Friends

by Charles Hackenberry

  We was almost to the Deadwood road, according to the map, so we backtracked to where the paint'd turned, and then we cut over and hit the road. No tracks at all to follow.

  "North's the way to go here," I told Clete. "Seems like it ought to be the other way, I know, but he went north."

  "How can you tell?" Clete ask, sliding out of his saddle and inspecting the sign.

  "Nothin' there that will tell you, but I'm sure he went up the road toward Deadwood."

  "I was wrong back there close to Marsh's camp when I went north," Clete said, trying to figure out the different tracks. "How come you're so damned sure."

  "Well, part of it's the difference between northeast, the way you went, and northwest, the way this road goes. I doubt he'd double back on himself and risk running into us. He must guess we're still after him, or else he wouldn't have turned the paint loose over there to try and throw us off. Not as much as he values a spare horse, he wouldn't. And another part of it is having somewhere to go-meaning Deadwood. A fellow who enjoys killing folks, or makes a trade of it, could do a lot worse than Deadwood if its reputation is only half true. And the last part of it, well, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

  Clete stood and put his hands on his hips. "Why don't you let me decide that?"

  "All right," I told him after a minute. "Stalking Bear taught me to spirit track. To put yourself in the place of what you're trackin', see with his eyes, listen with his ears. After you're been chasing an animal or a man for some time, you can get inside the thinking. 'Get in front of the sign' is what that Apache was always saying to me. Our man went north here. I feel it, like Stalking Bear taught me. Sounds farfetched, I know."

  "Yeah, it does," Clete said, getting back on the gray. "But you've been right so far and there's no arguing with that. Let's go."

  So go we did. All afternoon and into the evening. I knowed Clete didn't like it, traveling up that road without no sign to follow. He'd look at me from time to time, but he didn't say nothing. Near dark we hit a town the map said was Hay Camp, just a few houses and a saloon.

  Clete checked the horses there, and then stood a ways off and looked through the window a spell. We looked everyone over good when we went in, but none of the men at the bar or those playing poker at the tables in back was our man. Clete bought us whiskeys and questioned the barman, but he didn't see nobody new all day-except the folks on a stage that'd passed through.

  "What do you think, Willie?" Clete asked after we got our second whiskey. "Still think he's headed for Deadwood?"

  "Yes, I do," I said.

  "How come he didn't stop here?" Clete ask, taking a sip.

  "Cause he knew we would. Likely rode all the way around instead of coming through, too. Probly no one even saw him."

  "You're still sure, though, aren't you?"

  "Yes, I am. I could be wrong, now, you understand, but I feel he's up the road toward Deadwood."

  "You up to riding all night, just on the strength of your hunch?" Clete asked. "We could get to Deadwood by late morning."

  "It's not just a hunch," I said. "It's a lot more than that. And, yeah, I'll ride at night with you. Might be we'll even stumble onto him this time. But if we're gonna ride long, let's get a little sleep now and get back on him in a couple hours. Moon'll be up shortly past midnight … a good-sized slice of it. What my daddy called a horsethiefs moon. I say we sleep a while and then start."

  "Sounds all right to me," Clete said. "Be better for the horses, too."

  We finished our drinks and walked out of there with everone watching. I could have stood a few more. Two would have to do for that night, though. But Deadwood, I decided right then, that would be a different story. We made a cold camp a few miles out of town and slept 'til the moon rose, clear and sharp, like the points on a bull's horns.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I chewed jerky while we rode along in the dim moonlight. Stars were bright, and while we trotted on up the trail that old star goose flew slow across the night sky, east to nearly overhead and then winging her way toward the west.

  The air smelled sweet. A warm, dry wind straight up the flat-lands from Texas made you think of summer, though it was only May. Course, it could go back to being March again tomorrow, but I hoped it wouldn't.

