(1986) Deadwood (20 page)

The newspaperman looked like Charley had slapped him in the face. "I didn't realize preparation was needed," he said. "What do you need besides a horse?"

That's how newspapermen were. When Charley walked back outside, it was dusk. His feelings on Bill had changed, and it made him sad and tired. He started back to the Grand Union, thinking he would try the famous Alphonso the Polite for company, but at the door he thought of the boy in the wagon, and went back to his camp instead. Jane was sitting on Bill's stump, drinking coffee and whiskey, half and half.

Bill was gone to his appointments in the badlands. He was weak and sick, but not weak and sick enough to stay there in the moonlight with Jane Cannary. She stared at Charley without seeming to recognize him.

"How's the boy?" he said.

"Asleep," she said. "He's a good boy, he don't say a word." Charley leaned against one of the wheels of the wagon and looked in. Malcolm was right where he'd left him. "I took care of him while you were gone," Jane said. "Don't worry about that."

"Thank you," Charley said.

"Shit," she said. Jane was never much at accepting appreciations.

"Did he eat?" Charley said. The boy looked thin to him, and pale, but it was hard to say in that light.

"Milk," she said. "Corn soup."

Charley sat down on the ground with his back against the wheel. Dark came fast in the Hills, and he was having trouble seeing Jane's face. "Bill come back," she said. Charley didn't answer. "I was in the wagon with the boy. When I come out, he was rubbing hisself with silver."

"Mercury," Charley said. "The doctor prescribed him that for his treatment."

"I wisht he'd of come to me," she said. "Doctors don't know nothin' about illness." She drew in the dirt with a pointed stick while she talked. "I been nursing the ill all my life, never asked a thing in return."

"You did good by the boy," he said.

"Shit."

"He's lookin' better," Charley said.

"His tongue got unswole," she said. "Anybody looks better, they can get their tongue back inside their mouth. He ain't spoke a word yet." She finished what was in her cup, and then filled it again. Coffee and whiskey, half and half. She stirred it with her finger. "Bill don't like me," she said.

"He's consternated," Charley said. "Things are changing too fast for him, and he's trying to stay the same." Saying that, he saw that it was probably true for them both. "It doesn't have a thing to do with anybody, except maybe his wife."

"Shit," she said. "Wild Bill Hickok ain't got himself married."

"I was there," Charley said. "The woman is Agnes Lake, the famous trapeze artist and equestrian."

"I don't believe it," she said. "What does Wild Bill need with a circus lady? That ain't his kind of people, tricksters and illusionists. Elephants . . ."

"He didn't join the circus," Charley said. "He just married a trapeze artist."

"Shit," she said. "It probably ain't legal. They was probably playing the larks with you . . ." Charley saw that she loved Bill. It was some strange ripples they got when God dropped Bill Hickok into the pond. It was darker now, and he could see her better. Dirt poor and homely, she sat on a stump poking at the ground with a stick, crying for the most famous and handsome man in the West. The moon picked up the streaks on her face. Charley didn't blame Bill—he'd never done a thing to Jane but run away—but it seemed like he ought to of known about this before Charley did. "Elephants," she said, shaking her head.

"He took her back to St. Louis," Charley said. "So maybe they aren't married in the common way." Jane finished the coffee and sighed. A long, hoarse sigh, and then she stood up and threw the stick.

"Shit," she said. Her movements were mannish and heavy. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hands and sighed again. Charley sat still, giving her time to compose. "Well," she said after a while, "I still got the boy to take care of."

"You did good by him," he said again. "Here's something for you." He reached into his shirt pocket and found twenty dollars.

She took a few steps toward him and saw what it was. "I don't take pay for nursin' the sick," she said, and he thought she was about to cry again. "It's my duty. I'll take pay for driving a bull train or scouting or accommodating a gentleman—everything I do, I'm the best—but not for nursing the sick."

Charley studied the woman, and could not imagine it. Not on the drunkest night of his life, not with somebody else's peeder. "It's for the food," he said. "Somebody's got to pay for milk and corn." Jane took the money and the bottle sitting on the ground next to the stump.

"Anything that's left over, you'll get it back," she said.

