She addressed the question to Beulah.
'What?' Beulah said. She thought she must have heard Maria wrong.
'I want to know about your first man,' Maria said.
Then she looked at Cherie.
'I want to know about yours, too,' she said.
'My first man was a vaquero. He came riding into town, and when he got off his horse and walked to the cantina, his spurs jingled. From the time I heard his spurs, I knew I wanted to be his woman.' 'Oh, Lord,' Cherie said.
Maria waited. Marieta and Gabriela paid no attention; they had not even heard Maria's words. But the oldest woman in the group, a thin, old woman named Maggie, showed a spark of interest. Maggie had been one that Maria had to go back for several times. Once, Maria had found her kneeling by a little bush. She was crouched behind the bush as if she expected it to keep the cold wind from biting her.
Yet Maggie had recovered a little. She looked at Maria with curiosity.
'Did you get the vaquero?' Maggie asked.
'Yes, he was my first husband,' Maria said.
'We had good times--but then, he got mean. I still remember the sound of his spurs, the first time I saw him. When I think of him now, it's the spurs I remember.' 'I was married to a circus man, first,' Maggie said. 'Mostly, he was a juggler. He could keep seven barbells up in the air at the same time, when he was sober.' 'Where did you live?' Maria asked.
'Boston, for a little while,' Maggie said.
'Then he took me to New Orleans. He was going to marry me, but he never did. Them mosquitoes in New Orleans was bad. I'd get so I wanted to drown myself, rather than be bit by them mosquitoes.' 'They're bad in Houston, too,' Beulah said. 'It's swampy down there in Houston.' 'Jimmy drunk too much to be a juggler,' Maggie said. 'He'd drink all night and then the next day, he'd miss two or three of them barbells.' Maggie chuckled, at the memory.
'Them barbells are heavy,' she said. 'I couldn't even juggle two. If one was to crack me in the head, I wouldn't be able to walk straight for a week.' 'You can't go off with men and expect them to marry you,' Beulah said. 'That's the mistake I kept making. Now, here I am, an old maid.' Several of the women looked at her when she said it. Beulah realized that her last remark must have sounded a little odd. She smiled at herself.
'Well, I mean, I never married,' she explained.
Maggie, now that she had begun to talk, wasn't interested in listening to anyone else.
'Jimmy cracked himself in the head so many times that he got where he couldn't walk the tightrope,' she said. 'He wasn't no tightrope walker anyway, but he wanted to be the star of the show. I told him to stay off the dern tightrope, but he didn't listen to me. I started up with a trick rider about that time. Jimmy found himself a high yellow woman, but she had a temper, and Jimmy didn't want nothing to do with women who had tempers.' 'Didn't you have a temper?' Maria asked.
'No, I was just a girl then,' Maggie said.
'I was all in love, and I wanted to do whatever Jimmy wanted me to. I didn't put up no fight, but that high yellow woman did.' All the women, even Marieta and Gabriela, were listening to Maggie. Maria had not expected it to be Maggie who talked; she thought Maggie was too far gone. But that proved to be a misjudgment. Maggie had some spirit left. She knew everybody was listening to her, and she liked the attention.
'What was the trick rider like?' Maria asked.
'He was just a trick rider,' Maggie said.
'He could stand on his head on a horse, with the horse running full speed, but he wasn't no good with women. I got tired of the circus life and ran off with a smuggler. He was my first husband, and he took me to sea. We'd be rollin' around in one of them narrow bunks and sometimes we'd roll one way and the ship would roll another, and we'd go sailin' right out of that bunk.' She cackled at her own memory. 'That was forty years ago, that I married Eddie,' Maggie said. 'I'm surprised I can still remember him. He got caught smuggling niggers, and they hung him.' 'Was it a crime to smuggle niggers?' Cherie asked. 'I thought back then you could buy them and sell them any time you wanted to.' 'You could, but Eddie wasn't buying them,' Maggie said. 'He was smuggling stolen niggers.
I can still remember them nigger women, howlin' down in the bottom of that ship. Eddie and the boys would lash 'em good, trying to get them to shut up when they was coming into port. But they would keep on howlin'.
That was how Eddie got caught. I told him he ought to just smuggle buck niggers. The bucks didn't howl as much. But Eddie never listened to me, and he got his neck stretched, as a result.' 'Men don't listen,' Beulah agreed. 'I could have made Red Foot rich, if he'd listened to me when we were in the saloon business, in Dodge. I told him it was time to go to Deadwood. They say nearly everyone who opened a saloon in Deadwood in those days got rich.
There's just more loose money where there's miners.
'But we come to Crow Town instead,' she added.
'Red heard it was booming, but there sure wasn't no boom when we got there.' Maggie was so eager to talk by this time that she could hardly check herself and wait for Beulah to shut up.
'The circus was in St. Louis when Eddie got hung,' Maggie said. 'I went up to Vicksburg on one boat, and then I rode on another boat that had a train on it.' 'A train?' Cherie asked. 'Why would a train be on a boat?' She decided the old woman was telling lies and nothing but lies. She had thought as much back in Crow Town, too.
Old Maggie did nothing but lie. Cherie didn't resent it, particularly. Maybe the old crone actually believed everything she said.
Anyway, listening to her brag about all the men she'd had was something to do while they were sitting and freezing.
