It's a forty-minute feature in which old Buffalo -- if he doesn't object to my calling him by his first name -- stops with his horse, lies down and dreams about his youth, when he would single-handedly stop Cheyennes from massacring wagon trains or joining with the Sioux, but would need a dozen or so stout fellows to stop a stagecoach robber.
Besides the prologue and epilogue, in which the real -- so to speak -- "Buffalo Bill" Cody appears, there's a younger-looking man with his trademark long hair and beard, although they're dark in these parts. Four other performers are credited, although I have my doubts about Pearl White; she was working for Kalem at this point, and if she is one of the wagon train people or an Indian -- sorry, Native American -- it's unlikely she's playing the young William F. Cody. Perhaps it's Paul Panzer, who is also credited as the director. Maybe it's Irving Cummings, or perhaps William James Craft, who would have been about 16.
The four events which the older Cody dreams about all look to have been bits from his famous traveling western show, seen by the crowned heads of Europe and children throughout America. 'Children of all ages' was the cry of the ringmaster of the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey circus when I was a child of five, and that is the right age to understand the legend of Buffalo Bill Cody, and the myth of the American West. It is a dream, and if that myth and dream don't mean much to the people today, it's good to see what the myth once meant, and the man who made it.
