The Congress of Rough Riders

by John Boyne

  A display of marksmanship followed and the crowd roared their approval as their idol, Buffalo Bill Cody, took top honours against all comers. He even invited members of the audience to challenge him but none could match his eagle eye shots and clever stunts. He received his applause rapturously and reluctantly left their sights as Sitting Bull and his family entered the arena. The crowd went silent when he appeared for this had been the moment they had been waiting for. The Sioux leader’s name had been infamous for many years by now, yet very few white men had ever seen him. Although there were perhaps a thousand spectators and only a dozen Indians there was a palpable air of tension and fear as he appeared before them. It had been agreed that neither Sitting Bull nor any of his relatives would perform stunts or any theatrical acts. Instead, they would merely trot around the arena slowly so that all could get an opportunity to see him.

  ‘Take a look, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,’ cried Bill into his megaphone, reading out the speech that he had written earlier. ‘Sit back and stare in awe at the sight of the infamous Sioux leader. Chief Sitting Bull and his family, as they wander among you. Fear not, however, for the vanquished leader has been set free from his reservation purely for the purposes of entertaining you, the good people of Buffalo.’ The crowd cheered when he mentioned the city name and by breaking their initial silence they found the courage to turn their attention to the Indians, shouting and screaming at them as they made their way around. Sitting Bull sat stoically on his horse, trying to remain focused on the route ahead of him as their hisses entered his mind, but some of his younger followers were not so calm and found themselves shaking their tomahawks at their tormentors, an action which merely led to a higher cacophony of abuse. ‘Sitting Bull was the slayer of General George Armstrong Custer at the battle of Little Big Horn,’ continued Bill, happy now to use his late friend’s name if it improved the dramatic atmosphere, even though that sentence had not been strictly speaking accurate, ‘but now he is tamed and unable to kill any more. Behold the vanquished brave!’

  The crowd were torn between cheering for Bill and hissing at the Indians and, shortly afterwards when he had left the arena and returned to his tent, weaker for the experience, Sitting Bull received my great-grandfather sadly, reprimanding him for the things he had said within.

  ‘You take the name of your dead friend lightly,’ he said, the sound of the crowd still ringing in his ear. ‘What kind of man are you anyway?’

  ‘The kind who’s making a living, Chief,’ said Bill. ‘And don’t lecture me when you’re making money out of this too. If you can auction off your dignity to the highest bidder, then don’t criticise me for making a few dollars out of George Armstrong Custer.’

  There was little he could say to this; he despised Bill but despised himself even more. The Indians had lost, it was as simple as that. Sitting Bull had no choices left. He could either resign himself to his fate in the reservations or make some money which he could distribute to his people as he wished. It was a small victory over his white tormentors; it lessened them both, but it was business, it was the way the country was turning. It was, as Bill had pointed out earlier, the new American way.

  Chapter Eleven

  A Perfect Stranger

  Despite the initial tensions of their relationship, Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill Cody eventually became closely allied to each other. As the wild west show toured across America, centring on the country’s most important and industrialised cities – New York, Boston, Chicago – they both made their respective fortunes. My great-grandfather was not a thrifty man, however, and although he always managed to keep one step ahead of debt, he spent his income foolishly and quickly on unwise investments. His early career with both the Golden Rule Hotel and the town of Rome had proved how fickle he could be with his ideas and how easily his wealth could slip through his fingers. Even when he died in 1917, he had let several fortunes slip away and was far from a rich man. Sitting Bull, on the other hand, had a very different attitude to money. Although he had no personal interest or need for the stuff, he enjoyed earning it and as they toured the country would often undertake speaking engagements or personal appearances with various groups. The money he earned from this, combined with his income from the shows themselves, he distributed among the poor of the cities he visited. Whenever he saw begging children along the streets – children who generally stared at him with a mixture of terror and admiration – he would stop and pass out to them whatever dollars happened to be in his pocket. The leading lights behind the wild west shows were not the most financially gifted men of all time.

  In 1885, a problem emerged when Gary ‘Granite’ Grayson, perhaps the most famous marksman at the time, and a member of Buffalo Bill’s travelling troupe of performers, was himself the victim of a shooting. It was common knowledge that Grayson was conducting an affair with Paints Faces, one of the Indian women who performed in the show, but he was also considered a lech by most of the other women, many of whom had already spurned his advances. Paints Faces, however, had fallen in love with Grayson, whose reputation earned him third billing on the show cards after my great-grandfather and Sitting Bull, and when she became pregnant she hoped that he would marry her. He refused, however, and was challenged by Walks Across Streams, an ageing Indian who acted in the role of protector towards the girl. Despite Grayson’s skill, he was not a brave man and while he excelled at shooting targets which could not shoot back, he had never been involved in a shoot-out with another man. Walks Across Streams recognised the younger man’s insecurities and played on them, staring him out before the contest in order to achieve a psychological advantage and indeed, when the call came to shoot, Grayson’s finger had barely pressed on his trigger before he fell to the ground dead.

