Telegraph Days

  I got mighty nervous.

  “Oh my Lord, what have you done now, Bill?” I asked.

  Bill bent and kissed me tenderly—there were tears in his eyes. One of his most winning attributes was his ability to get swept away by his own showmanship.

  “It’s the Duleep pearl,” he told me. “It’s the largest pearl in the world and I’m giving it to you because you’re my favorite darling!”

  I opened the box as carefully as if it contained a cobra. But there was no snake, just the lustrous white pearl. I couldn’t at first believe that such a thing of beauty could be mine. It was large enough to be a pendant and hung from a tiny silver chain. Bill slipped the chain around my neck and there I stood, wearing the Duleep pearl. The crowd was as awed as I was—they fell silent for a second—until I whirled on Bill Cody and gave him a big smacking kiss, at which point the crowd went wild.

  So I had my farewell party—by the next morning, when I actually left, both Cody and the town of North Platte had gone on about their business. Cody had ridden off to the Red Cloud Agency, to try and persuade the old Bad Face to lease him some Indians for his Wild West. Ripley Eads was cutting hair and the blacksmith was shoeing horses. A young couple at the depot busied themselves with flirting. Only my two Finnish maids actually came to see me off. Little Pickle, Gretchen’s son, waved me bye. Fame is brief, unless you’re Annie Oakley, Bill Cody, or one of the world’s natural stars.

  When we got to Omaha later in the day I was surprised to see my picture on the front page of the Omaha paper. There I stood, wearing the Duleep pearl, and there was Buffalo Bill, with his arm around me, looking pleased as punch. Tears came to my eyes. I suppose I did love Bill Cody, in my way, and now he was gone to lease some Indians while I headed back to Rita Blanca. Would I ever see that handsome man again?

  Lanky Jake and grumbling Sam were mighty impressed to discover that they were traveling with a woman who had her picture on the front page of the Omaha paper.

  “Hope old Jesse James don’t read the Omaha paper,” Jakey said.

  “I thought Jesse James was from Missouri,” I said. “Why would he be reading the Omaha paper?”

  “Jesse, he does watch the railroads,” Sam mentioned. “If he gets wind of that big jewel he might try to rob us.”

  “Oh, fiddlesticks,” I said. “He won’t try to rob us.”

  For once Sam was right and I was wrong.

  Later that day, as we bore down on Kansas City, Jesse James boarded the train and tried to rob us.

  “Cough up that pearl, Miss Courtright,” were the first words he said.

  4

  “OVER THE YEARS I suppose you’ve acquired some facility in boarding trains, Mr. James,” I said, since there he was in my compartment, accompanied by two ruffians, both of whom could have used a shave.

  “Yes, I have—but the goddamn trains are getting faster all the time,” Jesse James lamented.

  “But not so fast yet that you can’t catch them, obviously,” I said.

  I had hastily sent my two escorts back to the cargo room, in order not to provide Jesse and his gang with any excuse to shoot them.

  This greatly disappointed Jakey and Sam, both of whom had bought new pistols just before leaving North Platte. My fear was that if they brandished their weapons Jesse would immediately cut them down.

  He was a small man, nervous and rather greenish in color. He did not look friendly. Cody told me that he had been a violent killer from an early age. I could have kicked Bill Cody for being so foolish as to advertise to every outlaw who could read a newspaper that I had the Duleep pearl. But it was too late to kick him.

  Fortunately, Sam had spotted the outlaws racing beside the train, which gave me time to size up the situation and send the cowboys away.

  “But Mr. Cody sent us to guard you,” Sam protested.

  “You are guarding me,” I assured him. “You’re just guarding me from the cargo car.”

  Cody had provided me with a sleeper, of course, which is why Jesse James found me so easily. Fortunately, I am cool under pressure and I was cool as ice in this emergency. Before Jesse found me I snatched the Duleep pearl out of its box, rubbed a little salve on it, opened my legs, and slipped the pearl inside myself. Then I sat back and opened my book—it was Mr. Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter—I was trying to figure out why those old Yankees came down so hard on mere adultery. I had only read a sentence or two when Jesse strode into my compartment and demanded my pearl.

