by Pete Dexter
He sat up, out of her lap, and looked out through the opening in front of the wagon to the street. A thin, gray-faced man was standing on a box in front of a cluster of miners, holding a Bible in front of his face, like he was talking to it.
The boy got on his hands and knees and crawled to the front of the wagon. "That's a preacher," she said behind him. "He's trying to save these sinners from hell."
The boy began to climb out of the wagon. He was the weak and the lost and the sad, and the preacher had come for him. She grabbed him from behind. "Whoa, my baby," she said. "You ain't dressed for church." But he was too strong for her and pulled away. He climbed out the front of the wagon, buck-naked on shaky legs, and then dropped himself onto the ground.
The preacher stopped when he heard the upstairs girls scream. There were a few of them scattered among the miners; most were there to catch the early service before they went to bed. They had spent Saturday night naked with these same miners, or ones like them, but at the sight of the boy, pale and naked and skinny, walking out of Charley Utter's camp, they screamed.
The boy came toward the Methodist, and the miners moved apart to give him room. The truth was, they weren't overly comfortable around an uncovered boy either. The boy did not seem to hear the screaming or notice the miners. He was looking at the Methodist on the packing crate.
The Methodist spoke first. "What is it, boy?"
The boy started to speak, but his throat was dry and unreliable. Half the noises he made could of come out of a hawk, but finally he made himself understood. "I'm the one you come for." This set off a new round of excitement among the upstairs girls, but the Methodist took it serious. He stared down at the boy, and then seemed to decide. "One of you get him a blanket," he said. When nobody moved, the preacher got down off his box and walked to the boy and wrapped him in his own coat.
The boy allowed himself to be wrapped. The Methodist looked into his eyes and the boy looked back.
The Methodist said, "Maybe so."
Jane watched it from the front seat of the wagon. She had four inches left in the bottom of a bottle of whiskey—she'd made it last half the week—and she pulled the cork now with intentions to finish it. The preacher got back on his crate and led the miners and whores in the Lord's Prayer, and then dismissed them without even asking for the collection. He took the boy away.
Jane felt herself crying. It seemed like that's all she'd done for two weeks. Unless she got hold of herself, somebody would catch her at it. She drank the bottle and watched the street from the seat of the wagon. After a while the crying passed, and she thought she might go to Rapid City and get drunk. She had once ridden a bull on Main Street there and got her picture in the newspaper. She thought about that day, how good her future looked, and wondered how she'd got so unhappy so fast.
She guessed it was from listening too much to her heart. "That boy was mine," she said out loud, almost finished with the bottle now. "I collected that Methodist about thirty dollars, too."
She stood up in the wagon and shook the last few drops of the bottle out on the ground. Then she threw it in the air and drew the Smith & Wesson Russian model she carried butt-first in her gun belt to shoot it. Then she lost the bottle in the morning sun and fell off the wagon.
The ground was drier there than the street, and hard. She heard the sound of her breath leaving her as she landed, and then lay still until she could tell that she wasn't hurt. That was a disappointment too, and she began to cry again. She curled into herself right there next to the wagon, in plain view of the public, and bawled. "He was mine," she said.
The Methodist took the boy to his cabin near the sawmill. He sat him in a rocking chair near the door, naked except for the coat. "What happened to your shoes?" he said.
The boy looked at his feet longer than it took to see he didn't have shoes on. "I got clothes," the preacher said, "but shoes ought to fit."
The boy accepted that like a first lesson. Shoes ought to fit. He nodded and waited for whatever the preacher would say next. "Can you work?" he asked. The boy looked at him. "Are you deaf?" he said. Not reproachful, a question.
The boy shook his head and cleared his throat. "I heard what you said. 'Help the sad and the weak and the lost among us. Lend us Thy strength, so that we may do Thy work better, and find our way back to You from this place full of Thy enemies . . .'"
Henry Hiram Weston Smith smiled. "That's more attention than I pay myself," he said. The boy did not smile back. The preacher said, "You're not soft-brained, what's the nature of your affliction?"
The boy shook his head. He wouldn't think about the nature of his affliction, something kept him from it.
"Have you been hurt?" the preacher said. "Are you on the mend?"
The boy turned in the chair, avoiding the preacher's questions. "I'm the one you come for," he said. Preacher Smith took those words seriously. He found a pair of old black pants among his things, and a shirt big enough for two men to wear at the same time. His initials were sewn into the pocket. A present from his wife, who always thought of him as bigger than he was.
He gave those to the boy, along with his spare underwear, and went outside while he dressed. He had no thought that his obligations to the boy were satisfied. He had no thought of what else he was supposed to do.
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 Hi
lls. 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."
