Cherokee Rose

by Judy Alter

  The horse was a palomino gelding with a luxurious white mane and tail. The colonel had bought him, he told me, from a small show that went bankrupt in one of the towns we passed through on the way to New York. He was called Blaze, because he had a blaze on his forehead, but I elected to call him Guthrie.

  "Guthrie? That's a city," the colonel said in disgust.

  "Now it's a horse, too," I replied. "Why didn't you tell me about him when you got him?"

  "Couldn't predict what you'd do," he said with a grin. "Just thought I'd wait till we were here and you had the dust of the Garden in your nostrils."

  Rose had been unpredictable that way, and I guessed the colonel was confusing me with her—or taking my identification with her one step too far. But I vowed right then that top billing wouldn't go to my head, making me difficult. Without another word to the colonel, I began to saddle Guthrie for our first practice session.

  "Who knows what commands he's used to?" I asked.

  The colonel shrugged, and I nearly threw the saddle at him. I had twenty-four hours to figure out how to make Guthrie bow!

  Somehow, between us, with some help from Billy, I figured how to make him rear on his hind legs and bow, and he was so well trained that when he saw me about to mount, he knelt down. Same thing if I swung a leg over to dismount. And so, if I never became a trick rider, I did become a star.

  The colonel announced that the day before the show started, we would parade through the city—"just like the circus," he said—to drum up interest in the performances. We lined up at eleven in the morning, me on Governor, Carmelita on a chestnut horse from the colonel's general stock, Billy on his beloved Lucy's Luck. The band marched in front, blaring out patriotic songs, and the colonel rode just behind them, waving his white Stetson at all who stopped to look.

  I wasn't the kid from the ranch anymore, or so I thought. I'd been to Oklahoma City and St. Louis, been to the convent, been off the farm as they say—and yet New York fascinated me. Streetcars and paved streets and electric lights were nothing new to me, but the people of New York—it seemed to me that in Guthrie or Oklahoma City the people all looked alike, most of the men like Papa, the women like Louise. Here, I saw men in tall hats and black suits, carrying canes, sometimes wearing white gloves, and then men in shapeless baggy coats and pants with hungry eyes and lean faces, women who wore scarves over their heads even though the weather was still fairly mild, and elegantly dressed women who clung to the arm of some man or another. One old woman ran in terror as she saw us approach—probably from Russia, where horses meant armies and trouble for many people, the colonel told me. I was horrified.

  The babble of a thousand voices seemed to surround me. Men pushed carts through the streets, selling everything from apples to sausages, children shouted, sometimes in play and sometimes offering everything from newspapers to shoe shines, and policemen blew on whistles.

  Children were everywhere, dirty, shabby, sometimes almost furtive looking, always alone or in groups but rarely with parents.

  "Where are these children's families?" I asked the colonel later. "No one seems to care about them."

  "Street children," he said. "Some are orphans, others are just neglected. Watch yourself around them—they'll pick a pocket before you know it."

  I'd always thought myself poor in comparison to others my age, poor in emotional terms if not actually poverty-stricken. I remembered my envy of the convent girls who came from big houses in the city and had fathers who worked in offices and mothers who were cheerful and happy. But the street children of New York opened my eyes to an entirely different kind of poor.

  "Can they come to the show?" I asked the colonel.

  "Of course not," he said shortly. "They'd rob the patrons blind."

  One little girl, about five, stood solemnly at the curb, watching us ride by. Her dress was too big and ragged, though one or two patches indicated someone had done their best. She followed the parade with round emotionless eyes that betrayed neither jealousy nor fear. When I waved, she raised a tentative hand in a half gesture, as though afraid to call attention to herself by waving, and yet I had the sense she desperately wanted to make contact.

  I guided Governor up to her, half wondering if she would run, but she stood her ground. "What's your name?"

  "Sonya," she said, and when I asked her last name, repeated, "Sonya. Just Sonya."

  I fished a dollar bill from my pocket and leaned down to hand it to her. Wordlessly, she grabbed it, wrapped a tiny fist around it, and disappeared into the crowd.

  Sonya haunted me for a long time.

