(1986) Deadwood (22 page)

He skinned a rabbit he had killed the day before, and made a fire • in a circle of quartz rocks he'd arranged on the ground. The little house had no fireplace, but was protected by trees on three sides. Still, there were nights in the winter when he dreamed he was freezing, and the dreams would wake him, and he would lie in his blankets knowing that the place where his dreams met the world was the place he would die.

Preacher Smith was afraid of his dreams.

The boy came out of the house and watched him run the spit through the rabbit and lay it across the fire. He was wearing the pants, which quit above his ankles, and the shirt. He nearly filled the shirt out; the boy was bigger than the preacher had thought.

The boy watched everything the preacher did. "You never prepared a rabbit before?" he said. The boy squatted on his heels to get a closer look, but he didn't answer. Something in that posture was familiar and bad. "Well," the preacher said, "there isn't nothing to it. You kill the animal, gut it, skin it, then you burn it." He pointed to the rabbit's skin—still attached to the head—that was lying on the ground. The boy looked at it, without interest.

"You put the stick through, front to back, and lay it over a fire," the preacher said. "When the meat pulls off, it's done . . ." He looked across the fire at the boy. He had intelligence; the preacher wondered how he had stayed so innocent. "You never did any of this before?" he said.

The boy slept innocent and peaceful on blankets on the floor of the cabin, the preacher kept the bed. His own sleep was interrupted by frightening dreams he could not remember after they woke him up.

It came to him early in the morning that the boy was intended to be his disciple. That God was ready to speak through his mouth, and the boy was there to learn the words, and then teach them to others.

On Wednesday afternoon, August 2, bill wrote his last letter to Agnes Lake. He had been to the doctor that morning and reported loose teeth in addition to his regular problems passing water. The doctor had stuck a hollow rod into his peeder to drain his urine. He felt it clear to his stomach. The doctor had given him powdered sulfur, which he'd taken with Hood's Sarsaparilla ("
Spring medicine, a True Blood Purifier
"), and Phosphoric Air, which was labeled "
to ease the pain of spermatorrhoea, seminal weakness, loss of vitality, impotency, and all diseases arising from the errors of youth or the excesses of adult age
."

He'd taken Tutt's Pills too, and rubbed his skin with mercury. Thus medicated, he sat down on the stump near the wagon and began the letter. Jane had left the camp two days before, when the boy did, mentioning Rapid City. He would never have written Agnes with Jane Cannary anywhere in the vicinity.

Agnes Darling,

All is well in the Hills. Charley Utter and I stakd claims on the Deadwood and Wbitewood both, and prospeck daily. We have done what we cud, and evrthing else is up to The Lord.

I do not no what He has planned yet, but this is a Wonderful cuntry, as rich and wild as Inland Africa, which is a marvelous place. We will go there to one day, but the Hills will be our home. When it is safe from Indians. I must end this now, as the man is impotent to start for Cheyenne. Be in good humor, pet, in the nowlege that we shall be together again soon, once and for always.

J.B.Hickok
"Wild Bill"

P.S. Brave once, if such shud be we never meet again, while firing my last shot, I will gently breetb the name of my wife—Agnes—and with wishes even for my enemies I will make the plunge and try to swim to the other side.

He folded the letter and took it to the Pony Express office. Then he walked into the badlands, wondering what had happened to Charley. He didn't remember talking to him since the hunt. He wondered if Charley held what happened to the moose against him.

Harry Sam Young was behind the bar at Number 10, and fixed Bill a gin and bitters without being asked. Pink Buford and his bulldog were at one of the poker tables, along with a retired Mississippi River pilot named William R. Massie and three or four pilgrims who had made themselves colonels or captains when they arrived in Deadwood. The dog saw Bill and came over to sit at his feet.

"I'd sell you that dog," Pink Buford said, "if you'd let me keep fighting rights." Pink was suffering a losing streak. Bill leaned over and kneaded the loose skin on top of the bulldog's head. Pink made a place for him at the table, but Bill shook his head.

"There's no luck in here today," he said. He sipped the pink gin in front of him, and it didn't taste right either.

"It must of been some in here last night," Pink said. He was playing draw poker for quarters with the pilgrims and Massie, winning their quarters and giving them back, so he'd have somebody to play with. "You took two hundred dollars put of my pocket. . ."

Bill hadn't counted what he had, and was surprised at the amount. The wound over the dog's missing ear had crusted, and little pieces of scab came off as he ran his hands over his head. "You oughtn't to fight him so much, Pink," Bill said. He felt uncomfortable, telling other people how to treat their dog.

"He gets moody if he don't fight," Pink Buford said. "He could turn on a body in the night, from the frustration." Bill shrugged, and scratched the dog under his ear. Pink said, "Besides, the animal was intended to fight. Look at them jaws, you believe he's built like that to no reason? It ain't no favor to him to keep him from it."

