The Honorable Cody

by Richard S. Wheeler

  So, he was candid. Half the stage-door johnnies I’ve met pretend they’re single and never admit to a wife or children. And they all think they’re the world’s finest lovers. I don’t think William gave a thought to what sort of lover he was. He was too busy having fun. Half of my delight in him came from that: he never was melancholic and always had a smile and a wink for me.

  William was simply attracted to my charms. They are abundant charms, and unlike most women I am content with them. I have just the right physique, and right cheek bones, and the right lustrous and long hair, and the right bosom, and the right smile, and all that is needed is a little rouge to color my cheeks because I am naturally pale. I always thought that if that is what Swift William wanted, I would supply it even if he was boring and even if his Wild West was populated with the sorts I hoped never to meet.

  Of course most of the country isn’t a bit interested in the Old West, and you won’t find anyone from a ladies literary society hiking out to some grassy meadow full of fleas to sit under a tent and watch howling redskins and unruly horses. You certainly wouldn’t have found my current husband’s father, Jay Gould, engaging in such barbaric things. There is only the future and history is bunk. In a way, the Wild West shows were an acknowledgment that the old order was fading. William would never have succeeded if people could still get the real thing just by traveling out to the remote regions of the continent.

  I told William that I was looking for a good vehicle for my talents, and was reading scripts. When I found it, I wanted him to underwrite the play. I knew my assets; all I needed was a little break, a chance for the critics to see me act and not just examine my figure. So I had all the literary and theatrical agents in New York and Boston and Chicago and Harrisburg send me plays, and I would read plays day after day. Sometimes I would read plays deep into the night, and William would say, Aren’t you coming to bed? And I would say, Go to sleep, and he would turn very quiet.

  Finally, Charlie whatever his name was, sent me the right script. I read it, saw myself triumphing, liked the role I would play, and decided that A Lady of Venice would carry me to the top. Let the world drink champagne from my slippers! But getting William to stage the show was another matter. I waited until that Saturday, because William is a weekend lover, perfect bourgeois that he is, and I could no more get him to make love on a Thursday morning than I could get him to shave his long brown locks. So I waited until that Saturday evening when I knew he would be filled with carnal thoughts and in his usual boyish hurry, and sure enough, late in the evening when he began eyeing me with hooded eyes and twitchy lips, I slipped the idea to him.

  “Dearest William,” I said, as I unbuttoned, “I have found the most wonderful play, the perfect play for your little sweetmeat. Do you want me to the be toast of New York?”

  “I want you to be buttery toast,” he said thickly.

  “Then it’s settled,” I said. “I’ll tell Charlie whatshisname.”

  The play, a costume drama, would not be cheap, but would reveal a great deal of my charms, which I knew would help.

  Fortunately, William was having a good year and thought nothing of the cost, which initially was projected as twenty-seven thousand, but crept upwards because, of course, I would not tolerate a second-rate show.

  “Do you like the script?” I asked him.

  “Ah...,” he said.

  “Good. I will make everyone in the first ten rows cry.”

  He came to a dress rehearsal, and was greatly agitated by my costumes.

  “Really, snookums, aren’t you baring a bit much?”

  “I belong to my public,” I replied.

  He laughed, pain in his voice. Poor William. He had never met an actress before. His world was filled with Louisas.

  Well, it was just awful. The lighting was bad. The set design was miserable and the set was hard to ship. Not only that but nothing looked like Venice. The director was an idiot. The advance man booked us in terrible theaters in the worst cities. The rest of the cast was so worthless I wanted to stop the show and make them all repeat their lines. The costumes were too gaudy and poorly sewn and made me look terrible. One of them made me look nine months pregnant. The hair dresser made me look like a witch. The playwright refused to change a thing so I had to mouth the dumbest lines I’ve ever had to say. And on top of that, the stupid producers took us right into towns where the critics are nasty, so they were all waiting for us with sharpened knives.

  I endured all of that with great dignity, mostly because I was sure that things would iron out, and if we kept going and making a few changes and fired a few of the cast, pretty soon there would be waves of applause and standing ovations and curtain calls in which I would have the chance to bow very low, and all would be well. But we certainly were running up debt, and I would peer out from behind the curtain and see half the seats empty, and then I’d rage at the stupid advance men for booking us in another little dump.

  William simply wrote checks and for a while it was fine. But then he began getting testy. He had spent nearly fifty thousand, which was nothing for him. He could afford it but he was being impossible, and it was all I could do to make him support the show. I knew that some day, crowds would cheer me in spite of all the idiots I was surrounded with.

  But then he cut us off.

  He was actually rather firm about it. “I’m sorry, Katherine,” he said. “I can’t afford any more.”

  “But, William!”

  He just shrugged and shook his head.

  His own season was closing and he went off to North Platte and left me stranded. I didn’t speak to him for months. Imagine doing that to me. I never quite forgave him, but we enjoyed an occasional rendezvous when our paths crossed. Later I married into the Gould family and after that I never needed a dime, and William was out of my life-–more or less.

