Free Walking Wolf by Nancy A. Collins Page A

brooding and pensive, obsessed with sin and guilt and divine retribution, the Professor was interested in one thing and one thing only—making a dollar. He knew he was a charlatan and did not pretend to be respectable—at least with me. Another big difference between him and the Reverend was that while the Professor pushed his patented cure-all on everyone from babies at the teat to old men with beards tucked in their belts, he himself never once put lips to it.
    The Professor’s way of making a living was unique, to say the least. Traveling from one pissant settlement to the next, peddling cure-alls to illiterate sodbusters and syphilitic townies, hardly guaranteed a steady or stable income, but it was exciting. And, in its own way, it reminded me of my boyhood, wandering from place to place on the plains.
    Every now and again, we’d catch distant glimpses of Comanche hunting parties in pursuit of buffalo and antelope, but they never offered to come near us. I’d watch from the wagon, part of me aching as I wondered if my adopted father, Eight Clouds, or my old childhood friend, Quanah, was riding past.
    But back to the medicine show: People didn’t get much in the way of outside entertainment in those days, so even the lamest of diversions was apt to draw a crowd and generate some interest. The Professor did business this way: We would camp well outside the city limits of his intended venue. He’d ride in and pay the sheriff a visit and offer him a dollar or three for permission to stage a show. If the sheriff wasn’t agreeable, we’d set up shop just outside the town’s dividing line and do it anyways.
    Then he’d hand a stray kid two bits to paste up handbills advertising Professor Praetorius’ Hard Luck Elixir Traveling Show’s imminent arrival, and give it a day or two for the news to percolate amongst the locals via word of mouth. Then we’d ride into town.
    Most of the Professor’s wagon was taken up by a portable wooden stage he’d had made special back in Philadelphia that was designed so it only took fifteen minutes to set up (a half-hour if it was raining), so he could address the crowd from a platform almost as high as their heads without leaving the safety of the wagon. There were holes drilled in the stage so you could fix poles with banners stretched in between them that advertised the Hard Luck Elixir and Whatisit.
    One such banner read: PROF. PRAETORIUS’ HARD LUCK ELIXIR—STRONG MEDICINE FOR THE WEAK! $1-FREE TO ALL VETERANS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR . But seeing how this was the late 1850s, the Professor rarely had occasion to part with a complimentary bottle of his precious snake oil.
    The show would begin with me coming out onto the stage dressed in a bright blue frock coat with a double row of brass buttons and shoulder epaulets, a pair of shiny Wellington boots, and a brushed beaver high hat with a bedraggled peacock feather tucked in its brim. (That last touch of theatricality virtually begged to be shot off my head—and was so, on more than one occasion.) I would then take up a drum and begin beating away on it, drawing a crowd as I did. Once the crowd was of a decent size, I would stop drumming and announce, as loudly as I could: “Ladies and Gentlemen! It is my honor to present to you the one! The only! The esteemed Professor Praetorius!”
    The Professor, who’d been waiting inside the wagon behind a blanket curtain, would then step out, accompanied by a drum roll. The Professor had a special white linen suit he kept stowed in a trunk and only wore for shows. He kept it clean by boiling it in so much starch it could damn near stand up on its own. At every show, he’d present himself to the audience as an immaculate tower of medical knowledge, his elbows and knees crackling like dead leaves with every movement.
    Of course, the damned suit chafed like a bear. After each show, when the crowds had left and we were