Little Big Man (55 page)

So though it was unlikely that Custer would ever become my personal hero, I had lost my former desire to do him in. I did not think about him at all, and when, in the summer of 1874 I heard he come back to the plains and led a column into the Black Hills to map that region, it never interested me none.

But as it happened, some scientists he carried along on that expedition found certain deposits in the area, and the journalists got hold of the report and spread it across the country:

GOLD!
The Land of Promise—Stirring
News from the Black
Hills.

The Glittering Treasure Found at Last
A Belt of Gold Territory
Thirty Miles Wide.

The Precious Dust Found in the
Grass under the Horses’ Feet
—Excitement Among
The Troops.

It Can be Reached in Six Days—Expeditions
Forming All Along the Frontier.

The Black Hills had been guaranteed to the Sioux in the treaty of ’68 after they run out the Army and burned down the forts along the Bozeman Trail, and it was a mighty nice piece of property, heavily forested and containing bear and elk.
Pa Sapa
is what the Lakota called it, the “sacred hills,” for the Indians considered as divine any piece of ground that grew so much wood and animals. A white man on finding such a place that held everything he needed would move in and use it to the hilt. But not a redskin; he restrained himself.

I had been there once as a boy. Beforehand, Old Lodge Skins prayed a good deal and had a vision in which we would get six elk, two bear, and twenty-seven tepee poles, so that is exactly what we took from the Black Hills and nothing more, and left its dark-blue forests and silver streams as quiet as we found them. At that time we would not have known what to do with gold if we come across it.

But I had since changed remarkably. So that is why I now proceeded up towards Dakota Territory: I wanted some of that gold. I hadn’t got much of it in the Colorado rush of ’58, but I was white man enough to try again.

I wasn’t trailing Custer no more, nor was I looking for Indians. But I sure found them both.

CHAPTER
24
Caroline

IT WAS THE SPRING
of ’76 when I reached the town of Cheyenne, in southern Wyoming, which was a stop on the Union Pacific and an outfitting place for the Black Hills gold rush.

Owing to the treaty with the Sioux, white men was supposed to keep out of the Hills altogether, no matter what their purpose; and the Army would turn back any expeditions they caught trying to enter. But there was a real difficulty in policing such an expanse of ground with only a few regiments. You might say any would-be miner who was kept away from the diggings by the U.S. Army wasn’t trying. For all they’d do if they found him was to say no. He wasn’t arrested or nothing, and once beyond the next rise, he could circle around the troops and continue towards his original aim.

However, even this much harassing caused popular peevishment back in the settlements. It was like the Colorado rush again: progress versus savagery; the Army should go in and wipe out the Indians rather than prohibit fellow whites from making a pile. For the Sioux had not sat still for the invasion, though they did not start seriously killing right away. They actually turned back some of the early-comers without sending them under, which I think showed remarkable patience.

I had no sooner got to Cheyenne—the Wyoming town, not the tribe; there wasn’t no Human Beings there; if they had been, they would have been shot on sight—than I come across two fellows having a terrific fight on the main street. So, being I never had no business that couldn’t wait, I went to watch them, and who did I make out on the losing end of it but my sister Caroline.

Now that was too much for me, seeing some bastard beat up my sister, though his reasons might have been of the best and though he
was smaller than her, so I was fixing to drop him as soon as they drawed apart a little and I could get in a fair shot. So when he hit Caroline a mighty blow upon the jaw and she chewed dirt, I went for my brand-new Colt’s Peacemaker, but before I could raise it a fellow alongside me in the crowd says: “Well sir, I reckon that proves which is the real one.”

A curious comment and lucky it was, for it kept me from murder. I asks: “Real what?”

“Real Calamity Jane,” says he, then lets out some tobacco juice to fall between his boots. “Them two bitches is fighting over’n it. That there big redhead was claiming the title up at the bar, and then t’other come in and called her and they went for each other.”

I put my gun away and looked at Caroline’s opponent a-standing there with her fists cocked over my sister’s recumbent body, and I saw the ugliest woman in the world, and she was cursing at the moment and I’ll tell you her prowess at that art was such as to make Caroline’s foulest mouth, as I recall it, sound like hymn singing.

