Friends (21 page)

As the valley we were in turned and twisted, it also narrowed. The dark-colored pines crowded closer and closer to the snaky road and swooshed in the breeze. The perfume from all those cedary trees, together with the moisture they give off, made it seem like the plains and them badlands we traveled through only days before was on the sun or the moon. It felt like we'd come to a place not even on the same kind of a map. Gradually we climbed up through gully and gulch, the sun finally rising high enough to set the stream and road afire in a blaze of light. Lots of wildflowers, too-red ones. I didn't know what they were, but I tried not to spend much time looking at them, pretty as they was. No matter how nice it was there, it was also ripe country for an ambush.

Lots of fellows along the streams panning and digging after we got into the Hills a ways. None of them very friendly, though. I waved at the first few gangs of men we seen, but few waved back and none of'em ask us to come on into their camps, so we just rode on. Some miners'd even hired men to sit guard with a rifle, and those sentries watched us
real
close. I guess there must of been quite a few thieves and claim-jumpers working that territory. In places, the ground along the stream was all tore up and bare-big gashes in the hillsides. Timber'd burned off not too long ago, too, in spots, givin' the hills a kind of bare look compared to where the trees was thick as fleas on a dog.

We heard Deadwood before we saw it. We had come down out of a steep gulch and then up and down a gentler one when gunshots echoed through the narrow valley. So many shots fired, it sounded like an Indian raid.

When we got to where we could see Deadwood good, up on a little rise, we just sat and looked. The streets was full of people, hollerin and runnin around. Many of'em, women as well as men, drunker than Billy-be-damned. Even at a distance you could see that. The town was stretched out down the hill from us, but it started off on the uphill again right away-mostly just a single street, following the line of the gulch. Rougher buildings closest to us, mostly log or uneven ripped boards, and the fancier ones with squared-off false fronts up the hill a ways. I had thought there would be more to it, much as I'd heard about Deadwood.

Toward the far end of town, up on the higher ground, a brass band stood in the middle of the street and struck up a march. Three or four men close to us, after we got down to the bottom, kept throwing their hats up into the air, going to fetch them, and then throwing them up again. Three teams of bulls hitched to wagons was stopped any old where, with no bullwhackers near them–one team with twelve animals.

Riders and buggies was all caught in a big snarl. A pile of poles higher than a man's head-pine tree trunks–had slid right off a fiat wagon and nearly blocked the street in front of a place called Liebmann's San Francisco Bazaar, so the sign said. I'd have expected that particlar store to be in San Francisco, myself. But there it was. Clete and me rode right through the middle of it all. Half a dozen men bawling out orders and arguing about what should be done about the logs lying there peaceful as liquored-up Irishmen, but nobody was
doing
a thing about 'em.

I saw a man in a beaver hat with three fancy-dressed women-upstairs girls they looked like to me-two on one arm and one on the other. He kissed one gal and then the second and then the third, right in a row and right in the street. And not just little pecks on the cheek, either. A place called the Red Bird caught my eye. Smelled like stale beer and sawdust as we rode past, so I promised myself I'd stop by there before very long. Everywhere people was hooraying and cheering, and the band just added to the racket, once we got up toward the fancier end of town. But mostly what you heard was pistols being fired off. I have seen some strange sights in my day, and heard some godawful noises, but I was not prepared for the likes of Deadwood.

"What happened, did I sleep through the Fourth of July?" Clete asked.

"Beats me," I said, almost hollering to be heard. "You suppose it's like this all the time?"

Clete didn't answer, but it didn't matter, because just then it was so loud I couldn't of heard him anyway.

When we got up the street a piece it quieted some. Clete rode close to a young man sitting his horse in front of a rail. "What's all the excitement?"

The man tipped his whiskey bottle at us. "Crazy Horse!" He tried to dismount and landed in a heap in the muddy street. He stood up slow, brushed himself off and wobbled into a big hotel. Had the name, Grand Central Hotel, on a sign right over the door, letters high as a man's chest.

