by Bill Brooks
Why, this little bit of spitting snow, these gray fat-bellied clouds, the harassing wind weren’t hardly nothing at all compared to weather up in the Deadwood Gulch.
And having a big strapping gal like Jane to share his bedroll with was almost like what he thought dying and going to heaven would be like. Jane was warm-bodied and big-boned and strong. She could cook and ride a horse and shoot and do just about anything a feller could do, except pee standing up.
“I’m asking you to marry me,” he said, watching her lasso that stump. They’d spent the better part of the day fornicating and White Eye was just about wore down to the nub.
“Why, I can’t marry you, Willy.” She had taken to calling him Willy, said it was her pet name for him, and he sort of liked it better than White Eye.
“I don’t see why not. I’m a decent hard-working feller,” he said. “Why, I used to bury folks for a living. That ain’t exactly the sort of work a slacker would do.”
“It ain’t you, Willy. It’s my daddy. I need to take care of him until the Lord comes and takes him to his heavenly reward. My daddy would never stand for me to have a man around him. He might shoot you and chop off your head. He’s gone a little soft in the brains.”
“I knowed Wild Bill,” White Eye said. “I helped bury him. I ever tell you that?”
“Yes, about ten times now.”
White Eye wasn’t sure why he was mentioning Wild Bill’s name, other than Wild Bill had his ways with women and White Eye figured some of his ways might rub off on him if he mentioned his name often enough to Jane.
“I knew Bill too,” Jane said. “He was a very good friend of mine.”
Jane’s rope fell over the stump for about the hundredth time and for about the hundredth time she went over and shook it loose. Wild Bill was younger and prettier than White Eye Anderson was, but Wild Bill was dead and White Eye, she reasoned, was better than a dead man if she had to be with someone, so it all worked out pretty even.
“I reckon we ought to walk down to the river and bring up some more buckets of water so when the party comes in they’ll be able to wash their faces and hands,” Jane said, weary of lassoing the stump. “We’ll heat some for the ladies, in case they want to take a bath.”
White Eye rose from the blanket and grabbed two buckets and Jane took two and they went down to the river’s edge and began filling them.
“You think you’ll be up to any more romancing before the party gets back?” White Eye said.
Jane had lost a lot of interest in White Eye, for she liked the handsome dark looks of the more aloof Yankee Judd and had pretty much decided she’d do her best to win his attention if she could. But it would be tricky, the two men being friends as they were.
Jane sighed and said, “I think we would do best to stick to our camp duties, Willy. I think Bill would be displeased if he knew we weren’t minding after him and his guests.” Dipping them buckets in that cold water reminded White Eye of panning in the icy creeks of Deadwood. The cold water hurt his fingers. His pard, Yankee, wasn’t keen on kneeling in those cold creeks and oft complained about them. Yankee wasn’t much on forced labor or any labor that proved a hardship to his person or sensibilities.
“What’s that floating?” Jane said suddenly, looking out toward the middle of the river.
White Eye stood up to get a better look.
“Lord, that’s a corpse,” he said.
“You sure?”
“I’ve buried enough fellers to know a corpse when I see one…”
Jane quick ran back to the camp and got her lasso and returned to the river’s edge.
“You ain’t going to rope it, are you?” White Eye said.
“It wouldn’t be right to just let it float on and not bury it,” Jane said, letting out a good length of rope. “I reckon that feller needs a decent burial like anybody else.”
Jane spun the rope several times over her head, trying to gauge the right distance. The rope hummed in the cold air. Then she let it fly and it sailed out over the muddy brown river like a coiled snake and plop! landed just so. The corpse drifted into it and Jane drew tight her end.
“Easy,” White Eye said. “We don’t have any idea how long that feller’s been floating; he might be waterlogged and if you tug too hard, he might come apart.”
Jane played the corpse about like she would a big fish, brought it in toward shore steady and easy.
“Help me pluck him out,” she said.
“Lord Almighty!” White Eye said.
“What?”
“It’s Buck Taylor.”
The corpse was bluish and a bit bloated, but White Eye knew Buck Taylor well enough to know it was him and not some other.
“Wasn’t he supposed to meet up with us and buy horses for Bill?” Jane said.
“He was, but it looks like he ain’t now.”
The body was heavy as an old log.
“He’s been shot,” White Eye said, rolling Buck onto the muddy bank. “Look it that hole in him.”
“Poor feller,” Jane said.
White Eye didn’t have a shovel to bury Buck with, so he went and gathered rocks, him and Jane, and they buried Buck under the rocks up under a big cottonwood tree; high enough away that the river wouldn’t come and claim him when it flooded in the spring like it usually did every year.
“You think that’s enough rocks?” Jane said when they’d built a fine cairn for Buck. “I mean, enough so’s the wolves and bears don’t get to him?”
“I reckon maybe it is,” White Eye said. “I’m no expert on burying fellers atop the ground, but I reckon it is.”
They stood for a second, breathing hard from the labor of hauling so many rocks, and finally White Eye said, “You know any prayers?” Jane said, “Just one.” White Eye said, “Go on and say it, then,” and Jane did.
