by Matt Braun
Hickok, he discovered, was the mentor of Cody. At thirty-five, Hickok was nine years older and already a legend before they met. In 1867, a New York journalist traveling the West wrote an article for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. The article dealt with Hickok’s exploits during the Civil War, when he’d infiltrated behind Confederate lines, operating as a Union spy. The journalist proclaimed, with attendant gory details, that Hickok had killed over a hundred men. He anointed him “The Prince of Pistoleers.”
Other publications jumped to follow Hickok’s adventures. He worked as a scout for the army, serving under Custer in the Seventh Cavalry. Then, after a stint as a deputy U.S. marshal, he was elected sheriff of a Kansas hellhole. From there, he went on to serve as city marshal of Abilene, the roughest cowtown on the plains. Abilene, where he’d killed two men, was his last assignment, ended less than a month ago. He was the scourge of outlaws, reputed to have dropped nine men in gunfights.
Dime novels, the craze of Eastern readers, immortalized him forever in the minds of the public. General George Armstrong Custer, penning an article for Galaxy Magazine, labeled him the perfect specimen of physical manhood, unerring with rifle or pistol, a deadly adversary. Henry M. Stanley, better known for locating Dr. David Livingstone in darkest Africa, also wrote an article for Harper’s. He portrayed Hickok in herculean terms, a plainsman and peace officer who had never killed a man without good cause. Wild Bill Hickok was enshrined into the pantheon of American folklore.
Cody, by contrast, had never killed a white man. His path to glory began in 1860, when at the age of fourteen he rode into history for the Pony Express. That same year, he met Hickok, who became his friend and mentor in the days ahead. When the Civil War erupted, he served with the Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, operating as a scout for the Union forces. Following the war, he sometimes worked with Hickok as a deputy U.S. marshal, and later found fame as Buffalo Bill with the Kansas Pacific Railroad. Later still, Hickok obtained a position for him as a scout with Custer’s Seventh Cavalry.
From there, after gaining the attention of General Sheridan, Cody was assigned to the Fifth Cavalry. Over time, he was promoted to Chief of Scouts, operating out of Fort McPherson, deep in Sioux country. His three years of service resulted in a record unequaled by any scout on the frontier. He engaged in nine expeditions against the Sioux, and fought in eleven pitched battles. At twenty-six, he was a seasoned veteran, having killed ten warriors in personal combat. His courage in the field brought a commendation for valor by direct order of the Secretary of War.
Cody, like Hickok, attracted Eastern journalists. In 1869, Ned Buntline traveled West to Fort McPherson, under contract for a series of stories in the New York Weekly. His first installment, entitled Buffalo Bill, the King of the Border Men, catapulted Cody into national fame. He depicted Cody as an intrepid scout and fearless Indian fighter, and generally sensationalized every aspect of Cody’s life. Following the series, he churned out four dime novels in two years, each more heroic than the last. To an entranced public, Cody became the Galahad of the Plains, a knight in buckskin.
“Now, you must indulge me,” Alexis said, as intoxicated by the men as the wine. “What were your grandest adventures?”
Cody wagged his head. “I don’t know as I’d call ’em grand.”
“Don’t be coy,” Sheridan admonished from the other end of the table. “Tell him about the Battle of Summit Springs.”
“Well—” Cody tugged at the small goatee on his chin. “You reckon he wants to hear that old chesnut?”
“Of course!” Alexis thundered. “I insist.”
Cody launched into a windy tale of blood on the plains. A band of Cheyenne led by Tall Bull had taken two white women captive and fled north toward the Powder River country. The Fifth Cavalry gave chase, and several days into the pursuit Cody located the hostile camp. The cavalry charged, overrunning the village, killing fifty-two warriors and recapturing one of the women captives. The other was clubbed to death during the battle, and Cody in turn shot Tall Bull in a pitched fight. The death of their chief put the Cheyenne to flight.
Alexis was round-eyed. “And you scalped him? Da?”
“Shore did.” Cody pulled a thatch of dried hair from inside his jacket and tossed it on the table. “Peeled the bugger’s top knot clean off.”
