Return of Little Big Man (47 page)

We was in the lobby of the building and surrounded by other Lords as well as the newspaper fellows who followed the Indians whenever they left the encampment, and when this man busts out in a great big haw-haw and repeats Red Shirt’s words in a loud voice, the whole bunch roars with laughter and shouts, “Hear, hear!” And being polite folks, all the Sioux joined in as well though that wouldn’t normally be the kind of joke they could recognize as such.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shipped out for America from the port of Hull in May of ’88 and thank heaven the ocean was not so stormy this time, which the Indians believed was due to our heading home, a more natural thing than going to perform for strangers, though they never regretted doing the latter.

Not being seasick, I could give some attention to that obligation I owed to Wild Bill Hickok’s widow, for here I was, on the same vessel as her daughter Emma, so first time I seen her on deck alone, standing at the rail, looking at that endless expanse of water, something I did myself on occasion, I stepped up and told her I greatly admired her talent on horseback. “I been riding since the age of ten myself,” I says, “but I could never come close to what you do.” She could dance the Virginia Reel on her mount, and make the animal stand up on its hindlegs and bow, all this while riding sidesaddle, which our female riders done in the modest style used for family shows, straddling a horse being considered indecent by many in that time.

Emma was a real nice-looking dark-haired young lady, and always on the lookout for a respectable woman who could put up with me, I regretted she was married, for we had a connection, unbeknownst to her, through my friendship with her late step-dad.

She thanked me now and says she too had got started early, but in her case she had the advantage of having as teacher her Ma, who was a famous circus rider.

“Why,” says I, “she wouldn’t of been Agnes Lake Thatcher? The one what played in
Mazeppa?”

“One and the same,” says Emma, real pleased. “She will be happy to hear that you remember. Did you see a performance?”

“Indeed I did,” I lied. “In St. Louie some years ago. I believe I heard she is retired now and living in Cincinnati.” And when Emma says that was true, I asked, “If I wrote your Ma a letter about how much I admired that play, would you send it along to her with my compliments?”

“That,” says Emma, “would be very thoughtful of you. As a performer yourself”—she believed me a member of the cowboy troupe—“you know how much it means to be remembered.” Then she says why don’t I just write direct, and gives me the address which she knowed by heart and I took down with a pencil stub on my shirt cuff, which was one of them detachable kind, along with collars, so you didn’t have to get the whole shirt washed every week.

Now all I had to do was try to figure out what I owed the Widow Hickok and send it to her.

So that is my account of the first visit to the Old Country by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and also me, except for two more items. The first is that one of them fellows that went to the Prince’s parties asked me if I was related to “that chap George Crabbe.”

I replied in an expression I picked up in England and thought clever at the time, “I haven’t the foggiest,” and said I never kept up with any relatives except one brother and one sister and had regretted that.

Having taken another gulp of champagne and squeezed the ample figure of the girl on his lap, he spouts the following:

“Fled are those times, when, in harmonious strains,

The rustic poet prais’d his native Plains.”

I finally got it out of him that old George, now bygone, had been quite a poet in his day. Sounded like he might of been a cowboy as well. So I might of come from a more distinguished family than I thought.

The other matter is that when we was well out to sea Red Shirt happens to mention to me, sort of by chance, that some of the Sioux had gotten left behind in England.

“Are you sure about that?”

“No,” says he. Indians was never strong on counting and in consequence tended to be cheated by white traders, and especially Government officials, who was geniuses at manipulating numbers.

“I’ll look into it,” I says. Who was responsible for the Indians in our company was always doubtful, so far as I could see. I believe Cody and Salsbury thought it was Red Shirt, but Indians didn’t have a concept of authority like whites: they didn’t tell one another, whoever they were, what to do. So in boarding the ship, they would leave it up to the individual to do it or not. Also they never did anything according to the clock, so some might show up after the ship had sailed. Now you might think I was the one what should of herded them up, but though I have just said that Red Shirt didn’t have the authority a white man would of had in his position, nevertheless I wouldn’t want to usurp it. If this seems a contradiction that’s because you don’t know Indians as well as I did.

