American Endurance

by Richard A. Serrano

  In Chicago, the Reverend F. M. Bristol, pastor of Trinity Methodist Church, deplored cowboys’ digging metal spurs into their horses’ flanks as “a cruel thing … simply unadulterated cruelty.” He called on the American Humane Association to block the cowboys before they reached the Mississippi River and urged Illinois county sheriffs to arrest the cowboys and seize their horses. “They will receive a lesson which they need,” Bristol said. “There is nothing to be gained by it, nothing to be learned from it.” The law simply must be obeyed. “If they have not killed their horses before they get to Illinois, they should be put under arrest and the ponies taken from them. They should, every one, be prosecuted under the laws of this state.”

  John Shortall, who as president of both the Humane Society of Chicago and the American Humane Association had been arguing against the race from the start, mounted a final assault. And he laughed off the “implied threats” that the cowboys might shoot any humane workers who tried to interfere. “They will be quite able to take care of themselves,” Shortall said of the animal protection agents.

  He predicted that while the cowboys and their horses would likely thunder through Nebraska and probably squeak past Iowa, they would not be crossing the Mississippi. “I do not care to make public our plans just now,” he demurred. He revealed only that eight of his agents had been dispatched to posts along the expected route, and mentioned also the two that would be stepping off the train at the Chadron train depot. The agents would, Shortall vowed, “deal properly and vigorously with this matter and enforce the law.”

  Asked a reporter, “Have you heard the ‘bluff’ about the cowboys being armed and ready to shoot?” “I heard of it,” Shortall replied, “but I do not regard that as a ‘bluff.’ It was only the foolish talk of an irresponsible individual. But it makes no difference what the cowboys think or say they will do. They may carry all the guns they want to, but they will shoot nobody. Our men are courageous and active, and I have no doubt they will not be intimidated from doing their duty by the fact that a man guilty of cruelty to a dumb beast has a gun. This Humane Society takes ‘bluffs’ from nobody.”

  Meanwhile, Paul Fontaine and W. W. Tatro, the executives from the Minneapolis Humane Society, picked up their bags at the Chadron train station on the morning of the race. They had telegraphed ahead that they were being sent by a conglomerate of animal rights activists to hash out some kind of compromise or, as Shortall was vowing in Chicago, to shut down the race.

  The duo was tired and hungry but determined to get to work. They met with some of the riders, shaking hands and sizing up one another. They toured the horse stalls, barns, and livery stables. Tatro, a veterinary doctor and breeder of fine horses, examined the animals’ legs and backs and assessed their strength. Shortly before noon, Fontaine and Tatro pronounced the horses healthy and well-bred, “in good condition” at that time. Then everyone proceeded down Second Street to the Blaine Hotel. The time was 11 a.m., just six hours before the cowboys were scheduled to storm off for Chicago. Fontaine and Tatro said they wanted to speak to all who were “interested” in the race. Inside the hotel they greeted committee members and town leaders, including Billy the Bear and John Maher. Fontaine said they had come to Chadron because “the race would be cruel” and “there was a strong feeling against it.” He was very direct: he and Tatro were in Chadron to compromise or to close the race down.

  So the Humane Society emissaries, the race committee members, the cowboys, various town leaders, and everyone else who had squeezed inside the hotel lobby now shoved into a larger meeting hall. Wooden chairs were lined up, the heavy windows raised to let in more air (and flies), and each side faced the other. Chadron Mayor Augustine A. Record presided. The room was stuffy and hot and heavy with doubt: Was there any wiggle room, any common ground?

  Fontaine rose and faced the group, repeating what he had said while leaving the train station, greeting the cowboys, and inspecting their horses. “Our duty is an unpleasant one,” he explained. He spoke for a half hour. “It seems like meddling, perhaps. But if the race started and there was any cruelty practiced, arrests would most certainly be made.”

  Tatro echoed Fontaine’s concerns. Animal cruelty was illegal, he warned, and state laws must be enforced. No cowboy, no horse owner, no stock breeder, no town booster stood above the law.