There was absolute silence at the table. Cody kept a hunk of beaver pelt handy to palm off on pilgrims and complete the joke. Everyone watched Alexis as he stared at what he believed to be a Cheyenne scalp, taken in the heat of battle. Custer was on the verge of a braying laugh when Sheridan shut him down with a cold look. Before anyone could spoil the joke, Sheridan glanced over at Hickok.
“Wild Bill, it’s your turn,” he said quickly. “Tell the Grand Duke about that fracas in Springfield. The time you shot Dave Tutt.”
“Not much to tell,” Hickok said, knuckling his sweeping mustache. “Maybe he’d sooner inspect Cody’s scalp.”
“No! No!” Alexis commanded, averting his gaze from the beaver pelt. “I want to hear of this shooting, Wild Bill. You must tell me.”
Hickok spun a wry tale of love and death. In 1865, shortly after the Civil War, he’d drifted into Springfield, Missouri. A classic love triangle developed, with he and a gambler named Dave Tutt vying for the attentions of the same woman. Finally, over a poker table one night, he and Tutt exchanged insults of the worst kind. The next morning, on the Town Square, Tutt accosted him and fired the first shot. Hickok, deliberate even in a fight, drilled him through the heart. There, on the Springfield square, he’d coined the term that speed’s fine, but accuracy is final.
“You left out a salient detail,” Sheridan prompted. “What was the range when you fired?”
Hickok smiled. “A measured seventy-five paces.”
“Astounding,” Alexis exclaimed. “Why did he fire on you at such a distance?”
“Well, Your Highness, he’d never seen me shoot before. I reckon you could say he was a mite surprised.”
“Champagne!” Alexis roared. “We make a toast to Wild Bill and Buffalo Bill. We get drunk!”
Hickok and Cody exchanged a look. They’d told the tales so often that by now it was like a vaudeville act. Cody reclaimed his Cheyenne scalp as the waiters popped the corks. Hickok smiled at the fun of it all.
Alexis, Grand Duke of all the Russias, hoisted his glass with a booming laugh.
CHAPTER 3
THE LAND was stark and flat. Cornfields stood struck dead by winter, their slender stalks gone tawny with frost. The train sped westward under a dingy sky.
Katherine stared out at the bleak landscape. Thick clouds of black smoke from the engine swirled past the window. Augustus was asleep beside her on the seat, huddled within his coat against the chill of the passenger coach. She watched the fleeting cornfields with a forlorn expression.
There were six coaches on the train. Five were for orphans, and the sixth, the last in the string, was for fare-paying passengers. On each of the orphan coaches there were two attendants, a man and a woman, to look after the children. Their duties seemed more that of wardens than guardians.
Over the past week the train had followed the Union Pacific tracks westward. Slowly, with stops at every hamlet along the line, the train had made its way through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and finally into Iowa. The landscape became flatter and bleaker with every mile, somehow desolate. A sense of abandonment hung over the orphan coaches.
Katherine felt dazed, curiously hollow inside. The day the train left New York, she and Augustus had fought and kicked and screeched until they were forcibly carried onto the coach. They continued to protest they were not orphans, until finally Mr. Crocker, the agent for the Children’s Aid Society, had threatened to bind and gag them in their seats. Their rebellion, stilled by the threat, turned to sullen apathy.
The helplessness of their situation was overwhelming. Katherine was ten, Augustus a year younger, and they’d never before been separated from their parents. At first, reduced to
whispers, they wondered why they had been taken from their home in the dark of night. Even more, they were distressed that their parents had not intervened, somehow prevented their abduction. There seemed no good answers, only hard questions.
Yet, ever so slowly, they pieced together fragments of their ordeal. Katherine vaguely remembered a face, the face of a man, caught in the light of the lamp from the hallway, who had clamped a bitter-smelling rag over her face. Augustus recalled a huge man, unbelievably strong and quilted with muscle, holding him tight until he succumbed to a stinky rag. The men were shadowy figures, dim specters but nonetheless real.
