by Andy Conway
She left him and pushed back inside the grand room, where the gallant Colonel was hollering, talking up the bravery of General George Armstrong Custer facing the hordes of Indians surrounding him.
It was not like that, she thought. It was nothing like that.
Seeing him, for a moment, sitting on the hill, looking around him as if he’d just woken and didn’t know where he was. A part of him already in the Spirit Land. Then lost in the scrum of yelping braves, like a thousand dogs in a fight.
She glanced back, saw Peter Wethers step inside, and wished she’d stayed out there with him. There was something about him that made her feel safe, and scared.
Where had she seen him before? Was it a dream? Had he appeared in one of her visions?
He was a man like any other. But he might help her, she thought. He knew this city. He might help her find that tower that called to her. It would be wise to be nice to him, not challenge him and run from him.
She smiled, and he smiled back. Red Shirt signalled her over and she went to his side.
“What story does Buffalo Bill tell the city fathers?”
Rocky Bear, Black Elk and Swift Hawk leaned in.
“He tells the story of how we killed Long Hair at the Battle of the Greasy Grass.”
Red Shirt nodded sagely and swallowed.
“But his story is no more true than that I am a catfish.”
Black Elk laughed, and Rocky Bear silenced him with a look.
“The tales we tell might create a peace between us,” Red Shirt said. “When we gather round the fire and tell our stories, we share our lives, not our deaths.”
Rocky Bear, Black Elk and Swift Hawk mumbled agreement.
Katherine looked across the room to the knot of whites basking in their story — Lillian, Bronco, Buffalo Bill himself — but her eyes fell on Gabriel Dumont, the poor exile who didn’t belong here among these people; the poor exile who had died inside himself.
She knew what he felt. For she was an exile too. And she knew she had to escape.
8
WHEN THEY HAD SAID goodbye to every councillor and every wife, and had walked down the red-carpeted stairs and out through the giant doors, they emerged to find a crowd before the Council House.
Word had flown round the city. Buffalo Bill and his Indians were at the Council House. Everyone had thronged to see them.
Buffalo Bill paused at the top of the steps, as if on a stage, overlooking the waiting carriages. He waved to the crowd. Many of them cheered.
But Katherine heard the unmistakable roar of anger that swelled from the rear of the mob. Her eyes swept the terrain, and she spotted them: a group of a hundred or more angry white men in cloth caps, slicing through the crowd like blueshirts charging through long grass.
“Dirty savages!”
“Murderers!”
“They killed Custer!”
Some of the crowd laughed at them. Some turned to shout at those who were laughing. A fight broke out. The crowd surged forward. The line of policemen in strange pointed helmets fell back till they almost reached the carriages.
The smile fell from Buffalo Bill’s face. “We best get out of here, pronto.”
Agent Calder rushed him down the steps to his waiting open carriage. The others followed and piled into the two closed carriages.
Katherine turned, looking for Red Shirt. He stood at the head of the stone steps, his eyes sweeping the crowd, impassive, imperious.
A swell of anger rose again from the mob. A stone arced through the air and missed him, clattering into the grand hall of the Council House.
Red Shirt stood, still gazing, unafraid. A policeman rushed up the steps, half ducking, and urged him down to the waiting carriage. Red Shirt nodded to him, waved to the crowd, and stepped down.
More stones spattered angrily in the space he had left.
As soon as he was inside the coach, the driver whipped his horses and they lurched forward.
The crowd pushed right against the coach as they pulled away, screaming and shouting.
Katherine saw the pale, contorted faces of women, yelling, snarling, crying. Hysteria had taken over the mob. An angry, dirty face pushed through the crowd and she saw the stone in his fist. It clattered against the coach as they pulled away and she heard the cry of, “Dirty savages!”
The carriage tore down the street, leaving the mob behind, though she could hear some still running after, and stones raining down on the roof. The driver yelped in pain and whipped the horses harder. She saw startled passersby stop and stare in wonder as they sped on past the church. St. Philip’s, she thought, and wondered how she knew that.
The driver did not let up even as they left the town centre and thundered down the quiet streets to Aston Lower Grounds. Perhaps he thought the mob might follow. There was no reason why they wouldn’t, at their leisure. Everyone knew where Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show was to be found. There was nothing to say that a mob might not descend on them. Nothing but the guns that everyone on camp possessed.
She thought wildly of a shootout in Aston. What a spectacle that would be.
They arrived at the camp and Buffalo Bill thanked the drivers for their skill in making their escape, joking about using them in the show as stagecoach riders. He gave them a hefty tip and they departed with huge grins.
They huddled together as a group before entering the camp and Katherine translated as Bill spoke.
“Now that was quite hair-raising, my friends. I will have words with the police tonight and we’ll make sure the camp is protected. But I don’t think we need worry. To me, it looked like a loutish, drunken element getting over-excited. Their heads will be sorer than ours come the morning, I have no doubt.”
They entered the camp and departed to their separate berths, Buffalo Bill to his marquee tent with its buffalo head crest above the entrance; the whites to their caravans, the Indians to their lodges.
“Wait, Katherine.”
