(1986) Deadwood Read Online Free

Charley could hear it catch in his throat. There was a family resemblance about this. Back in Colorado, the boy's sister would sometimes cut firewood until her hands bled after Charley went into the mountains and got drunk.
    For a while, Charley and Bill just sat still, watching. The boy came nine feet west, until he was even with the place he'd started, and then spaded his way back north to meet it.
    "What kind of a missionary have you become?" Charley said.
    He stopped digging again and took another drink. Charley could see they were going to need another bottle. "I intend to give him a proper burial before I leave here," the boy said. "I kilt him for no reason, and it's the least I can do to set it right."
    Charley dropped off his elbow and lay on his back, and looked up at all the stars in the sky, trying to empty his mind. Against all efforts, he began to laugh.
    The sound of that set something off in Bill too. As long as Charley had known him, however bad things got, Bill always found something to smile at, but there weren't five people in the world who ever heard him laugh like he did then. He laughed and rocked back and forth on old Peerless's belly until he fell off. The whole time the boy was still digging. If anything, the sound of it seemed to drive him harder. When he could talk again, Bill said, "And this is the easy part. Think of the box he's got to build."
    The boy would not stop, though, except to drink. He got drunk and threw mud from one side of the hole into the other. Bill and Charley got drunk too, quieter now, and watched until the boy hit himself in the head with the shovel and stumbled down into the bed he'd, dug for the horse. It might have been two feet deep by then. He landed on his back and lay still. Then he turned over and got his knees under him. He seemed to settle there, and then he just fell over and went to sleep.
    That's where they found him in the morning, still asleep. Bill picked him up under the arms, so when he opened his eyes he was already standing up. There was blood on both of the boy's hands where blisters had broken and he'd worn through the skin underneath. So he was useless to work. He held on to" Bill for a minute, finding his balance and looking around him, shocked, like raiders had come in the night, shot the horse, and torn up the earth.
    "I got to finish it," the boy said.
    "Leave the damn horse be," Bill said. He'd done all his laughing the night before. There were noises from the other wagons as the whores kicked each other awake. Some of the Chinese had kept their fires through the night and the smell of their food was everywhere. There wasn't a clean breath of air in two miles. Charley thought of fingers inside those mouths.
    "You can have my mule," the boy said to Bill. "He ain't much . . ." The boy's mule was tied with some of the others. They were blowing to get started. One of the whores was screaming at her whore man over at the other end of camp. Bill didn't like any kind of emotion before his morning cocktail, and climbed up into the wagon and poured himself a drink into a glass. He sat up there, sipping it and chewing jerky, while the camp got itself ready to leave.
    After a while he climbed down the other side, walked up the hill, and disappeared into the bushes. The boy hitched the wagon and threw Bill's saddle into the back. Charley washed and shaved and cleaned his teeth. He had a real mirror to shave in. The boy said, "You think Mr. Hickok might change his mind? I wisht he'd take my mule."
    "Bill doesn't want to talk about transportation this morning," Charley said. By now old Peerless was swollen twice his regular size around the stomach, and the place where the boy's ball had gone into him was black with insects. Bill had had that horse a long time.
    He came out of the bushes just as the sun broke the sky over the Black Hills. He'd combed his hair and tied it in a knot. He walked down the hill, right past the wagon. Charley thought he might not have