Some tobacco smoke must have gone down the wrong way, because the Reverend Granby coughed slightly, removed the cigar, coughed some more, spit into the fire, and wiped his nose.
“We are not Western people,” the parson said. “We hail from . . .”
“Cincinnati,” Dooley interrupted. “I know. By way of Peabody, Massachusetts.” He was growing impatient because he really needed to get out of Julesburg and get away from the avengers of Hubert Dobbs, and this preacher with the beautiful niece and some quality cigars kept beating around the bush.
“There is no trail to Slim Pickings, and most people do not even know of its existence. I guess I should start from the beginning . . .”
Dooley frowned. The way the preacher talked, Dooley figured that he would never get out of this camp and on the trail west, or south, or somewhere.
* * *
Logan Kingsbury, the Widow Kingsbury’s nephew, left Cincinnati before the Tyler Davidson Fountain, that exquisite Genius of Water, had been dedicated in 1871. He wrote his favorite, and only surviving, aunt for a few years, regularly, letting her know where he was, and naturally, where she might remit some money as life kept proving full of hardships and bad luck in Louisville . . . Nashville . . . Memphis . . . Natchez . . . New Orleans . . . Galveston . . . Indianola. . . San Antonio . . . Dallas . . . Fort Griffin . . . Wichita . . . Newton . . . Dodge City . . . La Junta . . . Trinidad . . . Breckenridge . . . Denver . . .
After Denver, the letters stopped coming.
By 1874, the Widow Kingsbury had reached the dreadful conclusion that poor Logan Kingsbury had been called to Glory, perhaps by savage Indians, or disease, or in some terrible accident trying to help the pathetic, homeless, heartbreaking little orphans as he had done in Memphis and Indianola and La Junta and the mining camps around Breckenridge, Colorado.
Or, Dooley thought, after being caught dealing from the bottom of the deck as he had most likely been doing in Louisville and Natchez and Dallas and Trinidad and Denver . . .
So the Widow Kingsbury wore black, even stopped baking sourdough bread for four months, and got little pleasure during those dark days from Cincinnati’s streetcars or the river or the canals or trips to Mount Auburn on the Cincinnati Inclined Plane Company or even sitting in front of the fountain and marveling over the grandeur of the Genius of Water.
Those were dark times in “The Queen City of the West,” which was another one of Cincinnati’s monikers, and much better than “The Blue Chip City,” which the Reverend Granby considered absurd.
“But . . .” The minister tapped off the ash from his cigar and pointed the stogie at Dooley to let Dooley know that he was about to say something extremely important.
“You know what happened in 1874?”
Oh, yes, Dooley knew something that had happened in 1874. That’s when everything that had happened to him in 1872 and before came flooding back into his memories as soon as he had shot dead Doug Wheatlock, first cousin to Jason Baylor and his brothers. Only Dooley did not believe that was what Miss Sabrina Granby’s uncle had on his mind. Had there been an election in 1874? Dooley couldn’t recollect as he had never been one to follow politics except for that time in 1860 when a fellow had offered him a free beer if he would vote for Stephen Douglas. Dooley had taken the beer, but voted for Abraham Lincoln anyway. He didn’t have to answer. The reverend told him after exhaling more cigar smoke.
“George Custer.”
Custer. Of course. The Boy General of the Civil War who was making a name for himself as an Indian fighter out West.
“The Black Hills,” the preacher said.
And Dooley knew, although the Reverend Granby told him anyway.
“It was Custer who discovered the gold in the Black Hills. Well, perhaps not Custer, but he was in command of the survey party or hunting party or whatever it was they were doing in Indian land, but gold was found. That set off the settlers, and likely will lead to an Indian war in which we white beings will wipe those red devils off the face of the earth.”
Dooley wasn’t so sure about that, but Episcopalians, it seemed, could be as hard-nosed as Methodists. He tapped his cigar on the heel of his boot, crushing it slightly until the tip was out. A cigar like this, Dooley figured, was worth savoring over two or three more days. And if he put the Cuban in his pocket, maybe the preacher would get the impression that Dooley had places to be—and Julesburg wasn’t one of them.
