I am Buffalo Bill’s horse. I have spent
my life under his saddle— with him in it,
too, and he is good for two hundred pounds, without
his clothes; and there is no telling how much he does
weigh when he is out on the war-path and has his batteries
belted on. He is over six feet, is young, hasn’t
an ounce of waste flesh, is straight, graceful, springy
in his motions, quick as a cat, and has a handsome
face, and black hair dangling down on his shoulders,
and is beautiful to look at; and nobody is braver
than he is, and nobody is stronger, except myself.
Yes, a person that doubts that he is fine to see
should see him in his beaded buck-skins, on my back
and his rifle peeping above his shoulder, chasing a
hostile trail, with me going like the wind and his
hair streaming out behind from the shelter of his
broad slouch. Yes, he is a sight to look at
then—and I’m part of it myself.
I am his favorite horse, out of dozens. Big
as he is, I have carried him eighty-one miles between
nightfall and sunrise on the scout; and I am good
for fifty, day in and day out, and all the time.
I am not large, but I am built on a business basis.
I have carried him thousands and thousands of miles
on scout duty for the army, and there’s not
a gorge, nor a pass, nor a valley, nor a fort, nor
a trading post, nor a buffalo-range in the whole sweep
of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains that we
don’t know as well as we know the bugle-calls.
He is Chief of Scouts to the Army of the Frontier,
and it makes us very important. In such a position
as I hold in the military service one needs to be of
good family and possess an education much above the
common to be worthy of the place. I am the best-educated
horse outside of the hippodrome, everybody says, and
the best-mannered. It may be so, it is not for
me to say; modesty is the best policy, I think.
Buffalo Bill taught me the most of what I know, my
mother taught me much, and I taught myself the rest.
Lay a row of moccasins before me—Pawnee,
Sioux, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, and as many other
tribes as you please—and I can name the
tribe every moccasin belongs to by the make of it.
Name it in horse-talk, and could do it in American
if I had speech.
I know some of the Indian signs—the signs
they make with their hands, and by signal-fires at
night and columns of smoke by day. Buffalo Bill
taught me how to drag wounded soldiers out of the line
of fire with my teeth; and I’ve done it, too;
at least I’ve dragged him out of the battle
when he was wounded. And not just once, but
twice. Yes, I know a lot of things. I remember
forms, and gaits, and faces; and you can’t disguise
a person that’s done me a kindness so that I
won’t know him thereafter wherever I find him.
I know the art of searching for a trail, and I know
the stale track from the fresh. I can keep a
trail all by myself, with Buffalo Bill asleep in the
saddle; ask him—he will tell you so.
Many a time, when he has ridden all night, he has
said to me at dawn, “Take the watch, Boy; if
the trail freshens, call me.” Then he
goes to sleep. He knows he can trust me, because
I have a reputation. A scout horse that has
a reputation does not play with it.
