Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (3 page)

He ended up on a number of seagoing vessels and served in the Seminole Wars. He never got too close to combat, though during the Civil War he once again served, this time as an enlistee in the First New York Mounted Rifles. He attained the rank of sergeant before being found guilty of drunkenness, resulting in a dishonorable discharge.

In 1838 he saw publication of his first story, a tale of action, in
Knickerbocker
magazine. By 1844 he began using the byline “Ned Buntline” (
buntline
being a nautical term for a length of rope attached to the lower edge of a large, square sail).

Once back in New York, Buntline launched a number of short-lived publications of his own and experienced a taste of success with a popular serialized story called “The Mysteries and Miseries of New York.” The grim read detailed the realities of life in New York's famed slum, the Bowery district.

Being of an opinionated nature, Judson was not able to hold his tongue when he recognized injustices. His true motives, however, emerged as opportunities for him to orate, to raise a hue and cry, and generally attract attention to himself. He reasoned that life's gray areas were ripe for exploitation. He famously preached for temperance, railing and rallying against strong drink. And after such fiery orations, in which he exhorted his audience to abstain from the foul effects of the devil's brew, he could be found at a local tavern hoisting a few with friends. After all, raging before a crowd was thirsty work.

He toured frequently, giving lectures and working to stay ahead of creditors. As he roved, he moved from city to city, setting up shop and launching another publication on the world. In the process he racked up mounds of debt. In 1845, following a stint in New York City, he ventured westward to Cincinnati, and started up
Western Literary Journal and Monthly Magazine
, but later that year it appeared bankruptcy was his only option out of that widening financial hole. So what did Buntline do? He skipped town, beat a retreat from the Buckeye State, made a midnight run for it, and ended up in Eddyville, Kentucky.

Then, just when he was in dire need of a wad of cash, as happened so many times in Buntline's life, chance stepped in and beckoned with a come-hither look. With no help, if we are to believe Ned's own account of the event, he tracked down and captured two murderers and claimed a $600 reward for his efforts. Instead of paying off debts, however, he thumbed through the wad of fresh greenbacks, grinned, and headed out of town. This time he made for Nashville, Tennessee, where, true to form, he once again launched a publication. This time it was called
Ned Buntline's Own
.

It was this publication that he was in the midst of running when in March 1846, he was caught up in the aforementioned duel with Robert Porterfield, who had discovered Buntline dallying with his young (teenage!) bride.

Following this near-death brush in Nashville, Buntline bolted for the big city once more, and in 1848 he relaunched
Ned Buntline's Own
, this time from the Big Apple. And this time it stuck. His popularity as a writer blossomed nationwide. He was also active in politics, and because of this he was well situated and willing to exert his increasing influence where he might.

He supported nativism, a perennially popular sentiment to restrict or prohibit immigration to the United States. The movement strongly advocated for native-born peoples' rights (never mind that the only true natives at the time were members of the various Indian tribes). The movement's rallying cry, “America for Americans!” was one Buntline would use to whip up crowds at his various lectures. Buntline's support of nativism coincided with his rapid rise in the Know Nothing Party, as well as the Patriotic Order of Sons of America, in which natives sought ways to purify the political scene in America.

His connection with this exclusionary movement led to his being an instigator and participant in 1849's Astor Place Riot, a debacle that resulted in twenty-five deaths, more than 120 injuries, and Buntline's imprisonment for a year. Some time later, he was once again a member of the Know Nothing Party, and a mover and shaker in another nativist riot, this time in St. Louis, Missouri, when a man was shot and the home of German immigrants was burned. Buntline may also have been present in Maine when a Swiss priest was tarred and feathered for providing aid to Irish immigrants.

In true Buntline fashion, one of the most famous items attached to his life story never actually existed. The Colt's Buntline Special handgun was allegedly a limited-edition special order of Samuel Colt's famous .45-caliber single-action six-gun, but with barrels four inches longer than the standard eight inches. Add to that standard hand grips and the gun would have been eighteen inches long overall.

It was said to also have had a demountable walnut rifle stock, complete with thumbscrew mounting accessory, a buckskin thong, the name “Ned” carved in the butt of the handgrip, and a hand-carved custom-made holster befitting the enhanced size of the weapon. It is said Buntline had them made so that he might present them to each of five Dodge City lawmen—Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Bill Tilghman, Charles Bassett, and Neal Brown—as thank-you gifts for supplying him with so much ripe material for writing his popular Western yarns.

The story of the Buntline Special has been so well polished and admired through the years that it's become somewhat apocryphal to refute it, and yet . . . it's full of holes. As was much of what Buntline claimed about his own writing, his own life, his own prowess with a gun, the story of the Buntline Special smacks of the very ingredients that make good pulpy reading so much fun. We simply want to believe the stories because they are so great to listen to. But that doesn't mean he didn't hobnob with some of the wildest characters of the Old West. . . .

Judson smacked his pudgy hands on the counter at the train depot and waited for the clerk to turn around. “What does it take for a man to get a question answered around here?”

The man sighed and slowly turned. “What may I help you with, Mister . . .?”

The stocky man thumbed his lapels and puffed up a bit, the various gaudy medals and ribbons on his frock coat clanking and ruffling. “I, sir, am Colonel Ned Buntline. And I've heard tell that a certain colorful character is in town.”

