Buffalo Girls

by Larry McMurtry

  All the way across the great ocean, No Ears attached his ears in private and listened to voices from the old times. It occurred to him that the sea must be very old; he had been taught to believe that the sky was the First Place and the Last Place, but as he sat and looked at the endless sea he began to wonder if perhaps the belief was wrong. Perhaps the ocean was the First Place; perhaps it was also the Last Place. Perhaps it was to the sea that souls went; the story about the hole in the sky could well be wrong. The very fact that he could hear so clearly the voices of people long dead made him wonder if perhaps the sea was not the Last Place; its great depths might contain all the dead and all their memories, too.

  Sometimes Jim Ragg came on deck while No Ears was dreaming back voices. Occasionally they would sit and share a smoke. No Ears knew there was no need to hide his ears from Jim—Jim had no interest in ears. He knew that Jim had long been an angry man—it seemed that he was angry with his own people for having killed all the beaver. In London, though, he had discovered that all the beaver were not gone; they just lived in zoos now, where their life was easier, since no one was allowed to trap them. The discovery had changed Jim a lot. He didn’t seem angry anymore. Even the fact that Bartle had taken a young wife didn’t bother him.

  Most people found Jim a more pleasant companion now that his anger was gone; No Ears had to admit that he was more pleasant, and yet he found Jim disquieting to be with for some reason. No Ears thought the matter over for several days without being able to decide what bothered him about Jim. The mountain man was perfectly friendly, and once or twice had even helped him adjust his ears when he hadn’t got them fitted on quite right. And yet, something was troubling about the man.

  While he was dreaming back the brief conversation with Crazy Horse, Jim Ragg walked by, and No Ears suddenly realized what was bothering him: Jim Ragg wasn’t really there anymore. His spirit had been an angry spirit, like Crazy Horse’s. Now it had gone. The realization made No Ears shiver a little. If Jim’s spirit had gone, his body was not going to last too long. That was why conversations with him were rather disturbing: his voice came from the Last Place, just as Crazy Horse’s had.

  This realization shocked him so much that he confided it to Calamity next time she came on deck. Calamity’s stomach had been slow to settle down after the passing of the storm. She spent a good deal of time at the rail, vomiting; No Ears watched her closely at such times. People who were ill often did foolish things; he didn’t want Calamity to make the same kind of mistake the elk had made when it became so sick with fear that it jumped into the sea.

  When Calamity recovered enough to sit down with him and accept a smoke, No Ears told her of his conviction that Jim Ragg’s spirit had left him.

  “I think he’s gone where Crazy Horse is,” No Ears said. “He is on a road he doesn’t see.”

  “Sometimes I think you must get drunk in secret,” Calamity said. “Then you stick on your new ears and think you know things you don’t really know.”

  No Ears didn’t press the point. It was obvious that Calamity was not feeling well; she had not been feeling well for most of the trip. It was hard enough to talk to whites about the spirit world when they were healthy; if they happened to be unhealthy, as Calamity was, the effort was a waste of time.

  “What do you hear when you sit there with your ears on?” she asked.

  “I hear some old-time people,” No Ears said.

  “You’re doing better than me then,” Calamity said. “I don’t hear nothing but this old howling wind.”

  No Ears said nothing; he didn’t want to argue about his dream conversations.

  “Well, say hello to Wild Bill for me, if you happen to be speaking to him,” Calamity said, as she got up to make her unsteady way downstairs.

  Darling Jane,

  This will be the saddest letter I have written you yet, Jim Ragg is dead. It happened in Chicago by the lake, so sudden neither Bartle nor me even saw it, Pansy didn’t either though we were all not ten feet away. We had gone there to do one last show, they were having a big fair by the lake. Billy had been so nice we felt we couldn’t refuse—he allowed us ample money to get home. I am sure he can afford it but many that can afford it wouldn’t do it.

  I know that will strike you as odd, here I am writing about Billy Cody’s fortunes, the truth is I would rather write about anything other than the death of Jim Ragg. I didn’t expect it, none of us did. Well, No Ears did, I should have listened to him, but what good would it have done?

