The Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  Meanwhile one of the police spotted the painting of Sitting Bull, and yelling in fury that his brother had been shot and killed by the Bull’s followers, pulled Catherine Weldon’s picture off the wall and smashed in the canvas with the butt of his rifle.

  I had to shout to be heard by the young cavalry lieutenant. “I talk Sioux,” I says. “What are you looking for?”

  He rolls his eyes at Amanda and shakes his head. “Weapons,” he told me. “We don’t want to get shot or knifed in the back.” He pointed at the Lakota women. “Tell them to get their dirty asses up. I want to see what’s underneath those blankets.”

  Amanda says, “You keep a civil tongue in your head!” And then blunts her point by adding, “You foulmouthed bastard.”

  The officers starts back at that, and thinking she was Sitting Bull’s white whore, he might of slapped her face, but my presence gave him enough pause for me to speak to the Indian women.

  “He wants you to get up,” I says, “and you’d better do it before they yank you up by force.”

  So Seen by the Nation and her sister Four Robes done as asked, rising in their wrapped blankets, as did the daughters, the married Many Horses and her Pa’s favorite, little Standing Holy, just entering her teen years.

  The lieutenant had the policemen pull away the top coverings from the heap the women had been sitting on, revealing two young Hunkpapa boys cowering together, naked except for their breechcloths.

  I doubt, with the officer present, them lads would of met with the fate of Crow Foot, but Amanda wasn’t going to take a chance. She lighted into the lieutenant, threatening to ruin him if a hair on those boys’ heads was touched. And whether that were the reason or not, nothing worse was done them than a search of their persons, which uncovered no weapon aside from a broken clasp knife, which was confiscated.

  The lieutenant happened to see that picture of Sitting Bull on the floor where it fell, with a smashed frame and a torn canvas, and he says to me, “That looks like a genuine oil painting. Tell them I’m willing to buy it though it can’t be worth much with the rip in it.” He winked. “Anyway, how would they know?”

  That seemed pretty cold to me, since the picture was a remembrance of Sitting Bull in better days than would ever come again, but I passed the offer on to Seen by the Nation and Four Robes, not wanting, for the wives’ sake, to put the officer in a bad mood.

  But their reaction was a surprise, not because they was Indians, who I thought I knew, but female, who I sure didn’t know. Turned out they was only too agreeable to selling the portrait. It finally occurred to me that might of been because it had been painted by that white woman. You notice it had not been hanging in the main cabin run by the senior wife. Anyhow, the lieutenant acquired it for two dollars, to which, without telling him, I added all the bills I had in my pocket, which turned out to be a rash gesture on my part, for I hadn’t any money left, and Cody had departed from the region. But I never thought of the consequences at the moment.

  The officer had the Indian policeman who tore the painting carry it out for him, and he followed with the rest of them and me. I figured serving as interpreter I might be able to head off any treatment of the defeated that was too nasty, for Indians saw no reason for mercy towards them that had been opponents, even when related.

  But I didn’t get out of there soon enough to prevent what might practically of done no harm, for the old man was dead, but was as ugly a thing as I had lately seen, and had I been closer I would of put my knife in the belly of the perpetrator.

  Them loyal to Sitting Bull had long gone, but there had now gathered a number of non-uniformed Sioux to see what happened, relatives of the policemen what had been killed or hurt in the fight, and just as I stepped out of the cabin one of them was carrying a heavy yoke he had took from the barn, probably for some such purpose as this, and raising it high above the body, brung it down on Sitting Bull’s dead face.

  Just ahead of me, the lieutenant saw this too, and yelled, “Stop that man!”

  And running, I translated it literally, “Nazinkya!” for the benefit of the policemen ahead of us, who of course till then thought it was perfectly okay, and for the perpetrator himself, I added, “Or your guts will be cut out and fed to the crows.” He dropped the yoke then.

  The features of Sitting Bull’s once noble face had been rearranged, and I won’t say more except I was just glad Amanda had remained behind with the women.

  The disrespect to Sitting Bull’s corpse wasn’t at an end, but I couldn’t interfere in what occurred next, for I understood what was involved. The Indian police intended to deliver the body to McLaughlin at the agency, but they also had four corpses of their own men to haul back and only one wagon. Putting Sitting Bull alongside their comrades in the wagon bed would mean he was a man of equal value, and their blood was still running hot due to the bitter fight.

  So they pried his old body from the ground, where its blood had froze and glued him down, and throwed it, the back of the head blown off and the chin where the nose should of been, into the wagon, then carefully placed the dead policemen on top of him.

  All I wanted now was to get away from there, and not just from the Indians, who was now so degraded as to act like the whites in Dodge and Tombstone, hating and killing one another of their own kind. I had had a stomach full of that long before and should never of come back West. Hell, I had been on good terms with the Queen and Prince Bertie and a lot of Frenchies I couldn’t even understand, not to mention Italians and Germans, all of them civilized to the hilt. I was mostly ignorant at the time of the mass slaughters they held periodically and not only of the various kinds of coloreds in their distant empires but also of one another right on their own ground. But at this period they was in between such, at least in Europe while I visited, no doubt getting ready for the next bloodbath, so it wasn’t for a few years yet I come to realize that no matter how old I got or where I went there would probably be a lot of killing sooner or later, and I should remember to accept it as I did when a boy amongst the Cheyenne. Growing up had made me soft. But so be it. At this time I had seen enough people die violently, and I was getting too near fifty years of age.

