Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 37

"Killed anything?"

"Not yet. But we were shot at the other night, near Notre Dame."

He glanced back at me, his eyes unerringly focusing on mine as if hitting a target. He had always known I was there, eavesdropping. He had heard every step and breath I took, I realized. He had never been unaware of me.

"Two women, out alone, at night?" He sounded skeptical.

"I was dressed as a man."

The silence was deafening.

"We had been at the Paris Morgue," Irene added, piling one incongruity atop another.

"Like no other," Buffalo Bill quoted himself at last. "You are going after Yellow Hand."

"In a sense. But I will take justice instead of a scalp."

"Actually, his name was Yellow Hair. The newspapers made it Yellow Hand. Guess they figured an Indian wouldn't be named Yellow Hair. Oddly appropriate name, given Custer was known for his long yellow hair."

I shuddered at the comparison: a dead cavalry colonel known for his yellow hair. The Indian known as Yellow Hair present at the battle, then later killed and scalped by a white scout and buffalo hunter and Indian slayer who now led a world-famous entertainment centered around buffalo and Indians . . .

"I have lived in Europe for a long time," Irene repeated, returning to her circuitous introduction of this topic. "I am ignorant of the ways of the frontier that you know so well, that you forged. I need to ask some ignorant questions. Will you forgive me that?"

"I'll tell you what. I will, if Merlinda the Mermaid will make an appearance at my command performance for the French president next month."

"Colonel Cody, that was a long time ago! I do not even sing opera anymore."

"Old skills never die."

"I have no costume, no tank."

"If I can cart my whole show across the Atlantic, I can come up with a few hundred gallons of water in a gla.s.s box." He eyed her as if inspecting a steed. "And I'm willing to bet that your hair is as long and your breath control is as peerless as it ever was. It was the darnedest thing I ever saw."

"Very well," Irene said, "but you won't like my questions."

"Questions never killed a man. But first I've got a thing or two to tell, or ask, you."

"Yes?"

"About that shooting near Notre Dame. At night? What? Gaslights still around there? Not electric lights?"

She nodded.

"Misty, though, fog thick as mohair coming off of the river?"

She nodded again.

"You two were silhouettes in the fog. Not recognizable."

"Unless someone knew who we were. . . ."

"Had followed you from the morgue, you mean. I was taken there. Now that's a show. They think my outfit celebrates death. Hmmph. This morgue's at the rear of the cathedral. Quite a system: church and then the morgue at the back door, so to speak. You see anyone following you?"

Irene shook her head.

"You look?"

"As best I could without being overly obvious."

He grunted. "Didn't shoot with a pistol. Revolver. Would have had to have been close enough to spot, and you were looking, right?"

She nodded, listening hard.

"Rifle. Only possible weapon. You hear the bullets. .h.i.t?"

"Stone. They scored stone. Perhaps I could find the places in daylight, but it would be difficult."

"It doesn't make sense, Madame Mermaid. Not at all. No one could expect to hit a target under those conditions, not even Miss Annie Oakley."

"A warning?"

"You don't get any warnings on the prairie."

"But here?"

He nodded. "So what kind of critter are you hunting?"

"You performed in England in 1887?"

"A triumph, three command performances for Queen Victoria. It's why we're here at this World Exposition in Paris now."

"And the next year, in 1888?"

He grinned. "Three hundred years after the Spanish Armada tried to take England, and failed, we had knocked them dead on their own turf and were back in the States, playing along the seaboard where the English lost America a bit over a century ago. History is a lesson and an irony. It was another triumphal tour. Why?"

"That was the autumn in which Jack the Ripper was terrorizing Whitechapel in London."

"He was a wild one."

"But he took no scalps."

"Not . . . quite. Took a lot more."

"There have been recent deaths in Paris."

"Pulled up stakes and moved on, hmmm?"

She nodded, watching him as narrowly as an American eagle on a poster. "Mutilations. After death. Less . . . anatomical, more gruesome."

"Aha." He buried his goatee in his hand as he thought. "These Indians of mine come from a talent agency. Some are a bit wild to control, but so are the horses and the buffalo, and the cowboys, too, for that matter."

"Did any Indians leave your show while you were in England?"

"You're following the wrong trail. There's a lot of rot about the Indians been written. They have their ways and they are not ours. But what is ours? How alike are you and me? Or me and that girl? Or a French count and an Indian chief? Whoever shot at you wasn't an Indian."

