Johnson said, “So the body will just stay here?”
One man jerked a thumb to the store behind them. The sign read kim sing washing and ironing. “Well, he’s in front of Sing’s place, I reckon Sing’ll move him before he gets too ripe and ruins business.”
“Sing’s son’ll move him.”
“Too heavy for the son, I imagine. He’s only about eleven.”
“Naw, that little ’un is strong.”
“Not that strong.”
“He moved old Jake when the carriage ran him down.”
“That’s so, he did move Jake.”
They were still discussing it when Johnson walked on.
At Colonel Ramsay’s stables, he offered his wagon and team for sale. Cope had purchased them in Fort Benton for the inflated price of $180; Johnson thought he could get forty or perhaps fifty dollars.
Colonel Ramsay offered ten.
After a long complaint, Johnson agreed to it. Ramsay then explained Johnson owed six already, and plunked down the difference—four silver dollars—on the countertop.
“This is an outrage,” Johnson said.
Silently, Ramsay picked one of the four dollars off the counter.
“What’s that for?”
“That’s for insulting me,” Ramsay said. “Care to do it again?”
Colonel Ramsay was a hard-bitten man well over six feet tall. He wore a long-barreled Colt six-shooter on each hip.
Johnson took the remaining three dollars, and turned to leave.
“You got a mouth, you little bastard,” Ramsay said. “I was you, I’d learn to keep it shut.”
“I appreciate the advice,” Johnson said quietly. He was beginning to understand why everyone in Deadwood was so polite, so almost preternaturally calm.
He next went to the Black Hills Overland and Mail Express, at the north end of the street. The agent there informed him that the fare to Cheyenne was eight dollars by regular coach, and thirty dollars by the express coach.
“Why does the express cost so much more?”
“Your express coach is pulled by a team of six. Standard coach is pulled by a team of two, and it’s slower.”
“That’s the only difference?”
“Well, of late the slow coach hasn’t been making it through regular.”
“Oh.”
Johnson then explained that he had some freight to transport as well. The agent nodded. “Most folks do. If it’s gold, it’s one and a half percent of appraised value.”
“It’s not gold.”
“Well then, it goes at freight rate, five cents a pound. How much you got?”
“About a thousand pounds.”
“A thousand pounds! What on earth you got weighs a thousand pounds?”
“Bones,” Johnson said.
“That’s highly unusual,” the agent said. “I don’t know as we could accommodate you.” He scratched figures on a sheet of paper. “These, ah, bones can ride up top?”
“I guess they can, if they’re safe up there.”
At five cents per pound, Johnson figured, the cost would be fifty dollars.
“Be eighty dollars, plus five dollars loading fee.”
More than he expected. “Oh, fifty for the freight and thirty for the express. Eight-five in all?”
The clerk nodded. “You want to book passage?”
“Not right now.”
“You know where to find us if you do,” he said, and turned away.
As Johnson was leaving, he paused at the door. “About the express coach,” he said.
“Yes?”
“How often does it get through?”
“Well, it gets through mostly,” the agent said. “It’s your best bet, no question of that.”
“But how often?”
The agent shrugged. “I’d say three out of five get through. A few of them get ventilated on the way, but mostly they’re fine.”
“Thank you,” Johnson said.
“Don’t mention it,” the agent said. “You sure you don’t got gold nuggets in them boxes?”
The agent wasn’t the only one who had heard about the boxes of bones. All of Deadwood had, and there was plenty of speculation. It was known, for example, that Johnson had arrived in Deadwood with a dead Indian. Since Indians knew better than any white man where the gold was in their sacred Black Hills, many people figured the Indian had shown Johnson the gold, and then Johnson had killed him and his own partner and made off with the ore, now disguised as crates of “bones.”
Others were equally sure the crates didn’t contain gold, since Johnson hadn’t taken it across the street to the assayer, which was the only sensible thing to do with gold. But the crates might still be plenty valuable, containing jewels or even cash money.
But in that case, why didn’t he take them to the Deadwood bank? Here, the only possible explanation was that the crates contained some recognizable stolen treasure that would be identified at once by the bankers. What that treasure might be was hard to say, but everybody talked about it a great deal.
“I think you might want to move those bones,” said Sam Perkins. “People are talking. I can’t guarantee they won’t get stolen from the storeroom.”
“Can I carry them up to my own room?”
“Nobody will help you, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I wasn’t asking that.”
“Suit yourself. You want to sleep in the same room with a lot of animal bones, nobody will say nothing.”
So that is what he did. Ten boxes, up the stairs, stacked carefully against the wall, more or less blocking all the light from his one window.
“Course everybody knows you moved them upstairs,” said Perkins, tagging along. “That makes them look even more valuable.”
“I thought of that.”
“The posts in that wall are good, but anybody could bust open that door.”
“I could build a thick timber slide lock on the inside, same as a stable door.”
Perkins nodded. “That keeps those boxes safe when you are in the room, but what about when you ain’t?”
“Cut two holes around the post, one in the wall and one in the door, use a chain with a padlock.”
“You got a good padlock?”
“Nope.”
“I do, but you got to buy it from me. Ten dollars. Came off a Sioux City and Pacific boxcar door that caught fire. Heavier than it looks.”
“I would be much obliged.”
“You would be further obliged, financially speaking.”
“Yes.”
“So I expect you’ll have to get a job,” Perkins said. “You need to raise over a hundred dollars, plus what you owe me. That’s a good deal of money to come by honestly.”
Johnson didn’t need to be told that.
“Any work you can do, useful work?”
“I dug all summer.”
“Everybody here can dig. That’s the only reason folks come to the Black Hills—to mine. No, I mean can you cook or shoe horses or do carpentry, anything like that. A skill.”