  So I went to the door of the cabin of women, and I asked Amanda to please come outside.

  And she done so, saying, “Jack, we’ve got to do something for these people.”

  “Amanda,” I says, “no we don’t.”

  She stared at me with them big eyes, which in certain kinds of light looked so dark as to be navy blue. “We don’t?”

  “Mind you,” I says, “I’m not saying they ain’t in trouble. What I mean is only that you and me are not going to be able to do anything about it staying here except just to witness more of the same. We can’t stop it or even slow it down by hanging around. I say let’s get out. That book of yours will be a greater help than anything you can do here. You seen quite a bit by now that will be news to other whites, and you know English real good and can tell a story I bet people will read.”

  “And what will you do?” She actually seemed interested.

  “Well, you might not approve, but I’m going back to Cody’s Wild West, where a number of Indians make a nice income from shooting blanks. They might just be actors now and not the noble savages they was once, but they don’t get killed either.”

  She had the saddest and also the sweetest expression, for in Amanda them two feelings often seemed intermixed, whereas when she was most pleased she was brisk and cool. “I do learn by experience,” she says, “unlikely as that might seem.”

  I never before heard any self-doubt from her, and in a way I was sorry to do so now, for as I have said often enough I was always impressed by them who was assured. But then most such that come to mind had had unfortunate ends, the latest of which was Sitting Bull, whereas if you seldom knowed what you was doing, like myself, you might live as long as me.

  Having give all my cash to the Indian women, I hadn’t none for railroad fare, so was forced to borrow
some from Amanda, who carried some money in gold under her clothing someplace, and while we traveled together for a short ways, she was going on to New York, whereas I was heading back to Cody’s ranch at North Platte, Nebraska, the nearest thing to home I had, where I expected to find Buffalo Bill and tell him the true story of the death of his old friend Sitting Bull, because Lord knows what version he would get from others.

  My heart was full on parting from Amanda again, though this time it was on real friendly terms, and unless it was my imagination she too seemed reluctant to say goodbye, shaking my hand a little longer and more warmly than ever before.

  All I managed to say was, “I hope we meet again, Amanda. I sure do.”

  “Thank you for saving my life, Jack,” said she. “I want to stay in touch with you.”

  For an exciting instant, I took that statement literally, but then I realized she probably meant we could keep in contact through the mail. By the way, now she was going back to civilization she had spruced herself up, getting rid of that bedraggled dress and buying nice clothes at a ladies’ shop in Pierre including even a fashionable hat.

  “It sure would be great to get a letter from you, Amanda,” I says, “but I got to admit I myself can’t write proper English.”

  She smiles and says, “I don’t have any difficulty in understanding your speech.”

  “Nice of you to say so, but I don’t have to spell when I talk.”

  She then says seriously, “Such things shouldn’t matter between friends.”

  As usual she was thinking of what ought to be rather than what was, but had she thought otherwise I would not of put her on a pedestal as I had always done.

  Now just let me conclude this part of my story with what was not a part of it personally and say that some of Sitting Bull’s followers, fleeing from the Grand River, joined up with a band of Minneconjou Sioux led by a chief named Big Foot, and a couple of weeks later, at a creek by the name of Wounded Knee, Custer’s old regiment, the Seventh Cavalry, met up with Big Foot’s bunch to parley about them turning in their guns and settling down quietly without no more Ghost Dances or anything else of a troublemaking nature, and a shot got fired by somebody, maybe by accident, touching off a scuffle which, unlike the Custer fight, had a satisfactory result for the civilized, in that this time all the Indians got massacred, a couple hundred of them including women and children.

  The Minneconjou, if you recall, was camped on the other side of the Little Bighorn opposite Medicine Tail Coulee, down which that day in June of ’76 General Custer rode with an idea of crossing the river to attack the big village, only to be drove back and up to the ridge where he died. That shallow part of the river was ever after knowed by the whites as the Minneconjou Ford.

  21. The World’s Fair

  AS IT HAPPENED, I got to Scout’s Rest in Cody’s absence. His mission to Sitting Bull hadn’t been successful, but Bear Coat Miles had quick give him another. Generals from Custer on had a soft spot in their hearts for Buffalo Bill, so it made sense when he was himself promoted to that rank in the Nebraska National Guard, in which capacity Bear Coat sent him to inspect the situation as to the Indians along the borders of his state, after which General Cody had went up to the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation, where some of the Wild West Indians was working as police, and he joined Miles for the surrender of the last band of Sioux regarded as renegades.

  So when he finally come home, he had a lot of the latest events to relate, and Sitting Bull’s death was old news. He didn’t show no curiosity as to where I had went when disappearing from the officers’ club at Fort Yates two months earlier, which was typical of his ways. But also typical was his hearty pleasure in seeing me again.

