by Bill Brooks
Charley, in his postcoital reverie, thought every day should end in a night like the one he’d just had, and that every man should have him a pard like Wild Bill, and every man should be free to go about the world as he pleased.
Then Charley thought about his wife and daughters and felt a little ashamed of himself.
Chapter 5
It was near evening and snowing when the train pulled into Denver. It was a soft easy snow that fell from the sky with near laziness though not much of it was sticking, for it was late in the season for snow to stick. Teddy felt stiff from being on the train for five days.
He asked for directions to the nearest hotel from the stationmaster and bought himself a ticket to Cheyenne at the same time. The hotel was about ten blocks up the street toward the center of town. He decided to walk.
It felt good to be West again in a way he couldn’t have explained to anybody if they had asked. And even though Denver wasn’t exactly a larger version of Abilene or Ellsworth or San Antonio, it still had the feel of the West to it.
He found the hotel and was registering his name in the book when the clerk said, “Would you like some companionship for the evening, sir?”
He looked at the man, guessed him to be in his fifties, nearly bald except for a few strands of hair combed over from one ear to the other. Freckled hands.
“Do I look like that sort to you?”
“Oh, no sir, I didn’t mean me, I meant that if you were interested, I could arrange, for a slight price above the hotel rate, of course, to have a young lady sent up to your room. Anything you wanted—even Oriental.”
“Oriental, huh?”
The clerk nodded.
“Sure, why not…” It was impulsive, but the feeling of emptiness was in him.
The room was comfortable with an iron bed, carpet, a washstand with a round mirror above it, and a window that looked out onto Colfax Avenue. The flier to Cheyenne wasn’t due to leave until the morning. He set his valise on the bed, undid the shoulder holster with the Colt Lightning and placed it atop the washstand, then put his coat on again and went out for a walk.
He found a steakhouse and oyster bar and went in, and it was warm and cheerful and well-appointed. The thought of a good meal piqued his senses. Teddy ate with gusto and then went to the bar drinking a cocktail and listening to a diva on the stage set up at one end of the bar who sang a bittersweet song about love that couldn’t last. Men were wiping their eyes by the time she finished, raising their glasses and shouting requests for other songs, which she gladly accommodated.
It was all very entertaining, but Teddy was bone-tired and still had to face another extensive journey by train tomorrow. He headed back toward the hotel.
He had gone only a block or so, noticing as he went how deserted the streets seemed. The snow was beginning to pile up now that the sun had gone down. It was a pretty sight, snow falling against the glow of the gas street lamps.
He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye—a shadow—then two men were in front of him. They wore caps with the bills pulled down low over their eyes and short coats. One stepped close to him, said, “Say, we were just wondering—”
He hit the man with a short straight jab to the point of his chin and turned his attention immediately to the other one. But too late. Something hard and mean struck him across his collarbone and buckled his knees. He knew it was a lead sap from the way it felt, the snapping sound his bone made when it broke and sent a wall of fire through his chest, numbing his left arm.
They were quick and fast with their fists and kicks, like a pair of fighting dogs attacking him as he tried to resist, the three of them dancing shadows, moving in and out of the street lamp’s glow, the snow falling so prettily.
For the first time in his life he felt real fear. He hit and was hit. He could taste blood in the back of his throat.
The thought of what Horace might have felt in those last dying seconds of his life flashed through his mind with every punch and kick.
One said, “Get him off his goddamn feet. Let’s take him into that alley and finish him…”
He felt the world tilt, saw the glow of street lamps swirling overhead as they pulled and lifted him, the darkness closing in.
Then he saw Horace—his face peering from the shadows, his mouth moving wordlessly, the form of a man holding a smoking pistol, the naked hip of a woman with a star-shaped birthmark fading in and out.
Don’t let’s all die like this.
He wasn’t sure if he’d actually heard the words, but they were like hot steel touching his skin, burning into his blood and bone. The words produced a fury in him, unexpected and unabated, and he twisted free of the clawing hands. He lashed out at the nearest face with a flurry of punches, striking hard over and over again until he felt flesh and cartilage give way, turn to something sticky and soft under his knuckles, and saw the man sink to his knees and topple over.
The other climbed on his back and was trying to rake his face, but Teddy swung him around into a brick wall, drove his shoulder into chest and ribs and heard them distinctly popping. The man’s yelps did not save him as Teddy drove a knee into his face, then took the small skull with its greasy hair and slammed it hard into the wall, knowing it was quite possible it had cracked like an egg, but no longer caring.
He stood bent with his hands on his knees, trying to breathe through his blood-clogged nostrils—his attackers silent now, curled shapes in the darkened alley. He regained enough air into his lungs to stagger toward the light. Once on the street again, he saw that the hotel was only a block away. He realized he was no longer scared, no longer filled with that same dread Horace must have known as he drew his final breath.
He went up the back stairs of the hotel and into his room.
