On the fourth day, he came upon a boulevard that he recognized and his heart jumped up. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. He forgot his weakness and homesickness for a moment. He and some of the others had ridden in an omnibus on this very boulevard in their only sightseeing ride. And he knew that the show arena was a couple of miles up the boulevard.
He looked the other way, and he knew that the omnibus turned onto another boulevard that he could even see in the distance. He recognized the spires of a holy building on the corner. That boulevard would take him down to the big water, where the fire boats rested.
But he began to walk out toward the arena. His ribs felt good now, and although he was aware of the tight knot in his belly, he seemed to have plenty of strength. And he dared to hope—foolishly, he knew—that there would be someone left at the arena site. Perhaps that was where the American in the brown suit lived. Perhaps some of the workers were still there, taking down the tents and the corrals. Charging Elk walked with purpose but he was light-headed from the hunger and weakness. He began to imagine that the show would be there, that he would soon hear the loud voice and the cheers of the audience. He imagined himself breaking free of the barrier and riding hard after the buffaloes. The audience was always thrilled at the excitement and danger of the event. But it wasn’t really very dangerous—the herd was small and young, most of them yearlings or two-year-olds. It would have been dangerous if all the animals were full-grown—given their bulk and speed, they could have made short work of a weaponless rider and his horse in such a confined space. It would have been just as dangerous to be in the audience. In Paris, one of the young bulls had climbed the barricade and hooked two people before it was shot by one of the handlers.
By now it was midafternoon and Charging Elk, while bemoaning his misfortune that night in the arena, began to notice something curious: There were hardly any people on the boulevard, and the stores, even the cafés and brasseries and tobacco shops, were closed. There were very few carriages on the street. Just the day before, Charging Elk had to stay on the small streets to avoid the crush of people. Just that morning, the shops had been open and people had sat outside in the cafés, soaking up the warm sun. He thought he must be on a dead street, that the people for some reason had decided this street was bad medicine, but when he came to a big cross street, it too was empty.
Charging Elk walked on, part of him happy that there were no people to stare at him, another part becoming fearful that he was alone. Maybe it was against the law for humans to be out just now. Maybe something had happened to the big town. But he did see the occasional humans—a shopkeeper locking up, a woman pushing a pram, a couple of young men turning a corner to disappear.
After a couple of rest stops, Charging Elk found himself at the big round square where the wagons and carriages went around and around to go to many streets—Rond Point du Prado. He knew the name because the interpreter had made him and the others say it before they left on their sight-seeing trip. If they got lost, they were to say it to a gendarme or an omnibus driver.
Now Rond Point du Prado was quiet, only one taxi entering a street angling off to his right. Charging Elk listened carefully for a loud voice, a cheering crowd, but all he heard was the clopping hooves of the horse pulling the taxi through the narrow, echoing street.
Charging Elk crossed the roundabout, circling around the big stone statue that spit water. On the other side, he hurried up a wide street on the edge of a large park until he reached the field across from the greensward where the show had set up.
There was nothing there. Not one tent, not one hawker’s stand, not even a fire pit where the Indian village had stood. He walked over to the large trampled circle of earth where the portable arena had been set up. The ground had been raked smooth. There was not a hoofprint on it, not one sign that the Indians, the cowboys, the soldiers, the vaqueros, the Deadwood stage, the buffaloes and horses had acted out their various dramas on this circle of earth.
Charging Elk stood on the edge of the circle, not wishing to disturb its raked perfection, and looked across the wide street into the vast park. There was not a soul among the trees and rolling grass hillocks. The walkways and green meadows were empty.
He looked back across Rond Point du Prado and he saw yellow lights coming from some of the windows in the buildings above the storefronts. The light was failing now and he dreaded another night in the big town. Especially this night when the people had disappeared. Just as he felt a wave of despair grip his heart, as it had so often in the past several sleeps, he remembered the train station. It was a foolish hope, but the foolish hopes seemed to come as often as the despair, and he realized that he had become weary with the suddenness and frequency of both emotions. Up and down, up and down went his heart until he walked numbly through the streets without a thought or feeling.
But he felt obliged to follow up on this slim chance. As he crossed the field to the street that led to the station, he noticed that his fuzzy slippers had become wet with dew. He almost chuckled at this latest problem. Wakan Tanka was not content with just the hunger and weakness of his pitiful child—now he was giving him cold feet. Charging Elk looked up at the sky to beseech the Great Mystery and he saw rain clouds where once had been sun. Nevertheless, he stood at the edge of the field and sang a song of pity and prayed with all his heart that Wakan Tanka would guide him home to his people, to his own land. He asked for a little food too. Then he began to walk again.
And he could not believe what had become of him in such a few short sleeps. Just a little while ago, he had been on this very street, dressed in his finest clothes—dark wool pants with painted white stripes, black sateen shirt with his father’s hairpipe breastplate over it, brass earring and armbands, and two eagle feathers hanging from a beaded medallion in his hair. His badger-claw necklace hung around his neck, he had the holy card the French woman had given him in his breast pocket, and he had painted his face with his own medicine signs and had tied three feathers in his horse’s mane, just behind the ears. He knew he was quite a sight.
He was one of over seventy Indians in the parade from the iron road to the field at Rond Point, most of them Lakotas, principally Oglalas. And they were just part of the larger procession of cowboys, soldiers, vaqueros, and wagons filled with elk, deer, and buffaloes. There was even a brass band on horseback, the Cowboy Band, filling the street with such noise that Charging Elk had to keep his horse’s head high and back to keep him from skittering all over the cobblestones. Still he couldn’t help feeling a great pride that he was part of such a spectacle. People were lined up in throngs on the broad walkways on either side of the street.
Of course, Buffalo Bill rode at the head of the procession on his great white horse, waving his big hat and bowing to one side of the street, then the other. Annie Oakley, the one Sitting Bull had named Little Sureshot, and her husband and the big bosses rode behind him. Then came the cowboys, some with the woolly chaps, and the soldiers with their neat blue uniforms and the vaqueros with their big upturned hats. And finally, the Indians, led by Rocky Bear, who had been designated chief by the bosses. From the Paris shows, Charging Elk knew that next to Buffalo Bill, the audiences wanted to see the Indians most. They called the Indians Peaux-Rouges—redskins. When the Indians rode by, the people whooped and pointed at the dark painted faces. Some of the women threw flowers, but the Indians rode by without recognition of such enthusiasm.
Charging Elk remembered that day as one of the longest of his life. They had ridden the iron road all night after a performance in a big town somewhere south of Paris. It was late night when the workers finally struck the tents and grandstands and awnings, packed up the food and furniture from the large eating tent, shut off the generators, and took down the lighting and the immense rolls of canvas backdrop painted with endless scenes of mountains and plains and rivers and villages and forts. They disassembled the booths and seemingly hundreds of other small structures and took it all by wagons to the train station. There they loaded up the thirty-eight big wagons of the special train with equipment and animals