Authors: Pete Dexter
Bill was standing next to the Mex, both of them facing Captain Jack Crawford. Charley noticed the Mex was missing half an ear. The gun went off again—Charley saw the smoke this time, it floated up into the ceiling like a departed soul—and then the place went quiet. Captain Jack cleared his throat and opened a copy of the Black Hills Pioneer, and began to read out loud. "A Missive to Buffalo Bill Cody," he said, "from Another Old Indian Scout, Captain Jack Crawford. By Captain Jack Crawford."
It took Charley a little while to realize it was a poem.
"Did I hear the news from Custer?
Well, I reckon I did, oldpard.
It came like a streak o' lightning,
And you bet, it hit me hard.
I ain't no hand to blubber,
And the briny ain't run for years,
But chalk me down for a lubber,
If I didn't shed regular tears."
Charley pried his way through the assembly and got to Bill, who didn't see him. He and the Mex were both fixed on Captain Jack's recital.
". . . I
served with him in the Army
In the darkest days of the war,
And I reckon, ye know his record,
For he was our guiding star.
And the boys who gathered round him
To charge in the early morn,
War jest like the brave who perished
With him on the Little Big Horn . .
."
Charley didn't know if he could wait it out. From where he was standing he could see Captain Jack's finger moving down the outside of the column. He'd read five or six verses, and was only halfway through. Bill and the Mex looked very solemn. The joints in Charley's hips and knees seemed to be locking into the bones. The Mex had tucked the Indian head into the crook of his arm, face forward, and somewhere in the achievement of its celebrity the Indian's face had been distorted, and half-looked like it was smiling.
Charley found a place on the bar to put his elbow and took some of the weight off his legs. The relief was instant, and when the pain ebbed he felt more patient. The poem was turning angry now.
"They talk about peace with the demons,
By feeding and clothing them well,
I'd as soon think an angel from heaven
Would reign with contentment in hell.
And some day these Quakers will answer
Before the great Judge of all
For the death of daring young Custer
And the boys that around him did fall. . ."
"Damn right," someone shouted. Captain Jack held up his hand for quiet, but there was a demonstration before he could finish. With interruptions, the poem lasted another five minutes, and at the end of it one of the miners drew his pistol and shot the smiling Indian out of the Mex's arm. The Mex was slightly wounded— more burned than shot, but a little of each—so they gave him the money right away, without teasing him.
He accepted it with the same solemnity he'd accepted the poem, and then he turned to the bartender and gave three of the bills to him, and pointed at the empty glass in front of him.
"
Da-me
" he said. The bartender filled his glass, and then Bill's glass, and then he picked up a glass that was sitting on the bar in front of a sleeping miner, threw what was in it on the floor, and set it in front of Charley. "
Da-me
," the Mex said, and the bartender filled it too.
Captain Jack refused even before the Mex offered him a drink.
"
No
da-me
" he said, more to the room than the Mex, and began another oration. There was something about his voice that nobody else wanted to talk at the same time.
"After the war," he began, "in which my father was killed and I myself was twice wounded, Battle of Spottsylvania, 1864, Forty-seventh Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, I returned home to New York to find my mother ravaged by sickness. As I wept beside her, she asked one last thing, that I never touch a drop of liquor, and I made that good lady that promise, and it is a promise I mean to keep." To Charley's knowledge, Jack Crawford was the only man in the West who spoke footnotes.
"
Da-me
" said the Mex, pointing to his glass. And when it was full he turned with it to Captain Jack and offered a toast. "
Tu mamá
," he said, and spilled some of it down the front of Captain Jack's buckskin jacket. Then he drank what was left and turned back to the bartender.
Charley moved closer to Bill. So did the poet-scout. "These are all good men," Captain Jack said to Bill, and pointed around the room. "Miners, paper-collars, even the greaser. But they don't know a thing about Indian fighting. Most of them can't use a side arm at all, except the ones that were in the war, and some of them don't have a stomach for it now."
