by John Shirley
Calamity Jane gave out a long jeering whoop, and spat in the gutter. “That’s right, ride off you yellow-feather offspring of a pig and a whore …” And off she went with it.
Wyatt noticed Swinnington, the confidence man in the butter-colored suit, scowling to himself on the sidewalk back of where Burke had sat his horse.
Seeing Wyatt looking at him, Swinnington made as if he were suddenly interested in the weather. He gazed earnestly at the sky, nodded to himself, then turned and hurried away.
And Wyatt suspected, then, judging from Swinnington’s manner, that the swindler had heard that Burke was looking for Earp and Henry McCarty—had kept watch and, confirming Wyatt’s whereabouts, had sought Burke out and sold the information.
Hickok holstered his pistol, gunbutt-outward, his hand performing the action in a single smooth, flowing motion. Wyatt and Henry went to shake that hand.
“I owe you a debt, Mr. Hickok,” Wyatt said. Wyatt remembered Jane, and turned to her, touching his hat. “And I thank you too—Miss Cannary.”
Calamity Jane shrugged and scowled, but seemed pleased. Then she turned and stalked into a saloon.
“Me, I sure owe ya both too,” Henry said, shaking Hickok’s hand rather longer than he needed to.
Hickok squinted down at the boy and grinned. “No sir, you both watched my back fer me last night and I won’t forget it.”
Henry beamed at that.
“But you’ll have to keep a watch by your lonesome, after this,” Wild Bill went on. “I’m leavin’ town, to see my wife. I am thinking to return to Deadwood later this summer, perhaps in July. Could be I’ll see you boys then.”
But Wyatt was never to see Wild Bill again …
* * *
Though his back ached from bending over, his face was getting sunburnt from reflected sunlight, and he sometimes slipped into the creek, Wyatt never tired of prospecting. He was half hypnotized by the glimmer of sun on the water, and the occasional flecks of gold. Just now he was panning, using a big tin pan brimming with water to separate gold flakes out from the sand in the creek, but for all his effort he had accumulated a little less than a gram of the precious stuff. He had been assured by Toothless Mike Spears, who’d passed by with his mule not ten minutes earlier, that panning a gram of gold in half a day wasn’t so bad at all—more was heard of too. Sometimes.
But it wasn’t the gold dust Wyatt liked. Mostly he liked being out here under the spruce trees; he liked the sound of the creek and the living smell of the water, and the craftiness of the crawfish slipping under the rocks and how the color of a small trout seemed to be almost the same shade as the firs. And he liked the freedom of panning, feeling like he was finding treasure, a glittering bounty hidden away in the Earth just for him …
He and the boy Henry had been working at it since dawn on a waterway branching to the East of the “hotter” area frequented by the other miners—Henry, however, had given up an hour before and was now dozing, an arm thrown over his eyes, in a newly green meadow just up the hill. Wyatt figured if he found enough promising color some place where there wasn’t a claim, he’d build a sluice, do his own placer mining … But he’d have to send for Mattie—or cut her loose. In his saddlebags was a letter from her overflowing with melancholy. She declared herself unwilling to come to Dead-wood, “a place known for its women of low virtue” and she couldn’t bear waiting for him alone in Wichita. Women of low virtue! She was doing her best to forget …
“Wyatt S. Earp?”
Wyatt straightened up like a bent sapling released, all in a snap, wishing he’d kept his gun on his hip. About thirty feet away a man sat on his horse with the sun behind him, its glare making it hard to see his face. Wyatt silently cursed Henry for not keeping a watch like he was supposed to. The man who’d spoken his name was a shorter man than Burke, anyway.
“You are Wyatt S. Earp?”
Wyatt’s full name was actually Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp—his namesake was a commander his father had served under in the Mexican war, a Wyatt Berry Stapp. But Wyatt B.S. Earp not having the right ring, he usually went by Wyatt S. Earp.
“That’s right.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to ride up on you like that,” the man said. He slipped off his horse and approached, leading the horse, his hands in plain site to show he wasn’t toting a pistol. A modestly sized fellow in a dark suit and a pencil thin mustache, he was not much older than Wyatt. “My name is Isaac Gray. I work for Wells Fargo. I’ve had a dickens of a time finding you. If not for Mike Spears I’d have given up and gone back to Deadwood.”
