No Ears felt a little peevish. It was hard to get precise information from Calamity, or Bartle, or white people in general. Even those whose lives had been in danger many times were content to be vague about vital matters on which one’s life could depend.
In fairness, he had to admit that many of his own people were also often vague about important facts, such as how far a gun would shoot or how quickly a man could drown if the banks of a river were too far away to swim to. It was because they failed to collect precise information about life-threatening matters that so many people, white and red, were no longer alive.
No Ears prided himself on finding out well in advance what he needed to know. It was because he was so diligent in gathering information that he was still alive. Almost all the people he had known in his youth, Indian or white, had been less diligent, and were dead.
He was very curious about the ocean—if the ocean was anywhere near three thousand miles wide, then it was a force to be reckoned with, a force as powerful as the sky, or the moon, or the storm. He wanted to know more about the ocean so as to be prepared, but Miles City proved to be a poor place in which to acquire precise information. Not shy, No Ears went up and down the street asking anyone he met if he knew anything about the ocean, but for most of the day he drew a blank.
Potato Creek Johnny, who had wandered into town a day or two previously, exhausted, half-starved, and lacking in either gold or silver, made a typical response when No Ears asked him.
“No, I ain’t seen an ocean and I ain’t interested either,” Johnny replied. “If there was gold in one you’d have to drown to get it, and that’s an unwelcome prospect.”
Johnny devoted what little energy he had left to attempts to talk Skeedle into doing him favors on credit.
“It would take a whole gold mine for you to catch up with what you owe me already,” Skeedle remarked. She liked Johnny well enough but was skeptical of his ability to locate gold. Besides, the survey team was still in town and her leisure was limited.
No Ears found out so little about the ocean that he was considering making a preliminary trip to it for purposes of inspection, when he happened to inquire of a blacksmith named Maggs. Mr. Maggs had grown up in Galveston and knew more about oceans than the rest of the population of Miles City put together. He had sailed the seven seas, and was on his way from San Francisco to the Great Lakes to run a steamer when his ambition deserted him. Since then he had lived in Miles City, being a blacksmith. He missed his old calling, though, and promptly told No Ears a great many things about the sea.
“I would allow three weeks to get to England,” Mr. Maggs said. “It’s good swimming water, but you can’t drink it.”
That startled No Ears, and his astonishment grew when the blacksmith informed him that all the oceans were salt. No Ears repeated this amazing news to several people, all of whom agreed with the blacksmith. The one thing the local humans seemed to know about the ocean was that the water was salt, and not drinkable.
This news caused No Ears so much concern that he began to regret having promised to go on the trip. First there was the danger of confusing the water with the sky; then there was the equally troubling danger of not being able to secure good drinking water.
A boat was only so big, and Cody seemed to be planning to take many animals. If the planning was not done well, it could mean a thirsty trip. It might be necessary to kill the animals for their blood—on badly planned trips in his youth, No Ears had had to drink the blood of animals to keep from dying of thirst. Though it had saved him, it had been unpleasant, a thing he would rather not do again. Seeing the Queen might be interesting, but if she was only a small queen seeing her might not make up for the hazards of the trip.
Another unfortunate fact he discovered about the trip was that Sitting Bull would be along. Sitting Bull was not a pleasant man. Once he had surprised No Ears when he was drunk and tried to blow smoke into his head through his open ear holes, a very rude thing to do. Also, Sitting Bull was crazy about women and had the advantage of fame; if there were any young women in England, Sitting Bull would soon marry them all.
But the irritation of having to put up with Sitting Bull was minor compared to his concerns about the dangers of the ocean—dangers everyone but himself seemed to be taking much too lightly.
One night he had an idea. Jim Ragg had returned in the night from his scouting trip in the Bull Mountains. As neither Bartle nor Calamity was up, he presented his ideas to Jim.
“I believe we should ride around the ocean,” he told Jim. “If we start soon we should be able to ride around it in plenty of time. We could ride a train if you want to. They are much faster than boats.”
