Many Loves of Buffalo Bill (9 page)

William took to the plains after a directive from the U.S. Army advised him that his scouting services were desperately needed in the Dakotas. Upset about the many broken promises made to them, the Cheyenne and Sioux Indians in the Black Hills area had planned to go to war together against the U.S. government. They vowed to stop white settlers arriving on their land. General George Custer and his men had already suffered a major defeat against the Indians at the battle of Little Bighorn, and tensions were running high.

Not long after that conflict, William and the Fifth Cavalry met eight hundred Cheyenne warriors and their chief, Yellow Hand (also known as Yellow Hair), in a heated engagement late in the summer of 1876. The Indians were pushed onto a reservation, ending the uprising in the process. As always, William first shared the news of his exploits with the one person he was closest to, Julia:

September 4, 1876. My Dear Sister—you no doubt will be surprised to hear from me away up in this country. I'm sure you heard I have gone back to my old life that of a scout. Well so I did. I could not remain east while this Indian war was going on without taking up a hand…. I would have come by and seen you but the government was hurrying me up so I could not find time. I did not have time to go to Denver and see Nellie and May. So Ed brought them over to Cheyenne since then I have been continually in the saddle. I have been in several fights and killed 3 Indians during the summer I call my own. That is I never say that I kill an Indian without I get his scalp. I sent two scalps east … and I have one on the boat with me that I killed one week ago yesterday
.

My wound is but a slight one. [He suffered an injury in a fight with Yellow Hand and his men on July 17, 1876.] Two weeks at home will fix me all right. Then I am perfect to return to my command
.
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William eventually wrote to Louisa and explained the brutal encounter he had had with the Cheyenne chief. She had not heard from him in some time and was worried about his well-being. “I daily lived in hopes of a letter from him,” she noted in her memoirs, “and in dread of bad news from some other source.” The letter she finally received from William was enclosed in a package that contained a disturbing item. “I pried open the lid,” Louisa later wrote, “and a very unpleasant odor caught my nostrils. I reeled slightly, reached for the contents, and then fainted. For I had brought from the box the scalp of an Indian.” William later informed her that the scalp belonged to Yellow Hand. Louisa listened in horror as he described the fight between him and the Indian. Thoroughly disgusted by the barbaric behavior, she made William promise that he would never scalp another Indian. He was making plans for another theatrical production that focused on the scalping when he agreed.
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William's battle with the Cheyenne, including his duel with Yellow Hand, was a widely publicized event. Writer and actor J. V. Arlington transformed the heated confrontation into a five-act play. The drama also included a reenactment of Custer's Last Stand. William was quickly hired to portray not only himself but also Custer onstage. The play, entitled
The Red Right Hand; or Buffalo Bill's First Scalp for Custer
, opened to rave reviews in Rochester and New York City. The next stop on the tour was California.

The idea that William was going to be leaving home again annoyed Louisa. The two argued, and Louisa told William that she was taking the children and moving back to her parents' home in Missouri. According to a court deposition William gave in 1904, he could not persuade her otherwise. “I divided what money I had with her and she went to St. Louis. I went on to California.” En route to the West Coast, William invested in a land and cattle venture in Nebraska and purchased several thousand acres in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming.
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By the time William arrived at the Bush Theatre in San Francisco, where his show was being held, the theater was sold out. For several nights he played to a standing-room-only crowd. His success as a showman was growing, but he missed his family. A letter from his sister May indicated that Louisa had had a change of heart. She had visited her sister-in-law in Colorado and poured her feelings out to her about the fight she and William had. She was sorry for her part in their disagreement and wanted William to come back to her. “My sister begged me in her letter to do so,” William recalled in 1904. “I finally consented and I went to Denver and at my sister's house I again met her [Louisa] and as she said she was sorry for what she had done we concluded to try again.”
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Louisa and William tried to patch up their differences on a new ranch house in North Platte. William spared no expense in the construction of the magnificent home, which was built on property he had previously purchased. Lumber for the structure, which Louisa referred to as “a little less than a mansion,” was carted in from Vermont, and the interior was decorated with furniture from Chicago and New York. William remained at home for several months, tending to his livestock, playing with his children, and taking long rides with Louisa along the Dismal River. For a while the couple was content. “We had money now, plenty of it,” Louisa wrote in her memoirs about their life in Nebraska. “All about us ranchers were beginning to take up their claims and begin the life that Will had always dreamed…. The untrammeled ‘great American desert' was beginning to fade forever.”
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During the summer months of 1879, 1880, and 1882, William shared a career goal with Louisa that he believed would delight them both for the rest of their lives. “It will take a lot of planning and a lot of money,” Louisa remembered her husband saying. “William's fondest ambition, outside of living a life in the ‘bright, free sunshine of the west,'” she added in her autobiography, “was creating a massive western show.”

