In Calamity's Wake (13 page)

S
HE TRAVELLED TO
C
OEUR D
'A
LENE IN
I
DAHO
at least twice. She followed the stream of gold miners and lost soldiers, the two hundred men a day who arrived in the mining region in the spring of 1882. She left the railroad with the other women at Rathdrum and took a stagecoach along the Coeur d'Alene River and then from Kingston rode horseback to Jackass.

Hell, she exclaimed. I could have gone to New York and back in the time it took to get to Jackass!

From Jackass Junction she crossed the divide into Beaver and Eagle City. It was in Eagle City that she performed for the first time.

The night began in a long tented barroom. Bloody angels in the snow made clear the sort of crowd she could expect. Whisky was fifteen cents a shot and the shots were passed hand to hand over the heads of the already drunk crowd. The bartender's head glittered
with gold dust from his casual hands pinching the correct amount from miners' pouches and then running his fingers through his hair. Later, he would pan his bathwater. There was an orchestra of four fiddlers dressed in matching plaid suits and black hats and a semicircle of a stage separated from the crowd by calico curtains. The fiddlers played “Life Let Us Cherish,” “Till Death Sounds the Retreat,” “All's Well,” “The Sisters” and other popular songs. The smallest fiddler was struck in the forehead by a flying glass and put down his instrument to appeal to the audience.

LADIES! GENTLEMEN! he cried. We are not tin monkeys before you. We are real entertainers. Show us some respect.

One musician put aside his fiddle and blew a trumpet to announce a change in program. The curtains parted and on the stage stood Martha in woollen pants and a jacket. She had a gun at one hip and a lasso on the other.

Everybody dance! she commanded. The fiddlers began a waltz and the women and men parted into two factions on either side of the room. The pretty girls were soon drawn to the floor by the Beau Brummells. There were far more men than women and so a system of turns was silently established and the women were handed neatly off at musical intervals. Of course this
system was abused and short tempers erupted and fights broke out, though the dancing continued. Blood spatters across the walls were wiped away assiduously by the bouncers. Light from the hanging lamps swung softly over the moving figures.

Jane watched. When the inertia finally set in and the remaining celebrants were quiet, draped over chairs or slumped by the walls, she began a monologue about her life. They listened, through bleeding ears, and watched, through swollen eyelids. She was young and her profile clear-cut, her whole countenance resolute and defiant. She wore lifts that made her tall as an elk. Her hands, spinning the lasso by her feet, or juggling knives to make her point, were so quick they were almost invisible. Impersonating a grizzly bear she growled so effectively the little fiddler and several women in the crowd screamed. She seemed to the unschooled miners, the bullwhackers, the gamblers, and even to the prostitutes, to be a thing beyond Creation—both awesome and bizarre.

She began her speech.

Y
OU MAY
have heard of Old Two-Toes, the grizzly that has haunted the Dakotas for a dozen years. I had heard of her and seen the one survivor of her attacks: a man missing one eye, one cheek, half of his lower jaw and
an arm. This man had to hold his face closed while he drank or chewed. His jaw made a terrible grinding sound whenever he moved it. He told me by Indian signs one night over cards about the attack and how he had seen the paw of the beast descend upon his face, the two claws more than enough to gouge out his eye and leave the wet jelly of it running down his neck.

I pitied this man and bought him his dinner and a night upstairs with a blind girl. But I have never been afraid of beasts, human or otherwise, so when I was asked by a friend to join him fishing in the area I thought of the bear, but only briefly.

My friend Su is a Chinaman. He runs a laundry but he is also an artist who paints images of the Black Hills the way they rise out of smoky mist; his pictures are so lovely they might be the patterns followed by the Creator. He asked me one day to join him on a trip and show him Spearfish Canyon. We were camping out by the water at night, fishing in the morning, and hiking all day. I was good at fishing and Su was a good cook. He treated me as a guide and paid me with liquor and cash. On the third day we spent the better part of the morning practising with longbows.

