In Calamity's Wake (15 page)
So that's what happened. You might have heard about different battles: the Battle of Little Bighorn, the Dull Knife Fight, the Battle of Slim Buttes; it all comes down to us telling them to stay on a space of land and then finding something we wanted there and telling them to get off of it. What were they to do? Bighorn was one for them; Dull Knife and Slim Buttes were two for the army. Both sides took terrible losses. No matter who was winning, the soldiers were getting thin and impatient. A lot of soldiers traded bullets for mining equipment and just
yelled bang, pretended to die, and disguised themselves to start anew. Eventually both sides gave in to another treaty and the boomtowns became part of the United States of America. I remember walking in Deadwood after that treaty with the strange feeling that all the criminals around me had suddenly been knighted.
In spring of 1876, we were ordered north with General Crook to join the Generals Miles, Terry and Custer at Little Bighorn River. I was the bearer of important dispatches and as the most reckless I was given the job of swimming the Platte River at Fort Fetterman, riding ninety miles to bring news back and forth. I was so wet and cold for so long that I woke up every morning thinking I was dead. I contracted a severe illness and was sent back in General Crook's ambulance to Fort Fetterman, where I lay in the hospital thinking of my family for fourteen days.
As soon as the army didn't need me as a soldier my sex became visible and I was suddenly too frail for duty. I didn't mind. I was ready to have a turn at independence. During the month of April I acted as a Pony Express rider carrying the U.S. mail between Deadwood and Custer, a distance of fifty miles, over one of the roughest trails in Black Hills country. I made the round trip every two days, which I defy you to beat on a fresh horse with no packages.
Many riders before me had been held up and robbed of their packages. But I was too fast, too good a shot, and too famous for anyone to try robbing me. I carried mail and money (for that was the only way of getting mail and money between those points). Once in a while the craftier or stupider toll-gatherers tried to muscle me but mostly I was looked on as a good fellow who never missed his mark.
I always hoped to rejoin the army but instead I met James Butler Hickock, better known as Wild Bill, and we started for Deadwood together, arriving as friends and lovers in about June. I don't know how to speak of love but I hope you find it, Daughter.
I remained around Deadwood all that summer, visiting the camps within an area of one hundred miles. I tried my hand at gold-panning but never saw a flake. I rode around the Plains with Wild Bill, my darling friend, and we remained in Deadwood during the summer. On the second of August 1876, sitting at a gambling table in the Bella Union in Deadwood, he was shot in the back of the head by the notorious desperado Jack McCall. I started to look for the assassin at once and found him at Shurdy's butcher shop. I grabbed a meat cleaver and made him throw up his hands. I had pictures in my head of me killing him, of a surprised look on his face as it fell apart under my blade. Truth
is, in all my life I never killed a single person. I was a hunter, but not of human beings. If you want to know the complete truth I could hit a tiny moving target as small as a bee searching in the air for flowers. After my brother and sisters died I aimed at rabbits and deer and even horses and men and I knew I had them perfectly dead beneath my sights but I never squeezed my gun's trigger except for contests and then only at spinning wheels and other foolishness. It wasn't that I thought life was precious. I knew that it wasn't. It was lifeâcheap and dirtyâbut life, still.
I cornered Jack McCall, and I frightened him until he saw that I was crying. You cannot dance around with a cleaver in your hand for as long as you would think and still be taken seriously. He was taken to a log cabin and locked up, well secured as everyone thought, but he got away. Afterwards he was caught at Fagan's ranch on Horse Creek, on the Old Cheyenne road, and was then taken to Yankton, where he was tried, sentenced and hung.
Poker Alice comforted me for hours. We were a strange couple to any who saw us: me a weeping mess in pants, and her a solid shoulder and a soft voice saying, Hey, hey, it's going to be all right.
