Eventually he employed 4,000 men, including a 15-year-old lad named Billy Cody, later known as Buffalo Bill.

[2] In 1853, Majors was awarded federal contracts to haul supplies to United States Army posts along the Santa Fe Trail.

This became a center of marketing and shipping beef from Texas and the Southwest by railroad to the East Coast and Midwest.

Majors was responsible for the freighting part of the business, Waddell was to manage the office, and Russell was to use his Washington DC contacts to acquire new contracts.

[4] Majors' Overland Stage Company was part of a wide network that reached into the frontier West.

From there, wagon trains headed west loaded with goods from his warehouse located on the Missouri River.

Thirty years later, his former young wagonmaster and Pony Express rider, Buffalo Bill, found him.

Majors lived at Cody's Scouts' Rest Ranch in North Platte, Nebraska for a time.