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[Illustration: BUFFALO BILL--COL. WILLIAM F. CODY]


AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BUFFALO BILL
(COLONEL W.F. CODY)

ILLUSTRATED BY
N.C. WYETH


1920



by Cosmopolitan Book Corporation

Farrar & Rinehart Incorporated
On Murray Hill, New York

Printed in the U.S.A. by
Quinn & Boden Company, Inc.
Rahway, N.J.



Dedicated to My Nephew and Niece,
George Cody Goodman, Anna Bond Goodman,
and family.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


Buffalo Bill--Col. William F. Cody. _Frontispiece_

He Shoved a Pistol in the Man's Face and Said: "I'm Calling the Hand
That's in Your Hat"

Chief Satanta Passed the Peace-Pipe to General Sherman and Said: "My
Great White Brothers"

Winning My Name--"Buffalo Bill"

It Was No Time for Argument. I Fired and Killed Him

Pursued by Fifteen Bloodthirsty Indians, I Had a Running Fight of
Eleven Miles

A Shower of Arrows Rained on Our Dead Mules from the Closing Circle of
Red-Men

Stage-Coach Driving Was Full of Hair-Raising Adventures




CHAPTER I


I am about to take the back-trail through the Old West--the West that I
knew and loved. All my life it has been a pleasure to show its
beauties, its marvels and its possibilities to those who, under my
guidance, saw it for the first time.

Now, going back over the ground, looking at it through the eyes of
memory, it will be a still greater pleasure to take with me the many
readers of this book. And if, in following me through some of the
exciting scenes of the old days, meeting some of the brave men who made
its stirring history, and listening to my camp-fire tales of the
buffalo, the Indian, the stage-coach and the pony-express, their
interest in this vast land of my youth, should be awakened, I should
feel richly repaid.

The Indian, tamed, educated and inspired with a taste for white collars
and moving-pictures, is as numerous as ever, but not so picturesque. On
the little tracts of his great inheritance allotted him by civilization
he is working out his own manifest destiny.

The buffalo has gone. Gone also is the stagecoach whose progress his
pilgrimages often used to interrupt. Gone is the pony express, whose
marvelous efficiency could compete with the wind, but not with the
harnessed lightning flashed over the telegraph wires. Gone are the very
bone-gatherers who laboriously collected the bleaching relics of the
great herds that once dotted the prairies.

But the West of the old times, with its strong characters, its stern
battles and its tremendous stretches of loneliness, can never be
blotted from my mind. Nor can it, I hope, be blotted from the memory of
the American people, to whom it has now become a priceless possession.

It has been my privilege to spend my working years on the frontier. I
have known and served with commanders like Sherman, Sheridan, Miles,
Custer and A.A. Carr--men who would be leaders in any army in any age.
I have known and helped to fight with many of the most notable of the
Indian warriors.

Frontiersmen good and bad, gunmen as well as inspired prophets of the
future, have been my camp companions. Thus, I know the country of which
I am about to write as few men now living have known it.

Recently, in the hope of giving permanent form to the history of the
Plains, I staged many of the Indian battles for the films. Through the
courtesy of the War and Interior Departments I had the help of the
soldiers and the Indians.

Now that this work has been done I am again in the saddle and at your
service for what I trust will be a pleasant and perhaps instructive
journey over the old trails. We shall omit the hazards and the
hardships, but often we shall leave the iron roads over which the
Pullman rolls and, back in the hills, see the painted Indians winding
up the draws, or watch the more savage Mormon Danites swoop down on the
wagon-train. In my later years I have brought the West to the
East--under a tent. Now I hope to bring the people of the East and of
the New West to the Old West, and possibly here and there to supply new
material for history.

I shall try to vary the journey, for frequent changes of scenes are
grateful to travelers. I shall show you some of the humors as well as
the excitements of the frontier. And our last halting-place will be at
sunrise--the sunrise of the New West, with its waving grain-fields,
fenced flocks and splendid cities, drawing upon the mountains for the
water to make it fertile, and upon the whole world for men to make it
rich.

I was born on a farm near Leclair, Scott County, Iowa, February 26,
1846. My father, Isaac Cody, had emigrated to what was then a frontier
State. He and his people, as well as my mother, had all dwelt in Ohio.
I remember that there were Indians all about us, looking savage enough
as they slouched about the village streets or loped along the roads on
their ponies. But they bore no hostility toward anything save work and
soap and water.

