Medicine Show Read online

  Ben didn't say anything. He didn't like waiting.

  But he sure did like watching the dance.

  "You reckon there'll be a lot of money?" he said after a second or two.

  "It won't really matter," Sam told him. "It's just a way to make Coy look better when he runs us off, and it oughta be easy pickin's."

  "I wouldn't mind pickin' up on somethin' besides the money,"

  Ben said, his hot eyes still on Banju Ta-Ta.

  "Coy wouldn't like that a damn bit," Sam said.

  "Yeah," Ben agreed. "But Coy don't run me."

  Sam just shook his head. Ben was contrary sometimes. It was best just to let him have his way. If he wanted to cause a little extra trouble, what would it hurt? Coy wanted people mad, didn't he. It looked like he was going to get what he wanted.

  7

  After the dance was completed, Banju Ta-Ta returned to the back of the wagon yo great applause. The enthusiastic men were practically panting to buy a bottle of Indian Miracle Oil, but the Colonel was not yet ready to bring it out. There was more to the show than the dance, after all.

  Banju Ta-Ta retreated to the interior of the wagon, and her father gave things a few minutes to cool down, using the silence to tell the crowd a few more things about the wonders of his healing concoction.

  Most of the women had left by now, one or two even having been successful in dragging their husbands along, and the few who were left, with the exception of Naomi Stump, were plainly uncomfortable at being there. With the women leaving and the men still thinking about the dance, hardly anyone seemed interested in what the Colonel had to say, but at least they were respectfully silent.

  The sun was beginning to sink, and shadows from the nearby trees played over the ground. The air was cooler, and the sky was beginning to take on a reddish hue near the horizon when the Colonel finished talking and deemed that the time was right for the festivities. He called for Banju Ta-Ta to bring out his banjo.

  He managed a couple of passable tunes, his enthusiasm as he strummed covering up most of the missed fingerings, but the crowd was clearly more interested in Ro-Shanna. After a few choruses of "Sweet Betsy from Pike," the Colonel called her over.

  Ro-Shanna took the stage and raised her face and arms heavenward in supplication. Her eyes were closed. Then she lowered her head and looked at the crowd.

  "Once," she said, "my tribe was as numerous as the buffalo, as numerous as the flying birds. Every year more and more beautiful babies were born to gladden the hearts of their mothers and swell the pride of their fathers."

  She smiled to express the joy the tribe felt, but after a moment her face turned solemn.

  "That time of happiness lasted for many moons, and then it came to an end. No one knew why. It was as if bad medicine had been made for our people by some unknown enemy. Fewer and fewer babies were born each year, until one year there were only three. Then two. Then one."

  Her eyes were now hollow with sorrow, her voice husky. The Colonel and Ray Storey stood to the side, watching her deferentially.

  Ro-Shanna described an arc with her arms. "The world was filled with sadness for my people then. No longer did the sun light up the sky, no longer did the birds sing."

  There was a lengthy pause as Ro-Shanna stared at the platform beneath her feet. Then she spoke again, her head still lowered. "No longer did the children play at the feet of their mothers. No longer did their grandparents hug them to their breasts for comfort."

  The Colonel stepped over beside her and lifted up her head with a gentle hand. "And can you tell us why this came about, Ro-Shanna?"

  She looked at his bright eyes. "The Secret Sorrow of our men," she said.

  "And was there no cure, no way to make the babies play again?"

  "We thought it not to be so," Ro-Shanna said. "But we were wrong. One day a man arrived in our camp, a man of our own tribe who had long ago left to travel over the world in search of knowledge. He had come back to us at last from the far mountains."

  She stared out over the heads of the crowd, as if she were seeing into a distance they could not comprehend and seeing the far mountains themselves. The Colonel felt his own breast swell with pride. What an actress she was!

  "In the mountains, the man had seen a strange sight. Something that for a long time he could not understand."

  "And what was that strange sight, Ro-Shanna?" the Colonel said.

