One Thousand White Women (21 page)

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Authors: Jim Fergus

BOOK: One Thousand White Women
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“Please don’t go out again, May,” Martha begged me. “Stay here with us.”
“I’ll be back, Martha,” I said. “I must check on the child.”
If there is a Hell on earth, being abroad in the camp yet a third time that night was like walking through its labyrinths. A few dancers still staggered by the dying firelight. Others had fallen down in a jumble of bodies around the fire; some struggled to regain their feet while others lay writhing on the ground. Throngs of drunken savages, men and women, jostled me as I pushed by. Naked couples copulated on the ground like animals. I stepped over them, pushed aside those who came up against me, and, when it was necessary, cleared a path by swinging my club. It was as if the whole world had fallen from grace, and we had been abandoned here to witness its final degradation. Never had I felt more keenly our precarious situation. Never have I been more fearful. I thought of John Bourke, of all that he had told me, of all his dire warnings. Would that I had heeded him. How I longed now for him to hold me again in his arms, to carry me back to civilization, safe from the horror.
Then I came upon the most shocking sight of all. It was Daisy Lovelace surrounded by a group of men. She was lying on her stomach, covered in blood, her dress pushed up around her waist. The savages appeared to be taking turns upon her. I yelled and pushed through them as another fell atop her. I swung my club with all my strength and hit the man a solid blow on the back of his head. He groaned and went limp upon her, but before I could push him off, another one grasped me from behind and wrenched the club from my hand. Now they had me down, grappling and pinning my arms. I fought for all I was worth, kicking, biting, scratching, and spitting. They tore the dress from my body. I screamed again. Suddenly I heard the crack of a bullwhip, and then another, and one of the savages who squatted upon me grasped his throat and made a gurgling sound as he was lifted backwards like a child’s rag doll.
Then I heard a familiar voice, familiar in tone, but because it spoke in Cheyenne I could not place it immediately. But when the voice came a moment later in English I recognized it.
“
Git
the hell
offa
her, you miserable
stinkin’
heathens!” It was the voice of my old muleskinner friend, Jimmy—my savior Dirty Gertie.
At that same moment two others came to my aid. Another of the savages was lifted off me and I heard Gretchen speak. “I kill you you
gottdamnt
drunken pig!” she said. “You are not my
husband
no more, I swear to God I kill you!” And she began to kick the man, who was too drunk to walk and crawled along the ground on hands and knees trying to escape her wrath. But Gretchen followed him mercilessly, taking measured aim with a heavy foot that sent him sprawling again and again in the dirt. “You
gottdamn
drunk son of a bitch, what you
tink
you doing? I kill you. You bad man son of a bitch drunken sot. I kill you, you
bastart!
”
By then Phemie had wrenched my club away from the savage who had taken it, and in the same motion backhanded the man in a perfect arc across the face, laying his nose against his cheek in a torrent of blood. And the whip cracked again and now the remaining men were scrambling to escape this fury of women they had unleashed, stumbling and falling over themselves and trying to crawl away in their drunkenness.
“Are you alright, May?” Phemie asked, her voice so calm as to be almost otherworldly. She helped me to my feet.
“I’m fine, Phemie, but what of Daisy?” I had lost track of the poor thing in the confusion.
Now we saw that she still lay facedown in the dirt where I had first discovered her. We knelt beside her. She mumbled something to us, but we were unable to make out her words.
“We have to take her back to her lodge,” Phemie said.
Gretchen now had ahold of her drunken husband’s hair and was dragging him the way that a child drags a rag doll as he struggled to get his feet under him. “I
yam
so sorry, May, I
yam
so sorry to everyone,” she said, and I could see that she was weeping great tears of grief and rage. “I
yam
so sorry to everyone,” she said again. “I take this
gottdamn
drunken pig son of a bitch back home now. I see you all tomorrow,
yah?
I
yam
so sorry to you everyone.”
“Now that’s an old gal I wouldn’t want to mess with,” Gertie said admiringly. “I bet that ol’ boy’ll think twice fore he takes hisself another drink a whiskey.”
