The Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  “This is what you been doing?” asked a peevish voice. It come from a fellow not much bigger than me but all duded up in fringed buckskin and wearing a pearl-handled pistol in a fancy holster held by a tooled belt with an enormous silver buckle. His hair was long and fair, as were his mustache and pointy little beard. “Sitting here with him and that bottle?”

  “Simmer down, Charley,” Wild Bill said in a mild tone. “Me and him are old friends from Kansas. Shake hands with—”

  But as this dandy turned up his nose at the idea of meeting me, the shaking did not take place.

  “My pardner Colorado Charley Utter,” Bill said, when the other went into a tent that was pitched nearby. Most of the other Deadwood tents was torn and tattered, but the canvas of this one looked brand-new and was taut-stretched and well pegged. “We got plans for an express service between here and Cheyenne.”

  I had never seen Wild Bill so bluffed by anybody else. The next instant, out comes Charley Utter from his tent, saying, “Goddammit, Bill, you been sleepin’ in my blankets again? They’re all messed up.”

  Wild Bill smirks and shrugs. “I’m real sorry, pardner. They’re nicer than that scratchy old Army blanket of mine.”

  “I want you to stay out of there,” Utter says.

  In the old days Wild Bill would have laughed in the face of a little fellow like that, as he had laughed at me first time I flared up at him. But now the once fearsome gunfighter only repeated his apology. When Utter went back into the tent, where he could be heard fussing with his property, Bill says to me, “He’s a good friend and has got a real head for running businesses. My own specialty is the ideas: I don’t always have the knack for the practical details.” He tilts his head back till the rear of the brim of his big hat, touching him between the shoulders, stops him, at which he removes the sombrero so as to align his throat with the verticaled bottle, and he drains the remaining liquid in the latter down the former. Now that he is momentarily bare-headed for the first time since I become re-acquainted with him, I see his hair is thinning in front, and I got a right funny feeling, for Custer too was losing some hair on top, which is why the Indians claimed they never scalped him. Never knowing baldness themselves, redskins see it as still another strange and distasteful thing about whites, whereas they find cutting off an enemy’s crowning glory and hanging it on their belt perfectly normal and even admirable, and when I lived as a Cheyenne I admit so did I.

  Having emptied the bottle, Wild Bill tossed it over his shoulder into the area between his wagon and Charley Utter’s tent, and no sooner than he did so, out come Colorado Charley, who picked it up and brought it back to hand to Wild Bill without a word.

  “Oh,” Wild Bill says. “Sorry about that.”

  “If you’re back here this time of day,” says Utter, “you already lost the money you was advanced.”

  Hickok replaced his hat. “You wouldn’t believe the hands I had, Charley.”

  Charley hooked his thumbs in that fancy gunbelt. He hmmphed and said, “It’s like that every single day, ain’t it?”

  Wild Bill got to his feet real slowly. He didn’t seem to be drunk though he had undoubtedly been drinking for hours before he topped it off with the remainder of that bottle. But he could still apparently hold his liquor as of old.

  He tossed the empty bottle up into the wagon and clumb up to follow it. “I’m going to catch forty winks, so I’m rested for tonight’s game.” Then, on hands and knees, he looked down at me. “Hoss, if you ain’t got a place to stay, why there’s lots of room here, and I got an extra blanket if you don’t mind the smell of horse.”

  “Right nice of you, Bill,” says I. When he had crawled back into the interior, I told Colorado Charley I wouldn’t do it if he objected, for I wasn’t in no position to make enemies at this time.

  “Hell, that’s between he and you,” Charley said in a kinder tone than he had used theretofore. “I noticed you ain’t a drinker.”

  He had been watching Wild Bill from his tent. “Never to excess,” I said, which was true except when it wasn’t.

  “You don’t look like you’ve had the best luck lately.”

  “Thank you for noticing,” I says, but then decided it sounded too sarcastic, so added: “That ain’t the half of it.”

