Buffalo Girls (38 page)

Dora found her sitting out on the steps, half frozen. What was wrong with her?

“What are you doing, you'll freeze!” Dora said, a good deal put out. It took nearly constant watchfulness to keep Martha Jane from doing things that might make her sick. She just would not respect liquor, or weather either.

Calamity came in meekly. Her face was chapped from the severe wind. She knew Dora was put out with her, but she didn't
respond. She was afraid to, for fear she would break down and reveal how sad it made her that the two of them were no longer going to live together as they had always planned: no Bartle, no Blue, no Ogden, no baby: just them!

It would have been a fine way to get old, Calamity felt: just herself and Dora in a snug house. Of course, visitors might come, Blue or Bartle, Potato Creek Johnny or anyone they liked. But the house would be theirs—just theirs.

The thought that it would never be that way caused her such an ache that she was a long time getting to sleep, even though Dora, fearful that she would catch cold, piled more quilts on her than she needed, and she soon thawed out.

N
O
E
ARS MET WITH NOTHING BUT TROUBLE AND VEXATION
on his journey up the Platte. He located a few of his people in scattered and not very prosperous villages along the river; but the troubling thing was that he could find almost no one from his own time.

It made him feel that his time was over, but that he had foolishly been too stubborn to die and had lived beyond it. If you lived beyond your time it was hard to find people with the proper sensibility, people who could evaluate important facts when they were discovered. Three or four old women heard his story of the whale fish, but the old women were only half alive; most of them had outlived their children and they had little interest in hearing about a great fish. They had little interest in hearing about anything; they lived in sorrow, and No Ears did not have the energy to make them listen carefully to his information, important though it was.

He did locate one man even older than himself, a man he had known all his life, whose name was Many Belts. It struck No Ears as very unfortunate that Many Belts was the one survivor from his time, for the old man was a notorious braggart, and also very selfish. He didn't like it that No Ears had come back. He wanted to be the only old person in the village; that way he could get all
the attention himself. He listened to No Ears for a while but then rudely informed him that he considered his report on the whale fish and other matters to be nothing but a pack of lies. Many Belts didn't believe that such a fish existed; anyway, he wanted No Ears to keep quiet and listen to some things
he
had to say. No Ears listened, but all Many Belts wanted to talk about was how active he was with his two young wives.

At the second village No Ears reached, he made the mistake of trying to make people realize the seriousness of his mission by exhibiting his wax ears. It got their attention, too. A few
of
the most sensible people were so startled by the sight of the ears that they could talk about nothing else. Still, the exhibition proved to be a mistake. Most of the people were discouraged and had abandoned many essential disciplines. The behavior of the young men was slovenly and ill-mannered; some of them were almost as ill-mannered as young white men—indeed, quite a few of the young men seemed not to know whether they were red or white. Naturally they coveted his English ears and promptly stole all but one of them. That one wasn't in the box Billy had given him; No Ears liked to sleep with it in his hand in case he suddenly needed to wake up and do some close listening. Because of this habit, one ear was saved, but the rest were lost.

The loss made No Ears angry; it occurred just as he was on the point of changing his name to acknowledge the fact that he now possessed ears—twenty-four of them, in fact. He thought he might start calling himself Man Who Gets Ears; but of course the robbery ruined that plan. The robbery, plus the rudeness of the young people and the discouragement of the old people, convinced No Ears of a sad fact: it was not his destiny to live and die with his own people.

Looking back over his long life, he realized that his destiny had been to be separate; most of his life, through one circumstance or another, he had strayed from his people. Long ago he should have changed his name; he should have called himself
Man Who Walks Apart—such a name would better describe the life he had actually lived.

When he woke up and saw that he was down to one ear, he decided to leave his people forever—they had become too unruly and undisciplined to provide the kind of calm atmosphere he hoped to enjoy in his last years. He decided to go find Martha and travel with her. She too walked apart; she too slept outside the houses of her own people much of the time.

As No Ears crossed the plains alone—it was the dead of winter, and a sharp winter, too—he had plenty of time to reflect on his adventures, and he decided that he had been foolish to take pride in the ears from England. Because of his great desire to acquire ears before he died, he had made the worst mistake of all; he had allowed himself to be deceived by the look of things. In fact, the objects he had taken such pride in had not been ears at all; they had merely been wax. He himself could find some bees and steal their wax and probably shape ears almost as good as those made by the Englishman with the goiter.

But he himself should have known better: wax was not flesh, and real ears could not simply be taken on and off, like hats. Once real ears had been removed, as his had been, it was better to accept the fact and change one's name accordingly, and then forget about it.

Once he recognized his pride for what it was, No Ears felt better; once again he began to rely on his eyes and his nose, the two senses that had brought him safely through so many years and so many dangers. His nose was as good as ever, his eyes perhaps not quite as good as ever, but still good enough for most purposes. He soon recovered his confidence and began to enjoy his trip, though the weather was bitter and he was three times forced to take shelter from blizzards and wait for them to pass.

That was easy enough. No Ears had long since perfected a method for dealing with blizzards; he merely located a snake den and denned with snakes until the storm passed. It was easy to
smell snake dens—snakes smelled like cucumbers—and in many cases the opening of the dens were large enough that he could squeeze through. He had no fear of the snake people; they were harmless when in hibernation and not really very harmful even in summer. With a blizzard howling above them, the snake people were too stiff to pose a threat, and if he found himself growing hungry he had only to kill one or two, peel their skins off, and eat his fill.

