These trail herds were beset by many dangersfloods, stampedes, hostile Indiansbut the most disastrous, and the most difficult to protect against, was a large herd of buffalo across the trail. The longhorns, like the horses, mules, and oxen along the Santa Fe and Oregon trails, seemed to take special delight in breaking away from the cowboys and scampering off across the plains with the buffalo. Once they mixed with the buffalo, it might take a week or so of hard work to cut them out and get them back on the trail, and even then the herders were lucky if they recovered three-fourths of their animals.
Beyond the wild country the herds found new obstacles, the settlers, who turned out en masse to prevent the range cattle from spreading Texas fever among their own stock. They blocked the direct route across Missouri to St. Louis and forced the herds to move farther west into Kansas. A newspaper item in 1867 from eastern Kansas, quoted by E. S. Osgood, describes the movement:
The entire country, east, west, and south of Salina down to the Arkansas River and Wichita is now filled with Texas cattle. There are not only cattle on a thousand hills but a thousand cattle on one hill and every hill. The bottoms are overflowing with them and the water courses with this great article of traffic. Perhaps not less than 200,000 of them are in the state, 60,000 of which are within a day's ride of Salina, and the cry is, ''Still they come."
The herds from Texas moved along the eastern side of the buffalo country and occupied the grassy belt of land from the edge of the herds to the farming frontier all the way from Indian Territory to the Dakota line. This open belt grew wider each year as the buffalo were pushed back even more rapidly than the farming frontier advanced.
At the same time the buffalo range was being nibbled away on the western side. The pastures along the foothills of the Rockies were filling up rapidly with Texas cattle on their way to market in the mining camps and towns. At first some of the herds were pastured for a few weeks until they were needed by the butchers, but in a short time surplus animals were put on the ranges as breeding stock.
In the early 1850's, freight teams had discovered that their stock could survive the winters on the western ranges in the foothills, where there was some protection from the storms. A large train, caught in an early snow, turned out all its stock to rustle for themselves. In the spring the teamsters were surprised to find that the animals had survived in very good shape and were ready for work again. The oxen fared well on the cured nutritious grasses of the high plains without any hay or grain supplement.
The stockmen in Colorado decided that their range stock could do as well as the oxen from the freight teams. They found that the cattle, tired and worn from the long drive from Texas, quickly recuperated on the open range, survived the winter in good shape, and needed little care beyond protection from rustlers and a rounding up after each bad storm.
Another invader, meanwhile, was inching its way into the buffalo country: the iron horse. California led the west in demanding railroad ties with the eastern seaboard. Cattlemen moving into Kansas from the south, farmers flocking in from the east, and the continued growth of the colorado mining districts emphasized the necessity for better transportation.
In 1865, the Union Pacific started west from Omaha. This line up the Platte was of great national importance but had little impact on the buffalo, for by this time the herds had learned to avoid the whole Platte Valley. The new steel ribbon merely underlined the fact that the great buffalo herd of the plains had been divided permanently into northern and southern segments.
The first railroad to invade the buffalo homeland in western Kansas and to dispute the right of way with the dark-brown masses was the Kansas and Pacific, which came from Kansas City to Salina, then up Smoky Hill Fork toward Denver. By the time this new line had reached Hays City, Kansas, it was among herds grazing in large numbers on every side.
The railroad construction gangs around Hays City in 1867 numbered about 1,200 men and required a great deal of fresh meat each day, which the contractors bought from various market hunters, the most famous being William F. Cody. Bill Cody had a good buffalo horse, Brigham, which he had bought from the Utes, and a new-model 50-caliber breech-loading rifle, beautiful and deadly, christened Lucretia Borgia. With these two, and teamsters and wagons to haul in the meat, Cody contracted to supply twelve buffalo to the cook tents each day.
With his fine horse and good rifle, Cody could easily kill buffalo by running them, but for his regular kill he shot from cover and thus secured his animals without disturbing the rest of the herd. He would select a small band on the edge of the main herd and drop the chosen animals in a small area, handy for the teamsters, who also doubled as butchers. In eighteen months as a market hunter Cody brought in meat from 4,280 buffalo to the construction camps and to the Hays City market.
Bill Cody earned his name "Buffalo Bill" in a hunt with a small party of army officers. He was at the construction camp at a time when the cry "Buffalo!" was raised. Slipping a bridle on Brigham and grabbing his rifle, Cody rode off bareback toward the small band, eleven animals, approaching at a distance. Soon he was joined by five army officers out for a hunt. Evidently they thought the young man was a laborer on the work crew, riding one of the work horses. They kindly offered to give him everything of their kill except the tongues and tenderloins.
As the party moved slowly toward the unsuspecting buffalo, walking down a gentle slope, Cody moved away and circled to approach the animals from the rear. Then he gave Brigham the signal, unlimbered Lucretia, and in a short ride and killed all eleven buffalo with twelve shots before the amazed officers could come within range. He offered the tongues and tenderloins to them, and they presented him with his title, Buffalo Bill.
When word of the incident spread, friends of Billy Comstock, chief scout at Fort Wallace, on the Colorado-Nebraska line, claimed their man had an earlier and better claim on the title. They demanded a contest between the two. The newspapers played up the challenge, and the Kansas and Pacific saw an opportunity for good publicity and ran an excursion train from St. Louis for the big event. Referees were appointed, the field was chosen, and the big show was on.
Buffalo were plentiful near the railroad. On the first run Cody outscored Comstock quite easily. Then they had lunch and made two shorter runs in the afternoon. For the third run Cody stripped the saddle off Brigham's back and rode out bareback. To wind up his day he chased a huge buffalo bull toward the crowd of spectators and, the women screaming in excitement and alarm, dropped it with one shot almost at their feet. Then the kills were totaled and Cody was declared the winner, with sixty-nine to Comstock's fifty-seven.
The Kansas and Pacific had the 126 buffalo heads mounted and distributed them throughout the country for their advertising value. Several more excursion trains were run out to the end of the track, with round-trip tickets at $10. To stimulate more interest in the new line, the railroad promoters proposed that a carload of buffalo bulls be rounded up and sent on an eastern tour.
A crew of top hands was organized and sent out into the herds. These skilled workers worked in pairs, one coming up on each side of the quarry, with their ropes settling in place almost simultaneously. Then the ropers let the bull run, but each kept his rope taut and his horse away from the animal so that it could not charge either one.