“You can’t ride around the ocean,” Jim informed him. “It goes to the top of the world.” He was not quite certain of that information, but it seemed to him he had heard it.
“There’s oceans in both directions,” he added. “The Pacific is on one side of the country, and the Atlantic is on the other. We’re using the Atlantic—England’s just on the other side of it, I believe.”
Jim realized that he did not know a great deal about oceans and did not much blame No Ears for looking dissatisfied with the sparse information he had given him. But getting the group to England was Bill Cody’s job—it was his Wild West show.
No Ears walked off into the prairies and sat in the grass all day, thinking about the information he had just received. The knowledge that there were oceans to east and west was troubling news. In his experience great bodies of water had a tendency to run over and cause floods. The floods he had witnessed interrupted many lives, including the life of his friend Sits On The Water. Perhaps being on a big boat was not such a bad idea after all. It might be that there they would have the best chance of not having their lives interrupted.
That night No Ears dreamed of the ocean again, but this time it was a better dream because he remembered only to breathe the sky.
14
GENERAL CUSTER, GENERAL CUSTER!” THE PARROT SAID. T. Blue felt like wringing the parrot’s neck—a bird that could only say one name deserved to be cooked and served up with dumplings, as far as he was concerned. The novelty of hearing a bird say “General Custer” had worn off several years previously.
But Fred sat on the arm of Dora DuFran, nibbling on an old iron key she had given him. If he wanted to stop nibbling the key and say his two words, there was not much Blue could do about it.
In truth, he was not so much angry at Fred as shocked by Dora, who had just informed him that she intended to leave Miles City and settle in Belle Fourche. From Blue’s point of view it was a most inconvenient plan, since it would mean a considerably longer trip every time he went to see her.
Dora was looking at him with a mixture of hurt and defiance, a look he was quite familiar with. She had always had a tendency toward defiance but had only begun to look hurt since his marriage. Before that he had usually been the one to look hurt, and indeed, he felt rather hurt at the moment.
“Now why the devil would you want to go way off to Belle Fourche?” he asked. “Just as things were getting settled, too.”
“I wouldn’t say they’re settled,” Dora said. “Do I look settled to you? If I do, then you might as well go outside and talk to your horse.”
“I meant settled in terms of a good location for business,” Blue said, aware that they hadn’t been talking about business.
“No, you mean convenient for you,” Dora said. “I’m just the right distance off so I won’t be upsetting your wife—I doubt she even dreams that I exist.”
“But a wife is one thing and a love is another,” Blue said. “I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve explained that to you. If I did I could afford to abandon the cattle business.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Dora said, scratching the soft feathers on her parrot’s head.
“If I’m right, then what’s the matter?” Blue asked, feeling that they must have had that exact conversation, word for word, b
efore. He had no wish to repeat himself, but when Dora looked the way she was looking it was better to talk than to stand there hoping for peace.
“The problem is I might have wanted to try being the wife for a change,” Dora said.
“You was offered a hundred chances, and you didn’t care to risk it,” Blue reminded her, feeling huffy.
“No, but I might have this time,” Dora said. “I may have turned you down, but I never said I wanted you marrying someone else. So far as I’m concerned you can go fall off the drainpipe and break your other leg—only when you do, look for another nurse. Calamity and the boys are heading for England and I’m moving to Belle Fourche.”
“Hell, why not go to England yourself, if all you want to do is get farther from me?” Blue said. “Go on—be a regular Lillie Langtry.”
“I have to support myself,” Dora reminded him. “I can’t just be taking fancy trips to see the Queen.”
“Billy would buy you a railroad car if you’d go, and you know it,” T. said, feeling even more huffy.
“Let him buy his wife a railroad car,” Dora said. “You’re the one who should be going to England with the show—you’re as good a rider as Texas Jack or any of them other cowboys. The Queen might give you a diamond.”
