Down the Yellowstone Part 5

"Show me where the lady is and I'll try," I replied, edging cautiously in toward the circle of golden glow.

"She's me, Short Pants--Martha Cannary--Martha Burk, better known as 'Calamity Jane.'"

"Ah!" I breathed, and again "Ah!" Then: "Sure, I'll tell you where you live; only you'll have to tell me first." And thus was ushered in the greatest moment of my life.

"Calamity," it appeared, had arrived from Bozeman that afternoon, taken a room over a saloon, gone out for a convivial evening and forgotten where she lived. She was only sure that the bar-keeper of the saloon was named Patsy, and that there was an outside stairway up to the second story. It was a long and devious search, not so much because there was any great number of saloons with outside stairways and mixologists called Patsy, as because every man in every saloon to which we went to inquire greeted "Calamity" as a long-lost mother and insisted on shouting the house. Then, to the last man, they attached themselves to the search-party. When we did locate the proper place, it was only to find that "Calamity" had lost her room-key. After a not-too-well-ordered consultation, we pa.s.sed her unprotesting anatomy in through a window by means of a fire-ladder and reckoned our mission finished. That was the proudest night on which I am able to look back.

When, agog with delicious excitement, I went to ask after Mrs. Burk's health the following morning. I found her smoking a cigar and cooking breakfast. She insisted on my sharing both, but I compromised on the ham and eggs. She had no recollection whatever of our meeting of the previous evening, yet greeted me as "Short Pants" as readily as ever.

This name, later contracted to "Pants," was suggested by my omnipresent checkered knickers, the only nether garment I possessed at the time.

The "once-and-never-again 'Calamity Jane,'" was about fifty-five years of age at this time, and looked it, or did not look it, according to where one looked. Her deeply-lined, scowling, sun-tanned face and the mouth with its missing teeth might have belonged to a hag of seventy.

The rest of her-well, seeing those leather-clad legs swing by on the other side of a signboard that obscured the wrinkled phiz, one might well have thought they belonged to a thirty-year-old cow-puncher just coming into town for his night to howl. And younger even than her legs was "Calamity's" heart. Apropos of which I recall confiding to Patsy, the bar-keep, that she had the heart of a young G.o.d Pan. "Maybe so,"

grunted Patsy doubtfully (not having had a cla.s.sical education he couldn't be quite sure, of course); "in any case she's got the voice of an old tin pan." Which was neither gallant nor quite fair to "Calamity."

Her voice _was_ a bit cracked, but not so badly as Patsy had tried to make out. Another thing: that black scowl between her brows belied the dear old girl. There was really nothing saturnine about her. Hers was the sunniest of souls, and the most generous. She was poor all her life from giving away things, and I have heard that her last illness was contracted in nursing some poor sot she found in a gutter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "CALAMITY JANE" IN 1885]

[Ill.u.s.tration: I FOUND "CALAMITY" SMOKING A CIGAR AND COOKING BREAKFAST]

Naturally, of course, after a decent interval, I blurted out to "Calamity" that I had come to hear the story of her wonderful life.

Right gamely did the old girl come through. "Sure, Pants," she replied.

"Just run down and rush a can of suds, and I'll rattle off the whole layout for you. I'll meet you down there in the suns.h.i.+ne by those empty beer barrels."

It was May, the month of the brewing of the fragrant dark-brown _Bock_.

Returning with a gallon tin pail awash to the gunnels, I found "Calamity" enthroned on an up-ended barrel, with her feet comfortably braced against the side of one of its prostrate brothers. Depositing the nectar on a third barrel at her side, I sank to my ease upon a soft patch of lush spring gra.s.s and budding dandelions. "Calamity" blew a mouth-hole in the foam, quaffed deeply of the _Bock_; wiped her lips with a sleeve, and began without further preliminary:

"My maiden name was Martha Cannary. Was born in Princeton, Missouri, May first, 1848." Then, in a sort of parenthesis: "This must be about my birthday, Pants. Drink to the health of the Queen of May, kid." I stopped chewing dandelion, lifted the suds-crowned bucket toward her, muttered "Many happy Maytimes, Queen," and drank deep. Immediately she resumed with "My maiden name was Martha Cannary, etc."... "As a child I always had a fondness for adventure and especial fondness for horses, which I began to ride at an early age and continued to do so until I became an expert rider, being able to ride the most vicious and stubborn horses.

