A Girl and Five Brave Horses Read online

  He was broad-shouldered, six foot four, and weighed 210 pounds. He had flaming red hair and a pair of long mustaches. In the manner of the plainsmen of that day he wore his hair shoulder-length, as did his friends Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok, with whom he spent much of his time.

  When the hide market finally became glutted he decided he wanted to try something else, and since the career of a professional man had a certain appeal for him, he decided to take up dentistry. In order to learn how to pull teeth he had to go to school, the closest one being in California. He decided to go there and persuaded Wild Bill Hickok to go with him, but at the last minute Wild Bill changed his mind because of a gold strike in North Dakota. He tried to sell Dr. Carver on the idea of going to North Dakota, and they ended by flipping a coin to see whether it would be California or North Dakota.

  Dr. Carver won the toss, but Wild Bill still refused to go to California. “You’ll run into bad luck, Bill,” Dr. Carver argued, “if you buck the coin.” But Bill bucked it anyway, and the next thing Dr. Carver heard Wild Bill was dead. “Shot in the back by a yellow-bellied so-and-so by the name of McCall,” he said. “He should have listened to me.”

  Dr. Carver went on and entered dental school in California but he didn’t stay long—just long enough to earn himself the “Doctor” tag which stayed with him the rest of his life. The tooth-pulling business lost its hold on him the day he went to a gun club and blasted all the targets in sight. He was such a good shot that word got around and one of the leading newspapers carried a story about him. The next thing he knew, some enterprising men had put up the money to launch him on a career that was to take him all over the globe and earn him the title of “Champion Rifleshot of the World.”

  By special request he exhibited at Sandringham, England, on April 13,1879, before the Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, and members of the royal household. Two days later he received a complimentary letter from the Prince of Wales, who was to become Edward the VII of England. The letter was accompanied by a gold pin set with diamonds known as the Prince of Wales Feathers, and he was the only American ever to receive it. Later on that same trip, thirty thousand soldiers cheered him when he exhibited his marksmanship before Sir Robert Peel of Aldershot

  In Germany some weeks later, Emperor Wilhelm I of Germany titled him der Shutzen Konig (King of Marksmen) at an exhibition before an audience that included Bismarck, Baron von Moltke and his staff, and the Grand Duke Albert of Austria. During the course of this exhibition the Emperor pulled a crown piece from his pocket and told Dr. Carver that if he shot a hole through the coin while it was in the air he would be satisfied that there was no trickery involved in his amazing marksmanship.

  “With your permission,” said Dr. Carver, “I will not only shoot a hole through it but I will put a bullet through Your Majesty’s head on the raised surface of the coin.” When he had made good his boast, Baron von Moltke threw his arms around him and said, “Oh for an army of such as you!” Later the Kaiser sent Dr. Carver a magnificent diamond ring, and when he came back to the United States two years later he had a chest full of jewels and medals and more glory than he could believe. He was quoted as saying that the only reason he came back then was because he got homesick for a piece of custard pie.

  Not long afterward he ran into his old friend Buffalo Bill, and the two of them hit on the idea of putting together a company for the purpose of presenting melodramas about the old West. It was called “The Wild West-Cody and Carver’s Rocky Mountain and Prairie Exhibition,” and they opened in Omaha in 1883. It was highly successful, but unfortunately the partnership didn’t last. Both men were so hot-tempered that the enterprise finally blew up in a quarrel that left them bitter enemies for life.

  The following spring there were two Wild West shows in the country—“Cody’s Show” and “Carver’s Show”—and the rivalry between them was intense. They fought each other from one end of the country to the other, a favorite trick being to find out where the other had a show opening and get there first to skim off the town’s money.

  In the end Buffalo Bill’s show lasted longer, but Dr. Carver had his innings, for in 1885 he attracted world-wide attention by undertaking a shooting exhibition that called for endurance as well as skill. He set out to achieve a record of ten thousand hits a day for six days running. He shot at what were called “glass balls,” balls made of resin, which shattered like glass when struck with a bullet. Sometimes in order to get in his ten thousand hits a day he would shoot on into the night by the light of flares. People everywhere were astonished by his supreme marksmanship as well as his amazing physical endurance. The guns became so hot from such rapid shooting that he had a barrel of water sitting nearby and an attendant whose job it was to dunk the guns to cool them off.

  Before he gave up the Wild West show business entirely Dr. Carver decided to take his troupe to Europe. He said the real reason he went was that he heard Buffalo Bill was going and he had to go in order to spite him. After Europe he went to Australia for apparently the same reason, and it was while he was on this trip that he was launched on still another career.

  The playwrights, after hearing him talk about his life on the plains, decided to write a play about him. They called it The Trapper and got Dr. Carver to play the lead. Later they wrote one called The Scout, which was even more successful and in which he also played the lead. He brought this play back to San Francisco and was soon thrilling American audiences with it from coast to coast.

