| 229Chicago NEWS JUNE . 26. #
AMY LESLE AT THE FAIR.
Finds a Mine of Good Stories in the
Hospital Tent of Buffalo Bill.
-----------------
SOME HORSE-RACES OUT ON THE PLAINS.
----------------------
Col. Cody's First Engagment with a
Swallow-Tail Coal--Col. Ochil-
tree Remembered.
[ By Special Private Wire from the Daily News
World's Fair Bureau.]
In the shadiest corner of Buffalo Bill's camp there stands a mainiature cottage, thatched and green with culitvated iveys. It is the private kitchen of the scout and the welcome there is not confined to the Indian woven rug at the door but sparkles in the snowy linen, through glasses and from the rude pictures upon the boarded walls ; moreovere, it echoes in the hearty voice of Cody and in his wife's pleasant smile.
From the gate to the door is a rough brick walk, bordered with garden flowers that speak homely hospitality sweeter than words even day. Rows of naturtiums, phlox, primoroses [dr?] Charlie" line the walk and reaching to the high board fence. Col. Cody just escapes stooping to enter this tempting domain and John Burke scrapes his curly Irish head against the flags inside decorarting the low roof. Early last eventide Nate Salsbury, his pretty blonde wife, Mrs. Cody, tired little Irma, the baby of the Cody family : Artea Cody, Boals, the other daughter ; Pony Bob, John Burke and Buffalo Bill unlted in an invitation to entertain me in this ideal little heven. Not that any amalgamated coax-ing is necessary, for I am the first to follow through the gate after Cody and the last to leave the enchanting quiet and happiness when the hour for performance has arrived.
Cody never mises an appearance in each of his special offerings in the illustation of wild western life ; he does not practice gurning but does not shirk rehearslas nor indulge in the usual understudy privilege of a star. He just works the same day and night the year around and recreates by the simplest domestic enjoy-ment or a friendly rest in the company of chosen friends. A perfect bombardment of recollection experinces and escapdes fill out the hours in company like this Salsbury is a cynic, full of the bitterness of caustic humor and spice of sarcasm. Mrs. Salsburry is spirit-nelle and cultuned, with graces attuned to so-clearly and wit effevacsent and elegant. No such an enaging story-teller as Buffalo Bill figures in history or romance. He is queit, rich in humor and mellow his style as a bottle of old port. Nobody on earth has had quite such a gold mine of experience to draw from and no a dozen men I know have his splendid maguestim, keen appreciation and happy originality. He sticks to truth mainly and is more intensely beguiling than the veriest maker of fiction. Maj-Burke, worthy his Hibernnian descent, has a perfect volume of episodes in a repertory which changes with the weather, Mrs. Cody is bright as a dollar and Artea, who is handsome as her father and clever as her mother, is jewel in a congenial crowd of idlers bent upon amusing each other by heedless and cheerful banter or capital recitals.
With that sort of delightful people together conversation drifts into descriptive channels and stories are beaded along like strains of rubies, interrupted once in a while by a delicate pearl of sentiment. There is never any begin-ing to an evening of laughs or tears made up of yarns. But likely something reminded Salsbury of the old days of " The Brook," for, without waring, we were in the midst of a scene described by that arch comedian in his most solemn and grotesque fashion: " Charlotte Cushman had just died and the stage-door keeper of a tumble-down theater in Shamokin came in with three coal-miners to appear as supers in the picnic scene. They came with the miners' tapers burning smokily in their caps, faces begrimed and black as night. The door-keeper, too, worked in the mines and set his falming headgear down on the window while taking instructions from Nate regarding the limited business of the scene.
" ' Fellers, ' orated the miner, in a raspy voice, 'yous is got to be good to-night ; remember one more of us is gone an' dere's no telling ' who's goin' to take her place.' "
I asked Salsbruy what occult strategy he invoked to manage the Indians under the strain of temper and climate. He looked at me in quiet scorn for my humble reasoning powers and said : " I traveled fourteen years with a soubreatte. Life with sevety-five Indians is tenderly peacful in comparison. "
Uppermost in the conversation was the Derby, the stuning throw-down and general outlook for a horse-race which might see the flag drop inside of an hour and a half.