"In 1865 we emigrated from our home in Missouri by the overland route to Virginia City, Montana. While on the way the greater part of my time was spent in hunting along with the men; in fact I was at all times with the men when there was excitement and adventure to be had. We had many exciting times fording streams, for many of the streams on the way were noted for quicksand and boggy places. On occasions of that kind the men would usually select the best way to cross the streams, myself on more than one occasion having mounted my pony and swam across the stream several times merely to amuse myself and had many narrow escapes; but as pioneers of those days had plenty of courage we overcame all obstacles and reached Virginia City in safety.

"Mother died at Blackfoot in 1866, where we buried her. My father died in Utah in 1867, after which I went to Fort Bridger. Remained around Fort Bridger during 1868, then went to Piedmont, Wyoming, with U. P.

railway. Joined General Custer as a scout at Fort Russell, Wyoming, in 1870. Up to this time I had always worn the costume of my s.e.x. When I joined Custer I donned the uniform of a soldier. It was a bit awkward at first but I soon got to be perfectly at home in men's clothes.

"I was a scout in the Nez Perce outbreak in 1872. In that war Generals Custer, Miles, Terry and Cook were all engaged. It was in this campaign I was christened 'Calamity Jane.' It was on Goose Creek, Wyoming, where the town of Sheridan is now located. Captain Egan was in command of the post. We were ordered out to quell an uprising of Indians, and were out several days, had numerous skirmishes during which six of the soldiers were killed and several severely wounded. On returning to the post we were ambushed about a mile from our destination. When fired upon Captain Egan was shot. I was riding in advance and on hearing the firing turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle as though about to fall. I turned my horse and galloped back with all haste to his side and got there in time to catch him as he was falling. I lifted him onto my horse in front of me and succeeded in getting him safely to the fort.

Captain Egan on recovering laughingly said: 'I name you "Calamity Jane,"

the Heroine of the Plains.' I have borne that name up to the present time."

Here, little dreaming what the consequence would be, I interrupted, and for this reason: I had felt that "Calamity" had been doing herself scant justice all along, but in the "christening" incident her matter-of-fact recital was so much at variance with the facts as set down in "The Beautiful White Devil of the Yellowstone" that I had to protest. "Excuse me, Mrs. Burk," I said, "but wasn't that officer's name Major Percy Darkleigh instead of Egan? And didn't you cry 'For life and love!' when you caught his reeling form? And didn't you shake your trusty repeater and shout 'To h.e.l.l with the redskins!' as you turned and headed for the fort? And didn't you ride with your reins in your teeth, the Major under your left arm and your six-shooter in your right hand? And when you had laid the Major safely down inside the Fort, didn't he breathe softly, 'I thank thee Jane from the bottom of a grateful heart. No arm but thine shall ever encircle my waist, for while I honour my wife--'"

Here "Calamity" cut in, swearing hard and pointedly, so hard and pointedly, in fact, that her remarks may not be quoted verbatim here.

The gist of them was that "The Beautiful White Devil of the Yellowstone"

was highly coloured, was a pack of blankety-blank lies, in fact, and of no value whatever as history. I realize now that she was right, of course, but that didn't soften the blow at the time.

Trying to resume her story, "Calamity," after groping about falteringly for the thread, had to back up again and start with "My maiden name was Martha Cannary." She was in a Black Hills campaign against the Sioux in 1875, and in the spring of '76 was ordered north with General Crook to join Generals Miles, Terry and Custer at the Big Horn. A ninety-mile ride with dispatches after swimming the Platte brought on a severe illness, and she was sent back in General Crook's ambulance to Fort Fetterman. This probably saved her from being present at the ma.s.sacre of the Little Big Horn with Custer and the 7th Cavalry.