Anyway, I took the matter to Nate Salsbury and he did some checking around and come back and said that was right, a half-dozen Sioux couldn’t be found after a thorough search of all decks and even the engine room of the
Persian Monarch.

I went back to Red Shirt and so informed him.

“So I told you,” says he.

“We’re too far across the water by now to turn back.”

“I think they’ll stay over there,” says he. He didn’t show any worry: they was Sioux warriors, with the same high idea of themselves as the Cheyenne. Also, had they not been big hits with the British? Red Shirt said they could go to the big camp, by which he meant London, and be fed at the lodge of the Untamed Society, which is what he called the Savage Club in Lakota.

B
UFFALO BILL RETURNED FROM
England as the “Hero of Two Continents,” so called in the papers, and most everybody in the troupe felt so good about our success in a foreign country that when he said he wanted to open right away at Erastina on Staten Island, they all was real keen to do so except for some of the Sioux who was homesick and went back to the reservation, though more stayed on.

My friend Annie Oakley had left B.B.W.W. after the London engagement and her and Frank went over to Berlin, Germany, where she performed for the German version of the Prince of Wales, namely Crown Prince Wilhelm, the same who later become Kaiser Bill and fought against us in the First World War. But that was in the future. At the time of which I speak, the Butlers come back on their own to the U.S.A. and Annie went on Tony Pastor’s vaudeville circuit, doing her shooting act in various theaters around the East.

All I knowed was that they had fell out with Buffalo Bill, I figured on account of Lillian Smith, though they never said so and I didn’t ask. After that tour Annie even joined the competition, in the form of a rival show run by a fellow name of Comanche Bill and then switched to that managed by Pawnee Bill Lillie, our old friend from B.B.W.W.

Now Pawnee Bill already had a lady sharpshooter, who happened to be his own wife, but the Lillies was shrewd enough to give Annie top billing.

When in New York, Annie and Frank stayed at the apartment they had rented opposite Madison Square Garden, and I visited them there on occasion, as did Mrs. Libbie Custer, though not at the same time, and by my request—which was out of respect for the lady.

Now, as to my plans for getting in touch with Mrs. Agnes Lake Thatcher Hickok, I hadn’t yet done so, for I wanted before making any monetary payment to determine how much cash I had accumulated in the North Platte bank to which a certain portion of my Wild West earnings had been sent from time to time. More of that later. Right now I’m going to get to the subject of a closer connection.

We had been back on Staten Island only a month or so when after one of the daytime shows I was in Cody’s tent, having a drink with him and Arizona John, sitting in a camp chair facing away from the entrance, when behind me comes a voice I recognized immediately but with feelings that couldn’t of been more mixed, so I won’t even try to name them all even if I could, aside from the one that made me want to hide.

“Colonel Cody, I should like to speak to you about an important issue.”

Buffalo Bill lowered the glass and rose to his feet. “By all means, young lady. Please do come in and sit down. Captain?” The last was for me to vacate my chair, for there wasn’t any other except that occupied by the ample rear end of “Major” Burke. “And may I offer you a glass of iced lemonade?”

“Thank you, no, Colonel, but I’ll accept the chair.”

All this while my heart was pounding, and not only in fear. I kept my head lowered as I got up from the canvas chair and moved over to the side of the tent, not holding the seat for her nor even looking in her direction.

I guess she waited till she sat down before saying the next. I wasn’t looking. “Colonel Cody,” she says in that cool voice I remembered so well, though it had now been ten years since I last heard it. “My name is Amanda Teasdale, and I am director of the New York chapter of Friends of the Red Man.”

Cody always put on formal airs when encountering respectable members of the opposite sex, and I expected him now to make the introductions, but he didn’t even introduce Burke, which was considerable relief for me. The stern tone in Amanda’s voice had took him by surprise. Remember, he had just returned from England, where Queen Victoria had fell all over him—by which I don’t mean what Lulu accused him of but rather that Her Majesty had been real flattering.