“I imagine she’d put me in jail,” Blue said. “I’d miss you so much I’d get drunk and sleep in the street. They’re strict about things in England, I hear.”
Dora knew she was being somewhat unfair—after all, T. had pestered her to marry for years; she had turned him down because she couldn’t face the ranch life. He liked the wide-open spaces and she liked towns; it didn’t seem they’d be a very good fit, none of which reduced the hurt she felt when he told her he had married someone else.
Now it seemed he was always around again. He had shown up twice since his convalescence, and his convalescence had ended only the month before. It annoyed her that he just assumed he could show up whenever he wanted to and get a kiss or a bedfellow for a week, or hot meals in the kitchen, or whatever else he might want.
“If I had a diamond I’d give it to you right now, and maybe you’d be sweet,” Blue said. “Why is Calamity joining the show? She can’t ride and she can’t shoot—about all she does is drink and tell lies. Why should the Queen want to hear a bunch of Calamity’s lies?”
“I thought you liked Martha,” Dora said. “She’s an old friend of Billy’s—I guess he just thinks it would be decent to give her a job. She’s expected to drive the stagecoach and she does have experience at that.”
“She don’t that I know of,” Blue said. “She might have driven a freight wagon a few times. If Calamity tries to drive a stagecoach she’ll probably turn it over and spill all the passengers out.
“It might give the Queen a laugh, I guess,” he added, feeling that Dora was at last getting in a slightly better humor.
Dora was mainly feeling that it would be a lonely fall with Calamity gone, Blue in and out; moving to Belle Fourche would at least give her something to occupy her mind—she always enjoyed setting up house, choosing curtains and rugs. There might be more miners and fewer cowboys down that way, but that didn’t discourage her. Cowboys were appealing, but poorly paid—exactly like the one standing in front of her looking hangdog. The girls fell in love with them, ran off with them, neglected to charge them, and provoked fights by encouraging two or three at the same time. The girls behaved better with miners, most of whom were older—it was uncommon to find young men who wanted to spend their days in the mines.
At the same time, she felt sad at the thought of the move. She felt she’d lost something in Miles City; perhaps it had been a way of hoping, a way of thinking about the remains of her life. Blue wouldn’t marry just to unmarry. If he seemed more ardent, more lovestruck than ever, it was probably only because he was restless about settling down. Once he settled, though, and children came, there’d be a turning; he wouldn’t come so often, or care so much. His young wife might not engage his attention, but the situation would—he’d grow up and start wanting to make his mark, and she herself would not get to be involved in it, much less help him make it.
“Dora, won’t you change your mind?” he asked. “Can’t you stay here? Can’t we just be as we’ve always been?”
Dora didn’t answer, though she finally let him take her hand.
But when T. Blue rode west the next morning toward the Musselshell, he could not get his spirits up. They hovered down near his stirrups, though the morning was bright and the plains in their summer fullness, the yellow grass waving. When he first rode west toward the Musselshell, he had had to worry about keeping his cattle, his horses, and his scalp. Now those worries were diminished. Unless he stumbled onto a mad renegade, his scalp was probably safe.
Still, he felt lower in mood than when such a ride had meant danger. There were dangers and dangers, it seemed. The old kind, the kind involving renegades and breakneck races over uncertain country kept one awake and alert, keen to the business of living. Relax and you might be gone, unless you possessed abundant luck.
T. felt he did possess abundant luck: he had swum rivers in which other men drowned, survived stampedes in which other men died, escaped bullets that had gone on to cut other men down. No defeat or contretemps depressed him for long; his energies would bob up and he’d be off at a rapid clip for new sights and fresh pursuits.
The shift in Dora, though, wasn’t to be survived as easily as bullets, rivers, stampedes. He had assumed from her many refusals that she wouldn’t mind if he married, so he had married; it was done, and he had no complaint about his wife, who was young, pretty, competent, devoted. Indeed, he loved her too.