  A man they call an anarchist stabbed Jim in the ribs, the knife was so small no one saw it, Jim didn’t, he just thought the man bumped into him. He sat down on a bench and died before he even realized he was stabbed. He bled to death inside, at least he didn’t suffer. He just said he was a little tired and we decided to sit and eat some spun candy, while we were eating it Bartle said he thought Jim didn’t look right, of course he didn’t, he was dead.

  I have never heard of an anarchist Janey, they say there are many of them in Chicago and also London, I didn’t see any in England though. We saw the little man that stabbed Jim, he was a very small man, I think he was loco or crazy, he thought Jim was the Emperor of Austria that’s why he stabbed him. You would have to be crazy to mistake Jim Ragg for the emperor of anywhere, Jim bore no resemblance to an emperor. The man was raving and screaming by the time they drug him away. I have never seen Bartle so stunned—of course it is hard to believe that a man could just walk up and stab Jim and Jim not even know he was stabbed. Bartle blames it on crowds, he says in a crowd it’s so crowded you don’t even notice your own death, he’s right, too, Jim Ragg didn’t, and he has witnessed hundreds of deaths.

  Later Bartle wanted to go to the jail to make sure the killer would be hung promptly. At the police station they told us he is too insane to hang. Bartle was disgusted—out west no one is too insane to hang.

  Billy Cody was nice as usual, he too was shocked at Jim’s death, but not as shocked as Bartle. Billy made all the arrangements for Jim to be buried but at the last minute Bartle balked, he said Jim ought to be buried in the west. Now they are going to put his body on a steamer with us at Dubuque, he will be buried as soon as we reach the Missouri—anywhere along the Missouri would suit Jim fine, Bartle thought.

  Of course we are all grieved, but Bartle is the most grieved. He partnered with Jim more than thirty years. Bartle has seen sudden death before, we all have, still, Bartle is having trouble adjusting to the fact that Jim is gone. It is a good thing Bartle has Pansy for a wife. I don’t like her much but Bartle does—she cannot make up for Jim Ragg, nobody can, I will miss the man too. I was thinking of Jim last night—what I wish is he had been more of a talker. If I scratch my memory I can remember many things that Bartle said over the years, also things Dora said or even Blue—Blue’s are easy to remember because they’re mostly too raw to repeat—but it is hard now for me to remember one thing that Jim Ragg said, he has only been dead a week too. Perhaps it is my fault, Jim only liked to talk about beaver, they never interested me, they’re just animals with big teeth.

  The question is, what will Bartle do? He has never done anything really, he just followed Jim around the west. Jim did most of the work, Bartle provided the conversation. At one time they guided wagon trains, later on they scouted for the soldiers—neither of them liked that, but they did it. In those days, knowing the country, knowing where the water holes were, and where you could get across rivers was a skill you could sell. Even I sold it, and I never knew the west half as well as Bartle and Jim. Half the people out there in those days earned a living showing newcomers around, wagon trains, or whoever wanted help getting somewhere.

  Now there’s no need for scouts—the steamers or the railroads will get you close enough. I don’t know what old scouts like Bartle and me will do, I guess we could work for Billy but the show only tours part of the year and he probably wouldn’t want to hire me again anyway—all I did was fall off the stagecoach and embarrass him in front o
f the Queen. If I could shoot like Annie I’d have a job forever, but I can’t—nobody else can either, she beat the English gun by forty-nine birds.

  I thought I might get some money out of Buntline, but Buntline is hard to pin down—he might do this, he might do that. About the best I could get out of him is that he is planning to take a look at Montana pretty soon. When he does he will stop by and write down a few of my tales. Billy Cody laughed when I told him that, he says Buntline never writes down anything, he just makes up tales. He thinks Buntline will write me up in dime novels and make me an outlaw worse than Belle Starr. If he does he’s in for trouble, your mother has never been an outlaw, Janey. It’s true I took food for the miners during the smallpox horrors—I paid for it later, though, it was not much food anyway. Even people who don’t like me, there are plenty that don’t, will admit that I’m honest—if I don’t leave you anything else Janey at least I will leave you a good name.

