New in Town, Part 13
Originally posted by fragrantwoods at New in Town, Part 13
Title: New In Town, Part 12 (AU)
Author: fragrantwoods
Rating: R for language, adult situations, references to violence, death
Word Count: 2900
Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Disclaimer: Don't own anything, not making anything
WIP Crossover: Deadwood/Battlestar Galactica
Spoilers for Deadwood S3
Setting: A/U that includes the American Old West (specifically, Deadwood): The Gem Saloon
Timeline: Post-Hearst, pre-fire, not congruent with the events of comm Deadwood S_4
Summary: Bill and Laura find themselves on Earth in 1879 in a Raptor jump gone wrong. Late night at the Gem, Bill is in Al's office as Al sheds some light (at least from his point of view) on the tragic events of the past year, stirring up memories Bill would rather forget.
Previous Chapter New In Town Chapter 12
Bill leaned forward in his chair, stretching the muscles of his lower back and wishing he had left with Laura. Her heels had rung hard against the stairs after Al had called for more whiskey. He’d thought about going after her, telling her he’d keep the liquor under control…but the thought of either him or Laura looking vulnerable here still chilled his blood.
Al poured coffee for them both, tipping the whiskey bottle over his own cup. He rubbed his eyes and started going over what Bill had told him.
“So, you’re sayin’ that were I to follow my instincts and cut the degenerate Hawkeye’s throat, I remove one problem and gain problems innumerable in driving his friend, Adams, away.”
That’s how I see it,” Bill had said with a nod. “When you have a weak link and removing it would do more damage, you reinforce it, shift some load off of it. Find something he can do…or figure out if getting rid of the weak link is worth losing a good man in the bargain.” He’d seen Silas Adams as an intelligent man with good instincts when he met him, and Laura’s description after Adams had escorted her to the schoolhouse and back had reinforced his impression. The man’s loyalty to his disreputable friend, Hawkeye in the face of Al’s wrath spoke volumes about Adams’s character.
Bill’s eyes had moved away from Al then, as he saw a dingy apartment in his mind’s eye and wondered if he would have made it through the Fleet knowing he’d abandoned Saul to his demons. He knew one thing for certain…he would’ve lost the Bill Adama he was today. His lips twisted in a cynical smirk as he realized the Fleet had bought his own soul when they gave Saul another chance, and Bill had been more than willing to make that deal. Finding a way to repurpose Hawkeye would gain Adams’s gratitude, tie him to Swearengen for the long haul. He hoped Adams could live with the choices being made tonight.
“I’d sooner hire on Hawkeye to shoo flies off whores than see Adams go elsewhere. Dan’s my best man with a knife-though Adams is no slouch in that department-but Adams has the better head for strategy.” Al’s coffee cooled in his cup as he spoke.
The hostility that had smoldered around Al before Laura left had ebbed, leaving an aging, weary man who seemed tired of bloodshed, quietly relieved that Bill had found him less deadly options. He’d focused on the dregs of his coffee as Bill had gone to the windows, watchful.
Bill had tensed when Dan and Laura disappeared into the darkened entrance of the Grand Central Hotel. He hadn’t relaxed until he saw the lamp being lit in front of their window, casting Laura’s shadow into relief. He thought he saw the curtains move, and smiled at the thought of her looking back towards him. He had turned and taken his seat again, pouring a cup of coffee for himself, holding his hand over his cup at Al’s offer of the bottle. The saloon-keeper had shrugged and kept up his rhetoric, looking past Bill to empty spaces in the room. His eyes flicked over the faded wood where a bloodstain had been. He could spare a little more time, Bill thought. The dark corners seemed to grow as he envisioned Picon priests hearing confessions.
Al sniffed hard, faint sneer on his face. “Anniversaries bring up memories probably better left alone, but it seems to be the way we’re made…maybe Mother Nature’s way of knocking us with a two-by-four once in a while so we don’t forget our mistakes.
“Generally, I don’t look back…I see what I have to do, do it, and go on. Worrying over decisions made and carried out…other men doing that has made me the success that I am, as they try to drown out their worryin’ with whores, whiskey and cards.
