Текст книги "Paradise Sky"

Автор книги: Joe R. Lansdale

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

“Where am I gonna get another nigger on short notice?” Snuffy said.

“You might try an Indian or a cripple,” I said. “Might even be a loose Mexican about, and I know there’s some Chinamen.”

“Ain’t the same, as you was the best spittoon emptier I ever had,” he said.

“Bullshit,” I said. “A blind bear could empty a spittoon if it took a mind to it and was willing to wear an apron.”

Snuffy studied on that a minute, perhaps trying to consider if a blind bear might be found around those parts—one that was willing to work, I mean.

“Ah, come on, Nat. You don’t need to quit.”

I had told him I was quitting but not that I was leaving Deadwood, and I kept it that way.

“Nope,” I said. “I’m done.”

Anyway, there I was taking the last of my back pay across the bar, and even ordering a sarsaparilla to irritate the men at the table, when Bill come strolling in. He was grinning when he saw me. He was dressed in blue pants and a leather jacket, had on a wide-brimmed, creamy white hat with a low crown. His revolvers was tucked in a wide red sash around his waist, near his hips, handles set forward so he could make with a cross-handed draw. Besides them two 1851 Navy pistols, he was carrying at the near center of his sash a Smith & Wesson Army .32 revolver with shiny bluing and rosewood grips. It wasn’t a gun he carried often; guess you could say it was his dress gun. His hair was combed out smooth and long, and his mustache had been waxed lightly. On his left hip he had a large bowie knife in a sheath dangling from under his sash, fastened most likely to a belt. He was all dressed up and had no place to go.

“Nat,” he said. “Let me stand you to a drink.”

“Thanks, Bill. You know I’m only for sarsaparilla.”

“That you are,” he said. “It’s a damn shameful girl’s drink, but if you must have it, dear sweetie, I will order it, and if I pay for three in a row, you have to lift your skirt for me.”

Bill, still grinning, leaned on the bar and propped his boot on the footrest beneath it. I could smell his breath, and it was stout as a mince pie; he had already been in the whiskey. He ordered us two swigs—me a refreshed sarsaparilla and him his usual poison, although from time to time he broke tradition and had a Champagne flip with fruit juice.

Snuffy, now that Bill had entered the room, was stepping lively, trying to look like he was the most pleasant, ass-kissing fellow on earth. He poured us a set. Me and Bill placed our backs against the bar, holding our drinks, looking over at the card table.

Bill was watching the game intently. He was a man who loved his gambling. He wasn’t near as good as some folks claimed, but he could play cards well enough to keep himself in whiskey and bullets, a steak now and again. I recognized the men at the table, including the owner of the place, Mr. Mann.

“Any minute now my shadow, Broken Nose, will come through that door,” Bill said. “He will most likely be snorting a little wind on account of when I first noticed he was trailing my scent I picked up my step. He will come in and act like he is my best friend that ever was.”

At just that moment, Jack did come in, blowing a little. He blinked a few times, seen Bill and me leaning against the bar, and came over. He stood in front of us, his bad eye wandering about in his head as if on a secret mission. He had on a ragged coat, a moth-eaten hat, and his boot heels had laid over on the sides due to wear.

Jack said, “Wild Bill, how are you, sir?”

“I am tight with life,” Bill said. “And how are you, Broken Nose?”

It seemed like an unnecessary insult, but Bill could be cruel.

“I am fine, sir.”

“Can I stand you to a drink?” Bill said.

“Well, sir, you have been most kind, and I could use one.”

There was something about Jack’s words that didn’t go with his tone or the look on his face. It was like he was trying to gleefully accept a turd and pretend it was a diamond.

“Pour this man a drink,” Bill said. “Some of the cheap stuff.”

“Yes, sir,” said the bartender. He brought out a bottle of whiskey, so watered you could see through it. He poured Jack a drink in a fly-specked glass. Jack took it and downed it. He brought out money of his own, said, “Give me another, and stand Wild Bill here, and even the nigger. Make it the good stuff.”

That went all over me, but Bill reached out and gently touched my arm. “Enjoy your drink, Nat.”

Bill picked up his glass when it was filled, said, “To the Union, and to the freedom of slaves. And to the snake that bit you. And may even drunkards, beggars, and cripples be saved by the all-merciful God. Unless they need killing.”

Jack’s hand trembled, but he dosed himself with his liquor, and Bill did the same. My glass had been filled with liquor this time, which I let be.

