Cherokee Rose

by Judy Alter

  I laughed aloud and went to tell the colonel, but he was too distracted to be amused.

  She tagged along through the inspector's tour of the animal quarters, too, lifting her long skirt to keep the hem out of the muck and wrinkling her nose as though the good barn smells offended her. I followed at a respectful distance, and once when she turned to look at me, I smiled and said "Good evening," but she just turned away without a word. I thought she was probably the world's unhappiest woman ever.

  The inspector reported to the judge that the animals were well treated and he saw no cruelty, so the judge refused to sign a restraining order and the show went on. But the publicity had hurt us, and the crowds were a little lighter than we would have liked. We left Cleveland a day early.

  * * *

  It was after the Cleveland show that Bonnie Adams came to me about Belle. Belle with the dark hair and wide eyes decided she had a crush on Buck, and she was none too subtle about it. "Buck, will you carry my saddle?"

  "Buck, are these chaps too long?"

  "Buck, be sure to play your best for me when I'm racing tonight." Sometimes when she said these things, she'd lay a light hand on his arm, or she'd look at him a minute and then cut her eyes away flirtatiously. Once I saw her leg brush his as she walked by him, and then she said with exaggerated politeness, "Oh! Pardon me, Buck."

  Buck was only human. He was flattered by her attention and angry when I teased him about it. "Buck," I said in a syrupy-sweet voice, "be sure to play your best—"

  "Cherokee, she's just being friendly."

  "Friendly?" I hooted. "Buck Dowling, you are not that naive. She's got a crush on you, and she's doing everything she can to make something happen between you two."

  "That's not true, Cherokee. She's a friend of yours, and none of these girls would do anything like that."

  In truth, Belle was not a friend of mine. I hardly knew her, and liked her less than any of the other girls. Dixie Bell was the only other girl who was married, and the two of us were a little apart from the girls who roomed together and shared secrets late at night. Still, I felt close to them, and sometimes we all went in a bunch to eat dinner—on those nights, Buck would go out with the cowboys, and both of us liked those evenings apart.

  "Makes coming back to you even better, Cherokee," he said one night. "I like missing you."

  "And besides," I giggled, "we can trade gossip."

  "Not funny," he said. "Were you polite to Belle?"

  I'd taken supper at the boardinghouse where most of the girls were staying in St. Paul, Minnesota, while we were there for a week. "I didn't have to be. She wasn't there."

  "Where was she?"

  I sat straight up. "Buck Dowling, maybe she was with you. Maybe you didn't really eat with Mike and Joe—maybe—"

  "Cherokee," he said patiently, "if I wanted to go to supper with another woman, you'd be the first to know about it. I promise you that."

  I laughed aloud. "I know," I said. "I just wanted to see if you'd get upset."

  Then he was angry that I'd tricked him, and he turned his back on me. Belle, I thought, could become a real problem if I weren't careful of the way I acted about it. What Belle did had precious little to do with anything.

  By the time we closed in St. Paul, Belle had been reporting in sick for almost a week now, forcing some of us to ride doubles in the relays, and we were all getting fed up with her.

  "She can't be that sick," I said to Bonnie. "What's the matter with her?"

  "She's pregnant," Bonnie said matter-of-factly. "Pregnant, and scared, and miserable."

  "She can still ride," I said. "She sure doesn't show." Then it dawned on me I was on the wrong track. "Who's the father?" I asked suspiciously, my mind going back to her play for Buck.

  "Not Buck." Bonnie laughed, and I indignantly said, "I know that!"

  "But," Bonnie went on, "that may have been why she made a play for him—get herself a good steady man she could claim as the father. I don't know who he is. She won't tell."

  "The colonel know?"

  "No, not yet. I told her she's got to tell him quick, so's he can find someone else, but she doesn't have anywhere to go. Her family's real religious, and they'd throw her out. 'Least, that's what she thinks."

