The Return of Little Big Man Read online

  I ain’t mentioned that as of midmorning the street was crowded with men and vehicles. I hadn’t paid much attention to them while attending to my brother, and if anybody was offended by or even noticed him dressed in his underwear with his arse showing, they didn’t indicate such. That kind of place is made up entirely of greedy people who can only see a dollar and for most of them even that is only a dream. Fact is, most people who run to gold strikes was losers.

  Now, while I’m standing there on the board sidewalk in front of an establishment bearing a crude handpainted sign, “The Congress,” which was more likely to be another saloon rather than a legislative chamber, though glass windows was rare in Deadwood, so I couldn’t see inside, who should step out through the door but a frock-coated tall figure who was right familiar to me.

  Under the broad-brimmed sombrero, he looked considerably older than when I had last seen him just the previous early spring in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory. His hair was still shoulder-length, but it had gone wispy at the ends, as was his drooping mustache, and his once clear gray-blue eyes was red-rimmed and kinda watery. His face was real pale. That long hooked nose of his had got pointier.

  “Wild Bill Hickok,” I says. “So you got here too.” Now that I seen him, I recalled we had talked of prospecting for gold in Deadwood.

  The keen nostrils at the end of that long nose was twitching, and he backs away. “Is that stink coming from you, hoss? Have you shat in your clothes?”

  I was more than embarrassed. “I’m down on my luck, Bill,” I says, “wearing borrowed clothing and ain’t ate in some time. I don’t know if you heard yet, Custer and most of the Seventh was rubbed out by the hostiles up in Montana. I happened to be there but got away with my life due to a Cheyenne I knowed....”

  Hickok had backed away a few more paces as I spoke. He was shaking his head, his long tresses brushing the shoulders of his swallowtail. “Hoss,” he says, breaking in, “I never shot anyone for telling tall stories of that nature, which I’ve done myself to greenhorns, but I’ve knocked him down. If a handout is what you need, then you oughta ask and not try to make a fool of me.” He sweeps away the coat with his left hand and plucks a silver dollar from the lower pocket in his fancy vest. Bill was famous for his sartorial tastes, as well as his personal cleanliness. “I will stake you to a bath, shave, and a trim.”

  I didn’t persist with my story but right away says, “Thank you kindly. I wonder if you would mind if I get something to eat with some of the money?”

  Wild Bill slowly blinks those sore-looking eyes and goes again into the vest pocket with two left fingers and finds me another dollar. This one felt funny, and I looked and saw it was knicked at one edge, but I guess it was still good, and I thanked him again.

  “After a plate of bread and beans, you’ll have enough left to pick up a shirt and pants where they sell used clothes, down the street. Then burn what you’re wearing now.”

  He turns and moves away, though not with the assured stride of old. Also he stayed on the walk, instead of the middle of the street, which he had once been famous for using so he could scan the area for possible bushwhackers and also keep a certain distance between him and them who might fire on him from ambush. But one thing I was sure about: namely, that when he played poker he still sat with his back to a wall.

  I had no reason not to act on his suggestion, having some pride in my appearance when I could afford as much, and I returned to my brother’s barrel-home so clean-washed and -shaved I bet I’d have to identify myself to him all over again. I was wearing a pair of canvas pants in reasonably good condition and almost clean along with a flannel shirt that was wore through at the elbows but had no discernible odor. These with the other goods heaped in the tent of the old-clothes dealer had been sold by gold-rushers who had run out of funds, either because they never panned any dust or lost it all gambling. Imagine what the original owners had got for a pants and shirt that cost me seventy cents altogether. That dealer throwed in a beat-up old hat with so greasy a sweatband I tore it away.

  I had enough left for coffee and two orders of beans and bread, the second of which I made sandwiches from and brung them back for my brother Bill. Even so, believe me when I say prices was greatly inflated at Deadwood, as at all gold towns.

  When I got to the hogshead, no Bill was in evidence, his yellow dog being there all alone and lonely. It never snarled at me this time, knowing me now, but sank its head real low and whimpered.