  It was like nothing anyone had ever seen before on a stage. It required a cast of hundreds—cowboys, pioneers, Indians, and a herd of horses which were brought onto the stage in wild action scenes. It was while he was appearing in The Scout that he first happened on the idea of teaching horses to dive.

  In the play there was a scene in which Dr. Carver rode a horse over a bridge. It was rigged so that when a stage hand pulled a lever the bridge fell out from under him. He always reached up and caught hold of an upright and hung on, while the horse plunged on down into a river of water which flowed through the middle of the stage. It didn’t hurt the horse, but it scared him so that he balked at crossing the bridge a second time. As a consequence Dr. Carver had to use a different horse every night.

  This worked out all right until the night they ran out of horses. Dr. Carver suggested that they try an old faithful of his, Silver King. King had been across the bridge before, but Dr. Carver thought he might be willing to try it again, and he was. In fact, after the bridge had dropped out from under him and dumped him in the water, King trotted back up the embankment, ready for an encore. It was then that Dr. Carver hit on the idea of teaching horses to dive for entertainment purposes.

  When the play finally closed he began training high-diving horses in earnest, and it was from this beginning that his present act had risen. It had been in existence ten years by the time I saw it, and thousands of people all over the United States had applauded “Carver’s High-Diving Horse Act and the Girl-in-Red.”

  The write-up ended with the announcement that the fair was closing tomorrow night and that anybody who hadn’t seen the act should, because it was a spectacle not to be missed.

  When I had finished reading I put the paper down. All I could hope was that Dr. Carver hadn’t already hired a girl to do the riding, because I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was that girl.

  Two

  The next morning I got up early and dragged Jac out of bed. It was Sunday and I didn’t have to go to work and she didn’t have to go to school. “Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to hurry.” She didn’t need to ask where. She put on a sailor dress and I a blue serge skirt and white blouse, and we hurried out without breakfast.

  When we reached the hotel it was only nine o’clock, but the desk clerk told us Dr. Carver wasn’t there. For a moment I experienced a sinking sensation, thinking he had already checked out, but the clerk added, “I think he’s gone down to see the submarine.”


  The submarine the clerk had referred to had been the object of everyone’s attention since its arrival. Hopefully Jac and I began to walk through the park leading down to the river and hadn’t gone far when we saw a tall, erect figure coming toward us.

  With Dr. Carver were his son and daughter and the rider named Vivian, all of whom I had met the evening Mother had dragged me to the hotel lobby. As they approached, I saw signs of recognition on their faces.

  I cannot recall after all these years our exact conversation, but I apparently said that I had seen the act the night before and had changed my mind about riding. What happened next remains hazy. The conversation shifted and changed, and then they were saying good-by and walking away.

  “What did I do?” I asked Jac, dumbfounded.

  “You didn’t do anything,” she said.

  “Well, why didn’t they say anything about my joining the act then?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, then added, “maybe they don’t want you.”

  That much seemed fairly obvious. “But,” I puzzled, “if they didn’t they could have told me so.”

  “Yeah,” Jac agreed.

  I was confounded and remained so. There seemed no reason to it. Then one day about three months later I came home to find a letter. It was from Dr. Carver, who wrote, “If you still want to learn to ride the diving horses, reply at this address.”

  I sat down and answered right away. Of course I expected to hear from him immediately, but one week passed, then two, then three, and still no word came. Just as dust was beginning to settle over my newly revived hopes, Dr. Carver himself appeared at my boardinghouse while I was at work, but told my landlady that he would be back to talk to me. I waited that evening in vain. He didn’t come until the next afternoon. Mother happened to be with me, so he invited us both to dinner to talk about the job.

  During the meal he said he was glad to find that I still wanted to ride the diving horses. He made no explanation for not having taken me up on my job acceptance back in October and I refrained from asking for any. The point was, I was getting another chance to ride and I wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth. When he asked how soon I could leave, I said the next day. This pleased him, because he was anxious to get back to Florida, where the rest of the troupe was in winter quarters.

  I had already mentally packed everything I owned and was in the process of imagining myself waving good-by from the train, when suddenly Mother piped up. “Sonora,” she said, “are you sure this is what you want to do?” There was no mistaking the worry in her face and voice.

  “Why, of course I’m sure!” I retorted. “What do you mean, ‘am I sure? You sound as if you don’t want me to go.”

  “It isn’t that I don’t want you to go,” she said. “It’s just that I’m afraid you’ll get hurt.”

  “You weren’t afraid last fall. Why are you afraid now?”

  “Well, last fall you weren’t really going,” she explained. “It was just something to talk about. Now—well, now it’s different.”

  I should have been prepared for such a shift, but I was not. She had been so completely sold on my going that I never anticipated a reversal. I don’t know what I would have done had it not been for Dr. Carver. He saw what a quandary I was in, took over, and soon placated Mother. He was, I was to find in the course of our acquaintanceship, a master placater.