Calamity Jane: I had heard the name around but never run into the specimen before. She had a face like a potato and was built sort of dumpy, and when she seen that Caroline was down for good, she prodded her with a boot, spat onto the street, and picking up the sombrero what had fell off in the fight and clapping it back upon her man’s haircut, she swaggered into the saloon.

You remember that time Caroline rescued me from drink by dunking me in a horse trough? Well, she was too big for me to return the favor, so I just filled the crown of my hat with water from the same and flang it into her face. Upon which she woke up, snarling: “Where’s that whore? I’ll kill her!”

I set back upon my heels. I said: “You been whipped, Caroline, and I believe you richly deserved it if you was pretending to be Calamity Jane. What did you want to do that for?”

Well, it took a minute or two for her to gather herself and realize who I was, but she was still too upset to express much affection for her brother, so I helped her up and she was all right though bruised and with a purplish eye and a cut lip and a bald patch where some of her hair had been tore out at the roots and the lobe of her one ear had been bit almost clear through. But I found a Doc and he dosed some liniment on her and it looked like she would live, so we went to a restaurant and she eat a steak as big as my back and about five pound of potatoes fried in grease.

“Now,” says I as she was subsequently picking her back teeth—most of the front ones was missing—“now,” I says, “you want to talk about it?”

“Well,” says Caroline, “if you was any kind of brother, you’d go and shoot that bitch.”

“Maybe I will,” I says, “if I could know what she done to you other than whip you in a fair fight though smaller and with a shorter reach.”

“I ain’t in condition a-tall, Jack,” Caroline says, pouring some coffee down her hatch. “I’m feeling real poorly, and ’spect to die.”

Now you can’t take a person serious on that subject when you just seen her devour an enormous hunk of steer.

But Caroline went on: “I don’t mean sick of body, but of soul.”

She takes another drink of coffee and wipes her mouth on her shirt sleeve. “I reckon a person of your cold temperament would find it hard to understand how another might die of love, Jack, but I’ll thank you not to sneer at it.”

Instead of replying to that, I says: “Caroline, what ever became of your intended, Frank Delight? I recall you was supposed to get hitched to him back in ’67.”

“Well I never,” says she, “if I correctly remember the man after all these years. You mean that honky-tonker who followed the U.P.? He turned out real bad, Jack. I believe that was when you run off and left your defenseless sister all alone, and this Frank, if that was his name, soon as you was gone, he made lewd and unseemly advances towards me and I had to cold-cock him myself, seeing I never had no brother to protect me. Where’d you go?” she asks, and then adds: “Major North told me you showed the yellow streak at that fight with the Indians and turned tail and run away.”

Caroline was one of them people who utter three failures of judgment for every two words they speak, and by trying to correct them, you only succeed in presenting further occasion on which to exercise their vice, so I kept my remarks to the minimum.

“So after that,” says she, “I couldn’t very well stay around the U.P., so I went to Californy and Oregon and Arizona and Santy Fee and Texas, I been to Texas a couple times, and Virginia City, and Ioway. I been many places, Jack, and done more than a few things, but I have kept out of the gutter.”

“But,” I says, “what is this stuff about Calamity Jane? I understand you was pretending to be her.”

Caroline gets a sheepish look and wipes her mouth again, all the way to the nose, upon the cuff of her man’s checked shirt.

“Because,” I goes on, “if that other was the real Calam, she’s sure ugly and fairly foul-mouthed, and I don’t believe there is many men who find such a person attractive. As for fighting, I wouldn’t think women was supposed to be good at it.”

Caroline was kind of sneery at my innocence. “You’d be surprised,” she says, “at how many fellows find a fighting gal mighty to their taste. I have had a good many admirers every place I have went, including, if you’d like to know, Mr. Wild Bill Hickok, of who I reckon you have heerd, only that whore you mention tried to steal him away from me. Now I’ll tell you, what people recall about her is that name, it ain’t her personal self, and ‘Calamity’ ain’t her real name nohow, which is Jane Canary, but just let a bunch in some saloon hear ‘Calam,’ and they don’t care who it is, they’ll joke you and buy you drinks and you are real popular. I’ve had some hard luck in my time, Jack, and I don’t mind being the center of a bunch of fun-loving fellows.”