  “Well,” I says, “you heard all about how Sitting Bull got killed, but there’s one thing you might not know. That gray horse—”

  He lifted his glass high and interrupted me to say, “Let’s drink to the memory of old Bull, who was a fine old fellow. I’m sorry I was prevented from reaching him, but there were political forces at work.”

  “He still kept the hat you give him,” I says, “and as for that horse, there’s a story. It seems—”

  “I have made arrangements to buy the horse back from the widows,” says Cody, raising his chin so the goatee was pointing at me. “I’ll ride in on him at the beginning of every performance, carrying the Stars and Stripes. What an attraction it will be, not to mention the historical lesson for the children of America.”

  So I never did find out if he knowed how the animal had went through its show tricks right during the little civil war the Sioux fought on the Grand River, and I brung the matter up here only to demonstrate again how Buffalo Bill’s mind operated. He would of saved Sitting Bull if he could of, but since he hadn’t, he wasn’t going to waste time in lamentation. Instead he would find a practical use for the horse the Bull left behind and, it should be pointed out, bring some profit to Seen by the Nation and Four Robes. This was Cody at his best, when seeing an advantage for himself also brought one to others. That was as American as you could get.

  Unfortunately, however, he could only pull this off in show business. I never knowed another financial venture of his that did not lose money, including the modest amounts I was able to invest in them, so you might well ask why I continued to contribute, especially when he himself done all he could to discourage me, being often full of hot air but never a crook. I’ll tell you why: all of them sounded too good in the planning to fail in reality, the land-development projects, the patent medicines, and all, for other folks was making big money in them days in similar enterprises. Take that pal of his, Doc Powell, what come up with White Beaver’s Cough Cream the Great Lung Healer. He had also concocted a beverage by the name of Panamalt, a healthy substitute for any other kind of drink considered harmful: ladies could use it to wean their drunk husbands off alcohol, which might be wishful thinking, but the idea I thought was a real winner was selling it to the Mormons, who had banned the drinking of coffee.

  Another business I was sure could not help succeeding was the hotel and livery Cody started in Sheridan, Wyoming. But all went under sooner or later. Maybe if Bill had been able somehow to apply his genius at make-believe to these ventures they might of done well, but I guess he used that up with the Wild West.

  Speaking of which, I’m going to condense the next couple seasons here, for though each had its differences from the others, they was sufficiently similar not to go overly into the details.

  We started up in ’91 in Germany, which if you remember is where we left off the previous year, and though there was the now familiar efforts by people of the type Amanda had been to get the Government not to let Cody hire Indians any more, they failed once again, and not only did we have a hundred Sioux in the troupe, a good many of them had been the very Ghost Dancers involved in the troubles in Dakota Territory, only now earning good money by entertaining white people, so Buffalo Bill had made his point once again.

  But during the winter when it had looked like there might be a coming season without Indians, Nate Salsbury hired a lot of other horsemen to fill the gap, and all of them stayed with the company, which included cavalrymen from the U.S.A., England, and Germany, Russian Cossacks, gauchos from Argentina, vaqueros from Mexico, American cowboys and -girls, and the big band, not to mention all of them in support of the performers, among which could be counted yours truly.

  At that time there was around six hundred fifty people with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, and foremost amongst them, still the sweetheart of the public wherever we played, though now no longer the young girl she had once been, was Annie Oakley, one of whose feats, a great favorite of the fellow who put himself at risk, was shooting the ashes off a cigarette being smoked by Kaiser Wilhelm, who she had knowed as Crown Prince when she done the same stunt. (Many years later, at the time of the First World War, she said she regretted not having missed for once and put a bullet through his head.)

  And then there was the time when she save
d the life of some Bavarian prince about to be run down by a bucking bronco at a practice session he was visiting: she tackled the prince and rolled him out of the way, so still another decoration was added to her trunkful of trophies. However, her and Frank professed to becoming weary of travel and talked of building a house for themselves in a place back home called Nutley, New Jersey, which, though dumb cowboys and such might joke about the name, they claimed was a real nice community and urged me to consider being their neighbor and fellow member of the Nutley Rod and Gun Club amongst other local activities.

  I tell you this idea had its appeal for me, could I of afforded it and had I had me a wife, for you don’t undertake that sort of thing by yourself. But my predicament was that knowing Amanda had made it out of the question that I take up with any of the type of women who I could of got, meaning them on my own level. I wasn’t no snob on a social basis. It’s just her combination of good looks, education, personal spunk, and an urge to help people made her stand out in my experience, kind of like what Libbie Bacon might of been if she hadn’t met George Custer. Then again, maybe not.

  The point is, I figured I was stuck forever in the type of life I had lived up to now, and it wasn’t bad, being amongst friends white and red, eating regular, making a nice wage, and playing a small part in entertaining the peoples of the world as well as what Buffalo Bill regarded as more important, instructing them in the history of the American West, for Cody greatly loved his country, the only place on the globe where a fellow like him could of done as well, and he appreciated that as did I.