by Bill Albert
“There is no need for thanks,” said Charlie. “Sunset Buffalo Dreamer could not see you betrayed and then caged like an animal. This is certain death for a Lakota. Many have died from their sorrow in the white man’s prisons. Now you must go before they discover you have escaped.”
You have the sacred foot of the eagle? Sunset Buffalo Dreamer signed.
I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it out to show him.
He mumbled something and handed me a soft leather pouch. I could feel the shapes of the coins inside. He put his hand on mine and squeezed it shut around the pouch.
A child is a precious gift from the Great Mystery, the old man signed. Walk in the sunlight.
“The railway depot is not more than a mile from here,” said Charlie. “Go there, and with the money buy a ticket for New York City. Sunset Buffalo Dreamer says you should go home to your white family.”
There was no point in trying to explain why I couldn’t.
Careful to stay away from the watch lanterns and the guards, the three of them walked me quickly to the edge of the showgrounds.
It was not a long goodbye. A touch of hands and they disappeared back into the shadowy row of tents. For the first time since the Madison Square Garden I was completely on my own.
My life with Wild West and with Buffalo Bill was gone and I felt miserable as sin. However, I didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on it. More right to the front was relief at being out of that stinking cage and having escaped from the Pinkertons.
Without looking back I started walking along the side of the railway tracks in the direction Charlie had pointed.
23
I hadn’t lied to the Pinkertons. I really wasn’t Meyer Liebermann, the rich kid from the Upper West Side. The Castle Garden story made me someone else, Hyman Budnitsky made me someone else, Buffalo Bill, Sunset Buffalo Dreamer and four months with the Wild West made me someone else. I scuffed my shoes in the dirt by the side of the railway tracks as I walked and thought hard about who I had become and what I was going to do.
The false dawn had started or maybe it was the genuine dawn. I didn’t know. I could just make out a couple of warehouses up ahead and a few hundred yards beyond them a large building with a tower which looked more like a church than a railroad depot. With the money Sunset Buffalo Dreamer had given me I figured I could buy a ticket to anywhere I wanted. Anywhere at all! I walked faster. A few steps and I came to a dead stop. Where was anywhere? San Francisco? Denver? Kansas City? New Orleans? Only names with nobody I knew to go with them.
A loud steam whistle. Up ahead a train was huffing into the depot, dark smoke and sparks outlined against the lightening sky. I kicked a rusted can and watched it bounce end over end into some scrubby bushes by the side of the tracks. It disappeared and I heard it clink as it stopped up against an unseen stone. I stared at the dented spike heads, the cross ties, the ballast between the tracks.
I decided at that moment that I would buy a ticket for New York and beg my parents to take me back. They would feel sorry for me. They would send me to a proper doctor who would fix my throat so I could talk again. Meyer Liebermann was worming his way back along with those soft-life-talking-again daydreams.
Then the decision was untimely ripped out of my hands.
Over to my right I had noticed a wisp of smoke coming up across the top of a raised dirt bank that bordered the railway tracks. I wandered over to take a look.
In the dip between the bank and a small wood half a dozen men were hunched around a fire. I don’t know why, but I stepped back so they wouldn’t see me. I didn’t step back quickly enough.
“Hey you there, kid!” shouted one of them, scrambling to his feet.
He was large and dirty and moved much too fast for me. I only got a few yards before he had grabbed me from behind and pulled me around to face him.
“Wadda y’all doin here!” he shouted.
I pointed to my mouth and shook my head.
“Hungry?”
I opened and closed my mouth forming silent words and then shook my head again. He stood there puzzling.
“Sure! I got it. Can’t talk? Is that wad it is? Yeah . . .” he said, smiling sloppily.
His face was blackened with soot, his hair matted and although he couldn’t have been more than thirty he had only two teeth left in his mouth, one on the top, one on the bottom and both yellow.
“Regular parade we got us today,” he said, pinching my cheek too hard. “Come on over ta here and sit with us a spell.”
I pointed urgently to the depot.