“God bless you, Jimmy,” I said to her, gratefully. “You couldn’t have arrived at a better time.”
“Aw, you can call me Gertie now, honey,” she said, “or whatever the hell else you like. The cat’s outta the bag. They found me out at Camp Robinson.’Nother skinner fella caught me just like you did, squattin’ to take a pee. It’s a dead giveaway, but there ain’t no way’round it, is there now?”
“What are you doing here, Gertie?” I asked.
“Your Cap’n sent me, honey,” Gertie said. “Got a message for you. But let’s get in out of this damn mess first. I’ll give you a hand with her, then we’ll talk. Things seem to be winding down some now. Hell, they was so busy partying when I got here I was able to ride right into the goddamn camp without even bein’ noticed. Ain’t they just plumb lucky I weren’t a Crow Injun come to steal me some Cheyenne ponies? Why you folks’d be afoot fer the rest of the damn summer.”
Gertie was right, the village had begun to quiet down; most of the dancers and revelers had either passed out or returned to their lodges, or crawled down into the willows along the river to sleep it off. Gertie, Phemie, and I half carried Daisy back to her tent. She had regained consciousness and was able to at least shuffle her feet. “Not a word to
mah
Daddy about this,” she mumbled. “Mr. Wesley Chestnut has not conducted himself like a gentleman,
takin
’ advantage in this manner of a girl when she is slightly tipsy. Not a word to
mah
Daddy,
Ah
beg of you.”
Daisy’s tipi crone met us at the entrance to their lodge, and we carried the poor thing inside and laid her gently down on her buffalo robes. The crone dabbed at the blood on her face with a cloth dipped in the water bowl, and made small clucking noises as she did so. The little French poodle, Fern Louise, yapped and ran in agitated circles about Daisy’s head.
Daisy’s husband, Bloody Foot, returned to the lodge moments after our arrival. The little dog seemed to have made friends with his new master and greeted him enthusiastically. To his credit, the man had not been drinking himself, and now told Gertie in Cheyenne that he had been searching the camp all night for his wife. His unpleasant name notwithstanding, he is a fine-looking fellow and was clearly genuinely concerned for Daisy. We did not tell him what had happened to her; but surely he could see.
It was just dawn by the time Gertie, Phemie, and I finally left Daisy’s tipi. Promising to meet later, Phemie went to her own lodge, while Gertie and I walked back toward Little Wolf’s.
A strange quiet had descended over the camp. The air was cool and perfectly windless, and the smoke from the dying lodge fires rose in thin straight lines above the tipis. Against the lightening horizon, the faint outlines of the bluffs over the river revealed themselves, and the birds took up their morning songs, tentatively at first and then in full voice. As always, the dawn cast a fresh light on the world; an uncertain hope returned. All seemed calm again, peaceful, as if the earth was a ship at sea and had managed to right itself after the storm.
Gertie and I skirted the half circles of family-grouped tipis where the bodies of some revelers still lay prone upon the ground, insensible as corpses. Fearing the worst, I stopped at Sara’s lodge, for which I had started out all those hours ago. I scratched lightly on the covering and called for her. To my great relief, the girl came to the entrance, her face still swollen with sleep. She smiled when she saw me. “I was worried for you,” I said. “I’ve been trying to get to you all night. I just wanted to see that you were safe.”
She touched the center of her breast with the tip of her right thumb, the sign for “I,” and then she extended her left hand, back down, in front of her body, and placed the tip of her right index finger, held vertically, in the center of her left palm, the sign for “safe.” “I am safe,” the gesture said.
I peered beyond her into the dimly lit lodge and saw her young husband Yellow Wolf, sleeping soundly on the buffalo robes. The child smiled at me again and swept her right hand, palm down from her breast outwards in a kind of chopping gesture, the sign for “good.” Her husband was good, I think she meant to tell me.
“That’s wonderful, sweetheart,” I said. “I was just worried for you. Go back to sleep. I’ll see you later.”
And Gertie and I walked on.
“How is it that you speak Cheyenne, Gertie?” I asked her.