“All the people back east want to find out just what the west looks like,” William told Louisa, “and you can't tell them on a stage. There ain't no room. So why not take the west right to them?” He explained his elaborate plans to his interested wife. He wanted to transport the prairie, Indians, buffalo, horses, and stagecoaches by train to the East Coast and beyond. Louisa remembered the two talking for hours about the grand project, “like two enthusiastic, happy children planning a ‘play show' in the back yard.”
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William invested countless hours in organizing a Wild West program. He made plans to recruit Native Americans, trick ropers, riders, and sharpshooters. Numerous guests arrived at the ranch to help plan the show. Numerous guests, including William's theatrical associates and their children, arrived at the ranch to help plan the show. Louisa, who was feeling pushed aside by then, had limited tolerance for the frequent barrage of out-of-towners. At times she was sullen and withdrawn.
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Despite what William referred to as her “depressing conduct,” Louisa did attend the opening performance of his new show in the fall of 1876.
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The show, entitled
The Mountain Meadow Massacre
, debuted at the Baltimore Opera House. William was well received by audiences from Rochester to Omaha and had the attention of many women. Their constant presence unnerved Louisa. At the conclusion of the theatrical season, she witnessed four actresses—Ada Forester, Connie Thompson, Tillie Shields, and Liddy Denia—kissing William. Louisa misinterpreted the friendly gesture, and the argument that ensued between her and William was a heated one.
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Louisa kept a close eye on William and the attentive ladies who were involved with his 1878–1879 show
The Knight of the Plains
. He found such close scrutiny and the complaining that went along with it distracting. It had a definite effect on his job. When Louisa decided to return to the ranch in Nebraska in February 1878, William was glad to see her go. “It [Louisa's behavior] kept me disturbed and made me nervous,” he revealed in 1904. “I was doing a very particular act in the way of shooting that when I would get excited and nervous over these family jars, I wasn't in a fit condition to do justice to my performances.”
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William's autobiography,
William F. Cody as Buffalo Bill the Famous Hunter
, released in 1879, did little to help alleviate Louisa's jealousy or lessen her complaints. He made mention of the “throngs of beautiful ladies” around him and how embarrassed he was by their attention; however, he was not shy about being photographed with the women. He posed for many pictures with female followers. Even pen-and-ink artists captured the showman's image on canvas with genteel fans on his arm.

Although his amiable, sometimes flirtatious personality kept him at odds with Louisa, he did appreciate seeing her happy and attempted to make her happy whenever he could. The house they built in Nebraska seemed to make up for some of his shortcomings. “One great source of pleasure to me was that my wife was delighted with the home I had given her and the prairies of the far west,” William recalled in his memoirs.
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For years William dutifully sent a large portion of the money he earned performing to the Codys' bank account in North Platte. He hoped that Louisa would recognize his fiscal faithfulness and that the monetary security he provided would make her just as happy as their home. As always, some of the income went to support his family, Louisa's parents, and his sisters. Now he was also providing for upkeep of the ranch and the purchase of additional acreage. In addition, some of the funds were to be used to help finance the lavish Wild West show William had dreams of producing. He believed that Louisa wanted to see his dream realized just as much as he did. When he learned that the deed to the land he thought he co-owned with Louisa did not have his name on it, he was stunned.

In March 1882 he expressed his irritation over the matter in a letter to Julia. With no land to borrow against to finance the bulk of the Wild West show, William felt that his dream might not be realized:

My Dear Sister, I am in a peck of trouble. What do you think? Lulu has got most if not all of our North Platte property in her name. Now what do you think of that? Ain't that a nice way for a wife to act?… Would you have thought that of Lulu? After all these years of my working for her. I don't care a snap for the money, but the way she has treated me
.
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Louisa did not consider whether William might see her actions as a betrayal. She believed she was protecting her long-term interests and those of her children from an overly ambitious spouse who might possibly risk everything to fund a theatrical production. In her opinion she was a dutiful wife who was exercising good business sense. The couple did not speak to each other for some time over the incident.
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The setback did not stop William from continuing to organize the Wild West show. He was certain it would be professionally satisfying and would also bring in the money he would need to build a house for himself.

By the summer of 1882, the Codys were once again civil to each other and were preparing to spend the Fourth of July with the citizens of North Platte. The townspeople had asked William to participate in the Independence Day celebration, and he decided to present a portion of the western show he had been working on and rehearsing. The production featured expert riders demonstrating how to lasso and brand cattle, how to break a wild stallion, and how to hunt and shoot buffalo. The “Old Glory Blowout,” as it came to be known, was the most popular and well-attended event in the county's history. The enthusiastic reception the program received gave William the incentive he needed to take the show on the road.

Two months before William escorted his crew out of North Platte, Louisa gave birth to their third daughter. Irma Louise was born on February 9, 1883. William proudly carried his baby around for all the cast members to see.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West show opened in Omaha on May 17, 1883. His partner in the venture was Nate Salsbury. Salsbury's background was in theatrical presentations. He was also a performer and co-creator of the frontier review William had initially conceived. With the assistance of publicist John Burke, fifty cowboys, a large company of Indians, Mexican vaqueros, bucking horses, and a herd of buffalo, the troupe prepared to dazzle audiences.
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Louisa attended the show's debut in Chicago, the next stop on the tour after Omaha. She and William both felt that success there meant the world. “Our every cent was in that show,” Louisa recalled years later. It cost thousands and thousands to purchase the equipment, to hire the actors, and to transport the big organization across the country. Other thousands were tied up in printing and the salaries of men going on in advance to make the arrangements for the show's coming. And if we failed we knew that failure would follow us everywhere.”
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William and Louisa were anxious about whether there would be an audience for the event. Their concerns were laid to rest once they learned that every seat in the house had been sold out. William's first entrance brought sustained cheers and applause. “Time after time Will was called forth, mounted on his big, sleek horse, to receive the approval of the tremendous crowds,” Louisa noted in her biography. “There was no worriment after that—our fortunes were made.”
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Neither the elation over the initial success of the show nor the children they shared could make the Codys any better suited for each other. Adding to the strain in their marriage was the fact that their ten-year-old daughter Orra was sickly and their oldest child, Arta, was away at boarding school and refused to answer her father's letters. William suspected that Louisa had helped drive a wedge between the two. By September 1883 William wanted out of the marriage again and was writing Julia about his intentions. “I am working my way home or at least west,” he told her. “Will close in Omaha in October. Well, I have got out my petition for divorce with that woman…. She has tried to ruin me financially…. Oh I could tell you lots of funny things how she has tried to bust up the horse ranch and buy more property. I get the deeds in her name.”
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