An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody)Buffalo Bill
History
An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody)
Buffalo Bill
Buffalo Bill, 1846-1917; Entertainers -- United States -- Biography; Pioneers -- West (U.S.) -- Biography; West (U.S.) -- Biography
When I was four or five miles from the Post I looked back and saw a
solitary horseman riding in my direction about a mile in my rear. When
I stopped he stopped. I rode on for a little way and looked around
again. He was exactly the same distance behind me, and pulled his horse
up when I halted. This maneuver I repeated several times, always with
the same result. Considerably disquieted by this mysterious pursuit, I
decided to discover the reason for it. I whipped up my horse and when I
had put a sandhill between myself and the man behind I made a quick
detour through a ravine, and came up in his rear. Then I boldly rode up
till I came abreast of him.
He swung around when he heard me coming, and blushed like a girl when
he saw how I had tricked him.
"Look here, White," I demanded, "what the devil are you following me in
this way for?"
"Mrs. Cody said I could follow you if I wanted to," he said, "and,
well, I just followed you, that's all."
That was all he would say. But I knew that he had come along to keep me
from getting hurt if I was attacked, and would rather die than admit
his real reason. So I told him to come along, and come along he did.
There was no need for his services on that occasion, but a little later
he put me in debt to him for my life. He and I rode together into a
border town, where there were a few gentlemen in the horse-stealing
business who had reason to wish me moved along to some other sphere. I
left White to look after the horses as we reached the town, and went
into a hotel to get a nip, for which I felt a very great need. White
noticed a couple of rough-looking chaps behind the barn as he put the
horses away and quietly slipped to a window where he could overhear
their conversation.
"We'll go in while he is taking a drink," one of them was saying, "and
shoot him from behind. He'll never have a chance."
Without a word to me, White hurried into the hotel and got behind the
door. Presently the two men entered, both with drawn revolvers. But
before they could raise them White covered them with his own weapon and
commanded them sternly to throw up their hands, an order with which
they instantly complied after one look at his face.
I wheeled at the order, and recognized his two captives as the men I
was looking for, a pair of horse-thieves and murderers whom I had been
sent to apprehend. My revolvers were put into instant requisition, and
I kept them covered while White removed the guns with which they had
expected to put me out of their way.
With White's help I conducted these gentlemen forty miles back to the
sheriff's office, and they walked every step of the way. Each of them
got ten years in the penitentiary as soon as they could be tried. They
either forgave me or forgot me when they got out, for I never heard of
either of them again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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