Buffalo Girls (33 page)

Once Dora led him into the mating act, Ogden seldom felt that imperative need to run. Now and then he still might lope a mile or two, but the frenzied speed that had once characterized his running diminished a lot.

Without meaning to, Ogden more or less ruined Dora's business. The Hotel Hope, so recently moved from Miles City to Belle Fourche, began to lose most of the customers it had just
begun to acquire. Skeedle, so actively sought in Miles City that she scarcely had had time to think, had so little to do in Belle Fourche that she took up fortune-telling as a sideline. Trix, sprightly as ever, had two or three devoted customers, but could rarely find anyone to dance with; then a cowboy bound for San Antonio passed through on his way south, fell in love with Trix, and in two days Trix was gone, bound for a ranch on the Frio. Opinion was divided as to whether Trix would tolerate the cowboy all the way to Texas; Skeedle felt that her departure had more to do with ambition than love.

“I predict she'll leave him in Denver,” Skeedle said. “Trix always said she wanted to see Denver.”

“That boy was sweet, though,” Dora pointed out. Marriage to a sweet cowboy was the dream of many a buffalo girl—it had been her dream, too, and yet, for fear of the country, plus a silly determination not to give in to Blue, she had let the dream slip by. For years she had cried about it, cried about it, cried about it. She had even cried about it the morning she met Ogden—she had had to hold cold rags to her eyes for an hour before she felt presentable enough to cross to the hardware store. How odd it was that she had recovered herself, crossed when she did, waited just the right amount of time on the keg of nails, and then set out for home again, only to lose her shoe just as Ogden was coming. What if she had decided she felt too grim to leave the store? What if she had held out a few minutes longer, stayed put on the keg of nails until Ogden had passed? She would have missed him. Now that she had him, the thought that a change in timing of even a minute could have meant missing him forever was disturbing. Dora, who had so often sat looking out her window wishing Blue would come, but knowing it would be difficult even if he did, now looked out her window in a state of amazement—amazement at her luck.

The business life was over, though. Skeedle was more interested in telling fortunes, for one thing. Trix was gone, for
another. But the principal reason business was over was Ogden himself: though perfectly friendly, and not the least judgmental about whoring—it was obvious to Ogden that if such great pleasure could be bought there would be men willing to buy it—his large presence frightened away many potential customers. Dora found this amusing; Ogden was one of the most peaceful males she had ever encountered, and yet most of the men that came in to the bar were afraid of him. He was just so large. Experienced whorers knew that most whores had a special fellow, a customer who loved them and might become fiercely jealous despite full knowledge of the requirements of the trade. The new customers at the Hotel Hope assumed Ogden was just such a fellow; they might be feeling rowdy, but fewer and fewer of them seemed to feel rowdy enough to risk an encounter with a jealous Ogden.

Once Trix left, Dora didn't bother looking for another girl. The bar did fair business—she would just get by with the bar. Once in a while, usually when Ogden was off hauling for the mines, a party would arrive and engage Skeedle for an evening. Or a new girl might show up and work for a few days before drifting on to Miles City or Helena or somewhere.

Two weeks after she met him, Dora asked Ogden if he wanted to marry her. She knew it would never occur to him to ask her because it would never occur to him that she might accept, or even consider it.

The question caught Ogden unaware and caused him to blush so deeply that he couldn't speak. He had cherished the deep hope that he could stay with Dora forever, but he feared that such a thing was impossible and he tried not to let the hope swell. Marriage was beyond his imagining. He wasn't even sure what you had to do in order to be allowed to marry. His shyness was so deep that he supposed that alone meant marriage was out of the question. And then, with no warning, sitting on the bed with him, wrapped in her housecoat, Dora brought it into the question.

“Married like Ma and Pa?” Ogden asked.

“Well, I don't know your Ma and Pa,” Dora said. “I guess they're probably pretty well matched, from the size of you. Do you want to marry me or not?”

She felt a slight pang of embarrassment at her forwardness—of course, this big boy wasn't going to refuse her.

