Many had seen Buffalo Bill’s newspaper ads predicting that today was the day, and at dawn throngs already lined the brick-and-stone streets on the northwest edge of the city. Soon a shout went up from a small boy who had shimmied up a telegraph pole. “Here he comes!” cried the boy. “Hurrah!”
John Berry, the noncowboy, was nearing Cottage Grove Avenue. He turned onto Seventy-first Street. Poison spooked as a cable car clanged by, but Berry steadied the horse and urged it on. They swung past Madison Street … California Street … Ashland Avenue … and finally mighty Michigan Avenue. He followed the waving arms guiding him the last few blocks toward Sixty-third, and he could tell it would be smooth sailing from here to Jackson Park, the fair, and the Wild West campground.
The crowds broke up. Chicago residents, fairgoers, and tourists, thousands of them, rushed on foot and bicycles after the small figure, sunburned and weathered, stooped and spent, clinging to his saddle horn, swaying but bravely hanging on to his horse. He seemed “the sorriest, sleepiest” man they had ever seen. His soft white hat was ripped, his cotton shirt torn at the throat and drenched in sweat, his dun-colored pants held together by frayed suspenders and a leather belt cinched around his waist. His face blazed crimson, his cheeks were swollen, his eyes were two narrow slits.
In Cody’s tent, Berry lay on Buffalo Bill’s sofa and panted, trying to catch a breath. The cook fired up the kitchen stove and served him a breakfast tray of half a fried chicken, warm biscuits, and hot coffee. Berry took one glance at that steaming plate and shoveled it down.
He next stumbled off to check on Poison, finding his horse head deep in a pail of oats. He hobbled back to Cody’s tent and finally described how much he had suffered in the past twenty-four hours. For a man of few words, Berry said a bucketful.
“I left DeKalb last night at 11:05 p.m. on Poison, and I kept pounding along as fast as I could without hurting the horse,” he began. “When we reached Turner, we got a telegram from DeKalb stating that Smith and Gillespie were just two hours and 30 minutes behind. So I knew I had the race sure. I fed and watered between Elburn and Lodi. We took the straight St. Charles Road and struck Maywood about 7 o’clock this morning. I had the comfort of seeing the smoke of this great place and then began to get nervous. I was afraid for the horse when we struck the pavement for fear he would break down. He ain’t used to pavements, you know.”
He paused to let his stomach rest and digest his breakfast. “I rode the last 150 miles in 24 hours,” he related. “Sore? Well, I should say I was. I don’t feel much like sitting down, but I am so sleepy that I can’t talk. I have had no sleep for ten days to amount to anything. But I feel in fairly good shape. Except sleepy.”
He turned to Cody’s adjutant Major John Burke and asked whether he had discovered any spur marks on Poison at Cody’s stable. No, said Burke, beaming. Not a one.
“Some of the riders say I rode in a wagon,” said Berry. “But they are liars. I have ridden on my horses, Sandy and Poison, all the way.” From the start of the race, Berry said, he had felt outnumbered. “There was a combination put up to beat me. The rest of the riders got out in front of me at the start. But I think I did a wise thing. While the rest kept a rapid pace I walked my horses half the time the first two days. I did not catch the leaders until I reached Iowa Falls. From there we kept pretty close together.”
From across the Mississippi River and on through Illinois, “I was in the lead and they had to follow me. They have not caught up with me yet. Yes, I am glad to win, for it is an honor.… I left Freeport at 9:15 yesterday morning, and here I am at 9:30 today. Of course I am glad it’s over.”
Berry fell back on the couch and scanned the faces. “But I am able to go on and do some more riding,” he said. He rolled his head back and closed his eyes. Two more words slipped past his lips: “If necessary.”
