Title: Famous Old Scout Suddenly Appears as Though He Sprang From the Pictures of Great Indian Battles Flashed on Screen

More metadata
 

Famous Old Scout Suddenly Appears as Though He Sprang From the Pictures of Great Indian Battles Flashed on Screen.

It is proverbial that the surprise of something happening that is "not on the bill" is of an unpleasant nature, but when it electrifies, bewilders with hair-standing effect, startling one by its suddenness, and as quickly becomes a pleasure-giving incident, it is doubly enjoyed on account of its unexpectedness.

Last night such a sensation was created at the Tabor when the audience, wrapped in close attention to the scenes of the Battle of Summit Springs, 1869, and War Bonnet Creek, 1876, enthralled by the life-size and lifelike figures of the participants, with Buffalo Bill prominently leading — saw the camera switched off at the finish of the thrilling combat. Then what seemed an apparition of a prairie centaur suddenly appeared, but it was the living, breathing Old Scout on his famed white horse Isham. Unannounced he galloped on the stage, as with a flash up went the lights in the darkened auditorium. It startled the mental poise of the auditors for an instant, as in olden days of superstitious belief would the uncanny story of the phantom horseman.

The effect was if they had just returned from the charge, recrossed the battlefield and ridden right out of the picture — real life an dblood [sic] duplicates in the last scenes.

AUDIENCE THRILLED BY CODY'S MAGNETISM.

It was received with spontaneous plaudits such as only a magnetic personality in thrilling action could achieve — something new in the history of the "movie" art, it being as if Hamlet in person answered the curtain call at the end of Shakespeare's immortal drama.

In the calm after the storm of enthusiasm had subsided the old plainsman doffed his sombrero, patted his milk-white steed, and said: "Gee, old pard, that was a hot one; we are going swift; two victories of forty-five and thirty-eight years ago in forty minutes, and another campaign to move on for."

And as quickly as they came they vanished past the footlights.

Interest in present Indian conditions was increased last night by the addition of a reel showing the contrast at Pine Ridge agency in twenty-three years, since the Ghost Dance war and now; a market day at the ridge with a lively country fair style assemblage of red skinned ranchers with farm wagons, hay trucks, surreys, buckboards, carriages and automobiles succeeding the old style pack horses and saddlers. It shows the modern buildings, churches and schools that have supplanted the tepees, tents and wigwams, with uniformed scholars vieing with our Vassar girls; husky lads with brass bands; the change producing famed as well as learned graduates — champion athletes like Jim Thorpe and others in the fields of football and baseball, as a substitute for the Remington and minnie (?) balls of their grandfathers; future patriots who will rush to their country's call and follow Old Glory to victory.

GRAYBEARDS GATHER NIGHTLY AT THE TABOR.

Daily and nightly the gray beards and Martha Washingtons, the early birds of the old West, and the military veterans attend devoutly. They often bring old tintypes, daguerreotypes and photos of persons and scenes when the sanguinary "Old Overland Trail" was the "road to Denver." Many have a wealth of reminiscent memories attached. Among them was a family souvenir which a young woman brought, and which especially moved Colonel Cody. It was a five group photograph of old-timers — all dead but himself — three of the most famed hunters and scouts and two of the most genial New York sports that ever trailed the West, away back in '73. It was taken after a big hunt that General Sheridan had arranged for Lish Green, a rich friend, and a once famous Broadwayite; Eugene Overton, following the great hunt of the Russian Grand Duke Alexis, under United States government auspices, with Generals Sheridan, Custer, in fact the flower of the United States army, under the guidance of Buffalo Bill in 1872.

HELPED PLACE DENVER UPON THE SOCIAL MAP.

This party, by the way, helped to put Denver on the social map, by their visit and the hospitalities extended to this first of royal visitors — Bill Cody being the chaperon, comrade in the parlor and ballroom, as he had been leader in the camp and on the hunt.

"Texas Jack" (J. B. Omohundro), after the Civil war, during which they were opponents, was Cody's 'pard' as hunter and guide, and is made famous by the writings of such sportsmen as the Earl of Dunraven in his book, "The Great Divide," whom he and Cody guided to Estes park, where the earl for years was a large landholder, and probably would have remained here had it not been for an immense "estate succession" demanding his return.

WILD BILL KICOCK'S NAME CARVED HIGH.

Wild Bill Hicock's name is carved in scouting and martial honors on the scroll of Western history, that makes it — like his comrade's, Buffalo Bill's — imperishable. One little episode, graphically told in Harper's Monthly of February, 1867, where he killed ten "bad men" unaided in a hand-to-hand fight, is but one of the many thrilling events that illumined his career. He was killed by an assassin at Deadwood, where his tomb is a shrine to the lovers of the brave on the apex of the Black Hills, while "Texas Jack" reposes in the mountain cemetery of Leadville, both overlooking the great plains that resounded with their fame from the foothills of the Rockies to the valley of the Missouri.

Their old comrade, pal and leader, Colonel Cody, "Buffalo Bill," still is preserving, by his presence and work, the history they revelled in — those pages of stirring Western story that even the yet middle-aged voters know of — by making a new era in the popular "moving picture" history, by initiating another grade of permanent value in pioneer pictures that move the patriotic emotions. The old scout and his Indian war pictures will continue the rest of the week in the pioneer play palace of Denver — the Tabor.