Buffalo Girls

by Larry McMurtry

  These thoughts made No Ears very uneasy. Jim was dead and Bartle—unless he was lucky and his wife fell overboard or was taken by the captain—probably did not have long to live. Calamity was drunk a great deal and would not be much help if there was serious trouble.

  No Ears studied the matter all day; he began to have the feeling that it was time to leave the whites to their own lives and deaths and go back to his home. He had better get off the boat and walk over to the Platte River—the weather was good and it would be a pretty walk. Perhaps he would be able to find a few of his people and tell them about the great whale fish and the other interesting things he had seen.

  He did not like to leave Calamity, but he felt he had better do it while he felt like walking home. Later he could go up to Montana on the steamer if he wished, or perhaps catch a ride on a train. He did not think it wise to stay with the white people when they were being so careless with their lives. The six cranes could return at any time; if there was too much trouble he might not be able to keep one of them from snatching his soul.

  The next morning he told Calamity what he was planning. Calamity looked disappointed but did not try to talk him out of it.

  “Go if you feel like it, while the weather’s pretty,” she said. “I’m aiming to go back and find Dora. Come for the winter, if you can make it. You oughtn’t to be wintering hard, at your age.”

  “I hope your horse is well and that no one has eaten your dog,” No Ears said. Calamity had left her black horse at Fort Leavenworth and her dog with Dora in Miles City.

  “I don’t expect they’ve eaten my dog,” Calamity said. “They’ll be chewing all day, if they do. That dog is tough.”

  Bartle Bone was slightly disquieted by the news that No Ears planned to depart. Of course, there was no reason the old man shouldn’t go. There was no reason to stop him, or to encourage him, or to do much of anything, that Bartle could see. He felt rather dazed; now he had a wife to support and had had no practice at such a task. Pansy had become noticeably more brisk since they struck America—she had been sharp with him several times and would doubtless be even sharper if he flagged in any significant way, such as by failing to support her. She seemed to expect to live in a house, though Bartle had never owned one and had no idea how to go about getting one. He was a poor carpenter and would not be able to build a decent house before winter. Perhaps Dora would allow them a room. If she didn’t, he had no idea what they would do. He had married hastily, without planning anything—of course he had assumed when he married that he would always have Jim and Calamity around to help him. Jim Ragg had always been competent at whatever he took up—no doubt he could even have built a house that would satisfy Pansy, if it had come to that.

  But it hadn’t. Now Jim was dead and Calamity almost never sober; No Ears, a sensible old man who could frequently be counted on for reliable advice, was leaving to walk to the Platte River.

  To Bartle it seemed a poor homecoming. Pansy had never been to the west: what if she took a dislike to it? Most of the English he knew had liked the west, but then they had all been men, and what they liked was the game. He had been trying to teach Pansy to shoot; she was erratic with a pistol, tolerable with a rifle; still, he could not imagine that she would take to the west because of the game.

  For the first time, the notion that he was now responsible for Pansy’s support crossed his mind. It was an upsetting thought, too. With the show going on, there had always been plenty to eat; Billy Cody doled out pocket money; most of the troupers gambled most of the money away, but could still usually afford to get barbered or go on a toot and pursue other expensive frolics. With money and grub so plentiful, Bartle had never really thought about having to support a wife.

  Except for a little scouting, and now and then a little freight hauling or a spot of stage driving, Bartle had never had a job. He had just traveled the country, living off Jim’s skill with the rifle. If absolutely required to shoot, he shot, but mostly he left it to his old friend, a superior marksman. If he tried to travel the country with Pansy he would have to shoot—of course, that was silly. He couldn’t travel the country with Pansy. She was an English miss, not a mountain man.

  The steamer stopped at a little dock on the Nebraska shore. No Ears took a blanket and his box of ears, shook hands with everyone, and got off.

