Buffalo Girls (30 page)

No Ears watched the cranes go, six flying shadows against the burnt light of sunset. He felt very uneasy; he did not like to travel with people who were going to die. It was for that reason that he had made no name for himself in battle. He did not mind the fighting itself, but he did not enjoy the company of people who would soon die.

The next day he sat on deck, watching Bartle with his young wife. Bartle tried to fish a little, but he was not good at it; he only caught a large turtle. That was not a good sign. Thinking back over his many visits with the mountain men, No Ears realized that Bartle had never been a good hunter; he rarely brought in game. He was also weak when it came to making fires. He seemed to be one of those men who were interested only in women. It was a failing No Ears could sympathize with because he had once been the same way. Getting wives had interested him more than war.

He knew, though, that getting wives was even more dangerous than war; he suspected that Bartle's marriage to the English girl might prove more dangerous than war. The English girl reminded him too much of his last wife, whose name was Sun-in-Your-Face. She had first been called Quick Ferret, but had been renamed once it was obvious that she was of such beauty that to look at her made one blind in the mind.

Certainly Sun-in-Your-Face's beauty had made him blind in his mind. He had wanted her so much that he didn't notice that she intended to kill him. He never knew why the beautiful Sun-in-Your-Face wanted to kill him, but there was no doubt that she
did. She once took the spleen of a sick dog and mixed it with his food in order to kill him. No Ears soon became very sick; it was while he was near death that he realized it was his wife's doing. He saw her sharpening a knife and realized she meant to finish him with it—she was impatient that he was not already dead. Fortunately he had his gun handy and had just enough strength left to shoot her. Sun-in-Your-Face looked at him with a terrible hatred when she realized she had taken too long to sharpen her knife. He didn't know why she wanted to kill him; he had been good to her, he thought; he had bought her several very pretty and well-tanned robes, and his tent was a fine one. Perhaps she only wanted to have the fine tent to herself. After her death everyone congratulated him for having outsmarted Sun-in-Your-Face; it seemed to be common knowledge that she had wanted to kill him, though no one had mentioned it.

But then, his people understood such things; they usually knew when a woman planned to kill a man, or vice versa. It was not so with the whites on the river steamer. No Ears could see that Bartle had no idea that his young English wife didn't like him; perhaps it was mainly that she did not desire him. No Ears's nose had not lost its keenness, and if there was one thing above others that he excelled at smelling, it was desire. He could smell it immediately in both women and men. Even in its early stages, desire had such a strong smell that it was hard to miss. No Ears knew that the rude captain had a great amount of desire for Bartle's wife; the captain smelled goatish. But the girl named Pansy had no desire for Bartle; No Ears slept not far from them and would have known it if she fancied their mating. Such was not the case.

These thoughts made No Ears very uneasy. Jim was dead and Bartle—unless he was lucky and his wife fell overboard or was taken by the captain—probably did not have long to live. Calamity was drunk a great deal and would not be much help if there was serious trouble.

No Ears studied the matter all day; he began to have the feeling
that it was time to leave the whites to their own lives and deaths and go back to his home. He had better get off the boat and walk over to the Platte River—the weather was good and it would be a pretty walk. Perhaps he would be able to find a few of his people and tell them about the great whale fish and the other interesting things he had seen.

He did not like to leave Calamity, but he felt he had better do it while he felt like walking home. Later he could go up to Montana on the steamer if he wished, or perhaps catch a ride on a train. He did not think it wise to stay with the white people when they were being so careless with their lives. The six cranes could return at any time; if there was too much trouble he might not be able to keep one of them from snatching his soul.

The next morning he told Calamity what he was planning. Calamity looked disappointed but did not try to talk him out of it.

“Go if you feel like it, while the weather's pretty,” she said. “I'm aiming to go back and find Dora. Come for the winter, if you can make it. You oughtn't to be wintering hard, at your age.”

“I hope your horse is well and that no one has eaten your dog,” No Ears said. Calamity had left her black horse at Fort Leavenworth and her dog with Dora in Miles City.

“I don't expect they've eaten my dog,” Calamity said. “They'll be chewing all day, if they do. That dog is tough.”

Bartle Bone was slightly disquieted by the news that No Ears planned to depart. Of course, there was no reason the old man shouldn't go. There was no reason to stop him, or to encourage him, or to do much of anything, that Bartle could see. He felt rather dazed; now he had a wife to support and had had no practice at such a task. Pansy had become noticeably more brisk since they struck America—she had been sharp with him several times and would doubtless be even sharper if he flagged in any significant way, such as by failing to support her. She seemed to expect to live in a house, though Bartle had never owned one and had no idea how to go about getting one. He was a poor carpenter
and would not be able to build a decent house before winter. Perhaps Dora would allow them a room. If she didn't, he had no idea what they would do. He had married hastily, without planning anything—of course he had assumed when he married that he would always have Jim and Calamity around to help him. Jim Ragg had always been competent at whatever he took up—no doubt he could even have built a house that would satisfy Pansy, if it had come to that.

But it hadn't. Now Jim was dead and Calamity almost never sober; No Ears, a sensible old man who could frequently be counted on for reliable advice, was leaving to walk to the Platte River.

To Bartle it seemed a poor homecoming. Pansy had never been to the west: what if she took a dislike to it? Most of the English he knew
had
liked the west, but then they had all been men, and what they liked was the game. He had been trying to teach Pansy to shoot; she was erratic with a pistol, tolerable with a rifle; still, he could not imagine that she would take to the west because of the game.

