(1986) Deadwood

by Pete Dexter

  She sat on the cushion next to Swearingen and he gave her the reins. "Tell that boy it ain't settled," he said. And then he crawled into the back.

  Bill sent the boy ahead to scout, mostly to get him out of his sight. Thirty-two wagons were safe from Indians. He climbed up next to Charley and said, "I ought to of finished it and got the whole episode out of my mind."

  Bill could put things out of his mind, once they were dead. The boy moved a quarter of a mile out in front, and beyond him were the Hills. The wagons strung out in back of Charley and Bill, the wheels creaked and the mules blew and complained and once, just after they'd straightened into a line, Charley looked back and saw old Peerless lying in the dirt, next to a hole that was supposed to be his grave. It looked like God Himself had dropped him out of the sky, and he'd bounced once when he hit.

  Let the Indians figure that out.

  They came into deadwood downhill, from the south, the gulch fell out of the mountains, long and narrow, following the Whitewood Creek, and where things widened enough for a town sign, that was Deadwood. It was noon, July 17. The place looked miles long and yards wide, half of it tents. The Whitewood joined a smaller creek—the Deadwood—at the south end and ran the length of the town. The mud was a foot deep, and every kind of waste in creation was thrown into the street to mix with it. The mountains that defined the boundaries were spare of live trees. There were thousands of the dead, charred black trunks lying across each other on the ground.

  "How's it look to you?" Bill said. He was handling the reins, sitting tall and handsome, nodding at voices when somebody called to him from the street. The word of who it was in the wagon got through town before Charley and Bill made a hundred yards.

  "Like something out of the Bible," Charley said. They rode through, the mud sticking to the wheels and the mules until it broke off from its own weight. It took most of an hour to get the train down Main Street, stopping to shake hands and once to give an interview to a reporter from the Black Hills Pioneer. Although he enjoyed a taste for the printed word, Charley winced to hear there was already a paper in town.

  They went farther north, and the population changed. Whores and roughs and gamblers stood in the doorways, holding drinks, shooting their guns into the air. It was a part of the city called the badlands, and it was as far as the whore wagons went. The place was shabby, but the ladies there looked better to Charley than the load they'd delivered. Some stood in the windows, as good as naked. "What part of the Bible?" Bill said, when they were alone again.

  "Where God got angry," Charley said.

  A hundred people suddenly came together in the street in front of them. Bill steadied the mules, and one of the men climbed halfway onto the wagon with them and shook Bill's hand. He was wearing a cheap leather coat, fringed, and two pistols.

  "Captain Jack Crawford," the man said. Bill gave him his left hand. "On behalf of the city of Dead wood, Dakota Territory, I would like to welcome you and your party, and express the hope that you are here to settle and prosper. We can use men of your ilk here."

  Ilk again.

  "Thank you," Bill said.

  The man seemed to notice Charley then, but couldn't bring himself to let go of Bill's hand. "Captain Jack Crawford," he said to Charley. "Scout, poet, and duly authorized captain of the Black Hills Minutemen. We can always use volunteers, lads, with the Indian situation."

  "Charles Utter," Charley said. "Does this place have a bathhouse?"

  The question drew its share of comment from the crowd, which

  Captain Jack pretended not to hear. He pointed back up the street and said it was five blocks on the left. "You passed it on the way in," he said. Then he looked around and said, "It's too bad there's not more who have asked the question." Before they could get him off the wagon, Captain Jack had told them where to graze the mules and where to find women, and that he had personally ridden with Custer and Buffalo Bill Cody.

  They turned around and found a place to camp on the other side of the Whitewood Creek, between the badlands and the bathhouse, across the street from the Betwix-Stops Saloon, which was a canvas tent. The proprietor had turned two barrels upside down in the doorway and laid a piece of lumber across them, and was selling whiskey from the States at fifty cents a shot.

  They left the wagon three yards from the creek and blocked the wheels with logs. The boy took the mules to the north end of town beyond the badlands, where the canyon widened and the ground was flat and grassy. Charley got his blankets from inside the wagon and threw them over the top to air out. Bill sat on a tree stump curling his hair around his finger.

