The Long Journey Home

by Don Coldsmith

Away from the arena, with the inebriated Bear’s Hand snoring comfortably on a pile of folded tarps, the two men had a chance to talk.

  “It’s gotten worse since you heard, I guess,” Beasley explained.

  A young Indian girl, daughter of Dick White Calf, had walked too close to the animal cages of the Sarrasani Circus, and was mauled by a tiger.

  “Just flesh wounds,” Beasley explained. “I wrote Joe Miller about it. I sent the girl to the hospital. Damn! We didn’t need this. The Indians are sort of sulkin’ anyway. Glad you’re here, Buffalo. Mebbe you can make ’em understand.”

  It was an uncomfortable position for John. Taking sides in the growing discontent would be disastrous. He spent the rest of the day talking to the Oglalas, and he and Beasley sat down late that night to discuss the situation.

  “It’s not that they don’t understand, Wayne,” he noted. “They’d just like to either be treated better, or go home.”

  “But I treat ’em good.”

  “I know you do. They know that, too. But the German border guards, when you’ve made some of the short trips—they sort of look down on our Indians.”

  “Hell, I know that!” Beasley sputtered. “That riles me, too. But I can’t do anything about an uppity border guard or two!”

  “I know. But you’re white. The border guards are white. The Oglalas need somebody to be mad at.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Just respect, I guess. Some left, I heard … . Went home.”

  “Yeah … Broke their contracts. So, no pay comin’.”

  John shook his head.

  “Did they understand that?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Okay. Let me talk to them some more.”

  It was much as he had thought, but there was still a lot of unrest. The daughter of White Calf was doing well, but that seemed to be only a small part of the problem. A faction among the Oglalas seemed determined to cause trouble. In talking to Dick White Calf, John learned that some of the troublemakers understood their contracts all too well.

  “There’s a morals clause,” Dick told him. “No drinkin’ allowed. So, some figure, if they get drunk, Beasley will have to send ’em home.”

  It was apparent that a few of the disgruntled Oglalas were using this strategy. To make matters worse, the German circus fans, fascinated by the Indian troupe, were eager to supply them with all the alcohol they could consume.

  “Oglalas and schnapps is a bad combination,” observed Beasley.

  John agreed. “But,” he reminded, “you can’t fire them, because that tells all the rest that it’s the quickest way home. You don’t want that.”

  “We sure don’t.”

  “Well, most of ‘em are pretty sensible, Wayne. I’ll hand out these medals made out of Iron Tail’s nickels, tell ’em he sends his greetings.”

  “He’s on the U.S. tour?”

  “Yes. Doing fine, I guess. I’ll tell ’em about that. They’ll trust Iron Tail.”

  By the time Zack Miller arrived in Dresden in September to see how the Oglalas were faring, the situation had improved considerably. All three Miller brothers had attended the August bankruptcy sale of the Buffalo Bill show in Denver. They bought most of the arena stock, wardrobe, electrical lighting plant, and “considerable other stuff,” Zack related.

  “I tell you, boys, it was a sad day,” he told John and Beasley. “A sorry thing to watch such a finish for a grand old outfit like Buffalo Bill’s.”

  “Sure musta been,” Beasley agreed. “You still shippin’ cattle?”

  “Yeah. Ten thousand from Florida just before I came over. So … Buffalo, you think our Oglalas here can finish the season?”

  “I think maybe so, sir. Things are some better now.”

  “Looks like it to me,” added Beasley. “John’s been a help.”

  “Good work, boys!” Miller nodded. “We’re thinkin’ about a South American tour this winter. You interested?”

  “Depends,” said Beasley. “Who’s goin?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.” Miller chuckled. “Just thought I’d mention it. We can talk about it when we get home. A lot of our equipment needs repair, including some of the Buffalo Bill stuff, but we’ll have enough to put a show on the road. Some pretty good new performers, too, from the Buffalo Bill outfit.”