  Just before we circled back to the Garden, our parade met a funeral cortege coming toward us. The horse-drawn carriage bearing the casket was followed by four smaller carriages, each with the curtains drawn and a black ribbon on the door handle. The people all hidden, there was a sense of impersonality about the procession, no hint of who had died—young? old? peacefully? suddenly?—and no glimpse of the mourning family.

  But the colonel called a halt and spoke quickly to the band, who struck up a solemn version of "Nearer My God to Thee," while we stood still in respect, the men's hats across their chests.

  The story made the newspapers the next day, and the colonel gloated over the publicity.

  * * *

  Even though we were by far a lesser attraction than the annual horse show, our first performance was a smashing success, from the grand entry right through to the finale. Guthrie was the highlight, even though we were in the ring the shortest time of any act. He was such a magnificent animal, and his tricks looked so effortless—someone had put years into training that horse!—that the audience went wild. And I, of course, bowed and waved like a star.

  But the whole show was our very best. Six thousand New York City folk were wowed by the things that most western folk took for granted—bronc riding, roping, and the like. Of course, they were at the horse show to see fancy Thoroughbred horses walk around the arena, and when the folks in the audience rode—if they did—they rode English style, sedately, in Central Park. None of them rode a horse to work, let alone a bucking bronc, or ever held a rope in their hands with a reluctant steer on the other end, or even got anywhere near a steer until it was cooked and served on a platter. We showed them the things they didn't see every day, and they loved it.

  Governor performed perfectly. I felt guilty when the thought crossed my mind that he was an even better roping horse than Sam.

  "He's yours," Billy said to me after the first show.

  "Mine? Billy, I can't afford to buy him. I'll just ride him till Sam's leg is healed."

  "I'm givin' him to you," Billy said softly. "Consider it thanking your pa, who gave me a job when I needed it." Then he grinned at me, laughter lighting his eyes as he slanted his head toward me. "Or consider it a gift to one of the prettiest girls and best ropers I ever knew."

  "Billy... I—"

  He shook his head. "Don't say it, Tommy Jo. It wouldn't ever work between us. We gotta be friends. You're gonna meet someone real soon. Feel it in my bones."

  "Maybe I don't want to," I said belligerently.

  "You do," he said quietly, "you do."

  And Billy was right. I did want to meet someone, and it happened pretty soon.

  Meantime, Billy and I were friends, but to my disgust he was fascinated with Carmelita. She didn't ride in the first three shows, sending word by me to the colonel that she was "indisposed."

  "Indisposed!" he fumed. "She better get 'disposed' pretty quick, or she'll find herself out of a job. Stranded in New York, that's what. I don't need a sickly Spanish bull rider."

  It took a lot of tongue-biting to keep from telling him that she wasn't Spanish, she wasn't a bull rider, she wouldn't be stranded in New York but just happy to be home, and finally, I suspected she was more frightened than indisposed.

  "Carmelita," I said sternly that night, "you've simply got to tell the truth. Obviously you can't ride a bull." Actually, I hadn't even heard of many me
n riding a bull, but the colonel swore it would make a great exhibition event. I thought it was a dangerous idea to begin with.

  Carmelita and I weren't ideally matched to share a room, for I was impatient with her deception and angry that she and I didn't get along one quarter as well as Rose and I had. Carmelita, on the other hand, was probably incensed at what she saw as my interference and impatient with my lecturing.

  This time she turned from the mirror, where she was carefully applying rouge to her cheeks—something so far from my experience that I watched with fascination. "Cherokee, as soon as I feel well, I can ride the bull." She persisted in addressing me in her fake Spanish accent, trying to fool both of us, but I knew it was a ruse, and she knew I knew. That made her even haughtier.

  I threw my hands up in the air and told the whole story to Billy the next day. If I'd expected him to be alarmed, I was disappointed. He laughed—not his usual slight grin, but an out-and-out loud laugh.

  "Billy, it's serious," I said.

  "You're right, Tommy Jo, it's real serious," he said, still chuckling, "but it isn't our problem. It's Carmelita's. I sure wouldn't want to be in her shoes—or on her bull." And he was off chuckling again.

