"What do you do when you're not chasing savages?"
"Drive coach or guide hunting expeditions through Indian territory, provided they pay in advance. Whatever needs doing and pays. I get by." He gathered his reins. "Thanks for the drinks, Colonel. Reckon I'll see you."
Peering up at him in the light from an upstairs hotel window, Buntline's eyes reflected a red glint. "I hold the conviction you will, lad. As surely as the moon sees the stars."
December. Cheeks and nose gnawed by bitter cold, whiskey in his belly and heat starting the slow crawl through his veins, Will leaned the leather-hinged door shut against the wind and peeled off his gloves to rub dry palms together over the black iron stove. The shack smelled of boiled coffee and steaming wool and man. Outside, a fresh gust hurled grainy snow against the building, making the oiled paper over the single window snap and rattle.
"Listen to this here." Lute North, brother of Frank, winked broadly at the other two scouts who shared the shack. They were sitting on their cots on the edge of the yellow oval of light shed by the coal-oil lamp on the table. "'Better son never blessed a mother, wild as he was. Rough he may be to others, but to us he is kind and gentle as the breeze of a summer eve.'"
"Who's that, the Pope?" asked Will, shucking his bearskin.
A hoot of laughter went up from the others.
Lute grinned and continued reading from the thick paperbound periodical in his hands. "'Yes, ma'am,' answered Wild Bill, 'as good as ever made, no matter whar you find him. There isn't a bit of white in his liver, nor black in his heart.'"
"If that's Hickok talking, you can bet it's about some poor bastard he just skinned at stud."
"You'd know better than me." Lute rolled the magazine into a tube and flipped it at Will, who caught it against his chest. It was the December issue of the New York Weekly, with a black-and-white lithograph on the tan cover of a longhaired, chin-whiskered dandy in ornate buckskins gripping a needle gun in both hands. His nickname was circus-lettered into the title, twice as large as the legend "By Ned Buntline." He opened it at random to find himself quoted: There is more fight, more headache—aye, more heartache in one rum bottle than there is in all the water that ever sparkled in God's bright sunlight. And I, for the sake of my dear brothers and sisters, and for the sweet, trusting heart that throbs for me alone, intend to let the rum go where it belongs and that is not down my throat.
"That rum's devilish stuff," Lute commented. "Good thing you and me drink whiskey—right, Will?"
"Son of a bitch." Awed, he turned the coarse brown pages, admiring the lithographs, including one of himself slaying Chief Tall Bull at Summit Springs just as the Indian was about to scalp the remaining female captive.
"Them's some fine things your ma said about you," Red, a Pawnee half-breed, observed. He had knife scars on both cheeks. "How long's she been dead?"
"Six years this month."
Lute said, "That there stirring adventure come for you in the mail packet while you was cutting the bear loose in town. Frank'll be interested to hear you was the one dropped that chief last June. All this time he thought he done it."
"It was Lieutenant Hayes," Will replied. "But he wasn't there when I talked to Buntline."
"Something else come for you too." Red drew a yellow - telegraph envelope from inside his grimy shirt and held it out.
Will opened it and unfolded the flimsy. "It's from my wife."
"She's expecting a kid," Lute told Red. "I got a month's night duty saying it's a girl."
The young scout whooped and directed a mighty openhanded blow to the broad back of Tiny, a hulking expert tracker from Wyoming. Tiny staggered forward two steps before reclaiming his balance.
Lute said, "Shit."
The boy had the Cody brown eyes and Louisa's square jaw. He grasped his father's fingers in a surprisingly strong hand for its size and lifted them over his blond head, smiling and showing his gums. His cheeks were round and glowing.
"He knows how to Indian wrestle!" exclaimed Will, holding the baby.
"He just started doing that. I thought the midwife taught it to him, but she denies it." Louisa was wearing a black skirt and stiff white blouse closed at the throat with a brooch, and had her hair done up the way it had been the day they met. They were standing in the parlor of her parents' home in St. Louis.
"Kit Carson Cody." He tasted the name. "It will sound good with 'President' in front of it, by God."
