The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1901-04-21
machinery of arrangements. is enough TO
harrow up commissary's soul.
SAVED FROM FAMINE

SAVED FROM FAMINE
Emporia Kan. is associated I'm my mind
as a place where the boys once had 10 make
two small unbuttered sandwiches serve as
a days rations. Our train was late;
had been travelling many hours and We
telegraphed our advance guard: Have
sandwiches and coffee for six hundred"
That mans experience in Emporia came
near unsettiing his mind He almost imme-
oiately gave up the coffee: the town simply
could not supply 1t. Sandwiches. however
surely he could get these. In one res
taurant he found that two hundred sand
witches had been made in anticipation Of
the rush of country people TO the town for
the show. Five cents was the price asked
per sandwich. The advance man offered
10. 10 and said he wanted 600 more. That
boniface actually refused-said he would
sell TO mo outsiders and leave the regulars
TO starve.' After a canvass OF every res
taurant in Emporia without reward our
desperate advance met William Allen
White, the What's the matter with Kan
sas?" man. White saved the day. He hur-
ried to a church where they We're holding
fair and offered 10 cents each for $500
sandwiches. Where the ladies OF that
church ever got all that bread and boiled
ham in such hurry is still a mystery.
On the road, too, we have other troubles
in the way of running short" on canvas
men. In circus parlance these are razor
hacks" linen who handle the rag" and
they have inconvenient habit of chuck
ing" their jobs. When I'm Dakota not long
ago, the grain crop was so tremendous that
farmers were Offering men $3.50 a day TO
work in the fields. This offer appealed 10
our razor Backs despite the fact that we
were paying them $50 a month and found.
They deserted in wholesale lots. Again. in
the South. the cotton crop one year was so
large that growers put up signs Offering g
a day for pickers. This sign met the eyes
of our rag men" as they entered the town
and we had TO get up the rag that
night with soldier hands as best we could.
But to return TO the mess tent, or, rather,
to the arena; for luncheon is over and
''boots and saddles" is sounding. To the
stables rush the men, reappearing three
minutes later, mounted. One of the Indians,
as he dashes into the arena, is thrown.
Over that green horses head he turns
somersault, lands head-foremost on the
soft earth bed but all that time he has not
let go the rope bride. He picks himself up
and pats the pony on the neck-he knows
better than to kick the beast before it is
bride wise.
The 800 riders assemble; I give a COM
mand in the Sioux language, SO the Indians
directly in front of me can understand.
They break into the ''maze," circles within
circles of horsemen moving in alternate
directions, the sQuaws in the smallest cir
Gle in the center. Half a dozen photog-
raphers plant their cameras on the arena
edge-too close for the safety of the horse
men. If a horse SHES now there will be
mixup that may injure Kill some one.
go away shouts an interpreter, and the
camera men retreat-after taking the pic
lures.
The Rough Riders Congress can go on
indefinitely as long as men ride horses with
the abandon of child on a hobby-horse.
Neither bicycle nor automobile will soon
supplant our great four-footed friend in
the unsettled portions of the earth, and
hence for years to come the rough and
ready horseman may continue TO give exhi-
billions of the strength. courage and Wig
orous and virile manhood which he rep
resents But the life of the Wild West
show proper is limited to the present gen
Grafton. For only the men who have lived
ity and reality.
/ might say that even now the West Is no
longer wild. That this is true strikes me
forcibly every year when, at the close OF
the season, / return to the land which
strong men and capital and railroads have
tanned. At my Scouts Rest Ranch" In
Nebraska-over the sign bearing this title
by the way, some wag last yeaT scrubbed,
tied in all directions, where not long ago it
was trackless forest and prairie
Then l push on to Wyoming, TO the Big
Horn Basin. where / have another ranch,
and where mo Mans Land" has become
many mems land. In this basin. I'm the
Great Divide. the last of the buffalo was
shot. Only five years ago ii was a dreary,
parched waste covered with sage brush
To-day it is irrigated planted with homes,
and in the town of Cody alone live thou
sand people.
Here the soil is twenty-one feet deep
No wonder the Eastern farmers, who have
to pay s12 an acre to make soil, are coming
West! Five years ago / told a friend that
L would run railroad through the noun
tains TO Cody. He laughed. This summer
one of the great trunk lines completed a
branch 10 Cody. / also told my friend Of
five years ago that L would publish a news
paper here in the wilderness. Again he
laughed: for at that time there was only
handful Of persons in Cody and the out
lying cow-punchers could not read. To-
day that newspaper comes out weekly
with a circulation Of $500.
Some mems ambition is power in politics,
others want TO be millionaires, others. 10
achieve lasting fame in the arts; mine is TO
build up the great West. l can only re-
claim small bit of that West of ours.
so 1 have chosen this bit in Big Horn basin
near Yellowstone Park. 1t is only a dot
the map. but it is big enough TO illus
trate the fact that wild and wooIly in
the sense Of yore no longer applies TO the
West.
Copyright by z. +. Collier & Son, 1901
Getting Rich on Salaries.
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