He shucked himself out of his coat, and in doing so felt the deep aching pain of his broken collarbone. His eye fell on the holstered Lightning and he wondered if he had been armed whether he would have shot and killed the two men. He realized in that moment that he had never shot a living thing. Would he have done it? Could he do it the next time? And would he stand a bullet for Hickok, or deliver one, if it came to that?
The world seemed full of hard edges. He spat blood into the basin, then filled it with water and washed his face. There was a nick above his eye, and he stanched the blood with the cuff of his shirt. His cheek was scraped but to no great damage.
There was a knock at the door.
He slid the pistol from its holster and held it down along his leg as he opened the door.
She was small and pretty, with coffee-brown skin and black hair that gleamed under the hall’s gaslights.
“Mr. Tom say you want company.”
Teddy had forgotten the agreement he’d made with the desk clerk.
“No, not tonight,” he said.
“You hurt,” she said, touching his face. It was such a delicate touch he nearly wept.
“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake,” he said. “But let me pay you for your trouble…”
She followed him into the room when he turned to get his wallet out of his coat.
“I’m Kiko,” she said.
He took ten dollars from his wallet and handed it to her.
“No,” she said. “I don’t want. You don’t like me. It’s okay. I go.”
He stopped her. “Don’t go,” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
She was there on the bed next to him when he awoke. Morning light fell through the window. He sat up and almost fell back again from the pain of his collarbone, remembered the way the pain felt lost during the night each time she kissed him there. She slept as silently as a child.
He dressed, strung his fingers through his hair, and set his hat down on his head. He slipped into the shoulder holster rig, tightening it like a binding around him to ease some of the pain. The weight of the pistol lent some comfort.
He took the money he’d offered her last night, placed it on the bed next to her and ki
ssed her cheek, and she did not stir. He said her name and she did not answer. She was the kind of woman that could make a man change his plans.
He left and walked to the train station, passing the very alley of his attack. Curiosity caused him to look. The alley was empty. He was just as glad he didn’t see two dead men lying there.
It had stopped snowing.
Chapter 6
Bill went to see the fortune-teller, Madam Moustache. She had big bosoms and claimed the ability to speak to the dead.
She looked at his muddy boots. He removed them. She nodded and led him into her séance room at the back of her tent.
“You have something for me?” she said.
He handed her five silver dollars, which she placed in a tin box under a red scarf.
“For the gods,” she said, smiling.
She sat across from him at a small round table covered with a black cloth.
“Who do you want to visit today?” she said.
“Mike Williams,” he said.
“Someone who is related to you?”
“A feller I killed by accident.”
“I see,” she said, taking his hands in hers and closing her eyes.
He followed suit.
She began an incantation. He felt a bit spooked. But that was the way the netherworld was—spooky.
She called Mike’s name. Her voice changed. Sure enough, the wind blew against the walls of her tent.
“He’s here,” she said.
Bill opened his eyes. “Don’t see him.”
She opened her eyes and looked into his. “You cannot see in that way.”
“Oh,” he said, and closed his eyes again.
“What do you want to tell him?” she said.
Bill hesitated, feeling a bit foolish. The wind stopped, everything became quiet.
“He’s waiting,” she said.
“Tell him I’m sorry, I never meant to shoot him that night…”
“He says he understands, that you shouldn’t be troubled, that where he is now is a wonderful place and that he is very happy.”
Bill opened his eyes and looked around, then looked directly at Madam Moustache.
He felt himself sweating.
“I could stand a drink…”
The wind began to beat the sides of the tent again. Madam Moustache shuddered and her hands shook inside his.
“He’s gone,” she said.
“Read the cards for me.”
“Let’s have a drink first.”
She reached into a cabinet, took out a small decanter and two glasses and poured them each a brandy. He looked surprised when he tasted it.
“This is fine stuff.”
“It doesn’t pay to drink cheap liquor,” she said.
“The wind up in this country never seems to let up. It makes me nervous.”
She took out a pack of picture cards and began laying them out. “You will soon find great fortune,” she said after turning up the second card.
“Me and Charley’s going to the goldfields soon as the weather breaks.”
She turned up another card. “Love will also be yours—a great love,” she said.
“Already know as much,” he said.
She poured them each another brandy.
She turned over the next card. Bill saw the way her face changed.
“What is it?” The card she’d overturned had an illustration of a dancing skeleton on it.
“It’s nothing. A mistake. Do not worry…”
“It’s the death card, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I don’t think it signifies anything in your case. All the other cards indicate—”
“Shit, I knew it.”
Charley found Bill drinking at the Gold Room. Charley could tell Bill was in the doldrums by the look he wore. He might have been drunk as well. Drunk, or carrying a head full of opium.
“You been to the chink’s,” Charley said.
“I went to see the fortune-teller…”
“That Gypsy with hair on her lip?”
“She foretold it,” Bill said.
“Foretold what?”
“You know, don’t you, Charley? It’s coming for me, death is.”
Bill always made even the air around him morose when he talked of death and assassination.
“She say how, when, where?”