Bill nodded. The war didn't leave anybody the same. Some of those in it came away too scared to live anymore, and some had spent all the time since looking for some excitement to match it. Captain Jack said, "They came here without the protection of the United States government, against the government, into these hills the Indians would claim for their own."
Captain Jack paused and gave the miners and gamblers a chance to agitate against the government. Charley had seen the same sort of thing a couple of times in Kansas, but he couldn't see the point here. There wasn't anybody around to hang.
"And so we have taken up arms to protect ourselves," Captain Jack said, and somebody shot a gun into the ceiling. "Forty-five volunteers, hard-working pilgrims of this territory, ride with me and patrol the mining camps on the outside of town. Three quick shots brings us on a run, and we are never more than a minute from the commencement of action."
Charley said, "Shit, they shoot off side arms in this burg like they used it to keep time." Bill turned and saw him there, and smiled at that.
Captain Jack nodded. "Discipline is always a problem," he said, "in any military situation. Compounded here by the fact that most of the Minutemen have no experience with arms or the military. That is why I would ask you"—he was speaking to Bill now—"to join me as a leader of the Minutemen. Together, we could make Indian fighters of these pilgrims."
"
Da-me
," said the Mex.
Bill looked at Charley, dead solemn. Charley said, "I already been shot by accident, once in each leg. I know where fate intends to put the third one."
The bartender filled the Mex's glass, and he offered another toast. "
Tu
mamá
" he said again.
"
No
da-me
," Captain Jack said. "We're discussing the protection of the miners."
That stopped the Mex cold. He had repossessed the Indian's head and was standing with his foot on one of its ears. As he considered Captain Jack's words to him, he rolled the head back and forth under his foot, the way a white man might stroke his chin. Finally he seemed to decide on something. He raised the glass toward Captain Jack again and said, "Pro-tess-shion." Then he smiled and killed what was in the glass.
"This greaser wears on you," Captain Jack said to Bill, "but he has proved himself in combat." The Mex set his glass on the bar and picked up the Indian's head. The eyes had shut, like it had seen the bullet coming that shot him out of the Mex's arm.
"
Mis amigos
" the Mex said. He hugged Captain Jack, then Bill. Then he turned to the rest of the bar and said it again. "
Mis amigos
." He started out the door, and the miners and reprobates cheered him, and some of them shot their pistols into the ceiling. The Mex smiled and blew them kisses. That caused more shooting and cheering, and the Mex, in a moment Charley considered inspired, stood at the door to the Green Front and blew the room a kiss from his own lips, and then one from the Indian's.
Then he went outside, got on his horse, and drew his pistol. He rode back through town the way he had come in, holding the Indian's head by the hair so it could bounce, shooting his pistol into the air so nobody would miss it. He went out of the badlands into Deadwood proper, where he was arrested by Seth Bullock and escorted out of town.
The citizens of Deadwood did not wring their hands over the workings of the badlands, but they drew the line at being shot in the course of their daily affairs by ambassadors of that part of the city, particularly a greaser carrying a human head.
Sheriff Bullock was just back from seeing the Mex out of town, and was sitting down behind his desk when Boone May walked into the office. The office was at the corner of Main Street and Wall Street, and the sign across the front of it said deadwood brickworks, inc. Beneath that were the words QUEENSWARE, FURNITURE, HARDWARE, LAMPS, WALLPAPER, ETC. And beneath that, in smaller letters, SHERIFF SETH BULLOCK.
Bullock's partner was a single-minded man named Solomon Star, who had come to Deadwood with him from Bismarck and put up the money for their business. He was tighter than Seth Bullock, and worried they were ordering too much, and too many different things. He had a wife back in Bismarck, but he had never loved anything but business, and did not see yet how much there was in Deadwood for the taking.
When Boone May walked in, Solomon Star was sitting at another desk, going over an ordering form. He had been against it when Bullock agreed to take over the unofficial duties of town sheriff. He'd said they hadn't come to Deadwood to end up as statues in the town square. He took off his reading glasses and looked at Boone May, then he looked at Bullock.
"You see where this road leads, Mr. Bullock?" he said. "You cannot leave your door open to all God's creatures in the blind faith that they were made by God, and somehow reflect His image."
