The Yellowstone Kelly Novels

by Bowen, Peter

  “Nothing to them,” I says. “When he’s serious all the skunks sue for peace.”

  I was dead tired for some reason and half loopy and Spotted Tail, ever the gracious host, offered me a pile of robes in his lodge and only offered threats of mutilation and death as a hostly entreaty to stay a while.

  The lodge was warm and I slipped my boots off and slept hard.

  Spotted Tail woke me after a while, and he sat crosslegged and tucked his chin into his hand.

  “What do we do?” he says. “The Teton, the Brule, the Santee, the Hidatsa, the Oglala? The Cheyenne and Kiowa?”

  I could tell him if he’d listen, for Spotted Tail, though no saint, had a broader mind than any other Sioux.

  “You got to do it quick. There’s rumors of gold in the Black Hills. You and Red Cloud and Red Shirt and Crazy Horse need to make peace and demand full citizenship and much of the gold. And do it now. Do it tomorrow.”

  “I know all of this, Kelly,” he says. “Try and explain that to my people, who have no written language and who obey the words of their fathers. Our land is alive, our mother, when we walk upon her we do so gently for we can feel her skin and breath. Your white laws change with the winds. Name me a tribe that has prospered under white rule. The Cherokees? The Iroquois? Is there a mention anywhere of even the name of the tribe that greeted Columbus?”

  “Then nearly all of you will be killed.”

  “Better than starving to death on a broken land and listening to sermons.”

  Well, he had a point. The young men wanted war. They always do. Go to Arlington, look at the tombstones. Eighteen, most of ’em.

  In the morning quite early I got up and went to the Tongue to wash. The water’s sweet and the grass is thicker there than other places. Soon the lodges would be bermed with snow and the gambling and the stick games—storytelling games, really—would go all winter. The little children would wrestle in the lodges and the old men would tell stories and brag some and the old women would tell stories on the old men and it warn’t a bad sort of life, one that wouldn’t last much longer.

  I walked to windward of the camp and blenched at a faint sauerkraut-and-rotten-egg stench on the wind. That could only mean that Klaas and Mulebreath were drawing nigh. It would be so like Klaas to search among the savages for converts to his twanging and screeching.

  There was a hooting mob of young braves riding around the two wagons, and behind them were four fellers trussed up and hung over their horses. Klaas and Mulebreath were safe—if they just did as they were accustomed to they would excite only pity for their insanity among the savages.

  “Four missionaries,” says Spotted Tail at my elbow. “Mormons. So I give you a gift. You figure out a torment for them and if it is good we will not treat them as we usually do.”

  He meant skinned alive and slow-roasted.

  Red Cloud come along behind the young braves. At a hand signal from Red Cloud the four were jerked off their horses and then hung from the limbs of a nearby cottonwood.

  “Council time,” says Spotted Tail. “Leave them hang for now.”

  There were so many there that the council had to be held outside, no lodge was big enough to hold them all. And it went fast for an Indian council, the chilly wind helped it along.

  Red Cloud was the most imposing figure I have ever seen. If he walked into a roomful of drunks they’d be sober in three minutes. He stood with his sons behind him all in red blankets. He got his name because when his warriors rode behind him, they looked like a red cloud.

  There was Touch-the-Clouds, a seven-foot Teton Sioux—that’s seven feet before the eagle-feather headdress, mind you—and Little Big Man—who weighed a hundred pounds without his collection of scalps, two hundred with. Crow Killer, Magpie, Many Snows, Crazy Horse, Gall, Rain-in-the-Face, and many dog soldiers, who would not retreat. They fought tethered to a stake, and they could not leave off fighting until another dog soldier had pulled the stake up.

  There was about four hours of flowery speeches and a ruck of chest-beating and brave boasts. Spotted Tail spoke for an hour, telling them to take the whiteman’s road and sell the land for money, not for blood.

  If that damned idiot Fetterman had known his business and done his job they wouldn’t have had so much hope. Wiping out eighty stupidly led troopers and casuals was a mite different from fighting Little Phil Sheridan, who killed everyone, because he liked problems solved up good and no relapsing.

  Klaas had come up and we stood well away from the circle, and when Little Big Man spoke he thought all whites should be killed, beginning with the seven in camp. It was a nice, easy, conservative policy but I still didn’t like it.