He just hadn’t imagined that securing a helpmate would affect Dora so. When he got annoyed at Billy Cody, tried to climb the drainpipe, and busted himself good, Dora had taken him in, nursed him, and been as sweet as ever. She didn’t exactly send Billy packing, but it was clear who she preferred. Yet in that time something shifted. Dora evidently thought the fact that he stayed with her to get well meant that he was going to stay with her forever. He hadn’t said it, but Dora believed it—the day he pronounced himself well and proposed to go back to his ranch, she turned to ice. He expected anger, he got an icicle—and since then, though he had returned twice, riding the long distance across the plains, Dora had not really melted. He had to strain and joke merely to be tolerated—and yet Dora and he had been sweethearts for twenty years, moving, more or less in step, all the way up the plains from Kansas to Montana.
Was all they had shared just to be memories now, because he had married? It seemed so. Getting saddled up to go home, he stopped and hugged her and asked once again that she not go, not move farther from the Musselshell.
“I’m moving, T.—let’s don’t talk about it,” Dora said, offering her cheek when he bent from his horse to kiss her goodbye.
He had not gone five miles west, and his mood had not lifted a stirrup’s width, when he saw a strange party right in his path. It was Calamity, trying to mount her horse. No Ears held a stirrup steady for her, but Calamity was having a hard time getting her foot in it. Twice she heaved a foot up and both times missed the stirrup and fell down. Her big shaggy dog barked furiously when this happened. The dog seemed to think it was all the horse’s fault.
As Blue approached, No Ears led the horse over by a low stump. He helped Calamity balance on the stump and then positioned the stirrup, but Calamity wobbled at the last second, jumped, missed the stirrup, and kicked the horse in the flank. This spooked the horse; it jerked No Ears down and dragged him for twenty or thirty yards before the old man got him stopped.
The dog barked even more furiously; he seemed on the point of attacking the horse.
“I can’t believe you’re too damn drunk even to get on your horse,” Blue said when he got there. “It’s barely sunup—what are you doing drunk at this hour?”
“Oh, Blue, don’t scold me,” Calamity said. “Don’t you remember all the times we drunk all
night?” She was near tears from embarrassment. No Ears had walked all the way from town to find her once he noticed that Satan wasn’t in the livery stable; she had ridden out to watch the sunrise with a cowpoke, whose name she couldn’t remember. But the cowpoke didn’t seem to be anywhere in sight; maybe he had changed his mind in the livery stable and gone back to the saloon—she couldn’t remember that part very clearly. Now she felt trembly and confused and was fearful that she might get sick any minute if she didn’t manage to get mounted and back to town. T. Blue in one of his temperance moods was the last thing she needed.
“You goddamn preacher!” she said. “Help me get up. You’ve toasted the sunrise as often as any man I know, don’t you scold me today. I’ve got to go off to England this afternoon, and it’s upset me.”
Blue was amused—Calamity had him on that one; he was no man to be lecturing ladies on the evils of drink, even ladies who were too drunk to find their stirrup.
“I’ve toasted the dawn, I admit, but I’ve never been too drunk to get on my horse,” he said, more for argument’s sake than anything. In fact, he had spent more than a few nights asleep under his mount, too drunk to remember that he even owned a horse.
But he got down and helped No Ears steady the stirrup—the horse was getting more and more disturbed and might soon bolt if Calamity kicked him in the flank a few more times. Even with his help, Calamity couldn’t hit it, so Blue cupped his hands and got her to put her foot in them; once she managed that, it was no trouble to heave her up. She was sopping drunk all right; her breath smelled like she’d been drinking kerosene, and she had no sooner taken the reins than she dropped both. No Ears patiently retrieved them.
“It’s a good thing No Ears has adopted you,” Blue remarked. “You’ve reached the age where you need a guardian, Martha.”
Now that she was up, Calamity felt like resting for a bit until her stomach felt a little more settled. Satan had already put up with a good deal—he might not appreciate being vomited on.