Gilligan’s toast encouraged proposals for more cowboy contests. What about a race from Chicago to St. Louis, “with frequent changes of horses”? Why not ride from New York City to somewhere along the Rio Grande, a race “between Mexicans and cowboys”?
The toasts and discussions ran so long that Cody almost missed his evening show. He scarfed down his meal and dashed for the exit.
That night Buffalo Bill wired a telegram to his many supporters out west and as far back east as New York. The great showman assured them that things were under control in Chicago and that a decision would be reached soon over who had won the cowboy race and who had cheated. “The cowboy race ended on my grounds today,” he wired. “Berry first, Albright second, others well up. I am the judge. Humane authorities perfectly satisfied, as horses are in splendid condition. Signed, William F. Cody.” In the morning, he and everyone else assumed, some kind of agreement and middle ground could be reached, and a formal public announcement regarding the winner would be made.
On Wednesday, the race committee members and Buffalo Bill continued arguing over who was the legitimate winner. Berry had ridden into Chicago first, but he had been disqualified from the start in Chadron. Should he still be counted out at the end? Albright had been second, with two horses. But he had admitted to secretly shipping them by railcar for long stretches, a clear violation of the race rules. Gillespie had been third; his horses seemed fine, and he was incontestably a cowboy.
The committee and Cody next heard from the bike-riding Chicago Inter Ocean newspaper correspondent who had trailed several of the riders. He said that near Farley, Iowa, “by the light of the moon” he had spotted Gillespie riding in the back of a buggy, sound asleep. He said he had woken Gillespie, and old Joe had stammered that he merely was trying to snatch a bit of rest. He claimed other riders were hiding in wagons under the cover of night, too, and that he and Rattlesnake Pete were not going to let them win. “Pete and me have been riding square all along, but these other fellows are riding in hacks after night,” Gillespie told the reporter. “And I propose to win this race if I have to ride a hack all the way.”
The reporter said he later “came upon Rattlesnake Pete at a farmhouse feeding his horse. He was glum. He said he had seen Smith and Gillespie pass two miles out of White Oaks Springs, both riding in vehicles and leading horses.” The reporter told more stories about other cowboys hiding in buggies, and he claimed that Albright was not the only man to secretly send his horses by rail. “At DeKalb I was told Monday morning that some of the riders had shipped their horses by train to Chicago, and others had tied [them] to vehicles and ridden in.”
The committee considered a telegram from James “Rattlesnake Pete” Stephens, well back of the pack and still struggling to make Chicago. He had strayed off course and bunked at Ben Morse’s livery stable in Rockford, Illinois. He slept there until about four in the morning, hoping to swing past Cherry Valley and then ride into Chicago, another eighty miles more. He wired that he planned to lodge a formal complaint against those he suspected had not ridden fair. He wanted a halt to any decisions on the prize money and other awards until his allegations could be thoroughly investigated and he himself declared the winner.
He pushed on to DeKalb and arrived there, the last registration station, at dawn. An inspector took one look at his horse, General Grant, and wired bad news to Chicago. “Rattlesnake Pete, the fifth of the cowboys to register here, arrived at 5 o’clock this morning,” his telegram advised. “The horse was so badly used up that he may not be allowed to proceed. He claims that Gillespie, Smith and Albright have not been riding square and has entered a protest against the prize being awarded to either of them.”
Meanwhile, Jack Hale, the owner of Berry’s horse Poison, now threatened the committee with a lawsuit if his horse and rider were not declared the flat-out winners of the race.
Cody was just about worn thin. And yet that afternoon six of the “grizzled and bronzed” riders lined up out outside his Wild West arena. The grandstand seats were filled, the crowd roaring and pounding their feet as Cody came charging in. He pulled up to the center of the two-acre show ring and lifted his hat. He shook back his long gray hair and pointed his famous goatee heavenward. “I am here to introduce the gentlemen who have ridden the great race from Chadron, Nebraska, to Chicago,” he shouted above the band music and the grandstand cheers. “They will ride the same horses ridden on their ride of 1,000 miles, so that you can see the condition of the horses after they have ridden this tremendous distance, averaging 73 miles per day. They illustrate that the western horses of America have more endurance than any other horses in the world.”
