Dragon Teeth

by Michael Crichton

  “What should I do?” Johnson’s heart was hammering so loudly he could hardly hear his own voice.

  “When you go out there, you take your time. And never take your eyes off him—he may try and shoot you while you’re stepping into the street. Never take your eyes off him. Then take your position, put your feet wide, get your balance. Don’t let him engage you in talk. Concentrate on him. Never take your eyes off him, no matter what he does. Watch his eyes. You’ll see in his eyes when he’s going to make his play, even before his hand moves.”

  “How will I see it?”

  “You’ll see it, don’t worry. Let him fire first, you draw deliberate, you aim deliberate, and you squeeze off one shot right to the middle of his stomach. Don’t do anything fancy like aim for the head. Make it count. Shoot him in the stomach and kill him.”

  “Oh God.” The reality of it was settling in on him.

  “You sure you won’t back out?”

  “No!”

  “Fine,” Earp said. “I believe you’ll come out. Dick’s cocky, he thinks you’re a mark. You can’t ask for better than a cocky man to go up against.”

  “I’m glad to hear of it.”

  “You’ll come out,” Earp said again. “Is your gun loaded?”

  “No.”

  “Better load it, boy.”

  Johnson stepped out of the hotel into the morning light. The main street of Deadwood was deserted. There was silence, except for Mrs. Wilson’s piano lesson, monotonous scales.

  Black Dick was at the north end of the street, waiting. He puffed on a cigar. His broad hat put his face in deep shadow. Johnson had trouble seeing his eyes. He hesitated.

  “Come on out, Foggy,” Dick called.

  Johnson stepped away from the hotel, into the street. He felt his feet squish in the mud. He did not look down.

  Keep your eyes on him. Never take your eyes off him.

  Johnson moved to the middle of the street, stopped.

  Get your balance, get your feet wide.

  Clearly, he heard Mrs. Wilson’s voice say, “No, no, Charlotte. Tempo.”

  Concentrate. Concentrate on him.

  They were thirty feet apart, on the main street of Deadwood in the morning sunshine.

  Dick laughed. “Come closer, Foggy.”

  “This’ll do,” Johnson said.

  “I can’t hardly see you, Foggy.”

  Don’t let him talk to you. Watch him.

  “I see fine,” Johnson said.

  Dick laughed. The laugh trailed off into silence.

  Watch his eyes. Watch his eyes.

  “Any last requests, Foggy?”

  Johnson did not answer. He felt his heart pounding in his chest.

  Black Dick threw his cigar away. It sailed through the air, sputtered in the mud.

  No matter what he does, never take your eyes off him.

  Dick drew.

  It happened very fast, Dick’s body was obscured by a cloud of dense black smoke, and two bullets whizzed past Johnson before his own gun was out, and he felt the third knock his hat off as he aimed and fired. His gun bucked in his hand. He heard a scream of pain.

  “Son of a bitch! I’m hit!”

  Johnson peered through the smoke, more confused than anything else. At first he could see nothing; Dick seemed to have disappeared entirely from the street.

  Then the smoke cleared and he saw the figure writhing in the mud.

  “You shot me! Damn! You shot me!”

  Johnson stood and stared. Dick struggled to his feet, clutching his bleeding shoulder, his wounded arm hanging limply. He was covered in mud.

  “Damn you!”

  Finish him, thought Johnson.

  But he had already killed a man and didn’t have the heart to shoot again now. He watched as Dick staggered across the street and swung onto his horse. “I’ll get you for this! I’ll get you,” he cried, and he rode out of town.

  Johnson watched him go. He heard scattered cheers and applause from the surrounding buildings. He felt dizzy, and his legs went watery.

  “You did good,” Earp said, “excepting you didn’t kill him.”

  “I’m not a gunman.”

  “That’s fine,” Earp said. “But mark, you should have killed him. It didn’t look to me his wounds were mortal, and now you have an enemy for life.”

  “I couldn’t kill him, Wyatt.”

  Earp looked at him for a while. “You’re a down-Easter, that’s the trouble. Haven’t got any common sense. You’re gonna have to get out of town pronto, you know.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because, boy, you have a reputation now.”