The preacher kept going.
It was in December last when the Widow Kingsbury got an early blessing from the Lord, a gift from St. Nicholas before that jolly old cuss left his home in the North Pole. A letter arrived, crinkled and stained from its miles and miles of travels, but such a letter added years to the Widow Kingsbury’s life. She baked a new loaf of bread, added to her famed sourdough starter, and removed the black band she had been wearing for more than a year and a half, and broke out a gray dress and donned a blue hat. Yes, the muffler she wore was black, as was her coat, but it was December, and cold, and the only winter outerwear she owned happened to be black. Yet you could tell by her eyes that she no longer mourned for Logan Kingsbury.
Logan Kingsbury, you see, was not dead. He was very much alive.
And he was successful.
“What do you know about the Black Hills?” the parson asked.
“Well,” Dooley said, “it’s where I was bound. I read about it, you see. The big gold strike in the Black Hills. They’re in Dakota Territory, those Black Hills, I mean, and the big strike everyone’s lighting out for is called Deadwood. Deadwood Gulch.”
The minister smoked, exhaled, and nodded. “What else?”
“Well . . .” Dooley didn’t know what else to say.
“Indians,” the preacher pointed out. “Indians. Savage, heathen red-skinned Sioux devils. The Black Hills are in Sioux land. That’s what has those Indians so persnickety, you see.”
That explained why those Indians had jumped Dooley and Zee Dobbs.
“The army,” the Reverend Granby went on, “was supposed to keep the whites out of the Black Hills, but the army isn’t doing that. Why should they? What use would Sioux have with gold? It’s for us, the white men, to claim. To take. To make a fortune. And that is our destiny. We will take our people to the Black Hills, to make our fortune, and damn any red devil we meet to Hell’s hottest fires.”
Dooley’s stomach started feeling that poor way again. He had not thought too much about Indians, about being scalped, about maybe even getting himself arrested by an army sergeant for trespassing on Indian lands.
“So . . .” Dooley started with some hesitation. There was a fierceness in the preacher’s eyes that Dooley had not seen before, but maybe it was only Dooley’s imagination, dark as it was by now, and the fire slowing burning itself out. “You’re telling me that the Widow’s nephew found himself a claim in the Black Hills.”
The reverend leaned closer, and Dooley understood that he had not mistaken that look in Granby’s eyes. “Not a claim, sir . . . The Mother LODE !!!!!”
Logan Kingsbury had been among the first to hear about the discovery of gold in the Black Hills on account that a deserter from Custer’s expedition wound up in Fetterman City, which probably wouldn’t be a settlement Dooley would have picked on account that it existed only because of Fort Fetterman right there on the Bozeman Trail. Be that as it may, the deserter confided in Logan Kingsbury just how rich that land was. So Kingsbury and the deserter, a fellow named Martin Dansforth, had schemed to make their way into the Black Hills, before the rest of the country—the world—learned about it and took most of that fortune for themselves.
In a town like Fetterman City, it was easy to find a few other men willing to trespass onto Indian lands and take out gold by the tons. But they kept it to just a few, four other men whose names Logan Kingsbury did not mention in his letter to his aunt.
After outfitting for a mining expedition, they rode south, just to fool anyone who might try to jump their illegal claims, and then t
urned east and finally north. Seven days later they reached the Black Hills. Logan Kingsbury had little experience in mining, as he had spent most of his time saving drowning puppies and helping orphans find loving parents who had lost their own child to measles, cholera, syphilis, or some other childhood disease. Martin Dansforth, however, had been a miner during the Pikes Peak rush and two of their hires in Fetterman City knew about gold and pay dirt and where to look.
Unfortunately, the two miners from Fetterman City were jumped by Sioux on the third day in the Black Hills, filled with arrows, bludgeoned with tomahawks, tortured, scalped, disemboweled, and left as a warning for any other white man in the holiest of all of the Sioux’s lands.
