The Melodeon Saloon was a dingy place, with a long bar on the back wall and three or four rough tables for playing cards. Johnson went around throwing back the curtains on the windows, flooding it with light. The patrons groaned and cursed. The proprietor, Leander Samuels, cried out, “Now, gents, be easy!”
Johnson ducked under the cloth of his camera to compose the shot, and a voice said, “What the hell you doing, Foggy?”
“Taking a picture,” Johnson said.
“Like hell.”
Johnson looked up. Black Dick, the Miner’s Friend, had risen from one of the card tables. His hand rested on his gun.
“Now, Dick,” said Mr. Samuels, “it’s just a picture.”
“It’s disturbing my peace.”
“Now, Dick—” Mr. Samuels began.
“I’ve said my say,” Dick threatened. “I’m playing cards now and I don’t want no picture.”
“Perhaps you’d like to step outside while the picture is made,” Johnson said.
“Perhaps you’d like to step outside with me,” Dick said.
“No thank you, sir,” Johnson said.
“Then you just take yourself and your contraption out, and don’t come back.”
“Now, Dick, I hired Foggy. I want a picture for the wall behind the bar, I think it’d look fine.”
“That’s all right,” Dick said. “He can come back any time he likes, long as I’m not here. No one takes my likeness.” He poked a finger at Johnson, showing off the snake tattoo on his wrist, which he was vain about. “Now you remember that. And you git out.”
Johnson got out.
That was the first sure indication that Black Dick was a wanted man somewhere or other. Nobody in Deadwood was surprised to hear it, and the mystery it added to Dick only increased his reputation.
But it was also the beginning of trouble between Johnson and the three Curry brothers—Dick, Clem, and Bill—that would later cause him so much misery.
But while his business prospered, he didn’t have much time to amass his profits. On September 13 he wrote:
I am generally informed that the mountain roads close with snow by Thanksgiving latest, and perhaps by November first. I must be ready to make my departure before the end of October, or remain until the following spring. Each day I record my accounts and my costs. For the life of me, I do not see how I can possibly make enough money in time to leave.
His journal for the next few days was filled with despairing comments, but two days after that, Johnson’s fortunes again underwent a dazzling change.
“My prayers are answered!” he wrote. “The army has come to town!”
The Army Arrives
On September 14, 1876, two thousand miners lined the streets of Deadwood, firing pistols into the air and shouting their welcome as General George Crook and his column of the 2nd Cavalry rode through the town. “It would be hard to imagine a more popular sight to the locals,” wrote Johnson, “for everyone here fears Indians, and General Crook has waged a successful war against them since spring.”
The arriving army presented a notably rugged appearance after their months on the plains. When General Crook signed into the Grand Central Hotel, Perkins, in his polite way, suggested that the general might wish to visit the Deadwood baths, and perhaps also to obtain a set of new clothing from a dry goods store. General Crook took the hint, and was cleaned up when he stepped onto the Grand Central balcony and made a brief speech to the throng of miners below.
Johnson viewed the festivities, which ran long into the night, with an entirely different perspective. “Here at last,” he wrote, “is my ticket to civilization!”
Johnson asked Crook’s quartermaster, Lieutenant Clark, about joining the cavalry for the march south. Clark said that would be fine, but he would have to square it with the general himself. Wondering how to meet the man, Johnson thought perhaps he should offer to take his picture.
“General hates pictures,” Clark advised him. “Don’t do it. Go up directly and just ask him.”
“Very well,” Johnson said.
“One other thing,” Clark said. “Don’t shake hands. General hates to shake hands.”
“Very well,” Johnson said.
Major General George Crook was every inch a military man: short-cropped hair; piercing eyes; a full, flowing beard; and ramrod-erect posture as he sat in his chair in the dining room. Johnson waited until the man had finished his coffee and some of his admirers had departed for the gambling halls before he approached and explained his situation.
Crook listened patiently to Johnson’s tale, but before long he was shaking his head, murmuring that he could not take civilians on a military expedition with all the hazards involved—he was sorry, but it was impossible. Then Johnson mentioned the fossil bones he wished to take home.
“Fossil bones?”
“Yes, General.”
Crook said, “You have been digging fossil bones?”
“Yes, General.”
“And you are from Yale?”
“Yes, General.”
His whole manner changed. “Then you must be associated with Professor Marsh of Yale,” he said.
After the briefest hesitation, Johnson said that he was indeed associated with Professor Marsh.
“Marvelous man. Charming, intelligent man,” Crook said. “I met him in Wyoming in ’72, we went hunting together. Outstanding man. Remarkable man.”
“None quite like him,” Johnson agreed.
“You’re with his party?”
“I was. I became separated from it.”
“Damned bad luck,” Crook said. “Well, anything I can do for Marsh, I will. You are welcome to join my column, and we will see your fossil bones safely to Cheyenne.”
“Thank you, General!”
“Have your bones loaded on a suitable wagon. Quartermaster Clark will assist you in any way you need. We march at dawn, day after tomorrow. Happy to have you with us.”
“Thank you, General!”
Last Day in Deadwood
On September 15, his last full day in Deadwood, Johnson undertook two final photo assignments.
In the morning, he rode out to Negro Gulch to photograph the colored miners who had made a fabulous strike there. Six miners had been taking out nearly two thousand dollars a day for weeks; their ore was shipped home, and they had already sold their claim. Now they were posing, putting on their old work clothes and standing by the flume for the photograph, then dressing again in their new duds and burning the old clothes.
They were in high spirits, and wanted the picture to take to St. Louis. For his part, Johnson was pleased to see miners so well disciplined that they were taking their findings home with them. Most left their earnings in the saloons or on the green felt of the gaming tables, but these men were different. “They are ever so cheerful,” Johnson wrote, no doubt cheerful himself, “and I wish them the best of luck in their journey home.”