Return of Little Big Man (44 page)

“Aw, Bill,” I says, “I’m a redblooded American and don’t bow down to no foreign thrones, or however it goes. Ain’t you got nobody with better manners? Annie, for example.”

“Missy has enough to do with her performance,” says he, “and so do Little California, Emma Lake, and the other riders. As to the cowboys, they are all pretty crude.” He said that to butter me up. “Besides,” and here he raised his goatee as if in pious thought, “I don’t know how close we should let our ladies come to His Royal Highness.”

We had already heard of the Prince’s rep concerning the fair sex. “Annie’s got Frank to look after her,” I says. “And Lillian’s married now too.”

Cody pours me another drink of Scotch whiskey, having exhausted the American stock as shipboard medicine for seasickness. At first it tasted bad enough to be used for a tonic, but it would warm you against the English weather, which had been rainy every day since we set foot in the country, shades of our time in New Orleans, though here the rainfall if not as forceful was even more persistent. “I don’t believe that makes much difference, Jack. He’ll be the next king of England, and we’re in his country and in fact need his patronage. I believe all purposes are best served by having somebody like yourself act as his escort and my personal representative. After all, you’ve been with the company since the outset and can explain every aspect of the exhibition, and you can interpret if he wants to meet the Indians, which I am told he very much looks forward to doing.”

Before royalty went anywhere, I soon found out, a lot of flunkies got everything arranged in advance: where they will get out of their carriages, where they will walk and sit (and relieve themselves, which can’t be anyplace near where normal people do), and what to say when they talk to you, for you was supposed to wait till that happened and not start palavering on your own. Cody told me all of this, but I proceeded to forget most of it, being indignant that while it was true England was the Prince’s country, we was his guests and ought to be protected against making mistakes by the natural laws of hospitality, which I tell you Indians sure observed if you went to their camps.

But before I get to my time with the Prince I want to speak of another concern. Cody had mentioned an Emma Lake as being amongst the female trick riders in our company, of which there was ten or twelve. There was too many people now in the Wild West for me to know them all or have occasion to recognize their names, and I hadn’t ever heard this one before. It rung a distant bell, though it might not of done so in any other association, for “Lake” was not that unusual a name, but put it with professional performance of horsemanship...

I told Cody I would do my best to show the Prince around but not to expect me to remember every nicety asked for by these foreigners, and he says he had every confidence in me.

Then I asks, “Who is this Emma Lake, Bill?”

“The Champion Equestrienne of the World, Jack. She has appeared in Barnum’s Circus. Of course we’re billing her not with the name of Lake or her married name of Robinson but rather as Emma Hickok, daughter of my late friend, Wild Bill.”

“You’re just making that up?”

He winked. “Not exactly. Not long before he was assassinated, Bill Hickok married a former circus owner, herself a renowned equestrienne name of Agnes Thatcher, who before she married Mr. Thatcher had a husband named Lake and a daughter by him named Emma.”

“She’s Wild Bill’s stepdaughter?”

Cody winks again. “Not to the letter of the law, but you can appreciate that she
could have
been.”

This news hit me totally by surprise. I hadn’t knowed Mrs. Agnes Lake Thatcher Hickok had ever had any offspring, let alone what had followed her Ma into trick riding, but then I never went out of my way to find out a whole lot about Wild Bill’s widow on account of losing that money he had entrusted me to give her in case of his death. That had happened so long ago now it was easy to avoid the subject in the forefront of my mind, but it was sure in the back of it somewhere. After bartending in Tombstone and then working with B.B.W.W. I had accumulated another of the little nest eggs I saved up at various points in my life, with that persistent idea of going into business for myself with a Western show of my own, like a number of fellows had done with a certain success though nowhere near Cody’s, for example, G. W. Lillie, who had been our Pawnee interpreter for a season or two, as usual acquiring a nickname, in his case “Pawnee Bill,” but most didn’t get far because, as I thought at the time, they didn’t have no famous performers. I on the other hand being so close to the Butlers was sure I could induce Annie to join my show, for she had begun to sour on Cody after he hired Lillian Smith and them female riders like Emma Lake Hickok. Annie was a sweet person except when she had competition, particularly of her own same sex.

