Paradise Sky

Just those words, simple as they was, put a fire in my heart. I worked my way on back to the main street of Deadwood, feeling light and free as a storm-blown feather.

15

I had given up on ratting. That very night I had seen professional ratters, and compared to them I was a joke. Also, I didn’t want to compete with Win, as she was suddenly the apple of my eye, and a shiny apple she was. I decided to take myself back to my so-humble abode, as Cullen called it, and pine over the beautiful Win Fi

I was fetching myself in that direction, striding along near a rise of dirt and stairs and upper streets and buildings, when I heard a voice say, “I would suggest you men take your leave. It will be far better a choice than taking a bullet between the teeth.”

It was a clear, firm, and fearless-sounding voice, and it was coming from a row of stairs that wound up from Main Street to Williams Street, which was little more than a terrace built into the hillside. There was one man at the bottom of the stairs, and he had moved his back to the stair railing.

It was light enough that night I could see he was a tall one, solid-built, narrow of hip, with hair that dangled down to his shoulders, and he had one of them drooping mustaches. The pearly handles of his pistols gleamed in the moonlight. The pistols was tucked down in the front pockets of his trousers, and the bottoms of his trousers was stuck down in tall boots with heels on them so high they made his already considerable height more than it was by some inches.

“There’s more of us than there is of you,” said one of the three in the street. They was all gangly and hungry-looking, like wolves that had cornered an old bull and meant to make a meal of him.

“Soon there will be less of you,” said the long-haired man, who I thought sounded remarkably calm.

That’s when I seen a fourth man coming down from the terrace above, creeping along the stairs, making his way behind the long-haired bull.

“We just want your money,” said one of the bony fellows, “though we’d oblige them pistols, too.”

“These are Navy Colts, year fifty-one, cap and ball, and you will certainly be obliged to them within the moment.”

It wasn’t any of my business, and I could have gone on, but it was never in me to let someone be bullied, outnumbered, or hurrahed for no good reason than the bullies’ own satisfaction or greed. I had seen that done enough to folks just because they was dark, like me, and had gotten to the point where I couldn’t even stand for that to happen to a white man.

I stepped out of the shadows slowly, said, “There is a man behind you, sir. He’s coming down the stairs on you.”

The man on the stairs stopped creeping, looked madly disappointed. He said, “Damn. I was almost there.”

“You was, wasn’t you?” I said.

“Thank you, my friend,” said Long Hair, and he shifted so that he was mostly still facing the men in the street, but had put his left shoulder to the one above. “I heard him squeaking along up there, but I appreciate it.”

“I think you’re still in a tight spot,” I said, “so let me spare you the one on the stairs.”

“You asking for dead,” said the man on the stairs to me.

“We will see who’s asking,” I said.

Then the ball rolled. The man on the stairs pulled. He had decided his first target should be Long Hair, but I chose him. I jerked the LeMat, fired, and seen what looked like a black swarm of bees jump out of the back of his head, and then he come tumbling down the stairs as if it was some kind of circus act and fetched up about three steps above Long Hair.

All this was going on as Long Hair pulled his pistols, one with each hand, from his pockets. It was as fast as any pull I’d seen Mr. Loving make, and he, like Mr. Loving, didn’t fire wildly. Took his time quickly is the best way I can explain it. Them revolvers of his snapped a shot apiece, almost at the same time, and two of them men went down while they was still trying to get their guns out of their holsters. The last one had his gun out, and he shot at Long Hair and missed, then turned to me to shoot, maybe thinking he’d nailed his first mark. I shot him before he could fire off another round. My shot hit him in the leg, and he dropped his gun and crumpled down and lay there, grabbed at his wound, rocked and moaned and started begging us to help him, like we had all been boon companions before.

“You’ll have your bullet and enjoy it,” said the long-haired man, strolling over to him.

I come over for a look. The man who had plummeted most of the way down the stairs was surely dead, and the two in the street Long Hair had shot had both took it through the heart and was pumped out of blood already. The man on the ground was still rolling around and moaning and making quite a spectacle. I was sort of embarrassed for him.

“Shut up some,” said Long Hair to the man, putting a foot on the fellow’s hat, it having dropped off during his writhing. “There’s folks trying to sleep.”

“Yes, sir,” said the man on the ground, and he rolled about some more, but was mostly silent as he did it.

Long Hair picked up the wounded man’s pistol and tossed it under the stairway. He caught up with him as he was trying to roll his way down Main Street. Long Hair bent over him and said, “You have been spared, and I reckon we could get the judge, or some kind of law, but why don’t we let that bullet be your law? You get you some help if you can, but you will then be gone from this gulch, for if I see you again, on the street or in any establishment about town, I will kill you without remark. Is that fully understood? I would not want there to be any confusion.”

“None, sir, none,” said the man. “Oh, God, it hurts.”

“I bet it does,” Long Hair said. “And to tell the truth, looks to me my dusky friend clipped an artery in the leg there. Minor at first, but it’s growing bad as you roll.”

“Oh, oh,” said the man, and then he stretched out and quit moving after saying “Mama.” The ground around him turned dark.

“He has bled out,” said Long Hair. “The devil is handing him a pitchfork and a slop bucket this very moment.”

“I was a bit hasty with the shot,” I said. “I was trying to shoot his kneecap off.”

“Well, you have done him in, but he would surely have done you had the opportunity been reversed.”

People had come out on the street, but when they seen us, two men holding guns and a bunch of dead men lying about, they went back into their shacks and hidey-holes, one of them pausing long enough to say, “Good evening,” and seeming to mean it.

“Who are you, sir?” asked the long-haired man of me.

“Nat Love,” I said, slipping the LeMat back into its place.

“Mr. Love, they call me Wild Bill. But my given name is James Butler Hickok. You may call me Wild Bill.”

Well, now, I about messed myself, but I took his hand, and we shook. He threw an arm around me, said, “I have a bottle among my possibles, but it is hidden in a corner crack between buildings, as I have yet to figure out where my lodgings are. I have no place to offer you to drink except the great outdoors. But I will tell you square—and I would only say this to a man who had saved my life, and I beg you not to tell—truth is, I’m frightened to death of the goddamn rats, and they are everywhere.”

“I know a place,” I said.

We went on then, leaving them four dead there for the undertaker to pick up and tote off to the graveyard on the hill, or possibly to be dropped down some abandoned mine shaft, or into some varmint hole. I can’t say I felt any real sympathy for them.

We got Wild Bill’s possibles, which was a carpetbag and a rolled-up blanket with the butt of a rifle sticking out of one end. He had hidden them, as he said, between two buildings that was built so close together they was almost as one.