Buffalo Girls (27 page)

“I wish I hadn't brought it up,” Bartle said. “A whole lot of the populace engages in marriage, though. I'm a member of the populace so I guess I could, too. I just sometimes wonder what it's like.”

“I ain't engaged in it myself, so why pick me to ask?” Calamity said. “Why can't we just sit here and get drunk? Ask Blue about marriage next time you see him. He's probably an expert by now.”

Then she seemed to lose her energy—she had a large face and when it fell into a sad expression there was a lot of sadness at the table.

“You're pesky, Bartle,” she said. “You'd do anything to satisfy your curiosity, wouldn't you?”

Bartle shrugged. He felt rather at fault, without quite understanding where his guilt lay. Calamity cried a few tears, snuffled back the rest, got drunk, and went to sleep. Bartle decided he would pass marriage by as a subject the next time they had a talk.

The great unsettled question, as far as he was concerned, was what to do about suddenly rising expectations of the sort women were prone to. Stop too long with some winsome woman and the next thing you knew you'd be plowing or tending store, or something
else very near the opposite of the life of a free mountain man.

The fact was, there were some very decent women in the world—now and then he would encounter one so decent that she made the thought of taking up the plow look good. It had happened to him often, but something would always finally come up to break the spell. Jim Ragg would get a hankering for the far yonder, or Calamity would, or
he
would; the pangs of longing might travel with him for a while but in time they would subside, lingering only as an occasional mist in his eye.

The troupe was only ten days from departure when Bartle went out for a little hunt in the streets one night and met Pansy. She was not even a redhead; she was a blonde, and so small he could almost have put her in his pocket. Indeed, he had been on the point of passing Pansy by, thinking she was merely a schoolgirl who had lost her way—though there was nothing beseeching in her manner, as there might have been with a lost schoolgirl.

Bartle looked twice, and then again; on the third look he fell in love.

“If you please, I'll be very nice, sir,” Pansy said. Her blue eyes were the biggest thing about Pansy—Bartle could tell that even in the poorly lit street.

Her polite manner touched him; too many women had tongues like sandpaper; very few had ever called him sir. She was neither bragging nor wheedling; she was just politely direct. Someone who would be very nice was exactly what he was wandering around looking for.

“Well, where's your room?” Bartle asked, a bit embarrassed to be discussing such things with someone who looked so young and prim.

“I've no room, sir, I'm poor,” Pansy said. “I wish I had a room but I ain't, yet.”

Bartle was a little shocked; he had yet to encounter a girl who lacked a room, though most were rather poor.

“Where do you sleep, then?” he asked.

“In a doorway, sir, if no one will be kind,” Pansy said.

Something in the girl's manner touched Bartle; she seemed so decent. The whole business made him feel so awkward that for a moment he felt he should just walk away.

“Are you an orphan?” he asked, not sure what prompted him to ask the question. The west was full of orphans; he had been one himself when he went west—his parents had died within a month of each other. Jim Ragg, too, had lost his mother and had no idea where his father might be. Calamity talked of a sister somewhere, but seemed quite vague even on the subject of her sister's name, sometimes calling her Belle, at other times Jane.

If a thinly peopled place like the west was so full of orphans, a great city such as London must have thousands—it was very likely that Pansy was one of the thousands.

“No, sir, I'm from Birmingham,” Pansy said.

“If you ain't an orphan, why ain't you home?” Bartle inquired. “You seem a very nice little miss.”

“I left home because there were so many on the pallet,” Pansy said. “I've been gone awhile now.”

“Oh, well then...” Bartle said, uncertain as to what he should do with this information.

There were several lodging houses in the neighborhood; Bartle had been in some of them and knew that most were grimy and bare. After strolling along with Pansy for a while, he decided he didn't want to take her to a lodging house.

“I'm with the Wild West show,” he said, thinking the news might reassure the girl. “Have you seen a performance yet?”

“Goodness, I guess not,” Pansy said, looking startled. “I have only seen the posters. I am in no position to afford shows.”

They walked awhile, Bartle occasionally stealing glances at her. Of course, she wasn't wealthy, but she seemed very neat. He was accustomed to far more ragged girls. However, she was barefoot, which troubled him—it was chill.

“I hope you're kind, sir,” Pansy said. They had strolled quite a distance and she was beginning to feel worried.

“Look here, you've sirred me enough,” Bartle said. “Just call me by my name—it's Bartle. If you care to sleep in a tent, come with me to the campground. We've only five shows yet to do, but you can see all five—you'll be my guest.”

“It's a good sound tent,” he added, thinking she might have worries on that score.

Pansy Clowes had no worries on that score; the old man seemed nice, on the whole. Old men were usually nicer than young men in her experience.

When they reached the campground the smell of all the animals was rather strong, but the tent was far nicer than she expected. It was nicer, in fact, than the hovel she had left in Birmingham; and the old man was such a kindly sort that he fixed her a bunk of her own.

When Jim Ragg came in from a late-night visit with the beavers, he found a young barefooted English girl asleep on his bunk. Bartle Bone sat watching her, as a father might a child.

“Here, take my bunk tonight,” Bartle whispered. “Little Pansy's all worn out.”

“Why, let the child sleep,” Jim said mildly. “If I'd realized you'd got married I'd have slept in the zoo anyway.”

He took a blanket and went outside, meaning to bed down in a wagon, but Bartle followed him out.

“Her name's Pansy Clowes,” Bartle said, not sure Jim had heard him the first time.

“Oh, that's fine,” Jim said. “You can introduce us tomorrow.”