The reporter, Peter Wethers. She hadn’t noticed him return with them. Katherine. Her white name. How strange it sounded on his lips. How could her own name sound so foreign to her?
“Can we talk some more?” he asked.
Distrust rose in her as a reflex, but she reminded herself this man might be of help to her.
“Why are you here?”
“Buffalo Bill said we are to be inseparable.” He smiled.
She forced her mouth to stay fixed, not to smile back at him. “You can help me,” she said.
“All right. What with?”
Something about the way he talked. It wasn’t right. It didn’t fit.
She walked and beckoned him to follow. Down the row of tipis, the sound of talk, singing, music from various parts of the camp. Some sat outside their lodges. The winyanpi next door giggled as she took the reporter into her lodge.
She lit a lamp and quickly had a fire blazing, golden light bathing their faces as their eyes sought each other. She indicated a rug where he might sit, snatched up a stick of firewood and scratched a shape into the dirt — a short tower, octagonal, a wooden staircase to its side. Bricked up arches where windows should be.
“This,” she said. “Where is this?”
He shrugged, puzzled. “I don’t know. What is it?”
“A tower. Somewhere here, in this city. You know it?”
He leaned closer and examined it, stroking his chin. “I’m not sure.”
“You can find it? You can show it to me?”
“How do you know it’s here?”
She looked away. “I saw it. In a dream.”
“Are you sure it’s real? Are you sure it’s here?”
She nodded. “I know it.” When she looked to him again, he had a curious expression, as if he knew more than he said, as if he were trying to read her mind.
Could he read it in her heart: that she no longer belonged with these people in this sham of a show? Could he hear this city calling to her? Could he see that she wanted to shed these clothes and
escape?
She squirmed and felt suddenly self-conscious under his gaze.
“I can look for you,” he said. “I could help you find it. But I want something too.”
She sought his eyes again and tried to read his intent, aware of her knife lying over to her right, next to the bundle of kindling.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he said. “Your story.”
He pulled out a notebook and pencil, licking the tip. “Tell me your story and I’ll find you your tower. Is that a deal?”
She pretended to mull it over, though she had no choice to make. He was the only person she knew in the whole city who might help her.
9
KATHERINE WOKE, HER face cold, and clutched her buffalo hide closer to her to keep the warmth in. The camp was stirring outside, the tinkling of pots, the smell the frybread cooking.
She fought the urge to get up, wanting to luxuriate in the warmth just a little longer. The fire whispered, a few embers still glowing in the grey ash. She thought of throwing kindling on it and using her chert stones to light it, but there was no point staying in her empty lodge. Life was out there, not in here. And the voice that called her from across the city still sang, as it had all through the night.
She kicked off the buffalo hide and stood up in a moment, looking around her empty tipi.
Something wrong.
A silence outside that was pregnant with threat. Her fingers brushed the scar on her cheek. She grabbed her knife, slipped it in her belt, stepped out of her tipi and stopped dead.
A group gathered at her door flap. Bronco Bill Irving, Lil Two Face and Nate Salsbury, the tour manager. Nate Salsbury was always too busy with keeping the mechanics of the show running, so if he came to see you, something was bad.
The winyanpi clustered round nearby and gossiped, laughing behind their hands. She heard them saying Bright Star Falling is married... She has taken a husband.
“Good morning, Bright Star,” Nate said.
“Good morning, Mr. Salsbury, sir,” she said warily. What was going on?
“There’s an awful rumour flying around the camp,” Nate said, scratching his beard.
Her vision. Why could they object to it? Surely it was old news.
“What harm have I caused?” she asked.
Lil Two Face had her hands on her hips and a grin like a cat who’d fallen into a vat of milk. “She knows what she did. You can see it on her face.”
Nate turned as if to shush her but said nothing. Katherine felt her face colouring.
Bronco Bill took off his hat and looked at the ground. “Katherine, this is kinda embarrassing to come out with, but we have to come here and ask you if it’s true and all, so please don’t be offended by it...”
“Only we can’t have this kind of thing going on in the camp,” said Nate.
“I mean,” Bronco Bill continued, “we know it’s Indian custom and all, and any man you take into your lodge is your husband, but...”
“But those are not the rules of this society,” said Nate. “And this is a show that has been presented to the queen of England. We can’t have this kind of thing happening. We just cannot.”
“What kind of thing?” she asked.
“She knows what kind of thing!” Lil Two Face shouted. “He’s in there right now!”
“Who?”
They thought the reporter had spent the night with her. Katherine’s fist clenched and anger flooded her soul.
“He was seen entering your lodge last night and no one saw him leave,” said Bronco Bill, who still couldn’t look her in the eye.
“He left at midnight,” Katherine said. “I walked him across the camp myself. You saw me.”
Lil Two Face sneered, but Katherine read the lie in her face.
Katherine had told Peter Wethers her story as the fire crackled. She had talked for an hour or more, telling him how she’d arrived on the Plains and made her home with them, right up to the night before the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Right up to when she had climbed the hill to watch Sitting Bull praying.