“Dear Lord and God in Heaven, take this poor feller’s spirit, if you ain’t already, and forgive him whatever sins he may have committed…and amen.”
“That’s it, then,” White Eye said.
“I reckon it is.”
They both stood looking at the river for a time, the way it flowed smooth and brown with the snow starting to fall into it.
“It’s snowing again,” Jane said. “It’s a pretty snow.”
“I know it,” White Eye said.
They walked back to camp, both bereft now of any earlier joy at having been part of such a fine adventure as they’d had to that point. Lassoing and burying a corpse they found in the river just ruined the mood for anything happy or pleasurable.
“Billy will be sorry to hear about Buck,” White Eye said as he and Jane sat around the fire, drinking hot coffee in order to warm their cold hands and hearts.
“Who, you reckon, was it that shot him?” Jane said.
White Eye looked out across the land, the sand hills, the broken canyons, said, “It could have been anybody. Probably somebody just wanted to rob him, for you notice he didn’t have no hat nor boots nor pistol on him.”
“This is hard times,” Jane said. “And these folks around here, some of ’em, are hard folks.”
“I know it,” White Eye said.
“I wish it hadn’t happened.”
“I’m sure old Buck wishes it hadn’t either.”
“I feel bad for him,” Jane said. “And I feel bad for us too for being the ones to find him. It started out such a nice day and now my mood is all black, ain’t yours?”
“It sure enough is. I guess the happy times never last too long, do they?”
They both looked glumly into the fire’s flames.
Then Teddy and Anne rode in and were followed by Billy and the rest of the party two hours later.
Snow fell nicely from the sky, but that was about all any of them could say about it.
Chapter 23
There was a heavy knock at the door and Bob opened his eyes.
“Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” a gruff voice said from the other side. “I need to speak to you-all.”
“Who is it?” Bob said.
Pearl’s eyes fluttered open.
“It’s Sheriff Mudd,” the man said.
“What do you want to see us about?”
“It’s a private matter. Would you open the door, please?”
Bob felt his heart thumping.
Pearl looked at him. She was naked, her skin a nice pink.
“Give us a second, if you would,” Bob said. “We’ll need to dress.”
“Make it quick,” the voice said.
“You think that man at the tavern said something?” Pearl whispered.
“Get dressed,” Bob said, sliding out of bed and struggling to put his clothes on.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Pearl said.
“I know it.”
The knock came again in a few seconds.
“You folks about dressed in there?”
“Just a moment,” Pearl said.
“Yes’m,” the voice said. “But hurry it up in there.”
Bob finished dressing before Pearl did. He took out his pistol. There were two spent shells, leaving him three that weren’t spent. The pistol only had five shells in it when Bob took it from the headmaster’s drawer; the hammer had been resting on an empty chamber that Bob figured was for safety reasons.
“What are you going to do with that?” Pearl whispered.
“Whatever I have to.”
Bob plucked out the two empty cartridges and dropped them in his pocket, then stuck the pistol in the waistband of his trousers and buttoned his coat over it.
“Let him in,” Bob said. Pearl opened the door.
There was a big oafish-looking fellow with a mule’s face standing under a plug hat.
“I’m Sheriff Mudd,” the fellow said again. Pearl and Bob didn’t say anything.
“You’d be Mr. and Mrs. Smith, as it states on the register?”
“Yes,” Bob said. The man looked at him curiously.
“Actually, Sheriff,” Pearl said. “This is my son. He wasn’t quite sure how he should sign our names. We’re on our way to San Francisco to meet my husband.”
“I see,” the sheriff said.
“How can we help you?”
“Well, ma’am. There’s been a body found—local feller, shot dead.”
“I don’t see how that has anything to do with—”
Sheriff Mudd cut her off with a wave of his hand.
“This particular feller was a barkeep at one of the waterfront bars and it has been reported to me by several witnesses that you and…Mr. Smith here…were seen with the deceased as of yesterday evening, and that there was some sort of transaction that took place between you and the deceased, one Harry McGrew.”
“I don’t know quite what to say,” Pearl said.
Bob felt the handle of that pistol there against his side under the coat. He sure didn’t want to kill another man if he didn’t have to but he might have to, he told himself.
Sheriff Mudd cleared his throat roughly, said, “Perhaps it would be better if you and me spoke without the boy being present, ma’am, considering the delicacy of what I have to ask you.”
“Yes, perhaps that would be best,” Pearl said.
“Bob, why don’t you go down to the dining room and order us some breakfast and I’ll be along shortly.”
“Oh, Mother, I am a full-grown man now, there’s no need for me to leave the room.”
“I insist.”
“No, Mother, I’d like to stay and hear what the sheriff has to say.”
“Son, go on do as your ma says,” the sheriff ordered. He was wearing a large sidearm in a holster high on his left hip. He had the eyes of a man who’d never spent one happy day in his entire life.
“Go on, Bob,” Pearl said, trying to get Bob to read her expression, that plea in her eyes, the same look she had when she insisted he leave the tavern the day before.