"During the rest of the summer of '76 I was a pony express rider, carrying the U. S. mails between Deadwood and Custer, fifty miles over some of the roughest trails in the Black Hills. As many of the riders before me had been held up and robbed of their packages, it was considered the most dangerous route in the Hills. As my reputation as a rider and quick shot were well known I was molested very little, for the toll-gatherers looked on me as being a good fellow and they knew I never missed my mark.

"My friend William Hick.o.c.k, better known as 'Wild Bill,' who was probably the best revolver shot that ever lived, was in Deadwood that summer. On the second of August, while setting at a gambling table of the Bella Union Saloon, he was shot in the back of the head by the notorious Jack McCall, a desperado. I was in Deadwood at the time and on hearing of the killing made my way at once to the scene of the shooting and found that my best friend had been killed by McCall. I at once started to look for the a.s.sa.s.sin and found him at Shurdy's butcher shop and grabbed a meat cleaver and made him throw up his hands, through excitement on hearing Bill's death having left my weapons on the post of my bed. He was then taken to a log cabin and locked up, but he got away and was afterwards caught at f.a.gan's ranch on Horse Creek. He was taken to Yankton, tried and hung."

Here, forgetting myself, I interrupted again in an endeavour to reconcile the facts of "Wild Bill's" death as just detailed with the version of that tragic event as depicted in "Jane of the Plain."

"Calamity's" language was again unfit to print. "Wild Bill" had _not_ expired with his head on her shoulder, muttering brokenly "My heart was yours from the first, oh my love!" Nor had she snipped off a lock of Bill's yellow hair and sworn to bathe it in the heart-blood of his slayer. All blankety-blank lies, just like the "White Devil." Then, as before, in order to get going properly, she had to back up and start all over with: "My maiden name was Martha Cannary." This time I kept chewing dandelions and let her run on to the finish, thereby learning the secret of her somewhat remarkable style of delivery. This is the way the story of her life concluded:

"We arrived in Deadwood on October 9th, 1895. My return after an absence of so many years to the scene of my most noted exploits, created quite an excitement among my many friends of the past, to such an extent that a vast number of citizens who had heard so much of 'Calamity Jane' and her many adventures were anxious to see me. Among the many whom I met were several gentlemen from eastern cities, who advised me to allow myself to be placed before the public in such a manner as to give the people of the eastern cities the opportunity of seeing the lady scout who was made so famous during her daring career in the West and Black Hills countries. An agent of Kohl and Middleton, the celebrated museum men, came to Deadwood through the solicitation of these gentlemen, and arrangements were made to place me before the public in this manner. My first engagement to begin at the Palace Museum, Minneapolis, January 20th, 1896, under this management.

Hoping that this history of my life may interest all readers, I remain, as in the older days,

"Yours, "Mrs. M. Burk, "Better known as 'Calamity Jane.'"

"Calamity" had been delivering to me her museum tour lecture, the which had also been printed in a little pink-covered leaflet to sell at the door. That was why, like a big locomotive on a slippery track, she had had to back up to get going again every time she was stopped. Oh, well, the golden dust from the b.u.t.terfly wing of Romance has to be brushed off sometime; only it was rather hard luck to have it get such a devastating side-swipe all at once. That afternoon for the first time I began to discern that there was a more or less opaque webbing underlying the rainbow-bright iridescence of sparkling dust.