"Perhaps not, but it takes nerve to use Paris pedestrians for target practice. Or blithe ignorance. Perhaps someone from another culture, from a savage past, is being used by someone quite civilized."

"Wouldn't be the first or last time." He thought again. "Was a couple Indians who deserted, only you can't call absent actors 'deserters.' That's what we all are now. Actors. Like you. Opera. Wild West Shows. A couple Indians didn't go back to the States with us after that England tour in eighty-seven."

"Do you remember their names?"

"Do I remember my own? Crazy Fox and Long Wolf. Long Wolf was quite the celebrity. Wore a black beaver top hat with his regular regalia. The English folk made quite a fuss over him. He said he had never seen a village so large and that he wished to learn its limits. Crazy Fox was another case. He had a taste for alcohol. Can't blame him. I do myself." The veteran scout laughed and shook his head. "You really think Jack the Ripper could be an Indian? What about those letters to the newspapers? They were full of Americanisms, but they weren't written by any Indian."

"The letters may have been from anyone but the Ripper."

"Who?"

"Newspaper writers hoping to sell more papers. There's quite a compet.i.tion to outdo each other with sensational and sordid stories, in America, England, France."

"These reporters do jostle for something to print. And I can tell you from doing a few hundred interviews that those folks invent up one side and down the other. Usually it's to my benefit, though. Lies only add to your legend. Oscar Wilde found that out when he came to the States. He and his wife received us when we appeared in London. Love the way the English and the French are coming to us now. We have grown up as a country, Missus Norton. We are of consequence."

She smiled. "We are. So you say that the Indians are . . . utterly subdued. They would not revert to their savage ways on foreign soil."

"Their savage ways are not so different from our savage ways. I found that out when I took Yellow Hand's scalp. On the prairie there's only wind and G.o.d and what men do, and not all of it's nice. Savagery has its reasons, you must understand that. They wors.h.i.+p their G.o.ds with their particular sacrifices. And sacrifices are always human, one way or another. We celebrate the torture of a G.o.d-man on a cross. That so different from how a Jesuit died at the hands of the Huron two hundred years ago? Some of the Plains Indians mutilate the bodies of dead enemies. We think that's savage. We kill 'em and embalm 'em and bury 'em whole. Much more civil, right? But some Indian tribes think the cuts in dead flesh release the souls to the Great Spirit, keep evil ghosts from walking the land. Savagery? Or spirituality?"

"Spirituality seems an odd concept for Indians."

"Oh, I don't know. Sitting Bull is a warrior, yes, but he is much more of a spiritual leader. Once he stopped a fray by sitting down on open ground between hostile Indian and Army forces. They shot away at each other, but not a bullet touched Sitting Bull. After a while, both sides were surprised enough to sit down with Sitting Bull and talk treaty."

"Impressive," Irene said, "but when I lived in America I heard that women who have fallen into Indian hands-"

"They can be brutal to captives, but so were the Romans. And some whites have become Indian in captivity. The Indian has lost his lands, thanks in part to me. I'd like to see them get some recompense. The ones in my show are chiefs the government would like locked up as 'hostiles' on a reservation, like Sitting Bull. Look at my posters." He gestured at the iron standards everywhere bearing colorful ill.u.s.trations. "In my programs I say, The Former Foe-Present Friend, the American.' Can't make it plainer than that. The Plains Indians are the best light cavalry on the planet. I like working with them. They have been my enemy, but they are fine warriors. I have seen an Indian chief match the dignity of the Queen of England. She saluted our American flag at my command performance for her in London, one of three. Victoria Regina has been Queen longer than I've been on this prairie. Where would an Indian get the hatred to stalk and kill foreign women?"

"These were prost.i.tutes. He might not understand that kind of citified corruption."

"No, the Indians didn't have brothels, but some had slaves, or prisoners of war, and those poor souls could be treated quite savagely, white or red, men or women. And some Indians, like the Apache, would rape as well as kill. But Indian women were also used by the white man. The word 'squaw' came to mean that, like 'Jane' or 'Mandy.' All were words for prost.i.tutes on the frontier."

" 'Jane' or 'Mandy' were used as description for prost.i.tutes in the West?"

"Now don't you go telling Calamity Jane that. Could get dangerous."

Irene, however, was thinking aloud. "Mandy. Jane. Mary Jane. Mary Ann. Annie. An Indian on his own in London might hear names like those, especially in a district like the East End that was riddled with prost.i.tutes, and think that the white man's privilege was his at last."

