CHAPTER II.
DEADWOOD DICK, THE ROAD-AGENT.
"=$500 Reward:= For the apprehension and arrest of a notorious young desperado who hails to the name of Deadwood Dick. His present whereabouts are somewhat contiguous to the Black Hills. For further information, and so forth, apply immediately to
HUGH VANSEVERE,
"At Metropolitan Saloon, Deadwood City."
Thus read a notice posted up against a big pine tree, three milesabove Custer City, on the banks of French creek. It was a largeplacard tacked up in plain view of all passers-by who took the routenorth through Custer gulch in order to reach the infant city of theNorthwest--Deadwood.
Deadwood! the scene of the most astonishing bustle and activity, thisyear (1877.) The place where men are literally made rich and poor inone day and night. Prior to 1877 the Black Hills have been for agreater part undeveloped, but now, what a change! In Deadwooddistricts every foot of available ground has been "claimed" and stakedout; the population has increased from fifteen to more thantwenty-five hundred souls.
The streets are swarming with constantly arriving new-comers; thestores and saloons are literally crammed at all hours; dance-housesand can-can dens exist; hundreds of eager, expectant, and hopefulminers are working in the mines, and the harvest reaped by them is notat all discouraging. All along the gulch are strung a profusion ofcabins, tents and shanties, making Deadwood in reality a town of adozen miles in length, though some enterprising individual has pairedoff a couple more infant cities above Deadwood proper, namedrespectively Elizabeth City and Ten Strike. The quartz formation inthese neighborhoods is something extraordinary, and from late reports,under vigorous and earnest development are yielding beyond the mostsanguine expectation.
The placer mines west of Camp Crook are being opened to verysatisfactory results, and, in fact, from Custer City in the south, toDeadwood in the north, all is the scene of abundant enthusiasm andexcitement.
A horseman riding north through Custer gulch, noticed the placard soprominently posted for public inspection, and with a low whistle,expressive of astonishment, wheeled his horse out of the stage road,and rode over to the foot of the tree in question, and ran his eyesover the few irregularly-written lines traced upon the notice.
He was a youth of an age somewhere between sixteen and twenty, trimand compactly built, with a preponderance of muscular development andanimal spirits; broad and deep of chest, with square, iron-castshoulders; limbs small yet like bars of steel, and with a grace ofposition in the saddle rarely equaled; he made a fine picture for anartist's brush or a poet's pen.
Only one thing marred the captivating beauty of the picture.
His form was clothed in a tight-fitting habit of buck-skin, which wascolored a jetty black, and presented a striking contrast to anythingone sees as a garment in the wild far West. And this was not all,either. A broad black hat was slouched down over his eyes; he wore athick black vail over the upper portion of his face, through theeye-holes of which there gleamed a pair of orbs of piercing intensity,and his hands, large and knotted, were hidden in a pair of kid glovesof a light color.
The "Black Rider" he might have been justly termed, for histhoroughbred steed was as black as coal, but we have not seen fit tocall him such--his name is Deadwood Dick, and let that suffice for thepresent.
It was just at the edge of evening that he stopped before, andproceeded to read, the placard posted upon the tree in one of theloneliest portions of Custer's gulch.
Above and on either side rose to a stupendous hight the tree-fringedmountains in all their majestic grandeur.
In front and behind, running nearly north and south, lay the deep,dark chasm--a rift between mighty walls--Custer's gulch.
And over all began to hover the cloak of night, for the sun hadalready imparted its dying kiss on the mountain craters, and below,the gloom was thickening with rapid strides.
Slowly, over and over, Deadwood Dick, outlaw, road-agent and outcast,read the notice, and then a wild sardonic laugh burst from beneath hismask--a terrible, blood-curdling laugh, that made even the powerfulanimal he bestrode start and prick up its ears.
"Five hundred dollars reward for the apprehension and arrest of anotorious young desperado who hails to the name of Deadwood Dick! Ha!ha! ha! isn't that rich, now? Ha! ha! ha! _arrest_ Deadwood Dick! Why,'pon my word it is a sight for sore eyes. I was not aware that I hadattained such a desperate notoriety as that document implies. Theywill make me out a murderer before they get through, I expect. Can'tlet me alone--everlastingly they must be punching after me, as if Iwas some obnoxious pestilence on the face of the earth. Never mind,though--let 'em keep on! Let them just continue their hounding game,and see which comes up on top when the bag's shook. If more than oneof 'em don't get their fingers burned when they snatch Deadwood Dickbald-headed, why I'm a Spring creek sucker, that's all. Maybe I don'tknow who foots the bill in this reward business; oh, no; maybe I can'tride down to Deadwood and frighten three kind o' ideas out of this Mr.Hugh Vansevere, whoever he may be. Ha! ha! the fool that h'isted thatnotice didn't _know_ Deadwood Dick, or he would never have placed hislife in jeopardy by performing an act so uninteresting to the party inquestion. Hugh Vansevere; let me see--I don't think I've got thatregistered in my collection of appellatives. Perhaps he is a new toolin the employ of the old mechanic."
Darker and thicker grew the night shadows. The after-harvest moon roseup to a sufficient hight to send a silvery bolt of powerful light downinto the silent gulch; like an image carved out of the night the horseand rider stood before the placard, motionless, silent.
