by Judy Alter
* * *
Next day we did a dry run of the act. "I don't like it," I said after I rode Guthrie on to the stage. "We'll be too close to the audience for their safety or ours."
Buck told me not to worry. "I've designed a portable fence," he said. "It'll hang from the usual theater rigging—up where the curtain is—and go between the stage and the orchestra pit. So if a horse gets unruly, it can't go toward the audience. Safe as can be, sweetheart."
I wished I believed him. Somehow I had trouble envisioning an audience watching me through a fence. But of course, that's what happened. By opening night, there was dirt spread several inches deep on the stage floor, and that fence hung between us and the audience. I held my breath in anxiety.
We really were in vaudeville.
The first night went better than I could ever have hoped. There were hitches, of course—the band started to play just as Buck began singing, completely drowning him out, and I, from nerves I guess, came close to missing him with my first loop. But the audience was enthusiastic and responsive.
Our act was preceded by some more traditional vaudeville acts—singing and dancing, which, in theater language, "warmed up" the audience. I laughed when I heard that and told Buck we'd learn a whole new way of talking.
"Nope," he drawled, "we'll probably teach those singers and dancers a vocabulary they never heard before."
After Buck and I did the opener together, I came back on the stage and did some fairly basic rope tricks, mostly while mounted on Guthrie. Then I put Guthrie through his paces—rolling over, kneeling for me to mount, and all that, and ending with him rearing back on his hind legs, which was always showy and splendid because he was such a magnificent horse.
The exciting part of the show came when the cowboys brought in the rough stock. They actually roped a calf on that tiny stage—and caught it before it made it off the other side. But I held my breath when they rode the rough stock—to see a bronc bucking and kicking on that small stage scared the living daylights out of me. Nothing happened, beyond some folks in the front row getting dirt kicked in their faces.
At the end of our act, we were called back for extra bows, and the audience called out for Cherokee and Buck. So I took my rope and built a loop around the two of us again. It became the standard close for the show as well as the opener.
"Whew! I'm tired," I said when we were finally back at our hotel.
"It's gonna work," Buck said. "It's really gonna be a good show, Cherokee!"
"Yeah, but it sure is hard on my nerves."
"You'll get used to it."
I did get used to it, but it seemed I was always anticipating trouble, always waiting for a bronc to get out of control, a calf to break loose from the rope. It's good I didn't know the old theater wisdom that wished actors to "break a leg"—I'd have taken it literally.
"Cherokee, you worry too much. Look how perfect everything's going. We got good crowds, and they like us. The act is getting better every time we do it. Nothin's gonna happen."
We played Springfield, Peoria, and Rockford, in Illinois, working our way north into Wisconsin and finally coming to Milwaukee, from where we'd head down into Chicago.
It was in Milwaukee that Buck had his wonderful idea. "Cherokee, the show needs a new punch. Why don't you ride one of the broncs?"
"On that small stage? Absolutely not." There was no use talking further about it, as far as I was concerned.
Buck was smart. He shrugged and let it go. But the subject kept coming up again and again. Sometimes it was, "If we had a girl to ride a bronc..."
"Call Belle," I said nastily one day.
"Now, Cherokee, you know I don't want anybody but you in the show. You're the star!"
"I'm the star that won't ride a bronc on a small stage," I said.
The colonel met us in Chicago. It was the first time he'd seen the show actually performed, and he was impressed and full of praise. "I knew you could do it," he said heartily. "Cherokee, you pleased with the routine?"
"It's fine," I said. "Seems to please the audiences, and we're getting some good publicity in almost every town we go to."
Buck nodded. "Sometimes," he said, "I think we need to add a little more drama to it. You know, something the audience doesn't expect."
"Can't do an Indian massacre or a stagecoach holdup on the stage," I said sarcastically. I knew what he was headed toward.
"I've tried to get Cherokee to ride a bronc," he told the colonel, "but she refuses. Says the stage is too small."
