Cherokee Rose

by Judy Alter

  It was a long night. The colonel and I took turns every hour or two, napping a little when the other walked the horse. All I could tell myself was that if it was long for each of us, think how it must be for poor Governor.

  About six o'clock in the morning, Governor stopped dead in his tracks. My heart leaped into my mouth, and I could barely frame that frantic call, "Colonel!" Then, before I could say anything, the horse moved its bowels. I'm not sure I had ever been as glad to see anything in my life. The crisis was over.

  "Colonel," I said as we walked to the hotel for breakfast, "don't ever ask what can happen next."

  He patted my arm comfortingly. "I won't, Cherokee. I figure we've had all the troubles we can by now."

  * * *

  In Chicago, we had to cancel the "Military Preparedness Pageant." Mayor Big Bill Thompson saw it on the program before we arrived and immediately objected in loud tones. Chicago, he informed the two colonels, had the sixth largest German population of all cities in the world, and he wasn't about to flaunt military preparedness in their faces. His city was hoping that peace would win—a vain hope, I thought, but I was not allowed to voice my opinion to the mayor.

  In Chicago, we were the Chicago Shan-Kive and Round-Up instead of the Buffalo Bill and Miller 101 Wild West Show.

  "What's Shan-Kive?" I asked suspiciously.

  Colonel Cody shrugged. "Loosely translated, it means 'good times.' "

  "In what language?"

  "One of the Indian dialects. I don't have any idea which one." The colonel walked away, effectively closing the conversation.

  We went three weeks without any pay.

  "Gate's just not good enough, Cherokee," Colonel Zack said to me dismally. "I hate it, but there's no money. You know I'll never let you want—and I know you won't bolt. But there's some I'm not so sure about."

  "I'll stick, Colonel," I assured him. Then, trying to lighten the moment, I added, "Long as I get fed regular, anyway."

  The colonel almost smiled, but he didn't have the heart.

  "When you think we're gonna get paid?" Pearl whispered to me late that night. "I can't be workin' for nothin'."

  "You thinking of quitting?" I asked. It went through my mind that Pearl had nothing better to quit for—either way, she'd be without money, and this way she had shelter and food. I suspected she'd heard that veiled threat from someone else in the show and now was trying it on for size herself.

  "Well," she said, drawing the word out into two long syllables, "maybe not quite yet. How long you think this can go on, Cherokee?"

  "Till the gate's better," I said, thinking the answer was obvious. "Instead of worrying about our pay or lack of it, we really ought to be worrying about what we can do to get bigger crowds to the shows."

  Pearl sighed. Such complicated thinking was beyond her.

  Five people did quit the show—three cowboys, one of the girls who rode in relay races and acted in the skits, and one stable hand. "That many fewer mouths to feed and worry about," the colonel said, but his tone was bitter, and I knew he felt betrayed.

  "Colonel, it'll be all right," I ventured, wishing I could believe it even as I said the words. "The crowds'll come back."

  * * *

  The colonel was as wrong as he could have been when he said he thought we'd had all our troubles. The final catastrophic blow came in December as our tram hurtled through the night between Chicago and St. Louis.

  "Sure seems this train is in a hurry," Pearl said nervously.

  I peered out the window into the dark night. I had always loved seeing the houses and towns go by. Sometimes I made up all kinds of stories about people who lived in those houses, their lights lit against the night. They are home and safe, I would think, and I'm far from home, suspended between one place and the next. Sometimes I envied their security, but then I remembered that I was Cherokee Rose, riding with a Wild West show. And now not just any Wild West show, but the Buffalo Bill and Miller 101 Wild West Show.

  "Train does appear to be going kind of fast," I said, "but I suppose the engineer knows what he's doing."

  The words were no more out of my mouth than our car came to such an abrupt halt, with the terribly loud crashing and grinding of gears and metal wheels, that I was thrown into the aisle. Behind me, Pearl gave a piercing scream as she was flung into the seat in front of where we'd been sitting.

  For a moment, we were surrounded by noise—grinding metal, screaming voices, and even—from the horse cars—frantic whinnying. Then, eerily, the world became silent, except for the horses.

