Buffalo Girls

by Larry McMurtry

  Down below, in what had been the bar, Calamity, Bartle, and Johnny were passing around a bottle. They had to drink out of a bottle because Dora had already packed all the glasses. Calamity felt like crying, although she had nothing against Deadwood and no fondness for Belle Fourche. The move had just seemed too prompt. Bartle had spent a week working up to leaving, and now Dora had caught him and passed him in one day.

  No Ears was stretched out on the top of the bar. He considered that the bar made an excellent bed, and he often napped on it when business was slow. It gave the effect of sleeping on a ridge—but this ridge had a roof over it. He had taken little part in the moving; it surprised him that the whites had taken three wagonsful of possessions out of one small house that hadn’t seemed to have much in it. The bulk of white people’s possessions amounted to a severe handicap in his view. Among his people whole villages could be disassembled, moved, and reassembled with much less fuss and bother than the whites had expended in getting the wagons packed. Watching them grow nervous and wear themselves out trying to fit bulky objects into the wagons, he began to feel lucky. He himself owned only his blanket, his pipe, his shotgun, and his wax ear. He could travel anywhere at any time and not worry about encumbrances such as glasses and plates—it was hard to understand why whites found such things to be necessary.

  “I never thought we’d be leaving Belle Fourche this quick,” Calamity said several times.

  “I wisht I’d left for St. Louis last week,” Bartle said. “Dora’s fierce when she gets in a hurry. I’d about as soon step in front of an Indian charge.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Johnny said. “I’d rather have a tongue-scalping than a real scalping. You’ve lived safe for so long you forget what trouble is like.”

  “Trouble is like having to drive a damn wagon to Deadwood,” Bartle said. “It’s in the wrong direction.”

  “Maybe we’ll see them moose,” Calamity said. She and Bartle had spent another fruitless day hunting the three lost moose; this time, though, they had been careful not to hunt so far from Belle Fourche that they couldn’t make it back for the night. No Ears had offered to go along to help them locate the fat animals, but they had pointed out to him that he had just had a long walk and that they were perfectly capable of finding the moose themselves. At this they promptly failed. No Ears was too polite to mock them for their failure, but others were not so kind. Doosie and Johnny, both of whom had been looking forward to some moose sweetbreads, were rather scoffing.

  Dora had them up and started for Deadwood an hour before sunup. At that hour Ogden was the only one who seemed very lively—but the trail was good, there was no mud, and the two new wagons followed Ogden’s lead while Calamity and Bartle dozed over the reins.

  Before she had been in the Miner’s Rest three minutes, Dora knew she had made the right choice. The stairway was grand, the banisters beautiful! Even Doosie’s spirits picked up when she saw the kitchen, which was far more grand than any she had ever commanded. The hardwood floors needed polish, but otherwise were splendid. There was a huge cash register—it was empty, but Dora meant to remedy that, and promptly.

  No Ears had come with them. Some of the better rooms on the second and third floors had little bay windows, and he settled himself in one of the bays to smoke and watch the birds fly. Calamity and Bartle were too exhausted to do much unpacking, and Johnny had jumped out of his wagon and walked off just before they got to town, seduced by the gurgle of a creek he hadn’t prospected in a while.

  That left Ogden to do all the unloading alone—a task he didn’t mind, although Dora’s orders were rather confusing. She was in such a state of excitement that she would order him to put a table or a chair in one place and then, a minute later, to pick it up and put it somewhere else.

  Ogden willingly did the lifting and relifting—it was clear that Dora was happy, as happy as she had been since they had married. Often she would catch him and give him a kiss, or pull him into a room to show him some pleasing view, or ask his opinion about where a bed should go.

  By the time the three wagons were unpacked, the confusion was so great, boxes, chairs, tables, drapes, and kitchenware piled everywhere, that Doosie grew discouraged and had recourse to tobacco, a drug she used only when her nerves were taxed to the limit.

  “I ain’t never moving no more,” she said, installing herself in a big chair in the bare kitchen. Dora was happily unpacking glasses.

