The Honorable Cody Read online

“Get him out of there, Bat,” said Ben.

  “All right,” I replied, being still young and foolish.

  I set off at once for Ogallala, two hundred-some miles northwest, wondering how the deuce I’d spring Billy, especially a shot-in-the-ass Billy. I could not simply supply a getaway horse and ride off with him. At that point I had not given thought to Buffalo Bill, and had no idea he was sojourning at his Welcome Wigwam just down the rails from Ogallala at North Platte.

  Well, hell, when I got there the whole town knew it and the sheriff, whose name I forget, figured I’d come to spring Billy, so I was watched and Billy was guarded all the more closely by the sheriff and his deputy, a tough New Englander ready for a scrap. There weren’t forty shacks in the whole burg, and each and every citizen knew exactly why I had blown in to town.

  That sure was a tough nut. I bided my time, waited my chance, played cards, lost a little, just enough to make friends, and cased the little burg without seeing much opportunity to blow Billy out of there. The poor bum couldn’t ride on that sore ass so that meant the railroad was it. One way or another, I had to put Billy Thompson on a train. The problem with that was that the sheriff could wire stations in both directions, and soon enough the bulls would be pulling Billy and old Masterson out of a coach at some flag stop and former Sheriff Masterson would be charged with abetting jailbreak.

  My first ploy was to visit Tucker and see if he would let me smooth things over, but Tucker was not in a smoothing mood and if anything, the people in Ogallala were not smoking peace pipes either. They were smoking hemp. Actually, considering their prisoner, that was only a just and virtuous idea.

  Then I learned that Cody was in residence down the rails a bit and I was pretty sure that I could rely on my old friend. His show season was over and he was spending his time regaling the locals with tall tales and tormenting his wife.

  I had one ally in the whole burg, a certain bartender named Dunn who had known me in Dodge and could help me in ways that only a veteran saloonman would know how to do. We had a little private talk, Dunn and me. I hung around and finally had my chance. The town was going to throw a barn dance in the schoolhouse about four hundred yards from the huddle of buildings around the station, and the sheriff would do the fiddling. A little research at the station indicated that the eastbound express took on water at midnight and its next stop would be North Platte. That was as good as it was going to get.

  I befriended the deputy, a sturdy fellow, with a handle like Hal or Jim or Bob, I can't remember what, who had a long-barreled Colt .45 and knew how to use it. He got used to having Masterson hanging around talking law enforcement and poker and boxing and booze. I sometimes even talked to Billy, who slowly improved, at least enough so that I thought I could haul him off to a railroad coach and drop him in a red plush coach seat without ruining the upholstery.

  The night of the schoolhouse dance, I hung around with the deputy, lamenting with him the bad luck that he was on duty and couldn’t down a few or chase the ladies. The town was deserted, the main drag hollow in the night and off in the distance we could hear the sawing of the sheriff’s fiddle. I proposed that, in view of the bad luck of being stuck with guard duty, we have a couple of drinks brought over to us. The deputy agreed that a good shot of whiskey would be suitable solace for the bum luck of having to guard Billy the night of the big shivaree.

  That’s when my friend from Dodge, Jim Dunn, delivered the drinks, good stout bourbon, and we proceeded to sip. I sipped, anyway. The deputy promptly fell asleep from the Mickey Finn in his. As soon as he was sawing wood, I got Billy dressed and hoisted him on my back and we made it to the station just as the eastbound was taking on water. Minutes later we were riding the rails and Billy even managed to sit up.

  After a while, two in the morning to be exact, we stepped down into the deep cold night at North Platte, Nebraska, the home of Buffalo Bill. One saloon was still well lit, so I hauled Billy there, and as luck would have it, within was the Honorable Cody himself, perched on a stool, surrounded by locals blotting up his every word. There he was, in a soft-collared gray shirt, tan corduroy britches tucked into glossy boots, and that creamy sombrero capping his long brown locks, an empty glass before him.

  “By my tiddlywinks, it’s old Bat!” he said. “Bat and a mystery man.”

  That’s how he talked, you know. You couldn’t even get a hell or a damn out of him.

  “Meet Horace Greeley,” I said, and Billy shook paws. “Horace has been wounded in the ass. Say, Colonel, where’s the pisspot?”

