Friends

by Charles Hackenberry

  "You shot Whitey DuShane?" Bullock asked, showing surprise and admiration both. "Why was he out for you?"

  "Long story," Clete said, waving away the rest of an answer. I guess he didn't want to talk about that mess. "The man we're after is kin to Whitey, but damned if we can figure out how. Some folks we run into tell us he's Whitey's father and others say he's Whitey's brother. Don't know his name-his first name."

  Seth Bullock got up and walked over to the window and looked down the street. "Just what I need in Deadwood, another DuShane." I saw then that deputying in this town would be a whole lot different than locking up drunks in Two Scalp.

  "I'll be happy to take him off your hands if you help me find him, and Ill save the citizens of Deadwood the expense of a trial and a hanging too."

  "Fine, you do that," Bullock said, turning away from the window and toward Clete. "Personally, I don't give a damn how you do it, but the decent people of this town won't stand for another back-shooting, even if it's done by a lawman. Gives the town a bad reputation and it's bad enough already. Just make sure he's facing you when you take him."

  He caught Clete off guard with that.

  "You got no call to be talking that way," I told him straight out. "Clete shot Whitey DuShane in a fair fight. I saw it. Any man who says otherwise is a lying sonofabitch who oughta be gelded."

  It was Bullock's turn to be pushed off balance and it was my strong words that done it. I had got to my feet and went over to him, for I ended up talking right into his face. And that's where I was when he looked at me so queer and then started smiling.

  Clete chuckled, and I seen that what was so funny to both of them was me. I suppose my face colored up pretty good. I set back down without saying nothing further.

  "You've got a loyal deputy there, Mr. Shannon, a rare beast. I doubt many of my men would stand up for me like that. Oh, they'd shoot somebody if I told them to, no questions asked, but … I'd value him if I were you."

  "Well, I do, mostly," Clete said, looking right at me. "He's got some damn peculiar ideas of how men ought to act, though, especially lawmen, even more especially how they should act towards women. But nobody ever questioned his doing the right-"

  I looked around and seen why Clete'd run out of words so sudden. A tiny woman had come in through the archway carrying a pitcher of water on a silver tray. She walked so slow across the room and her hair was so white, I thought she was an old woman for a second. But then you saw how smooth and fair her skin was. She didn't no more than set that silver tray on the table before I seen what a bang-up, well-favored creature she was. Didn't look bleached, either, her hair-the way it was on most women I had already saw in Deadwood-just as blonde as snow. You'd expect a gal as fair as that to have them pale blue eyes you see on Swede girls up Minnesota way, but hers was reddish brown, the color of raw cedarwood. She was young, too. Couldn't be no older than Mandy, I said to myself, maybe even younger. Maybe I thought her younger than she was.

  Seeing us there-me and Clete-her face looked all fluttery and disturbed for just a flicker of a second, 'til she put it back to being empty.

  "Thank you, Sarah," Bullock said after she'd set her tray down on the table and stood beside him. Bullock noticed Clete looking her over good and then glanced at me, and I guess he seen I'd been doing about the same thing my pardner still was. Seth Bullock, instead of being mad, though, seemed pleased she interested us so.

  She turned to go, but Bullock caught her by the wrist and she stopped, just stood there. She took us each in slow, Clete and me, and then looked down, like she was shutting a door on us in her brain. After that, she kept her eyes glued on that silver tray.

  "This is Sarah, gentlemen, my princess," Bullock said, pouring us each a glass of water to go with our whiskey. Reminded me of a man showing off his prize mare. He looked up at her face and then reached behind her and put his hand on the small of her back, but she didn't move when he did it. "She lives here in the castle I built for her and never goes outside. Do you, dear?"

  I waited for her to speak, but after a few seconds it was clear she wasn't going to say nothing.

  Bullock let his hand slide down her back and it was pretty clear what he was doing there with her, though I couldn't exactly see.

  Clete noticed too, and he shifted some in his chair.

