Return of Little Big Man Read Online Free PDF

didn’t have no windows usually, so was lighted by oil lamps at high noon in blazing sunshine outdoors. The bartender might not have a towel or apron—fact is, he was often dressed like his customers, even to the hat—but he was never without a prominent shotgun, leaning close to hand. This was used mostly as a pointer to indicate the door when the level of bad feeling amongst the drunks sounded like it would take another form than mere verbal abuse. But since only two or three people per week was shot to death in Deadwood at this time, it was not considered necessary yet to hire an officer of the law.
    I didn’t have no more money and therefore could not afford a drink, which in some of these places was as much as a dollar per shot, being at that price presumably something on the order of real whiskey, whereas the cut-rate joints, at fifty cents per, no doubt served up the kind of concoction of tobacco juice, gunpowder, pepper, and snake venom which my brother Bill had sold as liquor in his heyday.
    I hadn’t looked in more than three or four places when through the open door of the next one in line come the hurtling figure of somebody wearing only a suit of filthy underwear, followed by the sole of a big boot. My brother had enough momentum to take him on across the walk and down the couple feet to the dust of the street, which in that spot was actually a mess of mud, probably because a horse had staled there.
    Now I tell you Bill was the sort of person who if you owned a place of business you wouldn’t want as a customer, for stench and appearance aside, he likely wouldn’t have no money and would be there only to beg, borrow, or steal. But he was my brother, and that you can’t let your kin be treated badly by others is a self-evident truth. So after I had pulled Bill out of the muck, propped him up against the wheel of a parked wagon, and put his clothes in his lap, I told him for godsakes stay put for a spell, and I went into that saloon to deal with the son of a bitch who had, if for understandable reasons, insulted my family.
    But this was the darkest place I had been yet, and for a while I couldn’t make out anybody but a table full of poker players back a ways, under the light of a hanging lamp, and one of them was Wild Bill Hickok.
    For a number of reasons I did not want to disturb Wild Bill, who took his poker real serious, so I postponed dealing with the matter of honor and returned outside, where I expected I would not find my brother, but in fact Bill was still slumped where I left him. I got him to his feet and into the shirt and pants, and maintaining as little physical contact with him as I could, steered him back home through the wheeled and pedestrian traffic, and more than once he lurched towards oncoming wagons but was snatched back at the last minute and was kicked once by a horse and again by a cursing man who however was belted with both a pistol and an unscabbarded butcher knife, so my protests would of been foolish.
    I got Bill back to his barrel and tried to feed him the bean sandwich, but he got stubborn like a drunk will and clamped his jaws together so tight I would have needed a crowbar to pry them open. I ended up giving half the sandwich to the yellow dog and ate the rest myself. With the Indian knife I sliced some extra material from the tails of my too-long shirt and trouser bottoms, and used it for bonds to fasten Bill’s ankles together and also his wrists, so he couldn’t untie the former, and telling him to sleep it off went back to the saloon known as the No. 10, which before long was the most famous in Deadwood.
    Wild Bill was just leaving the poker game as I arrived, and was asking them standing at the bar if anyone wanted to take his seat, and one fellow went over and pulled the stool up to the table. He had a sandy mustache and there was something wrong with his eyes too, which in his case was slightly crossed.
    “You’re greatly improved, hoss,” Wild Bill says to me,