Buffalo Girls (8 page)

So now I am snowed in in the Owl Creek Mountains with two mountain men and an old Indian. It serves me right—I had an opportunity to run a store once, Dora wanted to buy in with me, I've no doubt a few years of storekeeping would have done wonders for my reputation, cleaned it up till it smelled like perfume.

Well there is little perfume to be had in the Owl Creeks. Fortunately Jim shot an elk about the time it started snowing, we are in no danger of running out of meat—or conversation either, Potato Creek Johnny showed up, he's as bad about gold as Jim is about beaver, he was down here prospecting. He couldn't believe his eyes when he looked up from his campfire and seen me and No Ears, the boys were elsewhere at the time, tracking the elk.

Johnny has been in Miles City, the news is that Billy Cody has showed up and is courting Dora again, that man has a hard head.
He is taking her on picnics and wants to take her to Europe, I wish him luck, he'll need it, Dora won't go that far from Blue. She won't marry Billy either, even if he does get rid of Lulu—I guess Dora could change, though, people do. They get lonely—think how I would be without the boys.

I might do anything, even marry some old sot or run off with a stranger, who knows?

Jim and Bartle don't admire Billy Cody, they say he is all show. Jim says he couldn't find his way around a corner, I got mad listening to them talk. Billy's got plenty of show all right—he's a showman, why not? But he's been very decent to Dora, I think he has supported her when times were hard. Not many men will do that for a woman once she has turned them down. I told Jim and Bartle to stop running Billy down in my company, they both looked surprised—neither of them expected me to get so hot. Johnny didn't either—he may decide to go look for gold somewhere else, snow or no snow. My temper is uncertain, Janey, it has got loose from me a thousand times. If it gets loose while Johnny is here I might box his ears. He's a small man, I could whip him easily.

Johnny ain't all talk though. At least he did try to help me during that smallpox spring when a boy was dying every day. He brought me supplies and once helped me carry water, I should go easy with him if only because of that. No one else would go near those dying boys.

It's scary how quick sadness comes, Janey. Sometimes it falls on me in a minute, like hail from the sky—for here I am and what's next? I'm glad you don't have to live out here where it's so rough, this elk meat is so tough you have to chew it for an hour just to finish one bite. I'm surprised No Ears can get it down, he has few teeth. But you're in a decent place—it's a consolation. Study hard now and learn to write a graceful hand—then one day when I show up in Deadwood or Miles City I can read a letter from my darling girl.

Your mother,
Martha Jane

P
OTATO
C
REEK
J
OHNNY WAS DREAMING OF THE CREEK OF
gold—a dream that came to him two or three times a year, if he was lucky. He'd be wading in a creek whose water was so thick with gold dust that the flow itself seemed golden. In the dream, fortunately, he had been lucky enough to equip himself with several buckets. He filled the buckets as fast as he could with the golden water and then carried them to shore—all he would have to do was let the gold settle to the bottom of the buckets and he'd be rich. Soon both banks of the creek were lined with buckets, but the creek ran as golden as ever. When he filled his last bucket he waded back into the creek and walked downstream, in golden water up to his knees. Gradually the ground leveled out, and the creek slowed; the gold thickened until it was almost like mud, so stiff you could have spaded it out. Far away, where the stream meandered into a flat plain, all he could see was gold—a vast desert of gold.

For a man who liked gold—and Johnny was such a man—it was the best of all possible dreams; in this case it ended abruptly when the keening mountain wind shook the branch above his head, sending a shower of snow right in his face. For a second he was confused: a slanting ray of sun made the mist of snow above him look like gold dust too. But it didn't feel like gold dust—it
felt like fine snow. Johnny sat up and shook as much of it as possible out of his hair.

“I guess it can't snow gold dust,” he said to Jim Ragg, who was squatting by the fire. Jim Ragg ignored the comment, as he did whatever was said to him while he was making coffee.

No Ears considered it an interesting comment—it called up a dim memory of some story about the spirit time. It seemed to him that in the spirit time golden snow would not have been unusual, but he couldn't remember whether he was thinking of a story or a dream. It was interesting, though, that Johnny had mentioned it just after waking up, which indicated to No Ears that he had just dreamed it, so probably he himself had dreamed it, too. It was well known that men had dreams in common; his own people often shared their dreams, hoping to glean some information about the behavior of the spirits; but white people, in his experience, were less likely to share their dreams.

“Did you have a good dream?” he asked Johnny, just in case he felt like doing a little dream sharing.

“Better than good,” Johnny said. “I dreamed I found the creek of gold.”

“I have heard of that creek,” No Ears said.

Both Johnny and Jim looked startled. Bartle and Calamity were still asleep, humps in the snow; snow had continued to fall for most of the night.

“Have you ever heard of a gold creek, Jim?” Johnny asked hopefully.

Jim Ragg shook his head—the notion was too silly to comment on. No Ears had probably just decided to have a little sport with Johnny.

Bartle Bone sat up suddenly, and as usual he woke up talking.

“If there was a gold creek there'd be a town bigger than San Francisco built on the banks of it,” he said. “They'd build a canal clean across the country and let it all flow east so the Senators and bankers could swim in it.”

“I believe that creek is near the Bosque Redondo,” No Ears said matter-of-factly. “The Apaches know where it is.”

“Wake up, Calamity—let's go to New Mexico,” Johnny said. He couldn't decide whether No Ears was joking or not; the old Indian sat by the fire, looking half dead. On the other hand, what if he knew something? The creek wouldn't have to be as rich as the one in his dream; he could be satisfied with a lot less gold than that.

“If there was any gold in New Mexico, Kit Carson probably stole it,” Bartle remarked. “He stole two dollars from me once.”

“Did he pick your pocket or what?” Calamity asked without stirring.

