XIII
“BUFFALO BILL”
He Works Hard but Jokes Harder.—He and I Stir up a Section of Paris.—In Peril of a Mob.—My Indian Friends in the Wild West Company.—Bartholdi and Cody.—English Bewilderment Over the “Wild West” People.—Major “Jack” Burke.—Cody as a Stage-driver.—Some of His Western Stories.—When He Had the Laugh on Me.
My acquaintance with Col. William F. Cody—“Buffalo Bill”—dates back to a time when I was a boy at Hartford and he was an actor in Ned Buntline’s play “The Prairie Waif.” His life had been strenuous in the extreme ever since he was thirteen years of age, but neither hardship nor danger had ever suppressed his inherent merriment and his longing to get a joke out of something or on somebody.
Our acquaintance was renewed at Rochester, where I had for schoolmate his only son, Kit Carson Cody, named for a famous scout of fifty years ago. The death of this boy was a great and lasting grief to his father, and his memory became more and more a link to bind the Colonel and me together, so in time we formed a close and lasting friendship. Whenever we chanced to be in the same city we were together so much that we became nicknamed “The Corsican Brothers.”
When the “Wild West” Company first went to Paris I was one of Buffalo Bill’s guests for several weeks. The Paris shopkeepers and theatre managers had heard of the enormous success of the “Wild West” in England and some of them, who feared it might divert money which otherwise would find its way into their pockets, arranged for a powerful “clacque” on the opening day, not to applaud but to disturb the performance and discourage Cody, so that he would leave the city. They did not know their man, so they had only their expense for their pains. Besides, even a Paris mob, which is said to be the meanest in the world, would think twice before “demonstrating” much in the face of an arena full of Indians and crack shots. The performance went on with little or no annoyance, but after it ended a great crowd burst into the ring and almost caused a riot. Suddenly another French peculiarity was manifested; a single gendarme worked his way to the centre of the crowd and fired a bullet from his pistol; in an instant the multitude dispersed. The worst of the French people respect the majesty of the law—when it is backed by firearms.
I soon duplicated, as well as I could, the Colonel’s plains costume, which he always wore in the streets as an advertisement. I too appeared in buckskin trousers, fringed leggings, pistol belt and broad sombrero hat. I must have looked like an animated mushroom, but the Parisians were quick to note the resemblance and to dub me “le petit Buffalo Bill.” Cody himself generally called me his “stove-in-pard.”
One morning the Colonel went out to be shaved and asked me to accompany him. As both were dressed in wild west costume, to which the colonel had added a pair of pistols and a knife, a large crowd followed on and lingered about the shop we entered. A Parisian shopkeeper generally has his wife with him, to act as cashier and general manager, and the barber to whom we had gone had a chic and attractive wife, regarding whom Cody and I exchanged admiring remarks in English, at the risk of the barber understanding us and becoming disagreeable. Then Cody seated himself and asked the barber:
“Do you speak English?”