In earlier days he had sometimes found it convenient to den with bears when blizzards came. Bears, too, were easy to smell, and in times of extreme cold made warmer bedfellows than snakes. More than once, denned bears had saved his life; on the other hand, denned bears were much less reliable than denned snakes. One had to approach them with caution and respect. A denned bear might not be polite enough to sleep all winter; it might get hungry and eat whatever happened to be denned with it. Snake dens were chilly, but on the whole, because of the unreliability of bears, No Ears preferred them as stopping places in blizzards. Anyway, there were few bears left, and none at all along the lowland rivers, whereas there were still thousands of snake dens everywhere.

No Ears usually preferred to walk so as to make close observations while he traveled, but now and then if he happened to meet some soldiers moving along in the direction he was going he might ride a day or two with them if he received an invitation.

Always it was the older soldiers who asked him to ride with them; it seemed to No Ears that the older soldiers missed Indians. Now that they had killed so many of them they suddenly realized that Indians were valuable people.

The younger soldiers were a different matter, though. They knew little or nothing about Indians; they were so silly about Indians that they were even afraid of him, an old man traveling with only a shotgun and a few shells. He had been given the shotgun by embarrassed elders in the village where his ears had
been stolen. It was a very weak gun, its stock held together with some buffalo-tendon wrappings from a long time past, but it was enough to throw a scare into some of the young soldiers No Ears traveled with.

So scared were the young soldiers to have an Indian with them that one night, camping on the Powder River, a ridiculous thing happened. Some of the young white soldiers were so terrified that he might wake up and scalp them that they slept with their guns cocked all night—a very bad practice, as was quickly proven. A young soldier with red hair must have had a bad dream; the dream upset him so that he discharged his gun while asleep. The bullet went through a passing sentry and hit a horse. The sentry lived but the horse died—it had been the favorite horse of a major, too. This showed how hard it was to predict what a bullet would do. The foolish young soldier was immediately put in chains. He was forced to ride in the wagon all day. No Ears rode in the same wagon and observed that the young soldier was so low in spirits that he would probably freeze on the first cold night unless covered up well. The boy's spirit put off no more heat than a candle flame, and that would not be enough to keep him alive the next time a strong blizzard struck.

“You should crawl up by a horse,” No Ears told the boy. “Look for a horse that's lying down. Otherwise you might pass away.”

“Don't care if I do,” the boy said miserably. “I'm ruint now anyway. What will I tell my Ma if I'm court-martialed out? I'm the hope of my family.”

An old sergeant named Grisom, with a fat brown mustache, came over and offered No Ears some coffee. He didn't offer the sad boy any. No Ears had known Grisom for years. He had fought at the Washita, the Rosebud, and in many local encounters; there were rumors that he had been among the baby-killers at Sand Creek, but No Ears didn't know about that. So many white people had done terrible things in those years that it was hard to keep straight who had committed disgraceful acts and who
hadn't. No Ears rather liked Grisom and hoped he had not killed any Indian babies at Sand Creek or elsewhere. Grisom had been with Crook the day No Ears came to camp and informed them that Custer was dead. Grisom was not very smart and had not believed the information.

“There's not enough Indians in this world to defeat George Custer,” he had said, foolishly.

“Shut your damn trap, Sergeant,” Crook had said. Crook was smarter than Grisom, which is why he was the general. He knew perfectly well there were enough Indians in the world to finish Custer; after all, but for luck, the same plentiful Indians might have finished Crook himself on the Rosebud.

“I think this boy was just scared,” No Ears said. He had been moved by the boy's distress over having disappointed his family.

“The idiot, he slept with his gun cocked,” Grisom said. “It's a good thing the horse died and not the sentry, or we would already have hung this young sprout.”

No Ears got down and walked with Grisom for a while. Grisom had a horse but was walking in order to keep his feet warm. It was so cold that the little clouds made by the freezing breath of all the horses made walking tricky. The horses produced such clouds of vapor that no one in the rear of the column could see anything. Grisom seemed in low spirits; indeed, all the soldiers seemed in low spirits. It was apparent that most of the soldiers didn't really enjoy their work, now that there was no fighting. They were almost as demoralized as the people in the poor villages along the Platte. The war might have been pretty bad, with many severe things done and much bloodshed, but at least war kept people alert; it sharpened their spirits.

That night, several of the older soldiers invited No Ears to share their supper. They were all experienced men and knew that he was not going to attack the force with one shotgun or sneak around scalping them during the night. All the men seemed excited to be talking to a Sioux of some age and experience;
just having No Ears in camp reminded them of the old days, when life had been more exciting for soldiers. Before they had been talking very long, it became apparent to No Ears why Cody's idea of a show worked so well. The soldiers going up Powder River—at least the older soldiers—were so excited to be talking about old times and battles of the past that No Ears had no doubt they would have paid money to see Cody's show. At first, when No Ears described the show, some of the men had been skeptical, but when he talked about some of the Indians who were there, particularly Sitting Bull, Cuts the Meat, and Red Shirt, their skepticism diminished.

“Did Sitting Bull kill anybody while he was in England?” Grisom asked. “I always did consider him a dangerous foe.”

“He would have liked to kill the warthog,” No Ears said. “It was a very ugly hog. But he behaved well with the people, and the Queen gave him a saber.”