We were comfortable and fairly prosperous on the little farm. My
mother, whose maiden name was Mary Ann Leacock, took an active part in
the life of the neighborhood. An education was scarce in those days.
Even school teachers did not always possess it. Mother's education was
far beyond the average, and the local school board used to require all
applicants for teachers' position to be examined by her before they
were entrusted with the tender intellects of the pioneer children.

But the love of adventure was in father's blood. The railroad--the only
one I had ever seen--extended as far as Port Byron, Illinois, just
across the Mississippi. When the discovery of gold in California in
1849 set the whole country wild, this railroad began to bring the
Argonauts, bound for the long overland wagon journey across the Plains.
Naturally father caught the excitement. In 1850 he made a start, but it
was abandoned--why I never knew. But after that he was not content with
Iowa. In 1853 our farm and most of our goods and chattels were
converted into money. And in 1854 we all set out for Kansas, which was
soon to be opened for settlers as a Territory.

Two wagons carried our household goods. A carriage was provided for my
mother and sisters. Father had a trading-wagon built, and stocked it
with red blankets, beads, and other goods with which to tempt the
Indians. My only brother had been killed by a fall from a horse, so I
was second in command, and proud I was of the job.

My uncle Elijah kept a general store at Weston, Missouri, just across
the Kansas line. He was a large exporter of hemp as well as a trader.
Also he was a slave-owner.

Weston was our first objective. Father had determined to take up a
claim in Kansas and to begin a new life in this stirring country. Had
he foreseen the dreadful consequences to himself and to his family of
this decision we might have remained in Iowa, in which case perhaps I
might have grown up an Iowa farmer, though that now seems impossible.

Thirty days of a journey that was a constant delight to me brought us
to Weston, where we left the freight-wagons and mother and my sisters
in the care of my uncle.

To my great joy father took me with him on his first trip into
Kansas--where he was to pick out his claim and incidentally to trade
with the Indians from our wagon. I shall never forget the thrill that
ran through me when father, pointing to the block-house at Fort
Leavenworth, said:

"Son, you now see a real military fort for the first time in your
life." And a real fort it was. Cavalry--or dragoons as they called them
then--were engaged in saber drill, their swords flashing in the
sunlight. Artillery was rumbling over the parade ground. Infantry was
marching and wheeling. About the Post were men dressed all in buckskin
with coonskin caps or broad-brimmed slouch hats--real Westerners of
whom I had dreamed. Indians of all sorts were loafing about--all
friendly, but a new and different kind of Indians from any I had
seen--Kickapoos, Possawatomies, Delawares, Choctaws, and other tribes,
of which I had often heard. Everything I saw fascinated me.

These drills at the Fort were no fancy dress-parades. They meant
business. A thousand miles to the west the Mormons were running things
in Utah with a high hand. No one at Fort Leavenworth doubted that these
very troops would soon be on their way to determine whether Brigham
Young or the United States Government should be supreme there.

To the north and west the hostile Indians, constantly irritated by the
encroachments of the white man, had become a growing menace. The
block-houses I beheld were evidences of preparedness against this
danger. And in that day the rumblings of the coming struggle over
slavery could already be heard. Kansas--very soon afterward "Bleeding
Kansas"--was destined to be an early battleground. And we were soon to
know something of its tragedies.

Free-soil men and pro-slavery men were then ready to rush across the
border the minute it was opened for settlement. Father was a Free-soil
man. His brother Elijah who, as I have said, was a slave-owner, was a
believer in the extension of slavery into the new territory.

Knowing that the soldiers I saw today might next week be on their way
to battle made my eyes big with excitement. I could have stayed there
forever. But father had other plans, and we were soon on our way. With
our trading-wagon we climbed a hill--later named Sheridan's Ridge for
General Philip Sheridan. From its summit we had a view of Salt Creek
Valley, the most beautiful valley I have ever seen. In this valley lay
our future home.

The hill was very steep, and I remember we had to "lock" or chain the
wagon-wheels as we descended. We made camp in the valley. The next day
father began trading with the Indians, who were so pleased with the
bargains he had to offer that they sent their friends back to us when
they departed. One of the first trades he made was for a little pony
for me--a four-year-old--which I was told I should have to break
myself. I named him Prince. I had a couple of hard falls, but I made up
my mind I was going to ride that pony or bust, and--I did not bust.

