Black Hills (24 page)

A
LL DURING HIS AFTERNOON ATTACK ON THE CABIN OF WHITE
settlers, even after he is shot and killed by the arriving cavalry, Paha Sapa is nervous about the upcoming appointment with Rain de Plachette.

He also hates being killed. He hadn’t volunteered for it, but Mr. C pointed to him and said that he’d be the one to be shot off his horse, so that was that. Almost every night, Paha Sapa has to nurse bruises or strained muscles or a sore left knee that never gets a chance to improve. There’s an extra mound of soft dirt for him to fall onto, a heap that’s supposed to be renewed each afternoon and evening, but the other warriors—in their very real excitement—often forget to clear a space for him to get to the soft dirt, and he has to throw his arms in the air and fall off the tall pinto pony onto the hard-packed arena dirt. Then he has to lie there, dead, while the tail end of his marauding band of mixed-tribe Indians pounds over and past him, then, immediately thereafter, try again not to flinch as the arriving cavalry horses come pounding and leaping by. Three times now he’s been kicked by shod hooves and, being dead, he can never even react to it.

This getting killed every afternoon and evening is killing him. (At least he is allowed to survive the attack on the Deadwood mail coach.) His fallback plan is to get a smaller, lower, slower horse. That way he
can live up to his name—the name the
wasichus
gave him seventeen years earlier—and if he
must
continue dying, he can at least guarantee that the fall will be as short as possible.

But this afternoon in July, in the four hours between the afternoon show and the longer evening program, it is the appointment with Miss de Plachette after the show that has Paha Sapa almost too nervous to think, much less die properly.

But, he reminds himself as he rushes to the men’s bathing tent shared by the soldiers and Indians, it’s not a
date.

Paha Sapa just happened to be dropping something off in the outer office that morning when Mr. Cody and his friend the Reverend Henry de Plachette stepped out and continued their conversation. The Reverend de Plachette, whom Paha Sapa had met, was explaining that his daughter was here to watch the afternoon Wild West Show but wanted to go to the Fair proper afterward and needed an escort. He, the Reverend de Plachette, would be meeting her near the entrance to the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building at the Grand Basin at six p.m. but would be busy until then. Mr. Cody said that it would be no problem;
he
would escort the young lady over to the Fair. Then Cody remembered that he had an appointment in Chicago after the afternoon matinee.

—
I would be honored to escort Miss de Plachette to the Court of Honor and wait until you arrive, Reverend de Plachette.

For the rest of his life, Paha Sapa will not believe that he actually said those words at that moment.

Mr. Cody and the Reverend Henry de Plachette turned slowly to look at the small, thin twenty-seven-year-old Sioux they knew as Billy Slow Horse. Cody, who was wearing an expensive tan suit and had just put on his wide-brimmed Western-style tan hat in preparation to step outside, cleared his throat.

—
That’s generous of you, Billy. But I’m not sure you would have time between the matinee performance and the evening performance, and perhaps it would be better if…

—
No, no, William. I’ve talked to Mr. Slow Horse a few times and he
has
met my daughter, as you know, and I believe it’s an excellent idea. I will, as I said, be meeting Rain no later than six o’clock, and that should give Mr. Slow Horse ample time to return and to get into his… ah… costume.

Paha Sapa’s costume consists of a breechclout, a bow and arrow, and a single white feather that he puts in his braided hair, his small way of honoring Crazy Horse’s memory. But it made him blush that afternoon as he rode around the arena, thinking of Miss de Plachette looking at him almost naked, visible bruises and all.

Cody continued to look doubtful that morning, but the minister (and father) had obviously made up his mind.

—
Be so kind as to meet my daughter here as soon after your performance as possible, Mr. Slow Horse. I will inform her that you will escort her to the Fair. And I thank you again for your courtesy.

The Reverend de Plachette nodded rather than offering his hand. Paha Sapa knew at the time that the man had decided to allow him to escort his daughter the short walking distance to the World’s Fair out of a minister’s liberal (and almost certainly shallow) sense of equality-of-all-men-in-God’s-sight, but Paha Sapa did not care the least bit
what
the reason was.

