“You’ll move now or I’ll throw you in jail!”
“This town hasn’t got a jail. I’ve walked every inch of it and I know.”
“Maybe not, but it’s got an abandoned tunnel dug into the side of the hill behind George Farnum’s grocery store and don’t think I won’t throw you in it—woman or not. I’ve got a job to do, and I intend, by God, to do it.”
“Incarcerating me might prove to be an unpopular move on your part.” She glanced at the onlookers. “These men are anxious to see the first copy of their town paper come off the press.”
Campbell turned to the crowd. “You men, move on! You’re holding up traffic here. Go on now, git!”
A miner with a gold pan and wheelbarrow raised his voice. “You really gonna throw her in jail, Noah?”
“Absolutely, if she doesn’t obey the laws.”
“But, hell, she’s a woman.”
“We made the laws for women as well as for men. Now move on so True can lead his train on through!”
He turned back to Sarah, standing with both hands akimbo, his big black Stetson worn level with the earth. “Miss Merritt, I’ll give you one hour to get this paraphernalia packed up and moved off the street.”
“I’m not in the street.” She finally stopped setting type and swung to face him. “I’m beside it on public land.”
“If you’re not gone in one hour, I’ll come back and see to your removal myself. And the next time I see you set up for business...” He pointed a finger at the bridge of her nose. “You’d better have a city license hanging on your wall.”
He pivoted on the ball of one foot and stalked off with his cowboy boots rearranging the mud on the street. Glaring at his back, with her lips curled tight, Sarah gave one frustrated kick that fanned her skirts. Before the brown muslin had settled into place, she was back at her typesetting.
“Show’s over, folks,” Campbell cried to the malingerers. “Go on back to work.” Waiting for the crowd to disperse, he drew a dollar-sized stem-winder from his vest pocket and checked the time: 11:04. He’d be back under that pine tree at four minutes after twelve, and that tall, bullheaded pain in the ass had better have pulled up stakes or there’d be hell to pay. She’d end up in a hole behind Farnum’s grocery and he’d have every woman-starved male in the gulch harassing him for arresting her. But what choice did he have? He couldn’t have her setting up her business anyplace she damn well pleased, stopping traffic, clogging up the street, thumbing her nose at their ordinances. Let her get by with that and the next thing he knew there’d be fistfights breaking out and men shot, In a town that lacked women the way this one did, it was bound to happen sooner or later. It might anyway, even after she moved her rig. Any way he cut it, Campbell realized he stood to look like a heel for stopping Sarah Merritt from printing the town’s first newspaper. Sonofabitch, this was going to get sticky.
The crowd began breaking up.
Stalking toward the lead oxcart, Noah faced his next unpleasant task. “True!” he bellowed, reaching the bullwhacker, “True, I’ve got to hold you up a minute.”
True stopped his freight wagon and spit a stream of tobacco juice into the mud, then swiped his stained mustache with the edge of one cracked hand. He had skin like venison jerky and only one eyebrow. He’d lost the other one in a close call with a bullet some years before.
“Noah, how’re you doing, boy? How’s your ma and pa?”
“Last time I saw them they were fine, but the Indians still raise occasional hell out there in the Spearfish, and to make matters worse, the farmers out there have to go out of the stockade to harvest. I worry about them some.”
“Yuh.” True adjusted his sweat-stained hat. “Bet you do. Well, you tell ‘em hey from old True.”
Noah nodded, rested a hand on the cart and squinted up at True. “Listen, True... the town set up some ordinances since you were here last, and I’ve been appointed the marshal.”
“The marshal!” True raised his face and bellowed with laughter.
“What’s so funny about that?”
“Why, hell, you ain’t mean enough nor ugly enough to be no marshal. Well, on second thought, you just might be ugly enough.”
“At least I got two eyebrows.”
“You better watch what you say or you won’t for long.” True took aim at Noah’s brow with a forefinger.
Noah laughed, then got serious. “Listen, True, I’ve got to charge you three dollars a wagon to let you unload your freight.”
“Three dollars a wagon!”
“That’s right.”
