Buffalo Girls

by Larry McMurtry

  “It’s a good thing we got Ogden to depend on,” she said. “Ogden don’t never come home without meat.”

  That stung, but Bartle let it pass. He spent what was left of the day in the saloon, warming himself inside and out. Calamity slept awhile and then came down and joined Bartle and Johnny in a card game. Johnny was fresh, they were tired—he won all the money they had, and some they were never likely to see. What troubled Johnny worse than the difficulty of collecting was the dead look in Bartle’s eyes. Calamity was the more rowdy of the two by far.

  When Johnny left to see if a whore might be standing around one of the other saloons, Bartle decided the time had come to say his piece. A night in a cold camp had helped him arrive at a conclusion he knew he should have arrived at sooner.

  “We should never have come back here,” he began.

  Calamity didn’t appreciate anyone telling her what she should or shouldn’t have done; she had never welcomed advice.

  “Speak for yourself,” she said. “I got no complaints about Belle Fourche.”

  “I don’t mean the town, I mean the west,” Bartle said. “There’s nothing to do. We walked all day and didn’t even see a deer. There’s no game. There’s no beaver. There’s no Indians that are of any account.”

  “There’s gold,” Calamity pointed out.

  “I ain’t a miner,” Bartle reminded her.

  “You can drive a wagon,” she said. She was getting the sad feeling that Bartle wanted to leave.

  “Well, but who wants to drive a goddamn wagon?” Bartle asked. “Who wants to be a goddamn cowboy? Or anything else there is left to be, in these parts?”

  “I admit it’s thin,” Calamity said.

  “Too thin,” Bartle said.

  “Thin or not, I’m too young to die,” Calamity said. “I can’t speak for you, but you will die unless you learn to build a fire better than you did the other night—if you can’t beat that, you best give up winter travel.”

  “I’ll give up winter travel in these parts,” Bartle said, getting a little aroused by her brash tone. “I’m ready to go back and sign on with Billy. He’s the only honest one of us, anyhow.”

  Calamity stiffened at that. “I like Billy Cody but I consider myself fully as honest,” she said.

  “Well, maybe I should have said smart, not honest,” Bartle admitted. Calamity’s temper rose quickly; she looked as if she might suddenly reach the point of pulling her pistol. He had had to disarm her many times over the years; there was always the possibility that he’d move a little slow, one of these times, in which case he might receive a bullet wound.

  “Then go ahead and be a showman,” Calamity said hotly. “I ain’t ready for it—anyway he wouldn’t hire me. He’ll remember that I fell off the stage!”

  Calamity still felt embarrassed by her fall—many times she wished she could do the stage ride over; if only she could, she’d take more care with her balance this time.

  “You ought to come, Martha,” Bartle said more gently. “Better to be honest showmen than a couple of old drunks. This west is full of braggart drunkards now. You can go in any saloon between here and Laredo and scratch up five or six. They’ll be talking about how they fought at the Alamo or Adobe Walls or the Washita or the Rosebud or the Greasy Grass.”

  “All the whites died at the Alamo,” Calamity said. “All the whites died at the Greasy Grass, and plenty of them died in the other fights—I heard it was just Custer’s damned luck that kept him from getting wiped out at the Washita.”

  “Don’t you suppose I know that?” Bartle said. “I know where the graves lie. That wasn’t my point.”

  “Well, I don’t know what your goddamn point is, but I’m sure I despise it,” Calamity said. She was getting angry.

  “Youngsters Ogden’s age won’t have our information,” Bartle said. “They want to see it. Otherwise they’ll believe the drunks—of course maybe some of the drunks was in some of those fights. That ain’t the point either.”

  “You’re so full of goddamn points today!” Calamity exclaimed—the rush of anger, on top of so much whiskey, left her feeling a little sick to her stomach.

