“I ain’t in condition a-tall, Jack,” Caroline says, pouring some coffee down her hatch. “I’m feeling real poorly, and ’spect to die.”
Now you can’t take a person serious on that subject when you just seen her devour an enormous hunk of steer.
But Caroline went on: “I don’t mean sick of body, but of soul.”
She takes another drink of coffee and wipes her mouth on her shirt sleeve. “I reckon a person of your cold temperament would find it hard to understand how another might die of love, Jack, but I’ll thank you not to sneer at it.”
Instead of replying to that, I says: “Caroline, what ever became of your intended, Frank Delight? I recall you was supposed to get hitched to him back in ’67.”
“Well I never,” says she, “if I correctly remember the man after all these years. You mean that honky-tonker who followed the U.P.? He turned out real bad, Jack. I believe that was when you run off and left your defenseless sister all alone, and this Frank, if that was his name, soon as you was gone, he made lewd and unseemly advances towards me and I had to cold-cock him myself, seeing I never had no brother to protect me. Where’d you go?” she asks, and then adds: “Major North told me you showed the yellow streak at that fight with the Indians and turned tail and run away.”
Caroline was one of them people who utter three failures of judgment for every two words they speak, and by trying to correct them, you only succeed in presenting further occasion on which to exercise their vice, so I kept my remarks to the minimum.
“So after that,” says she, “I couldn’t very well stay around the U.P., so I went to Californy and Oregon and Arizona and Santy Fee and Texas, I been to Texas a couple times, and Virginia City, and Ioway. I been many places, Jack, and done more than a few things, but I have kept out of the gutter.”
“But,” I says, “what is this stuff about Calamity Jane? I understand you was pretending to be her.”
Caroline gets a sheepish look and wipes her mouth again, all the way to the nose, upon the cuff of her man’s checked shirt.
“Because,” I goes on, “if that other was the real Calam, she’s sure ugly and fairly foul-mouthed, and I don’t believe there is many men who find such a person attractive. As for fighting, I wouldn’t think women was supposed to be good at it.”
Caroline was kind of sneery at my innocence. “You’d be surprised,” she says, “at how many fellows find a fighting gal mighty to their taste. I have had a good many admirers every place I have went, including, if you’d like to know, Mr. Wild Bill Hickok, of who I reckon you have heerd, only that whore you mention tried to steal him away from me. Now I’ll tell you, what people recall about her is that name, it ain’t her personal self, and ‘Calamity’ ain’t her real name nohow, which is Jane Canary, but just let a bunch in some saloon hear ‘Calam,’ and they don’t care who it is, they’ll joke you and buy you drinks and you are real popular. I’ve had some hard luck in my time, Jack, and I don’t mind being the center of a bunch of fun-loving fellows.”
There was something real pathetic about Caroline. But I knowed what she meant about names: it was certainly true. Take me, and look at the colorful, dangerous life I have led in participating in some of the most remarkable events of the history of this country. I’ll wager to say you never heard of me before now. Then think of Wild Bill Hickok, George Armstrong Custer, Wyatt Earp—names is what they had. Wild Jack Crabb, Crabb’s Last Stand—it just don’t sound the same.
But of course right at that moment I wasn’t thinking of that, but rather about my erstwhile acquaintance Hickok, a remarkable coincidence.
“Wild Bill?” says I. “He is here in Cheyenne?” For I had not seen him since K.C. though having heard much of his renown in the years intervening.
But while she showed no particular sign on her own mention of the name, as soon as I said it Caroline commenced to sniffle and sob and abuse that man and I couldn’t get no more out of her that was coherent on the subject, and did not understand the situation until the next day as I was walking down the main street of Cheyenne, who should step out of a drygoods store but Hickok himself.
He had put on a few pounds since I seen him last and was getting jowly; still wore his hair long, and was attired in his fancy town clothes of frock coat and all. He carried several boxes, of course under his left arm, and his eyes, which had seemed to get smaller owing to the fatness of his face, flickered up one side of the street and down the next.
I says, slow and easy: “Hiya, Bill. Remember me?”
He give me an equally slow once-over. I reckon he knowed me well enough right off, but had to check first as to whether I was about to pull a hideout weapon on him.
Then he says: “How are you, hoss? Still playing poker?”
I says not as much as in the old days, for I was fixing to go for gold.