It angered me that Buck would try to work around me, use the colonel to force me into doing what he wanted. "I don't think," I said, my voice shorter than I intended, "that you should agree to do something you're not capable of." I wanted badly to remind the colonel of Carmelita, who claimed she could ride a bull. Hadn't he learned anything from that lesson?
"But you can ride rough stock," the colonel said, obviously intrigued by the idea. "You ride better than most of my cowboys, and if they can ride on the stage, so can you."
I saw through him at once, of course. He was trying to play up to my pride in my riding. It wouldn't work, I told myself.
The subject was dropped for a day or so. And then it came up again, with the colonel pressing me to give it a try, while Buck sat back and watched with the satisfaction of a man who has put the wheels into motion and has only to watch the action play itself out.
I refused again, and the colonel shrugged.
The third time he brought it up, he was more clever. He spoke to Buck, knowing that I would hear every word—we were, after all, sharing breakfast in a hotel dining room. "I been talking to a little gal from Texas. Says she'll ride anything anywhere. You know those Texas girls. I'll bet she can do it."
"You think she'd ride a bronc on the stage?" Buck asked, wide eyes innocent.
"Bet she would," the colonel replied.
"All right," I said, standing up suddenly, "I'll ride the damn bronc. But you two be warned—if anything happens, it's on your heads."
They both began to protest, until I wanted to paraphrase Shakespeare for them—"Methinks you doth protest too much!"
"Now, Cherokee, we didn't mean...."
"Cherokee, I don't want you to do anything you don't want to...."
"I'll ride the horse," I said and walked away, leaving the two of them to gloat.
After that, I rode a bronc at the end of the rough stock portion of the show. It meant, among other things, that I was onstage for almost the entire Wild West act, a fact that probably escaped Buck. But I sure knew it when I left the theater at night, more tired than I'd ever been after any performance.
"I won't ride with the stirrups hobbled," I said.
"Now, Cherokee, that's the way women ride."
"Women," I said, "don't ride rough stock on a stage. If I'm going to do this, I'll do it the way men do."
"Just trying to make it safe for you," Buck said.
Relations between Buck and me had been frosty for days. I felt I'd been tricked into a ride I didn't want to make and, worst of all, by my own husband. It came to me slowly that he was putting the show before me—or before what was between us. And then of course, that was a puzzle—did I admire his professional dedication or did I want him to be a husband first and Wild West show producer second, or the other way around?
I didn't have to deal with such philosophical nuances to know that I was angry at Buck Dowling. And he didn't have to wonder if I was or not. At night, I lay tightly curled on my side of the bed and mumbled a distant "Goodnight" to him. And he, too proud to do anything else, replied, " 'Night," and turned his back to me. We were in a Mexican standoff.
I rode a bronc onstage the first time in Chicago, but I rode it without hobbles—and I stayed on for eight seconds. Nothing bad happened. The horse bucked and pitched enough to give the audience a thrill but not enough to shake me loose from its back. Contrary to my certain expectations, we did not fly through Buck's fence to land in the audience, though I did look with worry a ti
me or two at the band in the unprotected pit below. We could easily have pitched off the stage to land on those poor musicians. Lucky for us we didn't.
The audience was on its feet when I finished the ride. Flushed with a double success—staying on the bronc and overwhelming the audience—I took a long deep bow with an enormous grin on my face.
"See?" Buck was quick to say. "I told you it would be a real pick-me-up for the show."
I wouldn't—couldn't—give him the satisfaction of agreeing, but we did reconcile that night. It occurred to me, even in the midst of passion, that we might better talk out our differences than wash them away with physical love. But I said nothing and, subconsciously, moved a slight emotional distance further away from Buck Dowling.
It wasn't me that got into the trouble I anticipated from riding rough stock in a confined space. It was the musicians who got the worst of it, but I ended up in the middle of the fracas. Fortunately, the colonel had gone back to Oklahoma by the time this happened.