After hours of target practice, shooting at trees, we set out on a hike. Snow had fallen overnight, and the hunting conditions were perfect because our steps were
muffled. We climbed up, winding our way through the snow clouds. By mid-morning Su had downed a pretty doe. At my friend's insistence we said a brief prayer of thanks for the animal, then dressed it and hung it in a tree, planning to return the next day with help to carry it home.

The sun rose and warmed the hills, the early snow melted, and the woods were fragrant and very damp, making it easy to move along quietly over the soggy ground. We came to the top of the hill and I saw movement in the trees off to my left. At first it was a shadow, too hard to fathom. And then I saw Old Two-Toes facing me. At the sight of me she roared and I felt the air shake. She charged. She closed in on us with great strides. I remember seeing those gleaming eyes, and her high shoulders pumping as she ran. Su was twenty yards up trail, so I ran towards him, screaming, It's a bear, get away! But he was frozen, entranced. I couldn't leave him so I turned and for a minute the bear stopped. We swayed in each other's gaze. What a beautiful, magnificent, adult animal she was. So clean and healthy, maybe four hundred pounds. Clear eyes set in a broad forehead. Big black claws clutching the dirt. She was perfectly made to live in the hills. I thrust my bow at her and yelled at her, For Christ's sake, get out of here!

She lunged at Su, ignoring me and biting him in the face and neck. I could see, and so I could feel, his face ripping. Then I was on the sow's back. I heard her teeth crunching down on Su's head. I took my arrow and I climbed to her head. I heard Su screaming, She's killing me! She's killing me! And then I drove my arrow into her ear, and pounded the end to drive it deep into her brain. She fell on Su and he moaned but he was alive. I rolled the dead bear off of him and carried him all the way down the mountain and draped him over my horse and rode them back to town.

In Deadwood the lady doctor, Dr. Stanford, sewed Su's face back on. I trusted her the most because she had treated me for pneumonia, and because she trusted me with her daughter, sick little Emma, when she had to travel to care for folks. Su's own doctor, an elderly Chinese man who spoke no English, administered acupuncture to help manage the pain and herbs to stave off infection. The two doctors showed appreciation for each other. When Su awoke he assumed he was dead and he apologized to me for devising the trip. It's all right, I said. We're alive. He didn't understand and so I brought him a mirror. He looked at himself a long time and turned his face to see every angle.

I had to kill her, I said. I felt terrible about everything. He nodded and said a short prayer. He thanked
me profusely and sent his attendant to bring me gifts, a painting of an enormous waterfall, a silk jacket and an orange. I had never tasted anything so bright, so much like childish joy.

T
HE AUDIENCE
was silent when she finished. The room had emptied while she spoke. A few sleepers were draped over card tables or collapsed against the walls.

Calamity Jane spun her lasso at her feet and considered what to do.

Come and see me at the Pan-American Exposition, she said at last. Tired, she exited the stage by the side steps, walking through the bar to the door.

T
HERE ARE WOMEN IN RUSTLING ROBES WHO
drive to the Lincoln Park Gateway and view the fair through lorgnettes; and women in short skirts and shirtwaists who come in the trolleys and get much more for their money. There are thoughtful students and giggling girls…. There are brides and grooms who are bored by the crowds, and crowds who are delighted with the brides and grooms. There are strait-laced dames who could not show you the way to the Midway; and tight-laced dames who could not show you the way out of it; and fair American girls who would not know when they were in it; and types from Hawaii and the Orient that make a violent background for American womanhood. There is every type at the Pan-American Exposition that ever was known, and the harmonious blending of them all proves advancement in the material exhibits.

The first type that greets you is the gateman belonging distinctly to the Sphinx species. The second is one of an ambitious squad of boys, who informs you that a daily permit at fifty cents per diem is necessary for your camera. You declare it's an outrage; but you've got the Kodak craze, and deserve to pay. Mentally, you resolve to take all your pictures in one day. Actually, you bring the camera every day of your stay, making daily unsuccessful efforts to evade the squad. This type is the detective in embryo, and closely resembles a small animal known as the ferret.

