But I had since changed remarkably. So that is why I now proceeded up towards Dakota Territory: I wanted some of that gold. I hadn’t got much of it in the Colorado rush of ’58, but I was white man enough to try again.
I wasn’t trailing Custer no more, nor was I looking for Indians. But I sure found them both.
CHAPTER 24
IT WAS THE SPRING of ’76 when I reached the town of Cheyenne, in southern Wyoming, which was a stop on the Union Pacific and an outfitting place for the Black Hills gold rush.
Owing to the treaty with the Sioux, white men was supposed to keep out of the Hills altogether, no matter what their purpose; and the Army would turn back any expeditions they caught trying to enter. But there was a real difficulty in policing such an expanse of ground with only a few regiments. You might say any would-be miner who was kept away from the diggings by the U.S. Army wasn’t trying. For all they’d do if they found him was to say no. He wasn’t arrested or nothing, and once beyond the next rise, he could circle around the troops and continue towards his original aim.
However, even this much harassing caused popular peevishment back in the settlements. It was like the Colorado rush again: progress versus savagery; the Army should go in and wipe out the Indians rather than prohibit fellow whites from making a pile. For the Sioux had not sat still for the invasion, though they did not start seriously killing right away. They actually turned back some of the early-comers without sending them under, which I think showed remarkable patience.
I had no sooner got to Cheyenne—the Wyoming town, not the tribe; there wasn’t no Human Beings there; if they had been, they would have been shot on sight—than I come across two fellows having a terrific fight on the main street. So, being I never had no business that couldn’t wait, I went to watch them, and who did I make out on the losing end of it but my sister Caroline.
Now that was too much for me, seeing some bastard beat up my sister, though his reasons might have been of the best and though he was smaller than her, so I was fixing to drop him as soon as they drawed apart a little and I could get in a fair shot. So when he hit Caroline a mighty blow upon the jaw and she chewed dirt, I went for my brand-new Colt’s Peacemaker, but before I could raise it a fellow alongside me in the crowd says: “Well sir, I reckon that proves which is the real one.”
A curious comment and lucky it was, for it kept me from murder. I asks: “Real what?”
“Real Calamity Jane,” says he, then lets out some tobacco juice to fall between his boots. “Them two bitches is fighting over’n it. That there big redhead was claiming the title up at the bar, and then t’other come in and called her and they went for each other.”
I put my gun away and looked at Caroline’s opponent a-standing there with her fists cocked over my sister’s recumbent body, and I saw the ugliest woman in the world, and she was cursing at the moment and I’ll tell you her prowess at that art was such as to make Caroline’s foulest mouth, as I recall it, sound like hymn singing.
Calamity Jane: I had heard the name around but never run into the specimen before. She had a face like a potato and was built sort of dumpy, and when she seen that Caroline was down for good, she prodded her with a boot, spat onto the street, and picking up the sombrero what had fell off in the fight and clapping it back upon her man’s haircut, she swaggered into the saloon.
You remember that time Caroline rescued me from drink by dunking me in a horse trough? Well, she was too big for me to return the favor, so I just filled the crown of my hat with water from the same and flang it into her face. Upon which she woke up, snarling: “Where’s that whore? I’ll kill her!”
I set back upon my heels. I said: “You been whipped, Caroline, and I believe you richly deserved it if you was pretending to be Calamity Jane. What did you want to do that for?”
Well, it took a minute or two for her to gather herself and realize who I was, but she was still too upset to express much affection for her brother, so I helped her up and she was all right though bruised and with a purplish eye and a cut lip and a bald patch where some of her hair had been tore out at the roots and the lobe of her one ear had been bit almost clear through. But I found a Doc and he dosed some liniment on her and it looked like she would live, so we went to a restaurant and she eat a steak as big as my back and about five pound of potatoes fried in grease.
“Now,” says I as she was subsequently picking her back teeth—most of the front ones was missing—“now,” I says, “you want to talk about it?”
“Well,” says Caroline, “if you was any kind of brother, you’d go and shoot that bitch.”
“Maybe I will,” I says, “if I could know what she done to you other than whip you in a fair fight though smaller and with a shorter reach.”
