# Old Gobel — The Life of Buffalo Bill character guide

> Old Gobel in The Life of Buffalo Bill by William F. Cody.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Gobel, the Gobel

**First appearance:** 0005-iii-boy-days-in-kansas

## Snapshot

The Kansas neighbor who first put young Will Cody behind a wagon team, teaching a restless boy the plainsman's trade before the plains ever called him west.

## Who they are

Old Gobel belongs to the small fraternity of settlers and freighters who gave the young Cody his earliest work, hiring him when he was still a boy more comfortable in a saddle than at a desk. The arrangement suits a youth who chafes at schoolroom discipline and hungers for the open country, and it plants him squarely in the rough economy of ox-trains and frontier roads. His brief patronage matters because it is one of the first rungs Cody climbs, converting a fatherless boy into a working plainsman.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_life_of_buffalo_bill_se/characters/old_gobel
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- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_life_of_buffalo_bill_se/characters