The four surviving men of the expedition did find some gold, but in a sad, sad accident, Logan Kingsbury’s. 44 revolver discharged and put a bullet in the back of the third Fetterman City hire’s head. Logan, good soul that he was, did gather up the man’s gold dust and nuggets and would have sent it on to the dead man’s next of kin, but, well, the man did not have any identifying letters with him, and Logan surely doubted if the man’s real name was John Smith and even if it was . . . ?
The shot Logan had fired led to another unfortunate incident.
A Sioux scouting party heard the report of Logan’s pistol that had killed the unfortunate Alias John Smith and caught up with the fourth man hired in Fetterman City.
Dansforth and Logan could hear the screams of that man as they galloped west as hard as they could, leaving behind the dead men’s horses, the pack mules, and anything else that might have weighed them down. Except for the gold, of course.
“But,” the minister said, “as Logan Kingsbury remarked in his letter, they escaped with their lives but nothing more than slim pickings.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“I don’t understand,” Dooley said. “If they left—”
“You don’t understand, Dooley,” Granby said, “because I have not finished this tale.”
Dooley sighed. The moon had risen, a good time to start riding, but the way the preacher kept talking the moon would be setting before he ever got around to telling Dooley why they needed him to lead them to someplace that Dooley had never even heard of.
Dansforth and Logan hid in a cave one night, and stayed in that cave all day, sweating, driving themselves mad with fear.
That night they left, but could hear drums beating and see smoke rising above the Black Hills that the Sioux called Paha Sapa.
“Logan Kingsbury,” the preacher said, “began to wish that he had never heard of Martin Dansforth.”
Dooley thought: Like I’m beginning to wish I’d never heard of the Reverend Robert James Granby; or Cincinnati, Ohio; or Peabody, Massachusetts; or Julesburg, Colorado Territory; or even Miss Sabrina Granby. Well... maybe not Miss Sabrina so much . . .
Thus was how they traveled, nerves taut, sweat pouring out of every pore. Dansforth even began to lose some of his hair. They moved at night, slowly to the point of almost not moving at all. Fearing for their lives, they hid out in the day. Their food was almost nothing, and then became nothing except for the berries they could find, or even the bark on the pine trees. Oh, game seemed plentiful . . . deer and rabbits and even buffalo, but they dared not fire a weapon because one shot might bring Sitting Bull and every Sioux warrior within fifty miles upon them.
And they remembered all too well what they had found left of the first two men from Fetterman City. And the screams of the fourth man still echoed in their ears.
They kept their horses muzzled, until Logan Kingsbury’s fine horse played out, toppled over, and died. Two men now, one horse, and the going became even rougher. The Black Hills are not for the feeble, not for the meek. It is rough country, full of black granite, thick briars, freezing streams even in the dog days of August, and perhaps a Sioux warrior behind every pine, every rock, every cattail.
Such an ordeal could drive even the strongest man to the brink of insanity, or push him hopelessly beyond all reason.
At some point, as they moved southwest, the hills became not so towering, the streams not so cold. Oh, the trees remained oppressive with the wind moaning high above them, blocking out the rays of sunlight, as though they were moving through a tunnel. And whenever the wind rustled the pines above them, they thought it was raining. They worried that because of the tall trees, they could not see any smoke signals the Indians might be sending one another.
Madness. It was pure madness.
Yet it was fear that drove the men, that kept them alive.
“It was while they were camping, worried sick, fearing for their hair and their lives, hiding from those fiendish Sioux that they found more gold.”
Dooley saw. “I see,” he said.
“No,” the preacher said, “you don’t.”
Dooley had no response.
“You were bound for the Black Hills, Dooley,” Granby said. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Deadwood?”
“Well, that’s where the gold strike is,” Dooley said. “So, yeah, Deadwood. Deadwood Gulch.”
“That’s where the gold is, sure. It’s also where the Sioux Indians are, and the pickpockets and whores and murdering scum who will slit your throat for the gold fillings in your mouth.”
Dooley had no gold fillings. He even had all of his teeth, rare for a cowboy. Yet he nodded. The parson could spin a tale, and Dooley found this story a lot more interesting, stimulating, sometimes downright frightening, than all that crap he said about Cincinnati and Peabody.