  "Pearl?"

  "I'm all right, Cherokee. How about you?"

  I moved tentatively, and pain shot through my right shoulder and down the arm. "I think I did something to my shoulder. But I'm all right, too. We... we've got to see about the others."

  In the car with us, people were stirring about, moaning and questioning, but no one seemed badly hurt. I pulled myself up and found that the pain in my shoulder was so sharp, it made me draw my breath in quick. Finally, I discovered that if I held my right arm close to my body with my left hand, it was bearable.

  "The horses," I said to Pearl. "We've got to see to the horses."

  Outside, that momentary stillness had been replaced by a chorus of frantic voices. Over it, the horses could still be heard whinnying desperately. Railroad cars were tilted at crazy angles on either side of the track, and men were walking back and forth swinging huge flashlights and calling aloud to each other, though somehow the sense of what they said didn't make it through to my mind.

  Pearl clung to me as though to salvation. Once I had to tell her sharply not to grab my right arm, and then I was contrite for my tone of voice. "It hurts, Pearl" was all I could say.

  It was morning light—and too cold—before we sorted it all out. The colonel told me that Guthrie and Governor were all right, but four horses had been lamed and two others had legs so badly broken, they had to be destroyed.

  "The people?" I asked.

  "Everybody's accounted for. Some are pretty seriously injured. They've been taken by wagon to the nearest hospital."

  "What happened?" I asked, feeling dumb for asking. Obviously, the train had stopped suddenly—that was what happened.

  "Best I hear," he said, "the conductor had been drinking. Got to going too fast, and then had to stop too suddenly."

  I shuddered to think that we had all put our lives in the hands of a man who had drunk too much. When I realized the train was going too fast, I should have done something—but what would I have done? Who would have listened to me?

  The colonel rescued me from my feelings of frustration and helplessness. "Cherokee, why are you holding your arm that way?"

  "I think I did something to my shoulder," I admitted reluctantly, "when I fell out of the seat. Maybe sprained it."

  "Maybe fractured it," the colonel said darkly. "You're going for medical attention right now."

  And so, with the colonel and Pearl escorting me, I left that scene of destruction, its picture indelibly imprinted on my mind.

  The shoulder was dislocated, not broken, but putting it back in its proper position hurt like six demons, and I think for once in my life I screamed—loudly—at physical pain. Afterward I was embarrassed, but Pearl kept telling me to hush. And then I slept so long that it was a day later when I awoke in a small-town hotel somewhere in Illinois.

  * * *

  That was the end of the Buffalo Bill and Miller 101 Wild West. I never saw Buffalo Bill again, but Colonel Zack told me he was a broken man. The train was the last in the series of disasters that had hit his show, and he was quitting.

  "And you?" I asked as we rode back to Oklahoma by train—thankfully a train that was going slower.

  "Tom and George haven't left me any choice." He smoothed a crumpled telegram that lay on his lap. "I'm goin' back to farming and ranching. I'm sorry, Cherokee, but there's no show."

  "It's all right, Colonel. I'm ready to quit," I said, and meant it. "I'm goi
ng to Guthrie and hide from the world."

  Pearl sat behind us, staring blankly out the window, and I remembered about her and Donnie Slaughter. Turning I said, "Pearl, you come to Guthrie with me. Louise always has another vacant room."

  * * *

  Colonel William F. Cody died in January 1917. I cried when I heard the news, but I think I was crying as much for myself as for him.

  Chapter 14

  The colonel sent us to Guthrie in a covered buggy, with a driver. "Louise threatened me if I ever let you ride across the prairie alone again," he said, and I wanted to ask what she had threatened him with but thought better of it. As we left and I turned to look back at him, I saw him brush a hand across his eyes—cinders got in them, no doubt.

  I was grateful for the buggy. The weather had turned cold, and a fine rain was falling as we left the ranch. Even under cover, it would be a miserable ride. I tucked the buffalo robe tighter around myself and Pearl, then turned again for one last look.