“Gentlemen,” Bill said, “and Jack, I am about to play cards.”

With that Bill moved away from us, over to the table. The chair available had its back to the entranceway, and Bill said to the man across the table, a fellow by the name of Charlie Rich, “Sir, would you change chairs with me? I have an aversion to sitting with my back to the door.”

“So do I,” said the man. It surprised me a little, as most folks were quick to give Bill his way. I remembered that table of men that night in the Gem, how they had given us their table so we could have a private talk. I didn’t know if Bill’s reputation was slipping or if Charlie Rich was just one of his constant card buddies, but it made me kind of proud of that fellow for standing up like that against the fastest and best shot there was.

Bill was taken aback, but he didn’t want to show it. Pride. That damn savage thing, which can be as much a burden as a quality, took over. “Very well,” Bill said. “But I sure would prefer that spot.”

“As do I,” Rich said. There wasn’t nothing mean in his tone, and he smiled when he said it. I think he knew he had Bill over a barrel, in that if Bill protested he would seem to be a whiner, and if he insisted he would appear to be a bully.

I glanced at Jack. He was taking a certain delight in this performance.

Bill nodded, took the seat with his back to the door. I turned to the bar, ordered another sarsaparilla for myself and nothing for Jack. As the bartender was pouring it, I seen an image in my glass. It was just a blurry reflection, but it was the man across the table, Charlie Rich, the one who had refused Bill his seat, and I can’t say for sure, but it seemed to me that blurry image nodded to Jack.

As I turned, Jack stepped forward, pulled a hidden .45 pistol from under his coat, said, “Damn you and your cheap charity. Take that, you son of a bitch,” and fired a shot that struck Bill in the back of the head. Blood sprayed from Bill, and I seen and heard the fellow to Bill’s right yell out in pain; the bullet had gone through Bill and hit him in the wrist.

Bill tipped forward with his face on the table, his open eyes turned toward me. That wild spark he had in them was already gone. His arm hung loose, and his hand dropped the cards it held. In that quick moment, them lying there on the floor, an incomplete hand, I seen they was aces and eights. The last card had yet to be drawn from the deck. Bill’s body slumped, and his weight dragged his face across the table, and he tumbled to the floor.

I came unfrozen, glanced at Jack. He lifted his pistol to shoot at me, but it hit on an empty cylinder or a dead load. He yelled out, “I have killed the son of a bitch,” and bolted.

I threw my sarsaparilla glass at Jack as he ran and missed, shattering the glass against the wall by the door. Then it was a footrace.

I come out of Mann’s hauling as fast as I could go, and that damn short-legged McCall that couldn’t keep up with Wild Bill was damn sure moving briskly along the boardwalks and planks that was draped across the muddy streets. Racing after him, I thought of pulling one of my pistols and plugging him, but I couldn’t bring myself to shoot him from behind, though that was exactly what he had done to Bill. I also thought it bad form to take a shot at him and accidentally shoot a child off a stick horse or some such.

I stomped over a long plank across a wide puddle, and damned if I didn’t slip and bury my leg knee-deep in mud, about two pounds of it seeping into my boot. By the time I got my leg yanked up and was back in the race, my boot was heavy with mud. Jack had done hit the other side of the street and was running with that pistol still in his hand. He was yelling, “I killed Wild Bill. I killed him.”

I was gaining on him as he reached the open door of a butcher shop. He acted as if he might dart inside, perhaps to run through and out the back, but a leg poked out from a doorway and stuck itself right in front of Jack, who did a tumble over it and landed in such a way, on top of his head, his hat come down near over his eyes. Then that leg kicked out again, and this time it caught Jack in the teeth. I seen it was Colorado Charlie Utter that had done the leg work. He gave Jack another kick, this one causing the little bastard to spit out a tooth. Jack was crawling, trying to get to the pistol he’d dropped, but another man come along, scooped it up, put it in his coat pocket, and walked off with it.

It was then that a bunch of men jumped on Jack, some of them coming out of the butcher shop. Jack was pulled up and hit a few times, then carried away in such a hustle that his feet wasn’t even touching ground.

Charlie was pulling his pistol, and had not a handful of men grabbed him he’d have shot Jack sure as rain is wet. Some of those men looked at me, knowing I was Bill’s friend, but there wasn’t any need. The heat had gone out of me. I was breathing heavy, and I leaned on the wall.