“We’ve got that train to catch this morning, Mother. We can’t be late,” Bob said.
The sheriff pulled a pocket watch from his waistcoat, glanced at it, and said, “The flier don’t leave until nine, you’ve got a good hour still.”
“Why don’t you take our valise, Bob,” Pearl said. “That way we’ll be all set to go as soon as I come downstairs.”
Bob picked up the valise, looked at the unmade bed, their warmth still in it.
“Don’t be too long, okay, Mother?”
He put enough edge on his voice to let Pearl know he wasn’t happy with the situation.
“No, I promise,” she said. “I won’t be detained long, will I, Sheriff?”
“No, ma’am.”
Bob saw it then, the sheriff reaching out and taking Pearl by the elbow, the hungry look in his eyes as he did. Bob jerked the pistol free of its hiding place and aimed it at him, thumbing back the hammer as he did.
“Turn loose of her, you son of a bitch.”
“Easy, boy.”
“Back on up,” Bob said.
Pearl started to say something but Bob jerked his head toward the door.
“Go over to the train station and wait for me there,” he said.
She saw the look in Bob’s eyes and did not quarrel with him but instead took the valise and went out, closing the door behind her.
Soon as she left the sheriff said, “What you gonna do, son?”
Bob told him to ease the pistol out of its holster and toss it on the bed, and when he had, Bob cracked him hard on the back of the skull and the big bastard dropped like a shot horse.
“Goddamn!” the lawman gasped from his hands and knees.
Blood trickled from the place where the iron split his head. It dribbled through his fingers and onto the floor.
“Shit!” he said.
Bob took the sheriff’s gun and aimed it at him.
“You ever think of what it would feel like to get shot in the face by your own gun?” Bob said.
The man was trying to stanch the flow of blood with his fingers but wasn’t having very much success. His blood leaked down through his hand and dripped off his bony wrist.
“I know now you killed that barkeep,” the sheriff said. “It could have been self-defense. I could let it go as self-defense. It ain’t too late for that. Hell, I can write it off as unsolved, but you’re going to have to put that gun down.”
Bob hit him again, this time hard enough over the skull to knock him senseless. The sheriff moaned and rolled onto his side and Bob hit him again and again until he stopped moaning and just lay there bleeding.
Bob tied him up in bedsheets and gagged him with his own tobacco-stained kerchief and rolled him under the bed after he took the wallet from his pocket and the money in it.
“You’re just another white man who is paying for your sins,” Bob said. Only the sheriff wasn’t conscious to hear it.
Bob found Pearl sitting there on a bench in front of the station.
Pearl said, “Please tell me you didn’t kill him.”
“I did what I needed to so he won’t follow us.”
They got on the train when it came and sat in silence.
The train rumbled along and after a time Pearl said, “I can’t be part of killing. I can’t be an accomplice to it, Bob.”
“Don’t tell me nothing about it, okay,” Bob said.
“Why are you angry at me?”
“I don’t need a mother,” Bob said. “Especially one that’s white.”
“Fine. But tell me, did you go back and murder that barkeeper the way the sheriff said?”
Bob didn’t answer.
They watched out the windows. It had begun to snow and the snow fell among the sage and into the bare trees and into creeks that cut crooked scars in the land. Here and there they saw small herds of cattle, looking forlorn, standing in the snow.
“I didn’t kill the sheriff,” Bob said at last, “but I should have.”
“I just don’t want them to catch you and hang you,” Pearl said.
“It’s too late for that.�
�
“That saloon keeper last night. Did you…”
“No,” Bob said. “I didn’t kill him either.”
She touched his arm.
“There is no place we can go where they won’t find us if you killed someone.”
“I know it,” Bob said. “The whites are everywhere. But I didn’t kill anyone.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you,” Pearl said.
“You can strike off on your own if you want.”
“We don’t deserve this. Let’s try not to be mad at each other, Bob. Let’s try and love each other while we can. Everything I do is for you. Tell me that you believe me.”
The snow fell on the plains and in the old grass that would become new again in the spring.
“Love is a strange word,” Bob said.
“It’s all we have left to us.”
Snow fell from the sky and fell and fell and fell.
Chapter 24
White Eye warned Jane that they probably shouldn’t tell Billy in front of the hunting guests about finding Buck’s corpse.
“The Colonel wouldn’t want us to shine a black light on things,” White Eye said. “Those rich folks might decide to call off the hunt and return back East they know there’s dead men floating in the rivers out here.”
Jane was in complete agreement.
“It’s a bad sign all the way around,” she said.
Soon as supper was finished and the talk of the day’s hunt—how they’d killed one bear but not another—and tomorrow’s plan to ride out and find a few buffalo had been discussed and everyone made for the tents as night fell early, White Eye said to Billy, “They’s something me and Jane need to tell you.”
“Don’t tell me you two have fallen in love and aim to get married,” Billy said with a wide grin. He had been drinking heavy blackberry wine and was in good spirits, in spite of the relative unsuccessful day they’d had hunting.