  “Your points won’t save you in a blizzard—you just need to give some attention to building fires,” she added, remembering how bleak she had felt as the cold evening descended on them—shaky as they were, any cold evening like that could well be their last evening.

  “I’d rather be a showman,” Bartle said. “Why not? It’s a job, and it pays.”

  “I never thought I’d hear you wishing you had a job,” Calamity said. “I think you just like them English whores.”

  Bartle didn’t admit it, but Calamity was right: he did miss the English whores. After a lifetime in the uncrowded west, he had discovered there was something to be said for cities. The music halls in London had a hundred times more to offer than any western saloon. He missed the noise and the singing; he missed the clowns and the burlesque; certainly on cold nights he missed his Pansy. Now that they were far away, he began to remember all the girls on the London streets. There were plenty of other girls as nice as his Pansy; there might even be some who would prove less fickle.

  “Jim Ragg would have a stomping fit if he heard you turned into a showman!” Calamity said, growing angrier the more she thought about Bartle’s plan to desert her.

  “Be fair now,” Bartle said. “You saw how Jim hated to leave those beaver. If he’d lived I expect he’d have ended up working in a zoo himself. For a man that’s run wild all his life, feeding tame animals is about as silly as working in a zoo.”

  “He didn’t stay in London but I guess he’ll be staying in Dubuque for a while,” Calamity said, feeling morose suddenly; she had an ache for her dead friend. Jim was no talker, but he had been a staunch friend. They had been a kind of gang—a little gang—she and Jim and Bartle. Blue and Dora had joined the gang sometimes, sometimes not. They had seen some sights together over the years. Now she and Bartle were the only ones who could keep the old life going, and Bartle didn’t want to. He wanted to leave, to play-act for Billy Cody.

  “I ain’t going back to England,” Calamity said. “You go on, if you want. I’ll stick it out in the west.”

  “We could always come west and summer,” Bartle suggested. He hated making Calamity sad; it was happening more and more often.

  “There’s nothing wrong with a show,” Bartle went on, trying to coax her into a better humor. Once he had been able to coax her out of her worst moods, but lately his coaxing hadn’t been working so well.

  “You could just play yourself in the show,” Bartle said. “Billy’s thinking of having me play Kit Carson, since Lewis and Clark didn’t work out.”

  “What a spectacle, you playing old Kit,” Calamity said. “I thought you despised him.”

  She didn’t like the way things were getting so mixed now, what was real, or what had been real, mingling more and more confusingly with what was made up. Although she was annoyed with Bartle, she still considered him a better man by far than Kit Carson; it was depressing to think of the one playing the other.

  “I think I’ll just march down the Platte and see if I can locate No Ears,” she said. She found that she missed the old man.

  “No, don’t do that until it warms up,” Bartle said. “You’ve got a warm room at Dora’s. You ought to stay.”

  Calamity was tired of talking, tired of everyone giving her advice she didn’t want. They were always cautioning her—they acted as if she hadn’t taken care of herself all the years of her life. She got up suddenly and went out on the cold porch to smoke.

  Of course, she had come back from England intending to do just what Bartle suggested: accept her room at Dora’s, and stay. All the time in England, and on the long voyage home, she had thought of nothing but how comfortable she would be in her room at Dora’s. She had looked forward to being back and having her room as much as she had ever looked forward to anything.

  Now she had it; and it only demo
nstrated how foolish it was to look forward to things. Once you finally got what you were looking forward to getting, something would always have changed so that it didn’t seem as nice or as important as it had seemed when you were merely imagining it. Life was too slippery, and people too changeable.

  She had always assumed that when her wandering years ended she would live with Dora—and Dora had always encouraged her to assume it. Now she was there, and Dora seemed pleased to have her; Dora would never ask her to leave—there was no question of that.

  What changed the whole situation was that Dora had married. Calamity didn’t blame her for it, either. After all, the boat could have sunk or something; Dora had no way of knowing whether she would ever show up again. With Blue farther away than ever, Dora had herself to think about.

