Straight Outta Deadwood

by David Boop

  “So you’re going to destroy it?”

  “Destroying something like this isn’t as easy as moving it or capturing it,” the plague doctor said, and sighed. “Without a gathering of plague doctors to help, it would be very dangerous. Most likely deadly.” He turned his face to look square at Leon, something new in his dark eyes, an invitation for Leon to understand.

  Leon had wanted to believe that he would sacrifice himself for principles that he hadn’t really possessed. This odd little man offered him a new choice: face possible martyrdom instead of claiming it retroactively. Leon felt like he stood at the edge of a cliff. It terrified him.

  It was a second chance to be the Leon he wanted to believe he was.

  “You got a name?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t fancy waltzing down to hell with someone whose name I don’t even know.”

  The plague doctor laughed. “Theodore.”

  “All right, Theodore.” Leon smiled, and it felt strange and free, like he was taking his first breath in weeks. “Where to?”

  BIGGER THAN LIFE

  Steve Rasnic Tem

  Dawson never had many friends. Not that he disliked company; he just didn’t have the talent for it. He’d say the wrong thing, or they’d say the wrong thing, and then there’d be a scrap, and by the end of the night he’d either be in the local calaboose with acquaintances he couldn’t abide or heading out on his own again, living the hermit’s life.

  What he truly needed, he believed, was a wife, but he had no better luck with romance than he had with friendships.

  “No sir, what you need is some tin,” the grizzled prospector said, stirring the fire.

  Dawson hadn’t been aware he’d spoken aloud. But he was so tired, and the San Juan mountain air so chill, the campfire had him near hypnotized.

  “That’s money, to a greenhorn like you. You get yourself some money, and the compadres and the females are bound to come around. Grab yourself a root and try some of this.” Old Tate passed the stick with what remained of the burnt squirrel. It was mountain squirrel, and bigger than the ones Dawson was used to back East, but skinned and blackened like that it could just as well been a rat. Still, he hadn’t had a hot meal since that first day off the train in Denver two months ago. Dawson picked up one of the potatoes on the edge of the fire and took a bite, then leaned in and commenced gnawing on the squirrel.

  Tate looked sheepish. “Now it ain’t my business—long as you do your part with the claim, I’m happy to give you a share—but could you tell me what all them marriage proposals is about? You ain’t addle-headed, is you?”

  “Well.” Reluctantly, Dawson put the meat down. “I reckon love is a kind of madness, as the poets say. But I’ve been alone most of my life, and I’m damned tired of it. I’m flusterated with the whole business, to be frank. A man needs something bigger than hisself, and that means a family, a house and kids—the whole kit and caboodle.”

  “Oh, I get that. But askin’ every woman you meet if she’ll marry you? That farm gal yesterday was a grandma—looked like she were on death’s door. Seventy if she were a day! Besides, she had money and property. A bit above your bend, I’d say.”

  “Love knows nothing of age or class. She were still female, weren’t she? Not a lot of women in these mountains. Love is a gamble—I’m trying to improve my odds. I don’t much fancy the idea of dyin’ alone.”

  “I bet you ain’t heard many yeses!”

  “I reckon I just need the one.” He paused, turning the stick with the carcass between his hands. “Marital bliss is a big thing, and that’s what I’m aiming for. Something big enough to swallow me up. You ever feel that way, Tate?” The prospector grunted. “Well, the war was like that. Big and angry and eatin’ men—young’uns and old codgers alike—alive, sometimes spittin’ them out with parts missing. They tell me love can be like that, too, and marriage, ’cept it don’t kill you. Mostly.” Dawson went back to his meat.

  * * *

  Something woke Dawson up in the middle of the night. He sat up quickly and stared around, confused for a moment as to where he might be. This happened to him all the time. He’d moved around a great deal since he first left home to join the 23rd Virginia Volunteers, sleeping under a different sky almost every week. Then, after the war, there’d been farm work down South, and a little ranch work in the Midwest, all the while still wearing pieces of his Confederate uniform until they rotted off and showed his scars. If folks took offense at the uniform, or the scars, he’d just move on. If they asked about the war, he declined to discuss it.