"William, don't swear in front of the child."
He stayed a week, taking long walks with her about the growing city, helping the Fredericis look after the children when she was out visiting, playing with little Arta, a toddling, chattering blonde beauty now in pink satin ribbons and pinafores, and spoiling them all with presents bought on his scout's salary. To please Louisa, he donned a morning coat and striped pants she had bought and altered for a reception she was giving to introduce him to the friends she had made in his absence, but when she saw him with his hair tumbling over the black broadcloth she made him take it off and put on his best buckskins instead. Thus attired he stood out from the subdued party frippery like an Indian at a Presbyterian wedding. More than once in the course of the evening she found him surrounded by tittering women listening to his frontier stories with enraptured upturned faces and shining eyes. Usually she placed a proprietary hand on his arm and steered him away to meet someone she had just that moment thought of; the last time she brought out Arta, barefoot and in her nightgown, to kiss her father good night. Returning after tucking her in, Louisa saw him sighting down an imaginary rifle at an invisible buffalo for the edification of yet another giggling bevy. For the first time in their marriage she wondered if this was how it was when they weren't together, and what came of it without her sobering presence. More doubt trickled into the barrel.
When he was getting ready to report back to Fort McPherson, she presented him with her surprise, two new buckskin outfits she had made to his measurements, along with a startling crimson shirt and yellow silk kerchief "for dress occasions." She was an excellent seamstress. Touched by this proof of at least partial acquiescence to his unconventional lifestyle and deaf to her protests, Will picked her up and whirled her around, displacing knickknacks from tables to the shrill delight of Arta, who immediately did the same with one of her dolls with results less destructive. It was a habit Louisa fought hard to break in the weeks succeeding her husband's departure.
The Indian crisis had abated. Will filled the long periods between campaigns outfitting and guiding hunting parties bent on returning to civilization loaded down with buffalo robes and antelope heads. At the special request of General Sheridan he led a band made up of the general, other high officers, and a group of Easterners headed by Commodore James Gordon Bennett, Jr., flamboyant publisher of the New York Herald, and other prominent millionaires across the Nebraska plains, where they shot buffaloes and drank champagne and listened to Will's stories around the campfire; and when they parted at the North Platte railroad station, the Commodore shoved a fistful of money at the guide and shouted an invitation over the racket of the departing train to visit him in New York. Will smiled and waved and forgot the other's gesture as soon as it was made.
Another winter. A tall young man in a tight-fitting black urn-form with gold trim under an ermine coat stepped down into the bracing Nebraska cold of the North Platte station, accompanied by several dramatically mustachioed and bearded men in similar dress. He had a gentle face under a queer cylindrical fur hat, thick burnsides to the angles of his jaw, and his moustache was trimmed into a neat inverted V with the ends hanging over the corners of his mouth. His clear blue eyes quartered the platform, then passed beyond the line of bareheaded natives standing along its edge to the street and the man seated there astride a white charger, and for the first time in his long journey delight transformed his features.
The horseman was as tall as he and quite lean, attired in soft bleached buckskins trimmed with fur and a brilliant red shirt, the whole top
ped off by a broad-brimmed black slouch hat with a snakeskin band cocked over his left eye. Thick brown hair fell to his shoulders, gleaming auburn in the sun. A small spray of beard gave him the look of a Shakespearean player. Then a short fat man in an American general's uniform came across the platform, obscuring the view. The visitor recognized him and nodded politely.
"It is good to see you again, General Sheridan." He had a deep voice and a pleasant accent.
"An honor as always, Your Highness," said the fat man, whose manner and smart bow were as polished as his figure was comical. He glanced over the young man's shoulder at another American officer alighting from the private train and dipped his chin. "I see you've met General Custer."
"He has been fascinating me since your Omaha with his adventures fighting the red Indians," he acknowledged, smiling at the man with the sad eyebrows and matching moustache.
"You'll find few more expert upon the subject than Curly." Sheridan turned his head. "Will!"