  Mayor Record invited the race managers and promoters to speak. First up was Jack Hale, the widely respected rancher and stockman from near Sturgis, South Dakota. He owned a horse named Poison that one of the cowboys planned to ride, and he spoke on his horse’s behalf and for all the cowboys. He began by agreeing with Fontaine and Tatro that riders should be “arrested and punished” if they abused their horses. That, he said, would only be “right and proper.”

  But there was a difference here, Hale stressed. “If a man wanted to ride from here to Chicago, if he went about his business and used his horses right, he should be let alone. But if he abused his horses, it was time to arrest and punish him for it. If the man who an owner of a horse had employed to ride was guilty of such a thing, he ought to be arrested. And if the Humane Society put him in jail, I would not help him out.”

  The cowboys and race promoters squirmed in their seats. In the back and up against the walls, some turned away.

  Jack Hale (center), with cowboy film actor Tom Mix to his left. Hale was a rancher who brokered the compromise to establish Humane Society inspection stations along the race route. (Minnilusa Historical Association, Rapid City, South Dakota)

  Hale spoke about those back east who for years had ridiculed the men who braved the frontier and tamed the West. To him, he said, the Eastern snobs were hypocrites. “I have seen Eastern gentlemen spur their horses on the race track until the blood ran to the ground. Why weren’t they arrested?” he asked. “It looks to me the Humane people want to nab the cowboys and make some money out of it. If, as they imagine, the riders in this race are going through under whip and spur, then arrest them. But first wait and see whether they are guilty of such a thing.”

  Hale told the group that in the Black Hills region he had seen plenty of doctors, lawyers, and even ministers mistreat their horses. But “that class of men,” he said to a roar of laughter, “were not looked upon as being worse than cowboys.”

  Sheriff Dahlman, a race committee member, took the floor. Let’s instruct the riders to use good judgment; let’s urge them to care for their horses, he said. Considerable expense and trouble had already been involved in getting many of the riders here, not to mention the several thousand country homesteaders and out-town-visitors bunching up outside the hotel entrance, eager to hear whether the race was on or not.

  The race committee, the sheriff warned Fontaine and Tatro, “is not going to back down.… The race is going to start, and the money to pay the purse will be sent to Chicago. They will carry out their agreement, and the riders will be told that if they keep their horses in good shape they have a right to go through unmolested.”

  Dahlman spoke well, his words not threatening but forceful. He displayed the early signs of his subsequent long and distinguished political career: sheriff for three terms, mayor in Chadron, and, for many years more, the beloved mayor of the state’s largest city, Omaha. He had known Buffalo Bill Cody back in the 1870s, a friendship Dahlman was always “proud to say still holds good.” He would eventually round out his career as the U.S. Marshal for the state of Nebraska.

  Like many of the older men meeting in the Blaine Hotel, Dahlman had started out as a young cattle herder and cowboy, working stock in western Nebraska and at the mouth of Antelope Creek on the Niobrara River, once a sacred crossroads of the old Sioux Nation. He had struggled through the snowstorms of Nebraska winters, some lasting three days or longer, and he had fired up cow dung and buffalo chips to warm his feet and hands. After a particularly harsh blizzard, he recalled, “we gathered up the saddle horses and made another start, and sent out scouting parties. We soon began to strike cattle perfectly contented in
their new home amidst the splendid grass and water in the valleys, now the great hay meadows of the west.”

  James Dahlman loved Nebraska, he loved horses, and above all he admired courage and daring. So he was going to see this cowboy race through. He called the rewards of $500 or more offered to arrest the riders “nonsense.” This was not going to be a breakneck kind of race. This was about pacing and timing. “These horses and these cowboys are hardened and in good condition,” he said. “They can make a ride of sixteen or seventeen days at a moderate speed without hurting themselves.”

  Before sitting down, Sheriff Dahlman added a final word of defiance: “So far as the race being an injury to our city, we do not think it would have that effect.”