  He was downwind of Klaas and it may have made him tetchy, I allowed to Klaas, who grinned at me with his pale blue store-bought teeth.

  A warrior I didn’t know was reciting his genealogy, and so I turned to Klaas and answered a few of his questions about the council and what was to become of the missionaries. I explained I had to come up with something original or they’d be skinned.

  “Mormons,” said Klaas, lisping a little. “Vy not sent letter to Brigham Young?”

  “A letter?”

  “Sureness,” said Klaas. “I am yalso tattoo artist.”

  Klaas was always good in a pinch, I’ll say that for him.

  Mulebreath announced that he had woke up by giving off a loud rebel yell and poking the saber through the canvas top of the wagon.

  “Ze south risess,” said Klaas. “I hope he won’t start shooting at our hosts, here.”

  We run like deer to the wagon and pounced on Mulebreath, who had got down with a buffalo rifle he’d managed to fit a bayonet on.

  Mulebreath fought us off pretty good till he lunged at me with the bayonet and managed to get it buried in a water barrel that hung on the side of the wagon. Unarmed for a moment, the Great Confederate Hope was treacherously beset by his friends, one of whom cracked him on the head with a Colt, and the other sat on him. Mulebreath’s speech got fainter and fainter, on account of he couldn’t breathe.

  We trussed him up good and put him in the wagon, not forgetting to gag him good, too. Fine he wanted to insult the damn Yankees, not fine if he should wake up knowing exactly where he was. Spotted Tail, for one, could savvy English.

  “You got your tattoo implements here?” I says. “Not much of a market, is there?”

  “Alvayss carry my tattoo things,” says Klaas. “Can’t leave them to happy home. Wife hates that I even retired tattoo artust.”

  “Why was she stupid enough to marry you?” I says.

  “Good qvestunn,” says Klaas. “Potherss me lot.”

  Red Cloud had called for me, and I explained that these here missionaries was no worse than a mild case of ringworm. If they was properly treated, they’d go back to their hive and bother the Sioux no more.

  Red Cloud nodded.

  The warriors pegged the missionaries out, face down on the prairie, and I had Klaas tattoo Scripture, a mite altered, and what I remembered of my theological discussion with Elder McMullin. The very best things I thought of gave Klaas the laughing fits and caused the wobbling of his tattoo arm.

  When their back parts was all covered we turned them over and Klaas scribbled all over their fronts.

  Then we tied them on their horses facing backwards, and sent them south.

  I wouldn’t dream of telling you what I had Klaas write, as my family already blames that Luther for encouraging poor behavior in my nephews and nieces and all. I’m fifteen hundred miles away, I didn’t know that my voiced carried that far.

  As they was leaving—two young warriors was to dump them at the closest trading station—the ungrateful bastards said horrible things to me, not one word of thanks, after I saved their lives. Just human nature, I suppose. (Had to do the same to some Baptists, which left the Sioux to the Catholics and Episcopalians, but at least they wash.)

  A party of twenty Teton Sioux showed up, with two dozen fresh scalps. They we
re killing every prospector that they could find.

  The exercise might have been good for them, but the matter of keeping the whites out wouldn’t be that easy. The Injuns I knew then hadn’t numbers big enough to count the whites, and they couldn’t see what was coming. How were they to know? They’d won a cheap, easy victory over Fetterman. So that is how it was supposed to be.

  They were my friends, and I was to help hunt them down and stick them on the reservations, and if you’d seen what I was to see later, you’d have done so, too.

  Klaas and Mulebreath and me wandered down to the Canadian River country. There we saw hundreds of thousands of buffalo carcases left to rot, and at one rail siding we saw piles of hides stacked to thirty feet, and the pile was a mile long.

  I had come out here not long since, and I knew that the time for this land to be what it was hadn’t much sand left to run. It was going quick as the blood of the buffalo.

  I wanted to see as much of it as was left before the land was all over red and the flies was breeding.

