Buffalo Girls

by Larry McMurtry

  “I think that whale was the First Fish,” No Ears said, hoping to change the subject. Sometimes it was wiser to talk to Sitting Bull than just to sit while he grew more and more angry. A little speculation about the beginning of the world might calm him down.

  “You can ask him next time he comes,” Sitting Bull said. “Then I am going to throw you over and let him eat you. I think I’ll take that nice slicker first, unless you want to wear it while the big fish eats you.”

  Sitting Bull seemed to be getting angrier; No Ears was becoming a little worried, but fortunately Cody came on deck just at that moment. Sitting Bull immediately stopped making threats and went over to shake hands with Cody and borrow some tobacco.

  No Ears was glad Cody had distracted Sitting Bull. He pulled his slicker high up around his head, for the seas were growing rougher, the waves splashing high. That was fine—in rough weather people would have to look out for themselves and would leave him alone. He wanted to watch the ocean for a while and think about the beginning of the world. Also, he wanted to think about the magnificence of the great whale.

  Darling Jane—

  I am afraid this will be a desperate letter, I feel desperate if that’s the word. Your mother was not meant for travel, not for long travels like this one to a country across the sea. I have my pals Ragg and Bone it’s true, but I miss Dora, I have been crying for her almost every night since we left America and we left it a good many nights back. It seems like the miles are too many, it’s not like a ride on horseback down to the Wind River or somewhere, the Wind River is in the west and all the west is my home, Dora’s home too. She don’t wander like I do but she has done her share of moving around in our old west.

  I expect she is in Belle Fourche now, she was determined to go. Probably she found a dandy house to make into a saloon, I bet it is pretty and cozy, I do wish I was in it. Dora promised to keep a room for me, I know she will.

  I was a fool to come with this show, I don’t know why Billy asked me, he has been nice enough, and he advanced me money several times. Billy is quite polite but I don’t think he is interested in having me do much in the show, maybe I will ride in a race or something, they have an act called the Assault on the Deadwood Stage or maybe it’s Attack, I get the acts mixed up. There’s also an Attack on a Settler’s Cabin, I believe. It comes to the same thing, Indians and whites pretending to be fighting, shooting at one another with blank shells and holding up wigs that are supposed to be scalps. They say thousands of people will pay to see it—they say they are coming from France and other lands, I can’t see why, and neither can the cowboys or the Indians Billy brought along. Texas Jack is going to run a racehorse with some English rider, maybe Billy will, too, it will be at the Queen’s racetrack, I think.

  But I don’t know if I will be driving the Deadwood Stage. I don’t know what I will be doing. If they think I am going to put on a corset and sing a concert they can think again, I don’t like to sing in public. I refuse to throw targets for Annie Oakley either. She has been rather stiff with me, she is stiff with everybody, it will be hard to find someone who wants to throw targets for her. Bartle hates her, he hates any woman who gives him any talk of the sort he don’t want to hear. We all kid him about it—we remind him that she is the best shot in the world, she stands on deck all day and shoots clay pigeons, you will never see her miss, she could easily shoot Bartle even if she was at one end of the boat and him at the other.

  I was sick four days because of the boat, it rolled around constantly, even Bartle got sick. He and Jim are not getting along—Jim is not relaxed a minute, he wants to do the show and get his money and come home. You can’t hurry a boat across an ocean—he might as well quiet down.

  Bartle and me have taught Red Shirt and Sitting Bull to play cards, they both love cardplaying now. They ain’t very good though, Bartle has won both their wages for the rest of their lives, I think. Red Shirt is a handsome Indian, I think Billy is a little jealous of him, some of the women think Red Shirt is better looking than Billy, of course Billy don’t like that, he was having enough competition from Jack Omohundro, he and Billy are old rivals but neither of them expected to be out-handsomed by an Indian.

  I don’t trust old Sitting Bull, he is a cunning old Sioux, if he knew how to run a boat it wouldn’t surprise me if he organized the Indians and killed us all. He could take the boat to China or somewhere, they’d never catch him.