  (From the memoir of Colonel William F. Cody)

  I had some slight acquaintance with an actress named Katherine Clemmons, who came to me seeking some backing. She wished to star in a costume drama but needed the wherewithal to proceed. I went one night to see her perform, thought she was gifted, and agreed to back her show. I have backed all sorts of enterprises in my time and count myself a venture capitalist.

  Unfortunately, her show was not well received. The critics were unduly harsh, I thought, given the graceful nature of the young lady. I continued to support the show for some weeks while it toured eastern cities but it became plain that the show was going nowhere and spilling red ink. My own touring season came to an end and I concluded that I should cut my losses so I wired her that no more support would be forthcoming.

  She was not pleased, of course, and her show closed. But not until she had besieged me in a most actress-like fashion. I had to endure midnight telegrams, letters, the intercessions of assorted mutual friends, and more, but I stood firm. It was time to close a show that had won no critical or public support. The whole business left me feeling a little scorched and I am wary now of women in theater. Some women are difficult enough to deal with but those in theater are well nigh impossible. In my own Wild West, I have had to tread carefully and lightly whenever a distaff member of our cast was involved. So I have learned caution when it comes to actresses.

  She managed to do well. Her obvious allure was noticed by Howard Gould, son of the financier, and she married well and never wanted for a nickel after that. I felt most grateful to Gould for sparing me her attentions because my own show was in precarious straits in the years that followed. I heard about her now and then after that. She appeared here and there, often in western cities though she and Gould lived in the East, and I have always wished her every success and happiness.

  Now, in our Wild West we had an entirely different sort of lady. They were skilled shooters, women of the true west, hearty and friendly, and devoid of those passions of status and envy and rivalry that afflict actresses, which I largely associate with New York and other eastern metropolises. The ladies in the Wild West were
also hardier, less afflicted by illness and catarrh and other complaints. But of course the Wild West was about 99 percent male, which kept it stable and harmonious.

  I have found, while hosting my guests at Scout’s Rest, or Pahaska Lodge, or one of the Cody ranches, that men gathered together for good company always have a fine time, filled with humor and camaraderie, without rivalries, and they do business easily often over whiskey and cards. But this is only true of gatherings that are entirely male.

  Now when you have a show company that is mixed, there is going to be trouble, and the Wild West did not escape that reality. We could not avoid a mixed-gender cast but we could and did hold the distaff side to a minimum. We had our cowboy band, our cowboys and Indians, our horsemen and stock herders, our actors, our roustabouts, but very few of those lovely creatures who rule the world and rock the cradle. These of course were either married or chaperoned and this was expressly because of my insistence upon rigorous codes of conduct. So the Wild West was largely harmonious all the years of its existence and our touring company simply functioned better than most theatrical troupes.

  Louisa tried accompanying me a few times but found the rigors of a road show beyond what a person of the gentle sex should have to endure, so she always returned to the warmth and security of the Welcome Wigwam, where she found pleasure in her domestic life and our daughters. I have always thought that she made the right choice. I always encouraged her to stay there, where she would be at home and at peace. Sometimes she would yearn to see me and surprise me with a visit, and these were always welcome and all too short. But she would stay only a brief while and then catch an express back to her beloved Welcome Wigwam, and so we continued in domestic contentment for many years.

  Chapter 29

  Lieutenant General Nelson Appleton Miles

  Sometimes, in Cody, Wyoming, when I was a house guest of Buffalo Bill and we both were silver-haired, we used to sit in the Irma Hotel and reminisce about the Indian wars. Those days seem long gone now, but for us they were only yesterday.

  The pair of us had strange, conflicted feelings about those wars; we were the invaders, the Indians were the defenders of their land and ways. And yet it was inevitable that they would be driven into reservations. If the Americans hadn’t done it, the British Canadians or the Mexicans would have. They were brave people fighting valiantly for what they perceived as their very own lands and ways and I cannot but look back with a sense of sadness.

  Cody was perhaps the best scout the army ever had. Unquestionably the best the Fifth Cavalry had. My colleague, General Carr, could wax eloquent on the subject of Cody, and I proved an attentive listener. I wish I might have employed Cody in my own commands.

  There at the Irma’s saloon or up at Pahaska Teepee, in the chill of a fine fall evening, we would remember those days, and always Cody’s thoughts turned to Summit Springs, which was one of the most successful battles the frontier army ever fought and the one that virtually ended the resistance of the Cheyenne to settlement in Nebraska and Kansas. That was in 1869. Carr’s modest force was pursuing a war chief named Tall Bull, who with his gifted dog soldiers was fiercely defending his country. Tall Bull’s band had with it two white women captives, a Mrs. Alderdice and a Mrs. Weichel.

  Tall Bull was working his way north, heading for the Powder River area and the Wyoming Black Hills. Carr told me he hoped to intercept the Cheyenne before they reached the Platte River, and free the white women. Carr was known for his long hard marches, and he moved his cavalry column at amazing speeds, making a hundred fifty miles in only four days.