  “Well, spare me the facts,” Charley says hastily. “I got an offer for you. There are them in Deadwood who like it fine without law, and maybe I agree with them up to a point, but some think Wild Bill come up here to be marshal, like he was in Abilene, and will clean up the town. They’re wrong about that, but I hear they might be gunning for him. Nobody’s going to come at him straight on, I tell you that. He might of lost some of his powers, but he’s still better than anybody hereabouts.” Charley fingered his fair mustache and goatee. I found it amazing that he looked as clean and shiny as he did in that place. “What worries me is he might get absentminded while playing cards.” He glanced with concern up at the wagon and spoke in a lowered, confidential-type voice. “Also lately he’s been feeling real low. He told me the other day he thinks his days is numbered.”

  “He ain’t the Wild Bill I once knowed,” I told him. “I’ll swear to that. But maybe he’ll change if he begins to win at poker.”

  Colorado Charley screwed his face up. “He told me he wrote a letter to the same effect to that new wife of his. Now, ain’t that some weddin’ present!” He had raised his voice some to say this, and he glanced up at the wagon again as he lowered it. “Now, what I want to offer you... your name is—?” I told him, and he continued. “I’ll pay you to keep an eye on him. I’ll give you a dollar a day, which seems to me mighty generous considering all you got to do is watch his back.”

  I can’t be condemned for trying to sweeten the deal. “Bodyguarding Wild Bill Hickok ought to pay a little better than that.”

  “Did I say bodyguard? Bill don’t need none, and from the looks of you, you couldn’t do much anyway, and I ain’t going to supply you with no firearms. What I’m talking about is just keeping an eye on him—and just when he’s playing cards. Rest of the time I’m with him, or California Joe Milner or his other friends. You see something funny going on behind his back, you give a holler. He’ll do the rest himself. He can still use a gun better ’n’ anybody who’d go up against him: he can see that good.”

  I didn’t like his insults, but a dollar a day would keep me and my brother going till something better turned up, so I accepted his offer but did ask why he trusted me. How’d he know I wasn’t one of them who wanted Wild Bill rubbed out?

  “You’d of made your move by now,” says Colorado Charley.

  He wasn’t necessarily right about that, but not wanting him to mistrust me after all, I didn’t say anything more on the subject, but I did promise to show up that evening at the No. 10 Saloon and watch Wild Bill’s back, then walk him home and collect my dollar.

  I went back into town now and found my brother sleeping in his hogshead, tied up the way I left him, and that dog pranced out, expecting me now to bring him food on every visit. Seeing I didn’t have none for him, he goes back to curl up alongside Bill. I could have used a nap myself, having been up most of the night on my reconnoiter of Deadwood by moonlight and the trip to and from the hills, but I could not of stood the smell inside the barrel even if there would have been room for me, so I sat outside with my back against the staves, and napped off and on, but I was too spooked by my recent experiences to sleep soundly with my brother’s peace of mind.

  2. Aces and Eights

  I GOT TO NO. 10 before Wild Bill showed up, but the poker game was already in progress. I explained to Harry the bartender I was working for Colorado Charley Utter, but he said I couldn’t sit there unless I was drinking, so I waited outside till Wild Bill showed up, which he did before long, looking none the worse for all the liquor he had drunk earlier.

  “Charley says you’re working for us now,” says he.

  “You know about that?”

  “I’m not too proud
to have somebody watching my back. Way I’ve lasted up till now is not because I’m faster or shoot straighter than every one of them I’ve gone up against. It’s because I never lie to myself. I never lied much to others, but I would do so if my life depended on it, like everybody else. But not to myself.”

  “All I can do is holler,” I told him. “I ain’t got no gun.”

  “Just as well, hoss,” said Wild Bill. “You might shoot yourself in your manly parts.”

  This gibe irked me some, for it was him, back in Kansas City, who taught me to use a pistol well. “Your pal Harry Sam Young won’t let me hang around without spending money, and Charley won’t be paying me till later.”