  Sitting Bull is familiar with women, too familiar, but he don’t bother me, perhaps he doesn’t regard me as a woman. Whatever the reason I am glad.

  I am going to enclose some photographs, Janey—they are the ones we sell at the exposition. Little Doc Ramses took them—he brought along some movable scenery in the ship, a scene might be the Rocky Mountains or a gold mine, some scenic view, he will pose you in front of it for hours and make photographs to sell. There is even an old tame longhorn they brought along, we have all had to pose in front of it. I suspect it is an ox, longhorns were seldom tame.

  Doc Ramses wanted me to sit on the old steer, I said no, the other pictures were silly enough. I would be the laughingstock of the west if Blue or some other cowpokes saw a photo of me sitting on an ox. I said I would drive it in the parade though if they can borrow a cart to hitch it to. I once drove an oxcart in the gold fields, they were bigger oxen than this old steer.

  I have got to reform, Janey—get my spirit up and have some fun. I have been in difficult conditions before, lonely conditions, but I have never let it get me down for long. While I am healthy I am going to locate the fun if there is any handy. Jim Ragg has been glum all his life, I am glad I ain’t like Jim. He feels sorry for himself because the beaver got used up—and it was him and Bartle that helped use them up! You’ll find plenty of cowboys like that, they’ll cuss and complain because the country’s all settled up when it was them that settled it! Then they claim women are crazy and don’t make sense. Montana was just Indians when they started bringing in cattle, now look at it. The cowboys ruined it, now they’re mad because it’s ruined.

  It’s hard to have fun on a ship, there’s only one saloon, there were plenty in St. Louis, plenty more in Baltimore and New York. Me and the boys hit them all. I hope this don’t shock you Janey to know that your mother is a carouser, but you have known a more settled life, not like the life we have out west. Buffalo gals won’t you come out tonight? That has been the way I’ve lived, Dora too, neither of us have wasted too many nights. Maybe you will get educated and have a nice family—put your time to better use.

  They say we will make England today, I’m glad, it’s hard to keep a lively spirit when the boat rolls day and night and there’s nothing to look at but this old gray ocean. I had no notion there was so much water in the world, Janey—it’s monotonous, more monotonous than Kansas, I felt Kansas was monotonous enough.

  I don’t know what to make of little Doc Ramses, it is almost as if he is courting me. He says he will take me to an opium den when we reach London, then he gave me a yellow necktie, he says it will look good in the show. Doc is polite to a fault but he is wasting his time if he is courting me, I’m through with it—I’ll tell him so if he pesters me much more.

  Well, Janey, this letter is gloomy, the next will be better I promise. I will hold off writing until I have seen the Queen, won’t that be grand?

  Your mother,

  Martha Jane

  2

  DOC RAMSES WAS BEGINNING TO REGRET THE DECISION TO bring Sitting Bull to England—the management difficulties with the irascible old Sioux were constant.

  At the customhouse, before they had been off the boat an hour, there had nearly been a killing. A stolid young customs officer, in the course of doing a methodical job, made a little too free with Sitting Bull’s possessions, causing Sitting Bull to conclude that the man was about to make off with his pocket watch, a handsome silver timepiece only recently presented to him by the mayor of St. Louis. Sitting Bull had come within an ace of cutting the man down with his W
inchester; seeing the commotion, Red Shirt had drawn his knife and several other Indians looked to their weapons. Fortunately Jack Omohundro had snatched the watch out of the young man’s hand before he could be murdered.

  That night, all safely camped in a park near Earl’s Court, Doc had called a conference of the show’s top management—that is, himself, Cody, and Texas Jack Omohundro.

  “What I think is we’ve got to take away the real ammunition and put blanks in everybody’s guns,” Doc argued. “The Queen’s not going to come see us if four or five of her subjects get shot—and if the Queen don’t come we could lose money on this whole enterprise.”

  “Shucks, the Prince of Wales is coming,” Billy said. “I guess we could do without the Queen if we had to.”