Everything reminds Cody of something else a shade better than the subject at hand. The Derby awakend recollections of some of the early Dakota fair races where the excting and delusive " ringer" took an august part in the sport. Once a sleepy greaser matched a still more somenolent equine against the fastest horse Cody had on his ranch.
The Mexican kept his steed in an old adobe house and let him graze around in a listless sort of style for day or so. But the race day the horse appeared in pattern trim, surmounted with a dapper little jockey the like of which North Platte had never seen. Cody had all his money on his own horse and a glimpse of the opponent showed him that he had been watching the wrong horse doze about in the pamps. But they don't say much about those things out in that country, and Bill thought he would sport the race anyhow. After they had gone about half the distance and Cody had just cought sight of the jockey's chipper colors once in the heat the rider called out to him : ' How much of this do you want" Bill yelled into the melanchloy distance separating them : ' I guess this is far enough."
Buck Taylor, who is one of those slow hunorists in which the prairie a bounds, sauntered but into the town one morning and found eight
Colorado cowboys with champing broncos tethred to their iron wrists. " Whatcher calc' late doin' ?" lazily queried Buck. " Hoss-race," was the portentous reply.
" Whatcher conditions an' sich in this hoss-race?" asked Buck, with a smolder of sportive fire in his eye.
" Goin' ter lead 'em down ter the two-mille tree and race back," volun teered a plunger.
Buck looked at the outfit a minute and said solemnly : " Calc' late to git back to-night?"
Out on the plains Pony Bob, Buffalo Bill and a congenial coterie of horsemen arranged a race for a considerable purse, even for those generous days, and made it free for all comers.
Three days before the race a mild old man, with a covered wagon and team, drifted into the camp and incidenatlly remarked the evidence of sport. In the course of the day he offered to enter one of the queer animals dragging his covered wagon. Immediately the scert of the festive scout deteched something suspicious and they
delayed accepting the last entry until morning. That night when the soft Indian summer moon slid behind a convenient blanket of midnight the wary cowboys stole the old man's horse out of shelter and gave him a mile sprint under the blinking starshine. The horse trotted amiably over the ground in three min-utes and they forgave the kindly gentleman for everything he had not intended and accepted him as a lead-pipe-cinch angel.
The suspected enrty was received with acciamations the next morning and nothing but money was staked against it during the interim. When the race was called the old man brought out his dusty nag and also, to the surpirse and paralysis of the betors, he began dragging from the covered wagon a sack full of toe-weights, quarter-boots and scalpers, with which he proceded to decorate the three minute " velvet" of the previous evening. With these levelers of speed the horse struck out and trotted in 2:40. Of course, the untram-meled prairie trotter was outclassed and the emigrant carried away large accumulations of the golden dust staked against his traveling stable.
Col. Cody has served under thirty-two ger-erals, and that is more than many miliatry men can claim in this or perhaps any other counrty. Gen. Merill, who has put guns into the clever hands of so many soldiers, gave Cody his first commission. Bill was a lad and the dashing epaulets of lieutenant fell to his lot easily after that came all the heaped-up horses of his splendid career.
He fought and gained everlasting laurels long before necessity brought him into the radius of civilaztion. When the Grand Duke Alexis was
in this counrty Cody Planned and guided that prismatic Russian's frantic rush to the Rockies for a " b' ar" and other enchant-ments. Alexis gave him a jeweled pin of deep significanxe and great value, besides insisting upon the company of the successful scout into the less picturesque lairs of eastern hospitality. Cody came as far toward the orient as Omaha and the papers said that Bill had come east to buy a shirt so he could wear the pin.
The momentous occasion in which Buffalo Bill made his entree into Chicago society was marked by several unexpected and thrilling circumstances rarely credietd to prominent circies. It was along in '73, or some time at least before Phil Sheridan had married Miss Rucker, and Cody was to be the guest of that gailant bechelor.
Mike Sheridan was granted the privilge of escorting the celberated count to the gerneral's house and it changed that there was a ball of considerable importance to be given that evening at Riverside, and one of the promised sensations of the evening was Gen. Sheridan's tenderfoot hero from the bounless west.