“No, he just borrowed two dollars and never paid it back,” Bartle said. “That's theft, in my view.”

“I hate to think how much you've stolen from me then,” Calamity said.

She sat up carefully, brushing snow off her buckskin shirt. If snow once got down her neck, she would go around feeling wet all day. She tried to bend her legs and found them reluctant to bend. Her knee joints seemed frozen, and her feet were too cold even to think about. She pivoted on her bottom, swinging her feet around toward Jim's fire. A little snow fell off one foot, causing the fire to sputter and Jim to look annoyed.

“I ain't gonna put out your dern fire,” she said. “You don't need to frown at me over a pinch of snow.”

Jim Ragg liked a small, economical fire, one you could crouch by without cooking yourself. Bartle's preference was for a fire that roared and spit and crackled. He piled on three or four logs and soon all were watching the fire warily from a safe distance. Now and then it spat a spark into Potato Creek Johnny's beard.

“Now I can't get close enough to thaw my feet out without setting myself on fire,” Calamity said, annoyed. Jim underdid the fire, Bartle overdid it; the same went for everything else the two men attempted.

“This is a free country,” Bartle said, well aware that his fire met with disapproval in some quarters. “Every one of you is free to build his own fire.”

“You didn't build your own fire, you took mine,” Jim pointed out.

“I wish I was still asleep,” Johnny said. “I get nervous when people argue this early in the morning. Usually when I wake up there's nobody within thirty miles and I avoid the nervousness.”

“Who's arguing? We ain't pulled our knives,” Bartle said. “If you're so delicate, what are you doing out here with grizzlies like us:

“I didn't know you was here till yesterday,” Johnny explained. On the whole he was rather regretting his visits to the Owl Creek Mountains. Prospecting was better pursued alone.

Taken as individuals, he liked everyone in the group—but that was taking them individually: taken as a group, the matter was less simple. Jim and Bartle were known to be of uncertain temper; as for Calamity, few tempers in the west were as notoriously uncertain as hers. In a time of need there was no stauncher friend—it was in more relaxed times, when nothing particular was needed, that Calamity was apt to flare—and when she flared, the safety of the far horizon seemed a long way away.

Of the group around the fire, only No Ears was really easy to get along with. He said little, expected less, was a brilliant tracker, and a very decent weather prophet. Johnny fervently hoped that his prophecy of fair weather would come true, and that he could escape from the mountains before another blizzard struck. A winter with Jim, Bartle, and Calamity would put quite a weight on his nerves.

Calamity had felt sad in her sleep—every three or four nights, it seemed, she would awake to find herself crying. Some nights she had hardly wanted to doze off for fear of feeling sad in her sleep. Deep sleep wouldn't come, or a good dream either. Sometimes she felt so heavy inside that it was difficult even to roll over and seek a more comfortable position.

After such a night, the day was seldom any better: she woke without enthusiasm, or vigor, or purpose, unable to think of a thing to do that she hadn't done a hundred times, or might really enjoy doing.

“The dumps,” she said aloud. “I guess I've just got the dumps.”

No Ears didn't change expression—he seldom did—but the three white men all looked at her warily.

“Nobody's gonna appreciate it if you throw a fit, Calamity,” Bartle said. “The snow's too deep—you'd catch us without a chase.”

“Why would I want to catch you?” Calamity asked. “You can go stick your damn head in a hole for all I care.”

There was a long, uneasy silence; then Cody came bounding into camp, a grouse in his mouth. He came to Calamity and, after she had petted him and talked to him a bit, gave her the grouse.

“This dog's a harder worker than any of us,” Calamity said. “He's already brought in meat, and what have the rest of us done?”

She looked at Bartle, Jim, and Johnny, all three of whom still wore wary expressions; they looked melancholy and tired. No Ears, by far the oldest man there, was the only one of the group who looked cheerful—and he was an old Indian who had outlived his time and almost all of his people. Nevertheless he didn't look as though he slept sad at night. Even Bartle, who had more natural cheerfulness than the rest of them put together, didn't look as cheerful as he once had. Bartle looked gaunt and low.

It was the first time Calamity was brought up against the fact that Jim and Bartle were sad; she had always thought of them as happy out in the mountains, living the free life. But they didn't look happy this morning, and neither did Johnny, although on the whole she considered Johnny a lighter character—a few specks of gold dust in the bottom of a creek would keep him excited for weeks.

“It's like the snow soaking in,” Calamity said, half to herself—she
was thinking of her sad sleep. Young, she hadn't slept much; she let it rip most of the night with the cowpokes or the mountain men, the mule skinners and the soldiers; sad thoughts hadn't had much time to penetrate in the few hours she slept.

Now she slept longer, if worse; she didn't do much ripping, and the sorrows had time to seep through and settle on her heart and in her bones, soaking them finally, as the snow soaks through a shirt.

What was surprising was the way a little change in the drift of her thought made everything look different. She had known Bartle and Jim and Johnny when they were young, and in her thoughts they had never changed; years had passed, and then decades, and she still thought of them as young. Perhaps they thought the same about her, still saw her as the young wood-chopper who wanted to go west, a girl who could walk all day beside the wagons and sit listening to their stories half the night.

What was obvious, though, looking at the three of them in a cold camp in the Owl Creek Mountains, was that none of them was young; without any of them thinking about it, or even noticing, they had grown old—not
so
old perhaps, in terms of calendar years, but then, what were calendar years to people who had never settled, or wished to settle? The calendar meant nothing; what meant something, in the reaches of the west, were energy, muscle, will—three qualities they had all once had in abundance, otherwise they would not have survived. The prairie ground covered thousands who hadn't survived: fresh boys, brave warriors, skilled men, hopeful and forthright women. Either they hadn't been tough or they hadn't been lucky—or were neither.