Massacre of Eagles

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Cinnabar, Montana Territory

Perhaps the greatest promoter of Yellowstone Park was the Northern Pacific Railroad.

NORTHERN PACIFIC R.R.

Wonderland Route to the “Land of Geysers”

Yellowstone Park

With colorful brochures and national newspaper advertising, the Northern Pacific brought several hundred visitors per year, discharging them at Livingston, where the Yellowstone tourists would take another train to the depot in Cinnabar. Cinnabar was a town that had grown up specifically to service Yellowstone, and on any given day during the summer season there were many more tourists in town than there were residents. Today Cinnabar was even more crowded than usual, for a large number of cowboys had gathered to audition for a position with the Buffalo Bill Cody Wild West Exhibition, and an even larger crowd had gathered to watch the performance.

Although there were several stagecoaches that maintained a route between the Mammoth Springs Hotel and Cinnabar, Falcon, Cody, and Ingraham rode the ten miles, covering the distance in just under an hour.

Cody had given Sherman Canfield the authority to make all the arrangements for him. It was an established relationship, since Canfield had long worked with Cody and had even traveled to Europe with the exhibition. Canfield met them when they arrived in Cinnabar.

“Of course I know who Falcon MacCallister is,” Canfield said when he was introduced. “And Ingraham, it is good to see you again. Are you writing any new books?”

“My boy, I am always writing new books,” he said. He smiled. “But this time, I am actually living the book as I write it.”

“Living the book as you write it? Whatever do you mean?”

“He is following Falcon and me, taking notes on every little detail. We can’t seem to get rid of him,” Cody said.

“You love it, Cody, you know you do,” Ingraham said, laughing.

“Mr. Cody, if you’ll come down here to the end of the street, you’ll see where I’ve got us set up,” Canfield said. “I had some bleachers built especially for the occasion and I expect we’ll have three hundred or more who will show up to watch the auditions.”

“You aren’t charging them, are you?” Cody asked.

“No. Do you think I should have charged them?”

“No, we charge the Easterners, but these people out here are my people, so let anyone in who wants to come. I want it to be more like a party.”

“Well now a lot of them will be tourists, just gettin’ off the train to take the stage into the park,” Canfield said. “So they’ll be Easterners.”

“All the better,” Cody said. “We will whet their appetite so that when they go back East, they will be anxious to see the entire performance. It will just sell more tickets to the exhibition. What about the cowboys? Have many shown up?”

“Ha! I’ll say they have. They’ve come from three or four states. Quite a few of them have been here for a week or more. The saloon has been doing a heck of a business ever since word of this got out.”

“Good, that should give us a large enough field to find some really good riders.”

Canfield led the three men down to the end of the street to show them what he had done to prepare for the event. A large arena had been marked off by use of ropes and poles, and, facing the arena were recently built bleachers. On the opposite side of the bleachers, stock pens had been built. In one set of pens were cattle to be used for roping, another pen held horses selected for their ability to throw their riders.

Several cowboys were already practicing for the event.

“Hey!” one of them shouted. “There’s Buffalo Bill!”

Upon being recognized, Cody was quickly surrounded by visitors who were here to see the show as well as many of the cowboys themselves.

Falcon and Ingraham stepped aside as Buffalo Bill Cody’s fans swarmed around him.

“How in the world is he able to put up with all that?” Falcon asked Ingraham.

Ingraham chuckled, and shook his head. “You don’t understand, do you, Falcon? Cody lives for that.”

“Better him than me,” Falcon said.

“It’s all a matter of business,” Canfield said. “The more people that recognize his name, the more people will come to one of the exhibitions. It’s a matter of promotion, and Mr. Cody is better at this than anyone I have ever known.”

They heard the sound of a train whistle.

“Here comes another train load,” Ingraham said. “By the time we get around to doing the show, I’ll bet the bleachers won’t be big enough to hold everyone.”

Livingston, Montana Territory, was a stop on the Northern Pacific transcontinental line. From there, Northern Pacific built a special track down to Cinnabar, which was located at the edge of Yellowstone Park. The trip was fifty-five miles long, and was covered in just under three hours. That was the train that Falcon and Ingraham heard arriving. What they could not know was that this train carried six passengers who were dedicated to one purpose, and that was to kill Falcon MacCallister, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Prentiss Ingraham.

Angus Ebersole, Clay Hawkins, Ike Peters, Jim Dewey, Billy Taylor, and their newest recruit, Ethan Slayton, stepped down from the very train Falcon and Ingraham heard arriving. Once out of the train, they waited on the depot platform as their horses were offloaded from the special stock car. Then they led them over to the cart on which baggage was being loaded.

“When our saddles come out, no need to put them on the cart,” Ebersole said to the station agent. “We’ll take them right here.”

“Are you boys here for the tryouts?” the station agent asked.

“Yeah, we thought we might give it a try,” Ebersole said.

“Well there’s a good bunch of cowboys here to try out,” the station agent said. “I know a bunch of ’em myself. So it sure ought to be a good show.”

“That’s what we was figurin’,” Ebersole said. “Is there any place here to keep our horses?”