  I had no sympathy for Belle, probably because I'd never walked in her moccasins. Tell me about a young girl whose father was domineering, her mother weak, and her home unbearable, and I was full of sympathy—I knew that kind of trouble. But in my smug self-righteousness, I thought Belle's troubles were her own fault—she shouldn't have been sleeping with a man she wasn't married to. Besides, my pa, for all his faults, would not have thrown me out if I'd appeared on his doorstep pregnant. Disobedient, yes, but pregnant, no. "Well," I said, "she's made her bed."

  "It's a bed a lot of us could have made, save for good luck and some honorable men," Bonnie said dryly, and I had the grace to blush.

  "Don't know what I can do about it, though," I said.

  The gossip got to Buck before the colonel, and he was more upset than I'd ever seen him. He paced our little tent one night in his long johns, while I sat huddled in the bed wishing he'd join me.

  "She's just a kid, Cherokee, and now she's got no place to go. I—well, we've got to help her."

  "Colonel would probably let her go to the 101, now that Mrs. Miller's back there." The words came out of my mouth without my even thinking of them first, surprising me as much as they did Buck.

  "Cherokee, my love, you're a wonder. Of course that's the answer! She can help Mrs. Miller down there until the baby comes, and then—"

  "And then she and the baby will have to go someplace and build a new life. I suppose she could come back to the show," I said reluctantly, "but I don't know how the baby'd do."

  "How can she raise that baby alone?" Buck demanded, as though it were all my fault. " 'Course if she were in the show, we could all take care of it."

  "Buck Dowling, if I didn't know better, I'd begin to believe that rumor that you're the baby's father."

  What I'd intended as a joke fell flat. Buck looked at me long and hard and said, "I'm not the father, and you and I both know that. But I care about that baby."

  When he came to bed, Buck never touched me, and we both tossed and turned all night.

  I could have predicted what happened next. Buck took matters into his own hands—without even consulting Belle, which I thought was pretty high-handed—and went to the colonel. The colonel was not pleased—he'd always made a big point that no breath of scandal would touch his show. "Good clean entertainment by wholesome honest folks—a show for the whole family," he always said. Belle's little problem tarnished that image, though I was sure all those families in the audience would never know that Belle was expecting, let alone unmarried, unless the colonel made too big a fuss over it and some small-town news reporter, desperate for a story, found out.

  A tearful Belle was called in to the colonel's office, in Buck's presence, and offered sanctuary at the 101 in Oklahoma. Buck described the interview to me later.

  "Buck's idea," the colonel said gruffly, his scowl canceling any idea of sympathy.

  "Buck, I'm in your debt." Buck didn't tell me this part, but I interpreted Belle's reaction for myself and could picture her falling into his arms.

  "She did not," he told me indignantly. "She was grateful and relieved."

  "What's she going to do after the baby comes?" I asked innocently.

  "Don't know," Buck said. "We're still mulling that one over."

  "We?" I yelled, louder than I intended. "Who is we? You and Belle? Or you, Belle, and the colonel?"

  "Cherokee, I'm just trying to help."

  There was a big silence and a deep distance between Buck and me for days after Belle left, and I damned her for creating it and myself for making it worse, but it didn't ever occur to me to blame Buck. Oh, we mended our fences and went on being lovers and friends both, but that memory was always there. Our whole relationship had shifted, be it
ever so slightly, and would never again be quite the same.

  Chapter 9

  I thought we could forget about Belle and go on with our lives, but I guess for both of us anger and resentment lingered just under the surface. It came to the top one night when I sailed my loop toward Buck, just as I'd been doing for a long time now at the end of the show. It settled gently over his shoulders—but when he should have walked toward me, Buck pulled back, pulling the rope tighter about his shoulders. His reaction took me so by surprise that instinctively I tightened the rope from my end. The crowd began to snicker and then to laugh outright.

  "The lady's caught him," the announcer said, his bravado covering the uncertainty he felt at this strange turn of events, "but the gentleman doesn't appear to want to be caught."

  The look on Buck's face was enigmatic—maybe he was teasing and playing with me, or maybe he was serious. Either one, I thought, was out of place in front of a sellout crowd in Des Plaines, Illinois. But how was I going to get us out of it?