  That’s when he decided to get married. He’d tried every other job, so why not? But he was aging fast, and God knew when his days would be over, so he commenced asking every likely match and more than a few that weren’t. Married women, fresh young maidens, women with babies sitting with their husbands in church. Why not? He kept hearing it was a free country now. Maybe the marriage wasn’t happy. Maybe the husband wanted to get rid of her. He reckoned they could always say no.

  “Will you be my own?”

  That’s the way he put it. He thought it sounded sweet that way, although apparently not everybody agreed. He was run off more than once, jailed a few times, threatened, beat up, shot at. But anything worth having was worth taking a risk.

  He’d read in the newspapers about the gold found in Colorado, and then the silver. People were going out there to find their fortunes. And wives were expensive, or so he’d been told. Soon as he saved enough for the train trip, he was on his way. He spent a few nights drunk in Denver before journeying south and west into the mountains, arriving one hot day in Rico on the Rio Grande Southern.

  He kept staring into the Colorado dark trying to get his eyes to adjust. There were things moving around out there, but he couldn’t rightly tell what they were. He still wasn’t used to the western nights. On cloudy evenings, they were the blackest he’d ever seen. The few glowing embers left in the fire didn’t help none. If anything they lit up just a hint of things he probably wasn’t meant to see.

  Then there was this low, far-off moan that shook the ground. Dawson could feel it moving up through his feet and kissing his spine. Was that what woke him up? He afeared it, whatever it was.

  “That’s the bolter,” the prospector said groggily from under his blanket. “It’s when you don’t hear him is when you should worry, which I reckon is most of the time. Lonesome sound, ain’t it? Calling for his mate ’cept his mate ain’t there. I never hear tell of two of ’em together.”

  “Bolter?”

  “Slide-rock bolter. It’s like a, well, a mountain whale.”

  “Who you trying to fool, old-timer? Whales die out of the water. I seen them, rotting up on the shore. Besides, whales don’t make a sound. Afore the war, I spent a year on a square-rigger out of Boston. Heard them whales splashin’ aplenty. But they were mute, not like a dog or a donkey.”

  “You just never heared them underwater, talkin’ sweet to their ladies.”

  Dawson barked a laugh. “Like me, you mean? You’re a crazy old man. Is that the kind of tall tale you tell flatlanders?”

  Tate shook his head vigorously. “Now I didn’t say whale. I said like a whale. Different critter entirely. Bolter’s bigger than a whale, I reckon. But they’s a likeness. Shaped like the world’s biggest teardrop, and up front surely the world’s biggest mouth. Two giant eyes you don’t notice till they opens, and all that skull plate above, like a cliff. It’s even got a big tail like a whale, ’cept the bolter’s got a bunch of hooks under the tail, like fingers, so it can clamp itself on top one of them steep mountain sides. It hears something below, something loud enough to bother with, it lets go and slides down the mountain mouth open, gobbling up pert near everything in its path: trees, rocks and all, and whatever folks unlucky enough to get in the way.”

  Dawson wasn’t believing a word of this, of course. He figured the old prospector had been wandering these mountains alone too long, more evidence of the
ravages of the unmarried life. But still, Dawson had to wonder how the fellow had all this worked out in his head. “So, you got him—the bolter—down the mountain. How does he get back up again?”

  “Best part.” Tate grinned. “It’s them finger things under his tail. They’s strong. They dig into the dirt and the rocks, and they drag him back up the slope a little bit at a time, and they anchor him to the top again until he’s ready for his next meal. Now a good night to you.” The prospector rolled over and covered his head.

  Dawson studied the night some more, and eventually must have fallen asleep. The next thing he knew he was peeling back his lids to a fresh fire of sun.

  All that next day they did more digging, widening and deepening the tunnel the prospector had made in the side of the mountain, shoring it up with timbers as they went. It’s what they did most days. Dawson didn’t mind the work much, though he didn’t know how he’d feel once they got deeper under the ground. Dawson liked it much better when sometimes Tate would take the morning off, and they’d go scrambling around the slopes, looking for traces of silver ore where the ground had sheared away, or picking through the remnants of a recent slide for whatever they could find. Tate had almost a biblical faith in his claim, but couldn’t stop worrying there might be something better only a short hike away.