The man on the white horse dismounted with a fluid dexterity the visitor had previously seen only on the western steppes of his homeland and bounded up onto the platform, removing his big hat with a flourish.
"Your Highness, it is my privilege to present William F. Cody, otherwise and universally known as Buffalo Bill. Will, this is His Royal Highness Grand Duke Alexis, third son of Czar Alexander II of Russia."
"I am glad to see you," said Will, speaking slowly, as he did when addressing an Indian in English. "You have come out here, so the general tells me, to shoot some buffaloes?"
"Yes, and I hope to have a good, fine time. I heard of you before, and I am glad to meet you here." The grand duke's expression was more reserved now, but his eyes were animated, the eyes of an excited child.
"I took the liberty of giving His Highness a number of Ned Buntline's published accounts of your experiences on the prairie when we were both in New York," Sheridan explained. "I can't tell you what a sensation they've caused back East."
Will's smile broadened. "Thank you, thank you. If the weather holds good, we'll have one of the finest hunts that there ever was on the continent."
"We'll discuss details on the way to Camp Alexis. Your Highness?" The general swept an arm toward an open Concord wagon and four matched grays waiting at the edge of the platform.
"General," said Will as Custer approached on the heels of the rest of the party.
The commander of the 7th Cavalry nodded, amusement sparking his gray eyes. He was wearing his dress uniform and red Michigan Brigade tie. "And how is that mule of yours these days?"
The blue drifts surrounding the camp named for the imperial guest cast a phantom glow under a soap-sliver moon. Womb-red firelight writhed over the glistening, nearly naked bodies of Spotted Tail's Sioux braves, their war chants torn from their throats in guttural exhalations to the visceral pulse of tom-toms. Sitting cross-legged on a buffalo robe on the edge of the light, Alexis watched mesmerized from the center of a half circle with Will and General Sheridan at his elbows and the others, including the grand duke's Russian escort and Custer and Colonel Michael Sheridan, the general's brother, forming the horns. The Indians' flesh steamed in the crisp cold air of night.
"Magnificent!" exclaimed Alexis as the dancers drew blankets over their streaming shoulders. "The Cossacks would be hard put to equal it."
Will loosened his vocal cords with champagne from the duke's private stock and told of his rescue of General Penrose and Wild Bill Hickok at the Canadian River. The bottle made the rounds, clanking against silver-plated cups.
"How does one hunt the buffaloes?" Alexis asked the scout when the story was finished.
"Ask Curly," said General Sheridan, and laughed. His eyes were bright from the champagne. The other military men chuckled.
The grand duke looked at Custer, who moved his shoulders around under his buckskins and said nothing. He wore a black fur hat like the Russian's.
Sheridan said, "Come on, Curly, don't be modest. He's developed his own personal method," he told Alexis. "First he confuses the buffalo by shooting his own horse. Then when he's on the ground he stares at it until it gives up."
"The horse panicked when the bull tried to gore him." Custer's voice rose above the guffaws. "His head got in the way of the revolver. It could have happened to anyone."
"You tried to shoot a buffalo with a revolver?" Will pressed.
"The idea seemed sound at the time."
After a moment Alexis joined in the raucous laughter. Custer waited until it had died down, then: "It's a fair night for a snipe hunt, wouldn't you say, Cody?"
"Well, now, it does seem like one, come to study on it."
"Fellows," the general admonished.
The grand duke looked from one face to another. "What is this snipe hunt?"
Sheridan said, "Nothing you'd be interested in, Your Highness. Sorry, fellows, but I'd hate to have to think of what to say when the State Department asks why we left the third in line to the throne of Russia in the middle of the wilderness holding a sack and waiting for a nonexistent creature to come along and leap into it."
"Who said it was going to be him?" returned Custer, winking at Will.
Eventually, Sheridan laughed too.