Their terror the next morning was all too vivid. They found themselves at the mercy of workers at what was called the Juvenile Asylum. A man everyone addressed as Mr. Barton supervised their being dressed in clothing that was threadbare and tattered, obviously used. Then, after being manhandled onto an enclosed freight wagon, they were carted off to Grand Central Station. All their protests, like those of other children on the platform, went unheeded. They were dragged onto the train.
By the end of the first day, their spirits were at a low ebb. From talk among children in the coach, they learned they were aboard what was called the Orphan Train. There were five coaches, each packed with a hundred children, all destined to be adopted somewhere out West. For a brief moment, Katherine and Augustus were appalled by the thought that their parents had forsaken them, put them up for adoption. All their lives they had known love and affection, and their hearts broke to think their mother and father were involved. But then, flooded with memories of their rough abduction, they knew it wasn’t true. They had been stolen from their parents.
“What are you looking at?”
Katherine turned to find Augustus rubbing sleep from his eyes. He was a sturdy youngster, with the square jawline and pleasant features of their father. She shook her head with a woebegone expression.
“Nothing, really,” she said, studying the dismal countryside. “Everything seems so much the same.”
Augustus yawned. “Where are we?”
“I think this is still Iowa. I don’t really know.”
“Doesn’t make any difference, does it?”
“No,” Katherine said sadly. “Not unless they turn the train around.”
“How far is Iowa from New York?”
“Very, very far. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, you know.” Augustus shrugged, his features downcast. “I was thinking about Mother and Father. They must be looking for us.”
“Not in Iowa,” Katherine said. “I’m sure they’re worried sick. But who would ever dream of Iowa?”
“Maybe we ought to try to escape. Next time they stop and put us out on the platform for the farmers, we could just run. Hide somewhere until the train leaves.”
“Yes, I suppose we could try. Although, where would we go? How would we ever get back to New York?”
“We could find a policeman,” Augustus offered. “All he’d have to do is telegraph Mother and Father. We’d be on our way home in no time.”
“You two got bats in your belfry. Go ahead, holler cop and see what it gets you.”
In the seat opposite them were two young boys. One was asleep, but the other was watching them with open mockery. Over the past week they had learned that he was twelve, a tough little Irish scrapper from the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York. His name was Jimmy Callaghan.
“What do you mean?” Katherine asked. “Why wouldn’t a policeman help us?”
“Wake up for chrissake,” Jimmy said with a wiseacre sneer. “You think a cop’s gonna believe all that crap about your dear ol’ mom and dad? You got another think comin’.”
Augustus bridled. “Don’t talk to my sister that way. Watch your language.”
“And you watch your mouth, boyo, or I’ll box your ears.”
“Stop it!” Katherine said haughtily. “We are not orphans, and I think Augustus is right. A policeman would too help.”
“Whatta laugh,” Jimmy chided her. “You’re on the Orphan Train and a copper wouldn’t buy a word of it. He’d turn you over to Crocker quick as a wink.”
“Quiet down,” Augustus said, darting his eyes up the aisle. “Here he comes.”
Thadius Crocker was a large, portly man with a perpetual scowl. “Breakfast time, boys and girls,” he called out in a bogus jolly voice. “Let’s rise and shine to a glorious new day.”
The attendants followed him along the aisle. One passed out sandwiches while the other ladled milk into battered tin cups from a canister. The sandwiches were jelly and bread, served for breakfast, lunch, and supper. The milk was, as always, lukewarm.
“Look alive,” Crocker said cheerily, moving away. “We’re stopping in Council Bluffs this morning. Today’s your day to find a home.”
Augustus opened his sandwich. “Aww, wouldn’t you know, it’s jelly. I can’t eat this again.”
“Hand it over then,” Jimmy said eagerly. “Anything’s better’n nothin’.”
“Jimmy’s right,” Katherine ordered. “You eat that now, Augustus. And drink your milk, too.”
Jimmy Callaghan was right about many things. He was crude and foul-mouthed, a product of the impoverished Irish who inhabited Hell’s Kitchen. But he had lived on the streets for almost half his life, and he was wise beyond his years. He’d told her all there was to know about the Orphan Train.