  Johnson laughed. “Everybody in town knows who I am.”

  “Not anymore,” Earp said.

  It turned out that Foggy Bill Johnson, the man who gunned down Clem Curry and then went up against his brother Dick, was indeed a notorious celebrity in Deadwood. Every man who fancied himself sharp with a gun was suddenly asking to meet him.

  After two days of extricating himself from gunfights, Johnson realized that Earp was right. He would have to leave Deadwood soon. He had just enough money to buy fare and freight on the express stage, and purchased his ticket for the following day. When the light was low, he took one of the horses and checked to see that Little Wind’s grave had not been disturbed. So far, it hadn’t. The ground had hardened up in the cold and he had left no tracks. Even so, he forced himself to leave immediately, lest he be noticed.

  Earp, meanwhile, had grown tired of gambling and a desultory courting of Miss Emily. He had expected Deadwood to offer him a position as marshal, but no offer was forthcoming, so he was going to head south for the winter.

  “When’re you leaving?” Johnson asked.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Perhaps you could ride with me.”

  “With you and your bones?” Earp laughed. “Boy, every bandito and desperado from here to Cheyenne is just waiting for you to leave Deadwood with those bones.”

  “I’d be sure to make it if you rode with me.”

  “I think I’ll wait, to escort Miss Emily.”

  “Miss Emily might come tomorrow, too, especially if you were riding with us.”

  Earp fixed him with a steady look. “What’s in it for me, boy?”

  “I bet the stage would pay you as a messenger.” A messenger was a guard; they made good money.

  “Can’t you do any better than that?”

  “I guess not.”

  There was a silence. Finally, Earp said, “Tell you what. If I get you through to Cheyenne, you give me half your shipment.”

  “Half my bones?”

  “That’s right,” he said, smiling broadly and winking. “Half your bones. How’s that sound?”

  “I realized then,” Johnson wrote on the evening of September 28,

  that Mr. Earp was like all the others, and did not believe that these crates contained bones at all. I was faced with a moral dilemma. Mr. Earp had been friendly to me and helpful more than once. I was asking him to face real danger and he thought he was risking his life for treasure. It was my obligation to disabuse him of his greedy misconception. But I had received quite an education out West, one that Yale had been unable to provide. A man has to look out for himself, I’d learned. So all I said to him was, “Mr. Earp, you have cut yourself a deal.”

  The stage would leave Deadwood the following morning.

  He woke a few hours past midnight. It was time to retrieve the crates of bones. By prearrangement he had hired Kang to help him again, since no white man would want to dig up a dead Indian. They rode the wagon out of town, and the first thing they did was excavate Little Wind, who did not smell quite as bad as he had before, because of the cold air.

  One by one the crates went into the wagon. They were dirty and moist from being underground but appeared otherwise fine. This time Johnson filled in most of the grave before returning Little Wind to the earth. He paused at the sight of him. The grotesquery was not L
ittle Wind’s rotting, gray visage, Johnson realized; it was that he had now buried this poor man three times. Little Wind had died to protect him, and in return, he had not let him rest in peace.

  The Cheyenne Road

  Once in town, he continued to the stagecoach station. The coach was already there. It had started to snow again, and a chill wind moaned through Deadwood Gulch. Johnson was glad to be leaving, and methodically hoisted the crates onto the coach. Despite the assurances of the agent, the bones could not all ride up top with the enormously fat driver, Tiny Tim Edwards. Johnson was obliged to purchase an extra passenger seat and place some of them inside. Fortunately, the only passengers were Miss Emily and himself.

  Then they had to wait for Wyatt Earp, who was nowhere to be found. Johnson stood in the snow with Miss Emily, looking up and down the bleak street of Deadwood.

  “Maybe he’s not coming after all,” Johnson said.

  “I think he will come,” Miss Emily said.

  While they waited, a redheaded boy ran up to Johnson. “Mr. Johnson?”

  “That’s right.”

  The boy gave Johnson a note, and scampered away. Johnson opened it, read it quickly, and crumpled it.

