Johnson sighed. He was too tired to argue.
“Well, what do you expect me to do,” Earp said. “Leave ’em to come and sit in the dark with you?”
“It’s just that I didn’t know.”
“You look peaked,” Earp said sympathetically. “You go get sleep.”
Johnson nodded, started back to the hotel.
“You want to hire me again tonight?” Earp called to him.
“Yes,” Johnson said.
“That’ll be five dollars,” Earp said.
“I’m not paying you five dollars to play blackjack,” Johnson said.
Earp shrugged. “Suit yourself, boy.”
That night he put the loaded pistols and extra bullets in his boots again. He must have fallen asleep after midnight, because he awoke to the sound of wood splintering. The broken door opened, and a figure slid into the room. The door closed again. It was pitch-dark because of the crates blocking the window.
“Foggy,” a voice whispered.
“Wyatt?” Johnson whispered.
The sharp clock of a gun being cocked. A footstep. Silence. Breathing in the dark. Johnson realized he made an easy target and eased out of the bed and beneath it. He took one of the pistols out of its boot and flung the boot against the wall.
At the sound of the boot hitting the wall, there was a tongue of flame as the man fired at the noise. Someone yelled immediately elsewhere in the hotel.
“You get out, whoever you are!” Johnson said, the room filled with smoke now. “I have a loaded gun, you get on out.”
Silence. Another footstep. Breathing.
“That you, Foggy boy?”
The door opened again and another man came in.
“He’s in his bed,” came a voice.
“Foggy, we are going to light a lamp now. Just sit still and we will get this all straightened out.”
Instead, the men opened fire into his bed, splintering the frame. Johnson grabbed his second pistol and lifted both guns, emptying each without skill.
He heard wood splintering, groaning, something falling, then maybe the door being opened.
He paused to reload, fumbling in the darkness. He heard breathing—he was sure of it. That made him nervous. He could imagine the killer squatting there, listening to Johnson’s panicked exhalations, listening to the clink of the bullets going into the chambers, focusing on the sound, locating Johnson . . .
He finished reloading. Still nothing.
“Oh, Carmella,” came a sad and tired voice. “I know I’ve been—” The man’s breathing became labored. “If’n I can just get my breath good . . .” He coughed and there was a kick against the floor. Then a crackling, choking noise. Then nothing.
In his journal, Johnson wrote,
I apprehended then that I had killed a man, but the room was too dark to see who it was. I waited there on the floor with my guns ready in case the other shootist came back, and I resolved to fire first and ask questions afterward. But then I heard Mr. Perkins, the proprietor, calling from the hallway. I answered back. I told him I wasn’t going to shoot, and then he appeared in the doorway with a lamp, throwing light across the room and down to the floor, where a big man lay dead, his blood a wet rug beneath him.
There were three neat bullet wounds in the man’s broad back.
Perkins rolled the body over. In the guttering light of the lamp, he looked into the sightless eyes of Clem Curry. “Dead as a doornail,” he muttered.
The hallway filled with voices, and then heads poked their way through the doorway to gawk.
“Stand back, folks, stand back.”
Judge Harlan pushed roughly through the onlookers into the room. Harlan was in ill humor, probably, Johnson thought, because he had been called out of bed. It turned out to be nothing of the sort. “I left a hell of a poker game,” the judge said, “to deal with this here murder.”
He stared at the body.
“That’s Clem Curry, isn’t it?”
Johnson said it was.
“No loss to the community, as far as I’m concerned,” the judge said. “What was he doing here?”
“Robbing me,” Johnson said.
“Figures,” Judge Harlan said. He took a drink from a hip flask, passed it to Johnson. “Who shot him?”
Johnson said he had.
“Well,” the judge said, “as far as it matters to me, that’s fine. The only trouble is, you shot him in the back.”
Johnson explained that it was dark, and he could not see.
“I am sure of it,” the judge said. “But the problem is, you shot him three times in the back.”
Johnson said he hadn’t intended to kill anyone at all.
“I am sure of it. You have no problem with me, but you may have some difficulty when Black Dick hears of it, tomorrow or the next day, depending if he’s in town.”
This had already occurred to Johnson, and he did not like to think about it too long.
“You planning to leave Deadwood?” the judge said.
“Not just yet,” Johnson said.
Judge Harlan took another pull from the flask. “I would,” he said. “Myself, I’d be gone before daybreak.”
“Well, damn me,” Sam Perkins said, fingering the bullet holes in the wall after the crowd had left. “You surely had some hot work here, Mr. Johnson.”
“They didn’t get the bones.”
“That’s so, but they got every one of my guests out of bed in the middle of the night, Mr. Johnson.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Scared Edwin the night clerk so bad he wet his trousers. I’m not fooling.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I can’t run a hotel this way, Mr. Johnson. The Grand Central has its reputation. I want these bones out of here today,” Perkins said.
“Mr. Perkins—”
“Today,” Perkins said, “and that’s final. And I’ll charge you to repair the bullet holes. That’ll be on your bill.”
“Where am I going to move them to?”
“Ain’t my problem.”
“Mr. Perkins, these bones are valuable to science.”
“We’re a long way from science. Just get ’em out of here.”
Moving the Bones
With the crates loaded in his wagon the next morning, he went first to the Deadwood bank, but they had no space to store anything but gold dust.
Then he tried Sutter’s Dry Goods. Mr. Sutter had a strong room in the back where he stored his firearms for sale. Mr. Sutter refused outright. But Johnson took the opportunity to buy more bullets for his guns.
The National Hotel was not as particular as the Grand Central, and was known to be accommodating. But the man at the desk said he had no storage facilities.
Fielder’s Saloon and Gaming House was open around the clock, and the scene of so many altercations that Fielder kept an armed guard to maintain order. He had a back room that was large enough.
Fielder said no.
“It’s just bones, Mr. Fielder.”
“Maybe so, maybe not. Whatever it is, the Curry boys are after ’em. I want no part of it.”
Colonel Ramsay was feisty, and had plenty of room in his stables. He just shook his head when Johnson asked him.
“Is everybody afraid of the Curry brothers?”