They helped him over to the Hotel Columbia, next to the Wild West grounds. They booked him a room. Just before he fell asleep, he noticed again the narrow eyes, the smirks, the thin faces glaring down at someone they suspected had cheated. “I won the race fairly,” Berry insisted. “I do not care whether the stake money is coming or not.” As he started to drift off, desperate for sleep, he seemed to protest once more: “I haven’t closed my eyes in ten days and …”
Through the hotel room window and out in the street, Poison’s owner, South Dakota rancher Jack Hale, who had rushed to Chicago by train, defended his rider John Berry. “John rode for me as a friend and cares only for the glory of the thing,” Hale proclaimed. “I have known him for 20 years. He’s a capital rider and a man of great endurance.”
Some suggested that Hale had fixed the race to draw national publicity for his South Dakota ranch. If one of his horses was first to Chicago, that would work wonders for his stock farm. Others recalled how Chadron had hoped a local rider would win because it was their race, after all, and they believed a man and a pony from outside the Nebraska Panhandle should not be given any real chance to beat the home team. Chadron town leaders had initially demanded that if any of Hale’s horses were going to be allowed to race, he would have to let local favorite Doc Middleton ride Poison.
Not true, Hale said. There had been no such offer, no such demand. He admitted that his friend John Berry was no cowboy desperado like the wily Doc Middleton. “He’s not one of your bad men,” said a now angry Hale. “But he’s an all-round Westerner who can ride, box and wrestle with any man.
“I entered my horses for the race and trained them without any idea who was going to ride,” Hale told reporters. And he considered Poison the pride of his herd. “There,” he said, pointing toward the Cody stables, “is a horse that is nearly Thoroughbred. His dam is an old race mare that has won a great many races through the Northwest under the name of Trade Dollar, and his sire was a Kentucky bred horse of excellent breeding. It takes a horse of great courage to stand such a ride, and this can only be found in horses that have been bred for racing for many generations.”
He insisted that Poison’s initial rider had fallen ill and that Berry simply stepped up to ride in his place: “At the last moment John Berry volunteered, and I knew he was safe to ride. That made trouble for him and me. The Chadron people said Berry was no cowboy and knew the route too well. So finally Berry rode under protest. But I don’t think that protest will hold good when he gets back to Chadron after his splendid ride.”
Hale further claimed he had collected a “batch of letters” written by “certain Chadron folks” that proved some of the Nebraska town leaders had been in cahoots to fix the race for one of their own. But Hale was not yet ready to produce the sealed letters. When he did, he promised, “they will show up bad.”
Emmett Albright trotted into Chicago ninety minutes behind Berry, riding in with both horses looking quite well and Albright rather fresh himself for a man supposedly long in the saddle. He leaped to the ground and strutted about the sidewalk, searching for Buffalo Bill. He led his horses to Cody’s tent until they reminded him that to officially cross the finish line he had to ride, not walk, over it. So Albright gamely swung back on his lead horse, snapped the reins, and galloped across the last few feet of the Great Cowboy Race.
“I think I have won,” Albright claimed, now sprawling across Cody’s comfortable couch in the Wild West mess tent. “I am the only man who brought in two horses. I am awfully tired,” he said, “for I have been sick and vomiting since I left Chadron and I have not slept for five days and have not eaten anything since yesterday noon. I did not feel tired until this morning, when I began to let down. The excitement carried me through. Nerve can do a great deal. I can’t tell where I passed the other boys, but I know I passed them last night somewhere. You can hear great things on the road. I heard that I had no horses, was dead and everything else. I could have beaten Berry, but I knew he was riding under protest so I did not try. I think I get the first money.”
Many considered Albright, too, ineligible. They had heard stories that he had shipped hi
s horses by rail a good part of the last jaunt from Dubuque and that his speed was the speed of freight trains on the Illinois Central. When pressed, the cowboy sheepishly admitted that much of this was true. He had slithered off with his horses on a night train to steal some time and beat the others. He tried lamely to excuse it by saying he believed some of the other riders were “shipping too.”
Major Burke did not care to hear another word; he quickly dismissed Albright outright. “Albright,” he scoffed, “is the comedian of the outfit.”