  “If I had my horse I’d go with you,” Calamity said. Seeing No Ears preparing to leave made her suddenly panic-stricken. She had not been separated from him since the day he had saved her from the blizzard. He was a small man and very old. Seeing him with his blanket and his ears stabbed at her heart. He had the plains to cross—a long walk. Would she ever see No Ears again? And if she didn’t, who would advise her? Dora was fine for town advice, but Dora knew nothing of country dangers.

  “I wish I had my horse,” Calamity said. “I’m too fat now to walk to the Platte with you.”

  No Ears left without delay. To Calamity, watching him from the boat, he looked as old and dried up as the weeds along the river’s shore.

  “Maybe I should have just married him,” she said to Bartle. She still felt disturbed.

  “Marry No Ears?” he asked, astonished. “The man is twice your age. What would be the point?”

  Calamity felt like punching him; she felt like punching somebody, and nobody else was handy.

  “You’re twice your wife’s age,” she reminded him. “More than that—you’re three times her age, at least. What do you reckon the point is for her?”

  Lately Bartle had begun to worry about that very point himself. He usually had a quick retort to anything anyone might say, but this time he had none. He was aware that Calamity didn’t like Pansy; Jim hadn’t liked her much, either, though he had unbent and kissed her at the wedding. Suddenly life, which had always been a lively, sporty thing, seemed to be nothing but heartache and confusion.

  He wished Calamity could break her tiresome habit of asking unanswerable questions—speaking words that called up worry was a bad trait. The notion that Calamity might marry No Ears seemed ridiculous; they weren’t even sweethearts, at least not so far as he had observed. Now he was forced to consider that in some people’s eyes it was ridiculous that Pansy had married him, a broken-down old mountain man with no income. When forced to consider the matter, he realized he had no idea what the point might be for Pansy. He scarcely knew his own mind anymore, and could not pretend to know hers as well. Pansy was quick with opinions, but among her opinions, he could not recall that she had mentioned what she considered the point of their marriage to be.

  More and more, Bartle found himself wishing that the crazed anarchist in Chicago hadn’t picked Jim Ragg to stab. There had been hundreds of people walking by the lake that day—why, with so many possibilities, had he picked Jim Ragg to stab?

  9

  PANSY KNEW THE BOSTON CAPTAIN WANTED HER. SHE HAD begun her life in the London streets at the age of eleven; she had now reached the age of sixteen and considered herself an expert on the desires of men. She read them as quickly as educated people read newspapers. The captain wanted her, but that was common—it was not the important fact.

  The important fact was that he was taking his boat in the direction she wanted to go: south, to where it was warm.

  All her years in London, Pansy had been cold. She had spent nearly six years shivering; some girls got used to it, but Pansy never had. She hated the chill. The best thing about the Wild West show had been the warm tents and the heaps of buffalo robes. For the first time in years she slept warm; it was worth marrying an old man for a while to sleep in a warm tent rather than a chill stone doorway.

  On the voyage over, Pansy had heard several people talk about the western winters. Evidently they were long and severe. That news was enough to convince Pansy that her marriage to old Bartle had served its purpose: she was in America, and the southern parts of America were said to be quite warm. Old Bartle was not bad to her, but he was of no interest. The elegant Mr. Cody had been of consid
erable interest, but Mr. Cody was full of himself and scarcely looked at her. He did mention how warm the south was, though. He and Annie Oakley had done an exhibition in New Orleans, a city he claimed was always warm.

  Knowing no more than that, Pansy decided New Orleans would be her destination. She would have been pleased to attract the interest of Mr. Cody but he was evidently not a man who sought women very strenuously. He even seemed to think she loved old Bartle, when she had merely chosen him as her road to warmth. It was a pity Mr. Cody had no more need for women than he seemed to, but Pansy felt she had neither the time nor the opportunity to change him.

  The American summer, or the little that she had got to see of it, had been all she had hoped for. It was warm in New York, and even warmer in Chicago. But on the train west to Dubuque she had felt the breath of the prairie autumn. It was a sharp enough breath to convince her she ought to get on to New Orleans as soon as possible.

