Return of Little Big Man (62 page)

A
S IT HAPPENED, I
got to Scout’s Rest in Cody’s absence. His mission to Sitting Bull hadn’t been successful, but Bear Coat Miles had quick give him another. Generals from Custer on had a soft spot in their hearts for Buffalo Bill, so it made sense when he was himself promoted to that rank in the Nebraska National Guard, in which capacity Bear Coat sent him to inspect the situation as to the Indians along the borders of his state, after which General Cody had went up to the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation, where some of the Wild West Indians was working as police, and he joined Miles for the surrender of the last band of Sioux regarded as renegades.

So when he finally come home, he had a lot of the latest events to relate, and Sitting Bull’s death was old news. He didn’t show no curiosity as to where I had went when disappearing from the officers’ club at Fort Yates two months earlier, which was typical of his ways. But also typical was his hearty pleasure in seeing me again.

“Well,” I says, “you heard all about how Sitting Bull got killed, but there’s one thing you might not know. That gray horse—”

He lifted his glass high and interrupted me to say, “Let’s drink to the memory of old Bull, who was a fine old fellow. I’m sorry I was prevented from reaching him, but there were political forces at work.”

“He still kept the hat you give him,” I says, “and as for that horse, there’s a story. It seems—”

“I have made arrangements to buy the horse back from the widows,” says Cody, raising his chin so the goatee was pointing at me. “I’ll ride in on him at the beginning of every performance, carrying the Stars and Stripes. What an attraction it will be, not to mention the historical lesson for the children of America.”

So I never did find out if he knowed how the animal had went through its show tricks right during the little civil war the Sioux fought on the Grand River, and I brung the matter up here only to demonstrate again how Buffalo Bill’s mind operated. He would of saved Sitting Bull if he could of, but since he hadn’t, he wasn’t going to waste time in lamentation. Instead he would find a practical use for the horse the Bull left behind and, it should be pointed out, bring some profit to Seen by the Nation and Four Robes. This was Cody at his best, when seeing an advantage for himself also brought one to others. That was as American as you could get.

Unfortunately, however, he could only pull this off in show business. I never knowed another financial venture of his that did not lose money, including the modest amounts I was able to invest in them, so you might well ask why I continued to contribute, especially when he himself done all he could to discourage me, being often full of hot air but never a crook. I’ll tell you why: all of them sounded too good in the planning to fail in reality, the land-development projects, the patent medicines, and all, for other folks was making big money in them days in similar enterprises. Take that pal of his, Doc Powell, what come up with White Beaver’s Cough Cream the Great Lung Healer. He had also concocted a beverage by the name of Panamalt, a healthy substitute for any other kind of drink considered harmful: ladies could use it to wean their drunk husbands off alcohol, which might be wishful thinking, but the idea I thought was a real winner was selling it to the Mormons, who had banned the drinking of coffee.

Another business I was sure could not help succeeding was the hotel and livery Cody started in Sheridan, Wyoming. But all went under sooner or later. Maybe if Bill had been able somehow to apply his genius at make-believe to these ventures they might of done well, but I guess he used that up with the Wild West.

Speaking of which, I’m going to condense the next couple seasons here, for though each had its differences from the others, they was sufficiently similar not to go overly into the details.

We started up in ’91 in Germany, which if you remember is where we left off the previous year, and though there was the now familiar efforts by people of the type Amanda had been to get the Government not to let Cody hire Indians any more, they failed once again, and not only did we have a hundred Sioux in the troupe, a good many of them had been the very Ghost Dancers involved in the troubles in Dakota Territory, only now earning good money by entertaining white people, so Buffalo Bill had made his point once again.

But during the winter when it had looked like there might be a coming season without Indians, Nate Salsbury hired a lot of other horsemen to fill the gap, and all of them stayed with the company, which included cavalrymen from the U.S.A., England, and Germany, Russian Cossacks, gauchos from Argentina,
vaqueros
from Mexico, American cowboys and -girls, and the big band, not to mention all of them in support of the performers, among which could be counted yours truly.