  “I’ll speak to Harry,” Wild Bill said. “Now, about Charley, such money as he advances me for cards ain’t his own but from the funds of our partnership. I threw my savings into the pot, which he manages better than I ever could, but I’m not on his charity.”

  This information made me feel better about him. “I ain’t forgot I owe you two dollars, Bill.”

  “You’ll pay me when you can,” says he and saunters through the door into No. 10 looking more like the old Wild Bill than I seen him for a while. One of the fellows at the card table wanted to vacate his stool immediately though I don’t think the hand was finished, so influential a presence was Wild Bill Hickok, but the latter grandly waved him down and stepped over to the bar, where Harry had already poured him one.

  Wild Bill swallowed the whiskey, then throwed a thumb towards me and says, “This little fellow is working for me ’n’ Charley. Put him on my tab, but don’t serve him so much he can’t see.” He laughed at that statement.

  As it happened, all I swallowed that evening was some of the coffee which Harry, like all bartenders I ever met, drank instead of what he sold. Unfortunately they didn’t serve no food there, and I guess Harry had already ate his supper, so there wasn’t anything I could mooch. I just stayed there, watching Wild Bill’s back for hours while they played hand after hand, with the usual curses, grunts, and other such noises made by the participants that don’t mean nothing whatever to anyone not in the game.

  But what was special, I gathered, was that Wild Bill was winning for a change. After a while, one of the original players, being busted, had to drop out, and the same short fellow with the sandy mustache and slightly crossed eyes who had took Wild Bill’s place the day before come over from where he had been watching the game to claim the vacated stool, as he had taken Wild Bill’s place that afternoon. But now Wild Bill stayed in the game, winning hand after hand, his luck still holding, and before long this man too was cleaned out, and he pushed away from the table, looking more sad than mad.

  “Damn,” says he, head down, “I ain’t got enough left to get a bite to eat.”

  Wild Bill stood up too. “Look here, Jack, I done well tonight after a long run of bad luck. I’d be proud to stake you to your supper.” He picked up some of the piled coins in front of him and proffered them to this Jack McCall, as Harry Young told me he was called.

  McCall took the money, nodding, still not looking at Wild Bill, and left the premises.

  To the other players Wild Bill said he was turning in, being not as youthful as he once was, but tomorrow would give them all their chance to get even.

  We walked back to the wagon. It was still early enough on the midsummer evening to see our way without a lantern.

  “You must of give me good luck, hoss,” said Wild Bill. “I always square my debts, so you’re getting a dollar bonus for tonight, and I’m also canceling what you owe me.”

  “That’s mighty generous of you, Bill.”

  “Well, I want to do it while I can, for luck that’s good today won’t necessarily hold on forever, or even tomorrow.” He was taking such long strides, tall as he was, I had to make two for every one of his. “Custer’s luck,” he says. “He was famous for it, till it went bad.”

  I considered trying again to tell him a first-person account of the Little Bighorn fight, but decided against taking the chance as yet, for I needed this job.

  “I believe you was acquainted with him.”

  “And liked him,” said Wild Bill. “I had to shoot a couple of his men when four or five of them jumped me once in Hays, and I had a difference of opinion one time with his brother Tom, but the General was always mighty nice to me. Couple years back, he complimented me in the written word, or so I was told. His lady is a fine woman, and now a widow at a tender age, poor little gal.”

  “Beautiful,” I says with feeling. “I saw her once.”

  “Well,” Bill says with that new sanctimoniousness of his, “you might be right about that, hoss, but I am married to the most beautiful lady in the world myself.”

  I figure his eyesight must be even worse than I thought, on the basis of that photograph of his Aggie, but naturally did not say anything, and we had by now arrived at the camp, where I was looking forward to getting my wages from Colorado Charley.

  But when I peeked into the door of his tent, the interior of which was arranged neat as a hotel room in a city, with a cot and square-folded blankets, a leather-strapped trunk, and a nice hide rug on the ground, no Charley was in evidence.