She had paused, knowing that the next tale she must tell would be the death of Little Star, whose white ghost she still wore around her neck. She had paused and said no more. She would tell that another time. She missed Little Star, even though she felt him at her shoulder.
She’d ushered Peter Wethers out of her lodge and walked him across the camp. Lil Two Face had been sitting in the dark outside her tent.
“You calling me a liar?”
“I’m calling you a little, fat liar.”
“Now, now, ladies!” Nate cried.
“Say that again, squaw, and I’ll shoot your lying tongue right out of your mouth.”
“You’d probably hit my ass, like you hit that steer’s ass in Wimbledon.”
Lil reached for her pistol. Katherine drew her knife.
Bronco Bill swatted Lil’s hand with his hat. “Now, come on, Lil, don’t be talking like that.”
Nate grabbed Katherine’s wrist. “I’ll not have this fighting in my show!”
The anger burning in Katherine’s breast formed an arrowhead that she aimed between Lil’s eyes. She felt it shoot from her and almost saw it fly through the air between them.
Nate was talking, blathering on about propriety and morals and some other such horseshit, but she couldn’t really hear him over the music of the magic that buzzed between her and Lil Two Face.
Lil had a faraway look, as if lost in thought. Her fingers fell from the pistol at her side and she stared with the empty gaze of someone having a vision.
Katherine knew she was controlling Lil’s mind. Yes, this was something she had done before. She could feel its familiar buzz. It felt exciting. It felt strong.
It felt evil.
She shrank back, like a child feeling the heat from a campfire burn her fingers.
Lil blinked and emerged from her trance and tried to say something, but only stuttered.
The winyanpi whispered among themselves. They had seen her magic. She heard the phrase wakan... wakan ... wakan ... flutter between them. And sica.
Bad heart.
“Mr Cody assigned me to the reporter,” she said. “I’m to translate for him and work with him. I spent an hour or more talking to him last night, then I escorted him off the camp at midnight. And that little bitch saw me do it.”
Lil Two Face tried to say something, but again the words caught in her throat. A thin thread of scarlet ran over her lips as if it had sewn her mouth shut.
“Are you all right?” Bronco Bill put a hand to her chin and snatched out a handkerchief from his pocket. “You’ve got a nosebleed, there, Lil.”
“Is this true?” said Nate, ignoring Lil’s nosebleed, irritation and embarrassment gnawing at him.
Katherine swept the door of her tipi to one side. “See for yourself.”
Nate ducked and peered inside and nodded.
“You can check to see the impression on the floor if you like,” she said.
“I don’t think there’ll be any need for that.” Nate took his derby hat from his head and nodded to her. “My apologies, Katherine. There has obviously been a mistake of some kind. I obviously wasn’t aware of Mr Cody’s instructions. I’ll see to it that this reporter is allowed to come and go as he pleases, and that he can be present in your lodge at any time that is convenient for you. Before midnight, of course.”
He stalked off and Bronco Bill took Lil, holding her head back, throwing Katherine an embarrassed look of apology.
Katherine threw her knife into the dirt and watched them go.
The winyanpi scattered, hiding from her stare. Afraid.
She had magic inside her. She didn’t know if it was good magic or bad magic.
But, thinking about it, it was obvious. Fourteen years ago she had fallen onto the Plains with no memory of how she got there or who she was.
Someone here had sent her there.
Someone had e
xiled her.
She had been banished.
And that could only mean that the magic inside her was all bad.
10
THEY CAME IN THEIR thousands. Greater than the mob outside the Council House, greater even than the throng that had lined the length of New Street, as great as London and New York. They came and filled the bleachers lined around the giant marquee, buzzing with excitement.
It seemed impossible to think that the same amount of people would turn up again tonight for the second show, and again tomorrow for both shows, and again and again for the next twenty days. Could there be enough people in the whole of Birmingham, even if they all came twice?
She had seen the sprawling mass of them, evident in just the tiny collection of streets she’d witnessed. And it had been the same in London, where they had performed twice a day for four months.
She remembered Sitting Bull’s astonishment when he had witnessed the multitude of whites that populated the great cities of America.
“The white people are so many,” he’d said, “that if every Indian in the West killed a white man with every step they took, the dead would not be missed among them.”
Would this crowd turn ugly, as it had last night? She could see the black helmets of policemen all around. Would they be enough to hold back a mob that was fired up by the headlines of a local rag?
The excitement of the crowd crackled through the camp, where everyone was getting ready. All the Indians donned their war paint and feathers, even though they’d never worn it for a real battle. More important than paint would be an eagle feather in one’s hair, a bear’s claw worn around the neck, a kingfisher’s beak in a medicine bundle, a handful of dust to blow on your horse’s hooves. All of these would give great wakan in battle. But the whites liked headdresses and war paint. Buffalo Bill said they expected it, so the Indians slapped it on.
The cowboys too donned their best, shining their boots, practising their lasso tricks, twirling their pistols.
Lil Two Face’s nose was still bleeding and there had been worried talk of cancelling her appearance for this show, but Buffalo Bill had ordered a plantation field of cotton wool to be stuffed up her nose. She waddled out of her tent with her face five times as big and didn’t dare look at Bright Star Falling.