At the drop of a white flag, Berry rode Poison through the north gate. Albright and Gillespie followed him in, racing toward Cody’s uplifted arms. Smith, George Jones, and Doc Middleton roared in next. “Never felt better in my life,” Doc teased the crowd. “Weigh as much as I did when I left Chadron.”
They thundered into the ring on a final spree of high cowboy gusto, bursting with Western daring, all to the delight of the crowds come to see a real Wild West roundup. One after another they bowed their heads and steadied their horses. “It is the first time they have been in public,” Cody said, apologizing in jest for the restless horses. “They are a little shy.” But none, he said, was marked by spur or whip, and that drew polite applause from the Minneapolis Humane Society officials sitting nearby. Cody singled out Gillespie above the others. “Old Joe is old,” he said. “But he is still in it. American men as well as horses can ride a thousand miles.”
At the show’s evening performance, after another tour of honor for the cowboy race riders, Cody announced that two more horsemen were due into Chicago, including Rattlesnake Pete. “They are still to arrive,” said Buffalo Bill. “They are expected this evening or tonight. When they arrive the decision will be given as to the winner of this great race.”
Dawn came on Thursday, but it brought no immediate answers. Rattlesnake Pete at last lumbered in that morning, and in the afternoon the race committee met yet again, this time in a small room under a staircase near the Illinois Central tracks, away from the pressing crowds.
Cody brought along Major Burke. Hale sat in as well, along with some of the other horse owners. For two hours they hashed over the complaints and heard the threats of legal action and the allegations of shipped horses and cowboys snoozing in buggies. They debated the race rules and conferred again with the Humane Society representatives. Fontaine and Tatro discussed their preliminary findings. “The race has been accomplished in every way satisfactory to the Humane Society,” they concluded. They cited the horses’ stamina as nothing short of “wonderful” and commended the cowboys for not overworking them.
Tatro added a mea culpa: “It started in foolishness and was foolish business all through,” he said of the journey from Chadron to Chicago. “But it has been an educator of the people, showing them that the so-called cowboys are not a set of horned animals, all wild brutal men, and that the Humane Society discovered it was wrong in supposing that the riders would treat their animals badly.” The race had ended, he said, as “a big success in every way.”
When an attempt was made to formally disqualify Berry, Hale tossed down his receipt for the entry fee and read them the printed rules of the race: “This race shall be open to the world. No horses barred.” It said nothing about excluding railroad men who helped draw the race route. Hale argued that the map had been published in two newspapers two days before the race anyway. Berry, Hale insisted, “had ridden square.”
The committee members debated and adjourned for a while and then argued some more a little later, this time in Cody’s dining tent. He sought some kind of compromise. Others suggested a pool to divide the money among the riders. Eventually they strode out of the tent and announced at the gates of the Wild West show that they had reached an awkward and confusing settlement, but one that might stick. It was just going to have to do.
Berry was dec
lared the winner of the race, and he took home $175 from Cody’s purse plus the fancy Montgomery Ward saddle. He received none of the $1,000 prize money from the Chadron race committee, though. While overall he won less cash, who could deny he was the first to Chicago? His official time was clocked in at thirteen days, fifteen hours, and fifty minutes.
The biggest prize of all: the golden Colt revolver. It was fired to start the Great Cowboy Race, and Buffalo Bill himself awarded it at the finish line. (Dawes County Historical Museum)
Gillespie said he was fine with that arrangement: “He beat the race.” Old Joe was awarded the largest share of the money because Berry had prior knowledge of the route and Albright had shipped his horses. Gillespie won $200 of the $1,000 in prize money from the race committee, plus $50 of the $500 that Cody separately had pledged.
Six others, including Rattlesnake Pete, took a slice of the remaining $800 in prize money and the $275 remaining from Cody’s allotment. Middleton, Albright, and Campbell each were awarded the smallest amounts: $75 in prize money and $25 from Cody’s share. In the end, everyone pocketed something, except Little Davy Douglas, who had dropped out of the race long ago.