“But the events of last year…I’ll confess to lookin’ back on those in order to plan for the future. Now, I’m guessing as a man of the Navy or whatever the fuck you really are, you’ve braced yourself to be hit by superior forces at some point…and ain’t that a peculiar feelin’? Can’t lie down and quit, but knowin’ that those determined to grind you under their heel can just keep their forces comin’ at you…you kill a few, a few plus more get hired the next day. Fuckin’ hopeless feeling, that is.”
Al grabbed a toothpick off his desk and chewed viciously for a minute. “Times I wanted to burn the whole fucking place down myself, just to keep Hearst from doin’ it. Trouble is, we’d gone from a mining camp to a legitimate fuckin’ town by then, women and children and elections and every other damn thing that comes with bein’ civilized. That’s a hard thing, thinkin’ on seeing that put to the torch.”
Bill folded his hands over his stomach, picturing the streets crowded with armed men that kept coming, firing into crowds of civilians, buildings starting to burn. In his imagination, the men on horseback were expressionless, with a metallic sheen.
“Did Hearst show how much of a threat he was when he first came to town?”
Al snorted. “Didn’t have to. By the time he got here, he’d mined silver and gold by the ton between here and Utah, Nevada…I know you’ve heard of the dozens of dead men he left in collapsed mines in the Comstock Lode, buyin’ or bullyin’ his way out of the inquiries, changing politicians to suit him like pieces on a chess board. Made for excitin’ reading, what one powerful man can get away with”- his voice lowered-“until he shows up on your own doorstep.
“Oh, he started subtle enough, I suppose. Started fear-mongering and intimidation to take that which was held by the weak of spirit. An effective tactic, one that I myself have employed more than once in my career. Mimicked some of my own behaviors, friendly-like, tryin’ to get close. When that was met with limited success, things went to a higher level. Had men murdered in my own joint and in the streets, just to send the message that he could.” His heavy black brows drew together.
“His eye was on the biggest gold strike in the Hills, owned by one Mrs. Alma Ellsworth, supervised by her watchdog of a husband.”
He was quiet for a minute, glancing once at the iron bed half-hidden behind louvered doors. Bill waited, caught up in the story.
Rising from the desk and pacing now, Al unwrapped the dingy cloth around the stump of his middle finger. Bill was expecting a bloody wound, or infection-streaked flesh, but the stump had healed as well as other, similar injuries he’d seen. He wondered at the need to keep it covered, if it might be a type of penance.
“See, when Hearst couldn’t get his hands on her gold mine by lesser means, he ratcheted things up. Yeah, this…I got this for not agreeing to help him gull Mrs. Ellsworth on his behalf. Any machinations of that nature, I do for my own benefit…” He wrapped the cloth back as he continued, looking once more like a man recently wounded.
Does he even see it’s healed? Bill wondered.
“When that didn’t work, Hearst started having his hirelings fire over our bow in various ways, threatening those long known to me to make his point. His men, that would put the town to gun and flame, they kept comin’, riding into town night after night, like he had some fuckin’ factory turnin’ out Pinkertons by the dozen. The day came when he went to the level I figured he would…murdered a man considered good and honorable by man, woman and child-a rare breed in Deadwood. Struck at the heart of the camp, I can tell you that.” Al’s eyes glittered in the lamplight, mouth drawn. Sweat had loosened the pomade in his hair and a thick black lock fell over his forehead. He raked it back absently.
“So one who counted him as a friend shoots the cocksucker Hearst in his hotel room. Of course, she just wounds him...which brings us to Jen.” He shoved the empty coffee cup to one side, grabbed the bottle and took a deep swallow before setting it down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Didn’t you say that Jen didn’t shoot him?”
“Fuck, no, she didn’t shoot him!” He took another long swallow. “One thing I try to beat into my whores is to eschew violence when aggrieved, that being what me and my boys are for. Only had one who never learned that lesson…and I was as glad to see her leave my employ as was her new paramour. That day though…I confess to thinkin’ we should’ve had her work on her aim instead of tryin’ to keep her unarmed.” A half-smile flickered across his face before disappearing into the darkness, leaving his face stone-cold again.