  The fact that the captain wanted her was lucky—the one problem she had to consider was what to do with old Bartle. Again, the fact that they were on a boat and not a train was lucky. Jim Ragg had wanted to take the train west; Pansy had argued for a boat from the beginning, but if it had not been for the splendid luck of having old Jim killed, she might well not have prevailed. Bartle was far too willing to side with his friend. If the train had been chosen she would have had no option but to sneak off to Chicago and stay lost until they left; no doubt she would have had to work awhile, in order to get a passage to New Orleans.

  But by good fortune, Jim had been killed; by even better fortune, the old Indian was gone, too. Pansy hated the old Indian—he had been far too watchful. He was always on deck, smoking; often she caught him watching her. It would have been hard to do much, either with the captain or Bartle, without old No Ears knowing what she was about. He even stayed on deck most of the night, playing with his ears. Calamity sometimes sat with him, but she was usually dead drunk, and consequently less of a problem.

  The dilemma Pansy had to wrestle with, as the boat steamed down the Mississippi, was whether to kill Bartle or merely announce that matters were quits between them, and then leave with the captain.

  Her older brother, Ben Clowes, who had brought her to the streets of London and put her to work, had been a firm believer in killing as the most certain means of really terminating involvements of all kinds.

  “The dead won’t be turning up to make trouble for you,” Ben had put it—advice Pansy always remembered, though she had never acted on it.

  Ben had been a robber who aspired to be a murderer. He planned to make a specialty of sneaking into the houses of very old people of some means and snuffing them out, if possible by strangulation. It seemed a good plan, but unfortunately Ben had come to ruin due to the unexpected tenacity of his first victim-to-be, a very old lady. He managed to enter her house; she had looked frail, but when Ben grabbed her by the neck she proved to be too strong for him. She broke free and slammed him twice with a poker; she yelled for her servants, who slammed him several more times and called the police. Because of the age of the intended victim, Ben was hanged.

  Ben’s unfortunate failure at strangulation made Pansy cautious. It taught her that in killing the essential thing was to make sure of your victim; the question that now faced her was whether there was a means by which she could make absolutely sure of finishing old Bartle, if murder proved to be her choice. Bartle was often drunk but he was not really frail. He was set on teaching her to shoot—a project which held some hope. She could shoot him and pretend an accident. But it was chancy; she was new to shooting, and might miss the vital spot even from a close distance. Perhaps if he was drunk enough, she could whop him good with the gun some night and push him overboard; the difficulty there was that there was no guarantee he would drown. If an eighty-five-year-old lady wouldn’t be strangled, Bartle might well not drown. Worse still, he might manage to cry out and be heard.

  Ben’s remark about the finality of killing someone who posed a problem was no doubt valid, but it seemed to Pansy it might require an expertise she simply did not have. Ben had been a cold planner, but he had failed. Bartle, accustomed to danger, might prove to be more than she could finish; still, she would have enjoyed finishing him; the old brute was smelly, careless with his tobacco, and far too amorous.

  After a day’s reflection, Pansy told herself she had to be practical. She had always attempted to be practical; there was no sense taking chances in a new country.

  Consequently she began to smile at the captain, who was not slow to notice that he was being smiled at. He soon began to beam in response. Pansy watched his movements and knew when he went off duty. On the second night after No Ear’s departure she made herself as prim as possible, even tying her hair with the white ribbon Bartle had given her for their wedding. Then she met the captain outside his cabin door.

  “I will be nice, sir, if you like,” Pansy said. She felt quite confident—she had always considered that she enjoyed an advantage over men. After all, she had what they wanted—they could have it, but only if they helped.

  “Eh, ma’am?” the captain said. He had observed the young woman watching him; indeed, he was not unaccustomed to such attentions from his female passengers. The authority he wielded as captain gave him a definite advantage with the female sex. Still, in the case of this particular female, he had not expected such a sudden move.