There was something real pathetic about Caroline. But I knowed what she meant about names: it was certainly true. Take me, and look at the colorful, dangerous life I have led in participating in some of the most remarkable events of the history of this country. I’ll wager to say you never heard of me before now. Then think of Wild Bill Hickok, George Armstrong Custer, Wyatt Earp—names is what they had. Wild Jack Crabb, Crabb’s Last Stand—it just don’t sound the same.

But of course right at that moment I wasn’t thinking of that, but rather about my erstwhile acquaintance Hickok, a remarkable coincidence.

“Wild Bill?” says I. “He is here in Cheyenne?” For I had not seen him since K.C. though having heard much of his renown in the years intervening.

But while she showed no particular sign on her own mention of the name, as soon as I said it Caroline commenced to sniffle and sob and abuse that man and I couldn’t get no more out of her that was coherent on the subject, and did not understand the situation until the next day as I was walking down the main street of Cheyenne, who should step out of a drygoods store but Hickok himself.

He had put on a few pounds since I seen him last and was getting jowly; still wore his hair long, and was attired in his fancy town clothes of frock coat and all. He carried several boxes, of course under his left arm, and his eyes, which had seemed to get smaller owing to the fatness of his face, flickered up one side of the street and down the next.

I says, slow and easy: “Hiya, Bill. Remember me?”

He give me an equally slow once-over. I reckon he knowed me well enough right off, but had to check first as to whether I was about to pull a hideout weapon on him.

Then he says: “How are you, hoss? Still playing poker?”

I says not as much as in the old days, for I was fixing to go for gold.

So was he, he says, and instantly suggested that maybe we could go together. So we went to a saloon to drink on it, and that was when he says: “But first I am getting married.”

Now, I realized that it was not to Caroline, and that was her trouble.

“To Calamity Jane?” I asks.

Hickok looked at me real funny. “Some people say,” he allowed, “that Jane and I are already man and wife and had a baby daughter. But not,” he added, “to my face.”

I note this part of the conversation for what it is worth in historical interest.

“No,” says he. “I am getting married to Mrs. Agnes Lake Thatcher, who is the widow of the celebrated showman William Lake Thatcher, now deceased. Agnes was formerly an equestrienne with the circus, riding standing up on the bare back of a white horse, prettiest thing you ever saw. A remarkable woman, hoss. I saw her perform some years ago in the state of New York, when I was traveling with my own show.”

Now that was a phase of Hickok’s career of which I had not heard.

“Oh yes,” he says. “It was at Niagara Falls. I had a herd of buffalo, a cinnamon bear, and a band of Comanches. But the animals got loose and charged the audience, and the Indians had a real hunt on their hands before things settled down. It was a mess and I had to sell the buffalo to get fare back home.”

“Speaking of Indians,” I says, “I understand the Sioux don’t like miners going into the Black Hills.”

Bill disposed of that with a wave of his left hand. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “The Army’s going out to round them up.”

“The miners?” I asks.

He looks impatient. “No, the Indians. You can’t stop white men from going where they will. I happen to have heard,” he said in a low voice, “that Grant sent out a secret order to the Army not to stop any more miners from entering the Hills. Instead, they are mounting a campaign against the hostiles in the Powder River country.”

Mention of the Powder River give me an unpleasant feeling, which I don’t believe I must explain if you have listened to my many references to that favorite area of Old Lodge Skins’s.

“Led by George Armstrong Custer, no doubt,” I says.

Hickok replies: “You are out of touch, hoss. Don’t you know about the Congressional hearings?”

Well, I did not, being only a now-and-again reader of the newspapers, and considering politics to be a marvelous bore. It was only by accident that in later years I saw that notice about Amelia’s husband.