  Secretary Weir predicted that all the protests would blow over. He recalled complaints during the Indian Wars about how white settlers were decimating the native peoples, and how that hurt the country. “But Chadron is still here and doing business,” Weir said, “and can conduct the cowboy race with credit to herself.”

  Hale rose again, this time to offer a compromise. Why not have Fontaine and Tatro follow the race by train along with Weir and other committee members, and set up inspection and checkpoint stations to examine the horses? Two other South Dakota ranchers liked the idea. So did much of the room. The five o’clock hour was looming, and the race would soon be on; almost everyone was growing anxious.

  Tatro stood and bowed. “Our time is your time,” he said, agreeing to the compromise. “We will gladly go to see that there is fair play.”

  A local newspaper editor agreed that it was “not right to prejudge the race.” See what happens first; see how the cowboys ride, how the bronchos hold up. “Then you’ll have a better idea of the treatment of the horses,” he said. A retired colonel complained that all the race talk had begun months ago as a lark with a short newspaper item, and for too long it “had been advertised a little too much.” He said it was time to stop conflating and hyping the race with wild stories about Western outlaws and cowboys with fake names like “Rattlesnake Pete.” In a jab at John Maher, he added, “We need to have the lying newspaper correspondents tell the truth.”

  Mayor Record said he would be just as happy to “shut off the correspondents who have a weakness for stretching the facts.” He turned to Fontaine and Tatro and said, “I can’t blame you for interfering” after all the tall tales Easterners had read about this fantastic cowboy race. “You’ve formed the wrong opinion,” he told them.

  Fontaine scanned the audience. He had been warned not to come to Chadron unarmed, he confessed, yet he felt secure without carrying any pistols: “They said I would not be safe among a lot of cowboys, so great was the fear of our Eastern friends. But instead of being insulted or threatened, you have treated us very kindly since coming here. You have almost converted me,” Fontaine added, to the notion that the race could be run without abuse, without arrests, and without the slamming of jail cell doors.

  Even Doc Middleton, the outlaw, horse thief, and rumored murderer, did not seem all that bad. “We found him a very nice fellow,” Fontaine said. “And he found our people had heads and hearts and hands willing to do what was right. We had come here to establish a principle that dumb animals have a right to protection, and if the race must go, it should end without any cruelty.”

  But Fontaine had no kind words for John Maher. “This trouble could have all been avoided if your home correspondent had set the matter right,” Fontaine said. “In justice to the riders, the town and the state, I shall endeavor so far as I can to set the matter right.”

  The speeches were done, the meeting was over, the room fell quiet. Filing out, the men shook hands and patted backs. Everyone knew where everyone else stood; everything seemed reasonable at last. The cowboys would race, Humane Society inspectors would follow by train, and the horses would be examined at a series of way stations along the course. Any cruelty, any harm, and a cowboy would be out. The local sheriff would decide where any abusive rider spent the rest of the race.

  So ended the meeting in the Blaine Hotel, and so ended any last chance to stop the cowboys. In a few hours, the Colt revolver would be fired from the second-story hotel balcony. Secretary Weir plopped a floppy white Stetson over his head that nearly covered his ears. Tonight he would take the biggest prize in the race and board the first train headed east. He would follow the pace of the cowboys, too. And when he arrived in Chicago, Weir would hand the golden Colt revolver to the greatest showman on earth: Buffalo Bill, who would present it to the winner.

  Post Time

  7

  Late in the afternoon, a line of cowboys turned the corner onto Second Street and eased their horses in front of the Blaine Hotel. With all of the day’s fits and starts, the starting time for the race had been moved to 6 p.m. So the cowboys, eight in all, settled in their saddles and steadied their horses. After six months of protests, angry defiance, and nagging indecision, post time at last had arrived for the Great Cowboy Race. In fifteen minutes, the competitors would rush off on a thousand-mile sprint across three states and two mighty American rivers, aiming for the Chicago World’s Fair, its fabulous White City, and Buffalo Bill’s front door.