“Would we do it today, or when?” Ogden asked, his thoughts in a riot. He had come to the west meaning to farm; he had read a pamphlet describing the wonderful farming opportunities that abounded in the Dakotas, and here he was. But so far he was just a freight hauler; he didn't have a farm, and Dora had confessed to him that she didn't like farms much. How to manage the future seemed quite a puzzle. Ogden didn't understand the steps involved in marriage; on the other hand he felt a frenzy not unlike the frenzy that had once caused him to run. In this case his frenzy was to get the marrying done immediately, before Dora changed her mind.

“We could—or tomorrow,” Dora said. She was surprised at her own impatience, which was so sharp she felt capable of being quite ruthless about getting her way. For more than twenty years she had danced away from every opportunity for marriage; now she not only wanted to marry Ogden, she wanted to marry him immediately. She suddenly felt that everything depended on quickness, though there was no real reason to think it did. But she felt it anyway—she wanted it concluded, and concluded now!

They located a preacher and got married the next day, with Skeedle, Doosie, and Potato Creek Johnny in attendance. Johnny just happened to be in town—he had been in love with Dora for years and always dropped by when he was in her vicinity. She had never been sweet on him, but she was friendly to a fault—and there was always hope.

Watching the wedding—Dora had bought Ogden a new coat to be married in; it was handsome but rather tight in the shoulders—Johnny concluded that he might just as well quit hoping.
It seemed to him that a pretty tight knot was being tied. Later he got drunk and cut the cards with Skeedle, the prize being her favor. Johnny won the cut and spent a happy night.

“Calamity will be surprised when she comes back and finds you married,” he told the happy bride the next morning. The groom was sleeping late.

“She won't be the surprisest, though,” Doosie said. She wore a long face and spoke in a dark tone, although she liked Potato Creek Johnny—he always complimented her cooking extravagantly.

“Well, who knows when Calamity will get back?” Dora said. She felt happy and was determined to ignore any line of commentary that might spoil her mood.

Potato Creek Johnny didn't intend to be a mood spoiler. He was merely imagining Calamity's amazement when she returned and discovered that Dora had married this huge youth. He thought Dora DuFran had become more beautiful than ever as a result of her union and wished her nothing but the best. Dora finally getting to be happy made the whole world look better.

Johnny assembled his gear and set off—it might be the day he would find the creek of gold, although that was unlikely. He had long since waded all the creeks within a day's walk of Belle Fourche, and though one or two might carry an occasional gold fleck, none was the creek of gold. Only in wide-spaced dreams did he encounter the golden creek.

Despite Dora's cheerfulness and Ogden's big-boy courtesy—Doosie had to admit that he was a mighty polite boy; not once had he tramped in with muddy boots—Doosie continued to wear a long face and speak in dark tones. The marriage shocked her, and she did not bother to hide her shock. Dora, who ought to know how things went between young boys and older women, had acted hastily and foolishly, in Doosie's view, and foolishly not merely in terms of youth and age; foolishly in terms of where her heart lay.

Dora couldn't put up with it any longer; no matter how patient she was, or how nicely Ogden behaved, Doosie remained stiff, mighty stiff.

“Why do you look that way?” she asked Doosie finally—Ogden was out shoeing one of his draft horses.

Doosie made no reply; but she continued to look that way.

“You are the hardest person to get along with I've ever met, I guess,” Dora said. “All I did was get married. Don't I have a right to get married?”

“Yes, but that don't make it smart,” Doosie replied.

“What was so smart about what I had, I'd like to know?” Dora asked. “I'm forty-one years old, and what did I have?”

Again, Doosie sulled. She didn't enjoy long conversations. In her opinion people talked far too much; what was talk? What did it solve, if people were just going to go on and do anything they wanted to? Talking couldn't undo anything that had been done, and it rarely stopped people from making the most obvious mistakes.

“I don't know what to say,” Dora said. “You won't talk, you won't smile, you won't look at me. Is it Ogden you don't like?”

“I like Ogden but I don't know Ogden,” Doosie pointed out. “You ask me what you had—what you had was freedom. And you had a warm house, too.”