“Not really. I mean, bein’ as we’re so small, we don’t have no livery here as such. But we do have a barn where they keep the horses for the stagecoaches that take the tourists on down into the park. It’s run by a fella named Dempsey. If you tell ’im that Deekus sent you, that’s my name, Deekus Smart, well, like as not he’ll let you keep your horses there till you’re ready for ’em.”

It wasn’t hard to find the stagecoach depot. It was right across the street from the railroad depot, and it had two coaches standing out front, the teams already in harness, ready to take tourists down into the park.

Leading their now-saddled horses across the street, Ebersole inquired of one of the drivers as to where to find Dempsey.

“That’s him over there,” the driver said, pointing to a heavyset man who was bald, but sported a bushy beard and equally bushy sideburns.

Ebersole and the others led their horses over to him.

“Would you be Mr. Dempsey?” Ebersole asked.

“I am. What can I do for you?” Dempsey replied.

“We just came in on the train, and Deekus Smart said that if we was to mention your name, you might put up our horses for us.”

“He said that, did he?”

“Yes.”

Dempsey cut off a chew of tobacco and stuck it in his mouth before he answered. “You know this ain’t no livery, don’t you? All the horses here are team horses for the stagecoaches.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“But, Deekus is right. From time to time I will put up a horse for someone.”

“Good. We’d like you to keep these for us. Not sure how long we’ll be here. Probably no more than today and tomorrow.”

“All right. That’ll be a dollar a day. Pay me for the first day now. If you stay any longer, come back and make the arrangements.”

“A dollar a day?” Ebersole replied. “Damn, that’s kind of steep, ain’t it, Mister? Liveries don’t normally charge more ’n a quarter a day. Some charges half a dollar a day, but I ain’t never run across none that charges a dollar a day.”

“Well, you don’t have to pay it,” Dempsey said. “You can always put your horses in a livery.”

“I thought there weren’t any liveries here,” Ebersole said.

Dempsey spat out a quid.

“There ain’t none here,” he said. “They’s one up at Livingston. ’Course, you ain’t in Livingstone, are you?”

“All right, a dollar a day,” Ebersole agreed, snarling the words to show his displeasure in the arrangement.

“In advance,” Dempsey said.

“In advance,” Ebersole agreed as all of them dug out a dollar for the payment.

“Where at is the tryout being held?” Hawkins asked.

“Don’t you hear all the shoutin’? It’s just down the street at the south end of town,” Dempsey said. “They’ve put up bleachers there, you can’t miss it. Hell, near ’bout the whole town is there, all you got to do is follow the noise.”

Grumbling, the six men turned their horses over to Dempsey, then as he led them back into the stable, they walked down the street toward the crowd.

“Taylor, you and Slayton need to hang back a bit,” Ebersole said. “They’re sure to recognize you two. I don’t think they’ll recognize me or Peters or Dewey, or Hawkins, ’cause it was dark the only time he seen us, and we wasn’t right up against the train.”

Renegade camp of Mean to His Horses

Running Elk and White Bull had been with Mean to His Horses for at least three weeks. In that time, Mean to His Horses had led his warriors out for several raids, but he had not taken Running Elk or White Bull with him. In addition, there were at least twelve others who had joined Mean to His Horses’s group who had also not been allowed to go on raids.

Running Elk was willing to wait until they were invited, but White Bull had other ideas.

“We will make our own raid,” White Bull said. “We will show Mean to His Horses that we are warriors with courage and honor.”

“Do you think that is wise?” Running Elk asked.

“Yes. It will be like it was when we were young and hunted together,” White Bull said. “And when I killed the bear. Do you remember?”

“I remember when you killed the bear.”

Running Elk recalled the incident White Bull was talking about. They were young, no more than fourteen summers. It was the last year before Running Elk was selected to go back East to the white man’s school.

Running Elk had shot an antelope, and it ran into some trees. He went into the trees after it, and saw where it had fallen. It was still alive, and Running Elk knelt beside it to cut its throat. That was when he heard White Bull calling out to him.

“Running Elk! There is a bear!”

Looking up, Running Elk saw a bear coming toward him. It wasn’t a grizzly, it was a black bear, but it was frightening enough. Running Elk had put down his bow when he went after the antelope, so all he had was his knife. Frightened, he knew it would do no good to run, so he stood up and turned toward the bear to face it, with his knife in his hand.

That was when he heard the whizzing sound of an arrow pass only inches from him. The bear had stood up, and the arrow buried itself in the bear’s heart, killing him instantly. White Bull had saved Running Elk’s life. Even in the difficult days after Running Elk had returned from the school, when the relationship between them had cooled, when they became rivals for the hand of Quiet Stream, Running Elk was aware that he owed his life to White Bull. And it was because of that that their relationship had never gone from being rivals to being enemies.

“Hear me!” White Bull called to the others. “Mean to His Horses thinks that we are not ready to go with him, but I say we can show him we are ready. I am going now to claim coups against the white man! If you are brave of heart, you will go with me.”

“I will go,” Jumping Wolf said.

“And I will go,” Standing Bear said.

Within moments, everyone had declared their intention to go but Running Elk.”