Cody was practcially turned over to Mike, with instrction that they both appear at the stated hour in proper toilet for such an occasion. Mike did not approch the subject with obvious delicay the situation requrid and he nearly " faded" Bill with a sudden inquiry about a dress-suit. Bill thought he was doing pretty well to be decked in a blled shirt, but a claw-hammer, gloves and neck-tie had never entered his wildes night mares regardinf wardrobes.
However, he went in all docllity with Mike to an accommodating tailor, who rented him something awesome in the way of hand-me-down elegance which struck terror to Bill's loyal heart, Added to this injury was a pair of gloves, choker tie and low-cut patent leathers. It was one of those joylese years when men strteched their muscular legs into skin-tight trousers and the tailor with malice aforethought had picked out a shriveled pair of doeskins for Williams to wear to the ball. After much agitation upon the part of several volunteer assistant called in to extricate Bill from this fearful struggle with culture and broadcloth, they arrived at the ball-room. Bill was in a cold perspira-tion from his head to his heels. He was trembling like an April thermometer and had a started-fan look in his eagle eye that fitted his countenance worse than the huge white kids did his hands. About two hundred young ladies seized him with the usual finesse of Chicago and shook his uncomfortable hands in the hall before he could fly to the protection of Sheridan, who was in a similar but more familiar predicament at the extreme of a room which to Bill seemed longer than the grand canyon. At the first opportunity he escaped to the general, who, introduce him to more and more young ladies of such startling vivacity and security that the first thing poor Cody knew he had promised to dance a quadrille with a lovely blue-eyed creature who was going to " show him all he did not know," and that nearly meant a life-entanngle-ment for the damsel at that very trying moment.
But a gleam of hope shot into the stunned visage of the scout as he brought of the qua-drilles he had capered in up at the Dead Bush ranch hoe-downs or the cowboys' round- up on the plains. Bill was something of a dancer and was prepared to create as favrobale an impression as the tight trousers and button - hole bouquet would permit. But when a foreign tune struck his distracted tympanum and people began to dance without any further signal Bill grew ex-cited and yelled : " Where's your caller?" in such a magnificent voice that most of the girls thought he ought to study opera. After an awful siege with the lancers he saw an open door. Collecting his usual brilliant exceutive ability from the four winds whither it had been mercielssly scattered he made a bee line for the street and never stopped walking until he reached the town of Lyons, four miles south, where the friendly busting of a beer-barrel bung whispered frothy comfort to his harrowed soul. He floated in upon the bartender with his hands full of collar, scarf, cuffs and the coat of horros, other paraphernalia having been strewn in grewsome recklessness through the surpised night. An apparition of this inter-esting species was more than the sanguine " keep" had hoped for and after a hurried introduction Buffalo Bull gasped : " I had had an awful two hours. Now, you are my kind of people. I am at home here and I am going to stay until after the ball is over." Giving his distinguished guest a seat behind the bar-reduce Mr. Cody to a comparatively normal state by morning.
The colonel, by a smoth stroke of western indiffernce, once refused to drink wine with the princess of Wales. He simply did not want a drink just when he was asked and did not see why he should take it from a beautiful lady any more than anybody else. Immediately he became famous among a horde of temperance-workers----A circumstance which made one of the ex-quisite satiires of the age. Gen. Booth's forces carried his name and record around on banners, watery adulation was howered upon him, he was the frappe toast of the hour and the English paper were full of his exalted vistures and questionable fronteir manners.
All of a sudden the Denver Tribune came out with a cheering editorial telling of a few mountain escapades of the much-lauded temperance hero in England. It wound up by the disilusioning statement that " if Bill ever got on one of those whooping prairie tears of his he would breakes up any foreign temperance community in about one hour. " The shock-ing literary gem was copied with glee in various British journals and when confronted with it Cody met it with pictursque and sweeping denials of any acquaintance with Denver of its frivolous editors, much less intimacy with contumacious liquors.
" Tom Ochilltree lost $ 1,000 on the Derby, " somebody gullibe divulged with badted breath.
" Is that so?" mused Bill ; " well, well, maybe he did ; he is great pepole. I like him ; but Tom can make the biggest bluff on the smallest pair of any man in the counrty"
| 229Chicago NEWS JUNE . 26. #
AMY LESLE AT THE FAIR.