  To the west, come sunup, we saw the Black Hills, the first real rise on the plains in a thousand miles. From far off they looked like low-hanging storm clouds, but as you got up closer you saw the peaks and ridges. Wasn't hard to see why the first white men in these parts called them black, either. Darkest green you ever saw, though from far off they was smoky-looking too. True, they wasn't nearly so grand as the ranges between here and the Rockies, all of them higher and wilder, but these looked mighty pretty to me. Don't know why I fancy mountains so, I wasn't born near any.

  The road bent west and cut up into a valley. A wooden sign pointed us up the trail toward Deadwood and we followed its stiff finger. Every so often I'd look for those hoofprints we first saw over where Jimmy and his folks'd had their troubles, but I didn't see them even once more. Did I go and climb the wrong tree? I asked myself if I was still doing things the way Stalking Bear taught me to do. I figgered I was, so I said nothing to Clete. There was no other way now than to just go on.

  As the valley we were in turned and twisted, it also narrowed. The dark-colored pines crowded closer and closer to the snaky road and swooshed in the breeze. The perfume from all those cedary trees, together with the moisture they give off, made it seem like the plains and them badlands we traveled through only days before was on the sun or the moon. It felt like we'd come to a place not even on the same kind of a map. Gradually we climbed up through gully and gulch, the sun finally rising high enough to set the stream and road afire in a blaze of light. Lots of wildflowers, too-red ones. I didn't know what they were, but I tried not to spend much time looking at them, pretty as they was. No matter how nice it was there, it was also ripe country for an ambush.

  Lots of fellows along the streams panning and digging after we got into the Hills a ways. None of them very friendly, though. I waved at the first few gangs of men we seen, but few waved back and none of'em ask us to come on into their camps, so we just rode on. Some miners'd even hired men to sit guard with a rifle, and those sentries watched us real close. I guess there must of been quite a few thieves and claim-jumpers working that territory. In places, the ground along the stream was all tore up and bare-big gashes in the hillsides. Timber'd burned off not too long ago, too, in spots, givin' the hills a kind of bare look compared to where the trees was thick as fleas on a dog.

  We heard Deadwood before we saw it. We had come down out of a steep gulch and then up and down a gentler one when gunshots echoed through the narrow valley. So many shots fired, it sounded like an Indian raid.

  When we got to where we could see Deadwood good, up on a little rise, we just sat and looked. The streets was full of people, hollerin and runnin around. Many of'em, women as well as men, drunker than Billy-be-damned. Even at a distance you could see that. The town was stretched out down the hill from us, but it started off on the uphill again right away-mostly just a single street, following the line of the gulch. Rougher buildings closest to us, mostly log or uneven ripped boards, and the fancier ones with squared-off false fronts up the hill a ways. I had thought there would be more to it, much as I'd heard about Deadwood.

  Toward the far end of town, up on the higher ground, a brass band stood in the middle of the street and struck up a march. Three or four men close to us, after we got down to the bottom, kept throwing their hats up into the air, going to fetch them, and then throwing them up again. Three teams of bulls hitched to wagons was stopped any old where, with no bullwhackers near them–one team with twelve animals.

  Riders and buggies was all caught in a big snarl. A pile of poles higher than a man's head-pine tree trunks–had slid right off a fiat wagon and nearly blocked the street in front of a place called Liebmann's San Francisco Bazaar, so the sign sai
d. I'd have expected that particlar store to be in San Francisco, myself. But there it was. Clete and me rode right through the middle of it all. Half a dozen men bawling out orders and arguing about what should be done about the logs lying there peaceful as liquored-up Irishmen, but nobody was doing a thing about 'em.

  I saw a man in a beaver hat with three fancy-dressed women-upstairs girls they looked like to me-two on one arm and one on the other. He kissed one gal and then the second and then the third, right in a row and right in the street. And not just little pecks on the cheek, either. A place called the Red Bird caught my eye. Smelled like stale beer and sawdust as we rode past, so I promised myself I'd stop by there before very long. Everywhere people was hooraying and cheering, and the band just added to the racket, once we got up toward the fancier end of town. But mostly what you heard was pistols being fired off. I have seen some strange sights in my day, and heard some godawful noises, but I was not prepared for the likes of Deadwood.