  The one order given me by Wild Bill I had not obeyed was to burn the pants and shirt I took off, for they belonged to my brother and was balled under my arm at the moment.

  “Dammit,” I says now to the dog, “where has he gone in his underwear?” The answer I got was another whine. After the kindly face and big brown eyes, what was most noticeable on this animal was his prominent ribs, all of which you could count at a distance. “I’m going to look for him. While you’re waiting, eat yourself one of these bean sandwiches.” Now that was a real sacrifice, for it had been all I could do to save some food for Bill, being still famished myself, but I took this here dog as part of my family responsibility, and he was likely to be more reliable than my brother.

  He swallowed that sandwich in one and a half bites, living for the instant as a dog does, and in expectation of more, but I put the other sandwich in the pocket of my pants, which as always was too roomy for me, cinched at the waist with a length of rope and folded up at the cuffs, and went out along the street, trying each of the saloons, of which already at that time there must of been two dozen or more within a mile and a half. As time went on, somebody told me at a later day, the number rose to seventy-six. Some of them I looked into had a bar consisting of a wooden plank supported by a barrel at either end, a bottle or two, and tin cups you’d never see washed out between drinkers if you watched all day. They didn’t have no windows usually, so was lighted by oil lamps at high noon in blazing sunshine outdoors. The bartender might not have a towel or apron—fact is, he was often dressed like his customers, even to the hat—but he was never without a prominent shotgun, leaning close to hand. This was used mostly as a pointer to indicate the door when the level of bad feeling amongst the drunks sounded like it would take another form than mere verbal abuse. But since only two or three people per week was shot to death in Deadwood at this time, it was not considered necessary yet to hire an officer of the law.

  I didn’t have no more money and therefore could not afford a drink, which in some of these places was as much as a dollar per shot, being at that price presumably something on the order of real whiskey, whereas the cut-rate joints, at fifty cents per, no doubt served up the kind of concoction of tobacco juice, gunpowder, pepper, and snake venom which my brother Bill had sold as liquor in his heyday.

  I hadn’t looked in more than three or four places when through the open door of the next one in line come the hurtling figure of somebody wearing only a suit of filthy underwear, followed by the sole of a big boot. My brother had enough momentum to take him on across the walk and down the couple feet to the dust of the street, which in that spot was actually a mess of mud, probably because a horse had staled there.

  Now I tell you Bill was the sort of person who if you owned a place of business you wouldn’t want as a customer, for stench and appearance aside, he likely wouldn’t have no money and would be there only to beg, borrow, or steal. But he was my brother, and that you can’t let your kin be treated badly by others is a self-evident truth. So after I had pulled Bill out of the muck, propped him up against the wheel of a parked wagon, and put his clothes in his lap, I told him for godsakes stay put for a spell, and I went into that saloon to deal with the son of a bitch who had, if for understandable reasons, insulted my family.

  But this was the darkest place I had been yet, and for a while I couldn’t make out anybody but a table full of poker players back a ways, under the light of a hanging lamp, and one of them was Wild Bill Hickok.

  For a number of reasons I did not want
to disturb Wild Bill, who took his poker real serious, so I postponed dealing with the matter of honor and returned outside, where I expected I would not find my brother, but in fact Bill was still slumped where I left him. I got him to his feet and into the shirt and pants, and maintaining as little physical contact with him as I could, steered him back home through the wheeled and pedestrian traffic, and more than once he lurched towards oncoming wagons but was snatched back at the last minute and was kicked once by a horse and again by a cursing man who however was belted with both a pistol and an unscabbarded butcher knife, so my protests would of been foolish.

  I got Bill back to his barrel and tried to feed him the bean sandwich, but he got stubborn like a drunk will and clamped his jaws together so tight I would have needed a crowbar to pry them open. I ended up giving half the sandwich to the yellow dog and ate the rest myself. With the Indian knife I sliced some extra material from the tails of my too-long shirt and trouser bottoms, and used it for bonds to fasten Bill’s ankles together and also his wrists, so he couldn’t untie the former, and telling him to sleep it off went back to the saloon known as the No. 10, which before long was the most famous in Deadwood.