“Got a train ta catch?” he laughed. “Liddle fella like y’all is, dressed up for a Sunday church meetin and walkin the track? Come on now.”
He dragged me across the bank to the where the other men sat, watching a dented coffee pot balanced on two rocks. The men stared at me. All of them looked filthy, lumpy, and dangerous—the pirate crew of the Hispaniola: Morgan, Israel Hands, and Long John Silver. Each face was more brutal, ferocious and terrible than the next, except the last face which looked just plain terrified under a purple-black eye and a swollen lower lip.
Benny the Judas! He had got exactly what was coming to him, I thought with satisfaction. My second thought was why? Then: What was he doing with these men? Why had they beaten him up? Were they going to do the same to me? I looked at Benny, who shook his head ever so slightly and quickly averted his eyes.
“Got us another one, boys. This one’s a mite fancier than the last. Little Mister Sunday-go-to-meetin he is. Like to be better pickins, I reckon.”
A couple of the men grinned.
“’Spect he’ll want some of this here coffee, Abe?” said one with a livid scar on his neck.
“Gotta treat our guests right, Ephraim, don’t we?”
All the time he talked he was feeling me all over, my pockets, around my stomach, my legs. His hands were rough, the fingernails broken and black.
“And what’s this here?” Abe said, pulling the eagle claw from my shirt.
He gave a hard yank and the thong broke. After examining it for a moment he threw it on the ground. I tried to reach for it but he grabbed my ear, twisting hard.
“I tell y’all ta move, liddle baggage?”
It didn’t take him much longer to find Sunset Buffalo Dreamer’s pouch.
“Well,” he said, wide-mouthed grinning, “ain’t I the clever one? Lookee here what I done found.”
He tossed the pouch over to the others.
It was happening again. Just like at the Madison Square Garden. I started weeping. No one paid any attention. They were too busy counting the money.
“Got ‘im forty dollars,” said a thin man with a scraggly red beard.
“Had forty, ya mean!” laughed Ephraim, weighing the pouch in the palm of his hand.
“Take them shoes off, boy,” ordered Abe. “Right quick now.”
When I hesitated he grabbed hold of my ear again. I squeaked with the pain.
“I said now! And hush up that moanin!”
I took my shoes off.
“And them socks.”
He turned the shoes upside down and shook them, ran his hands through the socks. He tossed them aside.
“Nothin more,” he spat. “We got all a his, I reckon.”
Ephraim stood up and came over to where I was sitting. He squatted down, patted me on the behind and gave me what he probably figured was a friendly wink.
“He’s a regular punk one, ain’t he, Orville?” he said, continuing to pat me. “A regular soft-nosed liddle punk.”
“Ain’t got time now,” said Abe harshly. “Ya boys leave ‘em be.”
“Ah, come on, Abe,” complained a sallow-faced man, getting to his feet. “Don’t take no time at all. Take ‘em over in them trees.”
They were going to beat me up for sure, like they had Benny.
“I said we ain’t got the time, Orville. Y’all deef or somethin? Train’s due through here ‘bout ten minutes near as I can reckon. Damn!”
“Like Brother Orville says,” insisted Ephraim, “won’t take us no time.”
“Seems a waste just to cut their throats and leave ‘em,” said Orville.
I sat down hard on the ground.
“Please, mister,” Benny begged. “Please, we won’t tell nobody, honest we won’t.”
“Somebody ax ya somethin, boy?” Abe said harshly.
“Yeah,” said Ephraim. “A real waste. There gotta be lots of trains, Abe.”
“None of ‘em goin straight through to Joplin there ain’t,” Abe said. “And that’s the one we’re on.”
Ephraim let go of me and stood up.
“Christmas! I jus ‘bout had my belly full! Y’all sure is one know-all, bossy bastard and that’s a fact, Abe Carter. And I don’t see why . . .”
Abe took one step toward Ephraim and swung a big, bossy, knotted fist from way, way back. You could hear the swish of it, see it coming for about a day and a half. Ephraim didn’t, or if he did he was thinking maybe two days.
