Return of Little Big Man (3 page)

I asks, “Partner, what ails you?”

In response I got a stream of indecent abuse, so apparently he did not require medical treatment. “All right, then, you son of a bitch. I’ll fight you,” I says. I didn’t mean it. It was just a test and earned me some more abuse, but this time it was too slurred even to identify the words.

I boosted myself up into the wagon and proceeded to strip off the drunk’s outer clothes, a wool shirt and a pair of pants that stank worse than anything I ever smelled until his filthy long underwear met the air.

I drug these garments back up into the high woods back of the town, where I had hid, and soaked them the rest of the night in a cold mountain stream. Next morning they still stank though not as much, and somewhat less as the sun heated up and begun to steam them dry. If they shrunk some as well, all to the good, for I wasn’t so large as him I stole them from. I buried my Indian attire and went down into town again, now dressed at least as good as most of the other people on the main or in fact the only drag in Deadwood.

I hadn’t ate real food in ever so long, and being that drunk had enormous feet, I hadn’t taken his boots but continued to wear them Cheyenne moccasins that might be questioned by the inevitable people who like to make trouble, especially when the liquor’s flowing. I was in grievous need of funds, now I was amidst whites once more. In an Indian camp I could of walked right in and got my needs met free of charge, no questions asked, except “Where are you going?” and “What do you want?” which, however they were answered, entitled you to the basics. This was true even of an enemy band: if you could get in before you was killed, they had to be hospitable to you, for being a guest outweighed any other identity. It was owing to such practices that they proved at a disadvantage when dealing with people of a superior civilization.

The wagon where the drunk had been was still in its old position, half blocking the road, but not one person had troubled to move it out of the way, driving their own conveyances through the narrow space left at one side, which meant one-way traffic and a lot of cursing and probably a fight sooner or later, so I put my back into it and rocked the wagon out of the ruts and pushed it to the side of the roadway. I probably wouldn’t of been so public-spirited had I not known some qualms about swiping the owner’s clothes, for I never been a thief except when I had no other choice. I did this even though he wasn’t nowhere in sight.

But then I heard a groan and climbed up and looked into the wagon box, and there he was, in his long underwear (even filthier by day than in moonlight), squinting in the sun under a dirty hand raised as shade. I had left his boots alongside him after determining they wouldn’t fit me, and he grabbed them now and pulled them over his filthy socks. He licked his lips and rubbed the cactus patch of his beard. He hadn’t yet noticed having no outer clothing.

Then he discerned me and made a sickly grin. “I beg your pardon, sir,” says he. “I didn’t know it was your wagon. I wasn’t trying to steal it, I swear. If I pissed in it, I swear I will clean it up so you’ll never know. Same for puking or shitting, though if the last-named, it is likely it’s still in my pants.” Only now did he notice what he was wearing or rather what he was not, his grin turning more shamefaced, and he felt around under him, like his clothes might be bunched up there.

I didn’t feel right, but not so much as to return his shirt and pants, which obviously he didn’t recognize. “Tell you what I’m willing to do,” I says. “I’ll go back to your camp and bring you some articles of clothing.”

“I wouldn’t think of putting you out further,” says he, crawling to one side and throwing a long leg over. The trapdoor in his long Johns lacked a button or two and, flapping, afforded the sight of his hairy arse. He dropped to the roadway on hands and knees and stayed that way awhile, groaning and blaspheming. “God damn the people who can sell rotgut of that quality. I could never of gotten away with it when I was in the business myself.”

“Let me help you, partner,” I says. “You go over and sit on that stump, and I’ll go fetch some clothes if you’ll tell me where.”

He complained again about his entrails, and then he says, “Way it is, I don’t have no clothes but them I was wearing last time I looked but have mislaid since.” With difficulty he got to his feet by a process you might call climbing up himself.

As his face went past me I peered at him with new interest. His cheeks was smeared with dirt and his eyes was bloodshot. When he grinned all his front teeth was missing. I knew that nose and chin. “Your name wouldn’t be Bill Crabb, would it?”

Now you might think he’d be surprised, but instead he says with all the confidence in the world, “The very man. My reputation has preceded me. You have me at a disadvantage, sir. Are you an officer of the law?”