“Running Elk, will you not go with me?” White Bull asked.

Running Elk smiled, and put his hand on White Bull’s shoulder. “I will go with you,” he said.

Cinnabar

“Hang on there, Tommy! Hang on! You can do it!” someone shouted as the six men walked around the edge of the bleachers. The bleachers were overfilled with spectators and scores were standing on each side of the bleachers, right up to the rope that marked off the riding arena. In the arena a cowboy was trying to stay in the saddle of a bucking horse.

He wasn’t able to, and a groan went up from the crowd.

“There they are,” Slayton said, pointing to a table that was set up in front of the bleachers.

“You sure that’s them?” Ebersole asked.

“The three on the left are,” Slayton said. “That’s MacCallister and Cody. I don’t know the name of the man on the right, but he was with MacCallister and Cody back in Sheridan.”

“Slayton is right,” Taylor said. “That’s MacCallister, Cody, and the other man is a writer named Prentiss Ingraham. I met all three of ’em while they was takin’ me to jail.”

“What do we do now?” Dewey asked. “We can’t shoot them in front of all these people.”

“We’ll just wait and watch,” Ebersole said. “We’ll get our chance.”

The tryouts continued for another three hours, until it began to get too dark. Because this was an impromptu arena, there were no lights, neither electric nor gas, that could provide enough illumination for it to continue.

Cody got up from the table, stepped out into the arena and, holding a megaphone in front of his mouth, made an announcement to the crowd and the participants.

“Ladies and gents, and all the cowboys who took part today, this ends the performance.”

The crowd applauded.

“I want to thank all of you for coming.” He turned the megaphone toward the group of cowboys who had participated in the auditions. “Now, if you cowboys will just wait around for a bit, we’ll be calling some of you up for interviews.”

Prentiss Ingraham’s notes from his book in progress:

The bucking contest was held on the arena in front of a specially built grandstand at noon. It began just as the last stage rolled out of Cinnabar taking tourists to the park, but several tourists remained behind for the show and were part of a crowd of approximately five hundred spectators. Those who were present bore witness to one of the greatest exhibitions of bronco busting this writer has ever witnessed. In order to give the audition the greatest show of honesty, Buffalo Bill chose Falcon MacCallister and this writer as judges of the contest.

It was a magnificent exhibition of horses that had never been ridden trying to throw cowboys who had never been thrown. The horses leaped and spun, reared on first their back legs then their front legs, doing all in their power to get the objectionable weight off their backs. Oft times they were successful, and more than one cowboy suffered the ignominy of finding himself facedown in the dirt as the noble steed pranced around the ring in victory. But, just as often, the cowboys succeeded and it was the horse who found himself humiliated before the large crowd there gathered. Along in mid-afternoon a funny incident occurred. A young man, barely out of his teens, applied for permission to compete. Much younger than the other participants, he also stood out for his dress and appearance. He was wearing cowboy boots and spurs, but no chaps, sombrero or the customary vest. He asked to ride in the tryouts.

Stares, sneers and sniggers were openly directed in his direction but Buffalo Bill Cody said that the boy would be permitted to ride. Some of the cowboys, who were not themselves applicants, selected the wildest of all the horses from the remuda. A cowboy then held the wild horse while the young stranger removed his old and very worn saddle from his own horse, and transferred it to the wild horse that had been selected for him.

Those in the crowd, consisting mostly of tourists from the East, were totally unaware of what they were about to see. They had already seen wonderful exhibition of riding and roping, but they had no idea that this young man was about to mount the wildest horse of all. I could tell by the expression in the faces of some of the cowboys who did know, that they were now having second thoughts and some, I think, would have gone out to stop the rider and thus prevent any injury.

With an expression that was set and determined, the young man climbed aboard.

With that the fun was on. With his head to the ground and back arched like an angry cat’s, the wild cayuse bucked and pitched and sunfished; jumped straight up and came down twisting and then shook himself in an effort to get rid of the man on his back, but it was all for naught.

Unable to unseat his rider, the horse broke into a run down the road. The horse galloped at breakneck speed, going so far down the road that he disappeared.

“Now we have done it,” some of the cowboys said, and expressions of remorse circulated through the cowboys as they appeared truly remorseful over the trick they had pulled on the young rider.

Then a great cheer spread through the crowd as the young man was seen returning, this time riding on a horse that was trotting and well under control. As the young man returned to the arena, he leaped down from the horse on one side, then back on to the horse and leaped down from the other side, and then back on again, all to the appreciative roars of the crowd.

Finally he rode up to the stand where Falcon MacCallister, Buffalo Bill, and I were sitting. Swinging down from the horse he removed his hat and made a sweeping bow.

“Sirs, I present you with a fine horse, tamed and eager to serve his master, but not broken, sir. Never broken. His spirit is as great as it has ever been.”

“Young man,” Buffalo Bill said. “I do not even need a response from the judges, for I make the judgment myself that this is one of the finest rides I have ever seen.”

With that announcement, the cowboy who had practiced every spare moment for a year for the event, but who did not have enough money to purchase a cowboy outfit, got the job.