Telegraph Days (19 page)

“You are a curious fellow,” I told him. “Why would you want to do that?”

“So I can rebuild the town back east and use it in my Wild West pageants,” he said. “I'll get some good carpenters and give them the photographs to work from. We'll find some old wood, so the place won't look too new. You have to be authentic when you're putting on shows—particularly when it's history you're selling. The spectators are not going to want spiffy new buildings—I need to convince them that they're seeing the real West.”

“That's crazy,” I told him. “What are you anyway, a buffalo hunter or an actor? Don't you still have Indians to fight, up there in the north somewhere?”

“There's a few wild ones still out, but it's mainly over for the free Indians,” Cody said—he sounded sad about it. “I don't want to kill them, either. I want to hire the best-looking ones for my Wild West pageant.

“Some of the Sioux and Cheyenne are mighty good-looking people,” he added.

“You mean you're planning to hire the Indians you were just fighting?” I asked.

“That's right,” Cody said soberly. “Right now they're fighting and getting killed, but once I get my Wild West up and running all they'll have to do is pretend to fight. We'll do a fake attack on a settler's cabin, or the Deadwood Stage, and instead of getting killed for their trouble they can be paid cash money.”

Then Cody chuckled.

“You look as if you consider that to be a harebrained scheme, Miss Nellie Courtright,” he said.

“Of course it's a harebrained scheme,” I said. “Pay fighting Indians to pretend to fight?”

“Yep, and pay sharpshooters to shoot and acrobats to tumble and trick ropers to twirl big loops and cowboys to ride broncs and all the rest of the folderol that goes with a Wild West pageant,” he elaborated.

“This is making me dizzy,” I admitted. “Nobody in their right mind would pay good money to see a place that looks like Rita Blanca. Even Yankees aren't that dumb.”

“Sure they are—as soon as something's ended, people will start
flocking to get at least a glimpse of what it was like before it was over,” Cody said. “It's human nature.”

“I'm a human, and it's not my nature,” I assured him, but even as I said it I knew my remark was partly a lie. Why read Walter Scott if not to catch a glimpse of what life was like in older times—times that were surely gone forever?

Just then Mrs. Karoo began to ring the lunch bell.

“I hope that means there's some grub to be had, somewhere,” Bill said.

He took my hand again and was still holding it when we sidled into Mrs. Karoo's, where he took off his big hat and made his hostess a nice bow. Of course, he was immediately the center of attention, as I suppose he was in just about every gathering he attended. All eyes just naturally seemed to fix themselves on Buffalo Bill, who turned out to possess admirable table manners. He had known Aurel Imlah in former years—the two old buffalo men were soon telling stories about this adventure and that, leaving the rest of us feeling a little left out. The storytelling didn't put much of a break on Bill Cody's appetite—he had two or three helpings of everything and even charmed the two Choctaw girls by saying a word or two in their own language.

Of course, he poured on the charm with Mrs. Karoo, whose cooking he complimented highly, particularly praising the vinegar pie, which he claimed he rarely had a chance to enjoy.

My weakness is men—there it is. My famous susceptibility was just about brimming over by the time we'd finished eating. I would have crawled up on the hayloft with Bill in a minute, but he himself had no such inclination.

“Nellie, what I need's a nap,” he mentioned, as we were leaving the table. I suppose the man's own enthusiasm had temporarily worn him out.

“I have to get back to the telegraph office,” I told him. “You're welcome to nap in my room—I won't be using it for a while.”

His answer was a big, long yawn, followed by a sleepy smile.

I walked him up to my bedroom and even opened the windows for him so he could enjoy a breeze. I suppose I hoped for a kiss, or something, for my trouble, but no kisses were forthcoming. Billy Cody indulged in another mighty yawn and shut the door in my face.

B
EFORE
B
ILL
C
ODY
even woke up from his nap, telegrams had started coming in for him from this general or that. I had nearly a dozen wires stacked up by the time Bill came ambling back down the street. I handed him the telegrams but he refused to take them.