For the first time, the notion that he was now responsible for Pansy's support crossed his mind. It was an upsetting thought, too. With the show going on, there had always been plenty to eat; Billy Cody doled out pocket money; most of the troupers gambled most of the money away, but could still usually afford to get barbered or go on a toot and pursue other expensive frolics. With money and grub so plentiful, Bartle had never really thought about having to support a wife.

Except for a little scouting, and now and then a little freight hauling or a spot of stage driving, Bartle had never had a job. He had just traveled the country, living off Jim's skill with the rifle. If absolutely required to shoot, he shot, but mostly he left it to his old friend, a superior marksman. If he tried to travel the country with Pansy he would have to shoot—of course, that was silly. He couldn't travel the country with Pansy. She was an English miss, not a mountain man.

The steamer stopped at a little dock on the Nebraska shore. No Ears took a blanket and his box of ears, shook hands with everyone, and got off.

“If I had my horse I'd go with you,” Calamity said. Seeing No Ears preparing to leave made her suddenly panic-stricken. She had not been separated from him since the day he had saved her from the blizzard. He was a small man and very old. Seeing him with his blanket and his ears stabbed at her heart. He had the plains to cross—a long walk. Would she ever see No Ears again? And if she didn't, who would advise her? Dora was fine for town advice, but Dora knew nothing of country dangers.

“I wish I had my horse,” Calamity said. “I'm too fat now to walk to the Platte with you.”

No Ears left without delay. To Calamity, watching him from the boat, he looked as old and dried up as the weeds along the river's shore.

“Maybe I should have just married him,” she said to Bartle. She still felt disturbed.

“Marry No Ears?” he asked, astonished. “The man is twice your age. What would be the point?”

Calamity felt like punching him; she felt like punching somebody, and nobody else was handy.

“You're twice your wife's age,” she reminded him. “More than that—you're three times her age, at least. What do you reckon the point is for her?”

Lately Bartle had begun to worry about that very point himself. He usually had a quick retort to anything anyone might say, but this time he had none. He was aware that Calamity didn't like Pansy; Jim hadn't liked her much, either, though he had unbent and kissed her at the wedding. Suddenly life, which had always been a lively, sporty thing, seemed to be nothing but heartache and confusion.

He wished Calamity could break her tiresome habit of asking unanswerable questions—speaking words that called up worry was a bad trait. The notion that Calamity might marry No Ears
seemed ridiculous; they weren't even sweethearts, at least not so far as he had observed. Now he was forced to consider that in some people's eyes it was ridiculous that Pansy had married him, a broken-down old mountain man with no income. When forced to consider the matter, he realized he had no idea what the point might be for Pansy. He scarcely knew his own mind anymore, and could not pretend to know hers as well. Pansy was quick with opinions, but among her opinions, he could not recall that she had mentioned what she considered the point of their marriage to be.

More and more, Bartle found himself wishing that the crazed anarchist in Chicago hadn't picked Jim Ragg to stab. There had been hundreds of people walking by the lake that day—why, with so many possibilities, had he picked Jim Ragg to stab?

P
ANSY KNEW THE
B
OSTON CAPTAIN WANTED HER
. S
HE HAD
begun her life in the London streets at the age of eleven; she had now reached the age of sixteen and considered herself an expert on the desires of men. She read them as quickly as educated people read newspapers. The captain wanted her, but that was common—it was not the important fact.

The important fact was that he was taking his boat in the direction she wanted to go: south, to where it was warm.

All her years in London, Pansy had been cold. She had spent nearly six years shivering; some girls got used to it, but Pansy never had. She hated the chill. The best thing about the Wild West show had been the warm tents and the heaps of buffalo robes. For the first time in years she slept warm; it was worth marrying an old man for a while to sleep in a warm tent rather than a chill stone doorway.

On the voyage over, Pansy had heard several people talk about the western winters. Evidently they were long and severe. That news was enough to convince Pansy that her marriage to old Bartle had served its purpose: she was in America, and the southern parts of America were said to be quite warm. Old Bartle was not bad to her, but he was of no interest. The elegant Mr.
Cody had been of considerable interest, but Mr. Cody was full of himself and scarcely looked at her. He did mention how warm the south was, though. He and Annie Oakley had done an exhibition in New Orleans, a city he claimed was always warm.

Knowing no more than that, Pansy decided New Orleans would be her destination. She would have been pleased to attract the interest of Mr. Cody but he was evidently not a man who sought women very strenuously. He even seemed to think she loved old Bartle, when she had merely chosen him as her road to warmth. It was a pity Mr. Cody had no more need for women than he seemed to, but Pansy felt she had neither the time nor the opportunity to change him.

The American summer, or the little that she had got to see of it, had been all she had hoped for. It was warm in New York, and even warmer in Chicago. But on the train west to Dubuque she had felt the breath of the prairie autumn. It was a sharp enough breath to convince her she ought to get on to New Orleans as soon as possible.

The fact that the captain wanted her was lucky—the one problem she had to consider was what to do with old Bartle. Again, the fact that they were on a boat and not a train was lucky. Jim Ragg had wanted to take the train west; Pansy had argued for a boat from the beginning, but if it had not been for the splendid luck of having old Jim killed, she might well not have prevailed. Bartle was far too willing to side with his friend. If the train had been chosen she would have had no option but to sneak off to Chicago and stay lost until they left; no doubt she would have had to work awhile, in order to get a passage to New Orleans.