  “What is it?” Miss Emily asked.

  “Just a good-bye from Judge Harlan.”

  Around nine they saw the Earp brothers coming down the street toward them. They both appeared heavily burdened. “When they were closer,” Johnson wrote, “I saw that the Earps had obtained a collection of firearms. I had never seen Wyatt Earp wearing a gun before—he seldom went armed in public—but now he carried a veritable arsenal.”

  Earp was late because he had to wait for Sutter’s Dry Goods to open, to obtain guns. He carried two sawed-off shotguns, three Pierce repeating rifles, four Colt revolvers, and a dozen boxes of ammunition.

  Johnson said, “It appears you are expecting some warm work.”

  Earp told Miss Emily to climb into the stage; then he said, “I don’t want to alarm her any.” And then he told Johnson that he thought they faced “a deal of trouble, and no point in pretending it won’t come.”

  Johnson showed Earp the note, which read:

  I PROMIS YOU ARE A DED MAN TO-DAY OR MY NAME IS NOT DICK CURRY.

  “That’s fine,” Earp said. “We’re ready for him.”

  Wyatt’s brother Morgan had made a lucrative deal to haul firewood and was planning to stay in Deadwood for the winter, but said that he would ride with Wyatt and the stage as far as Custer City, fifty miles to the south.

  Tiny Tim leaned over the box. “You gents gonna palaver all day, or are you ready to crack leather?”

  “We are,” Earp said.

  “Then climb aboard this item. Can’t go nowhere standing in the street, can you?”

  Johnson climbed onto the stage with Miss Emily, and for the tenth time that morning attended to his crates, cinching them down tightly. Morgan Earp climbed onto the top of the stage, and Wyatt rode shotgun.

  A Chinese boy in cowboy boots came running toward the stagecoach. It was Kang, with a worried look on his face.

  Johnson fished in his pocket and found a five-dollar gold piece.

  “Kang!”

  He leaned out the open door and flipped the glittering coin high into the air. Kang caught it on the run with remarkable grace. Johnson nodded at him, knowing he would never see the boy again.

  Tim snapped his whips, the horses snorted, and they galloped out of Deadwood in the swirling snow.

  It was a three-day journey to Fort Laramie: one day to Custer City, in the center of the Black Hills; a second day through the treacherous Red Canyon to the Red Canyon stagecoach station at the southern edge of the Black Hills; and the third day across the Wyoming plains to the newly built iron bridge that crossed the Platte River at Laramie.

  Earp assured him the trip would get safer as they went, and if they reached Laramie, they would be entirely safe; from then on, the road from Laramie to Cheyenne was patrolled by cavalry.

  If they reached Laramie.

  “Three obstacles stood between us and our destination,” Johnson later wrote in his journal:

  The first was Black Dick and his gang of ruffians. We could expect to meet them during the first day. Second was Persimmons Bill and his renegade Indians. We could expect to meet them in Red Canyon on the second day. And the third obstacle was the most dangerous of all—and wholly unanticipated by me.

  Johnson had steeled himself for a dangerous journey, but he was unprepared for its sheer physical hazards.

  The Black Hills roads were bad, necessitating slow travel. Drop-offs were precipitous, and the fact that the coach swayed ominously near the crumbling edge under its load of bones did not reassure them. Several creeks—the Bear Butte, Elk, and Boxelder—were transformed from the recent snows into swollen, raging rivers. The fact that the coach was so heavily laden made the crossings especially dangerous.

  As Tiny explained it, “This item gets stuck in the quicksand, middle of the river, we don’t go anywheres less we ride back for an extra team, pull this item out, and that’s a fact.”

  And along with the difficulties, they lived under the continuous threat of attack at any moment. The tension was nerve-racking, for the smallest impediment could be dangerous.

  Around noon, the coach stopped. Johnson looked out. “Why are we stopping?”

  “Keep your head in,” Earp snapped, “if you don’t want to lose it. Fallen tree up ahead.”

  “So?”

  Morgan Earp peered over from the top of the coach. “Miss Emily? I’d be much obliged, ma’am, if you would get yourself low and stay there until we’re moving again.”

