Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  Well I tell you along about now I had a bellyful of Dodge and might of been ready to go back to the tribe if the Cheyenne would let me, but the ones in the Ford County jail give me no encouragement. I had kept my word to Wild Hog and hired a lawyer to represent the prisoners, and he was slick enough to get the proceedings moved from Dodge City to Lawrence on account of the possible local prejudice, though as I have said I couldn’t see that nobody in Dodge much cared, while Lawrence was precisely where the biggest mob had assembled the first time and might of lynched the Indians had Bat not taken charge. So maybe this was a bad idea? Not at all. If you know anything about the law, the technique is to keep moving. Not for nothing do lawyers call what they do making “motions.” By the time the Cheyenne was taken back to Lawrence, the townsfolk there had forgot all about that issue and had rushed off to the next fad, so this time we—the Indians, Bat and me and the deputies—went there without commotion. After a few more months of jail for his clients, and expense for me, that counselor got the case dismissed for lack of evidence.

  Eventually them Cheyenne, along with the others who survived the long journey north from the Nations, got that reservation on the Tongue, not far from where they helped rub out Custer, so you might say they won another victory and at the usual excessive cost.

  Wild Hog, Old Crow, Big Head, and the others never turned more friendly to me over the months I traveled periodically to Lawrence to see them, and I never expected them to. I tried not to think about redskins beyond this specific instance, for how farmers and wanderers could share the same acreage without conflict was beyond my mental capacity, as was what would happen to the loser of this dispute, who would not be the one that fastened himself to one place, built a house, and planted crops. Even though a few such individuals might get massacred, plenty more was coming from over the water to replace them, to the permanent disadvantage of Lo, to use a sarcastic name of the day, which come from

  Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way;

  quoted from Mr. Alexander Pope, whose verse I used to read as a boy with my foster-mother Mrs. Pendrake. Some newspaper writers also would call Sitting Bull “Slightly Recumbent Gentleman Cow.” In addition to losing most of their homeland, Indians got made fun of a lot, which was nasty but didn’t bother them as much as you might think, for not being able to read they didn’t know about most of it, and besides they had quite a high idea of themselves, which wasn’t destroyed by them being overpowered and outnumbered.

  On the other hand, along about now some of them was beginning to see their children would do well to learn how to hold their own in a world run by whites, at least to read and write and do sums, so they wouldn’t be cheated so easy by traders, government officials, and other dishonest Americans, and though it went against every principle of being a warrior, get some acquaintance with the vocations by which white people managed to eat regular and keep warm and dry: plowing and seeding fields, raising livestock, digging wells, erecting buildings permanently anchored to the earth, instead of starving when game was scarce, thirsting in a drought, and freezing every winter.

  There was two kinds of white people who wanted to help the Indian. One for practical reasons, for unless you had the stomach just to kill them all, what should be done with them? The second type was usually religious and saw red men, as well as black and the yellow Chinese what built the western railroads, as fellow creations of God and thus brothers under the skin, which meant they all should be treated kindly and helped to become white in behavior. Now, lest you think this theory hadn’t nothing going for it but arrogance, you might reflect that whites had the accomplishments to dominate all these folks the world over, whether for good or ill, so the decision was theirs to make by the law of life, and was it not preferable that some of them tried to bring a little decency to the process? If you ever seen the work of somebody without a conscience, then you know what I mean.

  This is by way of introducing the next phase of my life. It happened through that church that Miss Dora Hand had went to. I found myself in attendance there after her untimely death, which had an effect on me out of proportion to my slight acquaintance with her—and even so, I had finally to accept that my impression of the lady had been somewhat in error. But the idea underneath it, of grace and goodness and gentility as embodied in a female person, was not discredited. I had gone through that before, with Mrs. Pendrake, and though my illusions was dashed there too, and with a lot more shock, young as I was then, I have a right stubborn personality when it comes to certain convictions.

  Sol went to church of a Sunday morning, not to meet women, but to be in an atmosphere in which their influence was predominant without them being whores like the girls, all friends of mine, who worked at the Lone Star. Of course there was men in that church as well, but they seemed to be of two kinds, either sissies for whom it was what a saloon was to a cowboy, or merchants who was drug to the services by their wives and, though knowing it was for their own eternal good, was bored stiff by the particulars, and in fact the preacher was mighty dull, lacking in the colorful rant of my Pa on the one hand and the Reverend Pendrake’s lofty oratory, taken from Scripture, on the other.

  After several Sundays the lady churchgoers begun to view me more kindly than when Miss Hand was alive, and a couple of them come up to me after one service and says they was right proud to welcome me to their congregation and hoped to see me at their lawn fete Saturday next, weather permitting, with lemonade and homemade layer cake, the proceeds going to the Indian mission school run by their parent church body, which I don’t intend to name, for it may still be around today and I don’t want to hurt the feelings of any of its followers by what I say here, which is the truth but by no means all negative.

  Come the following Saturday afternoon, I went as invited, and I must say I was greatly pleased to be in an atmosphere of ladies in brighter clothes than they wore in church, some real comely and all fine-mannered, making them little gestures of finger and angles of head with pursed lips and squinty eyes shown by people of the better sort as opposed to the gaping mouths, nose-pickings, and arse-scratchings I was accustomed to seeing.