One of the cowboys—an Oklahoma ranch boy named Hank—was on a bronc named Spitfire who lived up to his name by sunfishing or twisting like a fish on a line. He twisted too far and went off the stage and into the pit with a great crash, scattering the musicians while the audience screamed in panic. The noise only frightened the poor horse more, and he began to thrash about, trying to get to his feet. He could not, of course. There wasn't room for him to right himself, even if one hind leg hadn't been stuck right through the cello.
Watching from the wings, I saw in my mind for one brief second Buck Dowling bravely playing his horn while an enraged bull contemplated charging him. But I was instantly back to the present and into action, knowing what I had to do without thinking about it. Two cowboys beat me to the pit and began to try to quiet the horse while Hank, fortunately only dazed, freed himself from the thrashing animal. But the more the cowboys tried to quiet him, the more terrified Spitfire became. They could not, without risking life and limb, get close enough to get the cello fragments off his hoof.
I went straight for the downed animal's head and, using all the body strength I had, sat on it, bending my face down next to his ear. Simultaneously I began to croon softly to him, while biting gently on his ear. It was an old trick Billy Rogers had taught me—the horse will be so concerned about saving his ear that he will stay very quiet. Old-timers used to "ear down" bucking horses to allow riders to get safely mounted.
Spitfire quieted immediately, though I could feel his flesh trembling in fear. Working quietly, the cowboys freed his leg, loosened the saddle, and cleared all the chairs, music stands, and instruments away from me. All the while I talked to the horse, and the cowboys talked to me. "Just one more minute, Cherokee....Can you hold on, Cherokee?...When I give the signal, Cherokee, you jump clear." Though we were quietly working to calm the horse, the audience was in a turmoil, and waves of noise seemed to rush over me.
Beyond the cowboys' quiet talk and the frantic buzzing of the audience, I heard one loud, anguished cry of "Cherokee!" Buck had been in the dressing room when the accident happened. Now, if I trusted my ears, he stood directly above me at the edge of the stage. I prayed that he would not repeat that wail, and he didn't. All I could think was that the loud cry was instinctive and then his practical side took over. What I heard next was his voice—calm but loud—pleading for quiet from the audience.
"Folks, we've got this under control, but we need your help. We've got to ask you to be absolutely quiet until this horse is freed." I could picture him holding up his hands, begging for cooperation. The audience never did become absolutely still, but the noise level dropped a good bit.
It seemed an eternity that I had that horse's ear in my teeth and felt him trembling beneath me, wondering all the while if fear was going to make him forget about his ear and explode into frantic action. But then, softly, came the call, "Jump clear now, Cherokee," and jump I did.
For a moment, Spitfire was stunned and lay still. Then, kicking and neighing, he struggled to his feet. Miraculously, he seemed to stand on all four legs, none broken. He was spent, and once righted he stood quietly, head down. I went quickly to him and began stroking his nose, assuring him in soft tones that I wouldn't bite his ear anymore.
Buck took over, telling the audience that the horse was fine, the rider was all right. Would they please, he asked, take an intermission and clear the theater briefly, so that we could get the horse out of the musicians' pit. A little grumbling followed, but soon the theater was almost empty. The cowboys used several wide planks to build a ramp up which they could lead Spitfire. He was retired from action for the day and given an extra ration of oats.
I got a tongue-lashing. Oh, not right away. Not until we were back in our hotel room.
"Damn fool thing to do," Buck stormed. "Scaring the life out of me, risking your own life."
"We saved the horse, didn't we?" I asked edgily. "What else did you want me to do? Stand there and watch that horse thrash about until it broke a leg or two and had to be destroyed, probably right there in front of the audience?"
"I could have gone down into that pit," he said. "There was no call for you to do it. You're a girl, Cherokee! Sometimes I think you forget that!"
There was no sense telling him how illogical he was. He wanted to take advantage of my being a girl, having me risk danger when I rode a bronc onstage, but he was furious when I took a risk that, to me, was much more justifiable. Maybe, I thought, he was angry—jealous?—that I had been the one to do the so-called courageous act. It was supposed to be a man who saved the day in a tight situation, not his wife.
