A Pair of Aces

by Joe R. Lansdale

  "How come you know all this, Checkers?" Billy Bob asked.

  "I was there when they dug him up. Was just a kid here in Deadwood when he got his brains blowed out. Missed that, which grieves me, since it was history in the making. Had a job emptying out the spittoons, and Mann's number ten was next on my route, but I didn't get there soon enough."

  "So you're saying you saw him dug up and the body was taken then?"

  "Nope, ain't saying that. Not right then. They reburied Bill, but that night a couple of fellas I knowed came and dug him back up, and they sold him to-an old Sioux medicine man for the whereabouts of a mine up in the hills, as there was considerable gold digging going on then."

  "Sold Wild Bill Hickok to an Indian?" Billy Bob said.

  "Yep. And he wasn't just any old Indian. Hickok had killed his oldest son in some shindig once, and he had vowed to get Hickok's body someday. Those two miners remembered that and they knew he knew these hills' like a chicken knows an egg, so they made a swap with him."

  "My God," Billy Bob said, "that ain't white."

  "This old Indian made him a box out of some sacred trees, and he put that body in it. He figured the spirits in the trees would keep Hickok-'s dead spirit from getting out and doing something to him. Hickok was so good with them pistols of his, lot of folks, especially Indians, thought he had some magic in him, or in them guns. That box was the Indian's way of holding that magic back, get me?"

  "I get you, but you still ain't told me where the body is."

  "This old Indian liked to open the box up a couple times a day, lift up his breechcloth and expose himself to old Bill's corpse."

  "That's disgusting," Billy Bob said.

  "Showing your privates like that is a kind of Indian joke. An insult."

  "All right, enough about the damned savages and their jokes, where is this old Indian that has the body?"

  "The old Indian don't have it no more."

  Billy Bob was starting to fidget, and I thought any minute he was going to jerk out that pistol and start beating Nose Picker about the head and ears with it, which would have been all right with me. I could see this was leading to no good, and I was cold and wet and getting wetter. Albert was leaning against the wagon, watching and listening. He didn't look any happier than I felt.

  "I swear you are the windiest gas bag I ever did see. If he ain't with the old Indian, then where is he?"

  "With the old Indian's son. He's a medicine man too. You see, the old man died and the young fella sort of inherited Wild Bill. He's been living back East getting him a white education, but he had to come back on account of he got caught cheating somebody in Yankee land. He has the body now and wants to sell it, get him some seed money. Get out of the cave he's living in. Maybe go back East when things cool down on what he done."

  "And what's your cut in all this, Checkers?" Billy Bob asked.

  Checkers smiled. I wished he hadn't. I didn't like them teeth. "Finder's fee. Indian said he'd give me a cut of the money, and then there's just the plain, simple fact that I'd like to see a family brought back together again, even if one of them is dead."

  "That's right touching of you," Billy Bob said.

  "Always did have me a sentimental streak. It's a kind of sweetness that runs through me. You interested or not?"

  "I'm interested. And Checkers?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You wouldn't lie to an ole Southern boy, would you?"

  "No. I wouldn't. I'm partial to Southern boys, actually."

  "I hope you are. How much this Indian wanting for the body, provided I see it and want it?"

  "Twenty dollars."

  "Twenty dollars!"

  "That's right. And twenty for me taking you to it."

  "Hell, man, ain't nobody got no forty dollars to be giving away."

  "Well now, I figure since he's your pa, you'll want the body. And another thing, maybe an even more important thing, is you have that body and you're going to make a ton of money. I mean, you can't kid Checkers. You carry that old boy around with you and it's going to sell more of that watered-down liquor you call Cure-All. And that's going to make you lots of money, I know."

  "When do I see the body?" Billy Bob asked.

  "Has to be tonight."

  "That's a mite hasty, ain't it considering the weather?!'

  "I'm leaving the Hills tomorrow. Don't know if I'm corning back. Hell, for all I know, that Indian might have already cut loose of it. He was big to sell."