“But we been hauling freight in here since spring. Hell, if it wasn’t for us skinners this town wouldn’t have windows or stoves or beans to boil! For that matter, if it wasn’t for us, who would you and your ma and pa have rode up here with last spring when the damned Indians were trying to keep everybody out?”
“I know, I know. But I didn’t make the ordinances, I just enforce them. Three dollars per wagon, True, from every one of you, and I’ve got to collect it.”
True spit. Wiped his lip. Scowled at the ox yoke. “Well, shit and dance around it,” he mumbled. He picked up his ox whip, made it whistle and smack, and bawled, “Git goin’, you lazy no-good hunk of guts!” As the train began to move, he said without glancing at Noah, “We’ll pay up at the freight house.”
It took Noah the better part of an hour to collect the license fees from the entire ox train. The drivers had to be contacted and their gold weighed out, their names taken down and recorded for the city clerk and treasurer.
It was one minute after twelve when he left the gold at the city treasurer’s and headed down the street toward the pine tree, where a crowd was again gathered watching Sarah Mer-ritt defy his orders. He shouldered his way through the throng, tall enough to see above the surrounding heads that she was rolling ink, loading the press and cranking it by hand. When the process was finished she lifted a printed sheet. A roar of applause rose: shouting and handclapping and hooraying enough to be heard on the other side of the mountain.
“Gentlemen! The first copy of the Deadwood Chronicle!” Sarah shouted. “It’s only a single page but the next issue will be bigger!” The cheers doubled as the sheet, with its ink still Wet, was passed from hand to hand. Those who couldn’t read asked those who could what it said. The men whose names were mentioned for helping Sarah on her first night in town became fleeting celebrities, patted on the back by their fellow townsmen. The editorial about the brothels was eclipsed by the feeling that each man there had taken a personal part in bringing the press to Deadwood.
Sarah Merritt had produced a second copy and was rolling ink for the third by the time Noah reached her.
“Miss Merritt,” he shouted above the din, “I’m afraid I’ll have to put an end to this.”
She set down her brayer, closed the frisket, cranked it into place and lowered the platen with a lunge of one hip. “Tell them!” she challenged. She opened the press, plucked another printed sheet from it, the ink still gleaming, and handed it to him. “Tell them why you want to shut me down, Marshal Campbell! Tell them where I saw you the first time, and what you were there for, and why you want to restrict my freedom of speech!”
He glanced at her headlines. One jumped out at him. CLOSE THE HEATHEN BROTHELS OF THE WEST.
Before the blood hit the crown of his head she was appealing to the crowd. “Gentlemen! Marshal Campbell is here to arrest me because he claims I’m on public land. But ask him what his real reason is! Ask him! I’m not the first newspaper publisher to be silenced because I speak the truth, and I won’t be the last.”
“What does she mean, Noah?”
“Let her be, Noah—”
“Town needs a paper, Noah—”
Noah knew the signs. Covertly he reached down and un-snapped his holster strap while shouting to them, “I warned her an hour ago she couldn’t set up this press in the middle of the street. We’ve got new laws and I’ve been hired to see that they’re obeyed.”
“But you can’t arrest no woman!”
“I don’t like it any more than you do, Henry, but I took an oath to faithfully and impartially perform my duties, and she broke two ordinances that I can see. Ordinance number one, section two, regarding licenses, and Ordinance number three, section one, on nuisances and junk in the streets and alleys, to say nothing of disturbing the peace and obstructing traffic—which she and every one of you are doing when you refuse to break up this gathering.”
“All we come to do was see the first copy getting made!”
“All right, you’ve seen it, now move along!”
“What’s she talking about, Noah? You got other reasons to shut her down?”
“I’m not shutting her down, only forcing her to move!” Turning to Sarah, he ordered tightly, “Get your jacket and come with me.”
“No, sir, I will not.”
“All right, have it your way.” He grabbed her by the back of the neck as if to shepherd her away.
“Get your hands off me!” She struggled.
“Get those feet moving, Miss Merritt!” He pushed.
“But my ink! My press!”
“Throw the canvas over it if you want to, but that’s it. I gave you an hour to move it and you chose not to. Now get going!”