The next evening, looking over toward the west, I saw a truly frontier
sight--a line of trappers winding down the hillside with their pack
animals. My mother had often told me of the trappers searching the
distant mountains for fur-bearing animals and living a life of
fascinating adventure. Here they were in reality.

While some of the men prepared the skins, others built a fire and began
to get a meal. I watched them cook the dried venison, and was filled
with wonder at their method of making bread, which was to wrap the
dough about a stick and hold it over the coals till it was ready to
eat. You can imagine my rapture when one of them--a pleasant-faced
youth--looked up, and catching sight of me, invited me to share the
meal.

Boys are always hungry, but I was especially hungry for such a meal as
that. After it was over I hurried to camp and told my father all that
had passed. At his request I brought the young trapper who had been so
kind to me over to our camp, and there he had a long talk with father,
telling him of his adventures by land and sea in all parts of the
world.

He said that he looked forward with great interest to his arrival in
Weston, as he expected to meet an uncle, Elijah Cody. He had seen none
of his people for many years.

"If Elijah Cody is your uncle, I am too," said my father. "You must be
the long-lost Horace Billings."

Father had guessed right. Horace had wandered long ago from the Ohio
home and none of his family knew of his whereabouts. He had been to
South America and to California, joining a band of trappers on the
Columbia River and coming with them back across the Plains.

When I showed him my pony he offered to help break him for me. With
very little trouble he rode the peppery little creature this way and
that, and at last when he circled back to camp I found the animal had
been mastered.

In the days that followed Horace gave me many useful lessons as a
horseman. He was the prettiest rider I had ever seen. There had been a
stampede of horses from the Fort, and a reward of ten dollars a head
had been offered for all animals brought in. That was easy money for
Horace. I would gallop along at his side as he chased the fugitive
horses. He had a long, plaited lariat which settled surely over the
neck of the brute he was after. Then, putting a "della walt" on the
pommel of his saddle, he would check his own mount and bring his
captive to a sudden standstill. He caught and brought in five horses
the first day, and must have captured twenty-five within the next few
days, earning a sum of money which was almost a small fortune in that
time.

Meanwhile the Territory had been opened for settlement. Our claim, over
which the Great Salt Lake trail for California passed, had been taken
up, and as soon as father and I, assisted by men he hired, could get
our log cabin up, the family came on from Weston. The cabin was a
primitive affair. There was no floor at first. But gradually we built a
floor and partitions, and made it habitable. I spent all my spare time
picking up the Kickapoo tongue from the Indian children in the
neighborhood, and listening with both ears to the tales of the wide
plains beyond.

The great freighting firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell was then sending
its twenty-five wagon trains out from the Plains to carry supplies to
the soldiers at the frontier forts. Leavenworth was the firm's
headquarters. Russell stayed on the books, and Majors was the operating
man on the Plains. The trains were wonderful to me, each wagon with its
six yoke of oxen, wagon-masters, extra hands, assistants, bull-whackers
and cavayard driver following with herds of extra oxen. I began at
once making the acquaintance of the men, and by the end of 1854 I knew
them all.

Up to this time, while bad blood existed between the Free-soilers and
the pro-slavery men, it had not become a killing game. The pro-slavery
Missourians were in the great majority. They harassed the Free-soilers
considerably and committed many petty persecutions, but no blood was
shed. Father's brother, Elijah, who kept the store at Weston, was known
to be a pro-slavery man, and for a time it was taken for granted that
father held the same views. But he was never at any pains to hide his
own opinions, being a man who was afraid of nothing. John Brown of
Ossawatomie, later hanged, for the Harper's Ferry raid, at Charlestown,
Va., was his friend. So were Colonel Jim Lane and many other
Abolitionists. He went to their houses openly, and they came to his. He
worked hard with the men he had hired, cutting the wild hay and
cordwood to sell to the Fort, and planting sod corn under the newly
turned sod of the farm. He also made a garden, plowing and harrowing
the soil and breaking up the sods by hitching horses to branching trees
and drawing them over the ground. He minded his own business and
avoided all the factional disputes with which the neighborhood
abounded.