  “Cough it up now, no trouble,” he repeated.

  “Why do you have that greenish look, Mr. James?” I asked. “Could it be that you smoke the green pipe?”

  I meant opium, of course. There was plenty of it available on the plains in those days, particularly among the railroad crews. The thousands of coolies who had been brought in to build the railroads didn’t like being without their opium.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, but I thought I had seen a fleeting look of guilt across his face.

  “Opium,” I told him bluntly. “It can leave people looking a little greenish.”

  Jesse James was shocked—somehow I had divined his secret.

  “It’s for the toothaches,” he admitted, with a shy look. “A horse kicked me right in the mouth when I was fourteen and I’ve suffered from toothaches ever since.”

  His ruffians were not interested in their boss’s toothaches.

  “This ain’t a church social, Jesse,” one reminded him. “Get her to cough up that pearl.”

  “He’s right,” Jesse said. “Hand it over and there’ll be no trouble.”

  I held out the little silver chain.

  “Would you be content with this expensive chain?” I asked.

  In fact I didn’t like the chain and meant to get it replaced eventually.

  Jesse, looking puzzled, took the chain but continued to frown and point his gun at me.

  “We mean business, Miss,” he said. “We want the pearl.”

  One of the ruffians, who later showed up in my life a second time—he was bartending then in Tombstone—began to rifle through my luggage, a liberty I resented. I had spent half a day packing my things according to an orderly system so I could find a clean undergarment, if I happened to need a clean undergarment.

  “I’ll thank you to leave that luggage as you find it,” I said. “Only a ninny would leave a rare pearl in a suitcase.”

  “Then where is it, damnit?” the ruffian asked.

  “In my vagina,” I said bluntly.

  “What?” Jesse stammered. He looked shocked, almost terrified. The ruffians just stood with their mouths open.

  It was a gamble on my part. The three of them could have held me down and extracted the Duleep pearl quickly enough. I had thought of swallowing it, but what if it stuck in my throat?

  What I banked on, putting it where I had, was that these were country train robbers. Neither Jesse James nor his brother Frank had the reputation for raping that was the case with Bloody Bill Anderson and some of the other Southern gangs.

  I don’t mean to suggest that Jesse James wasn’t mean. He was mean, but killing mean, not raping mean. I don’t think he wanted anything to do with my vagina; perhaps he’d never even heard the female privacy called by its right name before.

  I just sat there, looking Jesse James square in the eye. Mention of my vagina stopped him dead, which just goes to show that words do have their power.

  “Let’s shoot her,” one of the ruffians suggested. “That’d show her.”

  “Let’s don’t,” Jesse said. He stuck his pistol in his belt and looked at me again.

  “That pearl’s probably paste anyway,” he said—he actually tipped his hat to me as he was leaving.

  “I’d be sparing with the green pipe, Mr. James,” I advised him. “The green pipe can get you in trouble.”

  “It’s just the toothaches,” he said.

  Not three years later I read in the paper that Jesse James had been shot down while standing o
n a chair, straightening a picture. The railroads had a considerable reward on him by then, which no doubt tempted the shooter.

  What I remembered about him was his greenish hue, and the fact that he wanted no part of my hairy grotto, Duleep pearl or no Duleep pearl.

  He was not the only man to have a fastidious side.

  When Jakey and Sam showed up they were in a glum state. Jesse James had confiscated their new pistols.

  “Never mind, boys—I’ll rearm you in Dodge City,” I assured them.

  “If the dern Earps don’t kill us first,” Jakey said.

  Jakey rarely looked on the bright side of things.

  5

  TO MY ASTONISHMENT the first person I saw when we disembarked in Dodge City was Warren Earp washing a pig. Warren looked much as he had when I got him out of the hospital in North Platte, after the buffalo ride. But the pig was a real sight. It was so big it could hardly walk. If I had been asked to guess its weight I’d start my guessing at around a thousand pounds.