  Pansy decided the man was tiresome; few of his sex weren’t. Even in the plainest and most obvious situations, they frequently required some leading.

  “Nice, sir,” Pansy said, trying not to mock him. “I said I would be nice.”

  “Bully, then!” the captain said.

  10

  BARTLE CAME ON DECK, HOPING THAT THE COLD BREEZE would sober him enough to enable him to deal with the startling situation he suddenly found himself facing. Oppressed by the sad homecoming, grieving still for his lost friend, Bartle had adopted Calamity’s method for aborting dismal thoughts. He had begun to split her bottles with her.

  Now, with a dull headache, and a cold wind bringing autumn down the Missouri, he had just been told that his wife meant to leave him. Her notion was to journey downriver to New Orleans accompanied by the Boston captain.

  “We just got married—it’s only two months now,” Bartle pointed out.

  Neither Pansy nor the captain said anything. What seemed cruel to Bartle wasn’t that Pansy had decided to leave—drunk or not, he was sharp enough to realize that he had begun to bore her—but that the two of them had decided to leave him at a time when his head felt as if a carpenter had hammered it for a while. His tongue, usually agile, felt thick and slow.

  “Well, Pansy, I guess I am surprised that you want to leave,” Bartle said. “Do you have a reason?”

  He felt silly even saying it; why ask a woman if she had a reason, when the reason, gruff as ever, stood beside her in his blue coat?

  “I’ve come to love my dear Johnny,” Pansy said crisply, with a modest glance at the captain.

  Calamity, propped against a pile of ropes, observed the proceedings without surprise. The little English whore was tired of Bartle; probably she had had no interest in him to begin with other than securing her passage. She felt a little relieved that matters had come to a head so soon. She had not looked forward to traveling upriver with the aloof young girl.

  Despite her relief, she hoped for his sake that Bartle would make a stiff response. Since Jim’s death, Bartle had gone slack. He rarely looked lively, and Bartle had always been the lively one, a man with enough spark to lift everyone’s spirits at times when spirits were leaden.

  Bartle knew he ought to shoot the brazen couple, or at least fight the captain, but he did neither—his gun wasn’t handy, and neither was his anger. Facing them, he only felt a kind of wistfulness.

  Part of it was that he knew he would miss his Pansy; having such a soft girl to warm his nights had been a rare treat. The other part of it was that he had begun to miss himself
—the wild mountain man the Buntline types celebrated, half horse and half grizzly, the kind of character who would grab the Boston captain by the neck and shake him like a rat before pitching the little flirt who stood beside him into the river.

  Bartle had done such things, but he didn’t feel like doing them that morning. Seeing his friend die on a bench in Chicago had convinced him that it was foolish to go out of one’s way to seek revenge. Life would deal out revenge enough for whatever wrongs people did. Life would settle with the Boston captain, sooner or later; it would settle, at some point, with pretty Pansy Clowes.

  He had ignored the normal codes of behavior all his life—the freedom of the mountains was mostly a freedom to ignore codes of behavior—and he didn’t feel like pretending they interested him now. Jim Ragg had been the one who was code-bound. If Jim had been married to Pansy and she had proposed to depart with the Boston captain, Jim would have immediately shot the captain, and probably Pansy, too. Bartle had often tried to tease Jim about his strict behavior; there was something of the preacher in Jim—his sermon just happened to be beaver.

  “If that’s your wish, then I guess I’ll just tip my hat,” Bartle said. “Me and Calamity have got to catch our steamer.”

  Pansy Clowes was slightly affronted. She had married the old brute, after all—a stiffer argument than that would have been in order. Occasionally, in London, there had been contests for her favors; men had become violent over her and flailed at one another with their fists. Pansy enjoyed such occasions; she never felt surer of her power than in those hot moments when men fought over her. It would have been a good test for Johnny, too, to see if he could draw blood from old Bartle.