  Your mother,

  Martha Jane

  8

  JIM RAGG WAS BURIED NEAR THE VILLAGE OF DUBUQUE; THE best Bartle could do for him was to get him buried on the west bank of the Mississippi. The captain of the boat they had planned to take down to the Missouri refused to have a body on his vessel, and that was that.

  “I will not do it, sir, not for you and not for the President,” the man said. “I have never carried a corpse on my boat, and I don’t plan to start now.”

  “Well, you’ll start now if I shoot you,” Calamity said. She had been in a dark mood for weeks, and Jim’s death had done nothing to brighten it.

  “Madam, if you talk like that I’ll put you off,” the captain said. He was a gruff fellow from Boston; he had been on the river fifteen years and did not tolerate complaints.

  “You won’t if I shoot you,” Calamity said, but it was an idle threat—she had not yet purchased a weapon, thanks to being broke. Bartle might have loaned her his rifle so she could shoot the captain, but then again he might not have. Bartle had grown a good deal less free-spirited since his marriage; now and then he would get drunk and whoop and holler, but mostly he kept still. His little wife, Pansy, had a bluff in on him, in Calamity’s view. Or maybe it wasn’t a bluff.

  “I favor rapid burial,” Pansy said, after they had buried Jim with the help of a slothful gravedigger who had to be urged twice to keep digging; the grave wasn’t deep enough.

  “It’s more hygenic,” she added.

  “He wasn’t religious, though, if that’s what you mean,” Calamity said. Since reaching America, Pansy had become rather interfering, Calamity felt. Pansy had sided with Cody’s plan to bury Jim in Chicago, although she had scarcely known Jim a month. So far Calamity had held her tongue, though. Bartle was crushed as it was—a quarrel between herself and his new wife wouldn’t help matters. Besides, dragging Jim around really served no point, since he was dead. Listening to Cody and Bartle arguing about burial, and what kind of coffin to get, and how Jim should be dressed, made her feel the whole business of being buried was completely ridiculous.

  “I’m telling you now, just leave me where I fall,” Calamity said. “If I happen to fall in Deadwood, drag me up the hill and bury me by Billy Hickok, but if I’m elsewhere just leave me where I fall.”

  “Well, all right,” Bartle said uneasily. Concluding burial arrangements for Jim had been difficult; he hoped he wouldn’t have to do the same for Calamity, too. His own simple conviction that Jim ought to be buried in the west had caused endless trouble. Billy Cody thought it was absurd to take a dead man from Chicago to Dubuque, much less up the Missouri, but he did help arrange for Jim to be put on a train. At almost every stop somebody tried to have the coffin removed, though Jim was making far less trouble than many of the living passengers. Long before they got to Dubuque the whole thing had come to seem silly. He would have been glad to bury Jim anywhere, but no sooner had he resolved to do it than the railroad officials gave up and stopped trying to remove the coffin.

  The graveyard was not far from the bluffs of the Mississippi, which was fortunate; the gruff Boston captain was about to cast off when they got back to the boat. It was a pretty day, skeins of geese flew over them as the boat slipped through the sunlit water. Calamity was drinking, No Ears was smoking, Pansy was sewing. Bartle couldn’t think of any activity worth doing. It was mighty queer, traveling without Jim. More than that, it was novel; he had never done it. They had met the day after he left his home in Illinois, and had been together ever since; now he was traveling on, with Pansy and Calamity, and Jim Ragg was staying forever in a graveyard near Dubuque.

  “It’ll be a lonesome trip up the Missouri this time,” Bartle said to No Ears. “I guess I’ll have to try and be a better shot now. Jim mostly furnished the grub.”

  No Ears didn’t have his ears on; he could see, though, that Bartle was not quite himself. No Ears liked Bartle; he looked at him closely. Bartle stood at the rail looking sadly back toward the distant bluff where his oldest friend was buried. No Ears felt that Bartle’s spirit, too, was almost gone. Probably it had been linked too closely to Jim’s, and Jim’s had always been the stronger spirit; even Calamity agreed with that. When Jim’s spirit left to return to the Last Place, it had begun to pull Bartle’s with it. Bartle’s spirit was light as a rabbit pelt—Jim’s departure might pull it away as easily as one skinned a rabbit.