In June, 1856, when I was ten years old, father went to the Fort to
collect his pay for hay and wood he had sold there. I accompanied him
on my pony. On our return we saw a crowd of drunken horsemen in front
of Riveley's trading-post--as stores were called on the frontier. There
were many men in the crowd and they were all drunk, yelling and
shooting their pistols in the air. They caught sight of us immediately
and a few of them advanced toward us as we rode up. Father expected
trouble, but he was not a man to turn back. We rode quietly up to them,
and were about to continue on past when one of them yelled:

"There's that abolition cuss now. Git him up here and make him declar'
hisself!"

"Git off that hoss, Cody!" shouted another.

By this time more than a dozen men were crowding about father, cursing
and abusing him. Soon they tore him from his horse. One of them rolled
a drygoods box from the store.

"Now," he said, "git up on that thar box, and tell us whar' ye stand."

Standing on the box, father looked at the ringleaders with no sign of
fear.

"I am not ashamed of my views," he said, quietly. "I am not an
Abolitionist, and never have been. I think it is better to let slavery
alone in the States where it is now. But I am not at all afraid to tell
you that I am opposed to its extension, and that I believe that it
should be kept out of Kansas."

His speech was followed by a wild yell of derision. Men began crowding
around him, cursing and shaking their fists. One of them, whom I
recognized as Charlie Dunn, an employee of my Uncle Elijah, worked his
way through the crowd, and jumped up on the box directly behind father.
I saw the gleam of a knife. The next instant, without a groan, father
fell forward stabbed in the back. Somehow I got off my pony and ran to
his assistance, catching him as he fell. His weight overbore me but I
eased him as he came to the ground.

Dunn was still standing, knife in hand, seeking a chance for another
thrust.

"Look out, ye'll stab the kid!" somebody yelled. Another man, with a
vestige of decency, restrained the murderer. Riveley came out of the
store. There was a little breaking up of the crowd. Dunn was got away.
What happened to him later I shall tell you in another chapter.

With the help of a friend I got father into a wagon, when the crowd had
gone. I held his head in my lap during the ride home. I believed he was
mortally wounded. He had been stabbed down through the kidneys, leaving
an ugly wound. But he did not die of it--then. Mother nursed him
carefully and had he been spared further persecution, he might have
survived. But this was only the beginning.

The pro-slavers waited a few days, and finding there was no move to
molest them, grew bold. They announced that they were coming to our
house to finish their work.

One night we heard that a party was organized to carry out this
purpose. As quietly as possible mother helped take father out into the
sod corn, which then grew tall and thick close about the cabin. She put
a shawl round him and a sun-bonnet on his head to disguise him as he
was taken out.

There in the sod corn we made him a bed of hay and blankets and there
we kept him for days, carrying food to him by night. These were anxious
days for my mother and her little family. My first real work as a scout
began then, for I had to keep constantly on the watch for raids by the
ruffians, who had now sworn that father must die.

As soon as he was able to walk we decided that he must be got away.
Twenty-five miles distant, at Grasshopper Falls, were a party of his
friends. There he hoped one day to plant a colony. With the help of a
few friends we moved him thither one night, but word of his whereabouts
soon reached his enemies.

I kept constantly on the alert, and, hearing that a party had set out
to murder him at the Falls, I got into the saddle and sped out to warn
him.

At a ford on the way I ran into the gang, who had stopped to water
their horses.

As I galloped past, one of them yelled: "There's Cody's kid now on his
way to warn his father. Stop, you, and tell us where your old man is."

A pistol shot, to terrify me into obedience, accompanied the command. I
may have been terrified, but it was not into obedience. I got out of
there like a shot, and though they rode hard on my trail my pony was
too fast for them. My warning was in time.

We got father as quickly as we could to Lawrence, which was an
abolition stronghold, and where he was safe for the time being. He
gradually got back a part of his strength, enough of it at any rate to
enable him to take part in the repulse of a raid of Missourians who
came over to burn Lawrence and lynch the Abolitionists. They were
driven back across the Missouri River by the Lawrence men, who trapped
them into an ambush and so frightened them that for the present they
rode on their raids no more.

When father returned to Salt Creek Valley the persecutions began again.
The gangsters drove off all our stock and killed all our pigs and even
the chickens. One night Judge Sharpe, a disreputable old alcoholic who
had been elected a justice of the peace, came to the house and demanded
a meal. Mother, trembling for the safety of her husband, who lay sick
upstairs, hastened to get it for him. As the old scoundrel sat waiting
he caught sight of me.