  One of them from the previous Sunday comes up and introduces herself as Mrs. Homer Epps. She was quite a sizable person, made even a bit wider by her fancy dress, and taller than me by a couple hands.

  “Mr. Epps,” says she, “is president of the Merchants National.” Which was a local bank.

  I give her my name, and as she seemed to be waiting for a statement of my own calling, I told her I had to apologize when in present company, but I was in the entertainment line.

  She shows a tolerant smile involving all but maybe one of her chins. “No apology needed, Mr. Crabb. I am aware that you were professionally associated with our dear departed Dora Hand. When we saw you first, I’m afraid we worried that you represented another faith and had come here to lure her away from us. But now I realize your connection was only professional.”

  You never know what impression you’re making on others. Here I had been concerned I’d be taken as what I was, a bartender in a dance hall–bordello, while a bunch of church ladies was worried I might be from a rival church.

  “It was personal as well, Miz Epps,” I said sanctimoniously but not untruthfully. “Miss Hand and I shared spiritual interests.”

  More ladies joined us, and Mrs. Epps introduced me to them all. I didn’t see any men whatever for a while except for the preacher, who had staked out the refreshment table, along with what had to be his scrawny wife and three or four shabbily dressed kids, and all was stuffing themselves with cake, which unlike Mrs. Epps and some of the other women they looked like they could badly use, being all built real close to the bone. Preaching on the frontier wasn’t usually the way to prosperity.

  Everybody who spoke to me regretted the loss of Miss Hand and hoped I would nevertheless continue to come t
o services. One woman, a sharp-nosed, birdy-eyed little person in a shiny green dress, named Mrs. John Teasdale, allowed as how though no Dora Hand she was thought by all to be a soprano singer good enough to go on a stage.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I says.

  “Well then,” says she, “perhaps you could recommend me to Mr. Bell at the Varieties or Mr. Springer at the Comique.” And she cocks her head to one side, more like a sparrow than ever, and simpers.

  I hate to disappoint anyone with high hopes, having had a few of my own, so I said let me look into those matters, which was good enough for her at this point. For all I knowed she could of been the world’s best singer, but now I had put my crush on Dora Hand into balance, I realized no female who was altogether respectable, like Mrs. Teasdale surely was, could be a professional performer in that time and place. A girl either went onto the stage or she stayed home and was somebody’s wife, mother, or old-maid daughter, and speaking of the last-named, a tall, slender young lady come up to us at that point. She was real pale-complected, fair hair parted in the middle and pulled back so hard her facial skin seemed under tension, bony of cheek and nose, and with deep dark-blue eyes. Unlike the other women she did not wear a hat, and her dress was plain and modest as could be.

  “This is my eldest,” says Mrs. Teasdale, now assuming the sort of smirk that is intended to ally the person addressed with the speaker and against the other individual present, even though in this case she had just met me and the other was her own flesh. “Amanda,” she goes on, “is the serious one.... Amanda, this is Mr. Crabb. He is involved in professional entertainment.”

  The girl’s manner was of a kind with her plain clothing. She says straightforwardly in a strong though not loud voice, “You speak Cheyenne.”

  “Yes, Miss,” I says. “I sure do. But could you just look at me and know that?” I intended this remark to be light, but she answered it as soberly as she said everything.

  “I was told you translated for the Cheyenne prisoners held at the Ford County jail,” said she. “I’ll tell you why I am interested.”

  Her mother broke in here. “Let’s hope Mr. Crabb finds it interesting.” And again she gives me the special look. “I warned you, Mr. Crabb, she’s the serious one. She would even like women to have the vote.”

  Amanda ignored her, being one of them offspring utterly unlike the parent who would be expected to be their model. She stared at me with them deep eyes that looked larger than they were on account of the paleness of her skin and the delicate but prominent bone structure of her face. “We need a Cheyenne translator at school.”

  “There are Cheyenne students in public school in Dodge?” I asked in amazement.

  “Of course not,” she said, wincing irritably. “The mission school. The one for which funds are being raised today.”

  “Well, Mr. Crabb,” said Mrs. Teasdale, “I must tell my friends about your promise to manage my career as a singer. Don’t let Amanda bore you too much with her savages.” She tittered. “She means no harm.”

  When her mother had went away Amanda made a smirk of her own, which was a good deal more forceful than her Ma’s, and said, “Actually, I mean a lot of harm, Mr. Crabb. Let me ask this. Does being fluent in the Cheyenne language bring with it a concern for the welfare of the Indian?”

  “Let me tell you how I come to speak it,” I began.

  But this stern young woman, who was only in her early twenties, stops me right there. “That’s irrelevant,” says she. “What I want to know is whether you would like to do something to elevate the Indian from the miserable condition in which we find him today—a position, I hasten to say, into which we white people bear the most responsibility for putting him.” This point she accompanied with a gesture of her long white index finger, the nail of which was trimmed back to the flesh.

