Paradise Sky

“Wild Bill getting killed has kind of made it a holiday,” he said. “Not that I’m suggesting it’s a good thing, though I can use the time off.”

Arriving at my place, I took Cullen inside, and we sat down on the floor. “I’m going to give you some papers to hold for me, at least for a short time,” I said. Then I explained about Mr. Loving and the arrangements he had made.

Wild Bill’s funeral was a big ballyhoo.

At Charlie’s camp, under a tepee-style tent, they set up a black-cloth-lined coffin on wooden blocks with the guest of honor in it. Charlie laid a Winchester rifle beside him, said it was his favorite shooting piece. This was a lie. Bill always carried revolvers and was right proud of them, far more than any long shooter. I think Charlie felt he needed to lay Bill out in style, with some kind of weapon beside him, but didn’t want them fine and famous shooting irons of Bill’s to go to waste in the ground. It kind of bothered me about the Winchester, to speak frankly, as it seemed false to Bill’s memory.

Folks paraded inside the tent and around the coffin. Everyone, no matter sex or color, was let in. There was even a few dogs wandering about, and Charlie had to grab a cat off the edge of the coffin and throw it under the back of the tent, as it was sniffing at the corpse.

After a lot of flapdoodle was said, some of it accurate, the body was toted to a hillside, where Bill was put down. Some more flapdoodle was said by a couple of fellows, one of them a weepy Chinaman none of us understood. He apparently knew Bill, and it was whispered that he supplied our man with opium. I don’t know if there was truth to it or not. Charlie come up when the Chinaman got finished, or was made to finish, and said some heartfelt words. Then a board he had carved on was put up at the head of the grave. Charlie had whittled into it Bill’s age and about him being murdered by the assassin Jack McCall. One man suggested that “assassin” be changed to “dick sucker,” but Charlie was against it. It would have required an entirely new board.

The grave was covered with dirt, and that was all there was for the great Wild Bill Hickok.

This is off the trail a little, at least as far as the layout in time, but I thought I’d put it here cause I learned about it later. Jack McCall was let off by a miners’ court, even though he snuck up behind Bill and shot him in the head and there was witnesses to what was clearly cold-blooded murder. I was one of them witnesses, but I was not called to testify. I didn’t even know there was testifying to be done. It all happened quick and was done with.

In his defense Jack said that his brother had been killed by Bill back in Abilene, Kansas, but he had nothing on that but his word. That’s why I think he had been paid by Ruggert and knew how safe he was because some of the jury, such that it was, had probably been paid, too. Jack got off, and you can bet he got gone. Had Charlie not been so broken up about the funeral and needing to be there to protect me at the shooting match, I have no doubt he would have snuck off after him, left his bones out there in the wilds for grass to grow over.

Getting off didn’t do Jack no good, though. Later on, in Wyoming, he bragged about the deed. The Wyoming folks, bless them, didn’t consider the Deadwood trial a real trial, as it wasn’t an incorporated town then. They nabbed him and tried him and found him guilty and hanged him. I hope with thirty pieces of silver in his pocket.

I went to my room and sat alone. I cleaned my weapons again, as if they needed it, laid out all my ammunition. I thought about things Mr. Loving had taught me. I tried to do as he said I should do anytime I became overwhelmed, and that was to think about nothing at all. Course, the more I tried that the more I thought about every damn thing you can imagine. Finally I settled on thinking about being up in the hayloft in Mr. Loving’s barn, looking out the opening at the countryside in the springtime, when the trees grew thick along the creek bank and there was wildflowers and the limbs of the trees got filled with bright-colored birds.

It was with that thinking that I found my peace.

21

I pla

When I come out of my little room for the last time, there on the dirt street was Charlie and some others, about ten men if I remember my count. There was Tater Joe Wingchip, as he was known, and Smooth Ride Smith, known by that name because he was always falling off horses, and Frank Pe

“We come to walk with you, so as you won’t get lonely,” Charlie said.

“I am a mite lonesome,” I said, “and would enjoy the company. Shall we stroll, gentlemen?”

They gathered up around me and marched with me through the streets. There was people watching as we came, and I’m not sure what they made of a wad of white men with a darky in the center of them. Maybe they thought I was being led to a hanging.

Finally we arrived where the match was. There was a ba

There was also on the ground at the far end some stacks of bricks, and on those was big jugs with corks in them. I knew what that was all about. I counted ten across. They was bigger jugs with bigger corks than Bill and I had shot, but they was also set back a mite more in distance. There was a youthful man there, string-lean to the point of being mostly bones, wearing a checkered coat and bowler hat. He was introduced to me as Checkers Chauncey, which led me to believe that coat stayed on his back a lot. He was the one that ran the match, though he was not a judge, this being the job of six well-dressed men, three on one side, three on the other, all of them seated on stiff wooden chairs with cushions on the seats.

While I was signing in, some other men came up, and pretty soon there was ten of us signed. Then there was a murmur in the crowd. I looked back and seen people parting to let a little fellow come through. He had on a tall white hat with a wide brim. He was broad-shouldered but small everywhere else, except he had big hands and long fingers. I noticed that even as he was coming from a distance. His face was long and friendly-looking. He had dark hair and a mustache and a beard to match. He was wearing a milky leather jacket with fringe, dark stovepipe pants, and high boots that matched the jacket. He wore a vest with all ma

A ragged, redheaded boy, probably fifteen or sixteen, was ru

The man signed his papers for the match, studied on me with fine, clear eyes, and with that boy following with the bags come over and stuck out his hand. Charlie and the others stood close to me. I noticed they had their hands on their pistols in case things went in the wrong direction.

On instinct, I handed my rifle to Charlie, took the man’s hand, and shook it.

“I take by the tint of your hide you are Nat Love,” he said.