With "Calamity Jane," the heroine, evanis.h.i.+ng like the blown foam of her loved _Bock_, there still remained Martha Burk, the human doc.u.ment, the living page of thirty years of the most vivid epoch of Northwestern history. Compared to what I had hoped from my historic researches in the pages of "The Beautiful White Devil of the Yellowstone," this was of comparatively academic though none the less real interest. Reclining among the dandelions the while "Calamity" oiled the hinges of her memory with beer, I conned through and between the lines of that record for perhaps a week. Patiently diverting her from her lecture platform delivery, I gradually drew from the strange old character much of intimate and colourful interest. Circulating for three decades through the upper Missouri and Yellowstone valleys and gravitating like steel to the magnet wherever action was liveliest and trouble the thickest, she had known at close range all of the most famous frontier characters of her day. Naturally, therefore, her unrestrained talk was of Indians and Indian fighters, road-agents, desperadoes, gamblers and bad men generally--from "Wild Bill" Hick.o.c.k and "Buffalo Bill" Cody to Miles and Terry and Custer, to "Crazy Horse," "Rain-in-the-Face," Gall and "Sitting Bull." She told me a good deal of all of them, not a little, indeed, which seemed to throw doubt on a number of popularly accepted versions of various more or less historical events. I made notes of all of her stories on the spot, and at some future time of comparative leisure, when there is a chance to cross-check sufficiently with fully established facts from other sources, I should like to make some record of them. These pages are not, of course, the place for controversial matter of that kind.

One morning I kept tryst among the dandelions in vain. Inquiry at the saloon revealed the fact that "Calamity," dressed in her buckskins, had called for her stabled horse at daybreak and ridden off in the direction of Big Timber. She would not pay for her room until she turned up again, Patsy said. It was a perfectly good account, though; she never failed to settle up in the end. I never heard of her again until the papers, a year or two later, had word of her death.

With Romance and Historical Research out of the way, my mind returned to the matter of my river voyage. Giving the newly built skiff a belated trial with Sydney Lamartine, we swamped in a comparatively insignificant rapid and shared a good rolling and wetting. Agreed that the craft needed higher sides, we dragged it back to the yards for alterations.

Sydney thought he might find time to complete them inside of a week.

Before that week was over I had one foot in a newspaper editorial sanctum and the other on the initial sack of a semi-professional baseball team. As both footings seemed certain to develop into stepping-stones to the realization of the most cherished of my childhood's ambitions (I had never cared much about being President), the river voyage to the Gulf went into complete discard--or rather into a twenty-year postponement.

I became an editor as a direct consequence of making good on the ball team; I ceased to be an editor as a direct consequence of betraying a sacred trust laid upon me by the ball team. This was something of the way of it: Livingston had high hopes of copping the champions.h.i.+p of the Montana bush league, which, at the time of my arrival, was just budding into life with the willows and cottonwood along the river. For this laudable purpose a fearful and wonderful aggregation had been chivvied together from the ends of baseballdom, numbering on its roster about as many names that had once been famous in diamond history as those that were destined to become so. Of the team as finally selected three or four of us were known to the police, and at least two of us came into town on brake-beams. One of us was trying to forget the dope habit, and another--our catcher and greatest star--had just been graduated from a rum-cure inst.i.tute.

All of us were guaranteed jobs--sinecural in character of course. Paddy Ryan, one of the pitchers, and two or three others were bar-keepers.

There was also one night-watchman, one electrician and one compositor. I was rather a problem to the management until the editor of the _Enterprise_ was sent to the same inst.i.tute recently evacuated by our bibulous catcher. Then I was put in his place--I mean that of the editor. I don't seem to recall much of my editorial duties or achievements, save that one important reform I endeavoured to inst.i.tute--that of getting a roll of pink paper and publis.h.i.+ng the _Enterprise_ as a straight sporting sheet--somehow fell through.

They tried me out at centre in the opening game against Billings, and after the second--at Bozeban--I became a permanency at first-base, my old corner at Stanford. Besides holding down the initial bag, I was told off for the unofficial duty of guarding the only partially rum-cured catcher--seeing that he was kept from even inhaling the fumes of the seductive red-eye, a single seance with which meant his inevitable downfall for the season.