  Much of the equipment and canvas was shipped to New Jersey for repair and storage. Meanwhile, Edward Arlington was busy booking the South American tour: Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro …

  FORTY-TWO

  On November 1st, John found himself aboard the S.S. Varsara, bound for Argentina. Around the Millers, things seemed to happen very quickly.

  He was uneasy. It should have been a good feeling, heading toward a winter season in a warm climate. The arena director would be Vern Tantlinger, the respected 101 showman. Headliners were the cream of the crop, restless after the season’s close, and glad to stay busy. Pickett, Lulu Parr, Milt Hinkle and his cowgirl wife, Iona, Mabel Kline, Ed Bowman, Chet Byers, Hank Durnell, rodeo clown Billy Lorette with his trained mules. Some of the top performers from the “Two Bills” show, now dispersed, had also signed on for the winter season, along with a number of the Indians. That was one of the reasons for John Buffalo’s presence with the troupe.

  “You can do double duty,” Joe Miller joked. “Help with the horses and look after our Indians.”

  It was said in an offhand, joking manner, but John knew that it was sincere. That was indicated by the size of his pay envelope. There had been a substantial raise after his help with Beasley’s Oglalas in the Dresden circus.

  But, from the time he first laid eyes on the Varsara, standing at the pier in Brooklyn, he had felt that something was wrong.

  “Its spirit is not right,” said one of the Indian women, as the water lapped gently on the hull.

  “You are not accustomed to water travel, Mother,” he told her jokingly, in her own tongue. “Our people did well in Germany last summer, no?”

  She gave him a sharp look.

  “Some of them, yes. But I am not talking of that. This boat smells of trouble … . Bad spirits. I have spoken.”

  She turned her back to him and walked away.

  John had dealt with this lack of communication between the two cultures since his first day in old White Horse’s classroom at the reservation school. The white man had tried to ridicule the Lakota belief that the world is peopled with spirits, good and bad, which can help or hurt one’s life. Somehow, it seemed to offend the white man’s ideas of God. John had never really understood how or why, but he had learned quickly not to talk about it. When he did, he’d usually had his knuckles rapped with White Horse’s ruler. It was easier for an Indian student to pretend that he did not hear, see, and feel the presence of the spirits in his life. It kept the whites with whom he worked or studied more comfortable, and avoided a lot of controversy. Many of the Indians that he knew admitted that they no longer followed the old ways. However, he had never heard one say that he did not believe the old ways.

  John himself felt caught in the middle of this dilemma. Among whites, it was easier to follow their ways of thinking. At least, to pretend to. It avoided argument, and allowed things to run more smoothly. He could trade the resulting success for the slight, uneasy feeling of guilt that he sometimes felt for having partially abandoned the old ways.

  Just now, standing at the rail of the Varsara, watching the white curl of foam that blossomed on each side of her bow, he was worried. He had tried to brush aside the reaction of the old woman, but he could not. He felt very strongly that she was right. He had tried to stifle such feelings, but even before she had spoken, he knew. The spirit was bad. There was a feel—almost a smell—of tragedy. Now there was the guilt of participating in this venture, which he now felt as a threat to his people and his friends.

  Someone moved along the rail and stopped near him in the twilight. He recognized Bill Pickett. The two exchanged nods and were silent for a few
moments.

  Pickett spoke first, quietly.

  “You feel it too, John?”

  “What?”

  “You feel it … . The bad-luck ship.”

  This time it was a statement, not a question.

  “Well, I … Some of the Oglalas have a bad feeling.”

  “Yep. They got a feel for it.”

  John was silent for a moment. He knew that Pickett, like everyone else, had his own private beliefs. “Superstitions,” many whites would call them. No matter that in the background of a great many people, possibly all people, are the customs of previous lifetimes. In Pickett’s case, several different cultures. For several generations, there had been intermixing of white, Cherokee, and Negro blood in Cherokee country. Pickett had the heritage of all three. Would this dilute his feel for the spirit, John wondered, or enhance and strengthen it? He’d never heard Pickett discuss it. The bulldogger had mentioned a feeling of doom before his nearly fatal experience in the Mexico City bullring, but John felt that this was something else.

