Concepts

Los Angeles Times, 3 October 1898

TALK WITH BUFFALO BILL. Intends to Take Fifty Rough Riders to Paris in 1900.

[Kansas City Dispatch.] Buffalo Bill, millionaire, sat at an old brown pine table in a little tent on the show grounds at noon today. A pile of letters from everywhere, one with a deep black border, was in front of him. He was writing an answer to one of them, using a lead pencil.

"Always busy," he said, as he stood up and shook hands. "I've been out in Kansas among the old-times and they almost talked a lung out of me. I wanted to take my show to all the little towns in Nebraska, Colorado and Kansas before I quit the show business. I wanted a last chance to get around over those old trails where I hunted and whacked bulls and drove stage and rode pony express before the days of the railroads, and so I went."

"Did the people turn out to see you?"

"Did they?" They gave me the grandest ovation I ever received. I didn't expect to make a cent of money on the trip. I went because I was always getting letters from old-timers asking me why I didn't ever visit them with my show. People drove 300 miles to see my show. They came so far that their cows went dry before they got back home. Yes, that's a fact, I got letters from 'em telling me their cows went dry."

"And you are really going to quit the show business?"

"I am in 1900, after the Paris Exposition. I have my grounds picked out there and will take the best show over that I ever got together and then I'll positively never show again."

"By the way,' he said, as he took a couple of telegrams from his pocket, "I bought in New York yesterday thirty of Roosevelt's Rough Riders' horses. I will take them with me to Paris. And I intend to engage fifty of his best Rough Riders to go with me; two of Teddy's men are here visiting me today. You know I originated the name Rough Riders. I have been calling my men Rough Riders for ten years. Next year I am going to call them smooth riders. Why should I call them rough? They're the smoothest riders on earth.

"Here are two cablegrams from Gen. Miles. You know I was booked for the big war. I tendered my services to the President and was accepted. I was to go to Havana, but Manila and Santiago came up and changed plans. I got a telegram from Miles in August." He showed it. It was dated Ponce, Porto Rico, and read:

"Would like you to report here, taking first steamer from Newport News for Ponce."

"I cabled him," said Buffalo Bill, "that it would cost me $100,000 to discharge my people and close the show and asked him if I hadn't better await the outcome of peace negotiations, and if he needed me I would come. He sent me this cablegram:"

The cablegram from Gen. Miles was one word, "yes."

"You see, if I should go down there now people would say I was a grand stand player," said Buffalo Bill.