  I stalked off, still uncertain what to do.

  Carmelita appeared for the matinee the third day we performed. During our practice session that morning, the colonel had been gone for a long time, and I thought he'd probably stormed over to the boardinghouse to give her what for. Whatever it was, a subdued Carmelita, dressed in a red ruffled shirt and matching split skirt, rode in the grand entry that day—on a calm and fairly well-behaved horse, though, not a bull. She looked dramatic, the red brilliant against her dark hair, but I thought the bull might have a different idea about dramatic.

  When it came time for her act, I made it a point to be mounted on Governor at the edge of the arena, and I noticed that Billy, for all his laughter about Carmelita, was mounted and in the ring. The bull was snubbed to a post in the center of the arena and attended by several of the colonel's cowboys, who held him still until Carmelita could mount.

  As she sashayed—there is no other word for it—across the dirt toward him, the bull's nostrils flared and he pawed the ground with one forefoot. A bad sign, I thought, but no one else seemed to pay any attention, except Billy, who nodded imperceptibly to me.

  The crowd held its collective breath while she mounted. The bull, having little choice in the matter, was still, except for those nostrils, which still flared. Then, in a flash, the men melted away and the bull was free of the post. He ran a few steps, jumped straight into the air, twisting as he came down, and Carmelita flew from his back, landing in the dirt to lie still like a deflated red balloon. The crowd gasped as the bull stared at her, nostrils still flaring and that front foot pawing the earth impatiently. It seemed obvious he was about to charge an unconscious Carmelita.

  Two of the men on foot in the arena ran toward Carmelita, waving their hands and shouting to scare the bull away, but they were plainly scared themselves and ready to run.

  Bulls are unpredictable, and this huge animal—probably two thousand pounds—suddenly decided to visit the band, instead of charging Carmelita. The music came to an abrupt halt as the band members scattered. Without stopping a moment to think, I spurred Governor, building a loop as I raced across the arena. Vaguely I was aware of gasps from the crowd and, even fainter, the plaintive notes of a horn, warbling alone without any other instruments behind it. I threw my rope at the bull, remembering in an odd flash the last time I'd roped a bull and how it had been the cause of my being sent to the convent. This time, when the loop settled around the bull's neck, he stopped stock still, as though surprised. He was within a few feet of the horn player, but that solo music never wavered. Governor stopped and began to back up, pulling the rope tight, and I began to breathe again.

  The horn was still playing. When the cowboys had taken control of the bull and I'd caught my breath, I looked up to see the band coming back, one by one, to take their places and join the horn player. But he stood where he'd always been, only a few feet from where I'd stopped the bull. I'd never seen him before, I was sure, but I was aware as I sat there that he was staring at me, even while playing. He came to the end of a bar, put down the horn with a flourish, and bowed, tipping his Stetson in a broad gesture—not to the audience, but to me.

  There was nothing polite I could do, of course, but dismount and, leading Governor, go over to congratulate him on his bravery.

  My congratulations didn't come out as smoothly as I'd have liked. "Why'd you do a fool thing like that?" I asked. The minute I said it, I could have bit my tongue in half. If he stomped away, it'd serve me right.

  Instead, he grinned, not Billy's shy little half-grin but a wide smile that dimpled his cheeks and crinkled his eyes with laughter. They were brown eyes, deep, deep brown, under thick eyebrows. Above them was a high forehead—intelligence?—and curly hair so brown, it looked like chocolate and so curly it would have looked like a rag mop if it weren't cut close to his head.

  "I thought it added to the show," he said. "Nice musical background for your roping. Congratulations on a good job."

  There! He'd said what I should have! "Thanks," I mumbled. "It was—wasn't anything. I can rope pretty good." Why didn't I go ahead and tell him I admired his nerve?

  "Yeah," he agreed, "you can. I been watching you. Where'd you learn to rope like a man?"

  I stiffened. "Oklahoma," I said shortly. "My father runs a ranch, and Billy, uh Will, worked for him. Between them they taught me to rope." Then belatedly, I asked, "Where'd you learn to play the horn?"