  "Rabbits," she said. "Rabbits everywhere. Small ones, large ones, male and female."

  The Colonel was surprised and taken aback. "But there are no rabbits in the mountains!" he said.

  "So we thought too, but the man swore to us that he had seen them. More than he could count. They covered the sides of the hills as the stars that cover the night skies."

  "But how could that be?"

  "He watched the rabbits for a long time," Ro-Shanna said. "And after much study he realized that the rabbits were all eating an unusual and wonderful plant that grew in those mountains and that grew nowhere else. The rabbits fed on that plant, and they lived where no rabbits should have been living. They not only lived but they thrived. They not only thrived, but they increased their tribe almost daily. The man could not count the number of tiny rabbits being born."

  "And it was the plant that caused all this?" the Colonel said, expressing the curiosity that by now filled the speechless crowd. "It was the plant that spurred the miracle of the births?"

  "It was the plant," Ro-Shanna acknowledged. "He had brought some of it with him, and with the help of our medicine man he taught us how to boil it and make it into a pill which our men could eat."

  The Colonel appeared to be hanging on every word, as if he had never heard the story before. As if he had not written it all down himself for his wife to memorize.

  "What happened when they ate?"

  Ro-Shanna's face beamed. "Our men were made new. The Secret Sorrows were no more! And the next year there were babies once again, more babies that ever before! Our tribe increased daily, and the men were proud again!"

  The crowd was murmuring now. The men were getting really interested in the story with its obvious message about the efficacy of the Indian Vitality Pills that the Colonel's handbill advertised. Now they wanted to hear more.

  "And those pills, Ro-Shanna?" the Colonel said. "Could you duplicate them again?"

  "I made a pledge to my father, a medicine man who helped to make the first pills, that I would devote my life to helping others. What better way of helping than by sharing the secret of vitality?"

  "But the strange plant? Are you able to obtain it?"

  "I have traveled myself to the far mountains," Ro-Shanna said with becoming humility. "I have seen the plant, and I have picked it with my own hands. I have made the pills, and I have brought them here."

  At her last words, the Colonel began to applaud loudly, and soon the rest of the crowd was applauding with him.

  * * *

  "I sure do wish we coulda heard what she was talkin' about," Ben Hawkins said. He was leaning forward in his saddle as if he could get close enough to hear by doing so. "Listen to all that clappin'."

  Sometimes Sam wondered just how dumb his brother really was. "It was the turtle story," he said. "They all have a story like that. A man'd think you'd never been to a medicine show, to hear you talk."

  Ben appeared genuinely puzzled. "The turtle story?"

  "Hell, turtles, doves, buffaloes, it don't make any difference. Some kind of animal that lives off somewhere and has a lot of babies. Didn't you look at the handbill Coy showed us and see about the Vitality Pills?"

  "I looked at it. I didn't see any damn turtles, or birds and buffaloes, either."Reading was not one of Ben's strong points.

  "Never mind," Sam said. He wasn't going to waste his breath explaining things to Ben, who had heard the story about the turtles at the same medicine show Sam had. If he didn't remember, that was just too damn bad.

  "I wish they'd quit all the talkin'," Ben said. "Why don't th
ey get around to the sellin'?"

  "Don't worry," Sam said. "They will."

  "She's a damn good-lookin' woman, ain't she?" Ben said, his eyes on Ro-Shanna. "I still think we oughta take her with us. It's been a while since I had a woman like that."

  It had been more than a while, Sam thought. Ben had never had a woman like that, and neither had Sam.

  "We'll see," Sam said. Hell, even if it was Ben's idea, it wasn't a bad one.

  * * *

  Unaware of the watchers in the trees, the Colonel was getting ready to do his selling. He had finished telling the admiring crowd what a great humanitarian gesture the Squaw Ro-Shanna was making by offering them the Indian Vitality Pills, and now he was getting down to the good part.

  "And, my friends, I have even better news for you all. I have personally been so inspired by Ro-Shanna's story that I am not going to sell you the Indian Vitality Pills."

