(1986) Deadwood by Pete Dexter Page A

was about Captain Jack that Bill tolerated so long, but he wasn't giving off any signs to be left alone. Bill's parents had been shunned in Troy Grove, Illinois, before the war for keeping a station that smuggled runaway slaves to the North, and he wasn't normally receptive to the reasons that people decided they fought for after the war was over.
    They went from the Green Front back to the Gem, and then to the Senate, then to half a dozen places that didn't have names, at least not on signs in front. They went to Shingle's Number 3, then to Nuttall and Mann's Number 10, where Bill met Pink Buford and his famous bulldog, Apocalypse. Bill and the dog were love at first sight. The dog sat at Bill's feet, licking himself, and followed him every time he went outside to relieve himself.
    Pink Buford made a place for Bill and Captain Jack at the card table, and they played draw poker and drank gin and bitters until Bill had lost thirty dollars. Charley could see Pink Buford was as drunk as Bill—you would have thought drunker because Bill never lost his deportment—but Bill wasn't in a class with him at cards.
    Bill miscalculated himself at the card table, but it was harmless. He didn't have any money to speak of—mostly it was just what Charley gave him—and he would put the game behind him as soon as he quit for the night. There wasn't anybody Charley knew who didn't miscalculate himself one way or another—the main categories were guns or understanding women—and cards was a better blind side than most.
    Charley wondered sometimes where his own blind side was. It wasn't the kind of thing you came out and asked your partner, though, not if you respected keeping a distance.
    Bill was still at the card table when Boone May came in the door. Charley was looking in that direction at the time, supporting his weight against the bar with his back and elbows, and he took one glance and thought of the way the Hills had looked to him on the day the boy had shot Bill's horse. Something out of the Devil's dreams.
    "Oh, shit," the bartender said. "It's Boone and that damn head."
    He came in carrying a bag by its drawstrings, half a foot taller than anybody else in the room. He was bug-eyed, and his head was a size to be noticeable even if it wasn't up there above anybody else's. As he walked past the card table, his look stopped on Bill, but only for a moment. Charley had never seen a human being with eyes like that who wasn't in the throes of strangulation.
    Boone May moved through the crowd to a place next to Charley at the bar. He didn't push anybody out of the way to get there, he just took over the air they were using, and they moved to establish breathing room somewhere else. He put his hat and the bag on the bar in front of him and ordered a gin and bitters. The bartender, Harry Sam Young, did not know where to put the glass when he came back with it and was reluctant to touch the hat or the bag. And so he stood there until Boone slid them apart and made room.
    Charley smiled at the sight of a monster drinking pink-colored concoctions. Then the man was looking at him, eyes like a scared horse, like there was too much juice in there for even a head that size to hold it. Charley kept his smile where it was.
    Boone May studied him with one of his eyes. "Little fancy," he said, "you got a hundret and seventy dollars in gold?" Charley squared himself and set his jaw.
    "A dandy with pearl-handled guns, he must got a hundret and seventy dollars." Charley's guns were .36 caliber Colt Navy revolvers, designed in 1851, and modified in Chicago to take modern cartridges. He cleaned them after every use, and made no apologies for how they looked. Them or himself. Charley gave people their distance, and did not give up his own to strangers. ". . . And fine linen," Boone May said. He reached for Charley's shirt, and Charley dropped his left hand to his side. There was a boning knife in back of the gun there, pearl-handled and sharp. If it