He pushed her.
A hunk of horse dung hit him on the shoulder.
“Let her be, we said!”
“Yeah, let her alone! She ain’t hurting nothing!”
Another chunk of dung knocked Noah’s hat off. He released Sarah and spun to face the crowd. They were surging forward, expressions black, fists clenched.
“You men, get back! She can run her press. She just can’t run it here!”
“Get him, boys! He can’t manhandle no woman like that!”
Everything happened at once. The sky began raining horse dung. The militants shoved forward. Noah drew his gun. Someone’s fist struck him on the jaw. Sarah screamed and Noah stumbled back. His pistol fired and a half a block away True Blevins slumped over and fell across the freight he’d been unloading. Noah went down on his back, crushing his hat. Like a disturbed anthill, the men swarmed, fists first.
Sarah screamed, “Stop this! Stop!” and fell into the fray, grabbing an arm, hauling back on it. She caught glimpses of fists smashing into Campbell’s face and screamed again, trying to protect the downed man. “Stop it! Oh please, no... Listen to me!” She screamed till her veins bulged.
“Listen to me!”
Her screaming finally registered, and the inner circle of attackers heeded. Their shouts stilled. They looked about for her. She knelt among them with her face ferocious, her hair awry.
“Look what you’re doing!” she screamed raspily. “He’s your friend, your marshal, and he was only doing his job! This is my fault!” She pressed her open hands to her chest. “Mine! Please, let him up.”
Several men still crouched above Noah, their fists poised. They glanced from Sarah to the lawman. Realization filtered through them. Their hands relaxed. Murmurs began. “Let him up... yeah, let him up...” Sheepishly they shuffled to their feet. “You all right, Noah?” One of them offered Noah a hand. He knocked it aside and struggled to his feet, bleeding from one ear and his nose and mouth, cradling his ribs with his left arm. Already his face was beginning to swell.
In the stillness a voice called from down the street. “True Blevins has been shot!”
“Oh Jesus,” Noah whispered and began shoving his way through the crowd, which parted as he came. Before he reached True, he was running. He vaulted onto the oxcart and took True’s shoulders, turned him over gently on the sacks of cornmeal he’d been unloading.
True’s eyes were bleary, but he gave a murky grin.
“Y’ got me, boy,” he croaked.
“Where?”
“Feels like everywhere.” True’s weak voice ended in a cough, followed by a groan as his eyelids closed.
“Get a doctor!” Noah hollered, and saw the blood on True’s dirty leather vest. Softly he said, “True, I’m sorry. Hang on now, buddy. Don’t you go die on me.” Frantically, Noah stood and shouted, “I said get a doctor, goddammit!”
“He’s coming now, Noah,” someone beside the oxcart said in a hushed voice. “Here, you want to use this?” A handkerchief was handed toward Noah.
“No! Nobody touches him with anything dirty!” Dan Turley approached at a run, carrying his black bag. “Hurry, Doc!” Noah cried. “Help him up!”
A tall, gaunt man in shirtsleeves clambered aboard the oxcart and bent over True. “Get this cart rolling,” Turley ordered as he turned back True’s vest and unbuttoned his shirt. “Take us to my place. Noah, how about you? You need attention, too?”
“No, I’m all right, Doc.” An ox whip cracked. The cart lurched and began rolling.
“Then I believe you’ve got business to attend to. You won’t be any help hovering over me, so go keep yourself busy. I’ll send word to you as soon as I know anything.”
“But Doc, I’m the one who shot him!”
“He’s in good hands, Noah.” Doc took a moment to raise a no-nonsense gaze to Noah. “Go!”
Noah took one last look at True, touched the skinner’s hard hand, and said, “True, you hang on, hear?”
Noah jumped off the oxcart and watched it roll up the street. His Adam’s apple bobbed twice and his chest felt like drying rawhide. Don’t you go and do anything foolish, True.