At that time there was around six hundred fifty people with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, and foremost amongst them, still the sweetheart of the public wherever we played, though now no longer the young girl she had once been, was Annie Oakley, one of whose feats, a great favorite of the fellow who put himself at risk, was shooting the ashes off a cigarette being smoked by Kaiser Wilhelm, who she had knowed as Crown Prince when she done the same stunt. (Many years later, at the time of the First World War, she said she regretted not having missed for once and put a bullet through his head.)

And then there was the time when she saved the life of some Bavarian prince about to be run down by a bucking bronco at a practice session he was visiting: she tackled the prince and rolled him out of the way, so still another decoration was added to her trunkful of trophies. However, her and Frank professed to becoming weary of travel and talked of building a house for themselves in a place back home called Nutley, New Jersey, which, though dumb cowboys and such might joke about the name, they claimed was a real nice community and urged me to consider being their neighbor and fellow member of the Nutley Rod and Gun Club amongst other local activities.

I tell you this idea had its appeal for me, could I of afforded it and had I had me a wife, for you don’t undertake that sort of thing by yourself. But my predicament was that knowing Amanda had made it out of the question that I take up with any of the type of women who I could of got, meaning them on my own level. I wasn’t no snob on a social basis. It’s just her combination of good looks, education, personal spunk, and an urge to help people made her stand out in my experience, kind of like what Libbie Bacon might of been if she hadn’t met George Custer. Then again, maybe not.

The point is, I figured I was stuck forever in the type of life I had lived up to now, and it wasn’t bad, being amongst friends white and red, eating regular, making a nice wage, and playing a small part in entertaining the peoples of the world as well as what Buffalo Bill regarded as more important, instructing them in the history of the American West, for Cody greatly loved his country, the only place on the globe where a fellow like him could of done as well, and he appreciated that as did I.

Now let me say something about Germany. Wherever we went in that country, amongst the crowds, adult and children, who hung around our encampment was always a number of officers from the German Army, watching every move of ours in unloading the special train we used, setting up all our tents and tepees, cooking and feeding the troupe, and so on, and first I thought they was fixing to arrest us for not doing things the German way, which tended to be more clean and orderly than any cowboy could understand, not to mention an Indian, but Annie, who always knowed what was going on, explained that the German Army was so impressed by the way things was handled by B.B.W.W. that they was going to copy the procedures for themselves. “If you notice, they’re writing it all down in their notebooks.”

Then we went to Holland and Belgium and across the water to Great Britain again, performing all over the country including Wales and Scotland, where the speech of the local folks was so hard to understand it made the language spoke by the English almost clear.

Speaking of communicating across barriers, one of the most unusual examples of it I ever seen happened in Glasgow that winter, where we give some indoor performances. Cody had went back to North Platte for a couple months to deal with the management of his ranch and to quarrel with his wife, Lulu, and I was relieved he never invited me along for a change, for after the incident with Sitting Bull I was happy to stay amongst foreigners.

Anyhow, Cody’s absence would mean a big loss, for though beginning to turn gray and putting on a paunch, he still participated actively in every performance, recapturing the Deadwood Mail Coach from the Indians, arriving too late to save Custer, and so on, along with the marksmanship exhibition, shooting glass balls from horseback.

A fellow name of Lew Parker, who was booking talent for the show at the time, got the bright idea of hiring a bunch of trained elephants and if that wasn’t enough, he borrowed some members of the black Zulu tribe which that man Stanley, who found Dr. Livingstone in the middle of Africa, had brung on exhibition to Europe.

Now of course it didn’t take no time for the newspaper people to want the two kinds of savages, Zulus and Sioux, to be put together for pictures, and when that happened, and them tall, fit specimens of the African warrior, with headbands, claw necklaces, and lots of blue-black skin met the Indians in their feather bonnets and beads, a Scotch reporter says it was a pity they couldn’t converse together and maybe compare the Zulu victory over the British Army, that Prince Bertie had mentioned previously, with the whipping the Sioux give Custer.