  “It’s just a fallen tree,” Johnson said. Soil was thin in many places in the Black Hills, and trees often fell across the road.

  “Maybe so,” Earp said. “Maybe not.” He pointed out that high hills surrounded the road on all sides. The trees came right to the road, providing good close cover. “If they’re going for us, this’d be a good place.”

  Tiny Tim got down off the box and went forward to inspect the fallen tree. Johnson heard the sharp clash-clack of shotguns being cocked.

  “Is there really danger?” Miss Emily asked. She did not seem the least anxious.

  “I guess there is,” Johnson said. He withdrew his pistol, looked down the barrel, spun the chambers.

  Beside him, Miss Emily gave a little shiver of excitement.

  But the tree was a small one, fallen by natural causes. Tiny moved it, and they drove on. An hour later, near Silver Peak and Pactola, they came upon a rockslide and repeated the procedure, but again, they had no trouble.

  “When the attack finally came,” Johnson wrote, “it was almost a relief.”

  Wyatt Earp shouted, “You below! Heads in!” and his shotgun roared.

  It was answered by gunfire from behind them.

  They were at the bottom of Sand Creek Gulch. The road ran straight here, with room on both sides for horsemen to keep up and discharge their guns into the open coach.

  They heard Morgan Earp, directly above them, scraping over the roof of the coach, and they felt it sway as he took a position near the back. There was more firing. Wyatt called distinctly, “Get down, Morg, I’m shooting.” There was more firing. Tiny whipped the horses, cursed them.

  Bullets thunked into the wood of the coach; Johnson and Emily ducked down, but the crates of fossils, precariously strapped to the seat above, threatened to tumble down on them. Johnson got up on his knees and tried to cinch them tighter. A horseman rode alongside the coach, aimed at Johnson—and in a sudden explosion disappeared from the horse.

  Astonished, Johnson looked out.

  “Foggy! Get your head in! I’m shooting!”

  Johnson ducked back in, and Earp’s shotgun blasted past the open window. More gunshots from riders outside splintered the doorposts of the carriage; there was a scream.

  Cursing and shouting, Tiny whipped the horses; the coach rocked and jolted over the rough roa
d; inside the carriage, Johnson and Miss Emily collided and bounced against each other “in a manner which would be embarrassing were circumstances not so exigent,” Johnson later wrote. “The next period—it seemed hours, though it was probably a minute or two—was a nervous blend of whining bullets, galloping horses, shouts and screams, jolts and gunshots—until finally our coach rounded a bend, and we were out of Sand Creek Gulch, and the shooting died off, and we were safely on our way once more.

  “We had survived the attack of the notorious Curry gang!”

  “Only a damn fool would think so,” Wyatt said when they stopped to rest and change horses at the Tigerville coach station.

  “Why, wasn’t that the Curry gang attacking us? And didn’t we get away?”

  “Look, boy,” Wyatt said. “I know you’re from back East, but nobody’s that stupid.” He reloaded his shotguns as he spoke.

  Johnson didn’t understand, so Morgan Earp explained. “Black Dick wants you pretty bad, and he wouldn’t risk all in such an ill-made attack.”

  Johnson, who had found the attack terrifying, said, “Why was it ill-made?”

  “Riskiest attack there is, on horseback,” Morgan said. “Riders can’t shoot worth a damn, the coach is always moving, and unless they can shoot one of the horses in the team, it’s very likely to get away, just as we did. There’s no certainty in a horseback attack.”

  “Then why’d they try one?”

  “To put us at our ease,” Wyatt said. “To put us off our guard. You mark my words, they know we have to stop and change teams at Tigerville. Right now they’re riding like hell to set up again.”

  “Set up where?”

  “If I knew that,” Wyatt said, “I wouldn’t be worried. What do you think, Morg?”

  “Somewhere between here and Sheridan, I figure,” Morgan Earp said.

  “That’s what I figure, too,” Wyatt Earp said, cracking his shotgun closed. “And the next time, they’ll really mean business.”

  The Second Attack