Bill bought a pickled egg and dropped it into the jaws. The dog swallowed it without chewing, and Bill got him another. "He could find his own fights, if that's what he wants," Bill said. His voice was flat and quiet. "It's no favor, betting him to kill other dogs."

"He's a killer," Pink Buford said. "That's what he is, just like I am a gambler." He was holding a deck of cards in his hands, and as he spoke they divided in half, almost by themselves, and then merged into each other and were one deck again. "Come over here, and I'll demonstrate it beyond question."

Bill stayed with the dog. The Mississippi pilot was sitting in Bill's regular chair anyway, the one in the corner. Bill had taken a few dollars from him the night before too, and he had come in early to claim the lucky seat.

"A dime-quarter game doesn't spill enough blood," Bill said. "I'd just as soon drop eggs into this monster all day."

"If it's the price of the game," said the Mississippi pilot, "I can correct that with a visit to my hotel." Bill made no reply, which the pilot took the wrong way. "I think he's scared because I got his lucky chair."

Bill was about to feed the dog another egg, but his hand stopped an inch above the animal's mouth, and for a few seconds nothing moved. Then the dog's head began to rise toward the egg, slow as a snake. A line of drool spilled from one of the folds that covered his teeth.

Bill looked at Massie. "A pilot ought to respect limits," he said.

The pilot saw he had overstepped himself. "I didn't intend to insult your courage, sir," he said. "I questioned only your skill at the card table . . ."

"The water's getting shallow, pilot," Bill said. The dog came up slowly, off his front legs, and took the egg out of Bill's fingers. For a bulldog, it was a delicate thing, and it changed the gunfighter's mood. "Look here," Bill said, "this dog just picked my pocket." He looked at his hand. "Didn't even get my fingers wet. Pink, your bulldog is embarked on a life of crime . . ."

Bill and the dog walked toward the door. "Will you return today, Mr. Hickok?" the pilot said. Bill stopped and looked at him again. "I'm at your service," the pilot said. "In this seat, with sufficient funds to keep you entertained."

Bill walked north through the badlands to the clearing where he and Charley had cremated the slant-eyes. The dog was drunk with pickled eggs, and ran in circles out in front. The mules were still where Charley left them, in deep grass. A rancher had brought forty or fifty head of cattle through town the day before, and they were in another part of the clearing, while the rancher made his deals with the grocers in town.

The cattle had been left with two boys, seventeen or eighteen years old, who sat squint-eyed on their horses, holding rifles across their laps, and watched while Bill and the dog crossed the field. If they knew who Bill was, they didn't show it.

The dog ran a few steps toward the cattle, but Bill called him back. "There's nothing here for you to assassinate," he said.

He went right to the kiln, without a consideration that the boys were watching, and looked inside. It was as shiny in there as the bulldog's peeder. Not a speck of ash. He wondered where Charley was, and tried to remember the last time they had spoken.

Bill and the dog walked up one of the hills east of the clearing and found a smaller clearing, overlooking the town. He couldn't see Deadwood from there, but he felt it.

It was there like his illness. Nagging, something he couldn't put off.

The bulldog buried his nose under one of Bill's hands, wanting him to scratch the place he'd lost the ear. Bill accommodated him, thinking of the slant-eyes they had put in the kiln. His whole life, Bill had walked away from what he'd done, good or bad, like it wasn't there because it was past.

He'd even walked away from the lie he knew that to be.

He thought of his wife, trying to change the troubled feelings in himself, but unless it was walking a high wire, he had no idea what she would be doing that afternoon. He didn't know what she did when she was alone.

He remembered their wedding night in Cheyenne, as awkward a time as he'd ever had with a woman. They were afraid to find out about each other, even that.

He couldn't remember what stage the blood disease was in then. It wasn't like it was now, where the doctor had to fit a tube in him to drain his piss, he didn't think it hurt then to piss for himself. He did remember there wasn't any power behind it. That had been gone a long time, and he privately believed that was the first sign that he'd caught it.

He couldn't remember if he knew the disease was there when he married her or not. He did remember that later he'd thought it didn't matter, that they were joined for better or worse. He still didn't know what blood disease did to a woman's apparatus.

And he thought of the letter he'd written her that morning.

. . .
if such shud be that we never meet again, while firing my last shot, I will gently breetb the name of my wife—Agnes—and with wishes even for my enemies I will make the plunge and try to swim to the other side.

He tried to picture her reading that, but it wouldn't come. He could see her this way or that—happy or crying—but it didn't ring true. At the bottom of it, he didn't know what she thought of him. If he took care of her, or she took care of him. He didn't even know who was more famous.