  “Well, you shouldn’t say you’ll never do something,” Dora told her. “Say it and life will spit it back at you. Look at me. I must have told you five hundred times that I’d never marry—look at me now! Did I marry?”

  “You married, but I ain’t you, and I ain’t moving no more, either,” Doosie said. “If you sell this hotel, just sell me with it. I’ll go back to slavery before I’ll stuff up in a wagon again and move off to a new place.

  “It’s hard on my digestion, all this moving,” she added.

  “Blow your nose,” Dora said. “Look at how beautiful our hotel is. Pretty soon we’ll have customers like you won’t believe.”

  “I’ll believe ’em,” Doosie assured her. “I don’t mind you getting rich—I just ain’t moving around this earth no more.”

  That night in bed—they had put up their bed first, mindful that the baby might come soon—Ogden put his big hand on her belly. It was his new pleasure; he liked to put his hand there and feel the baby. Dora was large, and so warm she was like a stove. Both of them had begun to imagine the baby and to try and decide on names. Dora wanted to call it Mary if it was a girl; her favorite sister, who had died of diphtheria, was named Mary. Ogden wanted to call it Bob if it was a boy. He thought Bob was a simple, useful name, too short for people to forget or mix up with other names.

  Looking out her new bay window at the high moon that shed a pale light on the Black Hills, Dora felt, for once, both right and smart. After all the turmoil and torment of her earlier years, she had at last bought the right business; she had also married the right man—the very man whose large hand covered the growing child within her. Ogden might be only a boy, but he was a good boy. In the mixture of calm and excitement she felt spending her first night in her new hotel, she began to recognize a little of what Blue had so often tried to tell her about his marriage. It was not what they shared, she and Blue—not so sharp, not so deep, not so keen. But it framed her in a comfortable, restful way. Her hot impatience had not been a whimsy, or a mistake of the passions. She fit with Ogden; she liked him there beside her; his size and his simplicity were a comfort. Blue was too much of a devil—she could not run a hotel successfully and be wasting her energy in tantrums and tear storms that were the inevitable result of dealing with T. Blue.

  When Ogden slept, and his hand slipped off her stomach, Dora wished for a moment that T. Blue could be there outside her window. She wished she could walk over and whisper to him for a few minutes—admit that he had been right.

  But Blue wasn’t there—just the half-moon was there, shining on the new town she had come to, the little town in a crack in the hills. The conversation she wished for might always have to remain only a conversation in her thoughts.

  But even to think it was a solace and a resting after the years of quarrels and dashed hopes. Dora couldn’t wait for the morning; she felt happy, and so full of energy it seemed a pity to have to waste hours in bed. She meant to be up with the dawn, to start prettifying her new hotel.

  10

  SHE MUSTN’T!” CALAMITY SAID, STRICKEN. “WE COULD PACK some snow and bring it to her. That would cool her.”

  Fred stirred in his corner, disturbed by Calamity’s tone.

  “I’ll go right now, Ogden,” she added, wishing Dora would open her eyes.

  Almost as she said it, Dora did open her eyes—but they were the eyes of a woman wild with fever. Her forehead and upper lip were slick with sweat, though she was pale and shivering.

  “Blue,” Dora said. “Blue, when are you coming? I want you to hitch the wagon
so we can leave.”

  Ogden sat dumbly on the other side of the bed. He didn’t understand why his wife kept calling out for someone named Blue, but he didn’t care. He just wanted her to sink out of her fever and get well. Only an hour before, she had calmed enough to feed the baby—a whopping big boy; true to their intention, they had named him Bob—but now she seemed worse than ever. Her feverish eyes looked at him but didn’t really see him; even so, she didn’t want him to leave. Ogden had never felt so sad or so confused.

  “It’s a bright moon—dance by the light of the moon,” Dora said. “Don’t you hear me, Martha?”

  “I hear you, but hush and rest,” Calamity said, barely able to get the words out. “You need to mind Doosie now. You need to hush and rest.”