I remained around Deadwood locating claims, going from camp to camp, until the spring of 1877,
when one morning, I saddled my horse and rode towards Crook City. I had gone about twelve miles from Deadwood, at the mouth of Whitewood Creek, when I met the overland mail running from Cheyenne to Deadwood. The horses were on a run, about two hundred yards from the station. Upon looking closely I saw that they were pursued by road agents. The horses ran to the barn as was their custom. As the horses stopped I rode alongside of the coach and found the driver, John Slaughter, lying face downwards in the boot of the stage, he having been shot. When the stage got to the station the road agents hid in the bushes. I immediately removed all baggage from the coach except the mail. I then took the driver's seat and with all haste drove to Deadwood, carrying the six passengers and the dead driver to a safe ending.
I left Deadwood in the fall of 1877 and went to Bear Butte Creek with the 7th Cavalry. During the fall and winter we built Fort Meade and the town of Sturgis. In 1878 I left the command and went to Rapid City to spend the year prospecting. The gold still was not interested in me, and so I bullwhacked for a bit.
In 1879 I went to Fort Pierre and drove trains to and from Rapid City for Frank Witch then drove teams from Fort Pierce to Sturgis for Fred Evans. This teaming was done with oxen; even though they were slow
they were better fitted for the work than horses, owing to the rough nature of the country.
Over the next few years I drifted: Wyoming, California, Texas, Arizona. I stopped at all points of interest until I reached El Paso in the fall of 1885. While in El Paso, I met Mr. Clinton Burke, a native of Texas, who I married. I had travelled through life long enough alone and it was time to take a partner. We remained in Texas and I began a quiet home life which I meant to last forever.
On October 28th, 1887, I became the mother of a boy baby, the very image of its father, at least that is what he said, but who had the temper of its mother. He lived a few days and I nursed him. I thought of you and how far away I had sent you. I thought maybe I could bring you back. But then he died of the crib death. I held him after the doctor came. I rocked him in the chair we bought for the purpose. I thought how quiet he was and how you had screamed at me as if you knew I was going to be a bad mother from the moment you were born. You were right. You knew everything.
When we left Texas we went to Boulder, where we kept a hotel until 1893. We hosted Belle Starr there and that's how she became my friend. I heard that she was a horse thief and that she helped the James brothers after they robbed the railroad. I thought the
law was really after her because she was married to an Indian. She helped me write this for you so take that into consideration.
My husband and I adopted a girl named Marie. She was fat and joyful; she clapped and spoke in baby babble. I loved her and I thought often of you. But I could not quit drinking and my husband gave her away. I cried for twenty days after which I went back where I belonged, travelling on alone through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, then back to Montana, then to Dakota, arriving in Deadwood on October 9th, 1895, after an absence of seventeen years.
My arrival in Deadwood after such an absence created quite an excitement among my many friends of the past, to such an extent that it spread to a vast number of the citizens who had come to Deadwood during my absence and who had heard of Calamity Jane and her many adventures. Among the many whom I met were several gentlemen from eastern cities who advised me to appear in exhibitions so that people out East would get to see the Famous Woman Scout from the Black Hills.
For a while a woman put me up and she said I could be comfortable to the end of my days. She found me by the river in Deadwood living with Annette, who everyone called Old Nett. She was rude to Nett as many white folks are to coloureds, not knowing or seeing that Nett
was my friend who fed me and talked to me and didn't need any stories of the Old West or any shooting displays from me. I followed that rich woman, stumbling out of the mud, to a life I had never known with regular bedding and no worries. All I had to do was stay sober and tell people about my life and shoot a little bit. I was a fool to leave the river. Nett said to me when I was going, You be good, take care of yourself. That was the last I heard of her tender voice. Oh, how I still miss Nett. How we sat at night in silence by the fire and breathed in the woodsmoke. Nett had three children die at birth and three more killed by sickness, accident and murder. We understood each other, how much each of us had lost.
The rich woman arranged for a man named Cummins, who was director of the Indian Congress, to solicit my talents for a travelling show. Cummins had assembled performers from thirty-one tribes for the Trans-Mississippi Exposition and the Omaha Greater American Exhibition. Now everyone was excited about the Pan-American Exposition and it was for that he wanted me. Geronimo would receive top billing, which made me happy because it meant less attention on me. Cummins chartered a trolley car to take me and some of the other performers to the exposition. We stopped at Niagara Falls. I got out
and stood at the edge watching tons of frothing water fall over the precipice. The sound was like the biggest mule train stampeding across the Plains. It was a bigger sound than I had ever heard. There was a force behind it like the force that pushes the avalanche down a mountain, or the force in men that starts a war. The fog that poured upwards cooled my skin. I watched my foot on the brink and I closed my eyes. I wanted to let myself fall into that water and be gone. The photographers took pictures of me there. In the newspaper they said I looked as if I could defy the mighty waters.
