For some reason it seemed most reasonable to think Seamus Donegan could not possibly still be alive, not the way that man lived. But in the next moment Bill decided that it was every bit as reasonable to believe that the Irish man would still be very much alive. A man who pushed out at the edges of his Ufe with as much vitality and zest as did that Irishman—why, you didn’t easily kill off that sort of man.
Not the sort of man as was William F. Cody.
Likely, it was Edward Zane Carroll Judson who got the whole damn thing started what had pulled Cody off the plains to begin with. The stocky little prairie cock called himself Ned Buntline. Whatever name he wanted to use, in whatever company, it had been that fall of sixty-nine Cody first ran onto the dime novelist who was out to write the glories of the opening of the West. Bill instantly took a liking to that Buntline fella who had been hanged of a time, but the rope broke; some said the rope was cut by an accomplice. Still, it took some stewing, Buntline’s ideas did, before Bill seriously considered leaving these plains. But that chance meeting with Buntline that fall of sixty-nine was to come back to haunt Cody more than once. The first time was that very Christmas when an officer at Fort McPherson ran over to show him a copy of Buntline’s latest dime novel just arrived with a shipment of tinware at the sutler’s: Buffalo Bill the King of the Border Men.
Cody promptly bought up what all copies the sutler had and gave them away over whiskey and cigars for a chuckle or two, along with the feeling it gave him to see his very own name in print. To think of it! Buffalo Bill in print back east—even though Buntline’s story was nothing short of pure horse pucky—to think that his name in that tale was being read by thousands of eyes. Thousands upon thousands!
The Fifth Cavalry had only one Indian fight in all of 1870—things quieting down after the drubbing they had given the warrior bands, so it seemed. So it was that following winter of seventy, seventy-one that an eager Bill Cody jumped at the request made of him to guide for the British sportsman, the Earl of Dunraven. There followed hunting expeditions for the Grand Duke Alexis in seventy-two—the hunt when Bill got to meet George Armstrong Custer, the Seventh Cavalry’s hero of the Washita—as well as later expeditions guiding ornithologists and all manner of scientists out beneath this great open sky, into the midst of hundreds upon hundreds of intoxicating miles of absolutely nothing.
Again the following campaign season of seventy-one the Fifth had but one Indian skirmish. Nonetheless, he was developing a personal style mixed with a generous mix of charisma and electrifying dash that would make him truly memorable when he finally took that first step behind the smoky footlights of an eastern theater. Then in November of seventy-one, with little happening on the Central Plains, the Fifth was reassigned to the Apache war in Arizona. They were leaving Bill Cody behind at McPherson, bound for Fort McDowell.
No less than Phil Sheridan himself had instructed the regiment’s commanding officer to leave Bill at McPherson because he knew nothing of the Apache, and perhaps even less of the new terrain. The Fifth was ordered “not to take Cody.”
The Third Cavalry would be coming to take the place of the Fifth. Sheridan informed Cody he would never have a better chance to accept those numerous invitations to visit New York City. Bill went east. And his life was never to be the same again.
Dividing his time between newspaper publisher james Gordon Bennett and Ned Buntline, Bill got a real taste of the high life that only New York could offer. And he got to see himself played by an actor on opening night at the Bowery Theater for Fred Maeder’s production of Buntline’s story, Buffalo Bilclass="underline" The King of Border Men. At intermission the theater manager learned that no less than the real William F. Cody was in the audience, so after he made the announcement to the audience, the crowd prevailed upon the scout to make his way reluctantly to the stage, where he said little if anything—frightened to death, and frozen speechless.
Staring at a half-dozen painted, screaming warriors, each waving a rifle or war club as they charged down on him … why, that was one thing. But staring out at hundreds of theatergoers, all expecting him to entertain them merely by opening his mouth and saying something worthwhile? Now, that was a polecat of a whole different color!
Buffalo Bill made the one and only retreat in his life that night as he ducked through the side curtains—but was immediately cornered backstage by the theater manager, who offered him five hundred dollars a week to play the part of Buffalo Bill himself.
Five hundred dollars a week!
At the time Cody believed the man had to be mad, or merely addlebrained. No one could make that sort of money playacting, pretending, simply having fun. So Bill begged off, wanting nothing more than to escape the place as fast as he could get out of there.
“I never was one to talk to a crowd of people like that,” he told the group that had him cornered backstage. “Even if it was to save my neck. You might as well try to make an actor out of a government mule.”
And with that Bill ducked out a back door into the dark of a New York alley where he made good his hairbreadth escape, back none too soon on his beloved plains, assigned to Colonel John J. Reynolds’s Third Cavalry.
The next month, April of seventy-two, Cody guided Captain Charles Meinhold’s B Company on the trail of a war party that had killed three soldiers and run off some cavalry mounts a mere half-dozen miles from Fort McPherson itself. Two days later on the evening of the twenty-sixth as the entire company went into camp, Cody led Sergeant Foley and six men out to reconnoiter the immediate area before settling in for the night. No more than a mile from their bivouac Bill discovered a small Indian camp and a nearby pony herd, which included some of those stolen army horses. Cody and Foley decided to attack—killing three of the horse thieves. In the brief fight Bill found himself alone among the warriors, facing some daunting odds—yet stayed cool long enough to shoot his way out of the fix while the remaining horse thieves made good their escape before the rest of the company came up on the run.
For that bravery shown along the South Fork of the Loup River in Nebraska, Bill was awarded the Medal of Honor. And he thought on that now, touching his gloved fingers to his breast for a moment here in the warm morning sun—remembering how damned proud Louisa had been to slip that ribbon over his neck, remembering how the medal felt against the hammer of his heart. Recalling how he so enjoyed the long, joyous rolls of deafening applause from those in attendance as they clambered to their feet, their approbation ringing from those walls and rolling over and over him.
That same spring some of his McPherson friends secured Bill’s nomination by the Democratic party to represent the twenty-sixth district in the Nebraska legislature. He won by the slim margin of forty-four votes. When Bill had pressing matters with the army and did not show up at Lincoln on the specified date to be sworn in and to claim his seat, a suit was filed on behalf of his opponent, stating that some votes had been improperly returned.
Despite a questionable recount, Bill accepted the new figures, which gave D. P. Ashburn the election. Cody went on with his life.
Following his return to McPherson from the skirmish on the Loup River, Bill received the first of what would be many letters sent him by Buntline, every one of them urging, cajoling, begging Bill to go on stage to play himself.
“I still remember that dreadful night at the Bowery Theater,” he wrote Buntline.