  When he drew to within striking distance he took with him only those troopers whose horses were in good shape, numbering 244 officers and men, plus fifty Pawnee scouts under Frank North, leaving behind a large but slower force, including most of the Pawnees, most of the wagon train, and those whose mounts were incapacitated. And of course he took his chief of scouts, William F. Cody, a decision so fateful that it forever brought honor to Cody and to the Fifth Cavalry.

  “General,” reminisced Cody one evening in the hotel saloon, “it was plain that the Cheyenne were heading for the South Platte, and they needed water as much as we did. They had plenty of scouts keeping an eye for us and believed we were a few days behind them. I reckoned they might not be looking ahead so carefully. We were following their trail without difficulty. I went to Carr, and I said, ‘Sir, the best we can do is work around them, get between them and the river, and attack from the north. We’ve got plenty of cover; this is rough country, and they’re in no hurry. We can do it if we push.”

  Old Bill’s face would glow as he remembered it.

  Well, I knew the story. Carr had told it to me. He had the good sense to follow Cody’s plan and began a forced march that brought them abreast, well hidden by terrain, and then out in front of the village. The farther ahead the command got, the better things looked.

  Cody had detractors, chief among them Luther North, brother of the great organizer of the Pawnee Scouts, Frank North. Luther has tried to diminish the role Cody played that day and especially his advice to Carr. But Carr himself recorded Cody’s counsel in the official record and spoke warmly of it to many officers. There’s no question in my mind that the advice of William F. Cody set the stage for the army’s finest battle in that period.

  Carr’s scouts located the village and its herd about two miles distant and prepared to attack it. An entire army had moved around it in order to attack from an unexpected quarter. Pawnee scouts kept an eye on the village horse herd as well as the Cheyenne dog soldiers to the rear, who were looking for Carr’s force to come up behind.

  By the time Carr was ready to attack, his strung out forces had collected into a whole. Carr ordered them into a line of battle and had a bugler sound the charge. The village lay twelve hundred yards distant, and Carr’s force had only just been discovered by a herding boy up in the hills, who began a race to the village to inform its elders. The key to success lay in reaching the village before the boy did. Carr’s bugler, it seemed, had forgotten the notes to form and attack, so a quartermaster man grabbed the instrument and sounded it, and then the line of blue was off, guidons flying, horses in a slow gallop along a broad line. And still the village didn’t hear, thanks to a strong southerly wind which carried away the sound of all those horses.

  The herding boy reached the village only moments before Carr’s Fifth Cavalry did, too late for the warriors to respond, and the result was effective. Carr’s troops swept the village, killed numerous warriors, herded noncombatants off, and did so without serious casualties. Companies A and D, on the flanks, continued onward and captured the horse herd, thus putting the Cheyenne dog soldiers on foot. It was a swift, sweeping victory, a triumph of Cody’s insight and Carr’s soldier skills. The Pawnee scouts, operating freelance, sliced into the heart of the village and took no prisoners.

  Cody says he spotted a warrior forming a resistance, gathering other warriors around him. The warrior was mounted on a splendid light-colored horse, and Cody wanted it. He saw a way to knock that chieftain off his mount and plunged into a gulch that would let him get close and get the shot he wanted. Which, Cody said, he proceeded to do, not knowing at first that he had killed Tall Bull, the chief. A sergeant caught the horse and turned it over to Cody, whose prize it was.

  “Ah, that cream colored horse!” Cody said. “No wonder Tall Bull owned him. He was the best horse I’d ever seen. Fast! I raced him. He turned out to be the fastest nag in Nebraska! He’d fetch me a prize most any time!”

  I could see that the horse, rather than honor, was what Cody cherished most from the battle of Summit Springs.

  Much of this appears in the official history of the Fifth Cavalry but for reasons unfathomable to me, and indeed to Cody himself, Luther North has spent a lifetime trying to minimize Cody’s role. In fact, North even claims Cody wasn’t present in the fight but was off with Major Royall elsewhere.

  I asked the colonel about it.

 
Cody smiled and shook his head. “Frank North and I became partners, you know. That was when the Wild West was just being formed. Not only that, but we were partners in North Platte, sharing in the land, the irrigation project, all the rest. He was a grand man. He was injured badly in one of the early shows, had to resign, and died soon after. I’ve always felt that his brother blamed me for it and from that day on, it was get old Will. General, I don’t have any other explanation. I always treated Frank North right and he always treated me right. And that includes settling with North’s estate after he died. But Luther took it unkindly....”

  Cody’s voice trailed off in puzzlement.

  “What of the women?” I asked him.

  “Mrs. Alderdice was brained at once by Tall Bull’s wife and died instantly,” he said. “We buried her there. But Mrs. Weichel lived. She came screaming out of the lodge where she was held captive, wrapped her arms around a trooper and begged for her life. He got himself disentangled and had her lie down in a gulch out of harm’s way until it was over. She came through it all. We took her to Fort Sedgwick, where she recovered. We had found thirteen hundred in cash in the village, loot from pillaging white settlements, and the army gave her nine hundred of it. She came out of it, all right.”