  Bill and Sitting Bull covered up the affair, for if it had become public knowledge that an Indian set free from a reservation in order to entertain the public had killed a white man, the repercussions for all could have been severe. Grayson’s fame, however, made the story into quite a scandal which lent extra publicity to the show while leaving them one marksman short of a shooting gallery. My great-grandfather auditioned various people for the role but none were quite good enough; they each had a certain level of skill and proficiency which exceeded that of the average man, but that was not enough. The person to play the role had to be able to perform tricks and stunts and win the audience over on to his side.

  In the end it was Sitting Bull who located a replacement. Early the previous year, while travelling through Minnesota with the show, the Sioux chief had watched a display of marksmanship given by a married couple, whose skills were quite exceptional. The husband in the team was a man named Frank Butler and he also acted as manager for their act, which had become quite popular across the state. Afterwards, they had been anxious to meet the famous Indian chief and the three had dined together privately, where Sitting Bull had complimented them on their skills.

  ‘I’m just an amateur compared to her,’ said Frank Butler, cocking his head in the direction of his wife, who laughed and blushed as her husband reached across to take her hand for a moment. ‘Thought I was the best man in the county at shooting till I met her.’

  ‘That’s not true, Chief Sitting Bull,’ replied Mrs Butler. ‘Frank’s taught me a lot since we’ve met. I was green before that.’ She was a petite young woman of twenty-two, only five feet tall in height, with long, curly dark hair and a porcelain complexion. Her conversation was sparkling and witty and she was obviously devoted to her husband, qualities that Sitting Bull found intoxicating. He had lost a daughter himself only a year before and, while his grief and mourning had been private, it had caused him a great deal of pain. Although he had only just met Mrs Butler, he found himself attracted to her in a paternal way.

  ‘If that is so, he taught you well,’ replied the chief. ‘Although you have a natural talent. I can see that in the way you shoot.’

  She acknowledged the compliment with a graceful nod of the head. ‘I
t’s kind of you to say,’ she said quietly. The conversation continued throughout the night and, while comparing tour dates afterwards, they realised they would often be not far from each other over the following couple of months and agreed to meet again. In the meantime, Sitting Bull and Mrs Butler began a friendly correspondence which continued whenever they were apart.

  ‘What about the husband?’ asked my great-grandfather when Sitting Bull proposed replacing ‘Granite’ Grayson with Mrs Butler. ‘It’s a crazy thing to have a woman marksman. She can’t be anywhere near as talented as some of the men.’

  ‘She could out-shoot you,’ replied Sitting Bull in a calm voice. Bill had suggested that he himself take over from Grayson as he believed that no one was a match for him when it came to shooting and, although he was indeed a fine shot, the chief was only too well aware that pride was playing a part in that decision.

  ‘Outshoot me?’ he laughed derisively. ‘I think not, my friend.’

  ‘Invite her here then. Let her shoot with you. If you win, you win. If you lose, she gets the job. The husband is her business manager. He knows he’s not as good as her. He’d be happy to see her in the limelight. They seem very well suited to each other.’

  Bill shrugged and gave in. ‘All right then, chief,’ he said, laughing. ‘If that’s what you want, I guess you don’t ask that much of me. You tell this Mrs Butler gal to get over here and we’ll try her out, see what stuff she’s made of. What’s her first name anyway?’

  ‘Annie,’ replied Sitting Bull. ‘In private she’s known as Annie Butler, but her stage name is Oakley. That’s what she shoots under.’

  ‘Annie Oakley,’ said Bill, nodding as he made a mental note of her name. ‘Well get her over here and we’ll see what she’s made of.’

  Annie Oakley – or Little Miss Sure Shot, as Sitting Bull had affectionately christened her – arrived the following lunchtime and most of the performers of the wild west show came out to see the shoot-out between their employer and this tiny woman who had arrived with a rifle under whose weight she looked like she might collapse at any time. No one gave her much chance of victory and treated the contest like an entertaining way to pass an hour, but the contestants took it seriously and paid little attention to their spectators as they fought, respectively, for their pride and employment.

  Various targets were used, from stationary marksmen’s targets to birds in the sky, and just over an hour after they had begun, a winner was declared. Of the twenty-five targets which they had aimed at, Bill had scored twenty-two, an exceptional score in anyone’s book. Annie Oakley, however, had not missed a single one. Her perfect twenty-five had produced solid applause and respect in the audience and Bill, knowing he had but one chance to save his dignity, joined in that applause and congratulated her for all to hear.

  ‘That’s the finest display of marksmanship I’ve ever seen,’ he told her. ‘Where did you learn to shoot like that anyway?’

  Annie blushed and was stuck for an answer; she found Bill’s reputation and fame slightly overwhelming and was embarrassed for having beaten him.

  ‘Natural talent, Mr Cody, natural talent,’ said Frank Butler, shaking his hand and hugging his wife. ‘So what do you say? You want us to come work for you.’