Having paid for the privilege, the only way to get even with the management is to snapshot everything in the grounds. The first subject that appeals is a little old woman whose face is framed in a sunbonnet, which sunbonnet is framed in beds of tulips and orchids from a Long Island exhibitor's hothouses. The little old gardener tells you her name is Mary, and she lives between the Exposition grounds and the poorhouse, and has one hundred and two plants of her own, which she'll be glad to give you slips of; but things have been running down lately, and the pension's stopped since Johnny died, and Lucy's getting tall and expects to go out in company soon, so she wouldn't like to go to the city to work; and when it come to working in the Exposition or working towards the poorhouse, why,
the fair grounds were like play—specially as she always did love flowers so.

Mary is a common type—but Mary's daughter is commoner.

After Mary and her flowers, one observes the Pan-American small boy—the same that we have always with us, except that he is without restriction, and the air of Buffalo agrees with him. He has a way of cutting across the flowerbeds to shorten distances; and the state police, who overtake him without demolishing the flowerbeds, have a way of propounding the value of tulips and underrating the comforts of the town jail, which the small boy never forgets. These state police are a new type to the New Yorker, who is used to beef and brawn on the force. They are long, lean, muscular fellows with military bearing and uniform and intelligent faces. There are also on the grounds camps of state troops and a small army of attachés for the exhibits in the Army and Navy Building. So the Exposition brassbutton girl is happy and the type she adores gets the adulation on which it thrives. No building at the fair is so popular with the younger women as the Army and Navy Building; and no girl is so envied as she who happens to know an officer, who does the honors in one of those cozy little white tents, with chests containing everything you don't expect.

The building next in popularity to the Army and Navy is the Manufactures and Liberal Arts. Here women predominate, and it is curious to watch the different types of women linger around those features, which would naturally appeal to them…. There are old women and middle-aged women, neat women and shiftless women, thin women and fat women, and they all had housework wrinkles—little creases that settle about the eyes and mouth from little frets and worries. They crushed forward, trampling one another's toes and poking one another's ribs, and their eagerness was of the sort that characterizes a hungry dog's regard for raw meat. I knew it was a household implement before I heard a suave voice say: Ladies, it is so simple a child can use it. Other washers tear the clothes; ours will wash lace curtains without pulling a thread, or cleanse a carpet with ease. You can do a six weeks' wash of an afternoon with our machine, and find it as pleasant as a matinee. Come, madam, let me send you one on trial. You look as if you would appreciate it. The woman addressed was small and wiry, and the housework wrinkles looked as if they were there to stay. Her admiring gaze was lifted from the washing machine to the man's face, as she said earnestly, It looks like it would be such a comfort.

Comfort, madam? Why, our washing machine is
unquestionably the first principle of a happy home. Let me send you one on trial free.

I guess I'll wait, said the little woman timidly.

Never get another chance like this, ma'am.

I'll speak to John about it.

Does John do the washing?

No, she says drearily. He doesn't; doesn't have to pay anything for tubs, either.

Whereupon all the women thereabout, who had been following the colloquy with the keenest interest, looked knowing and appreciative of this vindication of their downtrodden sex, and the crowd dispersed in high good humor.

In the center of the Manufactures Building was a gathering that defied classification. All types of women were huddled together, rich and poor, esthetic and commonplace. It was lunch-time, and they were engaged in the work of managing a free lunch. Women whose diamonds were gems and whose gowns were creations elbowed women who might have been their cooks, to get free biscuits made from the
finest baking-powder on earth
; free pancakes made from the only pancake flour that wouldn't result in sinkers; free soup from the only cans containing real tomatoes; free samples of all the varieties of mustard, jam and pickles; free sandwiches of minced meat; free cheese, preserves,
chow-chow, plum-pudding, clam broth, baked beans and pickled lobster.