"I might be gone a while," he said. "I got to travel to Cheyenne to set up a pony express . . ."

"You need riders?" she said. "I can ride with any man, and I have killed more redskins than I could keep count of." He watched her in the moonlight, and he'd never felt sorrier for anybody in his life.

"Not right away," he said. "I won't know what I need right away."

She climbed into the front of the wagon using one hand. The bottle was in the other. She was clumsy and lacked balance. It seemed to Charley that she didn't have strong enough traits either way—man or woman—to get by. When she was in the wagon, she sat down in the seat and pulled the cork out of the bottle. Charley saw her close her lips against the mouth of the bottle when she drank, but she threw her head back like there wasn't enough liquor in the world.

"Well," she said, "I still got the boy."

She climbed over the seat and disappeared into the back of the wagon. It creaked and complained as she settled. Charley was back in the street, headed for the hotel, when he heard her singing to Malcolm. She had a sweet, high voice, nothing like the way she looked. She sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

Boone may took the Cat Man back up into the hills to practice. He set Frank Towles's head on a tree stump to shoot at. The head was worthless now, unrecognizable even in Cheyenne. Boone had set it on the floor at Nuttall and Mann's while he watched Wild Bill play cards, and the bulldog that followed him around had chewed into the sack and mauled the identifying features.

Boone had been studying Bill's moves at the time. It seemed like he had been doing that ever since Bill arrived in town, and he had decided the reason Bill was famous was that he could feel every current in the room. The cat man would probably run off when he saw him in person. Boone watched him, noticing what he drank, watching for him to spill cards or stumble on the way outside to piss. Which never happened.

He took forever outside. He'd tilt his chair into the table to save his spot and disappear for half an hour. Nobody ever complained. Boone decided if it was himself that had to do business with Wild Bill, that's where he would do it. Out in back, with a shotgun. That's where he would do it, but he had no confidence it would go his way.

He had the feeling the gunfighter saw as well in the dark as he did in the light.

He would have the cat man do his work inside, though. He was not the kind you could trust in the dark.

It was while Boone was figuring that all out for maybe the tenth time that the bulldog got into the bag and changed Frank Towles's features. Boone never noticed until he heard the bones cracking at his feet, and then the dog didn't want to give it up. Frank's head was soaked with dog spit, and Boone's hands kept slipping off when he tried to pull it away. The dog growled and held on. It was Wild Bill himself who called the animal away. At the sound of his voice, he let go of Frank's head and padded over to the card table, trailing saliva, and lay at Bill's feet.

Boone set the head on the stump now and stood beside the cat man. The cat man sighted down the rusted barrel of the gun he was holding, and then turned his head away and pulled the trigger. "You scairt of guns?" Boone said when the smoke cleared. "I didn't figure a cat man to be scairt of guns."

"I killed men," Jack McCall said. "I ain't scared of guns." Boone pointed at Frank Towles's head, and the cat man tried again. This time he didn't close his eyes.

"Get closer," Boone said. "You ain't going to get but one opportunity to die famous." Jack McCall stepped closer, then closer again. He was almost touching-distance before he hit the head.

"That feels peculiar," he said to Boone. "Shooting a head."

Boone shrugged. "It wasn't peculiar when I shot him." He picked the head up off the ground and put it back on the stump. "Do it again," he said.

"What for?"

"That's what practice is," Boone said. And the cat man pointed his pistol at the head again, and hit it again. He shot the head off the stump again and again, until it broke into pieces so small there wasn't anything big enough for Boone to put it back up there.

Boone took the cat man to the Gem Theater and bought him a bottle of J. Fred McCurnin swoop whiskey, which was as thick and sweet as molasses, and about as expensive. He sat him at a table with the bottle and a glass, and left him there while he went to talk to Al Swearingen. "Don't do a thing until I tell you," he told the cat man. "This is touchy business."

Boone found Al Swearingen in his office with his missus. She was crying, which was how Boone knew who it was. Swearingen did not like her to show herself in public. Boone walked in without knocking, and found them with their faces so close they might of been kissing, except he had the front of her shirt in his fist.