  Sometimes Doc irritated him with his constant worrying. The man was a good organizer, but had little grasp of the subtleties of publicity. If actual fatalities could be avoided, a shooting or two wouldn’t hurt—after all, they weren’t the Tame West show. Why did people go to circuses, if not in hopes that someday the lions would consume the lion tamer, or at least maul him good?

  “Who was you thinking of disarming, Doc?” Texas Jack asked. “Just the Indians?”

  “Well, cowboys can shoot Englishmen too,” Doc said, realizing he was on thin ice at the moment.

  Texas Jack Omohundro was reputedly the best card-player in the west. No one could remember seeing him change expression; certainly Doc Ramses had never seen him change expression. Texas Jack was watching him now, cool as ever, his eyes ice-blue. He was not quite as fastidious as Cody—he didn’t spend as much time selecting his bandannas or cravats—but he did devote some attention to his mustache, which bent sharply at each end, framing his mouth in brown.

  “My boys ain’t going to take kindly to being asked to walk around with unloaded guns,” Jack remarked. “Sitting Bull hasn’t stayed a chief all his life by being dumb. What if he figures out about the blank ammunition and puts some real bullets back in his gun? He’d be loaded to kill, and my cowboys would be loaded with blanks.”

  Billy could hardly repress his irritation at the grating way Jack kept referring to the cowboys as “his.” More than once he had slipped up in conversation and referred to the whole show as “his,” when in fact he had only a minority interest and could not possibly have made the whole thing pay were it not for Cody himself. The posters said “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show”—Buffalo Bill was the name every single person in America associated with Wild West adventures; the fame of Texas Jack was merely local by comparison. It was all he could do to keep from reprimanding Jack for his promiscuous talk, but he polished his engraved Winchester and held his tongue.

  Doc Ramses felt it had been a mistake to encourage Billy to take Texas Jack as a partner; it meant handling two volatile spirits rather than one. Good manners rarely failed Bill Cody, and when they did, little more resulted than a brief storm. So far, good manners had not failed Texas Jack either, but Doc had some trepidation about what might occur when they did. The measure of his temper had not been taken—not yet.

  “Now, Jack, the Indian wars are over,” Billy said mildly. “Sitting Bull and the young braves are on the payroll, just like the cowboys. What’s fair for one is fair for all.”

  Texas Jack let the comment settle a bit before he replied.

  “Just because you made peace don’t mean Sitting Bull has,” he said. “Just because you pay him a wage don’t mean he won’t lift your liver, either. I’m for keeping everybody armed—it’s safer that way, don’t you see? Sitting Bull knows I’m a faster shot than he is—he won’t shoot me if he knows I’ll be firing at him even as I fall.”

  “Let’s talk about the horse race,” Billy said. “That’s more important.”

  “You won’t think so if somebody mows down six or eight Englishmen,” Doc Ramses said, annoyed that his sensible point was being ignored.

  “Why, Doc, what’s come over you?” Texas Jack asked. “I would not think that a fellow who rode at Sand Creek would squirm so over a few Englishmen. There’s plenty of Englishmen, I guess, and Bill’s got a point. We ain’t the Tame West—at least I ain’t.”

  “I was just a bugler then, I didn’t order the massacre,” Doc Ramses protested. It seemed he would be bloodied forever by the carnage at Sand Creek, although he himself had not fired a gun and had even kept two Indian children from being brained by Chivington’s frothing Coloradans.

  “Jack, leave Doc alone, we can’t undo Sand Creek or the rest of it,” Billy said. “Let’s plan the horse race. You and me ought to try and finish in a dead heat, providing we can both beat the English pony. We have to beat that English horse, though—if I fall back you take him and if you flounder I’ll take him. Think of the tickets it’ll sell if we beat the Derby winner.”

  Of course, there was no danger of them losing—the English were so sure of their superiority that they had made no objection to having the race run over a mere quarter mile, though few thoroughbreds could even get untracked in that distance. With him and Jack on their swiftest cow ponies they could race to victory—the fine point was to avoid victory over each other in this first race. A dead heat would make the headlines—they might get in another race, attract another crowd, before they left. It meant more money.

  “Billy, I’ll try not to beat you, but don’t cuss if I can’t restrain my horse,” Jack said, putting on his hat.

