Paradise Sky

When Bill spoke of hanging on a rope, he was referring to what some called a trot line. When a man needed sleep but had little money, there was a building on the back side of Deadwood that tied ropes up, and you could hang between them as a way of sleeping standing up. That way the owner of the place could really pack them in. I figured I’d just as soon curl up on the ground and get nibbled by the rats.

It was in that moment my eyes settled firmly on Burned Man, took full notice of the way his eyes flashed across the room, hot as a prairie fire. It was like someone had slapped me in the back of the head. I knew what should have been obvious all along—scalped head, burned-up face, smoked-up voice or not.

He had survived them Apache and was still after me. It was Ruggert.

18

A rare bout of common sense and my love for Win saved Ruggert that night.

Believe me, I wanted to stand up right then, march over with my LeMat, the striker flicked to fire that sixteen-gauge shell, and blast his head off. But I didn’t. I knew that I didn’t have a chance of coming out alive, even if I was a bouncer in the Gem. I could get away with doing my bouncer work, but killing a white man for a past grievance I couldn’t prove, even in the wilds of Deadwood, was going to be a hard pill for most of the cracker population to swallow. You could backshoot, card-cheat, and maybe even steal a horse and screw the preacher’s wife and not be hung for it if the folks was in the right mood, but a colored man did any of those things, instant they caught you your boots would be off the ground and your neck would be stretched. I might have Wild Bill on my side, a few others, but even with that deadly man in my camp the numbers would be against me. It would be like trying to bail out the ocean with a teacup.

And I didn’t want to lose my chance with Win. She was what I had been looking for all my life, and I didn’t even know it until I come across her, seen her for the first time in the moonlight, playing music to rats. We could have a life. I figured Pa would want that more than he would want me to shoot Ruggert.

I didn’t even tell Wild Bill I knew who it was that wanted me dead and why. I let out my breath easy, made my excuses to Bill, and hit the street. I found myself walking very fast, becoming madder and madder, wanting to turn around and go back for Ruggert.

Finally I thought of how he looked and what had happened to him. I didn’t know how he ended up in Deadwood, but it never occurred to me it had been on purpose. Probably figured me dead by Apache, and my guess is that was a disappointment for him, not having the chance to get his hands into the act. And then fate had brought us back together. He had somehow made his way to Deadwood, was little more than a beggar, and here I came riding in with Cullen and the China girls.

From the time he seen me that day, his fortunes had steady climbed up the ladder, and it may have been giving him too much credit to think he had improved them purely to hire the help he needed to take me down, but I wouldn’t put it past him. It fit with what Mr. Loving said. He latched onto notions like a thirsty tick and wasn’t happy until he had sucked all the blood out of them.

By the time I got to my room, I had begun to feel sorry for Ruggert again, the way he had been tortured by the Apache, and though it wasn’t enough to soothe my burning hatred of him, as he had done just as bad to Pa, it was enough to throw a damp towel over my feelings, at least to some extent.

Pushed under my door was a flyer. Inside my room I lit a lamp and gave it a gander. At the top of it there was a couple sentences penciled in:

This here sounds like your meat. It could mean big money.

Cullen

The flyer had a drawing of a man with a rifle, and he had long hair and was dressed like Wild Bill. It was about a Deadwood shooting match, and the prize money was considerable. There was an entry fee and a sign-up deadline. I had two days to beat that.

I considered on it a bit.

I thought about that contest money, and then I began to think about Ruggert again. I decided he had paid enough for what he done. Maybe that was a greater punishment than death, and I should be content with it.

If I won that shooting contest I’d have plenty of money, and there could be more made with side bets. I could shorten my time in Deadwood considerably, making more money in one day than I might in months of working at the Gem, having to look over my shoulder all the time for Ruggert and his dingleberries. And if I won and left, and Ruggert followed, then a rifle shot on the wind needed no explanation to anyone.

The shooting event was set a week from that night. It didn’t seem unrealistic to me to be able to avoid Ruggert for a week and take my chances at the shooting match, and it didn’t seriously occur to me I might lose. I figured on wi

I pried open the wall space, checked in on my saved money, which I had stuffed in an old flour sack, pulled it out, and by lamplight counted what I had earned. There was nearly five hundred dollars in there. I added another twenty to it, keeping a few silver dollars in my pocket for needs. I was so excited about all that money, I counted it twice. I had earlier been overcome with the knowledge Ruggert was alive and still trying to kill me over seeing his wife’s butt (and where was she now?), but right then I was shot through with excitement and a kind of joy. I packed the money back in its hiding place, got myself ready for bed, the revolvers lying on either side of me as always, leaned over, and blew out the light.

I was deep into a visit with Morpheus when I heard my door being beat on. I came awake immediately, the LeMat in my fist, the hammer cocked. I sat up, said, “Who’s there?”

“It’s me,” Cullen said.

“Goddamn, Cullen,” I said, sliding up to the door. It was so close in there I didn’t even have to stand, just rolled off my pallet and knee-walked to it, spoke at him through the wood as I unlocked it by sliding back the bar. “You drunk? You don’t live here anymore.”

“No, I’m not drunk. Let me in.”

He came in and sat in the spot where his bed used to be. I laid my pistol aside and lit the lamp. When I looked at him his mouth was hanging open and his lips was quivering. For a moment, I thought he had been shot or stabbed, but it was an injury of another kind.

“I am on fire with love,” Cullen said.

“You been in them damn dime novels again, ain’t you?”

“I want to marry Wow,” he said.

“Well, my glorious congratulations to you,” I said, and meant it.

“We decided on it tonight. Just got through doing what we always do at night, and she said, ‘I think we ought to get married,’ and I said, ‘I think that’s a good idea,’ so we’re going to.”

“Usually you don’t bed the woman until after you marry her,” I said.

“And I suppose you have been chaste,” Cullen said.

“I won’t answer on the grounds that you know the truth,” I said. “But I am glad for you. Very much so. Wow is a wonderful woman.”

“She is,” he said. “I know she ain’t pretty, not like Win. Hell, not like a lot of women, including the China girl with the wooden leg. You know, I still don’t know her name, can’t get it right. Ring Ding. Ping Sing. Wing-a-ling. I don’t know. I think she gives me another name every time I see her. Hell, like I was saying, Wow ain’t a natural beauty, but she’s grown pretty to me. There’s the way she turns her head. She’s got that sparkle in her eye, and the way her teeth are so straight and white when she smiles; she spends time on them, Nat, and has taught me a lot about what she calls personal hygiene.”