In time he sniffed, rubbed the back of one hand beneath his nose, and felt his concern for True give way to furor. He turned toward the great ponderosa pine where the crowd waited, becalmed by tragedy. As he strode toward them, their eyes dropped guiltily. They shuffled in place and joined their hands like mourners around a grave. A path cleared as he hit straight for Sarah Merritt, feeling rage building with each footstep. In his entire life he’d never felt the urge to strike a woman, but he felt it now, the unholy lust to drive a fist into that long, skinny face in retaliation for True. To see her crumple and whimper and be laid low just as True had been. What a stupid, senseless loss, if True died, all because of this self-righteous do-gooder who refused to obey a simple city ordinance.
She waited, stilled like the others, standing straight as the liberty pole behind her, holding Noah’s Colt .45 Peacemaker on the flat of her hands as he approached.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, solemnly handing him the gun. His left eye was swollen shut and rivulets of blood had painted rusty tracks down his chin.
“Shut up!” he barked, grabbing the Colt, suppressing the urge to crack it across her cheek. “I’m not interested in your pitiful condolences.”
“Is he dead?”
“Not quite.” He rammed the gun into his holster and bent over to sweep up his flattened hat. “But you’ll have some answering to do if he gets that way. You men!” he roared, whirling on them, fanning at them with the hat. “I’m telling you for the last time—clear out of this street!” Like disturbed roaches, they scuttled off. Campbell punched a fist into the crown of his Stetson and it popped out, a mangled mess. “Sonofabitch,” he mumbled, disgusted. When he spoke, the skin around his lips quivered and he rested his eyes anywhere but on the woman. “Sarah Merritt,” he pronounced, glaring at the liberty pole in the distance, concentrating on what it symbolized in an effort to control his urge to drop her where she stood, “you’re under arrest for disturbing the peace, operating a business without a license, and inciting a riot, and I hope to hell you put up another fight, because nothing would please me more than to tie and gag you and drag you through the streets by your hair!”
“You won’t have to do that, Mr. Campbell,” she returned meekly, picking up her notebook, jacket and organdy pouch. “I’ll come with you.”
His cork finally blew. “Now you’ll come with me!” he shouted, glaring at her, pointing to where the oxcart had stood several minutes earlier. “Now that my friend’s been shot, you’ll come with me! God damn it!” He threw down his hat. “What ever happened to pub
lic whippings!”
She stood before him chastised, her mouth drawn, waiting. Beside her, her printing press was already covered by canvas.
“I can only repeat, I’m sorry, Mr. Campbell.”
He studied her for several beats of silence and she thought she had never seen hatred more clearly illustrated than by his grim expression.
“If I have my way, you’ll be a lot sorrier before this is over. Get moving,” he said coldly.
She did as ordered, allowing herself to be ignominiously herded down the length of Main Street while the townspeople stared and whispered in her wake. He took her to a wooden frame building fronted by a set of steps and a covered boardwalk.
“Inside,” he ordered, nudging her between the shoulder blades. They entered a store where customers stood as motionless as the cracker barrels around them, only their heads turning to follow Sarah’s passage. A sleeping dog rose from behind a potbellied stove and nosed their heels desultorily as Sarah advanced through the premises with Marshal Campbell one step behind. They passed fresh apples and eggs, tinned goods and sacks of dried beans. And farther along, a vinegar barrel with a wooden spigot giving off the acrid smell Sarah so disliked. At the rear of the store a long counter faced the front and behind it stood a bearded man wearing a white apron, suspenders, sleeve garters and a dapper black derby hat.
“Noah,” he greeted gravely.
“George,” the marshal returned, “I need to use your tunnel for a while.”
“Of course.” There was no question: everyone in the place knew what had happened on the street and that the downed man was a friend of the marshal’s.
“Is the lantern still back there?”
“Hanging on the hook in the passageway.”
Campbell gave Sarah another nudge and followed her around the counter, through a back door into a short window-less walkway that smelled like a potato bin. When the door closed behind them, absolute blackness descended. Sarah felt a shiver of fear and balked. Campbell poked her again, propelling her forward three halting steps.
“Wait there.”
She heard the clink of a lantern handle, then a match whisked and flared, illuminating his face as he plucked the lantern from the nail and lit the wick.