There was one presentation left, nearly forgotten in all the ruckus over cash prizes, cheating cowboys, and a railroad ringer. Cody stepped up to Gillespie and placed the golden Colt revolver in Old Joe’s hand. The money was fleeting, but that firearm was the grandest prize of all. Gillespie rode home with it.
The Agony Is Over
13
“The agony is over, and we are glad of it,” harrumphed the Chadron Citizen’s editors after six months of planning, two weeks of racing, and several days of grueling indecision that had ended with John Berry, the noncowboy, declared as winner of the Great Cowboy Race.
“What is the West good for anyway?” the editorial grumbled. “We pride ourselves on our cowboys with the long terrifying names, and they were a part of our very assets. And yet a man with a name which is almost as tenderfoot and respectable as any which serves as a sign for a shoe store in Rome, New York, has everlastingly walloped us at our own game. Our western heads are bowed in shame.”
So the civic leaders of Chadron did what any spunky town far out on the High Plains would do: they proposed another cowboy race.
While the Chicago results were still under debate, a letter had arrived in Chadron from Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was signed by Emma Hutchinson, the Denver cowgirl born in a barn and now a champion rider. She had first wanted to ride against the men this June, but her backers had bailed out before she could reach Chadron. Now she pledged to ride alone from Chadron to Chicago and beat Berry’s time. To many in Chadron and across the West, a genuine horsewoman in a saddle was more of a hero than a railroad surveyor.
Hutchinson’s letter was addressed to race committee secretary Harvey Weir. But Weir was still stuck in Chicago, sorting out the mess over the race money and awards. So the Chadron postman walked over to the courthouse and handed the letter to William Henry Reynolds, the Dawes County court clerk and treasurer and the future Chadron mayor.
“I left Denver last Saturday noon; arrived in Cheyenne Tuesday morning at 10:30; will leave for Chadron next Tuesday,” Hutchinson wrote. “I have two dogs with me and my horse looks fine and the dogs are making the trip splendid. I had to lay over here to do some business. I will be in Chadron a week from the day I leave Cheyenne, and then I will ride to Chicago. I have had so much bad luck I am going to let some of the Denver people see what I am made of, and from Chadron I will beat the winner’s time in to Chicago.”
Reynolds forwarded the letter to Blanche McKenney in Kansas City, Missouri. Another long-distance female rider with her own Wild West show, McKenney had been reading about the Great Cowboy Race in the daily papers; she was following it closely. She had been trying to get word to Hutchinson to suggest that the two of them race for a $1,000 purse. But her idea was a short race, maybe just a mile long, or at the most twenty miles around a local track.
With Hutchinson already riding to Chadron, Reynolds thought he might be able to raise money for a wager and put something together for the two cowgirls, if Chadron and the American public had not already had their fill of cowboy stunts.
Hutchinson arrived in Chadron in the middle of July. She brought her two dogs, her cowboy hat, and her bifurcated skirt. She decided to rest a spell, soon extending it to a week while she ventured around town mulling McKenney’s challenge. Some in town suspected that her supporters might be getting cold feet again.
“I shall start just as soon as I complete arrangements,” Hutchinson said to those who asked, especially to those hoping for another cowboy race. “But I can’t tell you now who my backers are or the details of my arrangements. I have a challenge from Blanche McKenney of Kansas City to contest with her for any amount of money from $500 to $1,000. Or more. But she is in position to obtain extra fine horses, and of course I’ll not accept her challenge as it stands now.”
Hutchinson countered with her own proposal. She suggested she and McKenney choose horses “from a bunch” corralled in the Chadron area and race them right there. Then, she said, “I will accept her challenge.” McKenney said no, however, and the deal fell through. So Hutchinson swung up on her Denver horse and rode home. That was about the last anyone in Chadron ever heard from her.
In Chicago, the press was wasting no time evaluating the thousand-mile trek from Chadron, and editorial writers were quick to deride the Great Cowboy Race as more a sprint for money than any legitimate Western triumph. “It was supposed that the race would be an honest trial of the endurance of men and horses,” carped Chicago’s Inter Ocean. “It proves to have been a tricky scramble for lucre.”