More people pressed in along the finish line, newspaper reporters especially. They wanted answers, and they wanted to hear from Cody. Two riders had arrived in Chicago that morning by hoof or by rail car and more were yet to follow, and already the results of the cowboy race had descended into chaos. Who gets the prize money? Who wins the golden revolver? Who rides home on the new Montgomery Ward saddle?
First to be settled was the matter of the horses. Minneapolis Humane Society official Paul Fontaine, fresh into Chicago, too, said the riders he had seen “have acted the part of gentlemen.… They have taken better care of their horses than they have of themselves. And we have no cause to complain or take any action whatever.… It was constructed satisfactorily in every way.”
His colleague John Shortall, president of the American Humane Association and the Illinois Humane Society, accompanied by a contingent of veterinary surgeons, made the rounds of the Cody stables, examining the three horses already in, thumping their knees, listening to their lungs, inspecting their flanks for cuts, bruises, or bleeding.
As Cody watched them weave through his stalls, the famous frontiersman declared there was a lot more to the Great Cowboy Race than just the first-prize money or a saddle or a gun. “It will show the world what the native American horse is worth,” he said. “European nations are watching the result of this race with interest. It is a test of the hardiness of the broncho, and after the wonderful result of 150 miles in 24 hours, and 1,000 miles in 13 days and 16 hours, there will be a rush for the American animal.”
Look at this horse Poison, he continued, heaping on the praise. “Not a drop of water on him, except under the saddle.” He declared that the horse was “good for another 100 miles, if necessary.” The two Albright horses also were “in fine condition and could not feel better. They are out in the paddock now, kicking up their heels.”
Cody could not have been prouder of the horses or any happier that the race had ended in triumph, he said, despite all the criticism, the nagging doubts, and the still unresolved questions. “Of course,” he concluded, “on the entanglements of the riders and protests I am not in a position to decide. But I do say that the horses are in splendid condition. I was not surprised at that either, though, for it is just as I said. The cowboys know that their horse is their best friend and that its best endeavors can be brought out by kindness and care.”
Major Burke of course backed up Cody; both were highly satisfied. He recalled how back in Iowa he had dubbed the riders “the Lemonade Brigade.” “They don’t drink anything but lemonade,” Burke said. “Why, I bought a string of lemonade from Iowa to Chicago and the boys just broke me.”
Burke called Berry’s riding under protest a small “technicality,” stressing that all eight of the real cowboys knew that he had worked with the committee staff in mapping the route. Nothing about Berry’s past or railroad career was kept from anyone, Burke said. “It was agreed among the boys that none should know in advance the stopping places along the route. Berry, having some ability in that line, at the request of the committee did part of their clerical work, and the other boys in the race protested against it.”
But these were questions for another time, Burke said. Right now “the principal thing was that their horses should come in good shape, and that the race has been one of honest endurance and skill.”
More in the crowd rushed back inside the stables to see for themselves, and it took ten Chicago police officers to secure the stalls. Everyone laughed when an ornery Poison kicked and tried to bite Shortall. That alone seemed enough to pronounce the horse “animated” and still rather feisty. Cody sauntered in for a close look at the horses, and the police stepped aside. “They’re as sound as a dollar,” pronounced Buffalo Bill. “And not a bit tired.”
To decide who should be declared the winner, Cody called a meeting at one in the afternoon and escorted a group of horsemen and newspaper reporters to his family dining room on the tent grounds. There they would try to sort things out. But first he filled their glasses.
“Gentlemen, a toast,” he said. “I propose a toast to the Cowboy Race, which has demonstrated to the world that we raise in our Western country the hardiest and best horses for cavalry purposes to be found on the surface of the earth. During my travels in foreign countries, I have frequently been asked by army officers about the merits of our American horses for cavalry purposes, and have always maintained that they were superior to any others. This race will result in bringing thousands of dollars into the pockets of our Western horse-raisers, as well as in teaching the most enlightened methods of harboring an animal’s strength for a long distance journey.”
