On the Dodge by William MacLeod Raine Read Free Book Online Page A

buffaloes he was in Paradise. But he saw at
once that this slaughter would soon exterminate the supply. He hated
the hunter and battled against his encroachments. The buffalo hunter
was an intrepid plainsman. He fought Kiowas, Comanches, and the Staked
Plain Apaches, as well as the Sioux and the Arapahoe. Famous among
these hunters were Kirk Jordan Charles Rath, Emanuel Dubbs, Jack
Bridges, and Curly Walker. Others even better known were the two
Buffalo Bills ( William Cody and William Mathewson ) and Wild Bill.
    These three factors then made Dodge: it was the end of the railroad,
the terminus of the cattle trail from Texas the centre of the buffalo
trade. Together they made it "the beautiful bibulous Babylon of the
frontier," in the words of the editor of the Kingsley Graphic. There
was to come a time later when the bibulous Babylon fell on evil days
and its main source of income was old bones. They were buffalo-bones,
gathered in wagons, and piled beside the track for shipment, hundreds
and hundreds of carloads of them, to be used for fertilizer. ( I have seen great quantities of such bones as far north as the Canadian Pacific line, corded for shipment to a factory. ) It used to be said by way of derision that buffalo bones were legal tender in Dodge.
    But that was in the far future. In its early years Dodge rode the wave
of prosperity. Hays and Abilene and Ogalala had their day, but Dodge
had its day and its night, too. For years it did a tremendous business.
The streets were so blocked that one could hardly get through. Hundreds
of wagons were parked in them, outfits belonging to freighters,
hunters, cattlemen, and the government. Scores of camps surrounded the
town in every direction. The yell of the cowboy and the weird oath of
the bullwhacker and the mule skinner were heard in the land. And for a
time there was no law nearer than Hays City, itself a burg not given to
undue quiet and peace.
    Dodge was no sleepy village that could drowse along without peace
officers. Bob Wright has set it down that in the first year of its
history twenty-five men were killed and twice as many wounded. The
elements that made up the town were too diverse for perfect harmony.
The freighters did not like the railroad graders. The soldiers at the
fort fancied themselves as scrappers. The cowboys and the buffalo
hunters did not fraternize a little bit. The result was that Boot Hill
began to fill up. Its inhabitants were buried with their boots on and
without coffins.
    There was another cemetery, for those who died in their beds. The
climate was so healthy that it would have been very sparsely occupied
those first years if it had not been for the skunks. During the early
months Dodge was a city of camps. Every night the fires flamed up from
the vicinity of hundreds of wagons. Skunks were numerous. They crawled
at night into the warm blankets of the sleepers and bit the rightful
owners when they protested. A dozen men died from these bites. It was
thought at first that the animals were a special variety, known as the
hydrophobia skunk. In later years I have sat around Arizona camp fires
and heard this subject discussed heatedly. The Smithsonian Institute,
appealed to as referee, decided that there was no such species and that
deaths from the bites of skunks were probably due to blood poisoning
caused by the foul teeth of the animal.
    In any case, the skunks were only one half as venomous as the gunmen,
judging by comparative statistics. Dodge decided it had to have law in
the community. Jack Bridges was appointed first marshal.
    Jack was a noted scout and buffalo hunter, the sort of man who would
have peace if he had to fight for it. He did his sleeping in the
afternoon, since this was the quiet time of the day. Someone shook him
out of slumber one day to tell him that cowboys were riding up and down
Front Street shooting the windows out of buildings. Jack sallied out,
old buffalo gun in hand. The cowboys went whooping down the street
across the