The newspaper complained that James “Rattlesnake Pete” Stephens had drank his share of both whiskey and the prescription medicine that he picked up for his ailing horse General Grant along the race route. It claimed he even had shared some of the whiskey with the horse, thinking that it might give General Grant an extra kick and hurry them toward the finish line. But, noted the paper, Rattlesnake Pete “would have fared better had he refrained from the cup that cheers and inebriates.”
Was there a larger lesson to be learned from the Great Cowboy Race? If so, it was not only about money or a gun or animal cruelty. It was not about riders sneaking their horses onto train cars or cowboys foolishly riding a circus mule. Rather, it was something at the heart of what had transpired in June 1893 between a small Western town all alone near the Badlands and the glimmer and glory of the bright lights of the Chicago World’s Fair.
“It is true that bronchos and cowboys can endure great hardships,” reflected the Inter Ocean. “But we did not need to learn it again. The narratives of a hundred forced marches with General Crook, a thousand journeys across the Plains, myriads of perilous adventures on the frontiers had taught us this long ago.”
The paper, like much of the press, judged Buffalo Bill Cody the overall winner—and loser—of the cowboy race. The contest had helped boost his Wild West grandstand attendance records. But for someone of his stature in what was left of the West, the gimmick seemed uncalled for: “His show is marvelous enough without the addition of one or two broken down bronchos and a few tricky riders.”
On July 1, the Humane Society officials issued their final report, and they were magnanimous. Signed by John Shortall, head of the national and Illinois groups, the report thanked Fontaine and Tatro for inspecting the horses at registration stations and Agent Oscar Little for helping to keep the riders honest. The officials were grateful to the governors of Iowa and Illinois for threatening arrests. And they commended the cowboys for “their fair play and obedience to the law.” They said Buffalo Bill Cody would remain an “officer in good standing” of the humane societies. “Finally,” Shortall wrote in summing up, “the nation is to be congratulated upon so universal an expression of execration of such cruelty as was promised at the beginning of this madcap, foolish proposition of a 1,000-mile race in mid-June ove
r our hot prairies.” Although the race offered not “the least value” to society, it nevertheless had been run with distinction.
Race committee secretary Weir, back in Chadron, returned the compliments. “You cannot speak too highly of Tatro and Fontaine,” he told reporters. “They advised the boys and cautioned them and gave them several warnings, which were heeded, for the boys knew they were for their own good.… It was wrong in supposing the riders would treat their animals badly. I consider the race a big success in every way.”
In Chicago, Cody dove back into his show program, preparing to make the second part of his season so spectacular that it would thrill even larger crowds before the Wild West and the World’s Columbian Exposition shut down in the fall. He also sent word back with Weir for his old friend Billy “the Bear” Iaeger in Chadron, the cowboy race committee member who years ago had lost his feet and his fingers to a Wyoming snowstorm. Cody wanted “Billy’s measure at once” on how the race turned out, and in return he would “send him the finest pair of artificial legs that money can buy.” Commented the local Dawes County Journal in Chadron: “The only big winner in the cowboy race was city clerk Iaeger.”
Few of the cowboys stuck around the big city; most were restless to move on. Joe Campbell, a tailender in the race, however, accepted a $60-a-month salary to work a while for Buffalo Bill.
Emmett Albright also had a slow start getting out of Chicago. The day before the Fourth of July, he rushed into the police station on Harrison Street, forgetting his summer jacket and hollering in a frenzy that his horse Outlaw, the one he had ridden to Chicago, had been stolen. He had stabled the horse in Buffalo Bill’s barn near the show grounds on Sixty-third Street before it went missing.
Other cowboys headed out of town, some back to Chadron, others riding deeper into the Old West. John Berry popped in and out of Chadron, but he said precious little. Always a quiet man, he was asked if he thought the race had turned out well. “Yes,” he muttered, “a success outside of the frauds that were practiced.” The man who was first to Chicago said no more.
American Endurance Page 23