“He offered to select me a charming squaw.”
Flat Iron is a shrewd financier, with a money getting system peculiarly his own, which he had worked successfully on many whites. In New York, he sometimes walked alone, in a street full of people, muttering to himself and staring at the sky. When he saw that he had excited curiosity—and an Indian can see out of the back of his head as well as out of both sides of it, he would stop, place several nickels,—never pennies, on the sidewalk, and make solemn “passes” over them, as if doing an incantation act. Occasionally he would look aside, and indicate by signs that the observers should add to the number of nickels. These additions he would arrange in geometric figures, which always lacked some point or line. Bystanders would supply the deficiency, the coins would be rearranged, still with missing parts, and the mysterious passes would continue, accompanied by solemn gazes heavenward. This pantomime would continue until the crowd had parted with all its nickels; then suddenly the old man would pick up the entire collection, stow it in his pocket and stalk off as jauntily as a broker who has succeeded in unloading a lot of wild-cat stocks on a confiding public.
While the Wild West was at Manchester I had my hundredth laugh—perhaps it was my thousandth, at the density of intelligent Englishmen’s ignorance regarding American people and ways. Colonel Cody, his partner and business manager, “Nate Salsbury,” were standing together, when an Englishman approached and asked for Mr. Salsbury. Nate asked what he could do for him and the man replied:
“I’m the Greffic.”
“The wha-at?”
“The Greffic—the London Greffic. I make sketches, don’cher know?”
“Oh! The London Graphic? All right. Sail right in. You might begin with Cody.”
“And who is Cody?” the artist asked.
“Why, Cody is Buffalo Bill!”—Salsbury almost screamed, he was so amazed.
“And does he speak English?”