Jack was gone then, and Charlie stumbled over to me with tears in his eyes. “Say he’s a lying bastard, Nat.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I seen it done with my own eyes,” and I went about laying out the details as I knew them. Before I was even finished telling my story, Charlie had sunk to the boardwalk, his back against a storefront. I sat down beside him and pulled off my boot and dumped the mud out of it right there on the boardwalk. I was daring a man to come to me with an angry attitude about it, and it was a good thing none did.

Bill may have been a preening peacock, a little mean-spirited, and willing to screw a dead cow if he was drunk, but he had been my friend and had treated me decent all the time I had known him.

I decided right then and there to put the shooting match out of my mind, gather up everything I had, including Win and Madame, give my good-byes to Cullen and Wow, all them other China girls, and head out for the great beyond; anything to get away from that hellhole they called Deadwood.

20

I was sick to my stomach, and me and Charlie spent a few moments together cussing McCall’s name with oaths that would have made a preacher and a schoolteacher want to put a gun to their heads, then Charlie went to find out what was going on. I went wandering along the streets for quite a time, not really going anywhere, stopping now and again to lean on a building wall, and then I would lurch back into the street and walk some more. Finally I climbed up the hill to the shack where Win and Madame was.

Win and Madame was outside, as they was doing laundry and had their big wash pot boiling on a fire of broken lumber and sticks. Win seen my face and came running over to me. When she did my feet went out from under me, and I sat down on the ground. I don’t know how to explain it, cause me and Bill wasn’t the best of friends, but we had a bond in blood and gun smoke, and that’s a kind of bond can’t be explained; it fits tighter than a hub on a wheel.

“It’s Bill,” I said. “He’s done been killed by a coward.”

Win squatted down by me, and Madame came over, sat on the ground beside me, and threw an arm over my shoulders; it really felt good. I hadn’t had that kind of motherly attention since my ma died. Madame pulled me in close, and Win held me, too. I started crying. I wasn’t caterwauling or nothing, but I was crying, and this went on for some time. I figure, looking back on it, I wasn’t just crying for Bill but for my pa and ma and Mr. Loving. They all just wadded up together like bread dough in my mind. I felt as if everything that had ever been worth anything had just been sold cheap at auction. I couldn’t hold back the tears.

Between sobs and wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, I told them all that had happened and how it was that I wanted to head out no later than tomorrow, tonight if possible, and the shooting match be damned.

I hadn’t no more than finished telling this when I looked down and seen Charlie Utter in a fresh set of clothes. For a moment, way he was dressed, his long hair and all, I thought he was Wild Bill come back to life. I wiped my eyes quick and watched him slog up the hill.

He come up and took off his hat and nodded politely to the women, said, “Would you ladies mind too much if I had a private word with Nat here?”

They agreed as they would be good with that and went back to their laundry. But when I looked at them, I seen both was watching me close, just to make sure I didn’t come to pieces and need recollecting.

Charlie’s face was red, especially around the nose, and his eyes was bleary. “Walk with me, Nat?” he said.

“You have duded up,” I said as I followed him down the hill toward Main Street.

“I have. I went over and saw the body at the saloon, and me and some of the boys carried it over to the barber’s for cleaning, and from there we have plans to bring it out to a tent I’ve put up. I’ll watch over him, and tomorrow there’ll be the burial. Me and some others have chipped in for a coffin and some funeral doings.”

“I can chip in as well,” I said.

“That is appreciated,” he said. “But let me tell you the chip you need to give.”

“All right.”

We was down the hill now, wandering along Main Street. Word had gotten out about Bill, and the air around us was buzzing with it. There was people practically swarming down the street, yakking about what had happened as they went, talking almost all at once, rushing out of alleys and stores, fluttering down from the high-perch streets thick as flies in a bowl of molasses.

“Look at those goddamn vultures,” Charlie said. “If I didn’t have him hid out in the barbershop, they’d be in Mann’s Number Ten pulling his hair out and yanking the threads from his clothes, trying to dip handkerchiefs in his blood for souvenirs. They’d steal the boots and drawers off him if they could.”

Charlie paused to gaze at them with his face twisted up, and then he relaxed it and looked at me. “That shooting match. Bill told me you were a part of that, correct?”

“The desire for it has flown,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“Cause we wanted to give Bill’s widow something lest he look like he died poor, which in fact he did.”

“I see,” I said.

“We have him a funeral now, and a coffin, and he’ll be buried tomorrow before he ripens and swells, but it would seem right for him to have had a bit of a financial gathering for Agnes, who, by the way, I had no truck with and no interest in. I don’t know how much dearness Bill had for her, either, other than telling me about how flexible she was. But she is still his wife, and we would prefer Bill not die under circumstances that might have him considered a pauper.”

