Many Loves of Buffalo Bill (6 page)

Before William and Louisa got married, she asked him to think about finding a job close to home. She didn't want to be left alone or William to be scouting the potentially dangerous plains. After considering the hardships Louisa would be exposed to on the frontier, he reluctantly agreed. The two decided to become innkeepers at a hotel in the Salt Creek Valley. It was the same business his mother had operated at one time. The Codys named the establishment the Golden Rule House. Not only did the hotel welcome out-of-town guests, but William's sisters Helen and Mary also occupied a room there. “I seemed to have the qualifications necessary to run a business,” William recalled later in his life, “but for a man who had lived my kind of life it proved a tame employment. I found myself sighing once more for the freedom of the plains.”
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Aware of her husband's longing, Louisa released William from his promise to settle in one place. After assuring her that he could provide for her working as a plainsman, he sold the hotel, moved his bride to Leavenworth, and traveled alone to Salina, Kansas. The Kansas Pacific Railroad was in the final stages of completion when William arrived. He planned to start his own freight service, transporting supplies to rail workers in remote areas. On his first venture out, the wagon was overrun by Indians. He escaped without injury, but his load and vehicle were lost in the attack.

He walked to Junction City, where he hoped to find a job that would help him support his family and replace his property. While he was there, he met up with Bill Hickok, a scout he'd known from his army days. Hickok was employed as a sentinel with the U.S. government and suggested that William take a job doing the same work. William's reputation, combined with Hickok's recommendation, led to his being hired to scout the territory between Fort Ellsworth and Fort Fletcher.

William wrote Louisa often during his travels. He shared with her stories about the terrain, the military posts, and the people he came in contact with, including General George Custer. He served as Custer's guide from Fort Hays, Kansas, to Fort Larned. No direct trail linked the two posts, but William forged a path through the countryside. Custer was so impressed with Cody's expertise that he promised to hire him on as a full-time scout should William ever need a job. “I think that was very nice of the general,” he wrote Louisa, “and I thanked him, telling him that I was a married man now and that I always would need a job to provide for my family.”
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Louisa wrote William about her daily routine, their home, the health and welfare of his sisters, and the impending birth of their first child. On December 16, 1866, Arta Cody was born. Several months later William was able to return for a brief visit with his wife and daughter. Seeing his child prompted him to consider less life-threatening work. He decided to enter into business with a land speculator named William Rose.

The two Wills invested in property near the spot where the Kansas Pacific Railroad was to run several miles west of Fort Hays. Their plan was to lay out a town where eager settlers could live and take advantage of this advanced form of transportation. Supplies were ordered and goods were stockpiled in anticipation of the mad rush to the area that the entrepreneurs named Rome. Once the plans for the railroad community were completed, William sent for Louisa and their daughter to come and live with him. “I was at Ellsworth to meet her when she arrived bringing the baby,” he noted in his memoirs. “Besides three or four wagons, in which the supplies for Rome's new general store and furniture for the little house I had built was loaded, I had a carriage for the baby. The new town was a hundred miles west. I knew it would be a dangerous trip, as the Indians had long been troublesome along the railroad.”
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A number of immigrants bound for the new town accompanied the Codys on the journey. William, his family, and the future residents of Rome were attacked twice along the way. Louisa was upset by the raids and with her husband as well. “Mrs. Cody asked me if I had brought her and the baby out on the plains to be killed,” William lamented years later. “This is the kind of life I lead every day and get fat on it, I said. But she did not seem to think it especially congenial.”
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Louisa and William put all their belongings away in their new home and looked forward to the town growing into a booming metropolis. Louisa was left alone quite a bit while William dealt with selling lots to various homesteaders and hunted buffalo to supply meat for the graders working on the railroad. During that time she learned to handle herself effectively against wild animals and drunken soldiers who made advances.

Before Rome had barely had a chance to get up and running, a ruthless businessman saw the town's potential and offered to partner with the two Wills. William Cody turned him down, and within three days the citizens of Rome were leaving in droves. The businessman had established a railroad town of his own called Hays City and encouraged residents to move there. The promise of employment for every man in the territory at the new site led to a mass exodus from Rome.
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Discouraged and broke, William left the deserted town and headed to St. Louis with his wife and child. After making sure Louisa and Arta were settled at her parents' home, he returned to the plains to hunt buffalo for the railroad. Once more, William and Louisa were separated, with only letters to connect them until he came home again.

My restless, roaming spirit would not allow me to remain at home very long
.

—W
ILLIAM
C
ODY
(1904)

I
n late February 1869, Louisa and her two-year-old daughter Arta were tucked safely inside her parents' home in St. Louis, Missouri. It was cold, and she stood over a fire blazing in a grate fireplace trying to get warm. Her little girl was nearby playing on the floor with a doll. Preoccupied with rereading a letter from William, Louisa paid little attention to the knock on the front door, nor did she look up from the letter when her mother answered the door. The sound of a familiar voice booming over Elizabeth Frederici's cheerful welcome prompted Louisa to set aside the correspondence.