  "I've got a feeling about,this camp," he said, "a premonition."

  Charley stopped his chores. He had known those who made a career of black feelings, but Bill was never like that, and Charley took this seriously.

  A month after the shooting in Abilene, for instance, a reporter appeared from Philadelphia—that was a class of paper-collars Charley would like to have studied, reporters—and told Bill how Bill had stood in the middle of the street, Phil Coe and four of his brothers shooting at him from every cowardly angle the area afforded, and that Bill had operated there, calm as an engine, picking them off one by one. The reporter said, "How do you sustain your courage in the face of death's odds?"

  Bill never blinked. He said, "When you know in your heart the bullet hasn't been made with your name on it, there is no tremble in your hand at the weight of a Colt."

  The reporter took it down word for word—Bill had to say it twice for him—and then he got drunk four nights straight and then he got on the stage east and went home to Philadelphia. Bill said later he was a good reporter, although he never straightened him out on how many Coes he killed that day—or how many policemen—but what he said about knowing the bullet hadn't been made yet for him, that was true. He'd told Charley much the same thing.

  The change in him came with the blood disease, or with Agnes, or with losing his sight. Charley was not sure those were separate things.

  "What kind of premonition?" he said.

  "This is the last camp," Bill said.

  "We could go somewhere else," Charley said. "We're not married to this place yet."

  Bill shook his head. "There's something here for us," he said. He looked up and around, and Charley believed that in his own way Bill could see the hills around them clearer than he could. It had something to do with the way things connected for him. "You don't wind up in a place like this for no reason," Bill said.

  Boone May was lying in a bed on the second floor of the gem Theater on top of Lurline Monti Verdi. He loved to say her name. He was finished now, but he liked to lie on top of her and watch her face when she panicked. After the passion left her, Lurline's thoughts always went to suffocation.

  Boone May was oversize—he had a head on him a foot across— and he would lie on her until her breathing changed. Then she would push at his chest with those little white hands. "Boone, honey, I can't breathe . . ." And a couple of minutes later she would be pounding his head with her fists, screaming he was killing her. Boone loved the feel of those soft little fists against his head as much as the sound of her name. Nobody ever came to help.

  Screaming didn't mean a thing at the Gem Theater, and even if it did, everybody knew when Boone was upstairs, and he was the last man on God's earth you wanted to walk in on during fornication.

  He waited for her now, patiently. There was a chair beside the bed, where he'd left his clothes. All except his underwear, which he only removed under sheets. His pants were buckskin, and he'd hung them over the back. On top of that was a leather bag, drawn together at the top by a piece of rawhide. Frank Towles's head was inside it. There was a two-hundred-dollar reward for Frank, but the way things had got between Boone and Sheriff Bullock, he'd have to ride back to Cheyenne to collect. That's where Frank was wanted.

  Boone May didn't know where it went wrong between him and Seth Bullock. The way it always worked, when road agents was identified, Bull
ock always sent him and W. H. Llewellyn out to bring them back. W.H. was Boone's partner. They hired out as messenger guards for payrolls and gold shipments together, and they both took it as a compliment that the sheriff always came to them to bring in the worst agents. The way the business worked, somebody always got shot, them or the agents. Boone May had begun to see that the sheriff didn't care who that was, and did not take that as such a compliment.

  She began to push at him now, and he smiled. He had teeth the size of a dirt farmer's fingernails. Lurline Monti Verdi was a singer and a blackjack dealer, and she fucked more highwaymen than there was bullets to shoot them. She liked that risky feeling. The head would be a surprise.

  "All right, Boone," she said. "Get off now . . ."

  He lifted his legs up off the bed to put more of his weight on her chest. Her mouth was painted into a little heart, and he could see the tip of her tongue in there in the dark. She began to squirm, but each way she rolled he moved against it, not letting her move an inch.