“Finding me for what purpose, Mr. Gray?” Wyatt asked.
“Well sir, our shotgun messenger’s been killed. I have heard that you’re the brother of Virgil Earp, who’s done some work for us, and I esteem Virgil highly. I’d like to offer you a job.”
“As you can see, I’m prospecting.”
“I can offer you the certainty of a hundred dollars above the going rate for the job, as opposed to the uncertainty of panning for gold. It’s the Cheyenne and Black Hills express, do you see, with a Wells Fargo shipment of two-hundred-thousand in gold. There’s a gang of owlhoots we’re worried about … I know it’s risky but I’m in terrible need of a good man.”
Wyatt put a hand to his back and stretched, grimacing. He was half inclined tell Gray to just ride away. But this was a chance to make another mark—someday he might run for Town Marshal, in Deadwood, or Wichita. Protecting a gold shipment put you in the good books of the local merchants. And it’d make Mattie happy—from Cheyenne, if he was remembering the route accurately, he could continue with the stagecoach to Wichita.
At length he nodded, and stepped up onto the bank of the stream. “I expect there’ll still be gold, somewheres, later on, when I’m ready to look for it.”
Wyatt offered Isaac Gray his hand. Gray had a firm handshake, and, in a way, Wyatt was shaking hands with Wells Fargo too.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jerome Mundale Swinnington was relieved to see the spring water trickling down the rough granite base of the cliff. He didn’t have to urge his mule toward it, the thirsty animal sped up to a quick trot, eager for the pool of clear, cool water fed by the spring.
It was a hot day, though scarcely past midmorning. When the weather turned in the Dakotas, Swinnington reflected, it turned like a marching soldier doing a left-face.
Swinnington dismounted, rubbing his rump and grimacing with pain. He was not a seasoned rider. He knelt at the small pool, and drank deep, so thirsty from three hours ride in the twisty trail through the Black Hills that he didn’t mind ducking his own muzzle beside the mules.
Finally he sat up, cupping water in his hand, taking off his hat so he could splash his forehead. He was so taken with the water he didn’t notice the two men walking openly up to him.
However, the first remark they made got his attention. “I think we should kill the son of a bitch, Dunc,” said the man stepping up to the spring on Swinnington’s left. “That suit alone deserves it, seems to me.”
“Fair enough, just don’t shoot holes in that vest—I hanker for that vest,” said the other man, standing not more than six feet away, on Swinnington’s right, pistol in his hand. “And that watch—don’t hit the watch neither. I’d surely like to learn how to read a watch.”
Though Swinnington had just drunk deep, his mouth was once more bone dry. He managed to croak out, “Gentlemen—wait! I come with an offer!”
“Anything you want to offer we can take anyhow!” said the shorter of the two men—almost midget-short but with an air of command as, gun never wavering, he sidled over to stand near his partner. He had a black mustache that seemed to grow out of his nose hairs, a week’s growth of beard, his hair stringy and greasy; eyes so small and sunken they were hard to see. It was difficult to tell too, what color his clothes were, for all the dust and dried mud. This would be Dunc Blackburn, the man Swinnington had come here to find. Blackburn and the taller man, grinning under a brushy mus
tache and a floppy brown hat, looked to have spent some time camping out in the wilderness.
“Right you are, gentlemen, you can rob me if you choose,” Swinnington admitted, in his most conciliatory tone. “But I’ve got little enough for you to take. I left my money in Deadwood—as only seemed prudent—and I’ve come here to—”
“You left your money—because you figured we was going to steal it?” Blackburn demanded, in a tone of outrage. “Why, that’s an insult, you just assumin’ I’d rob you! Made up your mind I was dishonest, right from the get-go!”
“Well I, ah …” Swinnington was rarely honest himself—but now he was honestly confused.
Then Blackburn let out a peal of laughter, his tongue sticking out as he laughed, and his companion laughed with him.
“You sure twisted him up with that one, Dunc!”