  To me, leaving the 101 was a lot more painful than leaving Luckett's had been. Sure I'd grown up at Luckett's. But I'd really grown up—some might say the word was matured—at the 101. Here I'd found my dreams of the Wild West show, here I'd found, and left, my husband, and here I'd been at home for almost ten years. Tired as I was after our last bad tour, and ready as I was to give up show business, I still felt a great lump in my throat. When I brushed my hand across my eyes, I knew it wasn't cinders. It was plain honest tears.

  Pearl felt no such attachment to the 101, but she was plainly anxious. "Now what kind of a place is this we're going to? And who is this lady?"

  I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, wondering just what she was thinking. Somehow I didn't want to tell her that "this lady" was my father's mistress—or once was—but then I thought that might be the least of Pearl's fears about Louise and her boardinghouse. I almost giggled to think that Pearl might totally have misunderstood the concept of the boardinghouse—but then I was indignant. Surely she couldn't believe that I would spend weeks and months of my life at a house of ill repute—especially not with my father's blessing.

  "Louise runs a boardinghouse," I said carefully. "She has some permanent boarders, like two ladies who run a millinery shop in Guthrie, a man who teaches school, and a printer and a lawyer. And then she takes in drummers as they go through Guthrie, so sometimes there are six people at the dinner table and sometimes there are ten or twelve."

  "And she's not a relative of yours?" Pearl's round face puckered into a frown, as though she were struggling hard to understand. Her hair was blown by the wind, her nose was red from the cold, and she looked like a young—and vulnerable—child.

  "No," I said. Vulnerable or not, she was beginning to wear out my patience. "She's a family friend." Well, maybe that was stretching the truth a little, but not too much.

  "I don't know, Cherokee. 1 been thinking maybe I just ought to go on home and marry Donnie Slaughter."

  "How do you know he'll be waiting?" I asked, hiding a grin.

  "Oh, he will," she said. "He wrote me not long ago that he was still waiting."

  "Do you want to marry him?"

  She stared out the isinglass window at the rain-blurred prairie. "I don't know that I don't. I've 'bout given up on a career in Wild West shows."

  I wanted to tell her that was smart, 'cause Wild West shows were pretty much a thing of the past, at least if the troubles of the Miller 101 were any indication. Instead, I said, "Well, there's always rodeo."

  She flashed me a quick grin. "I can't afford to ride without a paycheck and hope I get some of the winnings. And," she added ruefully, "I'm probably not good enough ever to touch the winning money anyway." She sighed. "I've got to earn my keep. And if I can't, then I've got to be married to Donnie."

  I didn't think life should be made up of such narrow choices, but I didn't say anything, and pretty soon she went on. "That means a baby every year, and lots of hard work on his family's ranch. But we'd have somethin' between us—and I do like him." Her eyes got a faraway look.

  I resisted the urge to tell her she was talking herself into marriage. She made me think of my time with Bo. I'd made the exact opposite choice, and I knew my life would have been different—and somehow lacking in something—if I'd settled down with Bo before I tried my chances. Pearl had tried, but on a minor scale, and she hadn't found it wonderful. Maybe she would be better off with Donnie Slaughter.

  * * *

  Louise's welcome was warm but matter of fact, as was her style. With her usual efficiency, she soon had Pearl installed in the bedroom next to the one I usually occupied. "If business picks up," she said practically, "you girls will have to share a room."

  We had arrived late, after supper was served and cleared away, but once we were settled in our rooms, Louise dragged us to the kitchen for a supper of leftovers—slices of roast hen, mounds of whipped potatoes, and vegetables that she had canned the previous summer. Pearl and I, too long on travelers' fare, ate like we'd not been fed in a month, and Louise watched us with amusement.

  "I'll have to talk to Zack about the way he fed you," she said.

  Pearl was too quick to answer. "Oh, he fed us fine, he really did. It just wasn't never as good as this." She helped herself to another serving of potatoes.