Arta immediately recognized the burly figure that entered the room as her father's. She hurried to William, and he scooped her into his arms. Louisa was less certain that the man was her husband. There was a long moment of silence as she studied his face and rugged manner of dress. The change in his appearance was so striking that she could only stare at him. “Where the close cropped hair had been were long, flowing curls now,” she later wrote in her memoirs. “A mustache weaved its way outward from his lower lip, while a small goatee showed black and spot-like on his chin.”
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Louisa slowly approached William and then cupped his chin in her hand. He smiled back at her, and she hugged him around the neck, stroking his matted, unruly mane. “What happened to your hair?” she asked, smoothing it down and pushing several strands behind his ear. “This is how they wear it on the plains,” he replied unapologetically. “If it were any shorter I couldn't claim to be a scout.” He went on to explain that any Indian who got the better of him would have quite a scalp on his hands.
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William pulled Louisa close to him and kissed her face. They were happy to see each other, but she thought he looked thin and tired. She promised to serve him a fine meal once he “made himself presentable.” After playfully tossing his daughter in the air a few times and tickling her ribs, he reluctantly went to take a bath and change out of his buckskins into store-bought clothes.

William's appearance was significantly less wild when he sat down to eat dinner that evening with his family. It gave Louisa pleasure to see how well he liked her cooking. Still, the good food, the congenial surroundings, his wife's attentiveness, and the affection of his daughter were not enough to entice him to stay put for an extended period of time.

General Phil Sheridan, commander of the troops on the western front, needed William as a scout for the Fifth Cavalry. The outfit was being transferred from Fort Lyon, Colorado, to Fort McPherson, Nebraska. As soon as the way was made safe from assault by the Sioux, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapahoe, William promised to return for Louisa and Arta and take them with him to the Northern Plains. The day he announced that he needed to be on his way, a troubled light came to Louisa's eyes, and the lines around her mouth deepened with sorrow. She worried for her husband's well-being on such a dangerous journey. She did not doubt his ability as a hunter; indeed, she had been present at numerous shooting expeditions in which William occasionally and successfully competed.

Riflemen challenged the claim that he was the best buffalo hunter in the West. Huge sums of money were offered to William to prove his talent. Hundreds of spectators would converge at the spot where the contests were held, twenty miles east of Fort Sheridan, Illinois. William and his opponents would hunt for eight hours to see who could shoot the most buffalo. William always won. Many of the Plains Indians knew of his reputation and feared him. Louisa hoped his notoriety would protect him beyond the area where he had earned his fame. Soon after William rode off to join Sheridan's troops, Louisa began packing and making arrangements to go with him when he returned.

Riding well in advance of the cavalry, William blazed a trail through treacherous, unsettled territory scanning the area for hostile Indians. Not far from Fort Larned, Kansas, where his trip originated, he spotted a large gathering of Kiowa and Comanche warriors. Other than being restless and anxious about receiving a herd of cattle the U.S. government had promised the tribes, the Indian leaders assured William that they were not planning any attack, and he accepted their word. He did not fail to notice, however, that many of the Indians were armed with rifles and had a generous supply of ammunition. He continued on his way but kept a careful eye out for tribesmen who might be considering going on the warpath.

Days after his first encounter with the Indians, he was hurrying toward the next outpost on the trek to get supplies and a fresh mount when he was stopped by forty warriors. He recognized them as the same men he had met outside Fort Larned. Their faces were now smeared with red paint, and their demeanor was clearly unfriendly. William was jerked off his ride, disarmed, and escorted to their camp along the Arkansas River. After some fast talking and the promise to help round up several head of cattle and drive them to their village, William was set free.

More than a dozen warriors trailed along behind him to make sure he would do what he said. William slowly managed to pull ahead of his followers and eventually spurred his ride into a full gallop. A chase between the scout and the Indians ensued. The warriors were gaining on William just as he spotted a party of soldiers moving out of a thicket beside a stream. The troops noticed that William was in trouble and took position with their rifles to fire on the incoming Indians. When William reached the soldiers, he leaped off his mount and fell in with them. Several shots were fired, and two Indians were killed. The remaining warriors turned away from the ambush and rode back to their encampment.
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The Indian uprising along the route did not end with the exchange of gunfire outside Fort Larned. Native Americans were sullen and bitter about the intrusion on their land and the slaughter of the buffalo. From the time William left Louisa at the Kansas military post in 1867 until the time he was able to move his family to Nebraska two years later, he would be involved in numerous skirmishes with a variety of Indian tribes.

One of the most dangerous of the armed conflicts occurred in the summer of 1869 on the north fork of Nebraska's Beaver Creek. William was leading a group of civilian scouts and Fifth Cavalry soldiers through this dangerous area when they happened upon a tribe of more than three hundred Cheyenne warriors and their families. All were traveling along the water's edge. Word of the Indians' presence was sent to the commander of the troops, and orders were given to the soldiers to keep themselves low in the ravine to avoid being detected. William was sent ahead to find out how quickly the Indians were moving and in what direction. He returned with the recommendation that the cavalry attack the Cheyenne before they discovered the army was there.

The tribe was not caught unaware. Their own scouts had caught sight of the army. The Indians lined up on one side of the creek bed and were waiting for the advancing soldiers. The Fifth Cavalry's commander, General Carr, divided his men into divisions and concentrated a wave of troops on the point in the line that had the fewest warriors. A rogue lieutenant decided to attack another point in the line and found himself and his division surrounded by a hundred warring Cheyenne. While the remaining troops fought to rescue the men, the Indians fortified their defense. They held off the cavalry long enough to get the women and children out of the area and then, a little at a time, began retreating toward the Republican River.