Friends (33 page)

Clete just sat and looked at me and after awhile he shook his head and then rode on. I waited and after a minute I followed him. It had clouded up pretty solid by then and before long the rain started. Nothin' heavy, just a steady drizzle that drenched everthing. I stopped and searched for my slicker, but then I remembered it was still back in Two Scalp. So I just got wet. I kept waiting for Clete to drop back beside me again, to say that he seen what I said was so, that about lynching and murder, but he didn't do it.

When we come down out of that valley to where the road forked, it was starting to get dark.

Clete got out his map and studied it. "This way should take us to Hay Camp," he said, tilting his head to the right. "I see no sense going back to Deadwood. I can wire Bullock to tell him what happened when we get to Two Scalp. Should save us half a day going this way, maybe more."

"I'm not going back to Two Scalp," I told him. "So I guess this here is where we part company."

Clete sat his horse and looked at me real curious, smiling almost. "You mean that? You sure you want to split up now? That's what you want?"

"Yes it is. I ain't so hot on Deadwood, but I can think of nowheres else to go, and I ain't going back to Two Scalp with you,
that's
for sure."

Clete looked angry for a minute right after I said that, but then he drew a deep breath and let it out slow. "You're making a mistake, Willie. Chances are good I can find the $30,000 Wilson stole. We could have a nice spread down in Texas on that … two nice spreads … fifty-fifty. You better think on it."

He waited for me to say something, but I just shook my head no.

The rain commenced to drip off Clete's hat brim and it was getting colder by the minute. Night was coming on. "You're not so young anymore, Pardner. Before too long you'll be getting too old to just drift around like you've been doing."

"I know."

He pulled the collar of his slicker up and inspected the sky. "It's not that mixed-blood girl, is it? Mandy?"

"Oh, I hope to see her again, though she don't want me. I know that. No, that's no part of it, I don't guess."

"Well, that's smart of you, anyway. She's little better than a whore, you know. Jumped right in my bedroll with me the night after I caught up with you two. I didn't even ask her. In bed with you one night, me the next."

I couldn't see his face real good, dark as it was getting. I thought for a minute he might be lying to me, just to get me to go along. But after I thought on it a minute, remembering how she was with that Thebideaux fellow, I figgered he was probly telling the truth, much as it pained me to think so.

"Well, it's getting dark," Clete said. "No sense sitting here jawing all night. Sure you won't change your mind?"

"No, I'll be going my own way from here." I rode my horse up close and offered him my hand.

He took it and give a hard shake. "You're a strange one, Willie, and probably the best friend I ever had."

"Thank you kindly," I said. It was a dumb thing to say, I see now, but it just come out of my mouth.

Clete backed the gray up a few steps and started off. "If you change your mind, I'll be in Two Scalp for a month or so and then down along the Rio Grande. Hear that's some of the best cattle country there is."

"I'll remember if I do, though I don't think I will." I sat the bay and watched him walk his horse part way up a little hill on the trail. He stopped and turned back, just looking at me. I burned him into my memory right then, just like Mandy done with me a few days before, him sitting there on that big gray stallion and smiling at me in the rain.

"Goodbye, my friend," I called to him.

"Goodbye, you old fart," he yelled back. He nudged Whatever, topped the hill and was gone.

I sat there a minute getting rained on and trying to figure out what I was going to do. The only thing I could think of was to head on up the road towards Deadwood, like I told Clete I was going to. After awhile that's what I done. To tell it short, I rode all night in the rain, wetter'n a frog in a bog, sleeping and being awake and miserable by turns. Just as I was coming down the hill into Deadwood, the clouds to the east raised up some. The sun clumb over the ridge and lit the whole sky and the town up like a fairy-tale city, the buildings all orange and rosy, the windows in them glittery like flames. I almost didn't mind I was wet and cold seeing that sight.

But as pretty as it was, it was all kind of sour to me at the same time-like I was only about half there. I figured it was only on account of being tired as hell and up all night again and being whacked on the head so often of late.

After seeing to my horse I got a room at the Grand, that beefy-faced owner up and about his business already. He ask me if I wanted my old room back. After I remembered as how Banty'd been killed in it I told him no, to give me another. I just flopped down on the bed and slept in my damp clothes 'til past noon.

I woke up feeling lower than a skunk's belly, but hungry too, so I went back and had another steak at that place I had eat before. After that I looked for where the fellow knew all them Texas songs. Damned if I could remember which place it was, so I had to have a drink in a lot of different saloons before I found it, which I eventually did. Of course, by then I had a pretty good load on and things still didn't look no brighter than when I had woke up. I fooled with the idea of gathering up my things and heading over toward the Grand River country, but I couldn't work up the gumption for it.

I was sitting there minding my own business, trying to figure out what I was going to do with myself, just sipping a rye and listening to them Texas songs again, when who should tap me on the shoulder but Sheriff Seth Bullock.

"Didn't expect to see you again so soon, Willie," he said. "Where's Shannon."

"More than I can tell you," I told him. "Might be on his way back to Two Scalp if a bunch of Sioux ain't scalped him by now. Or maybe he's took off in the other direction, toward Texas or someplace else."

Bullock sat down and looked at me close. "You two give up on DuShane?"

"He'll
no," I said. "We're all through with that business. And Jezrael DuShane won't be coming back to Deadwood to stir things up no more, you can count on that."

"What happened?" Bullock wanted to know.