“He seemed well stocked when we met at the saloon,” I said.

“He liked to make a show,” Charlie said. “The gambling mostly emptied his pockets. He had a few dollars in his pants, a few on the card table, but those have gone to the funeral, along with what the rest of us tossed in. Well, you see how it looks.”

I didn’t care how it looked, but I did care about Bill.

“So how does this tie in with the shooting match?” I asked.

“We would like you to try and win that,” he said.

“Didn’t plan on trying to lose it,” I said. “But now I’m not planning at all.”

“If you win the prize, we thought you could donate that to be sent to Agnes, like Bill had been saving it up, and we will all make side bets in a way that you’ll make some real money for yourself as well. You will get your share from the bets; Bill’s widow will get her share from the prize money.”

“Who is the ‘we’ you mentioned?”

He named some men; some of them I knew, some I didn’t.

“You may be misplacing your faith,” I said.

“Bill had faith in you, and that’s good enough for me,” he said.

“Some days are better than others,” I said. “I don’t know the kind of day I’ll have if I shoot.”

Upon Bill’s death, my confidence had taken a departure. Before that, I was stuffed full of it.

“I can take that chance, and my friends can, too,” he said.

“Very well,” I said.

Moments before I had planned to walk away with nothing, forget the whole thing, head out of Deadwood. Now I was going to be shooting not only for myself but also for a friend, too, even if he was white and dead. I told Charlie, “Bill made it so I could compete, but there are some who might take exception to the hue of my skin now that he’s not here to provide support.”

“No, they won’t,” Charlie said. “I can guarantee that. Any row comes about, I will be there, and so will some others. It would be unwise for you to be excluded.”

“Very well, then,” I said.

“One more thing. Bill told me about the one he said you called Ruggert, about him and his henchmen. My guess is he may have been behind Bill’s death. He may have wanted him out of the way, as he would have stood up with you, and in a straightforward fight he would have been a load. Damn. I can’t believe Bill sat with his back to the door. Anyway, that Ruggert was involved is only a guess, but there is more than a strong rumor that he has paid for your competition.”

I gave him a blank look.

“Bronco Bob,” Charlie said.

“Who is Bronco Bob?”

“He’s a famous trick shooter. Famous to everyone but you, apparently, and he’s not just one of them that uses devices to make things seem like they’re more than they are. Doesn’t load his revolvers with buckshot, for instance. He’s a hell of a shooter in the real world. Travels about, makes his day-to-day on it. Bill would have got around to telling you about it eventually. He heard about it from McCall, his assassin, but he didn’t know what stock to put in it. Wasn’t sure if Broken Nose was playing him or not. But I seen Bronco Bob’s wagon roll into town right before Bill got killed, saw him pulling up at the livery. He’s over at the hotel. So it’s quite a coincidence, is it not?”

“Why would McCall warn Bill about it?”

“That is a confusion, to be sure,” Charlie said. “One moment I think Jack wanted to be Bill, another he wanted to be his best pard, and another he wanted to trip him up, which in the end we have to say he did. I think Ruggert may have paid him. And there’s them other fellas. The one Bill said was called Gobbler and the little one.”

“Golem,” I said. “Not Gobbler.”

“Golem?” Charlie said. “What in hell is that?”

“Bill didn’t tell you?”

“If he had, would I be asking you as much?”

“Reckon not.” So I told him what Bill had told me, though there was little material there to make much of a story from.

“Them Jews have some queer ideas about things, sounds to me,” Charlie said, “but if I know what a golem is or don’t, I know who that big son of a bitch is that goes by the name. And I know that little son of a dog turd with him.”

“They call him Weasel,” I said.

“Weasel it is, then. Bottom line, me and Bill’s friends will be there to check your back, make sure a bullet don’t nest in it. The shooting match, how that comes out, that’s up to you. If the cards don’t land in your favor, I know you will have done your best. I trust Bill’s judgment that much. But that’s all there is in a nutshell. That is the favor I’m asking you. Money for Bill’s widow.”

“I’ve done agreed.”

“I wanted you to know the perils of it, though. I have built up good how you are protected, and how we will have your back, but I should add as a measure of honesty, nothing is certain.”

“I know that from experience,” I said. “But with you at the lead, it is certain enough.”

I stuck out my hand.