  Town dignitaries were assembling on the second-floor balcony over the hotel entryway. In a small spot of shade next to the train depot, Jester’s Freak Band, a local cornet ensemble in fancy braided uniforms, stirred the crowds. Chadron’s downtown merchants closed their shop doors but left their windows raised high. They craned their necks far out over the windowsills, their eyes and ears kept sharp. The more adventurous climbed up on rooftops, seeking the best seats and the better views. Trees made a good perch, too; so did gas lamp poles and hitching posts (for small boys who could stand still, stretch high, and keep from fidgeting).

  The crush of people filled the cross streets and the wide wooden boardwalks and back alleys, in some places standing ten or more deep. On both sides of the road a half mile out of town, the anxious jousted their buggies, their buckboards, and their bicycles for the best spots. Others clambered up a small hill even farther east, hoping for a final glimpse of the cowboys when they roared off for Chicago.

  Flags waved in the warm air, handkerchiefs too. Hats were doffed, cheers rose up, boys whistled, and girls shrieked. Fancy new Kodak cameras were swung into position. Some in the crowd scooped up late editions of the local newspapers, one proclaiming in a burst of civic pride: “Never before in the history of Chadron has there been an event in which the eyes of the world were directed toward our city.”

  All stood still, all hushed, all waited.

  Then John Berry pulled up on a chestnut stallion named Poison, and he slipped into line with the cowboys. Never a man to talk much, he did not have to now. It was clear he meant to race. Many recognized him as the railroad man and surveyor who for years had swung through Nebraska, Wyoming, and the Rocky Mountains seeking new paths for railroad track lines, and they had heard that when the official race route was being planned for the Chicago fair, Berry had helped draw it. The official map was supposed to have been kept folded and hidden from the cowboys and not shared until moments before the trigger on that Colt revolver was squeezed on the hotel balcony. But Berry had known the secret route for a week or more now. If allowed to race, he would have a significant head start.

  Worse yet, he was no cowboy.

  Sitting there on Poison, Berry did not speak. Not until some started to grumble did he realize that he had better say something. So he leaned over his horse’s mane and explained that he had not initially intended to enter the contest. But the cowboy who was supposed to ride Poison had unexpectedly fallen ill, and the horse’s owner, Jack Hale (the same Jack Hale who had brokered the compromise with the Humane Society officials earlier in the day), had asked him to fill in at the last minute.

  Few believed it.

  Berry insisted it was true. He had expected a good bit of grousing if he tried to race along the same route that he had helped carve out and had committ
ed to memory. He feared that someone in Chadron’s crowded streets or during the race or especially near the finish line in Chicago might be furious enough to poison Poison.

  Few cared to hear that either. The situation did not sit right, and once again the race was delayed. Committee members decided they had better huddle once more. Some suspected Berry was pulling a “cute trick” to sneak into the race with a wide advantage over the others. The committee members climbed down from the hotel balcony and reconvened inside the lobby.

  Steely-eyed John Berry, whom many called the “Silent Man.” A railroad surveyor and not a cowboy, he would race the thousand miles “under protest.” (Courtesy of William McDowell)

  In short order, they voted unanimously to bar Berry from the official competition. They could not keep him from riding, though. There was no legal way to stop a man on a horse from riding almost anywhere. The West might have been tamed, but much of it was still wide open, lawless in the sense that the law out in the open country was often a day and a night’s ride away. Nevertheless, the committee declared that Berry would not qualify for any of the prize money or awards should he beat the eight cowboys to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Nine riders would race, but only one of them—and that one a true cowboy—could win.

  Berry kept Poison in line. When he heard the committee’s ruling, he did not budge or climb down. Even when some in the crowd started to jeer that he was trying to “poison” the race, Berry held steady and calm, prepared like the others to get started for Chicago. Nor would he mind that the Chadron Citizen newspaper disparaged him in its next edition, speculating that he wanted in the race not for personal glory but rather personal wealth. “It is said that big money, some $2,500, is offered for the winning horses,” the paper alleged, “and John isn’t going to Chicago for his health.”