  25

  I LIKE HUNTING, MIND you, but this slaughter was a bit rich even for someone as bloodthirsty as I am. Oh, you hear these days about the slaughter of the buffalo was done to open up the plains to the plow. That may be, but it was also to starve the Injuns out and force them to the reservations. And it warn’t just the buffalo. There was government money for deer and elk ears, and furs, and a buffalo hunter, after he’d shot all his skinners could manage, would shoot any other walking food.

  The government paid inflated prices for furs—the Hudson’s

  Bay Company was eager to trade guns and ammunition straight over for furs, long as the guns wasn’t used on Canadian

  Territory.

  The buffalo was shot in the winter, for the best fur on their robes. A hunter would set up on a high place and lung-shoot the animals. They just bled to death inside and they’d wander around for an hour or two before quietly lying down. After the hunter had killed as many as he could, the skinners would come in and jerk the hides off, using teamed horses. They’d cut out the tongues and pickle them.

  After a number of articles in homemaker’s magazines, the fine old American custom of a buffalo roast at Christmas was started. It was also a fine old American tradition at Easter, New Year’s, and Aunt Grizelda’s wake.

  The hunters started first off down in the Canadian River country, now the Indian Territory, and they worked north from there. There was three great herds—Canadian River, Central, and Yellowstone.

  There was a fourth herd up in Canada that the Canadians was killing off even faster than us, to make Canada unattractive to Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Gall, Rain-in-the-Face, or any other war leaders.

  We wagoned past stands where hunters had set and shot up to three hundred buffalo from a single place. We were in Kansas now.

  I’d seen Buffalo Bill Cody once before, when he was with that idiot Custer, who had shot his wife’s mare while chasing buffalo. But we didn’t have words. I thought Bill had been embarrassed by the company he was keeping.

  This time it was in a little Kansas town name of Larned. Bill was hoot-owl drunk and riding a stump that some kind soul had put a saddle on. The stump was unlikely to throw him or step on him.

  A good barkeep does that, and the barkeep at the Mint Saloon was a princely good barkeep. If a drunk got to clacking his knees together or he dropped his eyeballs in the dice cup, the barkeep would walk him out back to a good-sized shed and tie one of the drunk’s feet up to an eyebolt three feet up from the floor. This kept the drunk safe until he come out from under enough to reach up and untie the knot. The shed’s floor was covered in sawdust, which soaked up the puke. Damn classy place, you ask me.

  I inquired of the barkeep as to who the drunk in the quilled and beaded, bright blue fringed leather coat was. Why, the barkeep says, that’s Buffalo Bill Cody, and I think he’s about ready for the shed.

  Bill had come up in the world, largely due to the efforts of a sawed-off teetotaling scribbler name of Ned Buntline. Oh, Cody was brave as hell—he literally had no fear bones—and Cody was trustworthy, brave, honorable, and a crack shot and horseman. (If you’re planning to have a war, Indian or otherwise, you need a treacherous, greedy, conniving, unprincipled swine like uh Luther Kelly, war is a serious business. In theater, Bill shone, and he was to make many people wealthy. Bill hated money; he could go through it like crap through a goose.)

  Klaas and Mulebreath about beat each other to pieces getting through the doorway and they was soon drinking redeye by the quart and grazing on the free lunch. Klaas had put a hundred dollars in gold on the bartop, and he and Mulebreath was determined to spend it all right here.

  It weren’t long ’fore Klaas had powerfully defeated his thirst. He tried to clamber on to a poker table to deliver a speech and the table done collapsed into matchsticks. I helped the barkeep haze the Dutch rummy out to the shed, and soon Klaas was snoring peacefully, one fat Dutch foot hitched up to a ringbolt. And pissing in them green-and-white-checked pants that he likely stripped off a dead drummer.

  Mulebreath had drunk enough so he decided to fight the War all over again, and the barkeep stood fast in front of Mulebreath’s charge, and cracked him a good one with a leaded pool cue.

  I took this heaven-sent opportunity to rifle the wagons and ship the banjos East to a music store in Cleveland. (After all these years, I sort of wonder where they ended up.)

  A pair of teamsters took my gold and the banjos and I never saw any of ’em again. I was planning on tying a good one on and I was afraid that if I was suffering lots and hangover’d half to death I’d commit murder if Klaas started in on his infernal blugerss.