"Crazy Horse?" Clete said. "If this is how they get ready for an Indian attack, I'd like to see what they do for Saturday night."

We tied our horses to the rail beside the young fellow's mount and then stood on the board sidewalk. We'd no sooner started to look around to get our bearings than, bam-out through the open door comes the young fellow Clete'd spoke to, ass first. I thought for a minute he was hurt, but I guess he was drunk enough to fall soft, even on them boards, for he picked himself up, found his hat and headed back inside. But not before he smiled and tipped his hat to us real friendly.

Clete and me waited, but after a while it seemed like he was going to stick. "I'm going up the street to look for the sheriff," Clete said. "Seth Bullock used to carry the badge here." He looked tired and dusty, and I supposed I looked worse. "You can come along or get swilled in one of these places, suit yourself."

All of a sudden, that young feller come sailing out of that hotel door again and made an even bigger thump going down than he did the first time. He was slower standing up, too, but he started for inside again.

Clete took the young fellow by the arm as he was building up steam to charge back in. "You sure you want to try that again?" Clete asked him. "Doesn't seem like they want your business all that bad."

He give Clete and me a crooked grin, and when he finally got around to talkin' he slurred his words pretty good. "Oh, it's all right. My pa don't like me comin' home drunk is all it is, him ownin' the best hotel in town. He'll not throw me out a third time. It was twice I come out now, wan't it?"

"Yep," I told him, "twice in and twice out."

"This'll be it, then. Pa don't usually stay mad enough to throw me out three times." He dusted himself off, set his hat on straight and staggered back in.

We waited a while, but it appeared that young man knowed his daddy pretty well, for though there was a lot of hollering inside, he had wedged himself in for good that time.

"You
want
me to go along to see Bullock?" I asked.

"Makes no difference. If I don't see you up there by the time I'm ready to go, I'll come back down here. Maybe you could look around in the bars for DuShane. He's a tall, lean one, and if he's kin to Whitey, he's a Rebel."

"I'll bear it in mind," I told him.

"And get us a room some place, but be sure there's no whores working there," Clete said, taking a step up the street. "I could stand a night's sleep in a regular bed, and the last thing I want keeping me awake is having to listen to every horny miner in these Hills banging his rocks off."

"I'll see to it," I told him, "though I may have to check out the ones that
might
be whorehouses pretty close."

Clete smiled, shook his head, and walked up the street through all that confusion. I went back down to the even noisier part of town.

People inside the Red Bird was celebrating every bit as much as the people in the street. That beery and sawdust smell hit me in the face as I walked in, and it felt a lot like coming home. Lots of gals in fancy dresses at the bar, not all of'em with somebody, either.

"You had your free one yet?" the barman asked me soon as I stepped up.

"You mean a free whiskey?" I ask the man.

"Unless you'd rather have beer," the fellow told me, standing there waitin'.

"Make it rye, then," I said, and he set 'er up in front of me. Maybe I could get used to a town with lots of confusion.

"Here's to General Clark!" a man standing beside me called out, and everybody cheered and raised their glasses … so I drank too.

The man who thought so highly of General Clark gouged me in the ribs with his elbow. "Let me buy you a drink, friend. You don't look properly lubricated for such a historic occasion."

"I wouldn't mind if you did," I told him. "But what's the occasion, anyways?"

"Why, ain't you heard?" the man ask, sounding like I'd just asked who Abraham Lincoln was. "Crazy Horse surrendered this morning! We got it on the telegraph more than an hour ago. That's where I work, the telegraph office, so I was one of the first that heard it."

He acted real proud of himself over that, passing his smile around to everyone that would look his way. He went over and sat at a table with some other men wearing suits. I wondered how come he'd walked away from the telegraph office and who was writing down the messages while he was gone. Maybe Crazy Horse changed his mind and was on his way here now, just to stir things up a little worse. Not that they needed it.

It was only natural that the people who lived in the Hills was celebrating old Crazy Horse giving it up. That Sioux chief had killed a lot of folks and would of killed a lot more, for the army had about as much chance of bringing in him and his bunch as it did of throwing a loop over the moon's horns. Still, I hated to think that the last really wild Indian in these parts was going to settle down on a reservation, eat the white man's beef and buy his shirts in a store somewheres.