  The pig was standing calmly at the watering trough in the communal corrals, and Warren was soaping it and giving it a good scrubbing. The pig seemed to enjoy the scrubbing—it never moved or so much as twitched.

  “Hello, Warren Earp,” I said, giving him a big hug. “I did not expect to find you involved with swine.”

  “It’s Lord Angus’s prize pig,” Warren told me sheepishly. He was in his undershirt and some old pants. Warren Earp had long possessed an easygoing charm.

  “Who is Lord Angus and what’s the point of a prize pig?” I asked.

  Warren smiled. I felt sure he liked me, but he showed no interest in Jakey and Sam, who removed our luggage from the train and trudged off to the livery stables to pick up the rig and horses that Bill Cody had reserved for us.

  I could see that Dodge City had suffered a sharp decline since my last visit. Several houses had fallen down, several more were leaning, and there were very few cowboys to be seen.

  “Lord Angus owns Wyoming, or most of it,” Warren said. “I have no idea why he wants a pig so big that it can barely walk, but I’m sending it to Chicago for some big fair they’re having. Lord Angus wants him clean.

  “He’s supposed to win the blue ribbon,” he added.

  “Won’t he have time to get dirty again, between here and Chicago?” I inquired. Washing a pig in Kansas and hoping he’ll stay clean all the way to Chicago seemed a dubious proposition.

  “He’ll have a private car,” Warren informed me.

  “I’ve heard enough about this pig. Are you married yet?” I asked.

  “I ain’t,” Warren admitted. “And my brothers all moved out west.”

  That was a surprise. Most of my memories of Dodge City involved the coarse Earps.

  “Out west—isn’t this west?”

  “Used to be, when the railroad stopped here,” he said. He stood back a step or two and inspected Lord Angus’s pig.

  “But the railroad don’t stop here anymore—it goes clear to California,” he added, as if I would never have occasion to read the newspapers or concern myself with the railroads.

  “Is that where your brothers went—California?” I asked.

  “No, just to Arizona. I suppose you’ve heard about the silver boom.”

  I had heard about the silver boom. In fact, thanks to me, Bill Cody had been one of the first investors in the Arizona silver mines, and it was among the few investments Bill could claim that hadn’t gone bad yet.

  “Do you think this pig is clean enough to win a blue ribbon in Chicago?” Warren asked, with a shy grin.

  “I told you I was tired of discussing this pig,” I reminded him. “Have you ever been kissed by a real girl? If not, I’m planning to kiss you, later in the day.”

  I suppose most men don’t like to be asked direct questions about that sort of thing—many simply decline to answer, which was Warren Earp’s method. He had a little goad with a sharp point on it, which he used to get Lord Angus’s pig in motion toward his private car.

  I’m female enough not to enjoy being abandoned for a pig, but it was a fine bright morning, so I thought I might as well visit the Tesselincks at their print shop where my little Banditti book had been run off. But the print shop, when I got there, was closed—it looked as if it had been closed for years. Most of the window had been broken out—all I could see, when I peeked inside, was lots of dust and many mouse droppings.

  It had only been four years since I had passed through Dodge City with Bill Cody—then it had been a thriving place, but it wasn’t thriving now. Buildings that had once housed thriving businesses were boarded up now. Even the saloon had only two horses hitched out in front of it. I had been in fine spirits when I stepped off the train but the sad, dilapidated state of the town was making me gloomy in a hurry. It was no wonder the Earp brothers had left, all except Warren. It occurred to me that Lord Angus’s prize pig was probably worth more than the whole town of Dodge City, which was a good reason to load up my luggage and get out of there. If Warren Earp had showed a little more enthusiasm I might have lingered, but Warren was shy with girls and probably always would be. With nothing to do but look at boarded-up buildings, I soon got to thinking about how short life is and how quickly places and people just go down.

  Dodge City had been one of the most famous towns in the West. Bill Hickok had played cards there, and so had Bat Masterson and a lot of other famous Western gents. It had flourished: there had been three hotels and at least six or seven saloons; there had been whores and gambling and rowdy cowboys fresh off the trail and full of sap. All gone, the cowboys, the hotels, the whores.