  Her teeth clenched and she bucked, but he stayed on top, watching her mouth. It wasn't the feel of her underneath him now, it was all in her face. And then she begged him. "Please, honey, I can't breathe. Really, this time . . ." And then one of the fists hit his ear.

  "You're killing me." She said that over and over, banging him, turning red and then white, and he watched it until he was sure it was real, until she quit hitting him with her fists, until she couldn't scream. In the end, her eyes came wide open and fixed on him and waited to see if he was going to call it off or kill her.

  Boone stared at her, feeling the warm, sweet places where her fists had hit his head. He put his hands against the mattress on either side of her and pushed up half a foot. She took that much air.

  Boone looked down at her breasts, the scar across her stomach— Doc Howe had made a mess of that, sewed her up with fish line— the little tangle of hair down where her legs come together. Boone had hung a man last year in Hill City who married a whore and then killed her for all the men she'd had. They paid Boone fifteen dollars to do it. He set the killer on his horse under a pine tree and put a rope around his neck—for fifteen dollars you didn't get much in the way of trappings—but before he slapped the horse out from under him, he asked if he had any last words. The man looked him dead in the eye and said, "Boone May, you know why God put hair on a woman's pussy?"

  Boone was taken back. "This here's your last'words," he said.

  The killer said, "To camouflage the hook," and went off into eternity.

  Lurline put an arm over her breasts and turned halfway over. His arm stopped her. "One day you're going to kill me, ain't you?" she said. He leaned down and kissed her shoulder, then her neck.

  "What do you think?" he said.

  "I think you'll kill me," she said. He moved off her and lay down on his back, smiling. She sat up and looked the other way. Her back was smooth and pale, it looked like you could snap it between your fingers.

  "Well," he said, "there's worst ways to go." He watched her back, and before long he saw her shoulders move forward, like she was coughing. In a minute she'd be laughing out loud, it was the same every time. He reached under the sheets and found his long underwear, and got himself decent. He didn't get out of bed, though.

  "I brung you a surprise."

  She turned around and smiled. "Where?" she said. Her eyes were wet in the corners. She wiped at them with the back of her hand, and then pulled down on her cheeks, like she was stretching them. "You never brung me nothing before," she said. He could see she didn't believe him.

  There was something happening outside, they heard the noise. It sounded like a dogfight. Maybe Pink Buford had found somebody to fight his bulldog. She put on her shoes and walked to the window, and then stood there with her hands on the sill for a long time, buck-naked, watching it. Forgetting that he said he had something to give her.

  Boone looked at the leather bag, then back at the window. He didn't like to be treated incidental. "Lurline?" he said. She didn't say nothing, didn't seem to hear him. It wasn't no dogfight, the excitement wasn't the right pace. "What is it, a wagon train?"

  She turned back to him, smiling. "You ain't going to believe this," she said, real happy now. "It's Wild Bill down there. Wild Bill in Deadwood."

  Boone got out of bed and went to the window. He looked out and saw half the population of the badlands standing in the street in front of a wagon, some from the proper end of town, too. While he was watching, Captain Jack Crawford climbed up onto the wagon and shook hands with the man holding the reins. He was sitting straight and serious, wide shoulders, dressed in expensive buckskin. The one with him was small, and dressed even fancier. Both of them had hair down to the shoulders.

  "That ain't Wild Bill," he said, but he knew it was.

  Lurline had left the window and was back sitting on the bed, dressing. She put on her undies and her garter belt and stockings, and then pulled her dress over her head. The more she put on, the less he liked her. "I brung you a surprise," he said again. He wished he'd stayed on top of her a little longer, help her remember him.

  She slipped her feet back into her shoes—they were more like slippers, now that he noticed, you couldn't take two steps in the street but they'd get sucked up in the mud—and headed for the dresser. She had a bottle of toilet water there, along with smaller bottles of perfume. She splashed some into her hand and rubbed it all around her neck and then down the front of her dress.