I picked up the drink the telegraph man'd bought me and moved down beside a hefty gal in a pink striped dress standing by herself and sippin' a beer. Looking me over, so I thought.

"Well, hello there, stranger," she said in a real loud voice.

"Haven't seen you in this hole before. You wanna buy a girl a drink or something?"

"The
something
sounds like what I'd
like
to buy–if I got you pegged right, but I don't mean no offense if I didn't understand you proper."

She throwed her head back and laughed a good loud one. "No, you got me right," she said, taking my arm and still smiling. "Bessie's my name and whorin's my game. You ready to go now?"

It surprised me she said it right out like that for all to hear, but nobody seemed to pay much attention. "Whoa, hold on, Bessie," I told her. "I meant that's what I'd
like
to do, but I ain't got the time right now' so instead rn just buy you that drink."

She twisted up her smile and slapped me on the back. "Then I'll take whiskey and be glad for that."

Soon as the barman set our drinks down, she tipped hers toward me and put 'er back in one splash, then took a sip of her beer. Never batted an eye. Long time since I saw a gal drink whiskey like that, even a whore.

"Seems everybody's too busy to dip his wick today," she said, free and easy, not caring how she talked.

"Still pretty early for that, ain't it?" I asked. People always like to talk about their trade, man or woman.

"Not for Deadwood. Hell, Sundays I'm wore out before most of the tin shits around here get out of bed the first time. Lots of gals working this town, but there ain't a one of 'em goin' hungry, even the old bags."

"You been around here awhile?" I ask.

"About four months now. That's a long time to stay in one place. For me, anyway." She pawed at her hair and began looking around the Red Bird for something, customers I guessed.

"You know a long, tall Southerner? Maybe just got in the last couple days."

"I know a few men that might be," she said, looking me over a different way than she did before. "What's it worth to you?"

I dug into my pocket, pulled a half-eagle out of the pouch I carry my gold in, and tossed it on the bar in front of her.

Quick as a cat she picked it up and dropped it into her handbag. "You ain't the law, are you?"

"He's not a young fellow," I told her. "Maybe my age or more. Maybe he has a son or a brother who'd be twenty-five or so, but maybe not. Anyway, his kin is dead-supposin' he had one."

"That's a shit load of help," she said.

"That's all I know. I'd tell you more if I had saw the man I was after, but I didn't. He's tall and skinny, though, that much I'm sure of. And he talks Southern."

"This fellow have a name?" she asked, curling her red-painted mouth funny.

"His name's DuShane, his last name. I don't know his other."

"Well, that's real useful too," Bessie said, putting her hand on her hip. "Men around here don't go by their last names much, don't even tell their partners, usually. Lot of men up here have their faces on a poster someplace else. Say, you ever been in a gold camp before?"

"No, I haven't," I told her. "And from the likes of this one, I don't care if I never go near another."

"Well, I've been in lots, Colorado and everywhere. And at least I have enough sense not to go into a gold strike town and go asking some box hustler to help me find somebody. Hell, you could get killed doing that. Don't you know that?"

"Do you know the man I ask you about or not? Just give me my five dollars worth and then I'll look elsewheres. Any honest whore would do that much."

The barman came and poured us two more whiskeys, and she stopped talking while he was there, just looked around the place. Bessie was still a pretty woman, though a mite fleshy for my tastes, but you could still see how sweet she would have looked a few years back. Her eyes was dark and so was her hair, long and full and clean. The life and the whiskey would soon begin to show a lot more in her face, but just now the years was still kind to her. "Well, I'll see what I can find out," she said after the barman left. "What'd he do, kill somebody?" she ask, making a joke.

When she saw my face, she didn't have to ask a second time. "Oh shit," she said, then took her whiskey in a jolt.

I did the same with mine. Pretty fair whiskey. Didn't feel no worse go in' down your throat than swallowing a nervous cat backwards.