  So there we were, it pitch black and raining had enough to strangle a duck, and Billy Bob wanted to go into the Black Hills with a total stranger who couldn't stop picking his nose, and look at a rotting body in a box. A body that might, or might not be, Wild Bill Hickok. Then he'd probably buy that rascal with the wages he owed me and Albert. . Billy Bob put the wagon in storage, put our old mules in the livery, and rented us some horses, including one for Chauncey, and one- mule for carrying the box out should he buy it, which seemed like a foregone conclusion to me. Provided there was a body in a box.

  We put Rot Toe over to one of the whorehouses, and I told one of the fat ladies to take good care of him, and if anything happened to us, which was damn likely, he was partial to fruit and would touch, a bite of meat now and then if that's all there was.

  By the time we were all squared away it was pretty late and raining worse than ever. I just couldn't see any sense in this thing we were doing, but I reckon I can't complain too loudly, because there wasn't much sense in me either. I went along and I could have deserted right then and there, lit out and never had to look at Billy Bob again. But I didn't, and I like to think it wasn't so much a dose of the stupids as it was the fact that I didn't want to leave Albert. You see, I knew, for whatever reason, he was going to stick with Billy Bob. And Billy Bob was one of them kind that once he got his mind set on a thing, he was going to do it, and there wasn't no swaying him. Way he was acting, you'd think Wild Bill really was his papa.

  Nose Picker worried me too. He was too eager to my way of thinking. Even twenty dollars and the cut of another twenty didn't seem worth what he was doing. I figured soon as we were up in the Hills, bunch of his cutthroat partners would come out of the rocks, kill us, steal the rented horses, and take everything we had on us, right down to our underwear, and them too if they were in the right sizes.

  In spite of all this, Billy Bob wasn't a total fool. He had put pistols in both his buffalo-coat pockets and he had another little one in his belt. He fixed me up with a. 38 Smith-and-Wesson and gave Albert a big .45. Chauncey didn't see any of this, as he waited outside the wagon while we got a few things, and him not knowing about the guns was at least some sort of comfort.

  As we rode I could see from the way Albert was looking all around, one of his hands inside his coat near the 45, that he felt like I did. He was worried.

  I kept my hand away from the Smith-and-Wesson because I was afraid of guns, and figured if it came down to me using it, I'd, most likely try to pull it and end up shooting off my kneecap, or some other part of my body I was even more proud of.

  Billy Bob, on the other hand; looked like he was on a picnic, or like he had just ridden out of one of them dime novels he liked to read. The rain didn't even bother him. He sat straight in the saddle, face forward. He was wearing a big, wide-brimmed, black hat, that buffalo coat, dark blue pants with a yellow military stripe, and black, fur-lined boots.

  Chauncey slouched in the saddle, smiling to himself, singing some ditty or another, picking his nose all the while. I couldn't tell if he was naturally happy, stupid, or thinking on what he was going to do with his share of the clothes and such he was going to help steal from us later.

  Whatever, there we were, right smack dab out in the middle of what used to be called Red Cloud's Big Open, and any minute I expected to get my brains blowed out by robbers in cahoots with Nose Picker Chauncey, or maybe by some Indians that didn't know, or didn't care, that we had won the Indian wars.

  But none of that ever hap
pened.

  After we'd ridden for quite a few hours and I'd begun to feel like my butt had growed to the saddle, we came on a bad section of rocks and the trail narrowed. Lightning flashed, and when it did I seen at the top of the trail that there were a series of small caves, and those caves looked like open mouths begging us to step inside and get chewed.

  When the lightning flashed again, Chauncey pointed at one of the caves, and we got the general idea which one it was, and that that was where the Indian lived.

  We started along the narrow trail that led up there, and I could hear pebbles tumbling off the edge and down to the depths below. When the lightning flashed again, I looked down and wished I hadn't. If me and my horse went over, there wouldn't never be no way to sort out which of us was which.

  Finally we come to a spot about halfway to the caves and stopped. Chauncey got down and had us do the same.