For a minute I thought of telling him the whole story, of how Clete had almost drowned DuShane-maybe would have if I hadn't of stopped him-of how Clete had finally hung him after pulling that dirty trick on me, making me think he was only trying to scare him. Before I even opened up my mouth to say it, I changed my mind. "DuShane got shot trying to get away from us," I said. I don't know why I said that, but that's what I told him. It wasn't a lie, exactly. DuShane
did
get shot running through that clearing.

Bullock tipped his hat up and looked kind of surprised. "He's dead then, DuShane?"

"Well, he damn well better be," I said. "I buried him yesterday-or was it the day before?"

He got a chuckle out of that, but then he cocked his head kind of odd at me. "What are you doing here, then?"

"Good a place as any to get a drink," I said, looking around at the room. "And the feller here knows even more Texas songs than I do."

"How come you're not with Shannon is what I meant," Bullock said.

I sat and chewed it over for a minute. I thought again of telling him the whole thing, only it just didn't set right. "Diff'rence of opinion, as the man says," I told him, but then didn't say no more.

"Difference of opinion," Bullock repeated after a while, nodding his head. The piano player started on "Texas Sunsets" again.

"Diff'rence of opinion," I said a second time, nodding right along with him, and then just let her go at that.

After a time Bullock stood up. "Well, I don't get it." He waited for me to talk, but I had nothing more to say. "If you want that deputy job I spoke of, stop around later. Just be sober when you do. I've got no jobs for drunks." The way he said it put me in mind of Clete.

"Thanks all the same," I told him. "But if I ain't deputying for Clete, then I don't suspect I'll be deputying for nobody–and what a man drinks is his own affair."

"Indeed it is, Goodwin. Indeed it is," he said, slapping me on the back. "But what a deputy of mine drinks is also my affair. You can understand that."

"Sure, I understand," I told him. I have to admit my mind was off someplace else-up along the Bad where Mandy and Clete and me had trailed DuShane, I think.

I don't know exactly when he left, but by the time I thought to turn around and look, Bullock was gone.

I gathered up my change, polished off the last few drops of my liquor, and turned my glass over. Going up the street to my hotel, even then I guess I knowed what I was going to do.

That red-faced man at the Grand was still behind the desk, and I told him I was leaving-which I did as soon as I collected the few things I had left in my room. I stopped in a grocery and bought a big hunk of bacon and some tinned goods they had there, including some peaches, though the price was high as hell. The man put everything in a feed sack for me. A bright yeller slicker in the window of a dry goods store caught my eye, and I went in and bought that, too. I decided I'd had enough of riding wet for a while. The boy at the livery got my horse pretty quick and I rode out of Deadwood at a walking trot.

Up and down through the gulches and gullies I went and come out onto the plain by the time it was starting to get dark. I rode all that night, I guess, passing through Hay Camp sometime early the next morning. Rode all the next day, too, and toward evening made a cold camp way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, going back just the way we had come, just like Clete's tracks showed me he was doing, too.

In a way, I couldn't believe I was trying to catch up to Clete. Several times the next few days I stopped my horse and just sat there, thinking I would go some other direction than back towards Two Scalp. Then I'd just keep going on like I was before.

I made good time, sleeping little and riding long. That bay was the finest animal I ever had, and I hated to trade him off to some drovers with fresh mounts, but I had to, for he was even more wore out than I was. Wasn't 'til about ten miles later it come to me I could have trailed the bay and made as good a time. I could have kicked myself for not thinking of it back there. Maybe my brain was tired too.

The new horse was strong, though, and I was putting the miles behind me again at a good clip.
What am I doing this for?
I kept asking myself.
Ain't I got no pride? Wasn't I right in the first place about splitting off from Clete over what he done, hanging DuShane like that and fooling me?
And even though I knowed I was right, that Clete
shouldn't
have done like that, it made no diff'rence. For he was my friend, you see, and even if he was wrong as hell and the devil lumped together, he was still my friend. I could no more say a permanent goodbye to him than I could sprout wings and fly up to heaven. Hell, maybe he even needed me, despite himself, just like he needed Mary to smooth him out in other ways.

Five or six days straight I rode hard, hard as I ever did in my life. Professor Marsh and his boys offered me supper at their camp in them miserable, cut-up Badlands and I didn't refuse. One of the young men had saw Clete earlier that day and though I felt like sleeping there after we ate, I pushed on.

Toward sundown I was up on that big ledge where Clete had camped that night, and then on up where I had slept in the mud. Even that looked good to me then. About dark I was sleeping in the saddle about as much as I was awake, but I kept going. Godamighty, I felt like climbing down and sleeping 'til I couldn't sleep no more. I kept going anyway.

I don't know how much farther it was, but coming awake once I thought I saw a fire up ahead. I looked again and then I was sure. Clete had a big fire built up for me, that's what it had to be. All those days on the trail and he was still building big fires at night for me to see, supposing I might be along. Why, that damned Clete! I snapped off three quick shots and he fired back almost right away. That horse sure didn't want to run, but after I give my whistle I hurried him along as fast as he would go.

There stood Clete in front of a bonfire big enough for the whole Sioux Nation to see, waving his hat slow back and forth over his head, as if I couldn't see him already easy as pie, outlined as he was against them flames. Of course, I couldn't see his face, but I knowed he would be wearing a smile as broad as Texas. I just knowedit.