  ‘I think I’d be a fool to say no,’ conceded Bill, realising that advertising an expert marksman was one thing but it was an even better publicity tool when that marksman happened to be a beautiful young woman. ‘Can you start right away?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  And so the deal was struck. Before much time had passed, Annie Oakley became probably the best-known marksman in America and joined Bill and Sitting Bull at the top of the billing. The relationship between the three was generally good, although my great-grandfather did find himself a little jealous sometimes at the skill of the younger woman which was, as her husband had suggested, a natural talent and something with which he himself could barely compete. He was also attracted to her which caused some tension for them, as Annie and Frank were a happy and solid couple. Louisa had long since left Bill and settled in Missouri; although they remained legally married, they almost never saw each other now and she devoted herself to bringing up their children who knew little of their father except what they saw in the newspapers or read about in the novels. Companionship was not difficult for Bill to find and he made himself free and easy with the women of the towns and cities that the wild west show visited; his celebrity always assured him the nightly affections of the local girls. Annie was different though, a beautiful young woman who he could not have. He never made any advances towards her either, recognising that he would be rebuffed, and although she was aware of his feelings, she never spoke of them with him. The shows and the touring continued; but now there was always a slight tension in the air which had not existed in the past.

  Russell Rose knew that he was getting old. It was only a matter of time before he would have to retire from the trapeze-artist troupe which bore his name. Already, Bessie, his wife, was dropping hints that he should leave the tightrope-walking to younger men and simply manage and train the artists from now on. He was just putting off the inevitable, she told him. It was time to admit that the days of his being a showman and an entertainer were at an end.

  ‘We don’t have too many savings though,’ he pointed out to Bessie over dinner one evening in their wagon. ‘What will we live on?’

  ‘You can still earn, Russell,’ she said. ‘You can still work, just like I do. Just not up high, that’s all. Believe me, if you fall and kill yourself you’ll be earning even less.’ She bit her lip quickly, wishing she could take back the words; she couldn’t believe she had said them but they were out before she realised what she was saying. ‘You know what I mean,’ she added quietly.

  ‘There’s no guarantee we’ll be kept on though,’ said Russell. ‘We could be fired the minute I come down from the tightropes. Then what would we do? We have a lot of life left in us yet. We need to be able to survive. And then there’s Ellen to think of.’

  Bessie nodded and pressed a finger to his lips to silence him just as their daughter entered the room. She had discarded her crutches recently but still walked with a pronounced limp and was prone to bending forward slightly as she walked, something which her doctor advised against as it only made her back problems worse.

  ‘But it makes it feel better when I lean forward,’ she pointed out irritably.

  ‘For now it does,’ he said. ‘But those pains will pass if you reaccustom yourself to standing up straight. Otherwise there will be more pain like that further down the line.’

  Ever since the accident, the Rose family had been struggling with tension. When Ellen had fallen from the trapeze to the ground below, there seemed little chance that she could possibly be alive. Russell had descended the ladder by shinning down the side of it, convinced that his daughter, his only child, was dead, terrified as he made his way to her side. He could barely hear the screams of the crowd or the people inexplicably charging from their seats and making for the exits, as if Ellen’s fall would be followed by the Big Top tumbling about their ears. She lay quite calmly on the dusty ground, her body slightly contorted, her eyes and lips closed. Russell’s first thought as he saw her there was that she was dead, but that she appeared to be simply sleeping. In fact, that was closer to the truth than he could have possibly imagined. Incredibly, her fall had not killed her, had not even paralysed her. She had damaged her spine of course and it was that injury which still caused her great pain. And she had broken both her legs, but the breaks had been clean and when she was treated and they were placed in plaster for a couple of months, the doctors announced that she would indeed be able to walk again, albeit without as much comfort or flexibility as she was used to. Of course she would never perform in the Big Top again; the fall had destroyed the one career she had ever dreamed of.

  At first, Joseph Craven was blamed for mistiming the leap from the platform which led to his failure to catch Ellen, but
when it became clear that her injuries, while serious, were not life threatening, many people began to apologise to him for making him a scapegoat. However, some months later, while making unwanted advances at the youngest daughter of the bearded lady, he had threatened to hurt her if she did not give in. Just look what happened to Ellen Rose, he hissed at her as he gripped her wrists and forced her lips to his. Do you want something like that to happen to you? The girl, who was unafraid of Craven, reported what he had said and the police were called in. Eventually he broke down and admitted what he had done and was arrested and jailed for attempted murder. His conviction, however, was of little comfort to Ellen Rose.

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ she muttered as she walked past her parents that evening, aware of how they often stopped speaking when she appeared. ‘I need my exercise.’

  ‘Don’t go far, dear,’ said Bessie in a cheerful voice. ‘You need your rest, remember. Early start tomorrow.’

  Ellen grunted a response but disappeared into the night. The cold wind whipped into her eyes and she blamed it for the tears that sprung up there. Walking slowly along the road, wrapping her cardigan around her body as she felt her legs’ pain begin to ease with the exercise, she wondered for the hundredth time why she had been the victim of such a crime. She hated seeing the circus performers now, for they reminded her of what she could never do again. The sound of the applause which rang through from the Big Top to the kitchen area where she worked with her mother made her skin crawl. She wanted her position back. Although she remained a beautiful young girl, she believed that her disability would mean that no man would fall in love with her. She would spend all her time in the circus now, peeling potatoes, boiling carrots, roasting beef. Before long she believed she would smell of animal fat and her skin and hair would be constantly greasy.