“Maybe I'll read them tomorrow,” he said. “Right now I need to go hire that photographer and get him started.”

“One of these telegrams is from General Crook,” I pointed out. From what I had heard, here and there, General Crook was not someone it was wise to ignore, but Cody ignored him anyway. In no time he had Hungry Billy Wheless out taking pictures of Rita Blanca, such as it was.

By the time I closed the office that afternoon I had received a regular bale of telegrams for Buffalo Bill, but the fellow they were meant for was down the street, supervising the big photography project he had launched into with Billy Wheless.

About half the citizenry of Rita Blanca came out to watch this surprising activity, most of whom seemed to share my opinion that it was a crazy thing for anyone to do. The notion that someone wanted to make a replica of Rita Blanca somewhere far away and expect people to pay cash money for a chance to look at it seemed so far-fetched as to be nearly incredible.

And yet it was happening. Aurel Imlah even consented to let his hide yard be photographed—Mrs. Karoo did the same with her rooming house.

“Doesn't this all seem a little odd?” I asked Aurel, who smiled.

“Life itself is odd, Nellie,” Aurel said, which was about as philosophical as Aurel allowed himself to be.

“I would never bet against Bill Cody, though,” he added. “He's made a go of everything he's tried.”

“I got more than twenty telegrams for him,” I said. “Some of them are from General Crook. Bill won't even read them, which I consider rash.”

“He don't like being bossed,” Aurel said. “Bill's always done pretty much whatever he wanted to do, and so far he's gotten away with it.”

“I think he may offer me a job,” I confessed, a comment to which Aurel Imlah made no reply. If I did accept an offer from Bill Cody it would mean leaving Rita Blanca—I guess Aurel Imlah was the one local I would really miss.

Meanwhile, down the street, Buffalo Bill and Hungry Billy were working their way along, from hovel to hovel. My brother, Jackson, sat on the edge of the gallows, dangling his feet and watching the action, such as it was. Jackson Courtright was the person Bill Cody had traveled all the way to Rita Blanca to interview but so far he had not exchanged more than a few words with Jackson, who, now that Mandy had agreed to marry him, was a deliriously happy man and probably wouldn't have left Rita Blanca even if he had been offered a big wage to do so.

Finally it got too dark to take pictures, though Bill made Billy get a few shots of the wide prairie at dusk. I went down to watch, carrying my sheaf of telegrams, which, once again, Cody refused to consider.

“The good old military can wait,” he said and was maybe even a touch annoyed that I had brought the matter up again. I had never met a more confident man—he was absolutely convinced that once he got his Wild West, as he always referred to it, up and going, thousands and thousands of people would be eager to pay to see fake fights. Time soon proved him right, but I was not that interested in the West, myself. I was a lot more interested in kissing or other fleshly activities, a preference that slightly set me apart from Bill Cody, who was determined to get rich or bust.

Just at dark, as Billy Wheless was packing up his camera and photographic equipment, Bill Cody made another of his sly attempts to slip past me into a saloon—moving rapidly, I handed him off at the door.

“Before you go get drunk I need to get a few things straight with you,” I began.

“I wonder if Sheriff Bunsen would spare me any more of that good
rye whisky,” Billy said, not meeting my eye. “I prefer it without dead flies, but if he doesn't happen to have a clean glass I could probably put up with the flies.”

So once again we angled across the street toward the jail.

“When you rode into this town you acted like you wanted to offer me a job, but that's the last I heard of that,” I told him. “I'm the telegrapher here—if you mean to offer me a job that will take me away, I'd like a chance to train my replacement.”

I had already decided that if Cody meant it about the job, Mandy Williams, my soon-to-be sister-in-law, would be my replacement, but I saw no reason to tell Cody that.

Getting a straight answer out of Bill Cody was not the easiest thing in the world, I can tell you.

“You would harass a man about these business details just when he's needing a drink,” Bill said, with a touch of petulance.

Then he sighed, as if he were the most put-upon man in the world, instead of the most pampered.

