Chapter 2

We got to the mine and I was paid off with no prospects for further employment. I wasn't surprised, but I didn't know how far my $40 was going to carry me. I turned in my shotgun and hitched a ride into Deadwood. When I got there, I was a bit disappointed. Yeah, I know. Well, I wasn't expecting another Brooklyn, but I did expect something besides stinking mud for a main street. After all, it hadn't rained for over a week. And the buildings were all dried out wood, just looking for an excuse to burn. Shit, that was a good description of Deadwood: shit.

Not knowing what else to do, I went into the nearest saloon for a beer. I did move my gunbelt so that my gun was visible, but it looked pretty much like I was the only man in town who used the crossdraw. I moseyed up to the bar and ordered a beer. 10¢! My God, that was ridiculous! OK, I paid it, but that beer better be good! It wasn't.

I was about to complain when I felt a gun muzzle in my back. Some galoot was standing behind me, more drunk than sober, and he demanded my money. Now, I may be a green kid, a tenderfoot, but I am not stupid. I partially turned so that I could see my assailant. I also could see a lot of grins on the faces of the bystanders. It looked like they were looking for some free entertainment.

I said, "You'll have to give me a little room to get to my pockets. All my money is there." Damned if that wasn't enough to get the muzzle moved out of contact with my back. As soon as I felt that, I swung around with the nearly full beer mug in my hand and smacked the fool aside the head with possibly a pound and a half of weight with all of the force I could muster behind it.

The glass didn't break, but bones did. Not only that, the gun went off and a bullet struck one of the grinning bystanders. Yes, it was a very entertaining experience for several people, but not for either of the wounded men. The man who was shot was hit in the chest, eventually a fatal wound, so I dismissed him from further thought.

The idiot that I had hit was a medium sized guy, so his head was just exactly at the right height to catch the full force of the blow from the beer mug. There was no question that I smashed his lower jaw, his upper jaw, his cheek bone, and his eye socket. Some bone must have been driven into his brain because he was already dead at this point. I set the mug on the bar and said, "Give this to somebody else, I sure as hell can't drink it." The swamper scooped up the bloody mug and downed the beer before anybody else could react.

I turned the dead man over with my foot and looked at his front. Nothing special that I could see. About this time, the marshal came in and took one look at the dead man. "Well, I see that Charlie's foolishness finally got him killed. Who done it?"

I confessed and explained the circumstances. The marshal squinted at me and said, "OK, I guess it was self defense, but don't let it become a habit." I assured the marshal that I had no intention of doing that, and the marshal sent the swamper for the undertaker. He also told me that I was welcome to take whatever I wanted from the body. He inquired about the injured man and was informed that the bullet had come from Charlie's gun, so there was no more said about that.

Here's where I got lucky. I managed to get a gun, S&W .44-40, a gunbelt, a knife, a moneybelt with $280, some loose change, and a set of keys. I asked if anybody knew what the keys might be for. Nobody knew, since Charlie didn't have a business, so I asked where he lived. I was told that he lived alone in a shack behind Hanson's Livery Stable. The keys might be for something over there.

What the hell, my curiosity was aroused, so I went to look in the shack. It was a complete mess. I don't know that Charlie ever cleaned out the place, but I figured that it wouldn't hurt for me to move in. I started throwing things out the door onto a pile where I was going to burn them. I got down to the floor in one corner and I found a small safe that one of the keys fit. I unlocked the safe and was shocked to my core!

The safe was full of gold coins! I made a quick count and came up with 20 bags of coins. I was going to have to count the hoard, but there had to be several thousand dollars in there! Wow, I didn't have to go prospecting—this was all of the gold I needed to find! I locked up the safe and went to find a restaurant.

I found a place that had food at a reasonable price, reasonable, that is, for Deadwood. I paid 65¢ for a venison stew that had some vegetables in it, though I'm not too sure what kind. I figured that was close enough to kosher and dug in. I filled up on stew and coffee, which cost me an extra nickel. I would be eating here very often, since the waitress was very pretty and I had always been a sucker for a winning smile. They served three meals a day, so I might be in for every meal if this waitress was also here. I left a 5¢ tip, and was thanked for my largesse.

I went from the restaurant to Hanson's Livery Stable to find out who owned the shack I was now occupying. The answer was that I was probably the owner because the only reason Charlie had used it was because nobody else wanted it. That was fine with me. The shack was certainly not palatial, but it would do until something better came along. Come winter, I would have to make other arrangements, but it was fine for now. Besides, nobody would be looking in there for a safe with thousands of dollars in it.

Speaking of that, tonight I was going to count the money. I really needed to know what there was that I could work with. I set up a kerosine lamp on the rickety table and opened the safe after locking the only door to the shack. I took out one bag and counted the money. My god, there were 200 Eagles in there—that's $2,000! Ten bags later, the total was up to $20,000. When it was all counted, there was a total of $39,970. I tossed in three Eagles to bring it to an even $40,000!

Not only was Charlie a fool, he was a miser and an idiot! That was enough money to live comfortably anywhere in America. Oh, sure, it was not going to buy you a town house in New York City and leave you enough to live there, but it would sure as hell buy you an apartment in the city. Anyway, I was headed back to Brooklyn as soon as I had a chance to look around. Hell, I had come all the way out here to the Wild West, so the least I could do was see a few sights.

And the first sight I wanted to see was one I never tired of: Annie, the waitress in my favorite restaurant. The next morning, I was deliberately a little late for breakfast, so that I was the last customer to be served. At that, I dawdled over my food and was the last customer in the restaurant. I asked Annie to sit down and join me for a cup of coffee while we talked. She agreed, since she had no real work to do until the lunch rush started.

I told her what she could tell already; namely, that I was newly in from the East and wanted to know what she could tell me about Deadwood and the chances of getting a job. I said that I figured that she was in a good position to know what was going on, since she could hear most of the conversations as she served her patrons.

Annie smiled that superior smile that all Westerners have over somebody new to the West and began to lay out all of the dirt on Deadwood. In essence, I got the impression that Deadwood was a hell hole, and no sane person would want to live there if he had any alternative. Of course, she held herself up as the exception.

Anyway, I found out a lot about her while she talked, and I liked everything that I heard. I guess that she found out a lot about me at the same time, so we came out pretty even on the information exchange. What interested me most about her was that she had no current boyfriend, but was not adverse to finding one, though none of the regulars around Deadwood were of any interest to her. Hey, maybe that was my chance.