Civic Asset

Kids in Colorado and Wyoming listened with only half an ear to milksops like the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet. Their elders seemed bemused too. For the Rockies were rumbling with argument again--over the late, grandiloquently great William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody.

It was not the first time. The U.S. had produced few better-known heroes--and almost none so artificially contrived. Cody was an Indian scout and buffalo hunter in his youth, but the rest of the "Buffalo Bill" legend sprang straight from the brain of a raffish scribbler known as Ned Buntline. Astounded by Cody's good looks, wonderful lies and infinite capacity for firewater, Buntline immortalized him in a series of hair-raising dime novels.

A pressagent named "Arizona John" Burke tooled the fantastic legend until no buffalo was left unskinned, no redskin unscalped and no maiden unavenged west of the Mississippi.

Bird Shot. Tens of thousands who saw the mighty hunter slaying stage Indians and popping glass balls with a pistol (loaded with bird shot) were ready to believe anything about him. For two decades Bill crossed and recrossed the U.S., beaming when women swooned at his bearded beauty. When he died in Denver in 1917 he was broke and partly bald, but his legend was unabashed.

Within minutes after the hero had crossed the last divide, Denver's Mayor Robert W. Speer was out to claim him. Buffalo Bill dead and enshrined would obviously be a greater civic asset than Buffalo Bill alive with one foot on the Albany Hotel bar rail. Within an hour Bill's widow accepted the city's offer of a fine free burial on Lookout Mountain. (It took five months to bore a grave in the solid rock; Denver embalmers called on all their cunning to keep Bill looking fit.)

The rest of the West did not take this corpse-rustling quietly. North Platte, Neb., where Buffalo Bill had built a home with two stuffed buffalo flanking the front door, wanted him too. So did Cody, Wyo.

Scrap Iron. As the magnitude of Denver's coup became apparent--a million people visited the grave every year--certain Wyoming citizens threatened to kidnap Bill. Denver's alarmed citizenry took steps--15 tons of concrete and old railroad iron were laid over the grave.

Last week the old argument was up again. Denver was preparing to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Bill's birth with a parade of Indians and costumed plainsmen at the grave. Wyoming was also hustling to produce Buffalo Bill centennial celebrations--and still wanted Bill back. In Cody, Bill's grandson, William Garlow, cried: "If grandfather were alive he would say, 'Get my remains out from under this concrete even if you have to quarry me out.' "

Chuckled Denver's Fred Steinhauer, author of the scheme for cementing Bill down: "They couldn't get the old boy out with an atomic bomb. No man was ever buried better. He won't even hear Gabriel's horn."

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