  There was an immediate outbreak of muttering among the crowd.

  "What the hell you mean, you ain't gonna sell 'em?" the bearded man near the front yelled. "If you got 'em, we're gonna buy 'em. You got no right not to sell 'em to us."

  Ray Storey had to turn away to hide a smile as the Colonel raised a palm to quiet things down. Storey had seen the Colonel use the same tactic a hundred times in the past year, but it never failed to work.

  "No, no, my friends," the Colonel said. "You misunderstand me. I did say that I would not sell you the pills, but what I meant was not what you think. I meant to say that I was going to give them to you absolutely free, though their value, as clearly printed on my handbills, is three full dollars!"

  "Free?" the bearded man said. "You mean you're just gonna give 'em to us right here and now?"

  "Right here and now," the Colonel said. "Please, Ro-shanna. Mr. Carson."

  Storey and Ro-Shanna went to the back of the wagon, where Louisa handed them boxes of Indian Miracle Oil and tins of pills. Then she joined them with a box of her own. They walked to the platform.

  The Colonel beamed at them as they took their places beside him. "Of course," he said, "my friends and I have to make a living. We do have something to sell, the magic elixir known as Indian Miracle Oil, which relieves catarrh when taken in moderate doses, eases the bite of fleas when applied to the skin, and alleviates the symptoms of dropsy. And all for the price of only one dollar!"

  "Yeah," someone yelled, "but what about them pills you was gonna give us?"

  "I said that I would give them to you, and that is exactly what I intend to do. This afternoon, with every purchase of Indian Miracle Oil, you will receive absolutely free a tin of Indian Vitality Pills! Let me repeat that. Although the value of these pills is three dollars, they are yours free with the purchase of Indian Miracle Oil at the usual price of only one dollar. You heard that correctly, gentlemen! Only one dollar! Now who will be the first to buy?"

  Hands holding money went up all over the crowd as everyone vied to be first.

  "Me, me! I'll be the first!"

  "Over here! Hey, over here! I've got a dollar!"

  Storey, Ro-Shanna, and Banju Ta-Ta walked through the crowd, dispensing bottles and tins and taking in the money. It was not long before Banju Ta-Ta gave the famous medicine show cry.

  "All sold out, Colonel!" she said. She held her empty box above her head.

  Storey was not surprised that she had been the first to sell all her wares. For some reason, no matter how eager the men were to buy, it seemed that they still tried to buy from her. He took a dollar from a man in a dirty vest and handed him his pills.

  "All sold out, Colonel!" Ro-Shanna said.

  Again it was no surprise. At nine shows out of ten both women sold out before Storey. He still had a few bottles left, but men who had not been able to get to the women were crowding around him and his supply would soon be gone.

  As he took in another dollar, he noticed that there was a woman standing near him. Now that was a surprise. He did not recall having sold a woman anything in the whole time he had been with the show. It was the woman who had been looking at him earlier.

  Naomi Stump was slightly ashamed of what she was about to do, but she was determined to carry it through. She clutched her dollar in her warm, damp hand and edged closer to Storey. She thought again what a strong man he must be, and how unfavorably her stout, bald husband compared to him. If only the pills could transform Lawton into someone like Kit Carson! She did not think it was really possible, but she was certainly not going to let the chance pass her by.

  "Please," she said. "I'd like a bottle of the Miracle Oil."

  The men standing by them looked at her oddly, but Storey didn't mind. "Do you want the pills, too?" he said.

  "Please." She handed him the dollar, and he gave her the last bottle and tin.

  "All sold out, Colonel!" he said. He started toward the platform where the Colonel and the two women were waiting for him to join them.

  From where they were watching in the trees, Ben Hawkins said, "Now, Sam?"

  Sam nodded. "Now," he said.

  * * *

  The Reverend Lawton Stump was horrified to see that his very own wife was in the press of men around Kit Carson. Could she possibly be purchasing one of the heathen cures offered by the putative Colonel on the platform? It was bad enough that his own desires had been inflamed by the dance and then by the story told by the woman in the revealing shirt.