Swinnington got to his feet, chuckling companionably in his relief. “Most amusing. Boys, I’m here with some intelligence of interest. It was known that you were holed up this way, and might not know about the shipment—they’ve been varying the shipping just to confuse any stage robbers, and it seems a dirty trick to me. But tomorrow it goes out—two-hundred-thousand in gold, shipped by Wells Fargo on the Cheyenne and Black Hills express line, leaving Deadwood at seven, headed for Cheyenne itself.”
Blackburn scratched his thorny chin with the sights of his pistol. “You don’t say. How much gold?”
“Two-hundred-thousand. It’s the spring clean-up, all at once. Now you’d think they’d have a cavalry escort, or some such. No gentlemen, nothing of the kind.”
“We done for the last shotgun messenger,” Dunc said musingly. “All to get nothing much. They must have a new guard ridin’ along.”
“Yes, but he’s a stripling, practically an infant, name of Wyatt Syrup, something like that. He will give you no trouble.”
“And why,” Dunc Blackburn asked, tilting his head to gaze shrewdly at Swinnington, “are you bringing us this here intelligence?”
“Well sir, I’ve been paid to offer you this little tip. There’s a certain party who would like to see that shotgun messenger dead—him and his young companion both. This party, himself having been wounded, and being somewhat outgunned in Dead-wood, and having business some ways to the West, why, he cannot take care of the matter himself. So knowing you boys were out here …”
“And how’d he know we were camping nigh to this here spring?” the taller man asked, the question cracking like a whip.
“Mr. Burke works on the, ah, fringes of your profession—he knows some of your associates, it seems.”
Burke wouldn’t like his name brought into this, but Swinnington was afraid these men would kill him for his watch and mule alone—or for sport. Burke’s name might convince them that they’d be making an enemy if they killed him.
“Burke … Yo-han Burke?” Blackburn muttered. “Why didn’t he come hisself?”
“I told you, my friend, he had business elsewhere. He’ll be back. I believe he expects—that is, we expect—a cut of anything you obtain.” Swinnington suspected that there were other reasons Burke had kept himself in the shadows. If Pierce knew about this little deal Burke would wake to find a rope around his neck—because some of that mining gold in the shipment was Pierce’s.
“Well now,” Blackburn said thoughtfully. “Yo-han Burke …” He and his partner exchanged glances—and shrugs. “All right—you can go. But keep quiet.”
“Dunc—what if he’s lyin’ about Burke?” the taller man mused. “What if this is some kind of ambush set up? He could be an agent for the gov’mint …”
Swinnington drew himself up to his full height. “Sir, I’m shocked at the suggestion. The government indeed! That is an insult! I hail from Virginia, and I do not approve of the so-called Union. In any event, I am not long out of the Federal Penitentiary myself. Just a year ago, it was, that I departed that kindly institution. A matter of so-called ‘land fraud’, so they said. A miscarriage of justice, is what it was, in truth.”
“I don’t care what kind of carriage you rode in,” Blackburn said. “Keep your mouth shut. And get the hell out of here. We’ll take care of that gold shipment …”
Swinnington simply tipped his hat, mounted his mule, and rode back toward Deadwood with all the dignity he could muster.
* * *
Wyatt wasn’t terribly concerned when he woke in the stable to find that Henry was missing. The boy was probably at the outhouse.
He dressed, and cleaned himself up at the water trough as much as he could, shivering in the morning chill, then returned to the livery stall—and only then noticed that Henry’s bedroll seemed to have been untouched; it was rolled exactly as it had been the night before. He remembered that the boy had sat up with the lamp burning, paging through Ivanhoe. Had he slipped out in the night? It had been a mistake, it seemed, to give Henry the money he’d earned …
Wyatt looked at his pocket watch. He was due to meet Gray at the stage in forty-five minutes. With a mingling of irritation and anxiety, Wyatt gathered up their effects, and went in search of Henry.
The morning was crisp; it smelled of wood smoke and horses and spruce trees. Only a few miners were about, and a couple of sleepy merchants. But here was Colorado Charlie Utter, coming out of the No. 10.
“Charlie, have you been playing the night through?”