  "We got to walk the rest of the way," Chauncey said, and he had to yell for us to understand him because the wind was whipping away his words. "We can leave our mounts here. Get the nigger to hold them."

  Though it would have been smarter for Billy Bob to have left me holding the mules, since I didn't know slick mud from fresh honey, he went along with Chauncey, seeing how Albert was colored. He damn sure didn't want no white man to know he'd feel safer with a colored by his side instead of one of his own kind.

  "Let's go- then," Billy Bob said.

  I handed Albert the rein to my horse.

  "You watch yourself, hear?" Albert said.

  "I will."

  So the three of us, Chauncey, Billy Bob, and me, went up."

  It was a rough walk and the higher it got the less there was to walk on. Rocks slid out from under our feet and cut at our legs and the gorge loomed just to our left, and when the lightning flashed it looked deep enough for you to fall all the way down to the pits of hell.

  After the jumble of rocks we come to a clear spot and the cave. There was a torch just inside against the wall, lodged in some rocks, and Chauncey lit it, which was quite a chore, as he had to take a finger out of his nose to hold the torch in one hand and the match in the other.

  When the torch was lit, we went deeper inside the cave. Bats flapped above us, and their leavings were all over the floor and smelt right smart. I didn't like bats, no kind of way. They always looked to me like rats with wings, and I don't like rats either. Especially ones that can fly.

  Finally it got lighter ahead of us, and we crunched through some old bones lying about, and Chauncey showed us that a lot of them were human. He said this cave had once belonged to a grizzly and that now and then some folks had come in and met him, and he hadn't been such a good host. I know I was glad when he lifted that torch and I didn't have to stare at those bones, particularly one skull with its entire right side crushed in, like a big paw had swatted it.

  The light around the bend was from a campfire, and it was right cozy in there. There were a few handmade chairs, a bed, and a table, and over on the right-hand side of the wall, leaning up against it, was a rough-cut box with a lid on it.

  But the thing that really got my attention was the young Indian. He wasn't all that young, I reckon. Maybe thirty-five. It's hard to tell with Indians. They seem to me to either age real fast or not at all.

  He had on a dusty black suit with a yellowish shirt that was once white and he was wearing an Abraham Lincoln hat. He was a friendly looking fellow and he was smiling at us while he held one hand in his coat pocket.

  I figured he had his hand on a pistol and was just smiling either out of habit, or to get us off guard. When he seen that Checkers was with us, he relaxed a mite and spoke.

  "Checkers, my good comrade. I thought that I might not see you again. It was my suspicion that you had been caught for some nefarious deed, like horse thievery, but I see that this was not the case. And better yet, you have brought friends to cheer my fire."

  "Why's he talk like that?" Billy Bob half whispered to Checkers.

  "That damned education stuff," Checkers said. "But he's all right."

  "Come," said the Indian, "please come and warm yourself by my meager fire. Take a load off your feet and your mind, and I will see to some liquid refreshment."

  What he did for liquid refreshment was reach into his other pocket and take out a pint flask which he sat on a rock by the fire.

  We got over near the fire and warmed our hands, but nobody sat yet.

  The Indian found four cups and brought them over, then he poured us all a little splash from the bottle and we drank it.

  "Please, please," he said pouring us some more. "Sit, please do sit. There is no need to stand on parade here. My home is your home. Or to take two lines from the opera Clan, the Maid of Milan: 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home; a charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, which sought through the world is ne'er met with elsewhere."

  Billy Bob wasn't so quiet this time. "What in hell is he talking about?"

  "Just more of that education stuff," Chauncey said. "An opry is where folks yell at each other to music."

  "Ah, Checkers," said the Indian, "you have no heart. An opera is the heart, the soul, the very wing tips of a bird. It soars through the breast and mind and fills the soul."

  "How about we do less soaring," Billy Bob said, "and talk about this body I come to look at."

  "Yes," the Indian said, "the body of the Great White Warrior, the Pistoleer Prince of the Plains, the one and only, the indescribable Wild Bill Hickok."

