by Andy Conway
Peter Wethers came through the crowd and a pebble splashed the calm surface of her heart. He did a double take of surprise when he saw that the sleek, scantily-clad squaw atop the painted horse was her, and swiped his hat off.
“Katherine. I didn’t recognize you.”
“It’s a fine old costume, isn’t it?” she said.
“I had no idea you dressed like that.”
“Neither did I. In five years of living with the Hunkpapa I never saw a single winyan dress like this, but this is how Buffalo Bill wants it.”
“What’s a winyan?”
“It’s what you whites call a squaw. We don’t use that word.”
Peter nodded and blushed a little. “Then I’ll never use it again. A winyan, you say? It means Native Woman?”
“No. It means woman.”
She saw his confusion, and that he was desperate not to offend, so she smiled and shrugged at the absurd impasse into which language had cornered them.
He caught her smile, brushing his lips with a finger. “And Colonel Cody tells you to dress like that?”
“White folks like a squaw to look half naked, is what he said to me. If she’s a young squaw. So I let them see my legs and my arms and clothe them only in paint. It’s all part of Buffalo Bill’s grand myth. He’s rewriting history. Didn’t you know? You can put that in your story.”
“So why do you take part in it?” he asked.
She kicked her horse and rode off, leaving him calling after her.
“Katherine! What’s wrong?”
She didn’t know what was wrong. She didn’t know why she was angry with him. He’d done nothing wrong. It was everyone else that was to blame. But sometimes a man got in the way and it was him you took it out on.
If you liked him enough.
She shut out the thought and joined the line of braves ready to ride into the arena. The opening of the show was pretty much the same as their parade down New Street. Everyone rode around the ring and waved to the crowds.
The Cowboy Band started up their brass fanfare and the long line of riders sauntered into the giant marquee. No one booed the Indians. They seemed fascinated to see them. Children cheered, some of them patting their mouths and whooping war cries. No one threw stones.
Perhaps Buffalo Bill had been right. Last night had been just a high-spirited, drunken element turning nasty and their sort would never be seen again.
Nate Salsbury called out the names of each group as they paraded around the ring, yelling through a giant megaphone that was almost as big as himself.
He drew special attention to Red Shirt, calling him the big chief of all the Sioux Nation.
Once they were assembled, the Cowboy Band stood and blew out a fanfare with their full might as Nate announced the arrival of the great chief of the entire Wild West show... Colonel Buffalo Bill Cody!
He rode in on his white horse, waving a white gloved hand, like royalty, and the entire crowd rose to their feet, applauding and screaming.
“Ladies, gentlemen, children – people of the proud town of Birmingham, England. We welcome you all to the first ever performance of Buffalo Bill’s... Wild West!”
He dropped his arm and every rider burst into life.
The horses bolted this way and that in a kaleidoscope of activity that had the crowd oohing and aahing. And one by one they left the arena.
Outside, she gathered with the Indian troupe, all of them falling into separate bands, ready for their next turn.
Each exhibition team rode in and did their routine: cowgirls with their riding tricks; Indian braves riding bareback; the Pony Express demonstration, riders swapping horses mid-ride to show how letters and telegrams were delivered across half of America before they built the trans-continental railroad and the telegraph lines.
Buffalo Bill demonstrated what a crack shot he was by hitting targets from a galloping horse. Lil Two Face took her turn and Katherine could hear the buzz of chatter in the crowd wondering at what was wrong with her face.
The cowboys went in and gave a rodeo show, riding bucking broncos and writing calligraphy in the air with lassos.
Annie Oakley smashed clay pellets as they were thrown into the air. There was nothing she couldn’t hit. Lil Two Face was dreaming if she ever thought she could knock her off top billing.
Then they ran a play called The Horse Thief, which showed the crowd how justice was dispensed in the early days of the frontier. They dragged the thief around the arena tied to a horse while the cowboys shot him with their six shooters. It looked dangerous and all, but the bullets weren’t real.
Then it all slowed down while they presented a frontier camp entertaining themselves with a dance and even a quadrille on horseback.
Katherine prepared herself while the sweet scene of frontier life played out. This was the moment when the savage Indians attacked.
Black Elk checked with the troupe that they were all ready and knew their parts. They had done it a hundred times or more so everyone murmured agreement.
“What if we kill them all this time?” Katherine joked.
She didn’t know why she said it. She felt mischievous and dangerous and wanted to stir things up. Maybe there really was bad magic inside her.
“Why do you say that?” Black Elk snapped.
“We always get driven away by the stupid cowboys. Why don’t we scalp them this time? Really show them what it was like?”
A few of the others laughed.
“Perhaps you do not like to be a Show Indian, Bright Star Falling? Perhaps you are better than this?”
“But it’s all such nonsense. It’s all lies.”
“It’s all right for you, Bright Star Falling. You can put on a white woman dress and go live with the whites. We cannot do that. If we’re not Show Indians, we have to go back to the reservations.”
The others nodded and mumbled agreement.
“Buffalo Bill is the best of the white men,” said Swift Hawk. “He lets us practise our old customs.”