"Not likely! Indians don't think t.i.t for tat like that."

"But if one were mad?"

"Insane? I suppose it's possible. Being cut loose in some of these European cities might do that. Or drink. But not likely. They've always stuck to themselves. That's all they've wanted, and that's the only thing we white men couldn't let happen."

"And from what you know of Jack the Ripper's work, it couldn't be Indian mutilations?"

"I was traveling the Eastern seaboard when that Jack fellow was doing his worst, but I read about it in the papers. Some of the women were disemboweled. Apaches'd do that. Have done that. But they like to work on the living, and Saucy Jack was sure to kill first, with a slash to the neck. He butchered the dead. Now the Cheyenne and Sioux, they do their work in battle, or just after. They can be postmortem throat-cutters, I admit. And scalp-takers, but it's all a part of war.

"The truth is the Army and the frontiersmen, they've been as bad about after-death mutilations as anyone, once they got the idea." He glanced quickly at me as if worried about letting me overhear such things. "You've been a Pinkerton, Missus Norton, and this gal here claims sympathy for the thousands of buffalo I've slain. So I'll tell you plain: the white man, soldier or settler, he did as bad or worse. I've heard them brag of 'trophies'-purses made from Indian women's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, necklaces strung with toes and fingers, some of them child-size."

I gasped, and he turned to me as fast as a striking snake. "That era's over, thank G.o.d. The Indians who've survived have become curiosities, at least around the world. The Queen last year in London and some of her ladies tickled the chins of the Indian babies in our troupe, and the babes laughed, and laughter knows no language. We are amba.s.sadors, and we give the Indians their rightful t.i.tle back: Americans."

"It seems," said Irene, "as if the late unpleasantries on the frontier are nearly over."

"Oh, we may look like wild men, ma'am, but we are progressive. I am proud to number Theodore Roosevelt as a friend, and we plan to raise some dust together. I've got a town a-growing in Wyoming, but before America paves the plains with streets and tram-cars, I'm looking into plans to preserve some of the land and its creatures for the future. And," he added, looking each one of us in the eye in turn, "the women in my show earn the same as the men. I support the suffragist cause to give each and every one of 'em the vote."

"I applaud you, sir," I said, ashamed of sounding like a civic booster.

"I will believe it when I see it," Irene added, smiling ruefully.

"True, good intentions don't put food upon the widow's table," he rejoined politely, "but the notion of universal suffrage will not pa.s.s away like the buffalo. Mark my words.

"I do want to bring the American ideal of independence and enterprise to the whole world," he added. "It's my thought to form a troupe soon of the world's finest hors.e.m.e.n-Arabs, German Cuira.s.siers, Vaqueros, Cossacks, American Indians and cavalrymen, Cubans, and Pacific Islanders. East, West, or in between, they're superb riders and more alike than different."

"More alike than different," Irene repeated slowly. She waited until Buffalo Bill's full attention had returned to her. "Then the forces that created Jack the Ripper could spring from any culture. East. West. Or in between. Which is where we stand. Europe."

He fidgeted, grinding his bootheels in the muck, but finally nodded.

"Yes, ma'am. If you put it that way."

He took a deep breath. "It's possible your Whitechapel killer is an insane Indian. Who'd blame 'em for going insane? You have to picture it: them living in the American wilds for centuries. Then a first white man comes, with a few more. And a few horses. The Indian takes the horse and forgets the riders. Then a few decades later more white men. And more horses. Then the horse soldiers. And the settlers. At first they think it's just that few and this few that they can fight. But the buffalo dwindle from the white man's guns, from a blanket of millions to a few thousand. Food, clothing, weapons, all gone. And the white man keeps coming, with his women and children and cattle and horses and guns. Finally, they see that, wide as the land they've always known is, there is other land beyond knowing, filled with other people beyond knowing, and there are not enough warriors to stop the new herd that is swallowing up the land. The folks in Europe must have felt that way when the Huns came from the East. Suddenly, everything they were was not enough. So I suppose an Indian, facing this in his lifetime, could go a little crazy. Anything is possible.

"If you need my further help, let me know. I am not a scout any longer. There is almost no more need for what I was. What I would like to be is someone who builds the future, though I am entombed by my past. I'll help you if you need it." He grinned. "And I'm itching to introduce Merlinda the Mermaid to a European audience."

Of Couches and Corks

The filles who people the maison de prost.i.tution would almost