My first plan of escape having failed, I now determined upon another.
After crossing the Smoky Hill River, I felt comparatively safe as this was the last stream I had to cross.
As a good horse is not very apt to jump over a bank, if left to guide himself, I let mine pick his own way.
Major North and myself went out in advance of the command several miles and killed a number of buffaloes.
The Indians were well mounted and felt proud and elated because they had been made United States soldiers.
Every Indian outbreak that I have ever known has resulted from broken promises and broken treaties by the government.
It was because of my great interest in the West, and my belief that its development would be assisted by the interest I could awaken in others, that I decided to bring the West to the East through the medium of the Wild West Show.
Washington newspaper men know everything.
Having secured my Indian actors, I started for Baltimore, where I organized my combination, and which was the largest troupe I had yet had on the road.
The first trip of the Pony Express was made in ten days - an average of two hundred miles a day. But we soon began stretching our riders and making better time.
Indians were frequently off their reservations.
I felt only as a man can feel who is roaming over the prairies of the far West, well armed, and mounted on a fleet and gallant steed.
Major North has had for years complete power over these Indians and can do more with them than any man living.
I had many enemies among the Sioux; I would be running considerable risk in meeting them.
The Free State men, myself among them, took it for granted that Missouri was a slave state.
The cholera had broken out at the post, and five or six men were dying daily.
I was persuaded now that I was destined to lead a life on the Plains.
Springfield has always had a place in my heart.
My great forte in killing buffaloes was to get them circling by riding my horse at the head of the herd and shooting their leaders. Thus the brutes behind were crowded to the left, so that they were soon going round and round.
General Custer was a close observer and student of personal character.
The Indians kept increasing in numbers until it was estimated that we were fighting from 800 to 1,000 of them.
We had avoided discovery by the Sioux scouts, and we were confident of giving them a complete surprise.
I thought I was benefiting the Indians as well as the government, by taking them all over the United States, and giving them a correct idea of the customs, life, etc., of the pale faces, so that when they returned to their people they could make known all they had seen.
My wife was delighted with the home I had given her amid the prairies of the far west.
With the help of a friend I got father into a wagon, when the crowd had gone. I held his head in my lap during the ride home. I believed he was mortally wounded. He had been stabbed down through the kidneys, leaving an ugly wound.
I found Spotted Tail's lodge. He invited me to enter.
The greatest of all the Sioux in my time, or in any time for that matter, was that wonderful old fighting man, Sitting Bull, whose life will some day be written by a historian who can really give him his due.
I had the best buffalo horse that ever made a track.
But the love of adventure was in father's blood.
Wild Bill was a strange character. In person he was about six feet and one inch in height. He was a Plains-man in every sense of the word.
But the West of the old times, with its strong characters, its stern battles and its tremendous stretches of loneliness, can never be blotted from my mind.
You who live your lives in cities or among peaceful ways cannot always tell whether your friends are the kind who would go through fire for you. But on the Plains one's friends have an opportunity to prove their mettle.
On reaching the place where the Indians had surprised us, we found the bodies of the three men whom they had killed and scalped, and literally cut into pieces.
Quick as lightning Wild Bill pulled his revolver. The stranger fell dead, shot through the brain.
Some days I would go without any fire at all, and eat raw frozen meat and melt snow in my mouth for water.
I began to think my time had come, as the saying is.
Excitement was plentiful during my two years' service as a Pony Express rider.
The first presentation of my show was given in May, 1883, at Omaha, which I had then chosen as my home. From there we made our first summer tour, visiting practically every important city in the country.
My restless, roaming spirit would not allow me to remain at home very long.
It was my effort, in depicting the West, to depict it as it was.
Frontiersmen good and bad, gunmen as well as inspired prophets of the future, have been my camp companions. Thus, I know the country of which I am about to write as few men now living have known it.
Wild Bill was anything but a quarrelsome man yet I have personal knowledge of at least half a dozen men whom he had at various times killed.
I could never resist the call of the trail.
Stations were built at intervals averaging fifteen miles apart. A rider's route covered three stations, with an exchange of horses at each, so that he was expected at the beginning to cover close to forty-five miles - a good ride when one must average fifteen miles an hour.
My brother was a great favorite with everybody, and his death cast a gloom upon the whole neighborhood.
So for twelve miles I rode with Sherman, and we became fast friends. He asked me all manner of questions on the way, and I found that he knew my father well, and remembered his tragic death in Salt Creek Valley.
The McCarthy boys, at the proper moment, gave orders to fire upon the advancing enemy.
My debut upon the world's stage occurred on February 26, 1845, in the State of Iowa.
We got more provisions for our whiskey than the same money, which we paid for the liquor, would have bought; so after all it proved a very profitable investment.