So all he says was, “Yes, Miss.”

“I don’t know whether you are familiar with our work,” Amanda says.

Cody had recovered to the degree that he could say, “And invaluable work it is.”

“I’m delighted to hear you say that, Colonel. Frankly, I had assumed perhaps unfairly, that you would be hostile to our organization.”

“Young lady,” said Buffalo Bill, now back at full strength, “as I am myself both an admirer of the fair sex, and I expect one of the original best friends of the American or, as our British cousins say, Red Indian, I assure you that the combination of the two names is one to which I pay the greatest honor.”

And Burke, silent until he got the cue from his boss, chimed in with, “Hear, hear,” another expression picked up in England.

“Oh,” Amanda says, “I thought your first claim to fame was as an Indian-killer.”

If when fighting redskins Buffalo Bill was as cool as he showed himself under this kind of fire, he done a good job at it. “Miss,” says he, “with all respect, you may be mistaking me for others. Far from killing our red friends, I give them gainful employment, with higher wages than many white men receive for hard and brutal labor, chopping at a vein of coal a mile under the earth, breathing noxious vapors, or in hazardous employment in some foundry, splashed by molten steel, or in a manufactory—”

At this point Amanda interrupts him. “Please spare me the rhetorical flourishes, Colonel. I of course refer not to your show but to your boastful accounts of killing Yellow Hand.”

“My dear young lady,” Cody says, in just the tone to annoy her, whether he knowed it or not, which is to say a kind of pitying patience, “I was defending myself.
He
was shooting at
me.
”

“Indeed? Yellow Hand had come to seize
your
home?”

John Burke spoke up at this point. Ever the press agent, he says, “Miss Teasdale, I am setting aside a block of tickets for yourself and any number of members of your organization. Lately the delightful term ‘Annie Oakleys’ has been coined for such free passes, taken of course from the name of the little lady who has brought nothing but honor to your sex. Let me explain the derivation of the term—”

“I have just seen the show,” said Amanda. “A large part of it consists of shooting at Indians and having them play dead. It’s the most degrading spectacle I have ever seen.”

Cody spoke in courteous exasperation. “It is not a
show,
miss, but rather an exhibition of great historical and educational value. We have made every effort to be absolutely accurate in our depictions, and we have been rewarded by universal commendation from those who participated in the actual or similar events.”

She spoke sneeringly. “How many Indians have been heard from?”

“You must recognize the name of Sitting Bull,” said Cody. “Once the most implacable foe, he was happy to join our company two years ago and stay an entire season, profiting handsomely in both money and acclaim. A pity he’s not at hand to correct your mistaken impressions. But a number of Sioux remain. You are free to go back to their encampment and speak with them without any supervision from myself. If you are not fluent in Lakota, Captain Jack here will be pleased to interpret.”

So the moment had come. I turned and said, “Good day, Amanda.”

She had started out real comely ten years before and only got better-looking in the interim, rather than the usual reverse, at least in them days when time took its toll quicker, her hair a richer and older gold, her eyes of an intenser blue, her features more clearly defined without getting harsh, and she had filled out some without putting on an ounce in excess. Also she was now real fashionably dressed in the fashion of Mrs. Libbie Custer though in livelier colors, in her case a lavender dress and a fancy hat. You could see why Cody had started off not as glib as usual. I only wondered why he hadn’t stayed that way longer, but as you know, I was always at a disadvantage with that girl.

She now gives me a glance of little regard and asks, “Do I know you?”

“Well, it was some time ago,” I says, “and I—”

“Move out of the shadow, please,” says she, squinting.

So I did as asked, and I took off my hat. “I got more forehead now and also this mustache. Name’s still Jack Crabb.”

“Why, Jack,” says she. “Of course it is.” And she smiles nicely, something I don’t recall seeing her do much if any back then as a real serious young woman, which in fact was my crude fashion of telling a respectable girl from one who wasn’t, if appearances was otherwise deceiving: the former didn’t have much humor, whereas you could always get a laugh out of a harlot.