  “Out back. I’ll show you,” Cody said.

  Moments later we were leaking side by side, which is how the world’s serious business gets transacted.

  I swiftly and privately detailed the dilemma I was in. I explained that the piece of meat I had rescued from an Ogallala noose was Ben Thompson’s nasty little brother Billy.

  “Ho, ho! We’ll rescue the little snot,” the colonel bellowed, buttoning up his tiger.

  Cody leapt into action. In short order we were secreted in a safe house in town where Billy could continue to recover out of harm’s way. And the colonel offered us the use of a conveyance that would carry us clear back to Dodge and safety. We could pick it up at the Welcome Wigwam.

  What more could a man ask? The old scout had come to the rescue, and he delighted in doing it. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Oh, no.

  I stashed Billy after looking after his bandages, and the next dawn I headed out to Cody’s rancho to see about the wagon and a dray we could take south. Dodge City was a far piece.

  But the colonel stayed me. “Bat, why don’t you stick around for a couple of days? I’m expecting a bunch of hunters, some people from abroad. General Sheridan wants me to organize a little hunt for them.”

  “I’ve got to get Billy back, colonel.”

  “Ah, you’ll get him back. I’m taking these gents thirty miles south to Keith Ranch. That’s thirty miles toward your destination.”

  “You have a wagon for us?”

  “Actually, Bat, I’m going to give you Louisa’s phaeton and a nag. It’s a fancy one. The little Thompson cur is going to ride back to Dodge in high style.”

  “A phaeton? How’ll I get it back to you?”

  Cody smiled. “I’ll get Lulu a new one. Tell Ben Thompson I did him a little favor.”

  I stayed. We kept Billy under covers. At the appointed hour two days later, a great caravan of wagons and horsemen started south across the endless plains. Cody, all got up in tan sombrero, red vest, embroidered blue shirt, and high boots, led the parade. The hunting party, whose tongues I did not fathom, and whose hyphenated names I don’t remember and couldn’t pronounce, headed south across great seas of shortgrass, occasionally undulating into a shallow watercourse. I took the lines of Cody’s mess wagon, a monster affair dragged along by a double team, while Billy drove the phaeton.

  That’s when I learned how Cody’s hunting parties progressed across the prairies. We stopped every five miles or so for liquid refreshments, which the colonel supplied liberally. He even had a little pond ice, and roamed the crowd, filling each tin cup with ice and whiskey. The hunt got increasingly jolly. In no time the bold hunters were weaving in their saddles, and not least of these was the colonel, who finally dismounted and flopped in the mess wagon. I could see how these little excursions of Cody’s could be popular affairs.

  All went well until I hit a sandy boghole and that top-heavy monster rolled over, throwing me and pinning the colonel. I held the teams while the others cheerfully extracted Buffalo Bill, who smiled himself up to his feet, and then we righted the wagon and stowed the gear. I had lacerated a lip and was bleeding all over my shirt but what else was there to do but pause and celebrate? The Old Orchard bottles went around again, and eventually we arrived at the Keith ranch in tiptop humor. The colonel was just fine, in capital form thank you, but his twenty guests were incoherent and soon were snoozing.

  Well, the next morning I loaded Billy into Lo
uisa’s phaeton and took off overland on a compass course, after hearty farewells and multitudinous handshakes intended to improve international amity. We had two hundred miles of dangerous prairie to negotiate. Little had I counted on the weather, and to our sorrow cold rain pelted us the whole trip and we barely escaped being mired on several occasions. Billy, wrapped in a soggy buffalo robe and shivering, finally made it to Dodge where Ben Thompson swiftly shoved him into a bed.

  “I owe you,” said Ben.

  “And Cody,” I replied.

  “And Louisa,” he said.

  “And General Sheridan,” I said.

  “I don't owe that bastard one cent,” Confederate Ben said.

  Billy survived, at least for the moment. But I lost track of him, which, come to think of it, is about right. He was worth losing track of.