We shook. “You come and see Bill laid down tomorrow,” he said.

He crossed the street, and I started back to Win.

Before I made it there, I seen Cullen coming toward me at a goodly clip, passing the crowd that was hustling to Mann’s saloon.

He caught up to me. “I heard, Nat. I know he was a friend. I’m sorry.”

“Ain’t no going backwards now. The killer has been nabbed.”

“This is a bad time to ask, you and me being friends and all, but are you still planning to shoot tomorrow? I put considerable money on you.”

“I will be shooting,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “It’s how I figure to make my dowry for Wow.”

“You need one?”

“No, but we need money, so I thought I’d call it that.”

“Come with me,” I said.

He walked with me back to where Win and Madame were. Actually, they had all met, but I took the time now to properly introduce him. When the visit had reached its natural course, I kissed Win on the cheek and went away with Cullen.

I said, “Ain’t you working today?”

“Wild Bill getting killed has kind of made it a holiday,” he said. “Not that I’m suggesting it’s a good thing, though I can use the time off.”

Arriving at my place, I took Cullen inside, and we sat down on the floor. “I’m going to give you some papers to hold for me, at least for a short time,” I said. Then I explained about Mr. Loving and the arrangements he had made.

Wild Bill’s funeral was a big ballyhoo.

At Charlie’s camp, under a tepee-style tent, they set up a black-cloth-lined coffin on wooden blocks with the guest of honor in it. Charlie laid a Winchester rifle beside him, said it was his favorite shooting piece. This was a lie. Bill always carried revolvers and was right proud of them, far more than any long shooter. I think Charlie felt he needed to lay Bill out in style, with some kind of weapon beside him, but didn’t want them fine and famous shooting irons of Bill’s to go to waste in the ground. It kind of bothered me about the Winchester, to speak frankly, as it seemed false to Bill’s memory.

Folks paraded inside the tent and around the coffin. Everyone, no matter sex or color, was let in. There was even a few dogs wandering about, and Charlie had to grab a cat off the edge of the coffin and throw it under the back of the tent, as it was sniffing at the corpse.

After a lot of flapdoodle was said, some of it accurate, the body was toted to a hillside, where Bill was put down. Some more flapdoodle was said by a couple of fellows, one of them a weepy Chinaman none of us understood. He apparently knew Bill, and it was whispered that he supplied our man with opium. I don’t know if there was truth to it or not. Charlie come up when the Chinaman got finished, or was made to finish, and said some heartfelt words. Then a board he had carved on was put up at the head of the grave. Charlie had whittled into it Bill’s age and about him being murdered by the assassin Jack McCall. One man suggested that “assassin” be changed to “dick sucker,” but Charlie was against it. It would have required an entirely new board.

The grave was covered with dirt, and that was all there was for the great Wild Bill Hickok.

This is off the trail a little, at least as far as the layout in time, but I thought I’d put it here cause I learned about it later. Jack McCall was let off by a miners’ court, even though he snuck up behind Bill and shot him in the head and there was witnesses to what was clearly cold-blooded murder. I was one of them witnesses, but I was not called to testify. I didn’t even know there was testifying to be done. It all happened quick and was done with.

In his defense Jack said that his brother had been killed by Bill back in Abilene, Kansas, but he had nothing on that but his word. That’s why I think he had been paid by Ruggert and knew how safe he was because some of the jury, such that it was, had probably been paid, too. Jack got off, and you can bet he got gone. Had Charlie not been so broken up about the funeral and needing to be there to protect me at the shooting match, I have no doubt he would have snuck off after him, left his bones out there in the wilds for grass to grow over.

Getting off didn’t do Jack no good, though. Later on, in Wyoming, he bragged about the deed. The Wyoming folks, bless them, didn’t consider the Deadwood trial a real trial, as it wasn’t an incorporated town then. They nabbed him and tried him and found him guilty and hanged him. I hope with thirty pieces of silver in his pocket.

I went to my room and sat alone. I cleaned my weapons again, as if they needed it, laid out all my ammunition. I thought about things Mr. Loving had taught me. I tried to do as he said I should do anytime I became overwhelmed, and that was to think about nothing at all. Course, the more I tried that the more I thought about every damn thing you can imagine. Finally I settled on thinking about being up in the hayloft in Mr. Loving’s barn, looking out the opening at the countryside in the springtime, when the trees grew thick along the creek bank and there was wildflowers and the limbs of the trees got filled with bright-colored birds.

It was with that thinking that I found my peace.