“Anyways…his murderous tactics worked. The mine’s owner agreed to sell out, doing her part to stop the killing. But Hearst hadn’t had the bullet removed from his shoulder yet before he started issuing new edicts. Even with the deed practically in his pocket, he demanded the bawd who shot him to be killed and laid out to be seen by his own eyes, or he’d loose his paid army to destroy the town. Of course, he assumed the shooter was one of mine, so his demand landed on my desk…actions of others done without my knowledge, and I’m the one stuck with making the hard choices.” Al grew quiet.
Bill began to get a sense of the position Swearengen had been in, outnumbered, out-armed…his chest grew tight as old feelings came flashing back. The scrape of the bottle’s bottom against the wood turned into the faint static of an open comm line, waiting on his orders to shoot down a good man to avoid a war. There had been dark nightmares after, that the pilot had been Lee, or Kara, the comm handset waiting in Bill’s fist, hungry for his order.
He looked towards the window, grounding himself in the present with the soft square glow across the street illuminating Laura’s shadow. “It almost sounds like you might’ve loved the shooter once.” The sharp snort startled him and he turned back to Al’s harsh laugh.
“Fuck no, I didn’t love her. I don’t believe in that shit-learned that at my mother’s knee, which she spent most of her time on, cocksucking whore that she was. But I had my reasons for not takin’ the more straightforward way out.”
Bill raised an eyebrow at this. Hard to picture this man swerving from the most efficient way to resolve a dilemma.
Al finally put the bottle down, gaze lowered to his hands. “It galled me to give anything to that cocksucker, but had I refused and told him to go fuck himself, with our pitiful numbers and his never-ending army of hired guns, we’d likely all been dead by morning anyway. Sacrificing one to save others…I imagine maybe you’ve been there a time or two, am I right?”
Bill stood and walked towards the window, staring again at Laura’s outline beyond the glass. Al’s story was dredging up too many echoes from the past. He was sick of thinking about blood sacrifices. He didn’t turn as he heard Al walk up behind him, didn’t want to see if there was sympathy in the man’s eyes. This was Al’s confessional, not his.
He finally turned to see Al standing at the patch of over-scrubbed floorboards. His words seemed directed to whatever ghost stretched out before him.
“It was Jen’s bad luck to have an appearance near enough to the shooter’s to be passed off as her. Johnny wanted to be the one to do it…found it harder than he thought, though, killin’ someone he cared about. I never liked it myself, when it came to killin’ someone you’d rather not, but have to. Probably best for the human race that killin’ the relatively innocent don’t come easy.
“He couldn’t do it at the end…so I took care of Jen for him. Told him I was as gentle as I was able.”
He looked back at Bill, face finally composed. “I’m guessin’, though, that you know as well as I do that killing is seldom a gentle affair.”
“No. But it’s a pretty good lie, if you can pull it off.” And if you can live with what you’ve done.
Al sighed as he sat again. “Go to your wife, Adama, and apologize on my behalf for keeping you to this late hour. Share of this what you think best, but with her only, as I’d not have it bandied about that Al Swearengen holds any fuckin’ hint of remorse for anything I’ve done.” He looked at the brass clock on the bookcase. The hands were a fraction past twelve.
“If you happen to see Dan on your way out, would you be good enough to tell him to send Dolly up? Looks like it’s finally a new fuckin’ day.”
Bill nodded as he left the shadowy office and into the bright lights of the saloon. The raucous laughter seemed less forced now, as the clock over the bar ticked forward, proof that time had passed.
**************************
Leaving Swearengen’s office, Bill was almost to the stairs when he noticed a flicker of movement at the end of the shadowy hall, near the door that led to the seldom-used back way. A woman stood there, waiting, hands folded at her waist, features obscured by the black half-veil on her feathered hat. He gave her a long look, wondering if she was a threat to him or the man inside the office. Didn’t look like one of the whores; didn’t have the demeanor of an angry wife…the rich burgundy dress falling in drapes and folds looked familiar. Another look, after his eyes adjusted to the light, and he recognized the dark hair, the slightly jutted chin, the brown eyes looking back at him through wide-paned netting.
Bill had seen her a few times-unlocking the double doors to the Bank of Deadwood, walking home in the evening, sometimes with her young daughter in tow. Once he thought he’d seen her leaving the Gem, but had decided he was mistaken. She hadn’t seemed the type to frequent a saloon, although…Not one for poetry myself, but that came recommended by a refined lady of my acquaintance, Al had said.