  "That little sissy with him probably got more shit on than you do," Boone said. She didn't seem to know he was in the room. She dropped on her knees and reached up under the dresser, came out with a bone-handled mirror, and fluffed at her hair with one hand while she held on to the looking glass with the other. From her expression, she wasn't satisfied with what was there.

  She hid the mirror back under the dresser, taking her time with that, and headed toward the door. He stepped in front of her, and she stepped back, suddenly finding him there. Boone was faster than he looked, that was where a lot of characters was fatally fooled. And Boone May never gave you a chance to fool him back.

  "You don't care what I brung you?" he said.

  She looked at him without sparkle. "All right," she said, "what is it?" It wasn't the way it was supposed to be, with her crawling all over him, begging.

  "Something from Cheyenne," he said. He saw an interest stir. Maybe she thought it was something to wear. Lurline spent every cent she made on clothes. She had four dresses that he knew of.

  "Well?" she said.

  "You got to find it," he said.

  She shrugged, then looked over at the pile of clothes on the chair. "It's in there," she said. Boone smiled at her, and she walked over, the heels of her slippers making hoof noises across the pine floor, and picked up his pants. There was pockets in back, and she reached in and come out with Harry Pine's front tooth. Boone had broke it off while he was looking for gold teeth, and kept it for good luck. He meant to have a piece of jewelry made with it.

  "What the hell?" she said.

  "That ain't it," he said. "Put it back."

  There was an oration in the street outside, then some clapping. She looked toward the window, forgetting what they were doing again. "I'm missing everything," she said.

  "It ain't nothing special," he said. She picked up his coat and put her hand in the pockets. She dropped the coat on the bed, beside his pants, and touched the leather bag. He smiled at her.

  She picked it up, interested in the weight. The bag was tied, and it took her a while to pick open the knot. "You ought not to chew your nails," he said.

  She got the knot loose and separated the pieces of rawhide. He stood still and watched her face. She opened the top and looked inside. "What is it?" she said.

  "Look and see," he said.

  She reached in, stopped, and then pulled it out by the hair. She held it up in front of her, eye to eye. He thought she was going to scream. "Shit," she said, "it's just Frank Towles."r />
  "It's his head," he said.

  She put it back in the bag and dropped it on the bed. "You been everyplace in the Hills with that head," she said. And then she walked around him, smelling like flowers, arid went out the door. Boone didn't stop her this time.

  He heard her slippers on the stairs and closed the door. He took Frank Towles's head out of the bag for a look. It wasn't true that he'd been everyplace in the Hills with it. He'd only had it three days. He'd tried to sell it to W. H. Llewellyn for $150, and save himself the trip back to Cheyenne, and he might of offered it for sale at the Green Front. That was all. Not everyplace in the Hills. It was strange, now he thought about it, how something could be worth $200 one place and not another. A head only had one value. A thing was worth what it was worth.

  He put the head back in the bag and tied it shut. Then he put on his pants and shirt and boots, and decided to move camp to Nuttall and Mann's Number 10 saloon, where the bartender— Harry Sam Young—was mixing the most expert gin and bitters in Deadwood. Pink gin was all Boone drunk, since he discovered it. It was Pink Buford's drink first, of course, he named himself after it. Besides owning the best dog in Deadwood, Pink might of been the best cardplayer too. He received visions at the card table. Boone admired Pink Buford for what he had, and wished there was a way to take it away from him.

  He put his gun in his pants and started out of the room. Before he got to the door, though, he looked at her dresser. He got on the floor and felt underneath. She'd hid the mirror in back, on top of a board. He saw his face in it once as he brought it out, and again in one of the pieces, after he'd broke it on the headboard of the bed.

  Bill and Charley had been in Deadwood four hours when the Mex rode into town carrying the head of an Indian. He held it up, away from the giant pieces of slop that were coming off his horse's hoofs, yelling some kind of Mexican yell. He rode to the bottom of the badlands, and then back up into the respectable part of town, and then back into the badlands. It was the most excitement since the wagon train, and the miners and roughs followed him up and down the street—some of them making the same noise he was.