“And gives us money in our pockets.”
“And some respect. Even if we have to pretend.”
“The old way is gone,” said Black Elk, unable to disguise the bitterness in his voice, and the sadness. “This is the best we have.”
He raised his hand. “Come! Attack!”
But it was false, play acting like children around the campfire as they rode into the arena to circle the poor, peaceful white folks, whooping and shrieking. She fought the burning desire to aim arrows from her mind into the faces of every settler and make the blood run from their noses, like she had with Lil Two Face. She knew she could do it if she tried hard enough. A dark part of her sensed she could do even more.
But she circled with the others, shooting blanks, until the brave settlers forced them back out to wild applause from the crowd.
Much later, she returned to the arena to set up an Indian camp with fake tipis. The braves did a war dance and scouts came to announce the approach of the cavalry headed by the dreaded General Custer.
The Indians went out to meet the 7th Cavalry and the fight began. But it was nothing like the real Battle of the Little Bighorn. She had seen it herself. She had been part of it. The Cavalry fought bravely and almost won, but for a daring charge by Crazy Horse, played by Black Elk, that split their forces in two. Custer and his men retreated to the far end of the arena where a little sand hill allowed Custer to stand high so his buckskin jacket and blonde wig was seen by everyone.
None of his men ran in panic, to be hunted down like buffalo. None of his men cried out for their mothers in blind terror. None of his men shook so much with fear that they couldn’t shoot straight.
No one had his face shot off as he begged for mercy. No one had his hair hacked off as he screamed. No one had his head battered to a flat steak in the stained grass.
She checked the savage thrill in her breast. This is only a pretence, she thought. I cannot paint my face with their blood, like I did at the Greasy Grass.
These blueshirts were not like the blueshirts that came to murder that day. These fought with determination and true grit, falling one by one, till only Custer was left alive, still firing at the circling Indians, till his pistols clicked empty and he threw them to the floor. It was Sitting Bull, played by Rocky Bear, who got off his horse, marched up to the defiant General, and killed him with a tomahawk so that he fell like a hero.
She laughed at that part, but her laughter was buried under the victory cries of the Show Indians. Sitting Bull hadn’t even taken part in the battle, and Custer hadn’t died so nobly. That she knew. And later, when the battle was over: his white body stripped naked like a fallen ash trunk on the grass, the sun reflecting off it; his eyes staring at the sky, fogged over like milk, the confusion of humiliation etched there, two red flowers against the stark white: one below his chest, one at the side of his head. It was no hero’s death. The old woman had stuck her sewing awl in his ears, so he might hear better in the spirit world. And the young woman he’d raped had stuck an arrow right up his—
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Nate bellowed through his megaphone, “the Indians then celebrated their victory!”
The Show Indians hopped a victory dance around fake campfires before departing the arena. Only then did Buffalo Bill himself ride in to Custer’s rescue, tragically too late. But over the fallen hero’s fully-clothed body, he vowed to take his revenge in a speech that unleashed applause like thunder.
Katherine ran to the shower tent and washed off her war paint, scrubbing at her skin till it was red raw. Redskin. Still dripping wet, she pushed through the crowd that was now filing out of the arena. The winyanpi were setting up their Indian handcraft stalls to sell their wares. The show was not over quite yet. This was the fun of the fair. Indians on parade. Their culture for sale.
She pushed through the stinking crowd and dashed to her tipi, like that morning Custer’s blueshirts had attacked the village and she had scrambled back to her tipi, bullets whizzing past her ears. Little Star had come out to face the soldiers.
A bullet took the side of his face off. A cloud of red mist spurted from his head and he fell down dead in the dirt.
She dug in her trunk for her purple dress and her leather boots. In a few minutes, she had donned her white woman’s clothes, transferring her Running Away Money from her native pouch to her white woman’s purse. She cast around her lodge where her winyan dress lay on the floor. Something missing. Something she had forgotten. No time.
She stepped out of her tipi for the last time and left her Indian life behind.
11
SHE WALKED ACROSS THE camp, keeping her head down, a felt bonnet low over her face. No one gave her a second look. No one saw that it was Bright Star Falling.
She hurried to the arena tent hoping to catch Peter Wethers before he left to write up his story of the show. A show she knew she would never take part in again.
The crowd was showing no real eagerness to disperse. All the colours, smells and sounds of the exotic Wild West hypnotized them. How could they return to their humdrum lives after seeing all this?
Katherine pushed through, keeping her head low, but trying to peer out from under her hat for any sign of Peter Wethers.
He was no longer in the arena tent, most of which was empty. She couldn’t see him anywhere near the craft stalls manned by the winyanpi, around which clustered customers eager for souvenirs. Some of the Indians were hanging around, high on their horses. A photographer’s tent was stationed where people could have themselves photographed against a Wild West backdrop, or buy pictures of the stars of the show, or even, for a small fortune, have themselves photographed standing alongside Red Shirt himself, or, for a slightly less extortionate price, one of the other chiefs.
Katherine shied away from them, fearing recognition, and still she could see no sign of Peter Wethers.