  “I think I’ll go look up Calamity,” he said. “Speaking of shooting, why don’t we disarm her? She’s already shot up three music halls. You know how wild she gets when she’s drunk. I’m more nervous about Calamity than I am about Sitting Bull.”

  “I was against bringing her,” Doc Ramses reminded Billy. “I was for parking her in St. Louis—they know her type in St. Louis.”

  “Oh, now, where’s your notion of showmanship?” Billy asked. “Let her shoot up the music halls—she’s Calamity Jane! Do you want her to sew napkins? I say, let ’er buck! It’ll just sell tickets.”

  With no further comment, Texas Jack departed.

  Darling Jane—

  Whooee, Janey, I swore I’d improve and I have. Yesterday was the big horse race and did we all have fun! It was held at a place called Ascot, the Queen didn’t come but the Prince did, he’s a pretty fat prince. Billy and Jack and Annie and Sitting Bull got to meet him, I think Red Shirt met him too. I didn’t—most of us were kind of roped up under a tent until after the race.

  Of course Billy and Jack ran off and left the English horse, the latter was just getting in stride when the race was over, Billy had kept the race short for that reason. The English horse would have caught them eventually but not in a quarter of a mile. I thought the crowd was going to swarm down and lynch the poor jockey, I felt sorry for him, he didn’t have a chance in the race, then people cursed him and said he’d let the Empire down. If I were him I’d leave the country, they might catch him and lynch him yet.

  After the race we all mounted up and ran our horses up and down in front of the lords and ladies, we were all stiff from the voyage and it felt good to be on horseback. The Indians did some war whoops and the cowboys some cowboy yells. It was plain the people watching had never seen such a spectacle, they quieted down and watched. Annie did a little trick riding, she is a regular acrobat, some people are born with gifts, Annie Oakley was. She has got plenty of ability—even Bartle admits that.

  I believe Prince Eddie has an eye for the ladies, he had several in his box. Bartle became jealous, as he always will if he thinks someone has more girlfriends than he does. It is just luck that he’s a prince, Bartle said—he wouldn’t last long in the Rocky Mountains. I’d like to see what he’d do with a grizzly.

  I’d like to see what you’d do with one, Jim said, he thinks Bartle is slipping and could not handle a grizzly in his present condition, he may be right. They are all confused about Lewis and Clark, I don’t think they will really have to act much. I think Doc Ramses just means for them to lead the parade and fire
off muskets a few times.

  The grand thing about England is the music halls—Bartle and I go every night while Jim sulks. Nothing can improve Jim’s mood but the music halls have improved mine. They are a lot like saloons but far grander than any saloons we have out west, unless there are some grand ones in Denver. I rarely get to Denver—Bartle claims the saloons there are nothing special.

  In these music halls you get singing and clowns and a regular show, Bartle and I laughed so much at the clowns we almost got sick. We are determined to get Jim in a music hall eventually, if these clowns can’t make him laugh, then Bartle and I are going to give up on him, we’ll let him miss the fun if he wants to.

  The first time I got rowdy and shot off my pistol in a music hall it scared everybody badly. They don’t wear guns in England. I even got in the papers, I am saving all the stories so you can read them someday. Now me shooting off my pistol has become a regular thing, they’d throw me out if I didn’t. Doc Ramses thinks they’ll be offering me a job pretty soon. He thinks I could make a pretty penny just firing in the air once in a while.

  Doc still looks at me funny, I will be minding my own business and look around and catch him looking. He has some strange habits himself, one of them is talking to dead people, Janey. He has found some gypsies and goes to see them often. They travel in little wagons—I suppose it reminds him of his days in the medicine show. I went with Doc once to meet some, I was a little frightened, they look rough. They even had a little bear with a collar around its neck—it was a small bear, not a grizzly.

  Now Doc wants me to go with him to a seance, that is a party where you talk to the dead, at least that is how he explained it to me. He said I could even talk to your father, Wild Bill. There is an old woman who runs the seance, she knows how to call the dead, or so Doc Ramses claims.