  Half afraid something would happen to change someone’s mind before I got away, I hurried back to the boardinghouse and packed all my things. Then I went out to the cottage to spend the night and say good-by to my sisters and brothers.

  Perhaps those last few hours at home should have been filled with nostalgia; but, to be truthful, I was so excited about going that there wasn’t room for any backward glances. Fortunately the children were equally excited, so there were no tears.

  It was different, however, the next day at the station. Suddenly I realized I was leaving and that, no matter what happened, things would never again be the same. There seemed to be two parts of myself then—a part that loved my family and would miss them, and a part that was wild to go.

  Now they all stood on the platform, waving good-by to me, and as the train pulled away and the track spooled out behind me I knew that I was starting a new life.

  Three

  I think it is important for me to give my impressions of Dr. Carver, for although I was excited at the prospect of learning to ride and dive on the horses, it is doubtful that I would have joined the act had I not realized from the first what an unusual person he was. It was more than his press clippings. It was the man himself.

  I have described him as tall and commanding and going on eighty-four. I have not said that he had a big strong face and big strong hands, which, though stiff and old, were nevertheless extremely impressive. He also had the air of an impresario, which he had acquired during his years in show business. Total strangers noticed it and behaved accordingly; it would have gone against some law of nature had they behaved otherwise.

  He was a descendant of one of the first governors of Massachusetts and a long line of doctors and lawyers and professors. His father had been a doctor, and in the years of Dr. Carver’s growing up he had been fairly well-to-do. For some reason I never understood, Dr. Carver and his father did not get along. In fact, his father treated him so cruelly that he ran away from home when he was only eleven years old.

  I suppose a runaway child was not so rare in those days, but it is unlikely that many of them succeeded to the extent that Dr. Carver did. It is also unlikely for him to have emerged with such presence had he not inherited a sense of dignity. I am a great believer in heredity, and it pleased me to learn many years later that the family motto engraved on a gold-headed cane belonging to Governor Carver was “Blood Will Tell.”

  I hope I haven’t made him sound like a stuffed shirt, because that he was not. He was aloof and standoffish with people of his own station, but with his inferiors he showed a warmth that endeared him to them immediately. I can best describe his attitude toward them as one of friendly awareness, and as a result they went out of their way to help him. Yet he still managed it so that under no circumstances did they treat him with familiarity. This is a difficult balance to achieve, but he achieved it and held to it throughout the time I knew him.

  Of course by the time I came along he had passed his zenith in so far as his physical prowess was concerned. The glittering brilliance of being the champion rifleshot of the world was gone. He was likely to be crotchety at times, lacking in patience and resilience, covetous of his own comfort, but he was, on the other hand, neither a braggart nor bombastic, both of which he might have been under the circumstances. He loved to talk about his past and did often, but he always told his stories in such a delightful manner that there was never any resentment on the part of the listener.

  All, or almost all, of his characteristics were obvious to me from the first, but I was so much in awe of him on the trip to Florida that I hardly spoke. That was not necessary, however, for his love for storytelling took over, and before we reached our destination I had digested a great deal about his son and daughter, the act and its history.

  Allen (called Al by everyone) helped his father train and take care of the horses; his daughter Lorena was a rider and had been riding since her early teens. She had injured a leg muscle the year before, however. This accident had required some surgery, so she hadn’t been able to ride during the current season. When spring came they hoped the doctors would release her so that she could go out on a separate circuit with Al. They tried to keep two versions of the diving act working at the same time in different places in order to double the income from it.

  I did not know the actual amount of money the act earned per contract until many years later, although I knew it must be considerable. All I knew was that I would be receiving fifty dollars a week, which in 1924 was a great deal of money. As a bookkeeper in Savannah’s largest department store, I had been earning only fifteen dollars
a week, and this was considered about standard pay. By taking a job with the act I had more than tripled my income, and later in the season the pay would go even higher when I began riding as many as five times a day—up to $125 a week! During the winter when the act was not working my salary would stop, but even then I would receive a traveling allowance, my board and room, and whatever medical expenses I might have. All in all, it was more money than I had ever encountered in my life.

  The idea of so much money made me a little giddy, but I knew even then, young as I was, that money wasn’t everything. To me it wasn’t important at all unless it included an equal amount of experience. Ever since early childhood I had had a craving for life, and as I grew older it had not diminished. I had once shocked a friend by telling her I’d be disappointed if I ever made an ocean voyage and didn’t get seasick.

  “Get seasick!” she had said. “Nobody wants to get seasick!”

  I said I did. I said I wanted to get seasick and throw up and have to hang onto the rail. How else was I ever going to know what being seasick was like?

  Outside of the bits of information I gleaned from Dr. Carver on the four-hour trip to Florida, there is little to recall except one episode I shall never forget.