  "Show the gentlemen your lovely hands, Sarah," Bullock said, and after a time she lifted them from her sides and held them out in front of her, palms down, though her eyes she kept on that silver tray. That girl's hands was something to see, all right, delicate and fine as they was, but I felt uncomfortable looking her parts over, right out in the open like that and she not even paying attention. Some of it was Bullock's way of showing them off, too. Clete glanced at the girl's hands, I saw, but he looked back at Bullock right away. He didn't seem to be enjoying the show no better than me, pretty as it was.

  That Sarah girl kept her hands held out in front of her, quivering a little, I noticed, and might of kept them there all night, I had the feeling, if Bullock hadn't of told her she could drop them.

  "If you think that's something, look at this." He reached up and unbuttoned the collar of her long blue dress and then worked his way on down the front, unbuttoning those tiny pearl buttons. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and her standing there so quiet and calm, almost like she was asleep with her eyes open.

  "That's far enough," Clete said.

  Bullock looked at him real surprised. "Why, I was about to offer you a taste of my choicest-"

  "That's enough of that!" Clete yelled, standing up quick and knocking his chair over backwards into the bargain.

  Bullock looked froze, his hand still on that girl's buttons. After a minute he smiled and waved her away. She went back through that fancy archway as slow as she come out, fastening herself up as she went. I figured it probly wasn't the first time Bullock'd entertained his guests that way, and it probly wouldn't be the last, either. I just wondered how the show ended. I was just curious, you understand, and I felt about as low as a snake for being so.

  "Sit back down, Shannon," Bullock said, that big mustache of his spread out over the lower part of his face, so you couldn't see much what his expression was. "You're making too much out of nothing." He laid his hands flat on the table and waited for my pardner to do as he said.

  But Clete just stood there and glared at him.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  After a minute, Clete pulled out his makings and rolled one, taking his time about it. Then he leaned over the lamp to light up, sucked the smoke in deep, and blew a big tobacco cloud across the table toward Bullock. "I've had about all the entertainment here I have the stomach for. And I've burned all the time I intend to trying to get your help."

  Bullock stood up and faced Clete. "Of course, Mr. Shannon. Come downstairs and rn see what I can do." I wondered how Sheriff Seth Bullock could just forget about that business with that girl Sarah so quick, but he appeared to close his mind on it like a banker slamming shut a big steel vault.

  He went to the stairs and we followed him down. At his desk, Bullock pulled a green ledger out of a drawer, flipped the pages 'til he come to the one he wanted and read for a minute. "No, no claim registered under DuShane's name, as I expected. He's no miner-or speculator. This record is pretty accurate," he said, rapping the page with with his knuckles, all business. "I could send someone around to check the hotel registrations-this week's. And your man here could read the hotels' books from last week and before, going backwards. A woman who works for me goes around every Friday and collects them. The hotel owners complain like hell because they have to keep two sets, but I just let them. I like to know who's come into my town and who's left." He got a tall stack of bigger books from a cabinet and dropped them on his desk. "These things aren't exactly what you'd call reliable. Some places do pretty well, but others don't keep very good records–even though I threaten to close them down. Still, it's worth a try. I guess you realize how men drift in and out of here.
Women too. It's a gold town, you'll recall."

  "Yeah, I know," Clete said. "Abilene had a lot of saddle tramps, so I know you can't keep track of everyone."

  "Well, most of them I can," Bullock said, and it didn't sound like bragging. "If they stay at a hotel or buy anything, that is." The sheriff put his book away and smiled at Clete. "Have you eaten yet, Mr. Shannon?"

  Clete'd looked a little surprised when it appeared Bullock was going to help us, but being asked to dinner was more than he was set for. "If you're buying, I'm eating," he said, sort of testing the water.

  "We'll let the Merchant's Association buy your supper," Bullock said, then got his hat from the rack.

  He set that hat just so on his head whilst looking in a mirror, such a dandy he was. "I will pay for my own meal, however. The President of the Merchant's Association must set a good example, especially if he has an election coming up." He done a little bow then. "'ne hand scratches the other, you see? You'll describe the man you're looking for to the merchants and they'll have their clerks keep an eye out for him. Agreed?"