  I could drop the rope, but that would look silly. Buck could suddenly start walking toward me—I prayed he would—and that would make it all right. Or we could stay there, in a Mexican standoff, until the crowd wearied and went home.

  Buck finally grinned and began walking toward me... slowly.

  "The little lady's husband, folks," the announcer said, relief plain in his tone. "He's been funnin' with her, but here he comes. Buck Dowling!"

  Buck slid the rope down over his body and waved his arms to the crowd, which was now cheering. Then he came and planted a distant kiss on my cheek, grabbed my hand, and together we bowed to the audience.

  At last the performance was over.

  "Buck Dowling, what were you doing?" The minute we were in our own room in the current boardinghouse, I demanded an answer.

  He shrugged and avoided looking at me. "Just thought it was time to change the routine."

  "Don't you think," I asked coldly, "that you could tell me before you change the routine?"

  "I—I didn't think you'd agree."

  A premonition swept through me, one that I didn't like and pushed to the back of my mind as quickly as I could. "We've always talked about the show and how it should go."

  "I know. Somehow it's different lately." He looked as unhappy as I felt.

  "All right," I said, "let's talk about how we should change it. What's wrong with my roping you?"

  Now he downright squirmed. "Aw, Cherokee, it makes me look—well, it makes me look like a henpecked husband."

  He might as well have thrown a pail of ice water straight in my face. I had to take a deep breath and think a minute. Finally I asked, "Is this about the show, or about what's between you and me?"

  "How can you separate the two?"

  He was right. I had no idea whether I'd even look twice at him if I were a schoolteacher and he a banker and we met on some city street. Oh, I'd think he was cute, but beyond that... Our whole lives were bound up in the show, and maybe, just maybe, it was the thing that held us together—well, besides the physical part.

  Sandy Burns had not raised a coward. "Buck Dowling," I said, my voice gathering strength from my determination, "what are you trying to tell me?"

  "I don't know," he said miserably, "but I gotta change something. I can't keep blowing a horn while you... well, you know, Cherokee. I thought it would be different. Maybe I don't know what I thought, but I thought things would change."

  "And you'd be the star?"

  He was quickly indignant. "No, that's not it. I don't necessarily want to be the star. But maybe I want to wear the pants in this family."

  "I thought you did," I said. I knew honestly, in my soul, that I had made every effort to see that Buck Dowling was the head of our two-person family. When the colonel came to me with problems or suggestions, I always deferred to Buck. And the colonel kept increasing his responsibility, so that Buck played an active part in the management of the show. As far as we were concerned, he chose where we stayed, how we lived, even how we spent our money, even though that money was in large part my earnings. And Lord knows, in our personal life Buck was the leader. I wasn't sure I knew where Buck's problem lay.

  Suddenly he came to me and took me in his arms. "I don't know, Cherokee. I don't know what's the matter with me. Just an itch in my soul I can't seem to scratch. You can rope me anytime you want."

  But it was a long time before I ended a show by roping Buck Dowling.

  Outside the arena, life went on. Buck and I were still lovers and friends. If the passion between us seemed a little less, I attributed it to having passed the first flush of new love—and it seemed to me we'd enjoyed that honeymoon period longer than most people have a right to expect. There were still many nights that we rushed back to our quarters, oblivious of the rest of the troupe, longing to be in our own cocoon.

  But more often Buck would say, "I'm going for a beer with the fellows. You be all right going home with the girls?"

  "Sure," I'd reply, and I'd be sound asleep when he came home, only to be awakened by his probing kisses and persistent hands.

  Sometimes in those months toward the end of the season, I thought Buck Dowling was making love to me in order to prove a point to himself. But I said nothing. I was scared.

  * * *

  "We'll winter at the 101," the colonel announced in late September 1912. "Get ourselves together for the next season—new acts, new costumes. Got to spiff up the show every year." His voice was hearty with enthusiasm. The Miller brothers back in Oklahoma may have complained about the financial drain of the Wild West show, but it had lost none of its charm or importance for the traveling brother. In spite of senoritas who couldn't ride bulls, horses who got down with colic, and cowgirls who were unexpectedly pregnant, the colonel was having the time of his life.

