by Judy Alter
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life,
for which the first was made
—Robert Browning,
"Rabbi Ben Ezra"
The words mock me. I never really had a vision of growing old alongside Autie. Oh, when I was young, I thought nothing could part us. But I remember the time he watched an old lady on the streets of New York and then teasingly wondered aloud how I would look when I was old. When I turned the question on him, he replied that he would never grow old. It came to be something we both believed.
It has been fifty-six years since the battle—the Custer massacre some called it at first, though I was never sure if it was because Autie was massacred or because they were assigning him the blame for it. In these long years I've seen Autie's reputation come and go, sometimes a hero, sometimes a spoiled, petulant, self-centered glory-seeker. And I've never said what I know to be true—that he was all those things.
Oh, at first everybody blamed Autie for that tragic day at the Little Bighorn. Crook and Terry got together and accused him of disobeying orders, attacking in a foolhardy manner, rushing in where he should have been cautious and studied. He was, they said, desperate to wipe out the humiliation President Grant had dealt him. But Autie was never humiliated by Grant's strange treatment that last spring in Washington; he was only puzzled. Crook and Terry were desperate not to be blamed, and Autie, being dead and silent, was an easy scapegoat. It made me furious, for they knew as well as I that whatever else Autie was, he was a great cavalryman and a great leader of men. After Bighorn there was no one left who knew how to fight the Indians.
The people knew, people who loved Autie and saw him as a hero. They raised money for his family, they put up statues in his honor and painted thousands of pictures of the battle—most of them atrocities—and they showered me with love, for the sake of the man I'd been married to. Autie had captured their imaginations in the Civil War, and he stayed larger than life in the public eye. Newspapermen loved to write about him, and magazine editors loved to use his own writing. In death Autie went from fame to legend... and I saw to it that the legend lived.
My life's work has been to defend and glorify Autie, and I admit that I have written of only one side of him and of our marriage. The dark side of Autie remains my secret, while the larger-than-life Autie has always been my subject.
Why did Autie die? In all that I've written and said, I have held my opinion. But I believe he died because Custer's Luck ran out... and because Benteen and Reno failed him, though they, too, were quick to accuse the dead. And because no one—not Crook, not Terry, not even Little Phil Sheridan—listened to Autie when he explained how desperate the Sioux were. Yes, I blame Autie's death on all those others... but I know that Autie was sometimes foolhardy and that he trusted too much in his luck... and that he never intended to grow old.
What, I have wondered, would my life have been like if Autie and I had grown old together? In a strange way, independence has forced me to grow. I went as a girl from my father's house to Autie's arms, never knowing I could take care of myself. Now I've had fifty-six years to take care of myself, and I've done things that I never would have done if I'd spent my life as Autie's wife. I've become a person in my own right, proud of my accomplishments and the recognition I've earned.
I never knew I could write, though I was always Autie's sounding board. Once General Sherman told Autie that he wrote so well, many people believed I did his writing for him and let Autie take the credit. Autie responded, "Then I should get credit for my selection of a wife." In truth, Autie's writing lacked discipline, as he filled page after page with his rapid handwriting. My writing is slow, careful, and deliberate. But I would never have written three books had Autie lived.
Who knows? There might have been other Monahsetahs. Autie and I might easily have lost the magic between us, even come to hate each other, for when love so strong sours, it can be nothing less intense than hate. Sometimes, secretly, I have thought it fitting and right that Autie died young, even though I have railed against his fate... and mine.
Many asked why I did not marry again. The truth is that I met no one I wanted to marry. I would rather have been married to Autie for twelve years than to most ordinary men for six times twelve years. But I would not trade my own life of late for those twelve years. I would not, could not, go back to being the person I was. I have come too far, grown too much, to let myself ever again be swept from a horse's back, or be called "old lady," or be fooled by an Indian woman with a red-haired baby.
But oh, how I have wished all these years for the joy of life with Autie.
The End
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Page forward for an excerpt from
SUNDANCE, BUTCH AND ME
Real Women of the American West
Book Two
~
"A realistic portrayal of historic events that
touches the imagination and stirs the spirit."
~The Literary Times
Excerpt from
Sundance Butch and Me
Real Women of the American West
Book Two
by
Judy Alter
Award-winning Author
No one knows where I came from—some say Wyoming, but most think it's Texas. I used to hear rumors that I was a teacher, even a Sunday school teacher, or that I was the runaway daughter of a rich cattle baron. Some say I died last year, struck by an automobile in El Paso. Others still believe I died in that hail of gunfire in Bolivia, when Butch and Sundance were supposed to have been killed. I once heard that I died of appendicitis in a Denver hospital. But none of it is true. I am here in Fort Worth, Texas, living as Eunice Gray and running the Waco Hotel. Still, everyone remembers Etta Place... and whispers follow me to this day.
Just yesterday I met that talkative cattle buyer, Luke Moriarity, on the street. He had with him his son, a child of five or six perhaps—who am I to judge the age of children?—and he poked and prodded the child to speak politely to me. Finally the little one said, "Good morning, Mrs. Gray," and I smiled and said, "Good morning."
But Moriarity must believe deafness comes with age, for as I turned away I clearly heard him tell the child, "Always remember, son, that you've said good morning to Etta Place."
"Who's that?" the boy asked.
"Never mind," replied his father. "Someday I'll tell you the story."
Well, I don't want to wait for someday. I want to tell the story now, tell that I didn't die in El Paso or Bolivia or Denver, tell that I was believed to be Mrs. Harry Longabaugh and still have the wedding photograph to prove it. And perhaps most of all I want to tell where I came from and what happened that could make me live outside the law. To my mind, loving a man isn't enough reason for some of the things that I did when I was young and wild.
Sundance, Butch and Me
Real Women of the American West
Book Two
by
Judy Alter
~
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Sundance, Butch and Me
from your favorite eBook Retailer,
visit Judy Alter's eBook Discovery Author Page
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Judy Alter retired director of Texas Christian University Press, and began
a new career writing mysteries. The first, Skeleton in a Dead Space, was published in September 2011 and the second, No Neighborhood for Old Women, in April 2012. More are to come. Alter previously wrote about women of the American West and is a former president of the Western Writers of America. In 1984 her book Luke and the Van Zandt County War was named best juvenile novel of the year by the Texas Institute of Letters. In 1988 she received a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for her novel Mattie, and in 1992 a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame for her short story, "Fool Girl." In 2005 she received the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement from Western Writers of America.
Judy Alter lives with her two dogs in Fort Worth, Texas. She is the single mother of four and the grandmother of seven.
Table of Contents
Cover
Author's Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
A Note from the Publisher
Excerpt from SUNDANCE, BUTCH AND ME (Real Women of the American West, Book 2)
Meet the Author
