Paradise Sky

“He’s bucked Weasel,” I said. “The devil let him climb on pretty as you please, and then he bucked him.”

“That would be his way,” Cullen said as I mounted Satan. “He has always had a sense of humor.”

We three rode on. Wasn’t too long before we come to a white mound in the moonlight, and as we got closer, I seen it was a body. It was a woman.

I rode over quickly, and from the saddle looked down on the dead and badly mistreated body of Madame. There was hardly a place on her that didn’t appear to have been cut, stabbed, or clawed.

Slipping off Satan, I went and bent down and looked her over. Her eyes was open and full of the moon. I tried to close them, but they was contrary.

“We have to bury her,” Bronco Bob said.

“Ain’t no time for that,” I said. I pulled my bedroll off the back of Satan, unrolled it, and threw it over her corpse. “Win is still with them, and she might be alive.”

It bothered me to no end to leave that poor lady there with nothing but a blanket over her ravaged body. I didn’t like the idea that varmints and bugs would be about her, but she was beyond help. Win, maybe, could be saved.

I guess we had gone another couple hours when we seen a man staggering along in the moonlight ahead of us. I could tell from the way he moved it was Weasel.

I halted Satan, shifted in the saddle, pulled the rifle, and shot Weasel in the back of his lower right leg. He let out a scream and collapsed. I rode up on him. He had rolled on his back and pulled one of my Colt pistols. When he seen there was three of us, he started in to begging. “Now, boys, don’t do nothing hasty. I was just hired. Nothing more.”

“Put that gun down,” I said.

He laid the pistol in the grass. I dropped off Satan, picked my Colt up, then took the other Colt and my LeMat from him as well as my knife. I handed each of the weapons to Cullen except for the Winchester, which I kept. Cullen brought his horse next to mine and dropped the pistols in one of my saddlebags. The money I had wasn’t in there.

I gave Weasel a hard look, said, “You was the one suggested the cowhide, as I recall.”

“It was just a suggestion,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And Ruggert took it.”

“Listen here, Deadwood,” he said, trying to sweeten things with that name. “I found that money that was in there, and that big Jew took it away from me. It was him that stole it. I ain’t got nothing against you. I’m leaking a river here. I need someone to bind my wound.”

“That there is a sad complaint,” I said, squatting down to keep an eye on him. “Where have they gone?”

Weasel hesitated only a moment, realizing his chances was slim in any direction, and decided he might could get in on my good side. He pointed. “There’s a split in the hills there. There’s a natural camp just inside them, around the first real run of rocks. They are going to bivouac there.”

I looked. The split he was talking about was some distance away, nestled in white rock between higher rocks darkened with trees.

“The young woman? Is she still alive?”

“Was when I seen her last, though them boys was rude about her.”

“And you, of course, wasn’t?”

“I ain’t saying one way or another.”

“You just have. How come you’re out here all alone?”

“Me and the big man, one they call Golem, went off together cause we was to meet up with Ruggert in Kansas, where we was to get the last bit of our pay. That black devil of a horse threw me and run off. Golem, he went on without me, and me calling to him. He said he didn’t like me.”

“Imagine that, a weasel despised by yet another and larger weasel,” Cullen said.

“You bind me up,” he said, “I can ride you to their camp.”

“If you split with Golem, how do I know you know where they are?”

“I been to that campsite,” he said. “I’m the one told them about it.”

“All right, then,” I said. “Give me the coat you’re wearing.”

“It gets chilly at night,” he said.

“Not if you’re wearing a bloody cowhide it don’t. But right now I’m a little on the cool side. Give me the coat.”

He pulled it off and tossed it to me, sat there holding his leg.

“You’ll take me with you?” he said.

“No.”

I stood up, leaned the rifle against my leg, and put on Weasel’s coat. It fit all right as long as I didn’t try to button it. I got on my horse. Weasel looked up at me with spite in his face.

“All right,” Weasel said. “I can tie my own leg off with something. I can take care of myself without help from any of you.”

“You ain’t going to need no help,” I said.

Weasel knew then. He said, “Now, Deadwood Dick, you don’t want to do that.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken, Mergatroit.”

I lifted the Winchester and shot him through the forehead. He fell back from his sitting position and lay in the grass on his back.

“Damn, if that wasn’t severe, sir,” Bronco Bob said.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it was.”

The Black Hills have stretches of prairie as well as rumbles of rocks spotted with grass. Then there was the hills. The trees that grew on the hills was thick, and in the moonlight they looked like one great wave of darkness creeping down from the sky.

We rode until we came to the split Weasel pointed out. It was a long, wide break in the rocks.

As we rode up on that split, Cullen said, “Hold up.”

We did, and he pointed to his right and high. I could see floating above a short rise of rocks and trees a gray puff of smoke. It looked like fairy dust in the moonlight.

“I smell meat cooking,” Bronco Bob said.

“I think we have found our men,” I said.

We climbed off our horses, led them into a clutch of trees, and tied them up there. I said, “Y’all wait here.”

Carrying my rifle, I started climbing through the trees, a large number of them dwarf pines, along a trail spotted with rocks and scrub brush. It was tough going, but when I got near the top, I stopped and squatted among the trees. I seen a lone sentry up there and recognized him as one of the men who had attacked us. He was standing so he could look down, and I suppose he was in that position so that if anyone rode into the split he could see them. He wasn’t looking back, as the idea that someone might know they was inside the split and would come up through the trees hadn’t occurred to him. If they could guard the split, they felt they could keep attackers out. What they had actually done was boxed themselves in.

He was looking down, probably wishing he was there eating whatever was cooking. There were little red sparks from that cook fire, and they fluttered up and dotted the dark like fireflies, then faded. I could smell the meat really good now. My stomach turned over a couple of times in want of it.

I squatted there for some time, watching.

Finally the man turned and went into the tree line, leaned the rifle he was toting against a pine, and unfastened his pants. With his pants hanging around his knees, he took what looked like a dime novel out of his pocket and squatted, let his back rest against the tree to support him while he took care of nature’s business, that book there for ass wiping.

He was quite loud about his straining, and was finally making good on his intentions when I gently laid my Winchester on the ground and crept up behind him. Pulling my knife, I inched around the side of the tree and drove the blade into his throat. I struck him so hard the knife went through his neck and into the tree, pi

Putting my knife away, after wiping it on his shirt, I got my rifle, eased over to where he had been standing guard, and looked down. It wasn’t a long drop, maybe thirty feet, and with the fire and the moonlight I could see all of them real good.