  Wild Bill was just leaving the poker game as I arrived, and was asking them standing at the bar if anyone wanted to take his seat, and one fellow went over and pulled the stool up to the table. He had a sandy mustache and there was something wrong with his eyes too, which in his case was slightly crossed.

  “You’re greatly improved, hoss,” Wild Bill says to me, inspecting me at close quarters. “You was the worst I seen until that drunk staggered in here in his underwear a while ago and Harry kicked him out the door.” He indicated the bartender with a nod, and he rubs his sore eyes with the back of his left hand. He buys me a shot of whiskey, which I drank real slow, as I had not tasted any for ever so long. Even so I felt its vapors hit my brain shortly after the first sip.

  Wild Bill introduced me to the bartender, man name of Harry Sam Young, and told me he knew him too from back in Kansas.

  “This town’s full of friends,” he went on. “California Joe, Colorado Charley Utter, White-Eye Jack Anderson, they’re all here. But the real news is I recently got married.” He got a refill from Harry Young. I was still working on my first. “Which reminds me.” He looks around like he’s worried somebody’s listening in, and decides maybe they might yet, and asks me to step aside for a confidential matter.

  Coming into the bright sunlight from a semidarkness smelling of lamp oil, liquor, and sweat was probably more the cause of my swimming vision than even the fiery hooch (which in case you never knew it is an Indian word, though not Cheyenne).

  Wild Bill’s own eyes was squeezed into sightless slits, and it’s funny that what I thought of was how helpless he would be if someone was to shoot him at such a moment.

  He takes me by the elbow of my shirt and bends down and in a subdued voice he says, “Hoss, I seem to recall being in your company once in a certain kind of establishment, or am I wrong?”

  “That’s right, Bill, you and me went to a whorehouse.”

  He flinches and says, “Keep your voice down, willya?”

  I had not been shouting, but I did as asked, and went on. “That was right after you shot Strawhan’s brother, which was the damnedest thing I ever witnessed. Not only did he have the drop on you, he was about to shoot you in the back. You seen him in the mirror. My God, you was fast.”

  He showed a thin smile, lifting his head and opening his eyes away from the sun. “I’m not that good any more, hoss. I don’t say I’m bad, but I don’t see as well as I used to. They still get me to shoot coins on edge, but nowadays it’s dollars, not the dimes of the old days.”

  I reflected that one of the dollars he give me had that nick in it. “I saw you put ten loads into the O in the sign across Market Square in K.C., a hundred yards away.”

  Wild Bill continues his distant smile. “The Odd Fellows’ sign,” says he. “I couldn’t do that nowadays. I’m taking something for my eyes. It makes me pale, and maybe it is doing something to my well-being.... But here’s what I wanted to tell you, hoss: If you remember that sporting house, well, I’d as soon you forgot about it insofar as I am personally involved.”

  Now Wild Bill Hickok wasn’t the sort of man from who you would deny a favor requiring as little effort as this, so I hastened to reassure him.

  “I got nothing against sporting women,” he goes on. “Some of them been real good friends of mine. Fact is, the wagon train we brought up here from Cheyenne stopped at Laramie and loaded on Dirty Emma, Sizzling Kate, and others who have set up shop down the street here, should you have a natural need.” Now his smile became something you might of seen on a preacher. “Now I’m married I have changed my ways.” He looked real high-minded, lofty eyebrows, pious mouth under the drooping mustache. “Agnes,” says he, “owned her own show, she and her previous husband, one of the noted clowns of the time until some little bastard shot him through the heart on account of not getting in free one day.”

  Wild Bill had told me about Aggie on a previous occasion, so I was able to say, “I do believe she is a celebrated equestrienne,” using the word as he originally did, and he was right pleased now.