“Get me those goddamn telegrams so I can read them before I get drunk,” he told me. “The fact is I'm tired of being a shuttlecock for the military. It's show business for me from now on—but if there should be one more spectacular battle I could help win, it would get such good publicity for the shows that I probably ought to do it. I doubt the Sioux have another big battle in them, but Geronimo's still a menace—I might have to help General Crook try and corner him in Arizona.

“It's iffy, though,” he added. “Suppose we can't corner the old rascal—that could produce bad publicity.”

“You're not answering my question,” I reminded him.

“I do mean to hire you, Nellie,” he told me, with a touch of huff in his voice. “I do, but I need to figure out this military problem first. I'd like to scratch up some good publicity but I also need to figure out this military problem first. I'd like to scratch up some good publicity but I also need to avoid anything that might produce bad publicity.

“There is that problem when you're fighting smart Indians,” he added.

“What problem?”

“Sometimes they win—ask your friend Georgie Custer,” Bill said. “I might bring Geronimo in, but on the other hand, he might bring me in.”

“I doubt there's an Indian who could get the best of you, Bill,” I told him.

Bill Cody smiled.

“Thousands could get the best of me,” he said frankly. “I've been lucky out here on the plains for fifteen years. But it only takes one bullet or one arrow to change all that permanently.

“It's why I want to stop fighting them and start hiring them,” he added. “It makes sense, don't you think?”

“I suppose it does, but it's not very daring,” I told him.

“Who said I was daring? In fact, I'm the soul of caution,” he retorted, before he went into the jail to seek his whiskey.

W
ILLIAM
F
REDERICK
C
ODY
turned out to be no easy man to predict. When he announced that he was coming to Rita Blanca to interview Jackson, I expected him to hire Jackson and attempt to seduce me. Instead he hired me, showed no interest in Jackson, and seduced nobody, although I thought I had made it clear when we kissed that I would not have resisted more serious advances.

After dinner Mrs. Karoo offered him a room for the night but he told her that he had formed the habit of sleeping out, and he did sleep out, over by Mrs. Karoo's cistern.

When I found him in the morning he was sitting on a basket, riffling through the telegrams I had made him take the night before.

“Go here, go there!” he said, sounding annoyed. “Track Crazy Horse, track Sitting Bull. Track the Sioux, track the Cheyenne. Track Geronimo.”

Though clearly vexed by the telegrams, he got a merry twinkle in his eye when he saw me coming—he heaved the sheaf of telegrams over his shoulder into the morning wind, which soon scattered them over a wide stretch of prairie.

“It might be more fun, Miss Courtright, to track you for an hour or two and see where that takes us,” he said. Then he laid me down on the pallet and we kissed more or less to our hearts' content. I say more or less because Bill's kisses, though fairly passionate, were not as passionate as Zenas Clark's had been. My susceptibility was acting up again, and Bill Cody was not unaffected. I could feel his big bullwinkle stiffening up nicely; and yet the man's mind was not really on the matter at hand.

“If it's more privacy you want you could consider tracking me down to Joe Schwartz's hay barn,” I whispered. “Up there we could copulate as much as we please.”

Bill Cody didn't seem to hear me—he had the habit of not hearing things that threatened to distract him from whatever he really felt like thinking about at the time, which in this case wasn't me, although he did free up my bosom and seemed mighty pleased by the heft and haft of my titties.

“Oh, I expect we should save copulation for when we meet in North Platte,” he informed me casually.

“For when we meet in North Platte?” I said—I was more or less stunned. The man had a stiffie the size of a post and he wanted to save copulation until we got to someplace I had never heard of. I wasn't even sure it was a place! And he was idly fondling one of my breasts even as he said it.

“Here's the point, Nellie,” he went on—I don't think he noticed that I was as shocked as I was. “I can't afford to be reckless about the generals, not just yet. Some of them are rich, and even if they ain't, they know rich men—bankers and railroad magnates and press lords and the like. I'm going to need some well-heeled investors if I'm to get my Wild West going, and the generals can lead me to the rich men and persuade them to listen.”