  "Cherokee," he said, as we turned to leave the general meeting that morning in the arena in Des Moines, Iowa, "I got an idea for you and Buck."

  "Good," I said. "Better tell it to Buck." I hadn't roped Buck since that awful night, but I sure had made it a point not to make one decision without him.

  "Cherokee," the colonel said, "you're the star here. You're the one the show depends on. You and I have got to talk."

  "Buck," I said, controlling my voice, "is my husband. He's the one we've both got to talk to."

  So Buck and I were both called into the colonel's railroad car the next night, while the train sped through the Iowa night. It was one of those nights we were condemned to sleeping upright in the coach car, so both of us were delighted to be summoned, even briefly, to more comfortable quarters.

  "Cherokee. Buck." The colonel nodded at chairs in front of his desk and lifted a decanter of brandy. Buck accepted, and I declined, having never acquired a taste for hard liquor. But I noticed that Buck sipped his brandy cautiously and kept an eye always on the colonel.

  "I've had a thought for a winter show," the colonel said. "Vaudeville."

  Buck laughed aloud, as though it were a good joke. "We don't sing and dance, Colonel. And we sure don't do blackface."

  The colonel grinned back, the two of them enjoying a joke, though I remained puzzled. "Not what I had in mind, Buck. I think we could do kind of a miniature Wild West show on the small stage."

  "You want me to rope a calf on a stage?" I asked incredulously, forgetting my resolve to remain quiet and let Buck handle the meeting.

  "No, no," the colonel said. "But you could do trick roping. Thing is, you could do it on a stage inside, where folks could come in bad weather. You could work all winter long. Buck could play with a small band to back you up."

  Lord, I thought, he could have chosen any one of a thousand other ways to say that! Just as I thought Buck would storm out of the car in anger, he said, "Not a bad idea, Colonel. Tell me more."

  And they fell to discussing what could and couldn't be done on a small stage.

  As we left the colonel's car, late in the night, Buck turned and said, "We will get to go to
the ranch for a little time off, won't we?"

  The colonel hesitated, saw the look on Buck's face, and then agreed quickly. "We'll all go to the ranch in November, and you can stay until after the holidays. I won't make any bookings until January. Folks are looking for new entertainment then."

  "I didn't know you were so all-fired fond of being at that ranch," I said later. To me, time at the ranch meant that I'd have to go see my folks, I'd get a visit with Louise, and I'd get some warm wonderful time being catered to in Mother Miller's house. But Buck had never seemed as at home there as I felt.

  "Want to check on Belle," he said without apology. "That baby's due in October."

  A great silence fell between us, and I said no more.

  * * *

  We arrived at the ranch early in November, and Mother Miller greeted us with a newborn infant in her arms.

  "Isn't she darling?" she asked of nobody in particular. "This is Sallie May, just two and a half weeks old."

  Buck reached out and took that baby as though he'd been holding tiny babies all his life. "Isn't she beautiful!" he breathed, and then, turning to me, said, "Here, Cherokee, take her."

  I felt as awkward as a barren cow trying to suckle a motherless calf. "She is beautiful," I said, never reaching an arm to take her because I was sure I didn't know how to hold a new baby. Wasn't there something about supporting their heads?

  Buck gave me a funny look, and finally I reached a tentative finger out to stroke her forehead. It was the softest thing I'd ever touched, maybe like old sheets that have been washed and washed until they're buttery soft. And she had this fine fuzz of gold hair all across her head. When she gurgled, I drew my hand back in alarm.

  Buck laughed. "She's fine, Cherokee. She liked that." Then, turning to Mrs. Miller, "Where's Belle?"

  "Upstairs resting. She hasn't been doing so well since the baby came. Can't seem to get her strength back."

  Without another word, Buck bounded up the stairs, loudly calling, "Belle? You get out of that bed now!"

  Mrs. Miller gave me a strange look and then said, "You two have the usual room, Tommy Jo. You might as well go on and get settled."