Finds a Mine of Good Stories in the
Hospital Tent of Buffalo Bill.
-----------------
SOME HORSE-RACES OUT ON THE PLAINS.
----------------------
Col. Cody's First Engagment with a
Swallow-Tail Coal--Col. Ochil-
tree Remembered.
[ By Special Private Wire from the Daily News
World's Fair Bureau.]
In the shadiest corner of Buffalo Bill's camp there stands a mainiature cottage, thatched and green with culitvated iveys. It is the private kitchen of the scout and the welcome there is not confined to the Indian woven rug at the door but sparkles in the snowy linen, through glasses and from the rude pictures upon the boarded walls ; moreovere, it echoes in the hearty voice of Cody and in his wife's pleasant smile.
From the gate to the door is a rough brick walk, bordered with garden flowers that speak homely hospitality sweeter than words even day. Rows of naturtiums, phlox, primoroses [dr?] Charlie" line the walk and reaching to the high board fence. Col. Cody just escapes stooping to enter this tempting domain and John Burke scrapes his curly Irish head against the flags inside decorarting the low roof. Early last eventide Nate Salsbury, his pretty blonde wife, Mrs. Cody, tired little Irma, the baby of the Cody family : Artea Cody, Boals, the other daughter ; Pony Bob, John Burke and Buffalo Bill unlted in an invitation to entertain me in this ideal little heven. Not that any amalgamated coax-ing is necessary, for I am the first to follow through the gate after Cody and the last to leave the enchanting quiet and happiness when the hour for performance has arrived.
Cody never mises an appearance in each of his special offerings in the illustation of wild western life ; he does not practice gurning but does not shirk rehearslas nor indulge in the usual understudy privilege of a star. He just works the same day and night the year around and recreates by the simplest domestic enjoy-ment or a friendly rest in the company of chosen friends. A perfect bombardment of recollection experinces and escapdes fill out the hours in company like this Salsbury is a cynic, full of the bitterness of caustic humor and spice of sarcasm. Mrs. Salsburry is spirit-nelle and cultuned, with graces attuned to so-clearly and wit effevacsent and elegant. No such an enaging story-teller as Buffalo Bill figures in history or romance. He is queit, rich in humor and mellow his style as a bottle of old port. Nobody on earth has had quite such a gold mine of experience to draw from and no a dozen men I know have his splendid maguestim, keen appreciation and happy originality. He sticks to truth mainly and is more intensely beguiling than the veriest maker of fiction. Maj-Burke, worthy his Hibernnian descent, has a perfect volume of episodes in a repertory which changes with the weather, Mrs. Cody is bright as a dollar and Artea, who is handsome as her father and clever as her mother, is jewel in a congenial crowd of idlers bent upon amusing each other by heedless and cheerful banter or capital recitals.
With that sort of delightful people together conversation drifts into descriptive channels and stories are beaded along like strains of rubies, interrupted once in a while by a delicate pearl of sentiment. There is never any begin-ing to an evening of laughs or tears made up of yarns. But likely something reminded Salsbury of the old days of " The Brook," for, without waring, we were in the midst of a scene described by that arch comedian in his most solemn and grotesque fashion: " Charlotte Cushman had just died and the stage-door keeper of a tumble-down theater in Shamokin came in with three coal-miners to appear as supers in the picnic scene. They came with the miners' tapers burning smokily in their caps, faces begrimed and black as night. The door-keeper, too, worked in the mines and set his falming headgear down on the window while taking instructions from Nate regarding the limited business of the scene.
" ' Fellers, ' orated the miner, in a raspy voice, 'yous is got to be good to-night ; remember one more of us is gone an' dere's no telling ' who's goin' to take her place.' "
I asked Salsbruy what occult strategy he invoked to manage the Indians under the strain of temper and climate. He looked at me in quiet scorn for my humble reasoning powers and said : " I traveled fourteen years with a soubreatte. Life with sevety-five Indians is tenderly peacful in comparison. "
Uppermost in the conversation was the Derby, the stuning throw-down and general outlook for a horse-race which might see the flag drop inside of an hour and a half.