  "What happened, did I sleep through the Fourth of July?" Clete asked.

  "Beats me," I said, almost hollering to be heard. "You suppose it's like this all the time?"

  Clete didn't answer, but it didn't matter, because just then it was so loud I couldn't of heard him anyway.

  When we got up the street a piece it quieted some. Clete rode close to a young man sitting his horse in front of a rail. "What's all the excitement?"

  The man tipped his whiskey bottle at us. "Crazy Horse!" He tried to dismount and landed in a heap in the muddy street. He stood up slow, brushed himself off and wobbled into a big hotel. Had the name, Grand Central Hotel, on a sign right over the door, letters high as a man's chest.

  "Crazy Horse?" Clete said. "If this is how they get ready for an Indian attack, I'd like to see what they do for Saturday night."

  We tied our horses to the rail beside the young fellow's mount and then stood on the board sidewalk. We'd no sooner started to look around to get our bearings than, bam-out through the open door comes the young fellow Clete'd spoke to, ass first. I thought for a minute he was hurt, but I guess he was drunk enough to fall soft, even on them boards, for he picked himself up, found his hat and headed back inside. But not before he smiled and tipped his hat to us real friendly.

  Clete and me waited, but after a while it seemed like he was going to stick. "I'm going up the street to look for the sheriff," Clete said. "Seth Bullock used to carry the badge here." He looked tired and dusty, and I supposed I looked worse. "You can come along or get swilled in one of these places, suit yourself."

  All of a sudden, that young feller come sailing out of that hotel door again and made an even bigger thump going down than he did the first time. He was slower standing up, too, but he started for inside again.

  Clete took the young fellow by the arm as he was building up steam to charge back in. "You sure you want to try that again?" Clete asked him. "Doesn't seem like they want your business all that bad."

  He give Clete and me a crooked grin, and when he finally got around to talkin' he slurred his words pretty good. "Oh, it's all right. My pa don't like me comin' home drunk is all it is, him ownin' the best hotel in town. He'll not throw me out a third time. It was twice I come out now, wan't it?"

  "Yep," I told him, "twice in and twice out."

  "This'll be it, then. Pa don't usually stay mad enough to throw me out three times." He dusted himself off, set his hat on straight and staggered back in.

  We waited a while, but it appeared that young man knowed his daddy pretty well, for though there was a lot of hollering inside, he had wedged himself in for good that time.

  "You want me to go along to see Bullock?" I asked.

  "Makes no difference. If I don't see you up there by the time I'm ready to go, I'll come back down here. Maybe you could look around in the bars for DuShane. He's a tall, lean one, and if he's kin to Whitey, he's a Rebel."

  "I'll bear it in mind," I told him.

  "And get us a room some place, but be sure there's no whores working there," Clete said, taking a step up the street. "I could stand a night's sleep in a regular bed, and the last thing I want keeping me awake is having to listen to every horny miner in these Hills banging his rocks off."

  "I'll see to it," I told him, "though I may have to check out the ones that might be whorehouses pretty close."

  Clete smiled, shook his head, and walked up the street through all that confusion. I went back down to the even noisier part of town.

  People inside the Red Bird was celebrating every bit as much as the people in the street. That beery and sawdust smell hit me in the face as I walked in, and it felt a lot like coming home. Lots of gals in fancy dresses at the bar, not all of'em with somebody, either.

  "You had your free one yet?" the barman asked me soon as I stepped up.

  "You mean a free whiskey?" I ask the man.

  "Unless you'd rather have beer," the fellow told me, standing there waitin'.

  "Make it rye, then," I said, and he set 'er up in front of me. Maybe I could get used to a town with lots of confusion.

  "Here's to General Clark!" a man standing beside me called out, and everybody cheered and raised their glasses … so I drank too.

  The man who thought so highly of General Clark gouged me in the ribs with his elbow. "Let me buy you a drink, friend. You don't look properly lubricated for such a historic occasion."

  "I wouldn't mind if you did," I told him. "But what's the occasion, anyways?"