I played fairly promising ball right along through that season, and but for the final disaster which overtook me in my unofficial capacity as Riley's keeper might have gone on to the fulfillment of my life ambition. Up to the final and deciding series with b.u.t.te I kept my thirsty ward under an unrelaxing rein, with the result that he played the greatest baseball of his career. Then a gang of Copper City sports, who had been betting heavily on the series, contrived to lure Riley away for a quarter of an hour while I was taking a bath. He was in the clouds by the time I located him, and rapidly going out of control into a spinning nose-dive. He crashed soon after, and when I left him just as the dawn was breaking through the red smoke above the copper smelters he was as busy chasing mauve mice and purple c.o.c.kroaches as the subst.i.tute we put in his place that afternoon was with pa.s.sed b.a.l.l.s. To cap the climax--in endeavouring to extend a bunt into a two-bagger, or some equally futile stunt--I strained an old "Charley Horse" and went out of the game in the second inning. We lost the game, series and champions.h.i.+p, and I, incidentally, ceased to be a rising semi-pro ball player and a somewhat less rising country editor.

I have failed to mention that I did have one more fling at the Yellowstone that summer. Lamartine remodelled his skiff as we had planned, and one Sunday when Livingston had a game on at Big Timber we decided to make the run down by river. Pus.h.i.+ng off at daybreak we arrived under the big bluff of Big Timber a good hour or two before noon. I find this run thus celebrated in an ancient clipping from the Livingston _Post_, contemporary of the _Enterprise_.

"Mr. L. R. Freeman, Mr. Armstrong and Sydney Lamartine made the trip from this city to Big Timber last Sunday in a flat-bottomed boat. The river course between this city and Big Timber is fully 50 miles, and the gentlemen made the trip without mishap in six hours. Several times the boat had narrow escapes from being turned over, but each time the skill of the boatmen prevented any trouble. Quite a crowd a.s.sembled on the Springdale bridge and watched the crew shoot the little craft through the boiling riffle at that point, cheering them l.u.s.tily for the skill they displayed in swinging their boat into the most advantageous places. The trip is a hazardous one, but full of keen enjoyment and spice and zest. The time made is without doubt the fastest river boating ever done on the Yellowstone, and it is extremely doubtful if the record has been duplicated on any other stream. Mr. Freeman, who has had considerable experience in boating in Alaska, says that he never has seen a small boat make such splendid time."

I don't remember a lot about that undeniably speedy run save that we stopped for nothing but dumping water out of the boat. Last summer, with a number of seasons of swift-water experience to help, I took rather more than nine hours to cover the same stretch. I suppose it was because the river and I were twenty years older. Age is a great slower down, at least where a man is concerned. I do seem to recall now that I stopped a number of times on this last run to see which was the smoother channel.

Doubtless the old Yellowstone was just as fast as ever.

PART II

DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE CHAPTER I

PRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE PARK

In embarking anew on a journey from the Continental Divide to the mouth of the Mississippi I was influenced by three considerations in deciding to start on the Yellowstone rather than on one of the three forks of the Missouri. There was the sentimental desire to see again the land of geysers and hot springs and waterfalls, no near rival of which had I ever discovered in twenty years of travel in the out-of-the-way places of the earth. Then I wanted to go all the way by the main river, and there was no question in my mind that the Yellowstone was really the main Missouri, just as the Missouri was the main Mississippi. John Neihardt has put this so well in his inimitable "River and I" that I cannot do better than quote what he has written in this connection.

"The geographer tells us that the mouth of the Missouri is about seventeen miles above St. Louis, and that the mouth of the Yellowstone is near Buford, North Dakota. It appeared to me that the fact is inverted. The Missouri's mouth is near Buford, and the Yellowstone empties directly into the Mississippi. I find that I am not alone in this opinion. Father de Smet and other early travellers felt the truth of it; and Captain Marsh, who has piloted river craft through every navigable foot of the entire system of rivers, having sailed the Missouri within sound of the Falls and the Yellowstone above Pompey's Pillar, feels that the Yellowstone is the main stem and the Missouri a tributary.

"Where the two rivers join, even at low water, the Yellowstone pours a vast turbulent flood, compared with which the clear and quieter Missouri appears an overgrown rain-water creek. The Mississippi after some miles obliterates all traces of its great western tributary; but the Missouri at Buford is entirely lost in the Yellowstone within a few hundred yards. All of the unique characteristics by which the Missouri River is known are given it by the Yellowstone--its turbulence, its tawniness, its feline treachery, its giant caprices."