The head of Deadwood Dick was bent, and he was buried in a deepreverie. A reverie that engrossed his whole attention for a long, longwhile; then the impatient pawing of his horse aroused him, and he satonce more erect in his saddle.
A last time his eyes wandered over the notice on the tree--a last timehis terrible laugh made the mountains ring, and he guided his horseback into the rough, uneven stage-road, and galloped off up the gulch.
"I will go and see what this Hugh Vansevere looks like!" he said,applying the spurs to his horse. "I'll be dashed if I want him to beso numerous with my name, especially with five hundred dollars affixedthereto, as a reward."
* * * * *
Midnight.
Camp Crook, nestling down in one of the wildest gulch pockets of theBlack Hills region--basking and sleeping in the flood of moonlightthat emanates from the glowing ball up afar in heaven's blue vault, issuddenly and rudely aroused from her dreams.
There is a wild clatter of hoofs, a chorus of strange and variedvoices swelling out in a wild mountain song, and up through the veryheart of the diminutive city, where the gold-fever has dropped a fewsanguine souls, dash a cavalcade of masked horsemen, attired in thepicturesque garb of the mountaineer, and mounted on animals ofsuperior speed and endurance.
At their head, looking weird and wonderful in his suit of black, rideshe whom all have heard of--he whom some have seen, and he whom no onedare raise a hand against, in single combat--Deadwood Dick, Road-AgentPrince, and the one person whose name is in everybody's mouth.
Straight on through the single northerly street of the infant villageride the dauntless band, making weirdly beautiful music with theirrollicking song, some of the voices being cultivated, and clear as theclarion note.
A few miners, wakened from their repose, jump out of bed, come to thedoor, and stare at the receding cavalcade in a dazed sort of way.Others, thinking that the noise is all resulting from an Indianattack, seize rifles or revolvers, as the case may be, and blaze awayout of windows and loopholes at whatever may be in the way to receivetheir bullets.
But the road-agents only pause a moment in their song to send back awild, sarcastic laugh; then they resume it, and merrily dash along upthe gulch, the ringing of iron-shod hoofs beating a strange tatoo tothe sound of the music.
Sleepily the miners crawl back to their respective couche
s; the moonsmiles down on mother earth, and nature once more fans itself to sleepwith the breath of a fragrant breeze.
* * * * *
Deadwood--magic city of the West!
Not dead, nor even sleeping, is this headquarters of the Black Hillspopulation at midnight, twenty-four hours subsequent to the rush ofthe daring road-agents through Camp Crook.
Deadwood is just as lively and hilarious a place during the intervalbetween sunset and sunrise as during the day. Saloons, dance-houses,and gambling dens keep open all night, and stores do not close until alate hour. At one, two and three o'clock in the morning the streetspresent as lively an appearance as at any period earlier in theevening. Fighting, shooting, stabbing and hideous swearing arefeatures of the night; singing, drinking, dancing and gamblinganother.
Nightly the majority of the miners come in from such claims as arewithin a radius of from six to ten miles, and seldom is it that theygo away without their "load." To be sure, there are some men inDeadwood who do not drink, but they are so few and scattering as toseem almost entirely a nonentity.
It was midnight, and Deadwood lay basking in a flood of mellowmoonlight that cast long shadows from the pine forest on the peaks,and glinted upon the rapid, muddy waters of Whitewood creek, whichrumbles noisily by the infant metropolis on its wild journey towardthe south.
All the saloons and dance-houses are in full blast; shouts and maudlinyells rend the air. In front of one insignificant board,"ten-by-twenty," an old wretch is singing out lustily:
"Right this way ye cum, pilgrims, ter ther great Black Hills Thee'ter;only costs ye four bits ter go in an' see ther tender sex, alreadya-kickin' in their striped stockin's; only four bits, recollect, tersee ther greatest show on earth, so heer's yer straight chance!"
But, why the use of yelling? Already the shanty is packed, and judgingfrom the thundering screeches and clapping of hands, the entertainmentis such as suits the depraved tastes of the ruffianly "bums" who havepaid their "four bits," and gone in.
But look!
Madly out of Deadwood gulch, the abode of thousands of lurkingshadows, dashes a horseman.
Straight through the main street of the noisy metropolis he spurs,with hat off, and hair blowing backward in a jetty cloud.
On, on, followed by the eyes of scores curious to know the meaning ofhis haste--on, and at last he halts in front of a large board shanty,over whose doorway is the illuminated canvas sign: "MetropolitanSaloon, by Tom Young."
Evidently his approach is heard, for instantly out of the"Metropolitan" there swarms a crowd of miners, gamblers and bummers tosee "what the row is."
"Is there a man among you, gentlemen, who bears the name of HughVansevere?" asks the rider, who from his midnight dress we may judgeis no other than Deadwood Dick.
"That is my handle, pilgrim!" and a tall, rough-looking customer ofthe Minnesotian order steps forward. "What mought yer lay be ag'inme?"
"A _sure_ lay!" hisses the masked road-agent, sternly. "You areadvertising for one Deadwood Dick, and he has come to pay you hisrespects!"
The next instant there is a flash, a pistol report, a fall and agroan, the clattering of iron-shod hoofs; and then, ere anyonescarcely dreams of it, _Deadwood Dick is gone!_