“Oh, hell, honey, didn’t I tell you that I lived with the Cheyennes for a spell when I was a girl? Not this particular band but I’ll betcha I know a few a these folks. I had me a Cheyenne boyfriend, too. Yessir, mighty nice young fella, good-lookin’ boy, named
He’ heeno,
Blackbird, … prob’ly would married Blackbird myself but he got killed by Chivington’s army at Sand Creek, Colorado, in sixty-four. We wasn’t doin’ nothin’, we was just camped there.”
Now people were starting to stir in their lodges. A few wives and old women came outside to assess the condition, and in some cases, the identity of those who lay on the ground in front of their tipis. Some of the old crones kicked the corpses, squawking at them like angry mother hens to drive them away if they did not belong there. Others dumped bowls of yesterday’s tipi water on their faces, which brought them awake sputtering and groaning.
“Goin’ to be some sorry sickass
Injuns
around here today,” Gertie remarked. “Yessir, whiskey goin’ to be the ruination of these folks, that you can bet on, sister. Where’d they get it anyhow?”
“The southern Cheyennes came visiting,” I said. “A half-breed among them named Jules Seminole brought whiskey.”
Gertie nodded darkly. “Sure, I know Jules Seminole,” she said. “A bad character, a very bad character. That’s one you want to stay as far away from as you can, honey. Take my word for it.”
I laughed, albeit without humor. “Yes, so I have discovered.”
“He ain’t hurt ya, has he, honey?” Gertie said, stopping to look at me.
“No,” I answered, “not really.” But then I felt the tears welling up behind my eyes, as if the horror of the past night had finally fully descended upon me. “Oh, Gertie,” I said and I began to weep, to sob uncontrollably. It was the first time I had wept since this ordeal had begun, and now I could not stop and had to kneel down on the ground and bury my face in my hands.
“It’s OK, honey,” said Gertie, kneeling beside me and putting an arm around my shoulder. “You go ahead and have yourself a good cry. There ain’t nobody around to see you but old Dirty Gertie, and she ain’t goin’ to tell nobody on you.”
“Tell me your news of the Captain, Gertie,” I said through my tears.
“Sure, honey,” she said, but I sensed a reluctance in her voice. “When we get back to the lodge, I’ll tell ya all about it.”
“Has he married the Bradley girl yet?” I asked, composing myself. “Tell me now, Gertie.”
“You’re a tough gal, honey,” she said. “I like that about you. I’ll tell ya straight. Weddin’s set for next month.”
“Fine,” I said, nodding and wiping my tears. “That’s good. She’ll make a fine wife for the Captain.”
“Honey, I don’t know exactly what went on between you two, but I got a pretty good idea,” Gertie said. “Just because the Cap’n was already spoke for, and so was you, don’t mean it can’t happen. I know how it is out here. You feel like you’re out on the edge of the world about to fall off and when somebody like the Cap’n comes along, somebody strong and decent, you grab ahold and you hang on for dear life. And just because he’s goin’ to marry someone else that don’t mean he ain’t been moonin’ around like a lovesick kid hisself since you left.”
“And why did he send you here, Gertie?” I asked, regaining my feet. “Surely not to tell me that.” We continued on our way.
“He sent me to warn you, honey,” she said. “He couldn’t trust anyone from the Army, because what I got to tell you would get him in a heap a trouble. He sent me because I know you and because I speak the language and got ties among these folks.”
“Warn me of what?”
“You prob’ly heard the rumors’fore you come out here about gold in the Black Hills?” Gertie said. “Well, the government give that land to the Sioux and to the Cheyennes in 1868 in the Fort Laramie treaty—it’s all on paper. All legal as can be. As long as the Injuns don’t bother the whites passin’ through, all this country from the Black Hills to the Yellowstone is theirs to roam and hunt—forever. That’s what it says right there on the treaty: forever. Well, now word has got out that there’s gold in the Black Hills. Just last week, the Army sent out General Custer in charge of an expedition with a bunch of geologist fellas to find out for sure about them reports. Some a my old compadres is skinnin’ for’em—I’d a been with’em myself if I hadn’t got found out fer a gal.

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