“I'm feeling peculiar about this,” Bartle admitted.

Jim Ragg was amused. Bartle seemed more than peculiar; he seemed completely rattled.

“I always expected you to marry,” Jim informed him. “I just didn't expect you to marry at such an early age. I thought you'd wait till you were about No Ears's age.”

“I don't expect it's
that
serious,” Bartle said. “I just met the little miss an hour ago.”

Since they were leaving London soon, Jim decided to go
spend a night with the beaver. He walked back to the zoo through the foggy streets, rather amused by the turn things had taken for his old friend. Along with the amusement, he felt a little relieved. Keeping Bartle on the move had become more and more of a strain. Bartle's heart had not been in the search, not for many a year; also, it seemed to Jim that he was showing his age more. Perhaps a settled life with Miss Pansy Clowes would be the best thing for Bartle, after all. He himself could go to Canada and locate beaver; once he got a bunch established in Montana, perhaps Bartle could be some help.

Within a few days everyone in the troupe was remarking on what a good influence the young Birmingham maiden had had on the old mountain man.

“Look at him, he's like a fresh puppy,” Calamity said. “She's just a girl he met in the street at night. She captured him without a struggle.”

No Ears observed the change in Bartle with no surprise. Aging men and young girls were an old story. He had married two young wives himself; although they had soon died he considered it had been an excellent arrangement. After all, anyone was likely to die.

Bartle himself could scarcely believe his good fortune. Even Annie Oakley, known to be stiff with females, liked Pansy and hired her to sew rips in her costumes and keep them neat. Jim Ragg liked her to the extent that he had no objection to her; only Calamity remained skeptical—at times Bartle thought Calamity must be jealous, unlikely as that seemed.

As for relations between Pansy Clowes and Bartle himself, they could not have been better—not in his opinion, at least. She still slipped up and called him sir once in a while, but that was a small error. He discovered that she was not quite so girlish, not quite such of a slip as she had seemed when he first glimpsed her on the street; Pansy had seen a bit of life. But on the whole her decent manners touched Bartle so much that he began to worry about his own deportment a good deal—and his appearance
as well. What if she suddenly left him? He felt he would carry the pang forever if that happened.

The thought worried him so much that he not only changed his buckskins for some that were newer and fresher; he also found a barber and squandered a few days' wages getting properly trimmed.

“What's that smell on you?” Pansy asked pertly, her eyes brightening, when he came rather timidly into the tent after his visit to the barber. Bartle was so taken with the spirited way she said it that he asked her to marry him on the spot.

The wedding took place the day before they sailed for home. Billy Cody took time to come, and so did Sitting Bull, who had taken a liking to Pansy and gave her his autograph several times. Jim Ragg unbent and kissed the bride. Jack Omohundro danced a Texas fandango with her, and the great vaquero Antonio Esquivel twirled his lariat in a tight loop around bride and groom to ensure that they would remain together forever.

The only cloud on the horizon was the absence of Calamity, who was eventually found in jail. She had gotten quite drunk and cussed a sailor; the sailor blackened her eye; Calamity thus fired her pistol at him several times, frightening him badly but otherwise doing him no harm. Later she was found asleep in an alley and taken to jail.

Bartle himself delayed his wedding night long enough to get Calamity out. When he tried to express his disappointment that she had missed the ceremony, Calamity, who looked frightful with her swollen eye, first shook her fist at him, and then began to cry.

“I've retired from going to weddings, I guess,” she said, when she felt better.

N
O
E
ARS FINALLY PERSUADED
S
ITTING
B
ULL AND SEVERAL
of the older Indians to go to the zoo with him so they could take information about some of the unusual animals back to their tribes. No Ears felt strongly that as many tribes as possible should know about such beasts as the great mudpig, the anteater, and the ostrich; also the large cats and the even larger white bear. Even if the people in the tribes never saw a mudpig or the great white bear, the information might still be important. The animals might appear to them in dreams; it was simply good policy to learn as much as possible about such animals and pass the information on.

Sitting Bull became very angry while walking around the zoo. He was very much annoyed that the whites had collected such ugly animals—and not merely ugly—many of the animals were clearly quite dangerous; only people as stupid as the whites could collect such animals and pasture them near their homes.

Sitting Bull took a particular dislike to the warthog—not only was it extremely ugly, it was also quite clearly ferocious. Sitting Bull wanted to go back to camp, get his rifle, and come back and shoot the warthog before it broke loose and began to kill people.

By the time they actually returned to camp, Sitting Bull's anger had increased. He immediately began to try to persuade the young braves to steal some real ammunition from Cody's
wagon and come back to the zoo with him. They would have a fine hunt and rid the world of many dangerous and obnoxious animals. The young braves, who were rather tired of shooting off false bullets in the Wild West show, were perfectly willing to accompany the old chief on a hunt.

No Ears and Two Hawks, a sensible Brule Sioux, tried their best to put a stop to the notion of a hunt in the London zoo. The whites would be very disturbed—it was necessary to point out how outnumbered the Indians were, should war result. Also, there was the ocean to get back across—even if they fought their way out of London, they still didn't know how to run a boat.

Sitting Bull was not convinced. He wanted to go back and shoot the warthog before he started to have bad dreams about it—the great white bear was also worrisome. It was just the kind of animal likely to cause troublesome dreams; he thought they ought to get on their horses, ride through the zoo, and wipe out as many of the bad animals as they could. As for the ocean, it was only a big lake. If they followed its shoreline they would eventually get around it and make their way home.