  On one of those mornings, a few days later, Tate found a rusted pick, along with the twisted remains of a coffee pot, a tin cup and a few scraps of cloth. He crouched down and started pawing through the piles of torn ground.

  Dawson held back a bit, uneasy. “What you looking for now?”

  “This poor feller’s bones, if any are left, and maybe something to tell me who he was.”

  Dawson looked around. “You think Utes, or claim jumpers?”

  “Utes ain’t no bother, not since that ’greement took this land out of their reservation. We’re in a slide, son. Can’t you see? I reckon this be bolter work.”

  Dawson looked left and right, finding the edges of the disturbance, and then he gazed straight up the incline to the cliff above. A wide path of nothing led away and up the slope as far as he could see: no trees or other plants, no rocks of any great size, as if a giant spoon had scooped the top off the ground. He squinted. The top of the mountain looked perfectly normal as far as he could tell.

  Dawson frowned at Tate. “If there’s a giant so-called bolter hanging up there at the top of the peak, how come I can’t see him? In fact, I looked at a lot of these mountain tops, and I ain’t seen nary a one!”

  “You can’t take my word for it, a new feller like you? You gotta question everything?”

  “What, you ain’t got no answers?”

  The prospector sighed. “You seen a horny toad, ain’t you?”

  “Heard of ’em.”

  “Well, it’s like that. Them bolters got a hide on ’em looks like rocks and ground. They blends right in. You could be standin’ right on top of one them bolters and not even know it!”

  Dawson looked down at his feet and shuffled nervously, looking for some sign of the giant creature he might be standing on. He scowled at old Tate. “Ah, you’re just fooling.” He waited for a response. Getting none, he said, “Ain’t you?”

  The next day they took the wagon down to Rico for supplies. Rico was a relatively new place in the world, first born out of whatever wealth could be squeezed out of fur trapping, then later that crazy passion for gold, and then silver out of the Blackhawk and Telescope mountains. Hell, “rich” was right there in the town’s Spanish name. Folks in these parts weren’t much for philosophizing; they knew exactly why they were there.

  Tate had a long list for the general mercantile: beans and hardtack, flour and Arbuckle’s coffee and bacon and those love apples in a can the old prospector loved so much. But Dawson had his own plans for while Tate filled that order. He’d been working so hard up in those mountains, he hadn’t had much time to check out the local talent.

  He’d spent the day before getting ready, washing that old red shirt of his in the creek, pounding the dirt out on the rocks and then draping it over a squaw apple bush to dry (hopefully getting some of that sweet perfume on it as well). And this morning he shaved—first time since he’d been in the San Juans. It was a torturous operation, and he come out of it with a few nicks which he hoped would add character to his admittedly plain-headed appearance.

  First thing he did was ask an old pod outside the mercantile where they were hiding the women. The feller grinned and pointed him toward a smart-looking house down the street, a bed house for a bunch of calico queens. Now Dawson wasn’t a prude, even though he’d been saving himself for the right woman. He believed in forgiveness and second chances, and figured there was nothing wrong in calling at a whorehouse, even though it wasn’t the usual way courtship occurred. He picked one out and went upstairs with her and when she tried to get his clothes off he kneeled down and said, “Will you be my own?”

  She looked down at him—he’d thought she was young, but from that angle she looked as old as his ma—and said, “I’m whatever you want me to be, honey. Long as I get paid.”

  “Well, I got no money.”

  “Then how were you going to pay for sex?”

  “I’m saving myself for my one and only,” he replied.

  Next thing Dawson knew, some old rusty guts had pushed him out the front door all the while scolding him for wasting the lady’s time.

  Undeterred, Dawson went on down the street to where there was a little church. In the yard outside that church, there were tables and chairs and some kind of supper was being served. Dawson sidled up to a table full of women and sat down, tucked a napkin inside his collar, and grinned at the woman sitting next to him.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I don’t think I know you. Are you a member of this congregation?”

