“Everybody with sense,” Ramsay said.
The afternoon was drawing to an end, the light starting to fail, and the temperature in town was dropping quickly. Johnson went back to his photo studio, the Black Hills Art Gallery, but he had no customers. It seemed he had become extremely unpopular overnight. He was looking around the studio, trying to see whether he could store the bones there, when his landlord, Kim Sing, came in from the laundry with his young son, the one who had dragged away the dead body out of the street.
Sing nodded and smiled, but as usual said nothing. The son said, “You need place to store some things?”
The boy’s English was pretty good. “Yes, I do. What’s your name?”
“Kang.”
“I like your boots there, Kang.”
The boy smiled. Chinese boys never wore leather boots. His father said something to him. “You store your things in Chinese Town.”
“I can?”
“Yes. You can.”
“It would have to be a safe place.”
“Yes. Ling Chow has tool shed, very strong and just new, it has lock and no windows except small windows at the top.”
“Where is it?”
“Behind Ling Chow restaurant.”
In the middle of Chinatown. It would be perfect. Johnson felt a rush of gratitude. “That’s very kind of you, I appreciate your offer very much. No one else in this town will even—”
“Ten dollar a night.”
“What?”
“Ten dollar a night. Okay?”
“I can’t afford ten dollars a night!”
Unblinking: “You can.”
“That’s outrageous.”
“That’s the price. Okay?”
Johnson thought it over. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
“At this time, I still had more than a thousand pounds of fossils,” Johnson later recalled.
Ten boxes weighing about a hundred pounds each. I hired Kim Sing’s boy, Kang, to help me with the wagon. I paid him two dollars for the afternoon, and he earned it. He kept saying, “What is this?” and I kept telling him it was old bones. But my story didn’t get more persuasive. I also didn’t know there were so many Chinamen in Deadwood. It seemed to me their smooth impassive faces were everywhere, watching me, commenting to each other, standing four deep around the tool shed, peering from windows in the surrounding buildings.
Finally when all the crates were stacked neatly in the tool shed, Kang looked at them and said, “Why you care so much?”
I said I didn’t know anymore. Then I went to the Grand Central for dinner, and returned to the tool shed at nightfall, to keep my evening watch over the dinosaur bones.
He did not have long to wait. Around ten, shadowy figures appeared around the high transom windows. Johnson cocked his gun. There were several figures outside; he heard whispered voices.
The window creaked open. A hand reached down. Johnson saw a dark head appear in the narrow glass. He aimed his gun.
“Get away, you bastards!”
A sharp giggle startled him. They were kids, Chinese kids. He lowered his gun.
“Get away. Go on, get away.”
The giggling continued. Scraping footsteps, and he was alone again. He sighed. It was a good thing he hadn’t shot hastily, he thought.
There was more scraping.
“Didn’t you hear me? Get out of here!”
Probably they didn’t speak English, he thought. But most of the young ones had passable English. And the older ones spoke a lot more English than they were willing to admit they did.
Another head at the window, shadowy.
“Get away, you kids!”
“Mr. Johnson.” It was Kang.
“Yes?”
“I have the bad news for you.”
“What?”
“I think everybody know you here. People in laundry say talking you move boxes to this place.”
Johnson froze. Of course they knew. He’d merely exchanged one room in town for another. “Kang, you know my wagon?”
“Yes, yes.”
“It’s at the stable. Can you get it and bring it here?”
“Yes.”
It seemed he returned only a few minutes later.
“Tell your friends to load the boxes as fast as possible.”
Kang did that, and soon the wagon was loaded. Johnson gave them a dollar and told them to run away. “Kang, stay with me.”
Chinese Town was larger than it looked, with new streets being built constantly. Kang showed him how to guide the wagon through the narrow lanes. At one point they stopped as four horsemen went by in a hurry in the street ahead.
“Look for you, I think,” said Kang.
They eased out onto a side road, and in a few minutes they came to the tall pine where Johnson had buried Little Wind. The ground was still soft, and he and Kang gently exhumed Little Wind, holding their breaths as they pulled him out of the hole. The stench was wretched. The ten boxes took up the space of about two more graves, and Johnson widened the hole he had made for Little Wind and stacked the boxes as evenly as he could. Then he laid Little Wind on top of the boxes, as if he were sleeping atop them.
If I had my camera and it was daytime, I would take a photograph of that, Johnson told himself.
He piled the dirt back over Little Wind, spreading it around so the excess would not be so apparent, then brushed pine needles over the spot.
“This is our secret,” he told Kang.
“Yes, but it can be a better secret.”
“Yes, of course.” Johnson pulled a five-dollar gold piece from his pocket. “You do not tell anyone.”
“No, no.”
But he did not trust the boy not to talk. “When I leave, Kang, I will pay you another five dollars if you have kept the secret.”
“Another five dollar?”
“Yes, the day I leave Deadwood.”
A Shootout
Black Dick showed up in a rage at the Grand Hotel at breakfast time the same morning. He kicked open the door. “Where is the little bastard?”
His gaze fell on Johnson.
“I’m not a shooting man,” Johnson said, as calmly as he could.
“No coward is.”
“You may hold whatever opinion you like.”
“You shot Clem in the back. You are a yellow-bellied snake.”
“He was robbing my property.”
Dick spat. “You shot him in the back, you son of a poxy whore.”
Johnson shook his head. “I won’t be provoked.”
“Then hear this,” Dick said. “You meet me outside now, or I’ll go to that shed in Chinese Town and plug every one of your precious crates with dynamite and blow ’em to smithereens. Might blow up some of those Chinamen who helped you, too.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I can’t see who might stop me. You care to watch me blow your precious bones?”
Johnson felt a strange deep fury fill him. All his frustrations, all the difficulties of his weeks in Deadwood, overwhelmed him. He was glad he had moved the crates. He began to breathe deeply, slowly. His face felt oddly tight.
“No,” Johnson said. He stood. “I’ll see you outside, Dick.”
“That’s fine,” Dick said. “I’ll be waiting on you.”
And Dick left, slamming the door behind him.