A
NOTHER VARIATION
of the schoolmarm type held forth in the Horticulture Building. She occupied a booth decorated with spheres, charts, maps and tracts, and tried to convince Pan-American visitors that the earth's habitable surface is concave instead of convex. The crowd, whose tongues take on a kind of Exposition looseness, chafed her considerably and asked vital questions at the wrong moment, each time necessitating a fresh start. When the young woman at last was permitted to reach the end of her argument—which, fortunately, no one understood—an old lady asked pertinently what difference concavity or convexity would make to the folks living on the Earth, anyway.

It will make this difference, replied the young woman: we can prove that the earth is concave, while Copernicus never proved, but only supposed, the earth to be convex. Now if you start with a supposition, you have no solid foundation for your science, astronomy, religion or the relations of God and man. But if you start with knowledge—

What's knowledge got to do with religion? interrupted the old lady. Didn't the Lord say all you needed was faith?

Oh, faith is all very well, replied the expounder of Koreshanity, but knowledge is better.

Humph! said the old lady. You ain't married, be you?

A
LL OVER
the fair grounds there seemed to be a dozen women to every man. From the Horticulture Building to the Graphic Arts to the Temple of Music, the Ethnology Building, the United States Government Buildings and across the beautiful Esplanade with its flowers and fountains, there were women, women, everywhere—old women in sedan-chairs propelled at fifty cents an hour; tired women in rickshaws pulled by Japs at a dollar an hour; athletic women in calfskin boots at only the cost of leather per hour.

The men, where were they? Packed like sardines in the United States Fisheries Building, grouped in twos and threes and hunches, their backs to the exhibits, telling fish stories.

Don't think much of that line of trout, said a man with chin-whiskers. Why, up near our camp in the Adirondacks, we don't think anything of hauling them in weighing twenty to thirty pounds.

The man with the side-whiskers nodded absently and reckoned the trout on exhibition were as big as most trout grow.

The bass are rather cheap-looking, though, he admitted. We've got an island up in the St. Lawrence, and the bass up there certainly are wonderful! Great big fellows, and so plentiful they rise up in schools and bound over on the island, waiting to be cooked for breakfast.

Yes, assented a clean-shaven boy, who was his son, I've seen 'em come right alongside a brushwood fire outdoors and lie there till they were broiled.

The man with the chin-whiskers looked meditative.

Well, he drawled at length, I'm not much on bass. Angling for trout's the real sport, and the stream near us is just packed with 'em—great speckled beauties; and I never did see fish multiply so. Two years ago I caught a fairly good specimen. Managed to get it in the boat, but the head and tail hung out both ends. It was the end of July then, and we leave up there in September. I knew we couldn't finish eating that fish before we went back home, so what was the use killing it? I resolved to put it back in the stream; but before doing so, I tied a big blue ribbon in its tail. Now, do you know, that fish has grown to the size of a human in two years, and multiplied the trout in that stream by two or three thousand.

He of the side-whiskers stared and his son gasped quickly. But you can't prove all those fish are the result of that same trout?

That's just what I can, said the man with the chin-whiskers, profoundly. Every one of those trout has a blue ribbon tied to his tail.

T
HREE-QUARTERS OF
the people at the Fair had followed the same route. From the Beautiful Orient to the Indian Congress the streets were black with people—whites, blacks, Indians, Mexicans, Hawaiians, Japanese, Americans; all packed so closely together they merged into one composite type, whose chief characteristic was curiosity, whose motive-power was deviltry.

The atmosphere of the Midway is not conventional and a few inhalations produce immediate results, which are, first, a realization that Buffalo is a long way from home; second, a hallucination that nobody one knows will be met in this place, which seems so far removed from America; and third, a conviction that much knowledge may be gained from these representations of foreign countries and not one detail of the outfit should be overlooked.

Lavinia Hart

The Cosmopolitan

September 1901