“I’ve been robbed.”
“How can that be?” Perkins said, and accompanied him upstairs. Perkins viewed the room with equanimity. “Just one of the boys, burdened with curiosity, checking out your story. They didn’t take anything, did they?”
“Yes, they took my wallet.”
“How can that be?” Perkins said.
“It was here, in my room.”
“You left your wallet in your room?”
“I was only going downstairs to dinner.”
“Mr. Johnson,” Perkins said gravely, “you’re in Deadwood. You can’t leave your money unattended for a breath.”
“Well, I did.”
“That is a problem,” Perkins said.
“You better call the town marshal and report the robbery.”
“Mr. Johnson, there’s no marshal in Deadwood.”
“No marshal?”
“Mr. Johnson, there was no town here this time last year. We surely haven’t gotten around to hiring a marshal. Besides, I don’t think the boys’d stand for one. They’d kill him first thing. Just two weeks back, Bill Hickok was killed here.”
“Wild Bill Hickok?”
“That’s him.” Perkins explained that Hickok was playing cards in Nuttal and Mann’s Saloon when Jack McCall came in and shot him through the back of the head. The bullet passed through Hickok’s head and lodged in the wrist of another player. Hickok was dead before his hands touched his guns.
“The Jack McCall I had dinner with?”
“That’s him. Most folks figure Jack was hired to shoot Wild Bill by folks who were afraid he’d be hired as town marshal. Now I reckon nobody’s eager for the job.”
“Then who keeps the law here?”
“There is no law here,” Perkins said. “This is Deadwood.” He was speaking slowly, as if to a stupid child. “Judge Harlan presides over the inquests, when he’s sober enough, but other’n that, there’s no law at all, and people like it that way. Hell, every saloon in Deadwood is technically against the law; this is Indian territory, and you can’t sell spirits in Indian territory.”
“All right,” Johnson said. “Where is the telegraph office? I’ll wire my father for funds, pay you, and be gone.”
Perkins shook his head.
“No telegraph office?”
“Not in Deadwood, Mr. Johnson. Not yet, anyway.”
“What do I do about my stolen money?”
“That is a problem,” Perkins agreed. “You been here three days now, you owe six dollars plus your dinner tonight, that’s a dollar more. And you stabled your horses with Colonel Ramsay?”
“Yes, down the street.”
“Well, he’s going to want two dollars a day, so that makes six or eight dollars more you owe him. I reckon you can sell him your wagon and team to square it.”
“If I sell my wagon and team, how can I leave with my bones?”
“That is a problem,” Perkins said. “It surely is.”
“I know it is a problem!” Johnson began to shout.
“Now, Mr. Johnson, keep a cool head,” Perkins said soothingly. “You still intending to go to Laramie and Cheyenne?”
“That’s right.”
“Then that wagon is no good to you, anyhow.”
“Why not?”
“Mr. Johnson, why don’t you come downstairs and allow me to pour you a drink? I suspect there’s one or two facts that ought to make your acquaintance.”
The facts were these:
There were two roads to Deadwood, north and south.
Johnson had driven into Deadwood unmolested only because he had arrived from the north. Nobody was ever expected from the north; the route was bad and there were hostile Indians in the north, and consequently the road was unattended by brigands and highwaymen.
On the other hand, the road to Laramie and Cheyenne ran south. And that road was thick with thieves. They sometimes preyed on emigrants coming up to seek their fortune, but they especially preyed on anything moving south out of Deadwood.
In addition, there were marauding bands of Indians, assisted by white bandits, such as the notorious “Persimmons Bill,” who was said to have led the savages responsible for the massacre of the entire Metz party in Red Canyon earlier that year.
The stagecoach line had started up that spring with a single armed guard, or messenger, riding shotgun up with the driver. Pretty soon they laid on two messengers, then three. Lately there were never less than four. And when the Gold Stage went south once a week, it traveled in a convoy with a dozen heavily armed guards.
Even then, they didn’t always make it through. Sometimes, they were driven back to Deadwood, and sometimes they were killed and the gold stolen.
“You mean the guards were killed?”
“Guards and passengers both,” Perkins said. “These highwaymen just naturally kill anyone they come across. It’s their way of doing business.”
“That’s appalling!”
“Yep. It’s bad, too.”
“How am I going to leave?”
“Well, this is what I’ve been trying to explain,” Perkins said patiently. “It’s a good deal easier to come to Deadwood than to leave.”
“What can I do?”
“Well, come spring, things should cool down a bit. They say Wells Fargo will start a coach line, and they have experience cleaning up desperadoes. You’ll be safe then.”
“In the spring? But this is September.”
“I believe so,” Perkins said.
“You’re trying to tell me I’m stuck here in Deadwood until spring?”
“I believe so,” Perkins said, pouring him another drink.
Life in Deadwood
There was a good deal of gunfire during the late hours, and Johnson spent a restless night. He awoke with an aching head; Perkins gave him strong black coffee, and he went out to see what he could do to raise funds.
The snow had melted during the night; the street was now ankle deep with stinking mud, the wooden buildings streaked with damp. Deadwood looked especially dreary, and the prospect of remaining there for six or seven months depressed him. Nor were his spirits improved when he saw a dead man lying on his back in the muddy street. Flies buzzed around the body; three or four loungers stood over it, smoking cigars and discussing its former owner, but no one made any attempt to move the corpse, and the passing teams of horses just wheeled past it.
Johnson stopped. “What happened?”
“That’s Willy Jackson. He was in a fracas last night.”
“A fracas?”
“I believe he engaged in disputing with Black Dick Curry, and they settled it outside in the street.”
Another man said, “Willy always did drink overmuch.”
“You mean Dick shot him?”
“Ain’t the first time. Dick likes to kill. Does it when he can.”
“You just going to leave him there?”
“I don’t know who’ll move him,” one said.
“Well, he’s got no relatives to fret over him. He had a brother, but he died of dysentery about two months back. They had a small claim couple of miles east of here.”
“Whatever happened to that claim?” one man asked, flicking his cigar.
“I don’t believe it amounted to nothing.”
“Never did have luck.”
“No, Willy never did.”