The Reverend Charles Loring Brace was the moving force behind the adoption program. A Methodist minister, he believed that vagabond children placed in Christian homes would turn out to be respectable citizens. The solution was to ship them off to the hinterlands, which also removed thousands of urchins from the streets of New York. The Truancy Law gave him the authority and wealthy do-gooders supported the plan with generous donations. He established the Children’s Aid Society.
Printed circulars were sent to religious organizations from Ohio to Wyoming. In church meetings, ministers throughout the Midwest and across the Western Plains urged their parishioners to adopt displaced children. The Orphan Train quickly became a rolling adoption agency, the weekly schedule posted in churches and railroad stations at every stop along the way. There were no legal documents involved with a child’s placement, but rather a simple verbal agreement by the new parents to provide a good home. Some twenty thousand children were shipped west every year.
Over the past week almost all the children on the train had been adopted. Some went along reluctantly, but others, resigned to their fate, played to the prospective parents and tried to find decent homes. Katherine noticed that boys were more acceptable than girls, and she quickly concocted a plan with Augustus. At every stop, they acted quarrelsome and unruly, passing themselves off as troublemakers. So far, their plan had worked, and they were among the less than fifty children left on the train. No one seemed partial to adopting them.
Shortly before noon, the train chugged into Council Bluffs. The engineer set the brakes, and the train ground to a halt before the depot. A crowd of farmers and townspeople were gathered outside the stationhouse, there to inspect the orphans. Some of the farmers had traveled twenty miles or more by wagon, looking for stout young boys to perform chores and work the fields. Whether moved by Christian charity, or merely drawn by the prospect of cheap labor, they edged forward as the train rolled to a stop. Everyone wanted first chance at the pick of the litter.
Thadius Crocker and his attendants ushered their charges off the coaches. The children were herded onto the depot platform, where they were formed into irregular ranks. Katherine, who was still weighing the possibility of escape, nudged Augustus and warned him off with a look. There were now ten attendants for fewer than fifty children, and the attendants were posted on the outer ranks of the group. Any thought of escape, at least in Council Bluffs, was clearly out of the question. They would be run down before they reached the end of the platform.
“Brothers and sisters!” Crocker addressed the crowd in a sonorous voice. “Allow me to welcome you
on behalf of the Children’s Aid Society. We invite you to provide a Christian upbringing for these poor tykes.”
The invitation drew blank stares. The crowd was uncertain as to how they should proceed with inspecting the children. “Let me introduce some of the little darlings,” Crocker said, like a carnival barker working a midway show. “Here’s a bright lad with a head on his shoulders. Tommy Noonan, step forward for these good people.”
By now, many of the children were anxious to be adopted. The farther west the train went, the land became increasingly bleak and inhospitable. Iowa was worse than Illinois, and no one doubted that Nebraska would be even more barren. There was talk as well that wild Indians still roamed the plains of Nebraska. Today seemed a good day to find a family.
Tommy Noonan was a freckle-faced red-head with a winning smile. He marched to the front of the group and recited the Gettysburg Address word for word. One of the farmers, figuring anyone who could quote Abe Lincoln was a bargain, quickly latched onto the boy. Crocker took them aside to settle the arrangements.
A girl stepped forward. She looked to be about thirteen, with small, budding breasts, and golden hair that gave her an angelic appearance. She gulped a deep breath and sang a stirring rendition of “Onward Christian Soldiers” in a quavering soprano. Some of the crowd thought she had been coached, but they were nonetheless impressed. She was adopted by a childless couple who operated the local hardware store.
Katherine and Augustus stood toward the rear of the group. A farmer and his wife approached, apparently uninterested in singers or aspiring scholars of Abe Lincoln. They studied the children with a critical gaze, as though sizing up livestock at an auction. They scarcely glanced at Katherine, who was obviously too delicate for farm work. But they thought Augustus looked promising, and the farmer moved a step closer. He took hold of Augustus, prodding with thorny fingers for shoulder muscle and strength. Katherine jumped between them.