"Would you have eared him down?"
"What?"
"Would you," I asked patiently, "have bitten his ear?"
"Hell, no, I wouldn't have bitten some horse's ear."
"Good thing I was there," I said, and turned away.
The newspaper headline the next day blared "Cowgirl Saves Horse!" and "Cherokee, the Heroine of the Day!" We made the front pages of the Chicago papers in stories that would surely increase attendance at the show and maybe even call for a longer Chicago run. Buck took one look at the papers, threw them across the room, and stormed out. I didn't see him again until show time that night, and by then I had decided he would have to come to me. I was through apologizing. And this time we would talk.
It wasn't until we arrived in Detroit that we talked, and by then it was almost time to go to Oklahoma. We had been to Michigan City and Grand Rapids between Chicago and Detroit, and Buck and I had been outwardly polite, especially in front of the rest of the troupe, but inwardly frosty. At night, we slept carefully so as not to touch each other, and I wondered about the feasibility of separate hotel rooms.
Finally, after the first show in Detroit, Buck spoke. Maybe he was prompted by the fact that the show was only a medium success. The audience had been polite, but not enthusiastic the way that crowds in earlier cities had. Our timing was off—the timing of the whole crew—and I knew it was because the trouble between Buck and me was spreading throughout the entire show. If Buck hadn't spoken, I would have—and the results might have been very different.
"Cherokee, we got to talk," he began tentatively. "We can either let this thing sit between us like a permanent wall or we can talk about it."
"I'll listen," I said, willing to be cooperative.
"So I've got to talk?" For a moment I thought he was going to be angry, and I bristled defensively. But then he said, "Maybe I was wrong to get mad at you. You didn't jump into that pit to scare me or make me angry."
"You weren't even in my thoughts for a second," I said, and then I chuckled. "Yes, you were, too."
He was startled, uncertain. If I was taking this lightly, the temper he was holding in tight control would flare out.
"Just before I jumped, I remembered the first time I ever saw you—playing your horn while that bull pawed the ground and eyed you, the bull that Carmelita couldn't ride."
He grinned sheepishly. "So we're both
too brave for our own good. It's just that—Cherokee, I don't want you doing things that a lady shouldn't."
I took a deep breath. "I'm not just a lady, Buck, and I'm not just your wife. I'm a cowgirl and a performer. I grew up ahorseback, and I'll probably always act instinctively around horses. You're right, someday it may get me killed, but I can't do anything else." I wanted to add, "And I sure can't think about what you'll say before I throw a rope or spur a bronc. There isn't time." But I didn't say that. Nor did I ask if he was embarrassed by me.
Buck sat in our hotel room's lone chair, his elbows on his knees, his hands locked in front of him, and his eyes fixed on those locked hands. At long last, he raised his head. "Am I wrong to want a wife and a family, like every other man?"
I drew a deep breath. The question of babies was about to come up and get me again. "You're not wrong," I said slowly, "but that's not who you married. And to tell you the truth, Buck Dowling, I don't think that's who you are. If a rose-covered cottage was what you wanted, you wouldn't have been so pleased when the colonel put you in charge of this show. You like the traveling and the show as much as I do. It's just that you want me to be two people."
"Two people?"
"Right. The cowgirl you married, who can ride and rope, and who even lets you force her into riding rough stock on a stage, and at the same time, a wife and mother who raises the children, cooks the meals, and waits for you to come home at night. You can't have both, Buck, and you better decide which one you want."
I picked up my coat—a luxuriant fox that Buck had bought me in a moment of feeling rich and on top of the world—and left the room, headed I didn't know where, but anywhere away from Buck. It wasn't that I was angry at him or in a hurry to get away from him, but I thought he needed to think, really think, about what I'd just told him. As a matter of fact, my own insight had surprised even me.
Buck was asleep, or so I thought, when I returned. I had actually spent the evening in the hotel restaurant, talking to the cowboys and giving a casual answer to their questions about where Buck was. They were not used to seeing us apart, another thought that gave me pause.