“But . . .” Again, the parson used his cigar as a pointer. Again, Dooley leaned forward so he would not miss any word. “It’s not where all the gold is. It’s just the major strike. What the Widow Kingsbury’s nephew found was nowhere near Deadwood. Oh, it’s in the Black Hills, but not the Black Hills that has been printed up in every newspaper between Seattle and St. Augustine. The strike Logan Kingsbury found is not even in Dakota Territory.”
“I thought all of the Black Hills were in Dakota,” Dooley said.
“Wyoming,” the preacher said in a whisper. “Wyoming Territory.”
The hills lessened in height and harshness, and Dansforth and Logan found places that were even free of pine trees. It had been a day, perhaps two, since they had seen or imagined any Indian sign, and once they took a chance and shot a mule deer with Dansforth’s stolen-from-the-army Springfield Trapdoor carbine. Famished, they ate the liver and heart raw, and quickly vomited, carved out some thick steaks, and ran as far as they could from the carcass they left behind. As buzzards and crows appeared out of nowhere and started circling overhead, the two men feared Indians would notice and come to investigate.
On they moved, back into the hills covered with conifer forest. From a creek they washed the mule deer’s blood from their hands, arms, and faces, and it was there, in a creek in the southwestern edge of the Black Hills that Logan Kingsbury made the great discovery.
As he lay on his belly, lapping up water like a dog, something in the bed of the stream caught his attention. He blinked away the water and reached forward into the cold water, found the nugget, and brought it from the creek to a few inches from his face.
It could not be, he thought.
“Martin,” he called out in a shout, and then felt the dread, the paralyzing fear take hold of him. He rolled over, dropped the piece of stone no larger than his thumbnail, and drew his revolver.
But it was only his imagination, his paranoia. No Indian stood over him. Just another tree.
“Martin,” he said again, and looked downstream.
To his surprise, Martin Dansforth sat on a boulder, his worn-out army boots soaking in the stream, as he studied a stone that caught the rays of the sun—for here, in this part of the Black Hills, a man could actually see the sun. It was Wyoming, you see, and not Dakota Territory.
Martin Dansforth slowly turned around. His eyes met Logan Kingsbury’s, and Logan dived back into the stream, fished
out the nugget he had found, and brought it out, lifting it over his head.
Martin brought his feet out of the water.
“Gold!” they screamed, forgetting their fear, forgetting the ravens and buzzards they had left behind them four miles back, forgetting the four dearly departed partners they had enticed to come with them back in Fetterman City. They ran to each other and danced a jig, then a polka, and then fell onto the grass and laughed and laughed and laughed.
Gold. A bonanza of gold, only it lay far from Deadwood, far from the prying eyes of the United States Army and the Great Sioux Nation. Gold. Gold for the taking. Gold for Martin Dansforth and Logan Kingsbury. Gold. Gold. Gold.
“They named their claim Slim Pickings.”
Not that it was an actual, legal claim. No, Martin Dansforth said he had seen what happens to a gold-rich place when claims were made, when people began flocking to steal or just get a slice of that pie. Besides, they had never really studied a map and weren’t altogether certain about what the treaty signed by the Sioux and U.S. government designated as Sioux land for as long as the grass shall grow and what was land that was open for white men and women.
It was decided that they would keep the location of the strike a secret.
“But two men can’t work a claim of this magnitude,” Logan Kingsbury pointed out.
“That’s true,” Martin Dansforth said.
“We could return to Fetterman City and—”
“No. No. No!” Dansforth shook his head. “That’s too dangerous. Men there do not keep secrets. I’m certain we would have eventually had to kill our four partners from there had not the Sioux taken care of them and, well, that unfortunate accident.”
“Yes,” said Logan Kingsbury. “Do you have any brothers? Sisters?”
“No, alas, as yellow fever took my brother, and a .41 slug from a derringer sent my father from this world.”
“And your mother?”
“They hanged her after my father’s murder.” He paused. “Vigilantes, you see. Bannack City in Montana Territory.”
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