She nodded as she walked by him, her skirts swishing against his pants leg as she passed. Bill stood there, hand on the bannister, looking from the wild festive atmosphere below to the quiet image of the elegant bank president standing at the office door, back straight and hand poised to knock. Something made her hesitate and she lowered her hand. Eyes darting around the hallway and over the crowd below, she took a step towards Bill. Looking back at the door, she finally spoke.
“Have you concluded your business with Mr. Swearengen for the night?”
Her accent was different from everyone else he’d talked to in town, crisper and more formal. Al’s “refined” description had been apt, if this was the woman he meant.
“Yes, we’re done.” He nodded and turned towards the stairs again. He almost missed her hushed question.
“Is he alone?”
He nodded again and watched her bite at her bottom lip as she finally knocked. At the answering coarse “Yeah!” shouted from within the office, she opened the door. Bill overhead a soft,“Sofia wished to spend the night with her friend Abigail,” before the door closed.
He shrugged and went downstairs into the throng of gamblers and drinkers, looking for Dan in the crowd. He spotted him at the far corner of the bar, pistol laid casually by his hand, a likely warning for anyone thinking to start trouble. Dan spotted him as well, keeping his eyes on Bill as he stepped around whores and drunks.
“I have a message from your boss, but I’m not sure it’s still valid.”
“Well, tell me the fuckin’ message and I’ll do my best to figure out the fuckin’ validity.” Dan turned and rested his elbows on the bar, eyes checking the crowd.
“He wanted you to send Dolly up to him, but-”
“But that was afore the Widow Ellsworth came tappin’ at his door, I’m guessin’.”
Bill raised his eyebrows at that.
“Yeah, I saw her up there, coming in from the back stairs.” Dan glanced up at the closed office door with a frown. “Never seen her quite that bold…guess comin’ outa her mourning might account for that.” He gave Bill a sly look and lowered his voice as he leaned closer. “Not that mournin’ ever did slow her down all that much, truth be told.”
“Anyways,” he said, leaning back again, “I put Dolly back in action soon as I saw the widow up there. You go on and see to your missus, Adama.” He looked out the open front doors of the Gem and grinned. “Looks like she’s waitin’ up.”
Title: New In Town, Part 12 (AU)
Author: fragrantwoods
Rating: R for language, adult situations, references to violence, death
Word Count: 2900
Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Disclaimer: Don't own anything, not making anything
WIP Crossover: Deadwood/Battlestar Galactica
Spoilers for Deadwood S3
Setting: A/U that includes the American Old West (specifically, Deadwood): The Gem Saloon
Timeline: Post-Hearst, pre-fire, not congruent with the events of comm Deadwood S_4
Summary: Bill and Laura find themselves on Earth in 1879 in a Raptor jump gone wrong. Late night at the Gem, Bill is in Al's office as Al sheds some light (at least from his point of view) on the tragic events of the past year, stirring up memories Bill would rather forget.
Previous Chapter New In Town Chapter 12
Bill leaned forward in his chair, stretching the muscles of his lower back and wishing he had left with Laura. Her heels had rung hard against the stairs after Al had called for more whiskey. He’d thought about going after her, telling her he’d keep the liquor under control…but the thought of either him or Laura looking vulnerable here still chilled his blood.
Al poured coffee for them both, tipping the whiskey bottle over his own cup. He rubbed his eyes and started going over what Bill had told him.
“So, you’re sayin’ that were I to follow my instincts and cut the degenerate Hawkeye’s throat, I remove one problem and gain problems innumerable in driving his friend, Adams, away.”
That’s how I see it,” Bill had said with a nod. “When you have a weak link and removing it would do more damage, you reinforce it, shift some load off of it. Find something he can do…or figure out if getting rid of the weak link is worth losing a good man in the bargain.” He’d seen Silas Adams as an intelligent man with good instincts when he met him, and Laura’s description after Adams had escorted her to the schoolhouse and back had reinforced his impression. The man’s loyalty to his disreputable friend, Hawkeye in the face of Al’s wrath spoke volumes about Adams’s character.