Ephraim’s jaw was knocked sideways with a sound like a thick branch snapping. He staggered backwards and fell on top of the fire, the hot coffee splattering up onto the others. Everyone jumped to their feet. Ephraim was rolling around in the dirt screaming and a few seconds later Orville jumped on Abe’s back, the red-bearded man grabbed for Orville and the other two piled in on top.
I didn’t wait around to see how it turned out. I picked up my shoes, my eagle’s claw and ran like I’d never run before.
24
Running from and running to. Life is like that one way and another. Most of the time you don’t know if you’re working on the “to” or the “from,” although what you’re really doing is working on both at the same time. Sometimes they’re right close together, like me running away from home and running to the Wild West. Other times you don’t figure it out until years later. On that Iowa morning, I was dead certain I was running from the Missourians. I was also running to this Idaho prison cell and lots of other places in between. I just didn’t know it at the time.
Back then, I only knew I had to run. And I did, scrabbling on my hands and knees up across the dirt bank and then hightailing it down the tracks towards the depot. The gravel cut into my bare feet but I didn’t care. Right behind me Abe and Ephraim and the rest of the crew were after to cut my throat. I heard the pounding of feet, heard uphill breathing. I could imagine the rest and didn’t look back. I passed a freight train starting out, pulling hard and slow. The engineer waved and shouted at me but I couldn’t hear over the clatter and bang of the boxcars. I hoped he was taking his train to Joplin.
“Mouse! Wait up, Mouse!”
The depot was still too far away. I kept running. Benny’s voice dropped farther back into the noise of the train. All those cigar butts I reckon. I reached the platform a good minute or two before he did.
The depot was two stories high and maybe a city block long with a high tower rising up from the center and seven or eight sets of tracks running in front of it. A big metal sign on the platform read ottumwa. It all looked brick-solid and, most importantly, safe from Missourians. From a long train of cattle cars on the farthest tracks I heard a roar of high-pitched screaming which set my neck hairs tingling. I found out later it was pigs on their way to a big packing plant in the town. Benny told me that pigs were smart like that.
“God damn, Mouse, but ya can really run some and that’s a fact.”
Benny slumped against an empty hand cart, puffing and more than used up. He shot a worried look over his shoulder.
“Shit! Those bastards . . .”
I had no time to tell Benny what a bastard he was or escape from him, for just then a short thin guy in a railroad cap, wearing one of those big railroad watch chains slung across his stomach, came out of a door marked baggage—c.b. and q.r.r. He gave us the once-over more than once.
“You boys got yourselves some trouble here?”
“No, sir,” Benny said hurriedly, “Ain’t no kinda trouble at all.”
I grabbed at Benny’s arm. I wanted him to tell the man about the Missourians but he shook me off.
The man stared at Benny, who had blood all down his shirt and a shiner puffed right out so you just about couldn’t see his eye.
“One of you beat all to hell and the other carrying his shoes and you say you got no trouble? Hell fire, son, I seen enough runaways in my time to know what I’m looking at. What happened, your Paw give you a good hiding, did he?”
He craned his neck to see back down the tracks.
“Just fell down is all, Mister. Come up from Hannibal on a wagon. Man let us off down the road a piece. Fell gettin down is what I done.”
Benny pointed the way we came.
“Comin to visit our aunt in town here,” he added.
“Brothers are you?” the thin man asked.
“Yes, sir. That’s right, brothers.”
The man laughed. “Sure you is. Snow white and coal black! One dressed like a little gent and the other looking like he’s been in with the hogs. Ain’t seen anyone look less like kin than you two boys.”
“Fact is,” offered Benny taking a step forward and lowering his voice. “George here is adopted is why that is. But we doesn’t talk about that to home.”
The thin man gave Benny a measuring stare.
“She got a name this aunt of yours?”
Benny didn’t hesitate, like he had it all planned out.
“Betty Jones.”
“That right? Betty Jones? Live over on Cyprus Street does she?”
Benny smiled. “That’s it, Cyprus Street.”
“Come from Hannibal you say?’