  I guess Jakey and Sam felt the same way I did; when I got back to the livery stable the wagon was loaded and the horses saddled.

  “I thought this place was supposed to be lively,” grumbling Sam grumbled.

  “We’ve been here two hours and nobody’s even shot off a gun—it’s a big disappointment,” Jakey said.

  “You got to see one Earp—Warren,” I told them. “And you got a good look at Lord Angus’s prize pig that’s expected to win the blue ribbon in Chicago.”

  “What kind of a job is that for an Earp? Washing a pig?” Jakey asked.

  I didn’t bother to answer.

  6

  I AM NOT, in the main, an anxious woman. Generally, if I run into a problem, I fix it—or at least I try. Lack of regular and satisfactory copulation is one thing that is likely to make me anxious; it was a fact that there had been a sad shortage of dependable lovers in North Platte, which is one reason I didn’t mind leaving the place. One thing that’s held me back from marriage was the fear that I’d impulsively marry myself off to some dolt, only to discover that he didn’t provide me with regular copulation. I considered the sad example of Lulu Cody, a woman who was lucky if she saw her husband six weeks a year.

  Thinking about how easily life can slip down got me into such a lather of worry that I snapped and snarled at Jakey and Sam so viciously that both of them stopped even trying to converse with me. We made a silent camp, ate a silent supper, and slept a mostly silent sleep, although Jakey would snore.

  I was in no easier mood the next day. I felt as if I needed to cry, but I couldn’t really find anything to cry about until we came in sight of the old, muddy Cimarron River. Then the dam inside me suddenly burst and I cried a river of my own tears, to the deep consternation of Jakey and Sam.

  “You fools, I’m just sentimental!” I yelled at them, while catching my breath.

  Indeed I was so sentimental that I nearly caused the wagon to turn over in the river, although it was an easy crossing place.

  “You will cry, I guess, if we lose all this kit!” Jakey yelled.

  I realized both my escorts were exasperated with me—not without reason.

  “I’ll make it up to you!” I yelled—and once my cry was over, my spirits suddenly soared. I hugged both the cowboys—to their relief—and promised them big bonuses once we arrived in Rita Blanca, which we did near
sunset on a fine prairie day. By the time we reached Joe Schwartz’s livery stable I had come home to a place that was much as it had been when I left to work for Cody.

  My brother, Jackson, had grown stout and sported a mustache, Teddy Bunsen was still sheriff and still gloomy, Aurel Imlah’s beard still looked as if a bird or two could be nesting it, and Mrs. Karoo still smiled serenely at her dinner guests. Hungry Billy Wheless had added a photography gallery to his general store. He filled it with pictures of cowboys and buffalo and horses watering at dusk and longhorn cattle and even the occasional Indian who happened to pass through.

  The Yazee raid museum was still there, though, with Hungry Billy being so busy, it bore a neglected air.

  The best new thing, of course, from my point of view, was my two curly-haired nieces, Jean and Jan, who were as yappy as I was; they were soon following me everywhere, much as their hens had followed the McClendon sisters, who were still as passionate about Buffalo Bill Cody as ever.

  After my nieces, the next most interesting addition to the population was a woman barber, by name Naomi, an olive-skinned woman of sizable girth who had had herself a little barbershop built. Naomi came from the Bible lands somewhere and had a son called Little Pita, who was just the age of my niece Jan. The cowboys had been reluctant to let Naomi shave and trim them at first, but she wielded the smoothest razor in No Man’s Land, besides being a high-spirited woman in a place where there weren’t many. She soon won over the cowboys and the freighters and anyone else who happened to be passing through Rita Blanca. The cowboys came to like Naomi so much that they fell into fisticuffs over who got barbered first.

  Naomi and I soon became fast friends—she was as frank as I was. Sometimes, at the end of the day, we’d walk over to the river together, trailed by Jan, Jean, and Little Pita, and sit and watch the water while the tots got muddy. One of the things Naomi and I were in complete agreement about was the desirability of regular copulation. Since the tots were safely out of earshot I started the discussion by lamenting that local prospects seemed rather thin on the ground.