Bill’s eyes had moved away from Al then, as he saw a dingy apartment in his mind’s eye and wondered if he would have made it through the Fleet knowing he’d abandoned Saul to his demons. He knew one thing for certain…he would’ve lost the Bill Adama he was today. His lips twisted in a cynical smirk as he realized the Fleet had bought his own soul when they gave Saul another chance, and Bill had been more than willing to make that deal. Finding a way to repurpose Hawkeye would gain Adams’s gratitude, tie him to Swearengen for the long haul. He hoped Adams could live with the choices being made tonight.
“I’d sooner hire on Hawkeye to shoo flies off whores than see Adams go elsewhere. Dan’s my best man with a knife-though Adams is no slouch in that department-but Adams has the better head for strategy.” Al’s coffee cooled in his cup as he spoke.
The hostility that had smoldered around Al before Laura left had ebbed, leaving an aging, weary man who seemed tired of bloodshed, quietly relieved that Bill had found him less deadly options. He’d focused on the dregs of his coffee as Bill had gone to the windows, watchful.
Bill had tensed when Dan and Laura disappeared into the darkened entrance of the Grand Central Hotel. He hadn’t relaxed until he saw the lamp being lit in front of their window, casting Laura’s shadow into relief. He thought he saw the curtains move, and smiled at the thought of her looking back towards him. He had turned and taken his seat again, pouring a cup of coffee for himself, holding his hand over his cup at Al’s offer of the bottle. The saloon-keeper had shrugged and kept up his rhetoric, looking past Bill to empty spaces in the room. His eyes flicked over the faded wood where a bloodstain had been. He could spare a little more time, Bill thought. The dark corners seemed to grow as he envisioned Picon priests hearing confessions.
Al sniffed hard, faint sneer on his face. “Anniversaries bring up memories probably better left alone, but it seems to be the way we’re made…maybe Mother Nature’s way of knocking us with a two-by-four once in a while so we don’t forget our mistakes.
“Generally, I don’t look back…I see what I have to do, do it, and go on. Worrying over decisions made and carried out…other men doing that has made me the success that I am, as they try to drown out their worryin’ with whores, whiskey and cards.
“But the events of last year…I’ll confess to lookin’ back on those in order to plan for the future. Now, I’m guessing as a man of the Navy or whatever the fuck you really are, you’ve braced yourself to be hit by superior forces at some point…and ain’t that a peculiar feelin’? Can’t lie down and quit, but knowin’ that those determined to grind you under their heel can just keep their forces comin’ at you…you kill a few, a few plus more get hired the next day. Fuckin’ hopeless feeling, that is.”
Al grabbed a toothpick off his desk and chewed viciously for a minute. “Times I wanted to burn the whole fucking place down myself, just to keep Hearst from doin’ it. Trouble is, we’d gone from a mining camp to a legitimate fuckin’ town by then, women and children and elections and every other damn thing that comes with bein’ civilized. That’s a hard thing, thinkin’ on seeing that put to the torch.”
Bill folded his hands over his stomach, picturing the streets crowded with armed men that kept coming, firing into crowds of civilians, buildings starting to burn. In his imagination, the men on horseback were expressionless, with a metallic sheen.
“Did Hearst show how much of a threat he was when he first came to town?”
Al snorted. “Didn’t have to. By the time he got here, he’d mined silver and gold by the ton between here and Utah, Nevada…I know you’ve heard of the dozens of dead men he left in collapsed mines in the Comstock Lode, buyin’ or bullyin’ his way out of the inquiries, changing politicians to suit him like pieces on a chess board. Made for excitin’ reading, what one powerful man can get away with”- his voice lowered-“until he shows up on your own doorstep.
“Oh, he started subtle enough, I suppose. Started fear-mongering and intimidation to take that which was held by the weak of spirit. An effective tactic, one that I myself have employed more than once in my career. Mimicked some of my own behaviors, friendly-like, tryin’ to get close. When that was met with limited success, things went to a higher level. Had men murdered in my own joint and in the streets, just to send the message that he could.” His heavy black brows drew together.
“His eye was on the biggest gold strike in the Hills, owned by one Mrs. Alma Ellsworth, supervised by her watchdog of a husband.”
He was quiet for a minute, glancing once at the iron bed half-hidden behind louvered doors. Bill waited, caught up in the story.