  (From the memoir of Colonel William F. Cody)

  When I was a scout for the army, I found myself taking parties of wealthy or influential men out on the prairie for a buffalo hunt. I was the man to do it because part of my job was to supply the posts with buffalo meat. I also had a hoofer's knowledge of the terrain and the Indians, so I was anointed guide, bartender, chief hand-holder and majordomo for parties of gents from all over the world. Some of these were simply crusty generals with a chest full of ribbons and hardware, and their pals, usually captains of munitions factories. Other parties came from abroad and the army was simply accommodating those in power.

  Those gents wanted a good time, and maybe a shot at a buffalo or two. They wanted comfort, and a lot of it, and good chow, and plenty of Old Crab Apple to lubricate their evenings. They wanted protection against rain and some good flooring under them in their tents. They wanted some iron cots with springs and a mattress as well.

  I swiftly learned what to provide and became almost unwittingly the premier hunting guide to the great plains, and later in Cody, to the Rocky Mountains. I could put together some elaborate affairs in no time, drawing on local talent for muleskinners, chefs, and roustabouts. These were done in the off season, when my tent shows were stowed away for the winter, and they were strictly recreational. I sometimes made good money but mostly I had a good time. And I made sure that my guests did, too, which required liberal employment of the whiskey keg. It helped that my Nebraska quarters were on the railroad; these potentates could step off the train and be driven to my doorstep, scarcely a mile distant, along with their trunks and heavy artillery.

  Louisa didn’t approve, but that was usual. I don’t think she would have approved if I had taken the Pope hunting. Half these fellows were counts and dukes and barons and earls or secretaries of this and that, or capitalists, or marshals and generals of half the armies of Europe. It made no difference to her; they were invading Scout’s Rest or the Welcome Wigwam, drinking spirits and soiling her floors with muddy boots.

  Most of them couldn’t shoot and scarcely knew a buffalo from a rhinoceros, and were half-intoxicated while they were manhandling the weapons. But I had learned to keep a sharp eye, and never suffered a disaster.

  I remember when old Bat Masterson, a fine buffalo hunter in his own right, showed up that evening in North Platte with the little skunk who was Ben Thompson’s younger brother. I resolved to help because Bat wanted me to. Bat Masterson and I have known each other for a lifetime, and have much in common. I never employed him in my shows; he always preferred the sporting life, or wearing a badge to hamming around a stage or an arena. But I count him one of the great men of the Early West. He had some tough scrapes with the Indians, notably at Adobe Walls, and knew how to kill a buffalo, and was a fine lawman even if he looked more like the local butcher.

  When he and Billy Thompson showed up that night just when the party was getting slow, I persuaded them to stay in North Platte for a day or two, when my next bunch of great white hunters would arrive to demolish a few buffalo. Billy looked pretty sick. The train ride from Ogalalla had done him in and a day or two of hiding in a safe house would help. It was a great game; I don’t recollect ever helping a fugitive from justice before, but the way Bat explained it Billy was likely to get strung up at any moment and it was time to protect him. Now Ben Thompson, down in Texas, was a compact legend, as deadly a man as ever carried a revolver and it paid to stay on the good side of him, so I readily assented. I donated Lulu’s phaeton and a plug, and off they went, while I kept my European guests properly snockered. As far as they knew, Bat and Billy were simply my hired help.

  I heard they made it back to Dodge and Billy recovered to continue his nefarious life. Maybe some day I’ll use fellows like Bat in the Wild West, maybe an outlaw or rustling tableau, but ever since we hired Hickock I’ve been a little leery of gun men. He was one mean customer. Most of those gents were unknown in the seventies and eighties; it wasn’t until this century that legends about them began to crop up and their names became known. I know them all, and if I don’t put them into the Wild West, some day some entrepreneur, maybe some of the movie people, will tell their stories and they’ll live forever in the minds of the people. But I’d buy them all a drink at any saloon. They were the genuine article, believe me.

  Chapter 10

  Louisa Frederici Cody

  Will and I were married by a justice of the peace on March 6, 1866, in my father’s St. Louis home. I had known Will for about a year, and when I first met him he was still in the Seventh Kansas Cavalry. My cousin, Bill MacDonald, brought him to my house one day.

  What a handsome boy he was. I suppose I shouldn’t use that word but he was so young and I was younger. He was full of tales, and told about being a Pony Express rider and a stagecoach driver and dispatch rider all before the time he entered the service of his country. I liked him. He had an easy way about him, was comfortable with us, and full of good humor.