It still seemed to him that famous people ought to marry each other, but it wasn't for the practical reasons he'd told to Charley. It was more instinctual, like people from Ohio liked to marry other people from Ohio. It seemed to him there was more to talk about that way. He tried to think what he would say to her now, if she was sitting next to him on the hill.

It wouldn't of been "If such should be that we never meet again . . ." No, even the simple things were uncomfortable between them. He'd probably be talking about the dog. Telling her about his fights and his appetites, how he ate pickled eggs whole. And that he liked Bill better than his own master. Bill wouldn't of said so, but he was proud of that. He would show her where the dog got his power to bite—it was in the back legs—and have her lift him off the ground. He was like a suitcase full of rocks.

Bill found himself smiling at that, thinking how it would sound to her. It occurred to him sometime later that he knew the dog better than he knew Agnes. He stood up and unbuttoned his pants and killed a quarter of an hour waiting for a small bit of relief. Then he made his way down the hill, past the hard-faced boys that squinted and sat on their horses with rifles across their laps, and headed back to Nuttall and Mann's Number 10, where a Mississippi River pilot was sitting at the card table with fresh money, and a belief that luck was tied to a chair.

It was dusk before Bill got back into town, walking sightless up the street, slow and straight with his eyes dangerous. The dog stayed a few feet in front of him, panting, and Bill followed the noise all the way to the bar. He thought the dog understood that there were times he went blind.

The place had filled up in the hours Bill had been gone, he could tell that from the noise. He found the bar and Harry Sam Young brought him a gin and bitters. He tasted it, and his eyes began to see shapes again. The pilot shouted to him across the room, "We got you a chair saved, Bill."

Bill pushed the gin and bitters away. "Let me test something different," he said. "This is lost its bouquet."

The bartender moved the glass in front of a pilgrim a few feet down the bar—half of the badlands was drinking pink gin by then—and poured Bill a shot of whiskey.

The whiskey tasted healthy and familiar, and Bill wished Charley would come in the door so they could drink one together. No matter what had gone wrong between them, they couldn't be so far apart that a bottle of American whiskey wouldn't bridge it. He waited while the bartender poured him another, and then picked the bottle up and took it with him to the table where Pink Buford, Carl Mann, Charles Rich, and the river pilot, Massie, were playing poker.

Massie was still in Bill's customary seat. The seat they'd left for Bill offered his back to the door. "I don't sit with my back exposed," he said.

"I got your lucky seat," the pilot said.

Bill looked at him unkindly. He had his rules, and his reasons. With all the local talk of Indians and bandits and poisonings, the citizens and visitors of the badlands visioned themselves as charmed men in dangerous times, but the truth was there wasn't a man at the table anybody had ever tried to kill.

Bill had been shot at frequently. Once he had believed he was charmed too, but that feeling had ebbed from the moment he shot the policeman Mike Williams in Abilene. He never mentioned the change to a soul, not even Charley, but killing Mike Williams by accident told him he could be killed by accident too. And he was accordingly careful in places accidents happened. He never filled his right hand in a bar, he never sat with his back to the door.

It was a strain, always watching for accidents, and he was tired.

Nobody at the table moved, and Bill saw they weren't going to. It was like a test. He set the bottle of whiskey in front of the empty chair and sat down. The river pilot winked at him and patted the dollars he had already won.

The bulldog lay at Bill's feet and sighed. Bill took the winnings from the night before out of his pocket and laid them next to his bottle. The room seemed wrong, he couldn't say why.

Pink Buford dealt cards. They played dollar ante, table-stakes draw poker. Bill couldn't catch a hand; the river pilot's cards continued their winning run. He drew one card into Bill's three tens, and caught his straight. He drew into Pink Buford's aces, and made three fours.

The more the river pilot won, the more reckless he got. And the cards still defied all the laws of probability and common sense, and stayed with him. "I can't lose, boys," he said. Bill had seen runs before, and waited him out.

In two hours, Bill lost close to a hundred and fifty dollars, and finished the bottle of whiskey. He was feeling the need to relieve himself, but he hated to leave the table and miss it when the laws of common sense caught up with the pilot. It wasn't anybody's time forever.

Number 10 had filled, as it did most nights, with tourists and miners of all kinds and quality. Captain Jack Crawford had come in and was standing behind him, just out of sight. There was a professor at the piano, and the upstairs girls took turns singing ballads of the West. The tourists paid them to sing, the miners paid them to stop.

It was a hot night and even with the front and back doors open, all the smoke and noise hung inside. Bill decided to leave the table. He began to stand up, but the dealer, Carl Mann, gave him the first card of a new hand, and he stayed to finish it.

Jack McCall came in through the back door and went to the bar. He picked up a glass of gin and bitters sitting in front of a tourist and drank it before Harry Sam Young could stop him. The bartender fixed the cat man a hard look. "A whiskey thief is unwelcome everywhere," he said. "Even thieves won't have a whiskey thief around . . ."