Something about the flash of the photographer’s bulbs pierced her mind like an arrowhead. A brief flash of recognition, though she could see nothing but the sense of familiarity: the strong taste of something that she knew but could not name. What was it? Something about this place. Something from her past. A voice whispering a secret to her but the words taken away on the wind.
She saw him, standing in his black suit, arms on his hips, scanning the crowd, his derby hat tipped back on his head. He was looking this way and that way, like an anxious parent that had lost a child.
She sidled close to him and put a hand on his arm. He turned with a smile, but the smile fell from his face at the sight of her. Surprise, alarm and then slow recognition lit his features.
“Katherine?”
“Be quiet,” she hissed. “Don’t let anyone know it’s me.”
“You look, so...”
She wondered if he was going to say white, but he left the sentence unfinished.
“Take me away from this place,” she said.
Her hand had slid down his arm and her fingers were entwining his own.
“What’s wrong? What’s happening?” he said, glancing around.
“I need to escape. I need you to help me get away from here. I need you to help me find my tower.”
“But I have to stay here,” he said. “I have a story to write for Buffalo Bill. I need to be here.”
She lifted her eyes to meet his. Something so familiar about him. She knew him, from her past that was hidden. He was a part of her past, she was sure.
“You can help me escape or I go on my own and never see you again,” she said.
“But why now?”
“It’s time. I feel it.”
He gasped and looked all around again, as if the crowd that milled around them were listening in. Then his jaw set with sudden firmness and she knew that he was hers.
“You’ll help me?” she said. “Help me find the tower I see in my dreams?”
He gripped her hand with sudden force. “Come with me.”
He turned and pulled her with him, And her hand slid up his forearm and found a natural resting place in the crook of his elbow, just like a young couple out walking, both of them now pushing through the crowd that were drifting towards the exit gate.
She saw Lil Two Face signing autographs. She passed Red Shirt posing for photographs. The winyanpi selling beadwork.
None of them noticed her. She was just another white woman, a native of Birmingham, walking out and heading home.
She was Miss Katherine Bright now.
12
AGENT BAYNARD CALDER stared at the grainy smear of dots that represented a woman’s face, trying to imagine what it might look like if he saw that same face in the flesh. They were never like they looked on photographs, even though the camera claimed to produce an exact likeness.
He preferred portraits, in paint. Artists captured something about a person that a camera never got. Maybe it was the soul. It was certainly that indefinable something about a person that made the job of recognition easier.
Buffalo Bill seemed unduly agitated, pacing to and fro along the confines of his tent, which was the biggest tent on the camp — the performance marquee and the stable tents aside — and was bigger inside than most saloon bars.
“It is expressly important to avoid scenes of any kind,” said Bill. “I want no panic.”
Calder looked at the smudge of squaw’s face in the photograph and wondered why Colonel Cody was so scared that he’d called in his personal Pinkerton agent. Nothing untoward had happened since they’d landed in England. A few of the Indians had left the camp to see the sights and all returned. One or two had not reappeared by curfew and he’d had to venture out and find out which public house they were lying drunk in, which was always easy. The sight of an Indian was so unusual that he pretty much knew where any of them were in the city without even having to tail them.
So why would this squaw get Buffalo Bill in such a spin?
The colonel stopped again. “And keep things quiet, for heaven’s sake.”
What was i
t about this squaw that Bill would have such an ants nest in his pants, with her not disappeared longer than — he pulled out his pocket watch — three hours? It was usually the braves that went off reservation, rather than the squaws admittedly, but wasn’t this all a gigantic over-reaction?
“Colonel Cody, sir, might I ask if you think this squaw might be a danger to the populace?”
He waved a hand, indicating the city out there, and Bill stopped pacing and seemed to think about what was out there for the first time. It increased his tension, if anything. Another curiosity.
“Oh, please, God, let there be no bloodshed,” said Bill.
The thrill of promise fluttered through Calder’s heart and the words left his mouth before he’d thought about them. “I can’t promise there will be no bloodshed.”
It was what he had always promised – before he’d arrived in this grey, damp, miserable country where nothing happened and no one had a gun, not even the police – but the mere mention of the possibility of bloodshed was the most exciting thing to happen in the last five months.
“I wasn’t talking about you, Mr Calder.”
Baynard looked at the newsprint image again. Her face just one of many in the crowd of Indians and cowboys. He’d seen her, but hardly given her a second glance. He never did look at the squaws that much.
“Colonel Cody. How dangerous is she?”
Buffalo Bill put a hand to his brow, like he was about to give out some Shakespeare soliloquy from the stage. He certainly was a showman.
“I want no gunfights on Queen Victoria’s soil. We have the sympathy of the monarch of this fair country and I do not intend to jeopardize that.”
“I guess the Queen also wouldn’t take kindly to an Indian on the warpath in her fair country neither?” said Calder, half to himself.
“And there’s the local scandal too. Politicians stirring up the mob against us. Just bring her back. Do it quietly and with subtlety,” said Bill. “You know what subtlety is?”