Buffalo Bill’s First Scalp for Custer

Cody, Carr, Collins and Townsend could hardly contain themselves. On a hot afternoon at Fort Laramie, Buffalo Bill was his customary dashing and exuberant self, straight and slender and wearing a scarlet shirt as he paraded in front of John Collins’ post-traders store, with the back-slapping Fifth Cavalry lieutenant colonel, Eugene Carr, at his side, and Fort Laramie’s serene commander Major Edwin Townsend of the Ninth Infantry, in the boisterous knot. All were old friends who had not seen e