  When I informed Wild Bill, who was still standing there, breathing the evening air with apparent satisfaction before mounting the wagon, he said, “He’s probably down to the bathhouse. He missed his bath this morning, being too busy at the time. He takes one every day whether he needs it or not. He’s famous for that habit.”

  “I thought the same was true of yourself, Bill.”

  “Not to that extreme,” says he, and by now it was getting too dark to accurately judge by his expression if he was joking. He goes into the pocket of the frock coat where he had put his winnings and withdraws two dollars and drops them clinking into my now outthrust hand. “There you go, hoss. After you drink it all up, if you want to come back and bunk in the wagon, kindly don’t kick me when you climb in. You’ll find that extra blanket in back.”

  I went back to town to find the place, a kind of lean-to open on three sides, where a burly woman, one of the few females in Deadwood at the time not working as a harlot, cooked up beans and the stone-heavy loaves she called bread, in which you was likely to find not just hairs but whole strands as well as other substances not so easily identified.

  I was still real hungry. “Ain’t you got no meat?” I asked the cook.

  “Had some couple days back but et it myself,” says she, shifting the wad in her jaw and spreading the feet beneath her so she could spit between them. I reckon the unusual flavor her beans had was from spattered tobacco juice. I’ve ate a lot worse than that when famished, which like the Cheyenne who raised me I so often was as a young man. “It wasn’t no goddam good, so you didn’t miss nothing. And you could not of afforded it nowhow.”

  I’ve got a policy of seldom passing up an insult when I’m in a position to answer, so I says, “You think you run the grand dining room of the Palace Hotel?”

  She spits again, this time right near me, and grins with her teeth brown in the light from the lantern that hung from a nail in a support pole. “I got a well-to-do sweetheart. He’s made a big strike lately.”

  No matter how dubious you get about the likelihood of anybody finding significant amounts of gold on his own, there’s something magic about the very sound of the word that causes the coldest heart to pound, probably because if you find some of that substance you don’t have to go to no further work to make it salable. Everything else that brings in a profit requires more work than separating gold dust from sand by shaking a pan. So for a minute there, picking up my order of bread and beans, I considered staking a claim of my own next day.

  But then this large woman wipes her hands on her stained apron and says, “’Course, he’s never told me the truth about anything else, so maybe he never paid five dollars for that beefsteak but bought it off some Indin for a drink of whiskey. It tasted like real old bear.”

  Back
at the barrel all was as before. My brother Bill was sleeping so quiet, in the same position as earlier, that I thought maybe he had up and died, and there wasn’t enough light in there to see if he was breathing, but when I poked his foot with mine he sighed and uttered an indecent word. The dog of course had been all over me right away and once again got more than his share of the grub I carried.

  I left my brother in as good a situation as he was likely to find at the moment and went back to get a night’s rest in Wild Bill’s wagon, which was real cozy in the rear where I slept. Wild Bill seemed asleep when I stepped past him, and I thought if I could so easily gain access to the wagon, so could an assassin, but Colorado Charley had not hired me to guard him twenty-four hours a day, without a weapon, and I was real tuckered out by then.

  I had a good sleep that night, waking up at dawn to look over and see Wild Bill’s blanket already empty. By time I got up and out and took a leak, careful to keep well away from Charley Utter’s tent, and returned, I see Wild Bill’s tall figure oncoming at a brisk pace up the gulch.

  “You’re up and at ’em,” I says when he gets there.

  “Generally at first light,” says he, “I trot down for a wake-me-up.”

  “Get your coffee from that big gal who cooks beans?”

  “Whiskey’s what I mean, hoss. Coffee’d put me back to sleep.”

  Colorado Charley come out of his tent at this point, looking bandbox-fresh as always, and according to Wild Bill went off to arrange a competition in which their pony express went up against a rival outfit to see who could run the Cheyenne newspaper up to Deadwood the fastest.

  I throwed some water on my face from the rainbarrel Wild Bill pointed out, and having got his schedule said I’d see him around noon at No. 10 and went into town.