“I’m your brother Jack,” says I.

Without a change of expression, he leans over and vomits on the toes of his boots. He straightens up, wiping his lips on the sleeves of the long Johns. “You was saying?”

“I’m Jack. Your brother. Long-lost.”

It’s a real feat to acquire a haughty expression when you’re in his state, but I swear he did as much. “Hmm,” says he, squinting down that long nose he got from our Pa, whereas mine is snub like our Ma’s. “Anybody can claim anything.”

“Meaning it’s so great to be related to you somebody would lie about it?” I asks, which would of been insulting to anyone of respect, which could never be said of my brother Bill. “Last time I saw you was years ago down on the buffalo range, where you was selling whiskey dosed with rattlesnake heads. I believe it was a gent named Wyatt Earp saved your hide before the buffalo hunters could string you up.”

“What I recall about Earp was it was me who taught him to shoot a sixgun.” Bill had a real annoying chuckle, which started like a hacking cough and ended in a shrill
hee-haw.
“Shoulda seen him in them days, held a gun like a girl. Didn’t know where the trigger was. And he was yella to the core. Nothin’ I could do about that.”

“What I want to know is, do you recognize me at all?”

Bill stared awhile, twisting his lips. “I’ll say this, I can hardly swally, I’m so dry. My memory works better after a drink or three.” He purses his lips and looks real smug. “After five or six I’ll recall anything I’m told to.”

I was standing apart from him, on account of the stench, and luckily so when he had begun to puke. “I doubt anybody but me would claim kinship with you, Bill. There can’t be much profit in it.” I was sorry I said it as soon as it was out: why assert a connection with a man so you can insult him? But no matter what you said to Bill, he would use it for himself, without doing himself any real good. Funny how that works. Nobody thinks anything of you, so you tell them what they ought to think, and the result is they think even worse. I run into plenty more of that sort in life, but my brother was a notorious example.

Standing there now on the main street of Deadwood in his underwear, from which his behind was showing, he cocks his chin real superior like and says, “You might wanta get your dirty little paws on my claim. It happens to be the richest hereabout. If I wanted to work that hard, I could take out a bucket of dust every day, nuggets the size of peach stones.”

“Bill,” I says, “I’m dead broke and without prospects myself,” realizing however that a give-and-take with him would always be useless. “But we’re family, and I’ll give you a hand soon as I’m able, which better be soon, for I haven’t ate in a while. Now, where are you holing up?”

He takes me down an alleyway between the saloons and around back to where there’s a big overturned, rotting hogshead which he called home. There was some burlap sacks inside and a piece of originally red blanket, on top of which laid a yellow dog who bared his teeth at me until Bill told it I was O.K. The animal then come out and smelled my moccasins, no doubt picking up the scent of Indian dogs, for its tail went rigid for an instant, but finally it wagged its tail and went back into the barrel and laid down in the middle, so that when my brother crawled in he had to push it aside. But I guess its idea was to stay as close to him as possible. Dogs make good friends for the likes of Bill, for they don’t have a critical faculty and also like stuff that stinks.

“You just stay here awhile,” I says, stating the obvious, “and I’m going to see how the Crabbs can come up in the world,” stating what might seem laughable at that moment. Bill was somewhat older than me though, I figured, still under forty. I doubt he would ever recognize me as the little kid who went off with the Cheyenne, but when you’re in his condition what do you care who your well-wishers are? I had seen Bill a couple times in the years between, selling whiskey to the Indians who hung around some fort and then again in that incident involving Wyatt Earp some time after, but to be fair, he hadn’t never recognized me and I sure didn’t ask him to.

