Paradise Sky

Bill was taken aback, but he didn’t want to show it. Pride. That damn savage thing, which can be as much a burden as a quality, took over. “Very well,” Bill said. “But I sure would prefer that spot.”

“As do I,” Rich said. There wasn’t nothing mean in his tone, and he smiled when he said it. I think he knew he had Bill over a barrel, in that if Bill protested he would seem to be a whiner, and if he insisted he would appear to be a bully.

I glanced at Jack. He was taking a certain delight in this performance.

Bill nodded, took the seat with his back to the door. I turned to the bar, ordered another sarsaparilla for myself and nothing for Jack. As the bartender was pouring it, I seen an image in my glass. It was just a blurry reflection, but it was the man across the table, Charlie Rich, the one who had refused Bill his seat, and I can’t say for sure, but it seemed to me that blurry image nodded to Jack.

As I turned, Jack stepped forward, pulled a hidden .45 pistol from under his coat, said, “Damn you and your cheap charity. Take that, you son of a bitch,” and fired a shot that struck Bill in the back of the head. Blood sprayed from Bill, and I seen and heard the fellow to Bill’s right yell out in pain; the bullet had gone through Bill and hit him in the wrist.

Bill tipped forward with his face on the table, his open eyes turned toward me. That wild spark he had in them was already gone. His arm hung loose, and his hand dropped the cards it held. In that quick moment, them lying there on the floor, an incomplete hand, I seen they was aces and eights. The last card had yet to be drawn from the deck. Bill’s body slumped, and his weight dragged his face across the table, and he tumbled to the floor.

I came unfrozen, glanced at Jack. He lifted his pistol to shoot at me, but it hit on an empty cylinder or a dead load. He yelled out, “I have killed the son of a bitch,” and bolted.

I threw my sarsaparilla glass at Jack as he ran and missed, shattering the glass against the wall by the door. Then it was a footrace.

I come out of Ma

I stomped over a long plank across a wide puddle, and damned if I didn’t slip and bury my leg knee-deep in mud, about two pounds of it seeping into my boot. By the time I got my leg yanked up and was back in the race, my boot was heavy with mud. Jack had done hit the other side of the street and was ru

I was gaining on him as he reached the open door of a butcher shop. He acted as if he might dart inside, perhaps to run through and out the back, but a leg poked out from a doorway and stuck itself right in front of Jack, who did a tumble over it and landed in such a way, on top of his head, his hat come down near over his eyes. Then that leg kicked out again, and this time it caught Jack in the teeth. I seen it was Colorado Charlie Utter that had done the leg work. He gave Jack another kick, this one causing the little bastard to spit out a tooth. Jack was crawling, trying to get to the pistol he’d dropped, but another man come along, scooped it up, put it in his coat pocket, and walked off with it.

It was then that a bunch of men jumped on Jack, some of them coming out of the butcher shop. Jack was pulled up and hit a few times, then carried away in such a hustle that his feet wasn’t even touching ground.

Charlie was pulling his pistol, and had not a handful of men grabbed him he’d have shot Jack sure as rain is wet. Some of those men looked at me, knowing I was Bill’s friend, but there wasn’t any need. The heat had gone out of me. I was breathing heavy, and I leaned on the wall.

Jack was gone then, and Charlie stumbled over to me with tears in his eyes. “Say he’s a lying bastard, Nat.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I seen it done with my own eyes,” and I went about laying out the details as I knew them. Before I was even finished telling my story, Charlie had sunk to the boardwalk, his back against a storefront. I sat down beside him and pulled off my boot and dumped the mud out of it right there on the boardwalk. I was daring a man to come to me with an angry attitude about it, and it was a good thing none did.

Bill may have been a preening peacock, a little mean-spirited, and willing to screw a dead cow if he was drunk, but he had been my friend and had treated me decent all the time I had known him.

I decided right then and there to put the shooting match out of my mind, gather up everything I had, including Win and Madame, give my good-byes to Cullen and Wow, all them other China girls, and head out for the great beyond; anything to get away from that hellhole they called Deadwood.

20

I was sick to my stomach, and me and Charlie spent a few moments together cussing McCall’s name with oaths that would have made a preacher and a schoolteacher want to put a gun to their heads, then Charlie went to find out what was going on. I went wandering along the streets for quite a time, not really going anywhere, stopping now and again to lean on a building wall, and then I would lurch back into the street and walk some more. Finally I climbed up the hill to the shack where Win and Madame was.

Win and Madame was outside, as they was doing laundry and had their big wash pot boiling on a fire of broken lumber and sticks. Win seen my face and came ru

“It’s Bill,” I said. “He’s done been killed by a coward.”

Win squatted down by me, and Madame came over, sat on the ground beside me, and threw an arm over my shoulders; it really felt good. I hadn’t had that kind of motherly attention since my ma died. Madame pulled me in close, and Win held me, too. I started crying. I wasn’t caterwauling or nothing, but I was crying, and this went on for some time. I figure, looking back on it, I wasn’t just crying for Bill but for my pa and ma and Mr. Loving. They all just wadded up together like bread dough in my mind. I felt as if everything that had ever been worth anything had just been sold cheap at auction. I couldn’t hold back the tears.

Between sobs and wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, I told them all that had happened and how it was that I wanted to head out no later than tomorrow, tonight if possible, and the shooting match be damned.

I hadn’t no more than finished telling this when I looked down and seen Charlie Utter in a fresh set of clothes. For a moment, way he was dressed, his long hair and all, I thought he was Wild Bill come back to life. I wiped my eyes quick and watched him slog up the hill.

He come up and took off his hat and nodded politely to the women, said, “Would you ladies mind too much if I had a private word with Nat here?”

They agreed as they would be good with that and went back to their laundry. But when I looked at them, I seen both was watching me close, just to make sure I didn’t come to pieces and need recollecting.

Charlie’s face was red, especially around the nose, and his eyes was bleary. “Walk with me, Nat?” he said.

“You have duded up,” I said as I followed him down the hill toward Main Street.