Mr. McCarthy

McCarthy belongs to the fraternity of teamsters, stock-tenders, and overland men who populate Cody's boyhood on the Kansas plains, the working world that shaped him long before he ever scouted for the army. He is the kind of older hand who trades stories and practical wisdom with a boy already earning his keep in the saddle, and his friendship gives Cody a foothold in a trade that demands nerve and judgment. In the book's early stretch, men like McCarthy matter because they show how Cody learned the frontier from the ground up rather than arriving as a finished hero.