“Then whose is it?” she asked anxiously.
“Yours,” laughed Billy.
The Cody house was a heavy log cabin of two rooms and a rough roof, in the Salt River Valley across which ran the Salt Lake overland trail. Fort Leavenworth and the Missouri River were only four miles eastward, and two miles below Fort Leavenworth was Leavenworth City. The Cody farm had been located by Billy’s father as soon as Kansas had been opened for settlement, in 1853, but Billy’s father had died two years ago. As Davy soon saw, Billy was the man of the family, and whatever he earned was badly needed.
It was good fun visiting at the Codys. There was Mrs. Cody and the four girls, Julia, Eliza, Helen and May, who seemed to think that Billy knew everything. Julia was older than he, but the others were younger. There was Turk the big dog; and not far from the Cody place lived other settlers who had children. But among all the boys Billy Cody was the only one who had been out across the plains drawing man’s pay with a wagon train.
The Codys lived right at the edge of the Kickapoo Indian reservation. Billy knew the Indians and they liked him; he could shoot with bow and arrow, and could talk Kickapoo, and had learned a lot of clever ways to camp and travel.
Best of all, past the Cody place, across Salt Creek Valley wended the Overland Trail—climbing the hill here, and disappearing into the west. Over it always hung that veil of dust from the teams and wagons that had set out. All kinds of “outfits,” as Billy called them, travelled it: the straining, creaking “bull trains,” carrying freight for the big freighting firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell; the settlers, bound westward, with their canvas-topped wagons bursting with household goods, the women and children often walking alongside; soldiers, for the forts of the Indian country; gold-seekers with pack mules; “tame” Indians, from the reservations or from outside villages; parties returning for the “States,” from California and Utah and the mountains, some of them with droves of horses, some without anything at all.
It was a very important highway, this Salt Lake, California and Oregon “Overland” Trail, which had one beginning at Leavenworth on the Missouri, only six miles from the Cody place; and the Codys saw all the travel that started on it. So no wonder Billy had made up his mind to be a plainsman and work on the trail; and no wonder that Davy wanted to do likewise. It seemed a useful work, and much needed; but it called for stout mind and brave heart, as well as sturdy body. As for sturdy body the work itself made people strong. The proper mind and heart were the more necessary qualifications.
Billy soon took the two mules into Leavenworth, and returned them to the company. When he came home, he gave his mother a double handful of gold pieces.