  Ogden, the big boy she had taken, was a nice enough ox; he had first place with Dora now, that was plain. Soon the child would come, and then the child would have a big claim on Dora’s attention. She herself might be perfectly welcome to remain with the household, but it wouldn’t be she and Dora together—just them!—as she had hoped. Dora had got herself a family; Calamity could choose to live with it, but she would never be part of it. Ogden was a little scared of her at the moment, but Ogden might change, he might not want her smoking or cussing or getting drunk around his new child.

  It struck Calamity that she was probably being prideful to be so stiff about Billy Cody and the Wild West show. Billy might not approve of her falling off the stagecoach, but he liked her and would never refuse her work, even if the work was just tending to the horses or helping the blacksmith or something. She ought to drop her pride and go with Bartle; she might improve her shooting or her riding and end up famous, like Annie Oakley.

  Dora found her sitting out on the steps, half frozen. What was wrong with her?

  “What are you doing, you’ll freeze!” Dora said, a good deal put out. It took nearly constant watchfulness to keep Martha Jane from doing things that might make her sick. She just would not respect liquor, or weather either.

  Calamity came in meekly. Her face was chapped from the severe wind. She knew Dora was put out with her, but she didn’t respond. She was afraid to, for fear she would break down and reveal how sad it made her that the two of them were no longer going to live together as they had always planned: no Bartle, no Blue, no Ogden, no baby: just them!

  It would have been a fine way to get old, Calamity felt: just herself and Dora in a snug house. Of course, visitors might come, Blue or Bartle, Potato Creek Johnny or anyone they liked. But the house would be theirs—just theirs.

  The thought that it would never be that way caused her such an ache that she was a long time getting to sleep, even though Dora, fearful that she would catch cold, piled more quilts on her than she needed, and she soon thawed out.

  8

  NO EARS MET WITH NOTHING BUT TROUBLE AND VEXATION on his journey up the Platte. He located a few of his people in scattered and not very prosperous villages along the river; but the troubling thing was that he could find almost no one from his own time.

  It made him feel that his time was over, but that he had foolishly been too stubborn to die and had lived beyond it. If you lived beyond your time it was hard to find people with the proper sensibility, people who could evaluate important facts when they were discovered. Three or four old women heard his story of the whale fish, but the old women were only half alive; most of them had outlived their children and they had little interest in hearing about a great fish. They had little interest in hearing about anything; they lived in sorrow, and No Ears did not have the energy to make them listen carefully to his information, important though it was.

  He did locate one man even older than himself, a man he had known all his life, whose name was Many Belts. It struck No Ears as very unfortunate that Many Belts was the one survivor from his time, for the old man was a notorious braggart, and also very selfish. He didn’t like it that No Ears had come back. He wanted to be the only old person in the village; that way he could get all the attention himself. He listened to No Ears for a while but then rudely informed him that he considered his report on the whale fish and other matters to be nothing but a pack of lies. Many Belts didn’t believe that such a fish existed; anyway, he wanted No Ears to keep quiet and listen to some things he had to say. No Ears listened, but all Many Belts wanted to talk about was how active he was with his two young wives.

  At the second village No Ears reached, he made the mistake of trying to make people realize the seriousness of his mission by exhibiting his wax ears. It got their attention, too. A few of the most sensible people were so startled by the sight of the ears that they could talk about nothing else. Still, the exhibition proved to be a mistake. Most of the people were discouraged and had abandoned many essential disciplines. The behavior of the young men was slovenly and ill-mannered; some of them were almost as ill-mannered as young white men—indeed, quite a few of the young men seemed not to know whether they were red or white. Naturally they coveted his English ears and promptly stole all but one of them. That one wasn’t in the box Billy had given him; No Ears liked to sleep with it in his hand in case he suddenly needed to wake up and do some close listening. Because of this habit, one ear was saved, but the rest were lost.