  All this accomplished, I attacked the Sinner’s Cider with glee, and sometime the next day, or the one after that, I was escorted to the Hitchfoot Hotel. Klaas, moaning and snuffling, had at last managed to untie his foot. He crawled off in search of healing potions, at leastways that’s what I think happened, and I awoke in ten or twelve hours feeling that I had been dancing with a train, and that I had dined in the sewers of hell.

  My right big toe was swollen and throbbing—my boots had gone missing—and here I had my first full-fledged attack of gout. (Perhaps this was the cause of my further misfortunes with Ned Buntline, who I hated on sight.)

  Buntline had run on to Buffalo Bill some months before and he was busily churning out reams of abominable tripe just as fast as his pencil could scritch.

  Bill and I met whilst puking into the sawdust in the Hitchfoot Hotel and never you mind the legends. It ain’t as Buntline has it. Listen and I’ll tell you how it was.

  Buntline would scribble something like “Buffalo Bill pulled his steely gaze away from his rifle sights and pondered the dark gentleman [me?!] to his left who had just killed fifty-three Sioux with seventeen shots and was presently reading Keats to his horse. ‘Pardner,’ said Bill, offering his hand, ‘you must be the famous Yellowstone Kelly. No one else I hear of reads Keats to his horse.’ BLAM. Another forty-three savages fall whilst Bill is composing a sonnet to his lady.”

  This is how it really was when we first met, formal-like:

  “Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugggeeeeeeeeeeeeeglurb glurg Oooo,” says Bill, through the foamy stream of bile he was a-pukin’ into the sawdust, and some on a couple fellers who was out cold yet.

  We moaned and puked and struggled with the knots so we could get back to the saloon. Every hair on my head hurt, and so did my teeth, all of which seemed to be growing pelts.

  “Pass me the bucket,” says Bill. “I think I’ll have an attack of the thundering drizzlies now.” Which he did.

  “I can’t remember when I’ve had such fun,” I says. “Musta been the church apple-bob.”

  “Godfuckingdammit my guts is on fire,” says Bill, which is a long way from Keats. “I believe I shall bob for such of my innards as came up in the last toss,” he says, contemplating the puddle in front of him. “Why, I do believe there is a kidney rising up and sinking down
there. Look!”

  “Lord, hell of a stomach I got—I don’t think anybody has thrown anything that far, ever. Maybe I can get a job in the circus. Moan.”

  We went on in this cheery vein for a while, for what can you do but laugh. Brains combined, we had no trouble getting each other untied. We leaned against each other and sort of tacked and yawed back to the saloon. We tilted one against another like a couple of hairy deadfalls and after waving one or another appendage Sam the barkeep come cheerily down, looking at us like we sashayed in stuck to someone’s shoe.

  “We have returned,” says Bill. “Looking and feeling our very best.”

  Sam nodded and served us each a big glass full of fresh oysters, hot sauce, gin, and three or four more soothing ingredients.

  “Congratulations fer gettin’ the knots undone,” says Sam. “Now get these down and we’ll see about a real drink.

  “If ya got to puke, do it in them spittoons,” he went on. “I gets annoyed ya puke on my bar. I hang ya all the way in the air overnight if ya do that.”

  Sam run a no-nonsense joint and that was that. We gurgled and swallered and the sweat run in rivulets off us from the hot sauce and we gripped the bar hard as we could to keep the room from dancing around.

  A sawed-off weasel with a pad and pencil slithered up, and he made an infernal racket with his scribbling. Scritch scritch and so forth. I had grabbed an empty whiskey bottle by the neck and I was praying for the strength to brain him with it, but it looked to be a bust cause.

  “Ned Buntline,” he says, offering a paw.

  I reeled off a string of curses would have paled Calamity Jane, and Calamity could outcuss Sherman.

  Critch scritch scritch critch.

  There was a mighty farting and belching and stench and the liquid sound of Dutchy moanings crawling over store-bought teeth. Klaas had arrived again.

  “Kelly,” he said, “you no-good sonbitch, vott you do mit banjos?”

  “Nothing,” I says. “I’ve been in the Hitchfoot Hotel there.”

  Klaas looked at me blearily for a while, then he signaled to Sam, who brought him a fiery oyster special. Klaas drank it down and seemed to glow with health all of a sudden.