After washing up as quickly as he can—all the while thanking the
wasichus’
god and the actual
Wakan Tanka
(the All who seemed so much larger, so much more complex, and so infinitely much more present than the Fat Takers’ white-bearded deity) that he didn’t fall on any horse apples when he fell dead off his horse in that afternoon’s show—Paha Sapa rushes back to his tent and changes into the only formal clothes he brought on this trip east: a black, pinstriped, thick-wool, ill-fitting, and completely inappropriate-to-July suit coat and baggy trousers that he purchased in Rapid City.

He realizes, with some small shock, as he tries for the third time to knot the ribbon of the string tie, that his hands are shaking. Paha Sapa cannot remember any time when his hands shook, except when he was sick with fever as a boy.

While he is near a mirror, Paha Sapa tries on the straw boater he purchased during his second trip into Chicago proper the previous month. The little summer hat looks absurd with his black winter suit coat and his long black braids sticking out. He tosses the cheap hat onto his cot and returns to the washing tent to pomade the tips of his braids. Between every action, Paha Sapa nervously checks his pocket watch, kept in the pocket of his suit coat, since he has no waistcoat.

Finally it is time. His heart pounding in his ears, Paha Sapa walks to the main administration tent.

Miss de Plachette is waiting in the foyer and smiles in recognition as he approaches. Paha Sapa is sure that he has never seen any single sight so absolutely beautiful or so infinitely unobtainable. He also notices that he has already sweated through his shirt.

Miss de Plachette is wearing a silky tan blouse waist with the usual balloon sleeves, the blouse gathered at her waist, as almost all women’s fashions seem to be these days. Even Paha Sapa has noticed that. Her skirt, which reaches the floor, is also a relatively light, summer, silky weight (for so much fabric), with stripes that continue the expensive tan of the blouse, the tan stripes alternating with rich green stripes bordered in thin gold. She is wearing a narrow-brimmed straw hat that looks as perfect on her as Paha Sapa’s boater had looked absurd on him. She also is wearing thin tan gloves and is carrying a parasol.

Paha Sapa is glad to see the gloves. He has had fewer of the
small-vision-forward-touching
experiences as he has grown older, but those that have occurred, he knows, always happen when he touches bare skin. He is absolutely resolved not to touch Miss de Plachette’s bare skin in any way even though he is wearing his only pair of dress gloves. He is pleased to see that she is also wearing gloves. Now no accidental touch will…

—
Mr. Slow Horse, it is a pleasure to see you again and I cannot thank you enough for escorting me to the Fair this afternoon so that I can meet my father. I apologize, but is it… Mr. Slow Horse? Or just Mr. Horse?

Her voice is as soft and modulated as he remembered from their brief meeting two days earlier, when she’d toured the Wild West Show with her father. Mr. Cody introduced Reverend de Plachette and his daughter, it seemed, to most, if not all, of the hundred former US Cavalry soldiers and ninety-seven full-time Sioux, Pawnee, Cheyenne, and Kiowa that had come east with Buffalo Bill.

Paha Sapa finds himself tongue-tied first thing out of the chute. He expected it sometime during his escorting of Miss de Plachette into the fairgrounds, but not upon first encounter. He finds, insanely, that he wants to explain to her that “Billy Slow Horse,” the name he’s
been known as to whites for seventeen years now, was a foul, stupid, insulting name that the Seventh Cavalry gave to him when he was their captive… scout… prisoner, and that his real name is…

He shakes his head and manages…

—
Billy, ma’am. Just Billy.

His face is burning, but Rain de Plachette smiles and slips her arm through his, causing Paha Sapa to jump slightly.

—
Very well… Billy… then you must call me Rain. Shall we go?

T
HEY STEP OUT THROUGH
the Wild West Show’s main gate into the heat and sun of high July. To the right of the gate a tall banner shows a full-color illustration of Christopher Columbus and proclaims
PILOT OF THE OCEAN, THE FIRST PIONEER.
The next-door World’s Fair is, after all, officially known as the World’s
Columbian
Exposition of 1893, even if it has missed the four hundredth anniversary of the Italian sailor’s landing by a full year.