Benny nodded.
“I suppose I gotta at least believe that, as to how there’s nothing but riverboat fakers and liars comes out of Hannibal. Most times though they’s better liars than you is.”
“I ain’t lyin, Mister,” Benny protested.
The thin man cackled. “You ain’t? Then how come we ain’t even got us no Cyprus Street in Ottumwa?”
“Ottumwa?” Benny said all surprised like. “Ya say Ottumwa, Mister? Well, shoot, that explains her. Man from the wagon said this here were Oskaloosa. Ain’t that right George? Oskaloosa’s where we is headed. If ya’d just point us on our way, Mister we’d be much obliged to ya.”
The thin man raised his eyebrows at Benny and pointed a finger at the sign.
“Don’t got no reading,” said Benny in a sorry-for-himself voice, eyes down.
The man took a corncob pipe out of the side pocket of his jacket and banged it against the side of a hand cart. He stuck the pipe in his mouth, gave it a couple of dry puffs and then dropped it back in his pocket.
“Ain’t got much to say for yourself, do you, George?” he said.
I reached to get my pencil. It wasn’t there. Abe must have yanked it out with Sunset Buffalo Dreamer’s pouch.
“Can’t talk,” Benny said.
“That right? Can you read, George? You can? Quite a pair,” he laughed, slapping his knee to celebrate his wit. “One can’t read and the other can’t talk. Well, leastways I reckon as how you got enough talk for the both of you, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”
He shook his head, “Hannibal!”
Benny gave a big-eyed grin, like to tell the railroad man he was just too sharp for the likes of a couple of no-account boys from Hannibal, Missouri, which he may have been, but he wasn’t too sharp for Benny December. He wasn’t even close.
From inside the baggage room someone called out to the thin man.
“You boys wait right here. I’ll fix you up with a ride over to Oskaloosa soon as I can. Don’t want your Aunt Betty to get to worrying about y
ou, do we?”
“Gee, Mister, thanks a lot.”
As soon as he went inside Benny started pulling at me like to tear my arm off.
“Come on, Mouse. We got to move and quick.”
Why? I signed, not wanting to leave the safety of the railway depot.
“Later. Now just do what I tell you and move youself!”
I moved myself, and later sitting in the open doorway of a boxcar, feet swinging over the side rolling towards Des Moines, I got my explanation.
“Ya really think he was gonna get us a ride to Oskaloosa? Shit no, he weren’t. Soon as he’s inside he calls up the sheriff or someone like that. Course he does. Way he was goin on I could see that one comin a mile off.”
Not that I believed it then, but watching him in action over the next few weeks as he kept us wide of trouble, got us fed—mostly at the back doors of obliging women—and found the right freight trains—Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, Burlington and Missouri River, Union Pacific, Denver and Rio Grande, Oregon Short Line, and Northern Pacific—to carry us all the way from Ottumwa, Iowa to Wallace, Idaho, and the two of us with not a red cent between us, well I reckon he more than knew his way around and was probably right about that railroad man in Ottumwa.
Benny December was really something extra special. A Judas, sure, he was that and in spades too, and looking out for Benny was what he did best, but if he couldn’t cash you in for a reward, then he was just about the best person to get you through the tight spots.
“It was yer goddamned Injuns did it, Mouse. Shit yes! Red bastards come for me. That Charlie Pinto Face and some others. Told me if I didn’t walk they’d tell the Colonel it was me sellin whisky and if he didn’t do nothin ‘bout it they would for sure. Can’t figure it. I mean, they knowed all along it were me. What with them fingerin those big ol’ skinnin knives and lookin at my hair it weren’t no use to argue with ‘em. So I got my poke and lit out. Don’t get more then a few yards and smack into that murderin, thievin gang of Missouri asshole bandits. Weren’t my lucky day, were it? Shit no! And my money, worked and scraped for, runnin errands for, damn near killed myself for, all of it gone with them miserable creepin Missouri bastards! Damn your blanket-headed, dumb-ass Injuns, Mouse, damn ‘em all to hell!”