So leaving my brother where he was, sleeping with his dog—to tell you the truth, it looked real snug in there—I went out to the main street, wearing his clothes, still slightly damp from their overnight soaking. I felt more hopeful than I had in some time, being reunited with Bill, who in better circumstances I would no doubt have avoided any association with. But I decided now to straighten him out, make some money somehow, and acquire a place for us to live. Deadwood seemed as good as any, for it was all new, such as it was, where everybody was starting out more or less from the same level. What I had to do was figure out a profession for myself. Looking along that street, all that immediately come to mind was something connected with whiskey, gambling, and whores. There was plenty room for legitimate business establishments, but to set up a shop you had to be grubstaked to lay in your stock, and credit is mighty hard to come by in a gold-strike area. At the moment I didn’t look much better than Bill had when wearing the same clothing, too big on me besides, and I had not washed a lot on the route down here. I hadn’t shaved in ever so long, either, but the way my whiskers growed I still looked more dirty than bearded to the quick glance I give my visage now and again when kneeling to drink in a stream slow-moving enough to reflect an image.

I ain’t mentioned that as of midmorning the street was crowded with men and vehicles. I hadn’t paid much attention to them while attending to my brother, and if anybody was offended by or even noticed him dressed in his underwear with his arse showing, they didn’t indicate such. That kind of place is made up entirely of greedy people who can only see a dollar and for most of them even that is only a dream. Fact is, most people who run to gold strikes was losers.

Now, while I’m standing there on the board sidewalk in front of an establishment bearing a crude handpainted sign, “The Congress,” which was more likely to be another saloon rather than a legislative chamber, though glass windows was rare in Deadwood, so I couldn’t see inside, who should step out through the door but a frock-coated tall figure who was right familiar to me.

Under the broad-brimmed sombrero, he looked considerably older than when I had last seen him just the previous early spring in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory. His hair was still shoulder-length, but it had gone wispy at the ends, as was his drooping mustache, and his once clear gray-blue eyes was red-rimmed and kinda watery. His face was real pale. That long hooked nose of his had got pointier.

“Wild Bill Hickok,” I says. “So you got here too.” Now that I seen him, I recalled we had talked of prospecting for gold in Deadwood.

The keen nostrils at the end of that long nose was twitching, and he backs away. “Is that stink coming from you, hoss? Have you shat in your clothes?”

I was more than embarrassed. “I’m down on my luck, Bill,” I says, “wearing borrowed clothing and ain’t ate in some time. I don’t know if you heard yet, Custer and most of the Seventh was rubbed out by the hostiles up in Montana. I happened to be there but got away with my life due to a Cheyenne I knowed....”

Hickok had backed away a few more paces as I spoke. He was shaking his head, his long tresses brushing the shoulders of his swallowtail. “Hoss,” he says, breaking in, “I never shot anyone for telling tall stories of that nature, which I’ve done myself to greenhorns, but I’ve knocked him down. If a handout is what you need, then you oughta ask and not try to make a fool of me.” He sweeps away the coat with his left hand and plucks a silver dollar from the lower pocket in his fancy vest. Bill was famous for his sartorial tastes, as well as his personal cleanliness. “I will stake you to a bath, shave, and a trim.”

I didn’t persist with my story but right away says, “Thank you kindly. I wonder if you would mind if I get something to eat with some of the money?”

Wild Bill slowly blinks those sore-looking eyes and goes again into the vest pocket with two left fingers and finds me another dollar. This one felt funny, and I looked and saw it was knicked at one edge, but I guess it was still good, and I thanked him again.

“After a plate of bread and beans, you’ll have enough left to pick up a shirt and pants where they sell used clothes, down the street. Then burn what you’re wearing now.”

He turns and moves away, though not with the assured stride of old. Also he stayed on the walk, instead of the middle of the street, which he had once been famous for using so he could scan the area for possible bushwhackers and also keep a certain distance between him and them who might fire on him from ambush. But one thing I was sure about: namely, that when he played poker he still sat with his back to a wall.

I had no reason not to act on his suggestion, having some pride in my appearance when I could afford as much, and I returned to my brother’s barrel-home so clean-washed and -shaved I bet I’d have to identify myself to him all over again. I was wearing a pair of canvas pants in reasonably good condition and almost clean along with a flannel shirt that was wore through at the elbows but had no discernible odor. These with the other goods heaped in the tent of the old-clothes dealer had been sold by gold-rushers who had run out of funds, either because they never panned any dust or lost it all gambling. Imagine what the original owners had got for a pants and shirt that cost me seventy cents altogether. That dealer throwed in a beat-up old hat with so greasy a sweatband I tore it away.