  The loss made No Ears angry; it occurred just as he was on the point of changing his name to acknowledge the fact that he now possessed ears—twenty-four of them, in fact. He thought he might start calling himself Man Who Gets Ears; but of course the robbery ruined that plan. The robbery, plus the rudeness of the young people and the discouragement of the old people, convinced No Ears of a sad fact: it was not his destiny to live and die with his own people.

  Looking back over his long life, he realized that his destiny had been to be separate; most of his life, through one circumstance or another, he had strayed from his people. Long ago he should have changed his name; he should have called himself Man Who Walks Apart—such a name would better describe the life he had actually lived.

  When he woke up and saw that he was down to one ear, he decided to leave his people forever—they had become too unruly and undisciplined to provide the kind of calm atmosphere he hoped to enjoy in his last years. He decided to go find Martha and travel with her. She too walked apart; she too slept outside the houses of her own people much of the time.

  As No Ears crossed the plains alone—it was the dead of winter, and a sharp winter, too—he had plenty of time to reflect on his adventures, and he decided that he had been foolish to take pride in the ears from England. Because of his great desire to acquire ears before he died, he had made the worst mistake of all; he had allowed himself to be deceived by the look of things. In fact, the objects he had taken such pride in had not been ears at all; they had merely been wax. He himself could find some bees and steal their wax and probably shape ears almost as good as those made by the Englishman with the goiter.

  But he himself should have known better: wax was not flesh, and real ears could not simply be taken on and off, like hats. Once real ears had been removed, as his had been, it was better to accept the fact and change one’s name accordingly, and then forget about it.

  Once he recognized his pride for what it was, No Ears felt better; once again he began to rely on his eyes and his nose, the two senses that had brought him safely through so many years and so many dangers. His nose was as good as ever, his eyes perhaps not quite as good as ever, but still good enough for most purposes. He soon recovered his confidence and began to enjoy his trip, though the weather was bitter and he was three times forced to take shelter from blizzards and wait for them to pass.

  That was easy enough. No Ears had long since perfected a method for dealing with blizzards; he merely located a snake den and denned with snakes until the storm passed. It was easy to smell snake dens—snakes smelled like cucumbers—and in many cases the opening of the dens were large enough that he could squeeze through. He had no fear of the snake people; they were harm
less when in hibernation and not really very harmful even in summer. With a blizzard howling above them, the snake people were too stiff to pose a threat, and if he found himself growing hungry he had only to kill one or two, peel their skins off, and eat his fill.

  In earlier days he had sometimes found it convenient to den with bears when blizzards came. Bears, too, were easy to smell, and in times of extreme cold made warmer bedfellows than snakes. More than once, denned bears had saved his life; on the other hand, denned bears were much less reliable than denned snakes. One had to approach them with caution and respect. A denned bear might not be polite enough to sleep all winter; it might get hungry and eat whatever happened to be denned with it. Snake dens were chilly, but on the whole, because of the unreliability of bears, No Ears preferred them as stopping places in blizzards. Anyway, there were few bears left, and none at all along the lowland rivers, whereas there were still thousands of snake dens everywhere.

  No Ears usually preferred to walk so as to make close observations while he traveled, but now and then if he happened to meet some soldiers moving along in the direction he was going he might ride a day or two with them if he received an invitation.

  Always it was the older soldiers who asked him to ride with them; it seemed to No Ears that the older soldiers missed Indians. Now that they had killed so many of them they suddenly realized that Indians were valuable people.

  The younger soldiers were a different matter, though. They knew little or nothing about Indians; they were so silly about Indians that they were even afraid of him, an old man traveling with only a shotgun and a few shells. He had been given the shotgun by embarrassed elders in the village where his ears had been stolen. It was a very weak gun, its stock held together with some buffalo-tendon wrappings from a long time past, but it was enough to throw a scare into some of the young soldiers No Ears traveled with.