However, the arrival of this Emma reminded me of that long-standing debt. I never counted the wad of money Wild Bill give me, and didn’t have no idea how much it amounted to. I might put together another roll that was around the size and weight of the first, insofar as I could remember them, but of what denominations? Then too, I got to thinking: it had been a dozen years since Bill Hickok’s death. Hanging around Cody and Nate Salsbury, as I done in my spare time to pick up as much as I could of what I understood least, namely the commercial side of show business, I was aware that money don’t sit still over the years, or it shouldn’t. It ought to grow, at least getting interest in a savings bank. So I undoubtedly owed more to his widow than Wild Bill give me in ’76, however much that was.

More of this subject later on, though, for the job of guiding the Prince of Wales around the Wild West took all my attention at the moment, so I’ll tell you about it.

I expected him to show up with more than just himself, for a person in his position travels with servants to open doors and take away his hat and coat, pass him a clean snot rag every time he blows his honker, etc., but I wasn’t prepared for a quarter mile of carriages bringing along his Mrs. and three little kids, all four of which was princesses; his brother-in-law, also a prince but of Denmark and not England (which I wouldn’t of thought was allowed); and a number of other people wearing silk hats and having titles from all over the place, including I believe France, along with a set of flunkies for each titled person, so the party filled so much of our grandstand it could of been a regular performance.

Cody of course was first to meet them, sweeping off that extra-large sombrero he wore for the occasion and bowing till his goatee almost touched the ground, which was a kind of compromise between the greeting that a member of the Royal Family had coming, but which us Americans, who normally don’t bow down to foreign sovereigns, didn’t like to give, so Buffalo Bill done what he otherwise delivered from horseback to the entire audience at the beginning of each show.

I’ll tell you them people couldn’t of been nicer, beginning with the Prince himself, who was a great big heavy fellow with a neatly trimmed beard and wearing regular gentleman’s clothes, high hat and tailcoat and all, and not the robe trimmed with snow weasel and the jeweled crown I expected, as the Indians sure did, or anyway some fancy outfit signifying his position.

He was however the largest in his party, and he was quite a bit older than I thought somebody still a prince would be. Fact is, he should long since of been king had not his Ma lived so long, so that by the time he finally got the throne from her, not till ’01, he had only seven years of life left for himself. Now the old woman could of retired any time before this, but the talk was she wouldn’t do so on account of she never believed he had the right stuff for a monarch, having spent most of his life eating and drinking and frequenting females in the carnal fashion.

But I ask what else was there to do when you were waiting to become king? For that matter, I never saw exactly what there was for an English monarch to do even when on the throne once George III had lost America, after which I understand he went nuts, but that might not of been true, for the same Limey what told me that said George happened to be a German. You heard as many tall stories in Europe as you did in the saloons out West.

Cody as usual introduced me by my phony rank, so when me and the Prince sat down side by side in the royal box all decorated with bunting and crossed flags signifying the brotherhood of nations—the big fellow wanted me right at his elbow so everybody else was shooed away—he asks me what regiment I was captain in and if I fought against the Red Indians.

Now here was my chance finally to tell somebody of what I had kept quiet about for a dozen years now, namely my presence at the real Last Stand as opposed to the representation thereof in the show before him, but I was cautious even though he was an Englishman who would probably believe anything.

So I begun by just saying, “Well, Royal Highness, I have spent quite a bit of time with Indians both for and against, you might say, and been associated with the U.S. Cavalry in more than one capacity.”

Before I got any further the show started with the music of the Cowboy Band and the march of the whole company around the area, led by Cody on his white horse, followed by the various contingents, quite a colorful occasion, and the Prince was real interested in everything but especially the Indians in their full regalia, every Sioux wearing a full warbonnet, and the lady sharpshooters and trick riders.

Of the former he says, “Splendid chaps, what? One wonders how they would match up against our Zulu. We had our own Little Bighorn, do you know? only three years after yours.”