  Clete nodded. "Agreed." He looked a long minute at Bullock, rubbing his stubbly, squared-off chin. "I hope you'll excuse me being curious, but how come you changed your mind and decided to help us?"

  Bullock looked more pleased with himself than took unawares. "Why, I never decided not to. I thought at first you were trying to blackmail me, but now that I see you're not … And I sure as hell don't want another DuShane loose in Deadwood, and neither do the townspeople, the folks who elect me to office." He walked over and opened the door. "Pay attention, Shannon. You might pick up a few pointers on how to run a town like this-at a profit, certainly, but entirely within the law. "Shall we go, Sheriff? Supper's not for another half hour, but the drinking generally starts a little earlier. A good time for you to meet the members and tell them about your man."

  "All right," Clete said, and then he come over to me. "You have a good time with these hotel books, Willie. I'll be back after we eat and then you can get something. That suit you?"

  "Yeah, sure, you go suck oysters with a bunch of bootmakers and clabberdashers and let me rustle through these. I'll see what I can find."

  They went out the door and I sat at Bullock's big oak desk and looked at all the books lying there. Took me more than two hours to comb back through two weeks of names in the hotel records. Pretty busy town, Deadwood. But DuShane's name was not there. I took the books back over to the cupboard where Bullock'd got them from and found a lot more. Instead of going back any further than two weeks, though, I got the ones from last fall, when Whitey DuShane was here to shoot Hickok, before he come to Two Scalp. And I found something, all right.

  Second of October, 1876, last year, somebody who signed the book at a place called the Gem had scribbled a big letter J and then after it a D and S close together. Whoever it was had squiggled lines after them big letters, but it didn't look like any writing I had ever saw. To the right of that chicken scratchin', over in another little square, somebody else had writ the word half. And behind that was wrote $9.50 in clear numbers. Nothing in the space for saying where you was from. Nothing in the room number box, either.

  Of course, I figured the name could just as well be that of Whitey DuShane's brother or pa, whichever it was, as that of someone else. Might be, but there was no way I could be sure. Other names in the book had seventeen or sixteen dollars marked down after them, so I thought maybe the one-half was for half rent. Sure enough, six pages earlier, and writ a lot plainer, was Whitey DuShane's name, clear as day. They shared room 12 and took no meals there. On the spot for saying where you hailed from, Whitey DuShane had wrote Elsewheres.

  I went back and studied a long time on that scratching made by Whitey's kin, the letter J and the wavy lines that followed it, what was supposed to be our man's first name-even got a Ioupe from Bullock's top desk drawer and looked through that. The longer I looked, the surer I was that the man who'd writ that couldn't read or write-not even his own name. Oh, he knowed his initials all right-them big letters-only the rest of it was pretend writing, such as a kid will do.

  When I leaned back in Seth Bullock's stuffed chair, it felt like Stalking Bear was standing across the room watching me, with pleasure in his eyes, like he done the few times I learned something right. The sign wasn't hoofprints in mud, but them ink marks on paper led just as clear to a den DuShane'd holed up in once, one he would likely go back to. And I was on his trail again.

  But there was no use tryin' to puzzle out what was never wrote there. I propped my feet up on Bullock's polished oak desk and pulled my hat down over my eyes.

  I was just starting to get comfortable when a pair of sheriffs come in the door.

  "Damn, Willie, I never saw you sleeping on the job before," Clete yelled at me, coming over to the desk. "You practicing up being the rich sheriff of a gold town sitting there?" He had some liquor in him. The words spilling out of his mouth wasn't exactly wobbly, but they had the sharp edges wore off them, all right.

  "I'm not asleep," I told him. "Just restin' my eyes after finding what I found. Look here." I showed him the names and explained what I put together.

  Bullock come behind us and had a look too. "The Gem is where he stayed, huh? I might have guessed that." Bullock looked me up and down then. "That's mighty good work, Deputy. What did you say your name was?"

  I told him.