  “That’s right, hoss, also a tightrope walker, but them days is behind her now. You might of heard of Adah Isaacs Mencken, who is renowned for a theatrical presentation called Mazeppa, where she is tied buck naked to a horse that runs around the stage. Well, those who saw both of them in the part gave their preference to Agnes, and she never rode naked, I’ll tell you that: she always wore tights that looked that way.” He frowns. “I don’t even like that, for I know there were sons of bitches who thought she was naked.” He clears his throat. “Well, like I say, that’s a thing of the past. No wife of James B. Hickok, Wild Bill, is ever going out to work. I want her home in our little nest, sweet Agnes of mine.”

  He had taken to calling himself by the whole two names together, like it was some legal matter of correct identification, and maybe it was, for Wild Bills were all over the West in that era, at least one of them a white man who claimed to have joined the Cheyenne at an early age—no, not me, but obviously some goddam liar.

  “I’d be proud to meet her, Bill. Has she come along with you to Deadwood? Or is she back in Cheyenne?”

  Wild Bill snorted. “Neither, hoss. She’s a fine lady. I wouldn’t let her set foot in a hog wallow like this. I just come here to make money. She’s back in what they call the Queen City, Cincinnati, Ohio, waiting for my return.”

  I figured she must be a real beauty to tame him like this, but not to compare with Mrs. Elizabeth Custer, who I seen only once, but long enough so that she become my ideal of femininity. Now of course she would be a widow, which you might consider a rotten way for me to think at this early time, but in fact I couldn’t imagine the likes of Libbie Custer looking in my direction and even seeing I was there.

  “Say,” Wild Bill says now, “come on back to my wagon and I’ll show you her picture.”

  We walked not far along Deadwood Canyon to what was still then the outskirts of town and found there, amongst a goodly number of tents that constituted the residential district, a covered wagon that was a bit smaller than the vehicle in which me and my family come West years earlier. I believe this one was from the Army.

  Bill climbs up inside and comes back out with a photo, which he hands down. “Now tell me if that isn’t the finest-looking woman you ever seen.”

  Wild Bill was not the kind of man I would have disagreed with even if he wasn’t lovesick, so I was as complimentary as I could be, but as it happened I admit I found his Agnes to be remarkably plain in appearance, at least as she was represented by the camera, which is not to say I doubted what he said about her talent.

  “What you might wonder is why a person of her high type would be interested in me,” he says with what I took as real modesty for a man many ladies had had a crush on, including my own crazy sister Caroline, bu
t then I never knew any dead shot on either side of the law that did not attract more women than anybody peaceful. “I’m trying my hand at something more dignified than what I done previously, and also more profitable. You can’t put aside much on a lawman’s eighty-to-a-hundred per month, and you can always get shot for your trouble.”

  He brought a bottle with him when he clumb down from the wagon, and we sat on a couple wooden boxes, former Army ammunition crates. He took a big gulp himself and then passed the bottle to me.

  That whiskey was nowhere near the quality of that which Harry Sam Young had poured for us at No. 10, but Wild Bill didn’t seem to notice. I could hardly get it down or keep it there.

  “I ever tell you about my time as a showman?” Wild Bill asks.

  “Wasn’t you at Niagara Falls with a herd of buffalo?”

  “That’s right,” he says and takes another slug from the bottle. “But later I traveled around the East for a time, performing in a stage play with Bill Cody, but I forgot my lines half the time even though they was the same night after night and I was playing myself, so it didn’t call for much acting on the face of it. But the fact is, hoss, the hardest thing I ever tried to do was to be a make-believe Wild Bill Hickok. It got to be too much for me to be the real myself pretending to be the fake Wild Bill, speaking words written by some little fellow that never been west of Chicago, and shooting blank rounds, which foul up a barrel real awful. I got to drinking too much and having some fun to pass the time, like using live ammunition and firing too close to the toes of them real actors, and they whined to Cody, who asked me to tone it down. But I couldn’t take it for long, even though the pay was real good, the best I ever made. I ain’t got Bill Cody’s way with horseshit. Nothing against Bill, God bless him, he always dealt straight with me, but he’s got a natural talent for showmanship. I don’t, that’s for sure.” He swallowed more of that awful whiskey and was just offering me the bottle when somebody spoke nearby.