Ignorant as I was, I knowed the Zulus was colored, but that was all. According to the Prince, they wiped out a British force somewhere in Africa with a name I can’t pronounce—it’s got “sandle” in it—and then descended on a smaller group of English soldiers at a place called Rorke’s Drift, who fought so hard that the thousands of Zulus finally stopped and admitted the English was brave and left without rubbing all of them out. Most of the survivors got the medal named for the person he referred to as “Her Majesty.”

Without thinking, I asks, “Would that be your own Ma?” Then I seen the surprised look on his face and corrected myself. “I mean, your mother, begging your pardon.”

I tell you when a fellow of his girth makes a hearty laugh, it is impressive, and before he was done one of his arse-kissers come along, I guess concerned the Prince might of been choking, but he waved him off and told me, still chuckling, “Right you are. She’s my Ma. And once upon a time I was her papoose.” He starts laughing again.

“Yes, sir,” I says. “You’ll undoubtedly hear a lot of other dumb stuff from me, so I’ll beg your pardon in advance. I never tried to talk to a prince before. I hope you don’t still chop off people’s heads.”

He winked and leaned close to me. “I’ll send the headsman away on condition that you introduce me to some of your crumpet.”

It took me a while to figure out what he meant, for at that time I wasn’t yet aware of how the English call women by the names of pastry, like “tart” for a harlot, but I was helped by the fact that Lillian Smith had just passed by in the march of performers and in fact looked our way with a flirty flutter of her eyelashes, and now come the lady riders, headed by none other than the newest one, Emma Lake Hickok, who on passing the royal box made her horse rear up and dance a few steps on his hind legs. She was a nice-looking girl, fortunately not resembling that picture of her Ma in Wild Bill’s possession.

“The only thing is, Your Royal Highness, all the ones I know is married.”

“Isn’t everybody?” says he. His wife was a real attractive lady, and he had them nice little daughters too, but they was all seated some distance away and I never seen him talk to any of them or look in their direction all day.

“Well, sir, you’re the Prince of Wales and this is your country, but these girls got their American husbands along, who are cowboys.”

“Indeed,” the Prince says, “and they all carry six-shooters, so I had better mind my manners? And no doubt the redskin squaws are defended by their braves with tomahawks and scalping knives.”

I realized he was having a lot of fun, saying these words. So when there was a minute between the various acts I would teach him some more from the Western lingo like “vamoose” and “hightailing” and “hawgleg” for a gun, and how the Indian name for Buffalo Bill, as well as Custer before him, was Long Hair, and in fact I went further, him being a Prince and such a nice fellow: I told him that name was
Hi-es-tzie
in the Cheyenne language and
Pahaska
in Sioux. “Now when you meet the Indians later on, you say that to them and they will be flattered.”

“Why,” says he, in as close as an Englishman can come to talking normal, though I knew he was joking, “I’ll be right proud to, ole hoss!”

“Not bad, R.H.,” I says, having gotten tired of giving the whole title every time I addressed him. “And here’s one which will give them Lakotas a laugh coming from you: their word for whites is
wasichu.
Now what that means is, ‘they won’t go away.’” He sure enjoyed that.

The Prince had a lot of questions beside what I volunteered. He already knowed far more of historical information about the U.S.A. than I did. All I could tell him was what a foreigner titled or not wouldn’t easily learn, as neither would some American who never had my experiences. But I still never got around to mentioning how I survived the Little Bighorn fight, though he was real interested in that subject, especially when the imitation version started, beginning with the Cowboy Band blaring out with “Garryowen.”

“Tell me, Jack,” he asks, dropping the “Captain” after I abbreviated his own title to initials, “why are they playing that Irish air?”

“It was General Custer’s lucky song,” I told him.

“His luck changed, then?”

“I guess you could say that. But ‘Garryowen’ wasn’t played at the Little Bighorn. He left the band back at the fort, along with the sabers and Gatling guns.”

The Prince frowned in interest and pointed his beard at me. “You know a great deal about the subject.”