Boone stood in the door and waited. He didn't leave, he didn't interfere. The way he looked at it, anybody that married Al Swearingen must of liked to bawl. It was the same way with him and Lurline, who kept asking was he going to kill her someday, and kept coming back just the same. There was something in them that craved it.

Al Swearingen saw Boone wasn't going to excuse himself, and let go of his wife. She sat in a chair and cried. The crying sounded pitiful to Boone, who was used to an angrier kind. Swearingen sat down on the desk. "What is it?" he said.

"Two hundred dollars," Boone said.

Swearingen changed expressions. "It's done?"

Boone said, "As good as. I got the man to do it, but when Wild Bill's laying in his brains, I don't want you sayin' it was no accident. I got a lot of time and effort in training the right man, and I want my two hundred dollars. I already lost Frank Towles's head in this, and I want you to know right now that you and me are in business."

Al Swearingen's wife looked up, blinking tears. Boone stopped himself, then he nodded. "Ma'am," he said.

"Don't pay no attention to the woman," Swearingen said. "She don't talk unless I tell her what to say." She found a hankie in her dress pocket and blew her nose, and Boone could tell just from the sound of it that what Swearingen said was true.

"I see that," he said.

Swearingen smiled. "I got all my girls broke," he said. Then he said, "Who is this man you trained?"

Boone shook his head. "That's nothin' you need to know," he said.

"How am I supposed to know he's the one that does it then?" Swearingen said. "For two hundred dollars, I want to know it was me that paid for it."

"You ain't paid nothing yet," Boone said.

"After," he said. "After it's done. 1 don't pay good money to have somebody to run out on his obligations. That ain't the way I do business."

"The way you did this was to offer me two hundred dollars for Wild Bill's scalp, and that's what I'm here to announce."

"How?" Swearingen said.

"What's the difference, as long as he's kilt?"

"I told you," Swearingen said, "I want to know I was the one that paid for it."

His wife made a noise then, someplace between gagging and a laugh, and ran for the door. Swearingen shouted at her, but she ran past Boone and out into the bar. Swearingen scratched at his head. "I've about give up trying to understand that girl," he said.

Al Swearingen's wife ran out of the office and through the bar. A miner caught her around the waist and put her on his lap, but she stuck her thumb in his eye until he let go. She went out into the street, crying, and fell in the mud.

She was wearing a dress Swearingen had brought her from Omaha. She knew he'd let one of the whores wear it on the trip back, and then given it to her used. She could smell other women on all her clothes. When she stood up, the dress stuck to her legs in front, and it embarrassed her the way it showed her off. She shook some of the mud off her hands and then started south, up the street. She was crying and wet, and once she was out of the badlands people in the street turned and stared at her.

There was nothing unkind in it. The cold part of town was where she'd come from, where they didn't look twice at a crying girl. She ran from the Gem all the way into town proper, and then tired and began to walk.

She was still crying when she came through the door of the Dead wood Brickworks, Inc. Seth Bullock and Solomon Star were on the way outside to inspect the rock flooring they'd commissioned to hold their new kilns. An enclosure would be built over them, after they were all in place.

They both looked at the door when she came in, then Seth Bullock tipped his hat. "Yes, ma'am," he said.

"I am Mrs. Al Swearingen," she said. Bullock nodded. He knew every permanent resident of Deadwood on sight, even the ones that kept out of sight. She said, "I am here to report on my husband."

Bullock looked at the woman carefully. She was covered with mud and she'd been crying, but didn't appear to be bleeding, or even show new swellings on her face. The sheriff had seen her black-eyed and petal-lipped more often than not. There were a large number of married men in Deadwood—most of them hadn't brought their wives in yet—and Bullock was not anxious to begin stepping into the middle of family disputes. There were too many of them, for one thing, and it was a good way to get shot, for another.

"Mrs. Swearingen," he said, "I respectfully can't allow my office to become involved in family business. A man's house is his castle, and it isn't the business of the law."

"I am here to report on my husband," she said again. Bullock saw that she was about to cry. He got her a chair and helped her sit down. He wasn't in a hurry to get in the middle of family troubles, but crying, muddy women walking out the front door wasn't going to do anybody any good, either.