  I was not offended, but I didn’t intend to let this girl push me around, either. “What I have got to say is to the point, Miss. I was raised mostly by the Cheyenne, and I am right fond of them and wish them the very best in life and am just sorry I ain’t got the power to give them back all their home grounds.”

  She frowned and nodded. “You’re wasting time, Mr. Crabb. What is needed is not sniveling about the past, which is dead and gone. The Indian must face the present and future. He can no longer be a hunter and warrior. But he is capable as any other person of any race. That his ways are now obsolete should not reflect adversely on him. He can learn new ones. For all, reading and writing, doing sums. How to plant and harvest crops, for the men. For the women, the domestic sciences as practiced by the civilized race, which it cannot be emphasized enough is nevertheless not morally superior.”

  She said this in her usual flat, apparently calm fashion but I begun to sense a real strong emotion underneath.

  “Well, Miss, let’s just say I’ll be proud to help out if I can. If you want me to do some translating, like I done between Wild Hog’s bunch and the legal authorities, I’ll be happy to do it, and there won’t be no charge.”

  She had still been staring at me with them big indigo eyes, but now she blinked in what I took for a slight softening of manner, and she says, “We certainly wouldn’t expect you to work for nothing. We will provide quarters and food and a stipend of...” She proceeded to name so low a figure I can’t even recall what it was, these many years after, but it didn’t seem to matter, for I repeated that I wouldn’t charge anything, having adequate income from my present situation.

  The fine flanges of her pale nose flared slightly as if she smelled something unpleasant. “You’ll have to give up tending bar,” said she, revealing she knowed more about me than her Ma did.

  “Ours is a boarding school, in ——,” naming a place some distance away, which I won’t identify for reasons that will be self-evident.

  Now I could of ended the discussion at that point, unless I really wanted to forsake a profitable job pouring whiskey for cowboys who bought more the drunker they got, and go to a religious boarding school for Indians at wages that was less than the colored fellow, an ex-slave, got for mopping out the Lone Star. It wouldn’t be long before I built up another nest egg and started thinking again of opening that place of my own. Why, I might go on to become another Dog Kelley, the businessman-mayor, and get married to a young future Mrs. Epps or Mrs. Teasdale, and have an offspring like Amanda, who somewhere within her severity was not only a young girl but, I recognized, a basically handsome one who however could use some fattening up as well as a realization of what was eating her.

  But I have said I was sick of the side of Dodge I knowed and was coming to see that hanging around that church was not a successful alternative, having little in common with the folks there, with the exception of this Amanda insofar as she was involved with Indians. I was also aware of her femininity, probably more than she herself was at this time. I’ve had a remarkable partiality to the ladies all my life, as is no secret by now to the reader of this life story of mine. Young white women can be vexsome, owing to an abundance of expectation, but I consider myself fortunate to have knowed them when I did, which was long ago, for when a man gets past ninety the only females around him tend to be nurses.

  Anyway, I ended up taking the job offered by Amanda, and thus begun my involvement, such as it was, in educating Indians to be white people.

  6. Schooling the Red Man

  I NEVER SAID GOODBYE to Bat Masterson, for he had previously left Dodge himself, without a goodbye to me, to go to Leadville in Colorado Territory, where they had lately struck silver. As when he headed for the Deadwood gold strike, getting only as far as the town of Cheyenne, his primary interest was gambling and not prospecting. I was not unusual for the time in wandering throughout the West. Everybody done it—everybody that is who didn’t settle down on some land and make a go of ranching or farming and raise children, so I expect I ought to say everybody who didn’t do nothing much to civilize the place, everybody, that is, you’ll pardon the coarse saying, with a wild hair in his arse.
This sure included Wyatt Earp, who also left Dodge, in his case to go to Tombstone in Arizona, where he was soon followed by the painless but lethal and consumptive dentist Doc Holliday.

  To get to the mission school, me and Amanda traveled by railroad, finally getting off at a town where we was met by an old colored fellow driving a wagon. Amanda lost no time in climbing up to sit right beside him, which got her stares from the other people on the platform and from the windows of the train as it pulled away, for a white woman didn’t properly place herself on an equal level with a man of a darker race, and that included Mexicans.

  She had not sat next to me on the train, placing a number of bundles on the seat alongside her, and having paid for a bath at the barbershop I hoped it wasn’t because of my odor, but we could not of conversed anyhow. In them cars the noise of the steam engine was deafening, and you had to keep an eye open for the glowing cinders that blowed in through the windows along with those that was not burning, just dirty. I was filthy by the time we got off, but oddly enough, especially given her pale skin and gold hair, Amanda still looked spotless.

  We finally reached the school after jolting some miles in that wagon with me riding not up on the seat with the driver and Amanda, not having been invited to do so, but in the bed of the wagon with the luggage and lots of sacked supplies the driver had picked up in town. The school consisted of one big whitewashed three-story building and several smaller structures, all appearing fairly new, and some distance off, a weatherbeaten barn with a few head of livestock visible and beyond them fields of tawny grain rippling in the breeze. Between the buildings would of been the usual dust of that part of the world, but rain had fell overnight and instead it was the comparably usual mud.