  I was expecting gentlemanly company that night but we played a joke on the fellow and Will told him that he and I were engaged. The gentleman retreated in confusion and I thought that was delicious, being engaged, at least for an hour or so, to the lean and handsome man sitting cheerfully in the Frederici parlor. But the idea of being engaged to Will Cody had settled in my mind and heart, and I nourished it all those months when he was away, out in Kansas, fighting for the Union. I wrote him a few times reminding him that we were “engaged,” and he thought that wasn’t a bad idea at all. Of course I didn’t know his faults at that time, being young and blind.

  So that was how it started. After the fighting was done and Will had been discharged, he returned to his old pursuits on the frontier, sometimes working for road contractors or railroad builders, other times as a scout for the army and always far to the west of St. Louis. But he had not forgotten me and I certainly had not forgotten the young man with all that energy.

  I knew so little about him and only later did I discover that he had been a border guerrilla, waging bitter war against the Rebs who had all but destroyed his family. It is odd how much a young girl doesn’t know about her swain and how little she dares to ask.

  But he cared about me, and when he could he left Kansas and slipped into St. Louis, and there in our parlor he seemed almost to devour me, which brought blood to my cheeks and I blushed at that strange attention that awakened such strange yearnings in my bosom.

  I was such a cloistered girl; indeed I had a convent education, reading and writing and prayers. Boys were mysterious to me. Yet I could tell from my own tumultuous feelings that I was drawn, even as he was drawn, and it was all we could manage to sit there in our parlor and converse and make moon eyes at each other. I really didn’t give the slightest thought to what we might do or where we might go. I thought he would settle into some St. Louis business, maybe becoming a livery stable man or a coal and ice dealer. If I thought at all about his life on the frontier, riding for the Pony Express, or being a dispatch rider for frontier companies, I might have hesitated. But how could any girl hesitate when she had so marvelous a boy in her life?

  We joked about our ersatz engagement but then h
e could see I really meant it, I wanted him, and suddenly he smiled and nodded, and we set the day, March 6, 1866. Since he was not of my church we married the only way we could, a civil ceremony before my somewhat skeptical parents, and then we raced down to the levee and boarded a riverboat for Leavenworth, where his sister lived, and where we would reside.

  I remember those vows, forsaking all others and all of that, and how firmly and sweetly he repeated the words before my family, for none of his were present. There at the dock I received a great scare, for someone brandishing a revolver saw Will and accused him of being a Jayhawker, and only the intervention of the crowd prevented trouble. Weakly, for I was terrified, I managed to reach our stateroom, a tiny, sweet place Will had reserved just for us, and ere long the river vessel trembled, make smoke and built up steam, and we were out upon the waters of the Mississippi and then the Missouri.

  And there, shyly, I stared at my new husband and the narrow bed, and the cream enameled walls, and awaited with fear and longing for what was to come, all of it a great mystery but one I ached to explore.

  But first Will escorted me around the boiler deck and then the cabin deck, greeting our fellow passengers as the afternoon waned. The boat was crowded with westering people, some in rough frontier clothing, others in the faded grays of the confederate uniform, others in silk hats and cutaways. I took Will’s arm and we watched the boat plow the river, and the wooded banks slide by and deer turn and flee as we rounded a bend.

  I wondered if people knew we were newly wed and had been just hours before standing before Mr. Gates as he read the words from some sort of book. I was so proud of Will, whose easy grace caught the eye of so many, especially women.

  I don’t think I ate very much, but I picked away at the beef and potatoes, and drank some wine, which I did just a little, as I had been taught. My mind wasn’t on the food at all. I could simply gaze at Will, who smiled at me, sat back, and watched the shore. I wondered whether we would tie up at night, but we kept going, and I realized the twilight sky was clear and the half-moon gave adequate light for passage so the pilot was pushing on. But then, about the time we finished, we did stop at a woodlot and a dozen boatmen began hoisting all the cordwood onto the boiler deck. The master was dropping anchor, and I realized this is where dawn would find us, on this wooded shore, the naked branches along the banks just beginning to show some leaf. The boat rocked gently as the current tugged it against its hawsers.