Buffalo Girls Read Online Free PDF

a morning she had sat in sadness by her window, thinking about it, and about his house and his new wife, a sweet young half-breed woman. Dora had only Calamity’s word for it that Blue’s wife was sweet, but she was prepared to believe it. Calamity had been a guest in their house and had even gone to their wedding, a fact that had not sat well with Dora at the time.
    â€œBlue invited me, what did you want me to do?” Calamity asked, when Dora challenged her on the point—as Dora, much hurt, promptly did.
    â€œYou’re my friend, ain’t you?” Dora said. “You could have mentioned me, at least. If you was in love with him and he suddenly slid past you and married somebody else, do you think I’d go to his damn wedding?”
    â€œWell, it would be fair enough, if you did,” Calamity said. She was a little drunk and had a hard time getting a grip on the complications such matters involved. She knew that Dora was upset because Blue had suddenly popped up married to Granville Stuart’s daughter—that was understandable. But her own attendanceat the wedding didn’t seem to matter one way or the other. Blue wasn’t marrying Dora, whoever went to the wedding, or didn’t go.
    â€œBlue’s been my friend too, since Dodge or before,” Calamity pointed out. “Don’t you go to the weddings of your old friends?”
    â€œI wouldn’t if one of them was jilting my
best
friend!” Dora said. While it lasted, her anger was unrelenting.
    â€œYou shouldn’t have never counted on Blue, that’s the way I see it,” Calamity said.
    â€œThe way I see it, you had to choose whose feelings to hurt and you chose mine,” Dora said. “I’d hurt the man’s, if it was me—not that many of them have really got feelings.”
    â€œBlue’s got feelings, he just wanted a wife to help with the work,” Calamity countered, trying to put the best face on it.
    â€œAnyway, next time I get jilted I just hope you’ll refrain from attending the wedding,” Dora said, just before she burst into tears.
    Later, when Dora’s anger had drained away, she went looking for Calamity to apologize, but Calamity was in the Elk Belly saloon, well on her way to being vomiting drunk. It was a winter night, cold and sleety. Calamity was as likely to mount up and ride off at midnight as at noon—Dora’s main worry was that she might pass out some night and freeze. Soberer specimens than Calamity had been known to pass out and freeze in the Montana winters.
    Dora assigned a couple of town Indians to see that that didn’t happen. Sure enough, Calamity rode off, fell off, and slept under her horse, but the Indians built a fire, covered her well, and brought her back to Dora the next morning, though in such a shaky state that she had to be carried into the house.
    It was not the only quarrel the two of them had had about Blue, and in every instance, no matter how blatant his misbehavior, Calamity took Blue’s side or found excuses for him. It infuriated Dora—she screamed Calamity out of the house manytimes, outraged because Calamity would never see, or at least would never admit, that she, not the man, was being wronged.
    â€œHe didn’t mean it,” Calamity would always stammer, when Blue stood accused. “You know he didn’t mean it.”
    â€œI don’t care if he meant it!” Dora yelled. “He did it.
He did it!
”
    But in the end, when her anger died, Dora would begin to reproach herself, not for Blue, that laughing reprobate who usually knew exactly what he was doing, but for her treatment of Calamity, her sad old friend.
    Calamity didn’t understand men, or women, or love, or any of it, Dora always concluded, once her sympathies began to operate normally after some wild fit.
    What awakened Dora’s sympathies was the knowledge that Calamity’s life was so peculiar, and so