Solomon Star had a facility for that. It always sounded like he was quoting the Bible. Boone May walked across the room, tracking mud, and sat down in the chair beside Bullock's desk. He was carrying a leather bag, and smelled like everything he'd touched or eaten in two months.
Bullock said, "Solomon, would you give us a few minutes?" He always spoke politely to his partner. The little man stood up and put his glasses in his shirt pocket. He took his coat off the hanger and held on to his shirt cuffs as they went into the sleeves of the coat. He stepped in front of the mirror and retied his necktie. His hat went on his head as carefully as you set dynamite.
Boone May watched him walk out of the office and close the door. He shook his head and smiled. "Paper-collars," he said. He didn't push that too far, though, because he wasn't sure that Seth Bullock wasn't part paper-collar himself.
Bullock sat still, looking at him in a steady, unfriendly way that made him forget the way he intended to put the case for collecting on Frank Towles's head. Seth Bullock was the hardest man to talk to that Boone May ever met.
"Lookie," he said, patting the bag, "I got Frank Towles's head that's worth two hundred dollars in Cheyenne. I shot him myself in a legal, fair fight, and did the public's welfare. So I don't see why you couldn't jurisdict this matter to give me the two hundred dollars here, so's I don't have to ride all the way back to Cheyenne."
Seth Bullock leaned closer. He was big through the arms and shoulders, as big as Boone. "Frank Towles's head isn't worth a nickel in Dakota Territory," he said.
"You could arrange it," he said.
Bullock shook his head. "I just paid a Mexican two hundred and fifty dollars gold for an Indian's head, out of the Board of Health funds, because that is municipal law. There is no such reward for Frank Towles." He didn't mention that he'd fined the Mexican the same $250 for endangering public safety, and taken his fifty percent collection fee.
Boone May covered his eyes. "You paid a Mex two hundred and fifty dollars?" he said. "And a white man's got to sit here and beg for what's comin' to him?"
"I never asked you to shoot Frank Towles," Bullock said.
"I don't need nobody to tell me to shoot Frank Towles. Where you find a dollar, you pick it up." He crossed one leg over the other and put his hands behind his head to wait. "I got a legal warrant."
Bullock said, "I don't know Frank Towles or what he looks like. That could be anybody, and you bring it in here tracking mud and say the town of Deadwood owes you two hundred dollars."
Boone May stared at Bullock a long minute, trying to decide what he meant about mud. Everybody tracked mud. He untied the bag in his lap, took the head out, and put it on Bullock's desk. "This here is what Frank looks like," he said. "You can ask Lurline Monti Verdi."
Bullock never acknowledged the head. Boone was watching to see if he was squeamish at heads, but it didn't do a thing, any more than it had for Lurline. Boone didn't know where the fault lay, but socially, Frank Towles's head was a failure. "You come and talk to me and W. H. Llewellyn fast enough when you need somebody killed," he said. "You never mentioned muddy when you wanted somebody tracked down. All I'm askin' here is fair treatment for a white man."
"I never said 'killed,'" Bullock said. "I always said 'apprehended.'"
Boone pointed to the head on the desk. "That's apprehended as you get."
Bullock still wouldn't look at it. Boone thought he must of practiced self-control. Then Boone thought of something else. "You seen Wild Bill yet?" The sheriff stiffened. "You plannin' on usin' him now, instead of me and W.H.? You tryin' to insult me and W.H. to get rid of us?"
"There's enough work to go around," Bullock said.
"Well, he ain't muddy," Boone said, "I admit that. That dandy with him, he might keep canaries."
Bullock shrugged. He'd been thinking about Bill that afternoon, trying to decide how to fit him into Deadwood Brickworks, Inc. It wasn't a question he could be useful. Anybody could be useful when you decided where they fit. That was what business was.
Solomon Star didn't fathom that. He saw the trading end of it clear enough. He saw the holes where money fell through and he knew ways to catch it before it hit the ground. But he didn't have a view of the future. He couldn't see that everything had to go somewhere.