Rising from the desk and pacing now, Al unwrapped the dingy cloth around the stump of his middle finger. Bill was expecting a bloody wound, or infection-streaked flesh, but the stump had healed as well as other, similar injuries he’d seen. He wondered at the need to keep it covered, if it might be a type of penance.
“See, when Hearst couldn’t get his hands on her gold mine by lesser means, he ratcheted things up. Yeah, this…I got this for not agreeing to help him gull Mrs. Ellsworth on his behalf. Any machinations of that nature, I do for my own benefit…” He wrapped the cloth back as he continued, looking once more like a man recently wounded.
Does he even see it’s healed? Bill wondered.
“When that didn’t work, Hearst started having his hirelings fire over our bow in various ways, threatening those long known to me to make his point. His men, that would put the town to gun and flame, they kept comin’, riding into town night after night, like he had some fuckin’ factory turnin’ out Pinkertons by the dozen. The day came when he went to the level I figured he would…murdered a man considered good and honorable by man, woman and child-a rare breed in Deadwood. Struck at the heart of the camp, I can tell you that.” Al’s eyes glittered in the lamplight, mouth drawn. Sweat had loosened the pomade in his hair and a thick black lock fell over his forehead. He raked it back absently.
“So one who counted him as a friend shoots the cocksucker Hearst in his hotel room. Of course, she just wounds him...which brings us to Jen.” He shoved the empty coffee cup to one side, grabbed the bottle and took a deep swallow before setting it down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Didn’t you say that Jen didn’t shoot him?”
“Fuck, no, she didn’t shoot him!” He took another long swallow. “One thing I try to beat into my whores is to eschew violence when aggrieved, that being what me and my boys are for. Only had one who never learned that lesson…and I was as glad to see her leave my employ as was her new paramour. That day though…I confess to thinkin’ we should’ve had her work on her aim instead of tryin’ to keep her unarmed.” A half-smile flickered across his face before disappearing into the darkness, leaving his face stone-cold again.
“Anyways…his murderous tactics worked. The mine’s owner agreed to sell out, doing her part to stop the killing. But Hearst hadn’t had the bullet removed from his shoulder yet before he started issuing new edicts. Even with the deed practically in his pocket, he demanded the bawd who shot him to be killed and laid out to be seen by his own eyes, or he’d loose his paid army to destroy the town. Of course, he assumed the shooter was one of mine, so his demand landed on my desk…actions of others done without my knowledge, and I’m the one stuck with making the hard choices.” Al grew quiet.
Bill began to get a sense of the position Swearengen had been in, outnumbered, out-armed…his chest grew tight as old feelings came flashing back. The scrape of the bottle’s bottom against the wood turned into the faint static of an open comm line, waiting on his orders to shoot down a good man to avoid a war. There had been dark nightmares after, that the pilot had been Lee, or Kara, the comm handset waiting in Bill’s fist, hungry for his order.
He looked towards the window, grounding himself in the present with the soft square glow across the street illuminating Laura’s shadow. “It almost sounds like you might’ve loved the shooter once.” The sharp snort startled him and he turned back to Al’s harsh laugh.
“Fuck no, I didn’t love her. I don’t believe in that shit-learned that at my mother’s knee, which she spent most of her time on, cocksucking whore that she was. But I had my reasons for not takin’ the more straightforward way out.”
Bill raised an eyebrow at this. Hard to picture this man swerving from the most efficient way to resolve a dilemma.
Al finally put the bottle down, gaze lowered to his hands. “It galled me to give anything to that cocksucker, but had I refused and told him to go fuck himself, with our pitiful numbers and his never-ending army of hired guns, we’d likely all been dead by morning anyway. Sacrificing one to save others…I imagine maybe you’ve been there a time or two, am I right?”
Bill stood and walked towards the window, staring again at Laura’s outline beyond the glass. Al’s story was dredging up too many echoes from the past. He was sick of thinking about blood sacrifices. He didn’t turn as he heard Al walk up behind him, didn’t want to see if there was sympathy in the man’s eyes. This was Al’s confessional, not his.
He finally turned to see Al standing at the patch of over-scrubbed floorboards. His words seemed directed to whatever ghost stretched out before him.
“It was Jen’s bad luck to have an appearance near enough to the shooter’s to be passed off as her. Johnny wanted to be the one to do it…found it harder than he thought, though, killin’ someone he cared about. I never liked it myself, when it came to killin’ someone you’d rather not, but have to. Probably best for the human race that killin’ the relatively innocent don’t come easy.