  Dawson ducked his head, reached out and took her hand firmly in his. “I could be, if you would agree to be my own.” He was so focused on his new love—the rising red in her face only an improvement in her appearance—he didn’t notice those tall blue-skins closing in until it was too late.

  * * *

  Tate laid another strip of bacon across Dawson’s swollen cheek and examined the results. “You can leave that on awhile, but you get blood on it, it’s your breakfast, not mine.”

  Dawson didn’t know how late it was. It might have been dark out, but he still couldn’t see too well to know for sure. He’d slept some, but he didn’t know how long.

  “Thanks for saving me.”

  “It were pure chance, son. I give up on you, to speak plain. I heard about that dustup at the whorehouse, and then them shenanigans at the church. Hell, boy, you can’t mess with them Presbyterians. Some of them folks is fully armed.

  “I can’t get atwixt you and the locals. I need them folks for my supplies. I was on my way out of town, quick as possible, when you run right into the wagon makin’ your escape from all them church people. I wasn’t there to save you, frankly.”

  Dawson smiled up at Tate from between two slabs of bacon. “Well, anyway, thanks for not turning me in.”

  “Oh, I didn’t reckon they’d had time to put up no reward money yet.” He cackled as if that was the funniest thing anyone’d ever said.

  An hour or so later, they peeled the bacon off Dawson’s face and fried it up for dinner. Tate even cracked open one of those cans of love apples to celebrate Dawson’s survival. Dawson tried to relax some, but he was feeling all jumpy, sorry that he might have caused trouble for Tate. Sorrier still for the state of his social life. Clearly, his attentions weren’t welcome in the town of Rico. He wondered if there was any place in the world where they would be.

  The night itself seemed to hum in nervous sympathy. There was a constant rustle in the brush, the ticks and flaps of bugs. The air was warmer than it had been in weeks, and the gnats and horseflies were out in their aggravating multitudes. Dawson was ready to jump out of his skin. Even Tate, seemingly too old to worry, looked cautiou
s, moving thoughtfully and deliberately as he cooked their meal.

  Suddenly Tate raised his head and stared at that stretch of darkness between them and the town. “Did you hear that?” he murmured.

  “Hear what?” But then there was a clang, and a progression of muffled thumps like boots in sand. And if Dawson wasn’t mistaken, a voice or two.

  “Just wait. Move away from the fire.” Tate slipped off into the shadows.

  Dawson backed into the taller brush away from the campfire. For a moment, he thought he heard that same low moaning as the other night. It made his toes itch inside his boots. But maybe he was imagining things because he didn’t hear it again. Some birds exploded from the top of a nearby tree, and he pissed himself a mite.

  More voices and steps in the darkness beyond the campfire. Old Tate reappeared, panting. “Luddy mussy, Dawson,” he whispered. “It’s them damn Presbyterians. We got to get you out of here.”

  Two tall gents in their Sunday-go-to-meeting best stepped into the edge of the firelight, guns drawn. A number of grayish shapes pushed out of the gloom behind them. Tate reached into the campfire and drug out a burning stick and began swinging it around his head, shouting at them. Dawson ran away into the darkness and stumbled, catching his balance before he fell on his face. He staggered around until he found himself down the slope below the campsite. He looked up the hill and watched Tate still swinging the fiery stick as a large number of men approached. Everybody was shouting: warnings, threats, maybe even a growl or two. Maybe even a roar. The ground began to shake apart, and Dawson fell to his knees.

  There was that tremendous moan again, but closer, louder as it descended the hill. Dawson thought of a train, or a herd of cattle stampeding in panic. And then there was the noise that drowned out everything in a calamity of rocks and dirt and trees flying past him down the mountain. He threw himself face first in the dirt and put his hands over his head.

  He heard the men scream and glanced up. A massive cliff of gnarled rock and ground suddenly filled the sky, a savagerous maw opening at its center and sucking all those poor souls inside. Tate’s flaming stick bounced harmlessly off a vertical snout higher than four men, momentarily illuminating a gigantic blood-filled eye.