  “No, I don’t want to rest, we’re going to fix up the hotel!” Dora insisted. “I want pretty glass in the doors.” She tried to sit up. Doosie rose for a moment from her seat by the bed, mopped Dora’s forehead and lip, and eased her back down. The mopping did little good; beads of sweat reappeared almost at once. Doosie, who had been through many birthings and recoveries, was afraid the sweat would soon give way to chill, and it did. Though warmly covered with quilts, Dora was soon shivering. Calamity went out of the room to cry. Ogden sat dumbly across from the bed, and the baby boy, one of the largest Doosie had ever delivered, waved a small red hand from a box of blankets that had been hastily fixed as his crib.

  The day faded; Calamity came and went, more drunken every time she returned; Ogden was allowed to go do his chores, but told to hurry. Dora wanted Ogden there; time and again she would try to find his large hand with her weak one. The baby wailed. Doosie took him in her arms and rocked him a little; he was a healthy boy and soon became quiet. By then, Dora’s mumbled talk was only whispers; she had no strength left to turn in the bed. Her fever burned; it burned more fiercely as the night deepened; the half-moon rose and lit one side of the room. Ogden came back and sat dumbly on the dark side of the bed. Doosie felt her boss’s forehead; she felt her fluttering pulse. Very late in the night, with Ogden asleep, his head and forearms on the bed, the rest of him in the chair, with Dora’s breath weakening with every time she strained to hear it, Doosie knew a woman’s life was ending.

  Of all lives, it was the one she would have most liked to save—Dora, for all her sharp tongue, had shown her years of kindness—but Doosie had sat by many beds and knew that what one human wanted was not enough to save the dying once they had passed a certain point, had lost the strength it took to live. Neither the doctor’s skills, nor hers, nor her love nor anyone’s, was going to save Dora now—it was not likely she would see the sunrise.

  Wearily Doosie got up and went out for a moment to seek a slop jar. The old Indian without ears sat smoking in one of the bare rooms off the hall. Doosie passed without speaking to him, but having found the slop jar, she stopped on her return and looked at No Ears.

  “Do you know anything about this?” she asked. He was an old man; he might have some knowledge she herself lacked. “If you do, come help me,” she added, going back to Dora’s room.

  Since the dying woman had been very polite to him over the years, giving him food and shelter and even tobacco when he needed it, No Ears felt it would be no more than good manners to follow the black woman into the sickroom, though he did not suppose there was anything he could do for Dora. Birth was as dangerous as death and indeed often brought death with it for mother or child or both.

  He stood by the bed a moment. The black woman was rocking the large baby. “He’s big,” he said, meaning the baby, though certainly the husband was large, too.

  “Well, she couldn’t help that,” Doosie said. “The child just grew.”

  “I don’t think she will be able to live,” No Ears said.

  “You don’t know anything do you?” Doosie asked. She was feeling desperate and would have liked to pass the burden of being the one with knowledge onto an older person; she would have liked a wiser person to contradict what she knew, which was what No Ears had just said.

  “One of my wives died of this too,” No Ears said. “She was too old to be making children, and the child she made was too big.”

  The old man left; Ogden slept; there were no sounds from downstairs. Calamity had gone somewhere to drink. Now and then the baby would wave its hand, a small shadow in the moonlight. Doosie slept a little, hunched over her knees. Then she felt Dora’s hand moving on the quilt; she straightened up. Dora’s eyes were open, shining, watching her. Doosie felt her forehead; there was no sweat, but when she searched for a pulse she was long in finding it, and it was very faint.

  “I hope you’ll stay and raise Bob,” Dora said, her voice scarcely louder than a breath.

  Doosie felt too broken to answer; dying women were an old story to her, but she had not expected to sit by while this one died.

  “Did you hear me? I want to know if you’ll do it,” Dora said.

  “Hush, miss,” Doosie said. “You know I’ll be staying. Where would I go?”

  Dora reached for Ogden’s hand, but could not find it. Not being able to reach him troubled her; she wanted to reach him. Doosie went around the bed and touched Ogden on the shoulder. Ogden didn’t really wake up, but he put out his hand and Dora found it.