I never cared to make a joke of it, having witnessed the latter, but I thought I’d try something.

I says to Rocky Bear, one of our Lakota, “Why don’t you see if you can talk to these black people in the signs?”

He nodded, eagle feathers waving, and says, “I’ll speak to them.” And he starts to talk in sign language, asking the husky fellow who seemed to be their leader them traditional Indian questions on meeting a stranger: “Where are you going?” and “What do you want?” Followed by “Do you want to eat?”

And by golly if the Zulu didn’t immediately comprehend and signal back reasonable answers, which under the circumstances didn’t need to be literal but just polite acknowledgments, and the two continued to converse for a while not about fighting whites but on such simple topics as the bad weather in Scotland, their children, the kind of meat they preferred, and so on, for the signs wasn’t made for complicated sentiments.

Cody come back in the spring, and the Wild West returned to London where we had not been since the Jubilee year of ’87, and while that excitement could not be repeated the season was greatly successful and Queen Victoria, who was older than ever but still on the throne, invited us to do another command performance at Windsor Castle.

I didn’t look forward to joining the Prince of Wales in his frolics, considering myself too old now for such, but wouldn’t of knowed how to get out of it if asked, for it was Bertie’s country, of which he might at any minute become king, so was relieved when one of his queeries got me aside to say His Royal Highness sent regrets to Captain Crabb but wouldn’t be able to see him this time for reasons of state. And then this fellow, a cheerier sort than most English of the official kind, winks and says to me something about another prince called Hal who become king and couldn’t see a fellow named Falstaff no more. I never understood this reference, but maybe Bertie was expecting too soon to get the crown. His Ma lasted another nine years! By the way, him and me was both the same age, but I don’t know if he ever really settled down after he got the throne, and it probably didn’t matter if he did, the poor fellow having grown so old waiting to become king, he croaked only a few years after he finally got there.

So we had another successful season in England, but by the time the fall come many in the troupe was homesick and welcomed the announcement that B.B.W.W. was heading back to the U.S.A., where we had not performed since ’88. I wasn’t personally thrilled by the prospect of returning, but neither did I want to remain in Europe on my own, maybe hooking up with one of the imitation Western shows, usually down-at-the-heels, which wandered around the Continent, especially Germany, living on Cody’s scraps you might say.

Now here was Buffalo Bill’s plans for the following spring: He was taking the Wild West to the Chicago World’s Fair. I was glad he had found a new place for a spectacle, for nothing bucked him up more. He needed to reclaim his notable get-up-and-go, being in a current down-in-the-mouth state that was unusual for him, maybe because he unaccountably took up teetotaling on his return to England, even refusing a glass at Windsor Castle, and when Arizona John Burke told the press, Bill was commended publicly by the Salvation Army, who of course was fine people, but to be praised by them wasn’t exactly swashbuckling glamour.

I myself, for the reason indicated, wasn’t that keen on going home, much as I admired America over any other country I ever seen regardless of the palaces and castles, on account of it was mine, but at least we wouldn’t be locating at New York, which was the last address I had for Amanda.

I haven’t mentioned yet that she wrote me a couple letters during the first year of the European tour, sending them to “Mr. Jack Crabb, care of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West,” which meant they was delivered quickly to our encampment, no matter the country, for there wasn’t no better-known attraction on earth. It was in the original letter she told me about arriving in New York, and says she missed me, which lifted my heart till I read on and seen that was mainly because there was so much information I could of furnished her, also that without me her lessons in Lakota had not continued.

In the end I felt worse than if I hadn’t heard from her at all, and the reasons for not writing back had multiplied. So all I done by way of answer was to put the money I had borrowed in an envelope addressed to her, along with a note thanking her kindly for the loan. A couple months later she wrote again, acknowledging receipt of the money but chiding me amiably for not writing more of a letter in accompaniment, repeating how useful I could be to her if only by mail, and this time asking a number of specific questions, such as what was the dowry a Hunkpapa girl was expected to bring when she got married, and was there any limit to how many wives a Lakota warrior might have at one time and must they always be sisters?