  “I’m glad I sent Spradley back to Oklahoma,” Pickett remarked absently.

  “You sent your horse home?” John asked.

  “Yep … Didn’t want him on this ship. It smells of death.”

  Then Pickett turned and strolled away.

  Perhaps the first sign of catastrophe was the weather. The sea became rough, the ship tossing on the crest of the waves and then dropping into the wallowing trough of the next. Everyone became seasick. Certain that he was to die, Bill Pickett said later that the only thing that saved him was to think constantly about his family back in Oklahoma, where his wife, Maggie, waited for his return.

  John himself was queasy and vomited over the rail a time or two, but escaped the worse of the symptoms by staying on deck when he could, to breathe the fresh air.

  Even so, there was one incident which was unnerving yet, in an odd way, reassuring. He was in his bunk, sleeping restlessly, when he awoke in the night. Someone was standing beside him, dimly outlined by feeble light from the ship’s electric lanterns. It was a female figure, so hazy and indistinct that he did not recognize her until she spoke.

  “It’s okay, John. Everything will be okay … .”

  “Hebbie! What are you doin’ here?”

  He sat bolt upright, his heart pounding, as the figure faded and disappeared.

  “Shut up, John,” said one of the other supine figures in the bunk room. “You’re dreamin’.”

  He lay back down, but could not sleep. He had to admit it was possible that it had been a dream. This in turn confused him further, because in the tradition of his people, a vision may occur asleep or awake. Is there really any difference?

  He rose and went on deck, where he stood for a long time, watching the writhing horizon line, where the dark sky met the dark sea. Despite the shock, the heartrending disappointment, he felt a calm, an assurance. It will be okay … .

  But what will? What was the nature of this vision? He tried to be objective, to understand what had just happened to him. Suddenly it came to him what he was doing. He was behaving like a white man, trying to dissect and examine and interpret, instead of merely accepting the event as it happened. Hebbie had come to reassure him … . From where, how, or why was unimportant. It had happened. He had regained some of his confidence, though his stomach still protested at the abuse. But he knew that in the end, it would indeed “be okay.”

  It was not many days before the next wave of misfortune struck. Someone on the deck told him that the Indians needed him. Some of them were sick.

  “Yes, I know,” he said. “I talked to them. They’re not used to ocean travel.”

  “No, not that, John. Somethin’ else. They want to talk to you.”

  Probably need a little reassurance, he thought. The weather had actually moderated a little, and John had no inkling of the seriousness of the situation as he went below. At the doorway of the Oglalas’ quarters, he paused. There was an appearance of tragedy on the faces that met him and, in some cases, accusation, as if he had somehow betrayed them. His most shocking impression, however, was the odor of the place. It was not merely the smell of unwashed bodies in close quarters. That was to be expected in such a situation. This was a malevolent stench of sickness and disease. He had smelled that same stench before, but it took him a moment to remember where. He had been quite small, but that is the way with smell. A whiff of a long-forgotten scent, good or bad, stirs primitive memory like none other of the senses. Through smell, even an old person can be transported instantly to memories of childhood, good or bad.

  In this case, it was bad. He had been no more than five summers when the people in the lodge next to Yellow Bull’s had fallen ill. John had not thought of it for years. Some of that family had died, and Little Bull had been taken to the white man’s doctor at the Agency. All who lived near those with the poch—the spotted sickness—had been protected against it with the white doctor’s medicine. Little Bull—now John Buffalo—still had a scar on his left shoulder to show for it.