“I've
still
got a warm house—my goodness!” Dora said, exasperated.

“You ain't got freedom, though,” Doosie said. “You'll never be seeing freedom again. He's got you now and he'll keep you.”

“You make him sound like a jailor,” Dora said. “Freedom isn't something everybody needs for their whole lives. About all I did with my freedom was cry. You think crying's better than being the wife of a nice young man?”

“Yep,” Doosie said.

“You're a hard one then,” Dora said. “Ogden's never given me orders. He wouldn't think of it. I give
him
orders. I told him he
better go shoe that horse. He wouldn't think of telling me to do something.”

“You just been married a month,” Doosie said. “Give him time. He may decide that men are supposed to give the orders.”

Ogden soon came in, and Dora gave up, but Doosie's attitude didn't improve. She did her work as precisely as ever, but she still wore a long face. Dora didn't like to scold her—Doosie had been with her for years—but she found her long face increasingly hard to live with. Besides, Skeedle suddenly left to try her hand at telling fortunes in Fargo; this left Dora with no one much to talk to. Ogden was too young, Calamity not yet back. Dora needed talk, too. She wasn't meant to live in silence, with just her thoughts. Though more and more content with Ogden, she had to admit that talk wasn't his strong suit. He was young and sweet, but he wasn't voluble.

For all her happiness, Dora was not free of all agitation, either. Agitation nagged her like a toothache.

“Is it Blue?” she asked Doosie one morning. “Is that why you're so sour?”

“That's why,” Doosie said, a little relieved that Dora had finally figured it out. She didn't like feeling angry at Dora—it spoiled the day.

Dora sighed. It seemed it was always Blue when there was agitation or disturbance. He was there, like a worm in the fruit, to remind one that nothing was really perfect.

“What makes you think I have to be concerned about Mr. Blue?” she asked, annoyed that Doosie seemed to be on Blue's side and not hers.

“Because you married so quick,” Doosie said. “You was afraid he would come. He gonna come anyway, though. Then what?”

“Then he'll find I'm a married woman,” Dora said, getting angry despite herself. “He's married too, remember? There's nothing either one of us can do about it now.”

She found it very annoying that Doosie had deciphered her sharp impatience to marry, when she had only half deciphered it
herself. Of course she had feared Blue would come and destroy her future with Ogden.

Ogden might be too young for her, she might be too old for him, he might start giving her orders, he might be killed, she might die, they might come to hate one another; still, she wanted it and she wanted it immediately. However odd it might seem to others, for now her marriage was something good, and Dora had spent her share of years without very much that was good. Blue and she were beyond good and bad, in any clear sense. They were part of one another's fate, perhaps the heart of one another's fate, but they were never going to be one another's whole. She wanted someone with whom she could have a whole, even if it changed, even if it led to tragedy. Having it and losing it seemed less terrible than never having it.

“What are you going to tell Ogden when he comes?” Doosie asked. The arrival of T. Blue—in her view it was sure to happen—had been preying on her mind of late.

“What are you going to tell Mr. Blue?” she added.

“The same thing he told me one day—that I'm married!” Dora said, her eyes flashing. “And you know something? I can't wait! I wish he'd walk in right now.”

“You're crazy!” Doosie said, alarmed at her boss's hot hunger for confrontation. Ogden was just out in the backyard. If Mr. Blue came just then, somebody might end up dead; she had seen several people end up dead, and in cases where far less enduring emotion was involved.

Dora grabbed a book and threw it through the door into the saloon. No one was in the saloon at the time, but the book narrowly missed a spittoon.

“I doubt he'll ever come!” she said. “I doubt he thinks I'm worth this long a ride. And I don't care! He's welcome to spend the rest of his life up on the Musselshell for all I care!”

An hour later Ogden found her sitting on their bed, trying desperately to stop crying. The sight made him weak in the legs. He had a terrible fear that he must have done something wrong.
Why else would Dora be crying? It was a pretty day, and he had done all the chores. He racked his brain but could remember no error, or call to mind anything he might have forgotten.