At the Pan-American Exposition I was like the children. I went on rides: Trip to the Moon, Scenic Railway, Ferris Wheel, Captive Balloon. I watched mock battles in the stadium staged by Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. At first there were so many people to see that I felt awed by the sheer variety of God's work. At sunset I watched the illumination of all the buildings as the thousands of little light bulbs grew bright, and more than once I heard a little girl gasp, Oh, isn't it beautiful? Is it really real?
But then it was up to me and I couldn't do it. I did try to perform myself. My friends bought me a suit worthy of Wild Bill. But I hated being stared at by strangers. My tongue wouldn't move. I had to drink and so I broke my promise. I got up onstage and all those fancy faces
turned towards me expecting me to shine on them. At the back of the auditorium I saw Geronimo watching. That old Apache had a look in his eye that made me want to cry, for although we were not dead, not gone, we were now artifacts of the frontier, which I suddenly realized was utterly gone, never to return. We were stared upon by eyes glistening with the prophecy of our deaths, seeing us as the last animals of extinct species pushed over the edge of the world by the onslaught of money. And we would not be allowed to live much longer.
I felt so sick and so afraid that I puked on the front row and was fired. The rich woman took my pay and Cummins wanted nothing to do with me. I went to see my old friend Buffalo Bill Cody who was there with his Wild West show. He offered me a spot but I said I couldn't do it and he understood. He gave me train fare.
I started home, having just discovered that such a place did not exist for one such as me.
I
KNEW
then that I was dying and I told the reporters in Deadwood that I came back there for the purpose. Nett was gone from the river. Bill and Charlie were gone. The muddy shantytown that I had loved was built over. The Chinese neighbourhood was evacuated. There was no reason left in this world to stay sober. I had helped
who I could help and that just never included me. Dora let me work at her place, whatever work I could do, laundry and such. Once in a while someone wanted to pay to lie with a legend and I still had enough tenderness for humanity to agree. I slept poorly under a roof, but I was sad and so I slept as much as I could with all those cats around my head. I wondered, if you ever knew me would you think me a monster or what?
L
ISTEN, WHEN
you grow, if you are a human child and I think you are, you will ask yourself why I gave you up, were you too much to handle or not good enough for me to keep? I expect these will be bitter questions and it hurts me badly to imagine your heart when you think them. Please believe it was all on me. When I looked at you I saw Anne, and Mary, and Silas, and Elijah, and even Lena, and how I couldn't take care of them. You were the mark of a world I could not control.
I saw Bill Hickok with a bullet in his head. I saw my ragged mother and my drunk father and my own shameful self. I knew that if I kept you with me you would die. I would get drunk and leave you to starve or freeze. I would bring home the wrong people. I would gamble away all the money we needed for your shoes and books and dresses. I would get killed one night and leave you helpless. All the risks I'd ever taken flashed
through my mind. And looking back at me was this brand-new person who was also the living memory of everyone I had ever loved. You were too precious to stay with me. I saw in you someone who was much too good for me. I guess that every mother looks at her new baby after all that pain, through that shock, and feels that they are seeing someone amazing, someone they can't possibly deserve. But I was right. I needed more than anything I have ever needed in my life for you to outlive me.
I want you to know that my mother loved me. And my brother Elijah, and my brother Silas, and my sisters, Mary and Lena and God Almighty's little Anne, they loved me too, but no grown man ever did, not even Bill. Love never made me strong. It never brought out any special reserves in me. I looked at you and all my confidence drained out with the blood between my legs. I could not keep you safe. I could not protect you. Darling girl, I knew that someday somebody might break your heart. But I decided then that it wouldn't be me.