  He nodded his head, picked up one of the hotel books and then walked over close to the cupboard where he kept them. He waited a minute and then motioned me over to join him. I thought he was going to have me look at something else over there, but instead he spoke low so Clete, who was still bent over them names, couldn't hear. "I could use a man of your talents, Mr. Goodwin, and the pay is $125 a month. Probably a lot better than you're making up in Two Strike. I could get you a free room, too, and most of your meals."

  "Two Scalp," I corrected him. I looked over at Clete, but I guess he had drunk a little too much to be paying attention good … And no thanks, all the same. Deputying is just something I'm doin' for now. I'd have myself shot in a week if I followed the peacekeeping trade in this town. Besides, me and Clete has other plans. Least we did have."

  Bullock smiled and patted me on the back. "I understand. Don't want to leave your friend out on a limb, right?"

  I didn't know what to say to that.

  "Well, I didn't expect you'd be interested, but it was worth a try. Damn hard finding good men these days." Bullock walked back to Clete and looked over his shoulder. "If he's in town now, it's likely he'll go to the Gem again, Shannon. I think you and I ought to walk down there and see Mr. AI Swearington, the current owner and whore master of that establishment."

  Bullock sounded pretty uppity when he said that last, but I didn't understand how he could see himself any different than the man he was talking about, only on a smaller scale. Didn't seem to strike him that way, though, for he set his hat back on, using his mirror again, and started for the door like he was on an errand of justice.

  "DuShane bunked at a dove cage?" Clete ask.

  "Well, it's a hotel, a saloon and a whorehouse all rolled into one," Bullock said, turning back and waiting for Clete. "They have stage acts and other sorts of shows too. Something to suit every vice and human depravity-so I hear tell. So long as no one complains or gets killed, I let them alone."

  I stood up and followed them out. Sam, Bullock's deputy, was in the outside office, and after he give Clete a hard look, he listened close to what Bullock wanted him to do-to check all the new hotel registration books in town except the one at the Gem. Him and Clete would do that themselves.

  It was clear dark by then, but the street was lit up from the windows of all the buildings along it.

  I walked beside Clete, told him where our hotel was and give him his key. "While you and Bullock are talking to the man at the whorehouse, I got someone to see myself. Some gal I met today is asking folks she knows about DuShane. I paid her to."

&nb
sp; "Yeah, you probably paid her all right, but not to tell you about DuShane, I'll bet," Clete said, a big sloppy grin on his face.

  Bullock laughed on that.

  "That's not how it is," I told them. "But if the chance for it knocks on the door, I'll be standing there ready to open 'er up wide."

  Clete laughed too. "By God, I believe you will be, Willie." Deadwood had got pretty noisy again, lots of miners in the street hoo-rayin' and singin'. A fat man was sharing a bottle with a couple of his friends, but he put it away when he seen the sheriff come swaggering down the walkway with a couple of mean-looking hombres in tow-meanin' Clete and me. A man wearing a big white apron standing outside a place to eat, he collared Bullock. Clete and me stood in the street and waited for him.

  The smells coming out the door made me hungrier than a bear in spring. "Pretty important fellah, this Sheriff Seth Bullock. Quite a man," I observed.

  "Yeah, if you don't take into consideration how he likes to pass around his upstairs woman. Probably watches her doing it, too. But from another room, I'd guess."

  "I don't know nothing about them things," I told him. "I do know that he offered me a job not more than ten minutes ago-deputy job, I reckon."

  Clete looked up at me pretty taken back, then over at Bullock. "Why, that sneaky sonofabitch!" Then he laughed again and turned to me. "Well, are you going to take it?"

  I couldn't believe he ask me that. "Why, of course I'm going to take it! Hell, next year I'll probly run for mayor of this place."

  After a time he turned and said, "You might be better off, my friend." I seen then that he was just looking out for me. "I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't quit me 'til after we get DuShane. You've a better head for this tracking business than I do. I doubt I'd have got this far on my own."

  That damn Clete! Why, he could insult a man half crazy one minute and flatter him red-faced the next and never know he done neither.

  "Last I heard," I told him, "we was heading for Texas after locking this DuShane up. Maybe hang around Two Scalp 'til they hang him and then head south. Maybe your being spoke for changes that, I don't know."