In the summer of 1868, after Bill Cody had completed a contract supplying meat for Kansas-Pacific Railroad workers and, by his own account, killed 4280 buffalo in eight months, a celebrated buffalo hunting contest took place near Monument between Cody and William Averill "Medicine Bill" Comstock. Cody was a civilian scout and hunter favored by the cavalry at Fort Hays, while soldiers at Fort Wallace backed Comstock, their own noted scout. With the honor of the two posts at stake, officers are said to have arranged the contest, putting up $500 a side and bringing a spectator train to the end of the tracks. When bison were spotted nearby, the two men split the herd and hunted by different tactics: Comstock worked from the rear forward, while Cody rode to the front on his horse Brigham, circled his herd, and shot the leaders one by one. By the end of the day, Cody had killed 69 buffalo to Comstock's 46, settling any doubt over his claim to the name Buffalo Bill. Comstock, born in Michigan in 1842 and descended from writer James Fenimore Cooper, had gone west as a young man, lived for several years among the Arapaho and Cheyenne, and became a noted civilian scout and interpreter along the Smoky Hill Trail; George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry called him "an eccentric genius," and he was killed on August 27, 1868, while carrying a message to a band of Cheyenne Indians.