“I'm certain you are the most well known currently in North Platte, Nebraska, Mr. Buntline.”

Judson puffed up a bit more at this and smiled. “Be that as it may, I have heard . . .,” he glanced right and left, though they were the only people in the large room. He leaned forward, lowering his voice, and continued, “that Wild Bill Hickok himself is in town.”

“You don't say?” the clerk tried to suppress a smirk.

“You know where he is, don't you?” Judson smacked a hand on the counter again. “I demand you tell me where I can find him, sir.”

The clerk sighed again. “You don't need to get so worked up, Colonel. Wild Bill's whereabouts isn't any secret. He's at Fort McPherson. Playing cards, I expect.” He jerked a thumb over his right shoulder. “That-a-way.”

“Well then.” Judson tugged the bottom of his vest—it had been riding up over his paunch—and stood straight. “That's all you needed to tell me, sir. No need to play such games. I shall rent a conveyance and proceed to the fort.” He scooped up the handle of his luggage and clomped down the boardwalk, aware that his presence had caused not a few stares. Good, as it should be. He smiled as he walked toward a livery.

Once at the fort, Buntline stopped before the door where he'd been told he could find Hickok. He tugged down on the bottom of his vest once more, cleared his throat, then opened the door and stepped inside. He felt his heartbeat quicken. He would soon meet a man he could envision making famous—more famous. He would make the man a household name . . . all over the world! Why, Judson would be surprised if Hickok didn't pay him for the privilege.

As he scanned the room, a few faces turned his way, then looked back to their card games, their drinks, their conversations, and he spotted the man. There he was at the back of the room, facing the door, a plank wall behind him. The man was thin faced, with a bony nose, long hair, and drooping mustaches. Everything about the man seemed long. His low-crown hat rested atop the table by his elbow.

The excitement was too much for him, and Judson strode straight across the room toward the man.

“You, sir! You're my man! I want you!”

The shout fairly echoed across the broad, well-packed room. The voice paused shoppers and riders in their tracks. Their gazes swiveled toward the shouter, a stranger who was fairly burly, none-too-tall, and had a foolish grin below bushy mustaches, his eyes wide. And he was looking straight at William Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok.

Hickok looked none too impressed. His cheek muscles bunched, but he tried to turn back to talking with the men with whom he was playing cards. But a second shout seemed to rattle the windows of the saloon. Hickok sighed, closed his eyes briefly, and shook his head. He was used to this sort of attention.

But he surprised everyone in the room by suddenly rising to his feet, cards and chips scattering across the baize tabletop as he stepped out from behind the table.

“What is it you want, little man?” Hickok spoke as he strode fast and manfully across the room, angling straight toward the boisterous newcomer.

The man to whom he spoke halted and drew back, startled by the sudden reaction his forceful words had instigated.

“I . . . I'm,” the stranger stammered briefly but quickly gathered himself. He straightened and advanced on Hickok. But instead of meeting an extended hand with his, he was confronted with a drawn revolver and a hard stare, sneering lips beneath those drooping mustaches.

“You have twenty-four hours to get on out of this town, mister.” He stepped close, peeled back the hammer, and raised the deadly snout of the long pistol. “Or I will shoot you dead. Do you understand me, sir?” His voice was a low, cold thing, the small mouth barely moving from under the long mustaches. But there was no mistaking the equally icy stare. Buntline knew this was no joke, no idle threat.

He swallowed, dry and tense. Hickok did not move; his gun hand was steady. Buntline nodded, kept nodding even as he backed up a few steps, then half-turned and sidestepped to the door. But even as he hastily left the saloon, even as his heart thudded in his chest, he was beginning to grin. Hickok in person was the man Buntline had hoped he would be. Wild Bill, indeed!

As he bustled back to town, the gunman's threat echoing in his ears, Bunt-line smiled wide and rubbed his hands together. “If I can't yet talk to Hickok, by gum, I'll talk to people who know the man. Get his story that way. And others too!”

By the time of this less-than-successful meet-up with Wild Bill Hickok, “Colonel” Ned Buntline, as he called himself (though his military records most definitely did not indicate he'd risen to any rank close to colonel), was nonetheless quite a celebrity. He was widely known as the author of more published works than any other living writer. And his income supported this designation: At a time when most people were making a few dollars a week, Buntline's annual income was in the neighborhood of $20,000. And it was as a writer of “shilling shockers” that he earned his phenomenal fame and income.

Buntline became known as the “King of the Dime Novelists,” the very readables he once skewered in the pages of his newspaper as trash literature, defending his criticisms as “a duty which the station we have assumed demands of us.” His own words fell on his own deaf ears, however, because he claimed to have written one 610-page novel in sixty-two hours. And while it may not have been the highest sort of literature, it no doubt entertained the masses and earned its author a tidy sum.

Shortly after his less-than-successful meeting with Wild Bill Hickok, Bunt-line tracked down one William F. Cody in an effort to find Hickok's friends and get his desired information in that way. But Cody surprised him in being not only affable but a man who was also a full-blown frontier character—just the sort he'd been looking for. He traveled with Cody for a time and worked up stories about the man. He even laid claim to having invented the name “Buffalo Bill,” which Cody would carry through his coming global success as a showman.