  "Why, ain't you heard?" the man ask, sounding like I'd just asked who Abraham Lincoln was. "Crazy Horse surrendered this morning! We got it on the telegraph more than an hour ago. That's where I work, the telegraph office, so I was one of the first that heard it."

  He acted real proud of himself over that, passing his smile around to everyone that would look his way. He went over and sat at a table with some other men wearing suits. I wondered how come he'd walked away from the telegraph office and who was writing down the messages while he was gone. Maybe Crazy Horse changed his mind and was on his way here now, just to stir things up a little worse. Not that they needed it.

  It was only natural that the people who lived in the Hills was celebrating old Crazy Horse giving it up. That Sioux chief had killed a lot of folks and would of killed a lot more, for the army had about as much chance of bringing in him and his bunch as it did of throwing a loop over the moon's horns. Still, I hated to think that the last really wild Indian in these parts was going to settle down on a reservation, eat the white man's beef and buy his shirts in a store somewheres.

  I picked up the drink the telegraph man'd bought me and moved down beside a hefty gal in a pink striped dress standing by herself and sippin' a beer. Looking me over, so I thought.

  "Well, hello there, stranger," she said in a real loud voice.

  "Haven't seen you in this hole before. You wanna buy a girl a drink or something?"

  "The something sounds like what I'd like to buy–if I got you pegged right, but I don't mean no offense if I didn't understand you proper."

  She throwed her head back and laughed a good loud one. "No, you got me right," she said, taking my arm and still smiling. "Bessie's my name and whorin's my game. You ready to go now?"

  It surprised me she said it right out like that for all to hear, but nobody seemed to pay much attention. "Whoa, hold on, Bessie," I told her. "I meant that's what I'd like to do, but I ain't got the time right now' so instead rn just buy you that drink."

  She twisted up her smile and slapped me on the back. "Then I'll take whiskey and be glad for that."

  Soon as the barman set our drinks down, she tipped hers toward me and put 'er back in one splash, then took a sip of her beer. Never batted an eye. Long time since I saw a gal drink whiskey like that, even a whore.

  "Seems everybody's too busy to dip his wick today," she said, free and easy, not caring how she talked.

  "Still pretty early for that, ain't it?" I asked. People always like to talk about their trade, man or woman.


  "Not for Deadwood. Hell, Sundays I'm wore out before most of the tin shits around here get out of bed the first time. Lots of gals working this town, but there ain't a one of 'em goin' hungry, even the old bags."

  "You been around here awhile?" I ask.

  "About four months now. That's a long time to stay in one place. For me, anyway." She pawed at her hair and began looking around the Red Bird for something, customers I guessed.

  "You know a long, tall Southerner? Maybe just got in the last couple days."

  "I know a few men that might be," she said, looking me over a different way than she did before. "What's it worth to you?"

  I dug into my pocket, pulled a half-eagle out of the pouch I carry my gold in, and tossed it on the bar in front of her.

  Quick as a cat she picked it up and dropped it into her handbag. "You ain't the law, are you?"

  "He's not a young fellow," I told her. "Maybe my age or more. Maybe he has a son or a brother who'd be twenty-five or so, but maybe not. Anyway, his kin is dead-supposin' he had one."

  "That's a shit load of help," she said.

  "That's all I know. I'd tell you more if I had saw the man I was after, but I didn't. He's tall and skinny, though, that much I'm sure of. And he talks Southern."

  "This fellow have a name?" she asked, curling her red-painted mouth funny.

  "His name's DuShane, his last name. I don't know his other."

  "Well, that's real useful too," Bessie said, putting her hand on her hip. "Men around here don't go by their last names much, don't even tell their partners, usually. Lot of men up here have their faces on a poster someplace else. Say, you ever been in a gold camp before?"

  "No, I haven't," I told her. "And from the likes of this one, I don't care if I never go near another."

  "Well, I've been in lots, Colorado and everywhere. And at least I have enough sense not to go into a gold strike town and go asking some box hustler to help me find somebody. Hell, you could get killed doing that. Don't you know that?"