Everything reminds Cody of something else a shade better than the subject at hand. The Derby awakend recollections of some of the early Dakota fair races where the excting and delusive " ringer" took an august part in the sport. Once a sleepy greaser matched a still more somenolent equine against the fastest horse Cody had on his ranch.
The Mexican kept his steed in an old adobe house and let him graze around in a listless sort of style for day or so. But the race day the horse appeared in pattern trim, surmounted with a dapper little jockey the like of which North Platte had never seen. Cody had all his money on his own horse and a glimpse of the opponent showed him that he had been watching the wrong horse doze about in the pamps. But they don't say much about those things out in that country, and Bill thought he would sport the race anyhow. After they had gone about half the distance and Cody had just cought sight of the jockey's chipper colors once in the heat the rider called out to him : ' How much of this do you want" Bill yelled into the melanchloy distance separating them : ' I guess this is far enough."
Buck Taylor, who is one of those slow hunorists in which the prairie a bounds, sauntered but into the town one morning and found eight
Colorado cowboys with champing broncos tethred to their iron wrists. " Whatcher calc' late doin' ?" lazily queried Buck. " Hoss-race," was the portentous reply.
" Whatcher conditions an' sich in this hoss-race?" asked Buck, with a smolder of sportive fire in his eye.
" Goin' ter lead 'em down ter the two-mille tree and race back," volun teered a plunger.
Buck looked at the outfit a minute and said solemnly : " Calc' late to git back to-night?"
Out on the plains Pony Bob, Buffalo Bill and a congenial coterie of horsemen arranged a race for a considerable purse, even for those generous days, and made it free for all comers.
Three days before the race a mild old man, with a covered wagon and team, drifted into the camp and incidenatlly remarked the evidence of sport. In the course of the day he offered to enter one of the queer animals dragging his covered wagon. Immediately the scert of the festive scout deteched something suspicious and they
delayed accepting the last entry until morning. That night when the soft Indian summer moon slid behind a convenient blanket of midnight the wary cowboys stole the old man's horse out of shelter and gave him a mile sprint under the blinking starshine. The horse trotted amiably over the ground in three min-utes and they forgave the kindly gentleman for everything he had not intended and accepted him as a lead-pipe-cinch angel.
The suspected enrty was received with acciamations the next morning and nothing but money was staked against it during the interim. When the race was called the old man brought out his dusty nag and also, to the surpirse and paralysis of the betors, he began dragging from the covered wagon a sack full of toe-weights, quarter-boots and scalpers, with which he proceded to decorate the three minute " velvet" of the previous evening. With these levelers of speed the horse struck out and trotted in 2:40. Of course, the untram-meled prairie trotter was outclassed and the emigrant carried away large accumulations of the golden dust staked against his traveling stable.
Col. Cody has served under thirty-two ger-erals, and that is more than many miliatry men can claim in this or perhaps any other counrty. Gen. Merill, who has put guns into the clever hands of so many soldiers, gave Cody his first commission. Bill was a lad and the dashing epaulets of lieutenant fell to his lot easily after that came all the heaped-up horses of his splendid career.
He fought and gained everlasting laurels long before necessity brought him into the radius of civilaztion. When the Grand Duke Alexis was
in this counrty Cody Planned and guided that prismatic Russian's frantic rush to the Rockies for a " b' ar" and other enchant-ments. Alexis gave him a jeweled pin of deep significanxe and great value, besides insisting upon the company of the successful scout into the less picturesque lairs of eastern hospitality. Cody came as far toward the orient as Omaha and the papers said that Bill had come east to buy a shirt so he could wear the pin.
The momentous occasion in which Buffalo Bill made his entree into Chicago society was marked by several unexpected and thrilling circumstances rarely credietd to prominent circies. It was along in '73, or some time at least before Phil Sheridan had married Miss Rucker, and Cody was to be the guest of that gailant bechelor.
Mike Sheridan was granted the privilge of escorting the celberated count to the gerneral's house and it changed that there was a ball of considerable importance to be given that evening at Riverside, and one of the promised sensations of the evening was Gen. Sheridan's tenderfoot hero from the bounless west.
Cody was practcially turned over to Mike, with instrction that they both appear at the stated hour in proper toilet for such an occasion. Mike did not approch the subject. |