  While he was considering whether to speak to Bartle, to give him at least a chance to detach his spirit from the dead man’s, No Ears looked toward the sinking sun and received a terrible shock. Six great cranes were flapping slowly westward; they crossed the face of the red sun in their journey west.

  No Ears knew then what had happened: he had made a mistake that morning when he had hidden behind the sage bush near Crazy Woman Creek. He had assumed that the cranes had come for his soul; it had been a silly error, one he should have known better than to make. He thought the cranes were after him because he was old. Of course, that was nonsense. Spirit messengers cared nothing for age; often they took the souls of babies who had only just been born, or of young men or young women in the prime of life; his wife Pretty Moons had barely been of an age to marry when the spirits took her.

  The cranes on Crazy Woman Creek had not been after him at all, No Ears realized: they had been after the mountain men. The mountain men had shot one of them, and then fooled them by slipping away to England, but their traveling had only meant a brief delay. The cranes had returned and taken Jim Ragg—when they wanted, they would take Bartle, too. His light spirit would be easy to carry away; to the cranes it would probably be no heavier than a minnow or a little water snake.

  No Ears watched the cranes go, six flying shadows against the burnt light of sunset. He felt very uneasy; he did not like to travel with people who were going to die. It was for that reason that he had made no name for himself in battle. He did not mind the fighting itself, but he did not enjoy the company of people who would soon die.

  The next day he sat on deck, watching Bartle with his young wife. Bartle tried to fish a little, but he was not good at it; he only caught a large turtle. That was not a good sign. Thinking back over his many visits with the mountain men, No Ears realized that Bartle had never been a good hunter; he rarely brought in game. He was also weak when it came to making fires. He seemed to be one of those men who were interested only in women. It was a failing No Ears could sympathize with because he had once been the same way. Getting wives had interested him more than war.

  He knew, though, that getting wives was even more dangerous than war; he suspected that Bartle’s marriage to the English girl might prove more dangerous than war. The English girl reminded him too much of his last wife, whose name was Sun-in-Your-Face. She had first been called Quick Ferret, but had been renamed once it was obvious that she was of such beauty that to look at her made one blind in the mind.

  Certainly Sun-in-Your-Face’s beauty had made him blind in his mind. He had wanted her so much that he didn’t notice that she intended to kill him. H
e never knew why the beautiful Sun-in-Your-Face wanted to kill him, but there was no doubt that she did. She once took the spleen of a sick dog and mixed it with his food in order to kill him. No Ears soon became very sick; it was while he was near death that he realized it was his wife’s doing. He saw her sharpening a knife and realized she meant to finish him with it—she was impatient that he was not already dead. Fortunately he had his gun handy and had just enough strength left to shoot her. Sun-in-Your-Face looked at him with a terrible hatred when she realized she had taken too long to sharpen her knife. He didn’t know why she wanted to kill him; he had been good to her, he thought; he had bought her several very pretty and well-tanned robes, and his tent was a fine one. Perhaps she only wanted to have the fine tent to herself. After her death everyone congratulated him for having outsmarted Sun-in-Your-Face; it seemed to be common knowledge that she had wanted to kill him, though no one had mentioned it.

  But then, his people understood such things; they usually knew when a woman planned to kill a man, or vice versa. It was not so with the whites on the river steamer. No Ears could see that Bartle had no idea that his young English wife didn’t like him; perhaps it was mainly that she did not desire him. No Ears’s nose had not lost its keenness, and if there was one thing above others that he excelled at smelling, it was desire. He could smell it immediately in both women and men. Even in its early stages, desire had such a strong smell that it was hard to miss. No Ears knew that the rude captain had a great amount of desire for Bartle’s wife; the captain smelled goatish. But the girl named Pansy had no desire for Bartle; No Ears slept not far from them and would have known it if she fancied their mating. Such was not the case.