The banner on the other side of the gate, with an even larger and more colorful illustration of Mr. Cody in full, fringed western regalia, announces
PILOT OF THE PRAIRIE, THE LAST PIONEER.
But it is an even larger sign above and to one side of the wide entrance gate that says it all—
BUFFALO BILL’S WILD WEST AND CONGRESS OF ROUGH RIDERS OF THE WORLD.

Miss de Plachette pauses just outside the gate to extricate her arm for a second and open her parasol, then she slides her arm through Paha Sapa’s again and gazes back at the gate and long fence for a moment, the tiny holes in the parasol throwing Appaloosa speckles of light onto her pale face in the shade. Paha Sapa notices for the first time that there are also faint constellations of freckles across her small nose and flushed cheeks. How old is she? Twenty, perhaps. Certainly no older than twenty-one or twenty-two.

—
It’s sad that Mr. Cody wasn’t able to set up his performing arena and other exhibits
inside
the fairgrounds proper. Father says that the Fair authorities rejected Mr. Cody’s application because the Wild West Show is—how did they put it?
—“incongruous.”
By which they mean, I presume, too vulgar?

Staring at Miss de Plachette’s hazel-colored eyes, Paha Sapa has a terrible second in which he realizes he has suddenly forgotten all of the English he has been speaking now for almost seventeen years. He finds his memory and voice only when they begin walking east together toward Sixty-third Street and the Fair entrance.

—
Yes, too vulgar is what they meant, Miss de Plachette. They didn’t want to sully the Exposition with Mr. Cody’s entertainment, even though Mr. Cody had just returned from a very successful tour of Europe when he asked for the concession. But it’s all worked out for the best.

—
How’s that?

He realizes that she is smiling, as if expectant of hearing something interesting, but it is hard to think in words because all of his attention at that moment is on the slight pressure of her right arm in the crook of his left arm (she kept her left hand free for the parasol).

—
Well, Miss de Plachette…

He pauses in confusion as she stops and turns and nods her head in—he hopes—a pretense of impatience.

—
I mean, Miss… ah… that is… when the Ways and Means Committee rejected the Wild West Show’s concession bid, Mr. Cody got the rights to these fifteen acres here just adjacent to the fairgrounds. Not being an official concession, Mr. Cody doesn’t have to share the profits with the Exposition and he can hold performances on Sunday—they’re wildly popular—while the Fair doesn’t allow shows then, and, of course, there’s just the fact of all this room, the full fifteen acres, I mean, Miss Oakley, Annie, has a whole garden around her tent and cougar skins on the couch and a beautiful carpet from England or somewhere, not to mention electric lights and real furniture from Italy and…

Paha Sapa realizes that after a lifetime of honorable, masculine taciturnity, he is babbling like a
wasichu
schoolboy. He shuts his mouth so quickly that the sound of his teeth clacking is audible to both of them.

Miss de Plachette twirls her parasol and looks at him expectantly, waiting. Is her small smile one of amusement or bemusement or mild contempt?

He gestures awkwardly with his free hand.

—
Anyway, it’s worked out very well to Mr. Cody’s advantage. I believe we’re averaging about twelve thousand people per performance, which is far more profitable
than any of the official concessions inside the Fair’s grounds. Almost everyone who comes to see the Fair also comes, sooner or later, to see our Wild West Show, and some take the elevated train down
just
to see it.

They walk in silence the half block from the Wild West Show’s huge area bordering 62nd Street to the closest Fair entrance at 63rd Street. Paha Sapa does not have enough experience being around women—especially white women—to have any idea whether this is a comfortable silence or one signaling tension or displeasure on the part of the lady. Overhead, passing over the boundary fence, runs the Elevated Railway—the so-called Alley L, called that, Paha Sapa has heard, because it threads its way through alleys to get out of the Chicago downtown area, since speculators bought up other rights-of-way—constructed to bring the millions of visitors from Chicago proper down here to Jackson Park. Some of those yellow-painted “cattle cars” are rumbling overhead now, and as they pass, Paha Sapa glances up to see eager fairgoers hanging out the open sides in a most precarious manner. Attendees have managed to kill themselves at the Exposition in many ingenious and terrible ways so far, Paha Sapa knows, but none yet, he thinks, from falling out of the Alley L.