“He couldn’t do it at the end…so I took care of Jen for him. Told him I was as gentle as I was able.”
He looked back at Bill, face finally composed. “I’m guessin’, though, that you know as well as I do that killing is seldom a gentle affair.”
“No. But it’s a pretty good lie, if you can pull it off.” And if you can live with what you’ve done.
Al sighed as he sat again. “Go to your wife, Adama, and apologize on my behalf for keeping you to this late hour. Share of this what you think best, but with her only, as I’d not have it bandied about that Al Swearengen holds any fuckin’ hint of remorse for anything I’ve done.” He looked at the brass clock on the bookcase. The hands were a fraction past twelve.
“If you happen to see Dan on your way out, would you be good enough to tell him to send Dolly up? Looks like it’s finally a new fuckin’ day.”
Bill nodded as he left the shadowy office and into the bright lights of the saloon. The raucous laughter seemed less forced now, as the clock over the bar ticked forward, proof that time had passed.
**************************
Leaving Swearengen’s office, Bill was almost to the stairs when he noticed a flicker of movement at the end of the shadowy hall, near the door that led to the seldom-used back way. A woman stood there, waiting, hands folded at her waist, features obscured by the black half-veil on her feathered hat. He gave her a long look, wondering if she was a threat to him or the man inside the office. Didn’t look like one of the whores; didn’t have the demeanor of an angry wife…the rich burgundy dress falling in drapes and folds looked familiar. Another look, after his eyes adjusted to the light, and he recognized the dark hair, the slightly jutted chin, the brown eyes looking back at him through wide-paned netting.
Bill had seen her a few times-unlocking the double doors to the Bank of Deadwood, walking home in the evening, sometimes with her young daughter in tow. Once he thought he’d seen her leaving the Gem, but had decided he was mistaken. She hadn’t seemed the type to frequent a saloon, although…Not one for poetry myself, but that came recommended by a refined lady of my acquaintance, Al had said.
She nodded as she walked by him, her skirts swishing against his pants leg as she passed. Bill stood there, hand on the bannister, looking from the wild festive atmosphere below to the quiet image of the elegant bank president standing at the office door, back straight and hand poised to knock. Something made her hesitate and she lowered her hand. Eyes darting around the hallway and over the crowd below, she took a step towards Bill. Looking back at the door, she finally spoke.
“Have you concluded your business with Mr. Swearengen for the night?”
Her accent was different from everyone else he’d talked to in town, crisper and more formal. Al’s “refined” description had been apt, if this was the woman he meant.
“Yes, we’re done.” He nodded and turned towards the stairs again. He almost missed her hushed question.
“Is he alone?”
He nodded again and watched her bite at her bottom lip as she finally knocked. At the answering coarse “Yeah!” shouted from within the office, she opened the door. Bill overhead a soft,“Sofia wished to spend the night with her friend Abigail,” before the door closed.
He shrugged and went downstairs into the throng of gamblers and drinkers, looking for Dan in the crowd. He spotted him at the far corner of the bar, pistol laid casually by his hand, a likely warning for anyone thinking to start trouble. Dan spotted him as well, keeping his eyes on Bill as he stepped around whores and drunks.
“I have a message from your boss, but I’m not sure it’s still valid.”
“Well, tell me the fuckin’ message and I’ll do my best to figure out the fuckin’ validity.” Dan turned and rested his elbows on the bar, eyes checking the crowd.
“He wanted you to send Dolly up to him, but-”
“But that was afore the Widow Ellsworth came tappin’ at his door, I’m guessin’.”
Bill raised his eyebrows at that.
“Yeah, I saw her up there, coming in from the back stairs.” Dan glanced up at the closed office door with a frown. “Never seen her quite that bold…guess comin’ outa her mourning might account for that.” He gave Bill a sly look and lowered his voice as he leaned closer. “Not that mournin’ ever did slow her down all that much, truth be told.”
“Anyways,” he said, leaning back again, “I put Dolly back in action soon as I saw the widow up there. You go on and see to your missus, Adama.” He looked out the open front doors of the Gem and grinned. “Looks like she’s waitin’ up.”