The group sat down for lunch, but suddenly more shouts were heard, and everyone dropped their silverware and hurried back onto Sixty-third Street. Joe Gillespie had come firing in, yelling at the waving fans and hollering “like a renegade Comanche.” He yanked on the reins and pulled Billy Schafer to a near crash at the cowboy finish line. He leaped off the horse. “I’m the lightest rider in the West!” he shouted.
He had dropped thirty pounds over the past two weeks, and the next time, he vowed, he would race another thousand miles and do it within ten days. He had left his second horse with a farmer farther back, asking him to “hold and take good care of him until called for.”
Many now insisted that Gillespie should be awarded the prize money, the saddle, and the Colt revolver. Berry, after all, had been disqualified from the start, and Albright had shipped his horses. Here now was Old Joe Gillespie, who would have ridden in first had he not lost precious time traipsing around on a trick mule in a small-town Iowa circus.
At many of the small towns in Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois, overzealous fans had plucked hairs from Billy Schafer’s tail, just like they did with Doc Middleton’s horse. “I could cuss at the men,” Gillespie groused. “But what can a feller do agin’ a woman? And some of them were mighty attentive to the man who rode him.” He held up from his saddlebag a knot of dainty handkerchiefs women had presented to him along the route, now keepsakes of his own.
But Gillespie’s abiding affection this afternoon was for Billy Schafer. “He’s the best horse I ever throwed a leg over,” Old Joe told reporters. “Give him a little rest and two quarts of oats, and he’ll throw off another 50 miles this afternoon.”
Asked how he felt, Gillespie whipped out his quirt and kicked up some dust. “Hell. Give me some grub and another hoss and I’m ready to start right back to Chadron.”
Gillespie led Billy Schafer to a horse stall and stretched out on a bed of mixed straw and hay next to his horse. But he was too riled up to sleep. His arms tucked behind his head, he rambled on about how he’d wound up confused in the Chicago outskirts and thought the city larger than the whole state of Iowa. He knew he was floundering in those last few miles, so he stopped two young men on bicycles and asked for the shortest route to Buffalo Bill. He complained that the young men had sent him off in the wrong direction and then quickly disappeared down a side street. “Why, this here damn town stretches all over the earth!” Gillespie complained.
Joe Gillespie (left) and Charley Smith at the Wild West finish line in Chicago. (Dawes County Historical Museum)
He soon jumped to his feet and headed over to the Wild West arena for a look around. That afternoon Gillespie, with a reservoir of leftover energy, was handed the reins to drive four mules in the matinee performance, and he stole the scene where a gang of desperadoes held up the Deadwood stagecoach.
After the last curtain call, he wandered a while longer through the show grounds, soaking in all the lingering cowboy spirit, and only then did the oldest man in the race agree to lie still and nap.
Meanwhile, Charley Smith trotted in on Dynamite; he had left his second horse, Red Wing, at Malta, Illinois. He dismounted and marched straight for the Cody mess hall. He was forking into his second pie when some reporters approached and asked him how he felt, too. “I feel like a broncho,” he replied, “and will bet my cash in hand and in sight that I can start out tomorrow morning and cover another 1,000 miles in ten days.”
As the hours wore on, more riders straggled in, others wiring ahead that they planned to file formal complaints against John Berry. Doc Middleton turned up on the afternoon train, finding the Cody tent ground in a state of confusion over who had won, who had lost, and who had not ridden fair.
That evening, Cody hosted a formal banquet at the Hotel Columbia just before the nightly performance of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Sitting as guests of honor at the head table were Gillespie, Albright, Smith, and Berry too. Glasses were lifted for “the riders”; other toasts were sounded for “the riders who have not yet arrived.” Some hailed Chicago and the World’s Fair. Still more called out for Buffalo Bill.
A particularly elegant tribute was paid by P. J. Gilligan, an old-time Butte, Montana, pioneer. He praised “the cowboy and his habits,” explaining that though the Western horseman was becoming a dying breed, he, for one, would always prefer to look back upon “the sunny side of the cowboy’s life.”
American Endurance Page 22