Bill shook his head. “Could be any minute. Why, somebody could walk right through that door and blow my brains out all over this bar.”
“You’d spot them a mile off, Bill. You’re good at spotting danger.”
Bill waggled his head again. “I’ve lost my feel for it, old pard.”
“No you ain’t, Bill. No you ain’t.”
They stood in silence for a time, then Bill said, “Listen.”
Charley listened but he didn’t hear anything other than men talking in low voices, the click of the roulette wheel, the scrape of a chair, the clink of glasses.
“What am I listening for, Bill?”
“Hear it?”
Charley shook his head. “Don’t hear nothing unusual. Hear what?”
“The wind,” Bill said.
Charley tried to hear it.
“I had her contact Mike. I told her to tell him I was sorry about shooting him. He said he forgave me.”
Bill was maudlin, and there wasn’t nothing worse Charley could have seen than a maudlin Wild Bill.
“Why don’t you let me buy you a girl,” Charley said. “How about Lilly? She’s from San Francisco and does this neat little trick with her—”
Bill cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I’m married now, Charley. I put all that aside…”
“Hell, Bill, ain’t nobody’d know.”
“I’d know. I’d know. I got to get myself right with him.”
“With who?”
Bill pointed toward the ceiling. Charley looked up, but all he saw was the painting of a near naked lady with a flimsy scarf draped over her bosoms and wrapped discreetly between her thighs. Then Charley realized that Bill wasn’t pointing at the nude but beyond the ceiling, beyond the cloudy sky with snow still falling out of it. Bill was pointing toward heaven and where God kept house.
It gave Charley the shivers to hear Bill say things like that. Bill never did before profess any great faith in godly matters. As far as he knew, Bill never started talking about such things until after he shot Mike Williams. From what he’d been told, Bill hadn’t visited a dope den till after the shooting either.
“Maybe you could just let Lilly rub your feet,” Charley said. “It might make you feel better.”
Bill shook his head. “I am going back to our camp and write Agnes a letter. I don’t want her worrying about me.”
Charley felt a twinge of guilt about not telling Bill about the letter he’d received. What was a pard supposed to do? Bill straightened from leaning on the bar and adjusted his pancake hat so the brim swooped low on one side. He threw Charley a final look with those mournful eyes before turning and heading for the door. Charley wished the weather broke so he and Bill could go up to Deadwood and make their fortunes. That’s all it would take to put Bill back in good spirits again—a nice fortune. Money was a happy thing; the weight of it in a man’s pocket made a feller smile.
Charley saw Lilly sitting with a broken-nosed miner drinking the watered liquor the girls drank. Lilly was about the best of the girls working the club, young and petite and not too ugly, and gave a man his money’s worth. Some of the girls had been plying their trade so long they’d became dispirited and were like rag dolls in a man’s arms. But not Lilly, who showed unusual exuberance, probably because of her youth. Charley had a yen for Lilly in a way he had not for any of the other working girls he’d ever been with. He went over to the table where she and the miner sat and said to the miner, “I’ll flip you for her.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” the miner said.
“I’ll toss this gold piece and you call it. You win, you get
Lilly and the gold piece. I win, I get Lilly.”
The miner had three or four places in his mouth where teeth should have been when he smiled.
Of course, Charley won. He never knew why he had such good luck, but he did. They climbed the stairs arm in arm, and Lilly didn’t disappoint, just like Charley knew she wouldn’t.
“I sure am going to miss you when me and Bill head off for the hills,” he said, all winded, lying there next to her.
“You know the thing about you I like best?” she said.
“No, what?”
“The fact you wash.”
“Cleanliness is next to godliness, darling.”
“I didn’t know you were a Christian, Charley.”
“I ain’t exactly. But I am a little.”
Lilly gave him the next one free because he was such a sweet little fellow. Charley didn’t object.
Chapter 7
Cheyenne seemed like a cruel place flung up at the end of nowhere, like the wind had swept it away from the rest of civilization then petered out. Off to the distant west were mountains, but little in between. Cheyenne was a crossroads to other places—a jumping-off spot to the goldfields in the Black Hills. It was a holding place for miners, gamblers, pimps, prostitutes, and shootists, all feeding off one another: opportunists, predators, and prey.
Teddy figured he could empty his pistol into the middle of the entire population and not hit a preacher or a virgin.
Snow lay melting on tin roofs, dripped off eaves when the sun struck, but froze again when it retreated. The streets were wide and muddy. Now that it was nearing spring, the population had swollen to nearly busting out the seams. The town was built around the Inter-Ocean Hotel and the Union Pacific Railroad Hotel. Most everything else was a collection of raw lumber false-fronted buildings where a man could buy mining equipment, get a haircut, purchase a pocket watch, or buy a woman if he was willing to wait in line.
Gathered at the edge of the town proper was a collection of tents and wagons where most of the transient types set up camp, waiting for the weather to break and allow them to make it to the Black Hills—to Deadwood Gulch and Lead.