“I have, Wyatt, and I regret losing both the sleep and the cash. But say, I saw that boy of yours, stumbling through the bar, around three in the morning. He was headed toward the Dancing Lady with a gypsy girl who can be counted on to show up about the time the miners are too drunk to stand … He was carrying a jug of Old Orchard.”
“The devil you say! Why the little …”
Charlie laughed, and then waved wearily and set off for his tent. Wyatt went in search of the Dancing Lady. He found Henry in less than ten minutes, on the ground outside the dance hall. The boy was huddled against a rain barrel, alternating between snoring and moaning to himself, and smelling strongly of spirits.
“Come on, Henry, we have a stage to catch! Unless you plan to stay here in Deadwood.”
“What?” Henry sat up straight with a start, and then whimpered, clutching his head. “Stay here? No … don’t … wanna stay here … by myself …”
“Are you sure? You think you’re man enough to drink. You ought to be man enough to take care of yourself.”
“If that’s … if it’s what you … Oh Lord … My head …”
“It isn’t what I want,” Wyatt admitted, taking pity on him. “I just hate to find you sleeping in the street like a goddamned bindlestiff. But this isn’t a fit place to leave a … to leave anyone. Is your money gone?”
Henry fumbled through his pockets. Then he nodded mutely, his mouth buckling.
“I thought it’d be. She just bided her time. Some lessons are expensive. I learned a few hard ones myself.” Wyatt patted the boy on the shoulder. “You come with me … we’ll get us something to eat and get on the stage. I expect some of that oatmeal and molasses is hot, about now. Maybe we’ll get us some eggs too …”
“Molasses … eggs?” Henry clutched his stomach, and bent over. Wyatt stepped hastily back, just barely fast enough to avoid getting vomit on his boots.
* * *
Blinking in the dusty wind, Wyatt held the sawed-off shotgun across his lap with his right hand, his other hand gripping the rail edging the coach’s box as they rollicked along between steep hillsides, under a clear blue sky.
Conscious of the long journey ahead of them, John Slaughter drove the stagecoach at a breakneck pace; he was a gangly, long-chinned, rusty-mustached, wolf-eyed man somewhere past thirty-five, his shoulder-length red-brown hair tied back with a leather thong.
The stagecoach, an aging and trail-worn Concord imported from the East, rocked when it hit a rut, shuddered at every stone, and leaned precariously when they took corners. The motion made Wyatt redouble his grip on the small iron rail next to the shotgun messen
ger’s side of the box. Down below, curled up alone on the stagecoach’s passenger seats, Henry groaned when they struck the rougher spots.
Slaughter chuckled and ducked his head whenever he heard Henry groaning—and he had to be groaning loudly to be heard over the perpetual creaking of the coach on its decaying bolsters, the rattle of the wheels, the clatter of the horse’s hooves. “That’ll sure teach that boy not to get a sore head before taking to the road …”
Wyatt nodded, admiring the way Slaughter handled the team when they came to a sharp turn. The driver eased around the curves with fine adjustments of the reins and gentle pulls on the brake lever. Wyatt had never driven a stagecoach himself but he thought he could manage it, with a little training, though the team was a big one: the “hitch” consisted of three pairs of horses, of successively smaller sizes.
The nearest horses to the coach were the “wheelers”, the biggest and best trained. Guided by the driver’s lines, they started the turns; the center pair, the “swings”, weighed a bit less but did their share of pulling; the lead pair was usually the smallest horses in the hitch, and they helped lead by watching the road. Wyatt sat behind the “off” horses, on the right; Slaughter drove from behind the “near” horses on the left.
“How do you get all these animals guided around some of these sharp turns?” Wyatt asked, having to shout over the noise of the stagecoach. “I can figure for two horses, but six …”
“I’ll tell you, when it gets twisty, you got to turn each pair of horses separately—I got reins in hand for each pair, do y’see—otherwise they get themselves tangled up!”
“You don’t whip ’em, I see.”
“Nah, I need both hands for all these lines! A fella whips ’em, that’s just showboating, that is. Ruin a good hitch with whipping. Yet some folks will persist in callin’ the driver ‘the whip’.”
“You figure us close to the Cheyenne River?”