  "Here and there," he said. Then, turning, he said, "See you around. Name's Buck—Buck Dowling." And he was gone, leaving me standing there.

  "Wait," I called, "you don't even know my name."

  "Oh yes, I do, Cherokee," he said over his shoulder and kept walking.

  Buck Dowling was the hero, and Carmelita was in disgrace. By the time I got back to my room that night, she was packed and gone.

  "Never had ridden a bronc," the colonel fumed the next day. "Flat lied to me, she did. Should have had you riding that animal, Cherokee."

  "No, thanks," I said, though I'd ridden enough raw horses in my day that I'd have had a lot better luck than Carmelita. I never did tell the colonel she lived in New York and simply wanted a way home, but Billy and I laughed over that again and wondered if she was happily settled in Brooklyn.

  "It was a steer," Billy said to me quietly.

  "A steer? Of course not. The colonel billed it as a bull, and there's an obvious difference," I retorted.

  "Did you look?" he asked with a grin.

  "No, of course I didn't look!"

  "Neither did anyone else, and half of New York wouldn't know the difference anyway. It was a steer. The colonel wouldn't take a chance putting a bull out there with a slip of a girl."

  I pondered that for a minute. "Would he have let you ride a bull?" I asked.

  "Might have," Billy said, "but I'm too smart for that."

  * * *

  I didn't see Buck Dowling at all for days, except during performances, when he was in the band and I was riding, and I confess to a certain curiosity, disappointment even. When I was in the arena, I could hardly stare at him—roping and riding took every bit of my attention. Yet I thought I felt him watching me, in a way that was different from spectators who watched.

  I'd about decided that I was imagining an interest on his part that didn't exist when I met him at the train after the performance one night. It was my habit to check on Sam while everyone else was cleaning up from the performance and getting ready for the next day.

  "Walk with you?" Buck asked.

  Startled, I managed to mumble, "Sure. Just going to check on my horse."

  "I know. I've seen you each night. Don't you know that it's not safe for a girl to be wandering around New York alone at night?"

  "I'm not wandering! I'm going to the train, and there's a
watchman there, and then I'm going to walk to my boardinghouse with several people."

  "No," he said, "I'll walk you there tonight."

  He didn't ask, he just assumed, and that made me angry. "Sorry. The others will be waiting for me. They do every night."

  Nothing seemed to faze him. "Well, I'll just walk with all of you then."

  When I raised Sam's leg to look at his injury, Buck proved to be knowledgeable about horses, recognizing the torn tendon, guessing at the age of the wound, and suggesting that the present lack of swelling was a good sign. "Never can tell if he'll be good as new or not," he said.

  "He's going back to Oklahoma to rest," I said. "Bo, a friend, will take care of him."

  Patting Sam's neck and then running his hand along his back and onto his hindquarters, Buck walked around my horse, inspecting as if he were thinking of buying. "He's a good sound horse," he finally said.

  "What would a musician know about horses?" I asked, laughing.

  "I grew up on a ranch in southern California," he said quietly. "Been riding since I was three. I'd just rather play my horn now than try my luck on a bronc, but I still do a little of that, too."

  "You're a cowboy?" I said in surprise. "I thought that getup was, well, you know—for show."

  "This?" He looked down at his fringed suit of brown denim, with a holster at his hips. "This is for show! I'd never dress this way, 'cept this is how the colonel wants the band to look. I've got no choice."

  "You talk like you've been to school," I said as we walked back to the Garden after giving Sam an extra ration of oats.

  "Have been. Four years of college. My pa wants me to be a lawyer, but I just don't feel the calling."

  Four years of college probably made him twenty-two or -three, at least five years older than me. What, I wondered, would Papa say about Buck? And then I wondered why that thought had even entered my mind.

  True to his word, Buck walked me back to the boardinghouse, joining Mrs. Miller and Belle and several of the others. Though I stiffened in anticipation, no one sang out, "Tommy Jo has a boyfriend," or, "Look who's walking Tommy Jo home!" They seemed to accept Buck without question, and he chatted happily with Mrs. Miller about the show. So much so that I wanted to remind him sharply just who it was he was walking home.