Return of Little Big Man by Thomas Berger Read Free Book Online

me after all, I didn’t say anything more on the subject, but I did promise to show up that evening at the No. 10 Saloon and watch Wild Bill’s back, then walk him home and collect my dollar.
    I went back into town now and found my brother sleeping in his hogshead, tied up the way I left him, and that dog pranced out, expecting me now to bring him food on every visit. Seeing I didn’t have none for him, he goes back to curl up alongside Bill. I could have used a nap myself, having been up most of the night on my reconnoiter of Deadwood by moonlight and the trip to and from the hills, but I could not of stood the smell inside the barrel even if there would have been room for me, so I sat outside with my back against the staves, and napped off and on, but I was too spooked by my recent experiences to sleep soundly with my brother’s peace of mind.

2. Aces and Eights
    I GOT TO NO. 10 before Wild Bill showed up, but the poker game was already in progress. I explained to Harry the bartender I was working for Colorado Charley Utter, but he said I couldn’t sit there unless I was drinking, so I waited outside till Wild Bill showed up, which he did before long, looking none the worse for all the liquor he had drunk earlier.
    “Charley says you’re working for us now,” says he.
    “You know about that?”
    “I’m not too proud to have somebody watching my back. Way I’ve lasted up till now is not because I’m faster or shoot straighter than every one of them I’ve gone up against. It’s because I never lie to myself. I never lied much to others, but I would do so if my life depended on it, like everybody else. But not to myself.”
    “All I can do is holler,” I told him. “I ain’t got no gun.”
    “Just as well, hoss,” said Wild Bill. “You might shoot yourself in your manly parts.”
    This gibe irked me some, for it was him, back in Kansas City, who taught me to use a pistol well. “Your pal Harry Sam Young won’t let me hang around without spending money, and Charley won’t be paying me till later.”
    “I’ll speak to Harry,” Wild Bill said. “Now, about Charley, such money as he advances me for cards ain’t his own but from the funds of our partnership. I threw my savings into the pot, which he manages better than I ever could, but I’m not on his charity.”
    This information made me feel better about him. “I ain’t forgot I owe you two dollars, Bill.”
    “You’ll pay me when you can,” says he and saunters through the door into No. 10 looking more like the old Wild Bill than I seen him for a while. One of the fellows at the card table wanted to vacate his stool immediately though I don’t think the hand was finished, so influential a presence was Wild Bill Hickok, but the latter grandly waved him down and stepped over to the bar, where Harry had already poured him one.
    Wild Bill swallowed the whiskey, then throwed a thumb towards me and says, “This little fellow is working for me ’n’ Charley. Put him on my tab, but don’t serve him so much he can’t see.” He laughed at that statement.
    As it happened, all I swallowed that evening was some of the coffee which Harry, like all bartenders I ever met, drank instead of what he sold. Unfortunately they didn’t serve no food there, and I guess Harry had already ate his supper, so there wasn’t anything I could mooch. I just stayed there, watching Wild Bill’s back for hours while they played hand after hand, with the usual curses, grunts, and other such noises made by the participants that don’t mean nothing whatever to anyone not in the game.
    But what was special, I gathered, was that Wild Bill was winning for a change. After a while, one of the original players, being busted, had to drop out, and the same short fellow with the sandy mustache and slightly crossed eyes who had took Wild Bill’s place the day before come over from where he had been watching the game to claim the vacated stool, as he had taken Wild Bill’s