  Now, after all these years, these memories came flooding back. He felt the revulsion, the dread that he had seen in the faces of his parents then. It was now his own, and enough to inspire terror in the present situation. Here they were, in mid-ocean, with no way to escape the lurking killer … . Smallpox.

  The Oglalas had concealed their problem. Many of those on board had, like John himself, been vaccinated. But, there were a few others who had not. Six or eight were sick, some dangerously so. In addition, when John approached the ship’s doctor, he learned that one of the whites, Hank Durnell, the trick roper, was also sick.

  “There is no treatment except time,” the doctor explained. “We are not even equipped to vaccinate to protect the healthy. A ship like this is limited in what we can carry. We can expect some deaths.”

  Four of the Indian performers did die and were buried at sea, to the great concern of their friends and relatives. The songs of mourning echoed from the afterdeck for three days, and then the Oglalas settled back into private mourning.

  Hank Durnell was carried on deck for fresh air by his friends. He begged and pleaded that they throw him overboard to end his suffering. Of course they refused, and Hank recovered, scarred but alive.

  The S.S. Varsara docked at Buenos Aires nearly a month after her nightmarish journey began in New York. Edward Arlington, accustomed to dealing with foreign officials, had scheduled the entire tour. He now took over the questionable and risky part of the disembarking. Incoming ships were subject to health inspection for the very reasons that the Varsara’s passengers were now in trouble. But usually, it was merely a formality. Arlington greased a couple of official palms with cash and smuggled his now-recovering smallpox survivors ashore. They had managed to avoid a quarantine for smallpox, which would have destroyed their tour schedule.

  But there was one more surprise. An officious-looking man in a government uniform arrived and introduced himself as a livestock inspector. He must examine the horses of the troupe for disease. None would be allowed ashore until he and his two assistants had completed their work.

  Arlington offered a bribe, which was received congenially.

  “But you realize, señor, that I must still perform the inspection, no?”

  Grudgingly, Arlington agreed.

  “It will not take long,” the inspector promised.

  It did not. In a very short time, the official and his two assistants reappeared, their faces long and sober.

  “Señor,” he told Arlington, “I am sorrowed to tell you this, but your horses are infected.”

  “Infected? What is this? They want more money?” sputtered Vern Tantlinger, the ringmaster.

  “No, señor,” said the inspector. “I wish it were so. But some of your animals are diseased. ‘Glanders,’ it is called in your country. They must be destroyed, and the carcasses burned.”

  Arlington heaved a deep sigh. “Very well …”

  “How many?” dem
anded Tantlinger.

  The inspector looked at him sympathetically. “You do not understand, señor. This is a highly infectious disease. It is necessary to eliminate all possibility of contagion. All of your horses and mules must be confiscated and burned.”

  Members of the troupe were gathering, sensing that something big was happening.

  “My trained mule?” sputtered Billy Lorette, the rodeo clown.

  “The tour’s over,” someone muttered.

  “Shore glad I sent Spradley home,” muttered Bill Pickett as he turned away.

  The Hundred and One troupe stood helplessly as their show animals were led away by military personnel. Down the gangplank, along the wharf and away from the shore, to an isolated area out of sight. They winced at each volley of shots.

  A few of the performers felt called upon to follow the dozens of doomed animals to the scene of destruction. They must make sure that there was no skulduggery in process, no confiscation for personal profit.

  Apparently, there was not. It was a legitimate quarantine and preventive measure. As they turned back toward the ship, greasy black smoke rose in a funeral pall over the death scene.

  The death ship had done its evil work.

  FORTY-THREE

  “This ain’t over,” insisted Vern Tantlinger.

  “What can we do?” asked someone helplessly.

  “Look,” said Vern, “what would you do if your horse broke a leg?”

  “Get another’n.”

  “Sure. How’s this any different?”

  “He’s right,” said Edward Arlington. “I’ll authorize purchase of replacement animals. I suppose there are horses available?”

  “Oh, sí, señor!” assured one of the inspector’s assistants. “We can help you.”