(1986) Deadwood Read Online Free Page B

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