  On the other hand, he told himself, he should not have been surprised. Naomi was not as conventional a wife as was it truly becoming for a minister to have, and she was likely to do anything that came into her head. That was another of the qualities that had attracted him to her in the first place, before he realized his folly. He wondered if she would try to slip the pills into his food and further contribute to the sinfulness of his flesh. He would have to be on his guard.

  He had thought when he came to the show that he would buy the pills himself, as an aid to overcoming the feelings of guilt he told himself were both irrational and harmful, but he had not been able to go through with the purchase.

  Now all he wanted to do was slip quietly away before anyone got the idea that he had actually gone through with buying anything. His reputation was probably damaged beyond repair already with those who had seen him at the show, though he might be able to convince most of his members that he had been there merely to observe and look into the moral qualities of the show. But Naomi's presence there was sure to be the talk of the town tomorrow.

  He began edging toward the trees, thinking that he would slink behind the tent near the wagon and take a circuitous route to town, and so he was the first to see the two men charging out of the woods.

  They seemed to be heading straight for the tent, and Stump opened his mouth to yell. Then he saw their drawn pistols, and the yell stuck in his throat.

  * * *

  In the tent, The Boozer heard the horses' hooves striking the hard ground and he wondered what was going on. He had been staring at the poster of the divided woman, halfway listening to the goings on outside, and he knew that it was not yet quite time for the anatomy lecture that always concluded the show.

  He thought that it might be a good idea to look outside.

  The Colonel was telling everyone that there would be one more show, to be presented the following evening, when more Indian Miracle Oil and Vitality Pills would be available. He urged everyone to try out his restorants before returning and to tell others about them.

  "But before you find your way home," he said, "I would like to invite you to attend an informative illustrated lecture on human anatomy, conducted by the estimable Albert Stuartson, M.D., in the tent just to your right. Due to the delicacy of the subject, women and children are of course not admitted."

  Everyone turned to look at the tent. Dusk was gathering now, and the tent was glowing softly with the lantern that The Boozer had lit inside it earlier. No one was really interested in how the tent looked in the twilight, however. They were all very curious about
what was inside.

  That is, they were all curious until they saw the two mounted men riding toward them, pistols waving in the air.

  Sam and Ben, knowing that they now had everyone's full attention, began firing their pistols into the crowd. Flame and smoke leapt from the pistol muzzles as the brothers guided their horses right by the tent, and each fired a shot into the canvas, leaving a black-rimmed hole. Then they began firing into the crowd.

  The Boozer, frightened nearly witless, but nevertheless thankful to have gotten out when he did, stumbled to the back of the show wagon and fell inside. At the moment, he did not care a whit what the Colonel's rules were. He was going to find something to drink.

  The crowd was scattering, people running in all directions. Two men fell to the ground as they were struck by bullets. Others leaped into their buggies or climbed as fast as they could onto their the backs of their horses and made tracks for town.

  Ray Storey stared at the bearded men bearing down on the platform. He knew it was the Hawkins brothers, beyond a doubt, and he had a terrible feeling that he was watching something that had already happened to him once before.

  This time, he had to do something about it.

  He tried to force himself to draw his pistol, but for some reason his hand would not move. A sudden cold sweat popped out all over his body.

  And then he saw the woman.

  Naomi Stump was right in the path of the horses. She seemed as unable to move as Storey, and she simply stood there, one hand pressed to her mouth, watching as the horses thundered toward her.

  Just as the Hawkins brothers got to Naomi, their horses veered apart, and they galloped past her, leaving her untouched. Then she moved, but only to collapse to the ground in a faint.

  Sam and Ben reined their horses to a stop in front of the platform where the Colonel stood with his wife and daughters. Storey stood beside them, close enough to Sam and Ben to feel the hot breath of the horses on his face. Yet he still could not draw his pistol.