"Look yere, kid," he shouted, "ye see this knife?"

He drew a long, wicked bowie. "Well, I'm going to sharpen that to
finish up the job that Charlie Dunn began the other day." And scowling
horribly at me he began whetting the knife on a stone he picked up from
the table.

Now, I knew something about a gun, and there was a gun handy. It was
upstairs, and I lost no time in getting it. Sitting on the stairs I
cocked it and held it across my knees. I am sure that I should have
shot him had he attempted to come up those stairs.

He didn't test my shooting ability, however. He got even with me by
taking my beloved pony, Prince, when he left. Mother pleaded with him
to leave it, for it was the only animal we had, but she might as well
have pleaded with a wildcat.

We had now been reduced to utter destitution. Our only food was what
rabbits and birds I could trap and catch with the help of our faithful
old dog Turk, and the sod corn which we grated into flour. Father could
be of no service to us. His presence, in fact, was merely a menace. So,
with the help of Brown, Jim Lane and other Free-soilers, he made his
way back to Ohio and began recruiting for his Grasshopper Falls colony.

He returned to us in the spring of '57 mortally ill. The wound
inflicted by Dunn had at last fulfilled the murderer's purpose. Father
died in the little log-house, the first man to shed his blood in the
fight against the extension of slavery into the Northern Territories.

I was eleven years old, and the only man of the family. I made up my
mind to be a breadwinner.

At that time the Fort was full of warlike preparations. A great number
of troops were being assembled to send against the Mormons. Trouble had
been long expected. United States Judges and Federal officers sent to
the Territory of Utah had been flouted. Some of them never dared take
their seats. Those who did asked assistance. Congress at last decided
to give it to them. General Harney was to command the expedition. Col.
Albert Sidney Johnston, afterward killed at Shiloh, where he fought on
the Confederate side, was in charge of the expedition to which the
earliest trains were to be sent.

Many of the soldiers had already pushed on ahead. Russell, Majors &
Waddell were awarded the contract for taking them supplies and beef
cattle. The supplies were forwarded in the long trains of twenty-five
wagons, of which I have told you. The cattle were driven after the
soldiers, the herds often falling many miles behind them.

I watched these great preparations eagerly, and it occurred to me that
I ought to have a share in them. I went to Mr. Majors, whom I always
called Uncle Aleck, and asked him for a job. I told him of our
situation, and that I needed it very badly for the support of my mother
and family.

"But you're only a boy, Billy," he objected. "What can you do?"

"I can ride as well as a man," I said. "I could drive cavayard,
couldn't I?" Driving cavayard is herding the extra cattle that follow
the wagon train.

Mr. Majors agreed that I could do this, and consented to employ me. I
was to receive a man's wages, forty dollars a month and food, and the
wages were to be paid to my mother while I was gone. With forty dollars
a month she would be able to support her daughters and my baby brother
in comfort. Before I was allowed to go to work Uncle Aleck handed me
the oath which every one of his employees must sign. I did my best to
live up to its provisions, but I am afraid that the profanity clause at
least was occasionally violated by some of the bull-whackers. Here is
the oath:

"We, the undersigned wagon-masters, assistants, teamsters and all
other employees of the firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell, do hereby
sign that we will not swear, drink whisky, play cards or be cruel
to dumb beasts in any way, shape or form.

his
(Signed) "WILLIAM FREDERICK X CODY."
mark

I signed it with my mark, for I could not write then. After
administering this ironclad oath Mr. Majors gave each man a Testament.

My first job was that of accompanying a herd of cattle destined for
beef for the troops that had gone on ahead. Bill McCarthy, boss of the
outfit, was a typical Westerner, rough but courageous, and with plenty
of experience on the frontier.

We progressed peacefully enough till we made Plum Creek, thirty-six
miles west of Fort Kearney, on the South Platte. The trip had been full
of excitement for me. The camp life was rough, the bacon often rusty
and the flour moldy, but the hard work gave us big appetites. Plainsmen
learn not to be particular.

I remember that on some of our trips we obtained such "luxuries" as
dried apples and beans as part of our supplies. We could only have
these once every two or three days, and their presence in the mess was
always a glad occasion.

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