  “Martha can help—where’d she go?” Dora asked.

  “I don’t know,” Doosie said.

  “She nursed all those boys with the smallpox,” Dora said. “Why won’t she stay and nurse me?”

  “You, you, though,” Doosie said. “She can’t stand it when it’s you.”

  “But you’re going to stay. You said it!” Dora insisted. “You’re gonna stay with Bob.”

  “Yes, miss. I said it. I’ll be staying.”

  “Bring me Bob,” Dora said. She felt that the deep rest was near; she wanted to see her boy again. Doosie brought him—Dora touched him, put her fingers on his cheek, saw him wiggle, make a fist, rub his eyes. She uncurled his fist and put her finger in it. “Put him back to bed, he’s sleepy,” she whispered.

  As Doosie took the baby to his box she looked out the window and saw Calamity standing below in the street. Calamity just stood there, looking up at the window, which was open.

  “You better be coming up,” Doosie called. “You better come on.

  Calamity just stood there; she didn’t think her legs would make it up the stairs. She stood there, feeling bad. Finally she made her slow way up, but when she got to the bedroom, Dora’s eyes were closed.

  “Is she gone?” she asked, shaking—she couldn’t see well in the dim room.

  Doosie shook her head. “Not yet,” she said.

  Dora held onto one of Ogden’s fingers, as Bob had momentarily held to one of hers. Rest surrounded her, easy rest, and yet there were things nagging at her: she wanted pretty glass in the front door of the hotel—and another thing nagged, too.

  “Martha, you better go tell Blue,” Dora whispered. “Or if that’s asking too much, make Ogden do it.”

  “Tell Blue what, Dora?” Calamity asked. She sat down in a chair by the bed.

  Dora tried to wake up to the question but she couldn’t, she wanted to accept her rest.

  “Just tell him, I guess,” she said.

  Later in the night, No Ears felt a difference in the house. He went into the sickroom. All the weary people in it slept—the baby in its box, Martha, the black woman, in chairs. The big youth slept in his chair, too; the parrot was silent on its perch.

  But the woman in the bed wasn’t sleeping; her spirit had gone where spirits go. No Ears closed her eyes.

  11

  DORA DU FRAN WAS KNOWN THROUGHOUT THE BLACK Hills; she was known in Montana and Dakota, in Wyoming and down the plains and the cattle country, all the way to Texas. Some who had admired Dora did not hear of her death for months, or even years. On the day of her burial in a grave on Mount Moriah, the hill was crowded with boys and men, miners and cowboys mostly. Mr. Fortescue wept profusely; he had lost a ligh
t hope, and also had to grapple once again with the problem of that deuced hotel.

  Bartle, who had left Deadwood the day after the move, heard of the death before he reached the Missouri. He gave the news to Billy Cody in Buffalo, New York. The show was in camp and Billy was doing a stage show called Pawhaska, the White Scout. The white scout stumbled through his role that evening; he locked himself in his dressing room for two hours, and later was seen dead drunk in a saloon. Because of his stumbling performance, the show closed a week later.

  In the days after the funeral, Calamity thought of Blue. Doosie looked at her reproachfully whenever his name came up. Doosie thought Calamity ought to set off at once and do what Dora had asked her to do; but Calamity wavered. She felt too sad to set off alone. In the mornings she felt so poorly that it seemed she might die herself, and she didn’t care if she did. She attempted to postpone the question of Blue by helping Doosie with the baby, but that didn’t work very well. The baby didn’t like her; he squalled every time she picked him up. Also, she was shaky and nearly dropped him once or twice when he wiggled. Doosie didn’t really trust her with the baby and kept snatching him from her before she could win his confidence.

  Calamity felt out of sorts with Bartle Bone for leaving. She missed him, and she also felt sure that if he had been there to go with her to find Blue, she could have worked up to taking Blue the sad news. But he wasn’t there to go with her—which left No Ears or Potato Creek Johnny as the likeliest traveling companions. She sounded out Johnny first and found him not at all enthusiastic about the trip.