  "That's him," Billy Bob said.

  "Now you remember that deal you made me about bringing a buyer here?" Checkers said to the Indian.

  "It has been a month, my good friend. But I remember." The Indian smiled. "What if you had brought them here and I had sold the body?"

  "Chance I took," Checkers said. "Besides, I didn't figure you'd sold it. You don't like going down into town so much."

  The Indian opened his arms wide. "Isn't that polite? That is Mr. Checkers' way of saying that I am a wanted man in Deadwood."

  "What for?" Billy Bob said. "I thought it was back East where you was wanted."

  The Indian sighed. "There too. But I can hide better here. As for Deadwood, well, I'm wanted for a slight altercation with a young gentleman who had some rather foul comments about my ancestry. I was forced in a moment of passion, perhaps a moment fired by devil rum, to place the full length of a Bowie knife between his top two ribs, and therefore, let the soul fly out of him."

  "What?" Billy Bob said, glancing at Checkers.

  "He stabbed the sonofabitch to death," Checkers said.

  "And I hope, dear friend," said the Indian, "that you have been better able to quiet your tongue on that matter below than you have here this night."

  "You told them, you silly bastard," Checkers said. "I was just explaining."

  "So you were, so you were," the Indian said.

  The Indian and Checkers grinned at each other. The way they were doing it, I figured it was hurting their lips.

  "Can we just get on with what I come here for?" Billy Bob said.

  "Of course," said the Indian, "but first let me introduce myself. I'm Elijah Bigshield, Oglala medicine man, retired." He held out his hand.

  Billy Bob's face worked to the left, then to the right. "I don't shake hands with niggers or Indians," he said.

  "You don't say?" the Indian said.

  "I do say. Now let's get on with it."

  Checkers cleared his throat. "This here boy has got a special interest in the body. Hickok was his daddy. Some whore in Deadwood was his mother."

  "You don't say?" Elijah Big shield said, but the honey in his voice had gone considerably sour. "Isn't that nice. Why you even look like him, now that it is mentioned. 'As a little childe riding behind his father, said simply unto him, Father when you are dead, I shall ride in the Saddle.' Stefan Guazzo, Civile Conversation. And now that saddle has been passed to you, and you may ride in the
tracks of Hickok the killer."

  I was beginning to feel a mite uncomfortable, but Billy Bob didn't show a sign of it. "I don't want to hear no more of your education," he said. "An Indian or a nigger with an education ain't nothing more than a bird that can talk. It sounds like it knows something, but any fool knows it don't. It just mocks."

  "I find you most unpleasant, sir," Elijah said.

  "You're going to find me leaning over your ugly face, beating you upside the head with my fist, if you don't show me this body Checkers has been carping about. And there better be a body in that damn box, that's what I'm trying to tell you."

  "Anything to please the young gentleman," Elijah said snidely. He walked over to the box and rubbed a hand against it. "I'm asking twenty dollars for it, sir."

  We followed him over, with Checkers standing back a bit, and Elijah opened the lid. That was the first time I seen the body, and I knew in my heart that it was none other than who they said it was, Wild Bill Hickok.

  "The body possesses magical properties, sir," Elijah said stepping to the side to let Billy Bob see. "Hickok's ability with his guns was most phenomenal; and he himself said on more than one occasion that his hands were guided by spirits."

  "How come you know so much about it, you being an Indian?" Billy Bob asked.

  "Even the mouse must learn the ways of the hawk if he wishes to survive. That body, sir, is so full of magic, that it is said that if you put it at the foot of your bed at night, Hickok's skill with the pistols will enter into you and allow you to shoot as fast and straight and true as this man-killer ever did."

  "Is that a fact?" Billy Bob said. "Who's done it to know?"

  "No one. My father told me this, and he was one to know. He tried to steal the magic from the corpse and put it in a pot, but the magic was too strong to be stolen. When he died, my father's soul joined those in the wood that surround the white man-killer."