  Next morning, Pearl met the boarders. There were some changes since I'd first sat at that table—the printer had married and moved into his own home, and the lawyer had given up on Guthrie and moved to Oklahoma City. But the teacher was still there, and so were the milliners, who had not changed their thinking about me one iota. They thought I was shocking, and they still whispered to each other while throwing obvious glances in my direction. I tried to kill them with kindness.

  "Ladies, may I bring you a second helping of chocolate cake? More cream in your coffee?" They had both gone to fat in recent years, and I knew it was from eating Louise's desserts and putting too much cream in their coffee. Now they both shook their heads, as though they had practiced together, and protested that they never indulged in sweets. I knew better.

  "They're rude," Pearl exploded that night when she came into my room. "They don't like you, and they don't hide it!"

  "They're jealous, in a way," I said slowly, brushing my hair and staring in the mirror, wondering how anyone could be jealous of me. "They haven't had the nerve to do anything but make hats and live in a boardinghouse in a small town. They resent you and me because we've been out in the world."

  Pearl laughed the hardest she had since the train wreck. "If only they knew," she said, wiping tears from her eyes. "I can't believe anyone finds us glamorous."

  "Maybe not glamorous," I said, "but free and independent."

  She thought long about that, and I watched her—by looking in the mirror—as she chewed her lip and stared at her hands. Finally, she spoke: "We have been that, haven't we, Cherokee?"

  "Yes, Pearl," I said, "we have been free—except, of course, for the colonel."

  "He doesn't count," she said quickly.

  I wanted to tell her that if she married Donnie Slaughter, she'd never again be that free, but I didn't think it was my place.

  * * *

  Bo came just as we were finishing breakfast dishes the third morning we were in Guthrie.

  "Tommy Jo." He stood in the doorway, his hat held in front of him by both hands, his voice solemn—and a little nervous.

  "Bo!" I cried, impulsively rushing toward him with my arms spread for a hug. "I am so glad to see you!" Then I remembered what Mama would have called my manners and stepped back, saying, "I was very sorry to hear about your wife."

  He still stood there, awkward as sin. "Thank you... thank you very much. How are you, Tommy Jo?"

  "I'm fine," I said, "just fine. And I want you to meet my friend Pearl. She was in the show with me."

  Bo inclined his head. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am."

  "Me too," Pearl said, casting obvious sidelong glances at me. "I—I guess I'll just go on upst
airs now."

  I began to laugh. "Pearl," I said, "you don't need to leave us alone. Bo and I, we're friends." I emphasized that last word, and Bo nodded quickly. "Bo, sit and I'll get you some coffee."

  Pretty soon Louise joined us, and the four of us sat at that old kitchen table talking—except Pearl, that is, who was uncharacteristically silent and kept giving me weird glances. Bo told me about his stables—thriving since some horse-racing people had moved into the area—and I told him about the decline of Wild West shows and the tragedy of Buffalo Bill. As we talked, we relaxed and fell into our old relationship.

  "Buffalo Bill," he said. "Why Tommy Jo, that man's been your hero forever. That's sad for you."

  "Yeah," I agreed, "it is. And yet maybe if it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have ever been ready to give up being in shows."

  "You ready to give up now?" Bo asked, his eyes deliberately avoiding mine.

  "I think so," I said truthfully. "For now, anyway."

  Bo began to fidget, as though he'd overstayed his welcome. "I best be going. Work to do, you know," he said. "Pleasure to meet you, Pearl. And Louise, good as always to sit at your table." He paused. "Tommy Jo, I'm glad to have you home. You come out to the stable anytime."

  I realized I'd forgotten to talk to him about the most important business of all. Rising quickly from the table, I said, "Bo, Colonel's going to have Guthrie and Governor brought down here, first fair day he has a loose cowboy. Can they board at your place?" Quickly I added, "Usual rates, of course."

  "No rates," he said flatly. "I'd be proud to have them." And then he was gone, out the door and onto his horse before any of us could say more.

  "He's in love with you," Pearl said dramatically.

  I was almost angry as I turned from the window where I'd been watching him ride away. "He is not!" I said. "Bo and I are just—well, we're old friends."

  "Sure," Pearl sniffed. "I think you ought to marry him."