From a distance their first herd resembled the shadow of a low-hanging cloud moving slowly across the dazzling noon whiteness. Will, who had described his "surround" technique to the Russian the night before, provided a practical demonstration, dropping half a dozen buffaloes in as many minutes. Then Custer took a turn, his six staghounds flying like gaunt ghosts behind his piebald as he galloped up to within arm's length of each target before emptying his side arm into it just to show that it could be done. In this manner he killed three, reloading in between while steering with his knees. Then Will changed mounts and lent his new buffalo horse, Buckskin Joe, and Lucretia Borgia to Alexis. He and Custer attended the grand duke, who drew his Colt revolver as he had seen the lieutenant colonel do and fired six times at the hump of a pitching bull. The beast didn't miss a step. Holstering the colt, Alexis hoisted the heavy Springfield. At that moment Will smacked Buckskin Joe's rump with the ends of his reins. The horse whinnied and plunged through a hole into the herd.
"Shoot!" Will directed.
Alexis fired. The bull grunted and fell rolling.
"Champagne!" The grand duke drew rein and weaved frantically at a member of his suite, who obediently opened a large basket bristling with green glass necks wrapped in gold foil.
While the party was celebrating the guest of honor's first kill, Will quietly walked his horse up to the panting bull with pink bubbles in its nostrils from its pierced lung and slammed a slug into its brain.
The hunt lasted five days, at the end of which Will presented the grand duke with eight handsomely mounted buffalo heads. While servants were engaged in placing them in the baggage car of Alexis's train, he invited the scout into the brass-and-red-plush splendor of his private coach.
"For you," said the grand duke.
Will accepted the jeweled box his host extended, mumbling an astonished thanks.
"Open it."
He obeyed. Twinkling inside were a pair of diamond-encrusted cuff links and a matching tiepin in the shape of tiny buffalo heads with gold snouts.
"Your Highness, I can't accept anything so expensive."
"Riches are nothing if they cannot be shared with men you admire. Do not insult a visitor from a friendly nation." He summoned Sheridan. "I will say good-bye to the red Indians now," he said. "What gifts should I give them?"
"Nothing grand, Your Highness. They wouldn't be able to appreciate it. A couple of your red blankets would make them as happy as if you gave them gold."
Alexis sent an aide to fetch the blankets and led the party outside, where Spotted Tail and his braves were waiting beyond the platform. The Sioux chief was in full headdress, and his pony was painted in barbaric colors from mane to tail.
Sheridan whispered, "Will, I received a message this morning from
our friend James Gordon Bennett."
"How is the Commodore?" He fingered his jeweled box.
"Still talking about last year's hunt. He and his friends are still eager for you to be their guest in New York."
"I'm needed here."
"The Indian situation is under control at present. We can spare you. It's high time you and civilization made acquaintances." He patted Will's arm. "Bennett's an excellent host. Think about it and wire him when you've reached a decision."
The Sioux party accepted their gifts with grave gratitude and straddled their mounts.
"There goes a load," muttered Will, distracted still by his lavish gifts and the invitation from New York. "I never could get next to the notion of Spotted Tail standing behind me with a loaded rifle. He and Sitting Bull are too close."
Custer, who was standing close by, blew air. "Lighten up, Cody. If there's anything on this green earth that's predictable, it's an Indian."
DENVER, COLORADO
January 8, 1917
The old man is dying.
Fat yellow light slides politely into the bedroom like a mortician and rests on the printed amber wall. The old man lies on the lukewarm edge of awakening. Present and past tramp in and out of the space behind his eyelids, the long dead mingling with the new living, names of men and horses years forgotten coming to his dry lips. Dr. East, a young man with a round face and black-rimmed pince-nez on a ribbon, flutters pale brown double shadows across the blanket as he returns instruments to his bag with efficient little clinks, his starched sleeves rustling like leaves in a gust. His presence nudges gently but insistently into the old man's consciousness. He tastes the words before giving them voice.
"Where's this?"
"You're in your sister May's home, Mr. Cody." The doctor's tone was a polished hush. "You were moved here from the sanitarium after the mineral-water cure failed."
"I know all that," snaps the old man. "I just woke up fuzzy. Don't talk to me like I'm senile. How's it look?"
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