Buffalo Bill had been born in a cabin home on the banks of the Mississippi River in the State of Iowa, and from his eighth year he had been a pioneer—an advance agent of civilization. At that age his father had removed to Kansas, and as a boy Billie Cody saw and took part in the bloody struggles in Kansas between the supporters of slavery and those who believed that the soil of Kansas should be unsmirched by that terrible traffic in human lives.
Cody’s father, indeed, lost his life because of his belief in freedom, and the boy was obliged to help support the family at a tender age. He went to Leavenworth, and there hired out to Alex Majors, who of that day was the chief of the overland freighters into the far West.
The boy was eleven years old—an age when most youngsters think only of their play and of their stomachs. But Billie Cody had seen his father shot down; he had nursed him and hidden him from his foes, and from the dying pioneer had received a sacred charge. That was the care of his mother and sister. It was necessary for him to earn a man’s wage, not a boy’s. And to get it he must do a man’s work. He was a splendid rider, even then—one of those horsemen who seem a part of the animal he bestrode, like the Centaurs of which Greek mythology tells us. Alex Majors needed a messenger to ride from train to train along the wagon-trail, and he entrusted young Cody with the job.
It was one that might have put to the test the bravery of a seasoned plainsman. Indians and wild beasts were both very plentiful. There were hundreds of dangers to threaten the lone boy as he rode swiftly over the trails. Yet even then he began to make his mark. He had several encounters with the Indians during his first season. As he says himself, the first redskin he ever saw stole from him, and he had to force the scoundrel—boy though he was—to give up the property at the point of the rifle. This incident, perhaps, gave the youth a certain daring in approaching the reds which often stood him well in after adventures. And the reds learned to respect and fear Billie Cody. He allowed his hair to grow long, to show the Indians that he was not afraid to wear a “scalp-lock”—practically daring any of his red foes to come and take it!
So from that early day he had been active on the border. All knew him—red as well as white. He had been an Indian fighter from his eleventh year, the hero of hundreds of daring deeds, thrilling adventures, and narrow escapes. He was as gentle as a woman with the weak, the feeble, or with those who claimed his protection; but he was as savage in battle as a mountain lion, and had well earned the title bestowed upon him by his admiring friends—the Border King. His coming to the fort now—if he could make it safely—was worth in itself a company of reenforcements, for it put heart into all the besieged.
“Never mind, Keyes! it is Cody, and he will get through,” called out Major Baldwin to Captain Keyes, as the men were mounting.
Captain Edward L. Keyes was a splendid type of cavalry officer, and he was anxious for another brush with the redskins at close quarters. He was disappointed, but as the man making the attempt to reach Fort Advance was Buffalo Bill, the captain agreed with Major Baldwin that “he would get through.”
The Border King had turned his rifle now upon the Indian guards who were trying to head him off by blocking his way with the large herd of half-wild ponies which had been feeding in the valley. Indian ponies are not broken like those used by white men. They are pretty nearly wild all their days. The red man merely teaches his mount to answer to the pressure of his knees, and to the jerk of the single rawhide thong that is slipped around the brute’s lower jaw. And these lessons are further enforced by cruelty.
The odor of a white person is offensive to an Indian pony. A white man has been known frequently to stampede a band of Indian mounts; and not infrequently the mob of wild creatures has turned upon the unfortunate paleface and trampled him to death under their unshod feet.
Therefore, this opposition of the ponies was no small matter. They were a formidable barrier to Buffalo Bill’s successful arrival at the gate of the stockade fort.