Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [107]
I push back from the desk, where I have been examining some F. Jay Haynes stereoscopic views of Deadwood in the 1870s, and swing my chair around. “Rodman!” I say. “What’s the idea, sneaking up on me that way?”
Impervious, burly, bearded, beaming, here he comes with his hand out. Now take it easy, you oaf, my hand won’t stand . . . Oh, Jesus.
Contrite, he releases me. “Whoops, sorry. Hurt your hand?”
“No, no.” I let the hand down carelessly on the chair arm. Afterwhile the bones will work back into place, especially if I can catch him looking the other way and flex the fingers a little. “How’s school?” I say. “Classes all over?”
“Classes all over, grades all in. I’m clean. How are you getting on with your book?”
“It keeps me out of mischief.”
“I’ll bet. Ninety years of Grandmother’s life ought to keep you out of mischief till the twenty-first century. How far have you got her by now?”
“I’ve got her back to Milton, New York. Grandfather’s in Deadwood.”
“Deadwood? Wasn’t that kind of a wild camp? Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane and all that?”
“Rodman,” I say, “you’ve been reading history.”
“You never gave me proper credit. I’m not opposed to history if it’s interesting.” Grinning, he leans to look at the stereopticon slides spread along the desk. “Is this Deadwood? Looks like a movie set.”
“It has been, plenty of times.”
“I didn’t know your grandfather ever got into anything like that.” He picks up the stereoscope and slips a picture into the slot, takes it out and slips in another. “It really is like a movie set. Look at all the guns on these guys. Anything exciting happen to him there?”
“He never shot it out with Wild Bill Hickok, if that’s what you mean.”
Lifted viewer, ironic eye. “All right, Pop, all right. What was he doing there?”
“Building a mill ditch for George Hearst’s Homestake mine. Ever hear of the Homestake?”
“I’ve heard of Hearst. Not the Homestake.”
“Last time I looked it had produced a half billion in gold.”
“And Great-grandpa built the mill ditch,” Rodman says. “Good for him.”
He irritates me, he always does. Nothing is interesting to him unless it’s bellowing as loud as he is. I say, “Ever try living in a tent through a Dakota winter? That’s excitement enough to last anybody a while. Ever see Buffalo Bill Cody and Captain Jack Crawford ride their horses onto the stage of the Bella Union Theater to re-create Buffalo Bill’s single-handed killing and scalping of the Oglala chief Yellow Hand?”
He is looking into the viewer again. “The real Buffalo Bill?”
“I don’t know that there were any imitations. Unfortunately Captain Jack’s horse got cutting up, scared of Captain Jack’s warbonnet, and he shot himself through the leg and brought down the curtain.”
“You mean they were putting on an act with live ammunition?”
I say ironically, “The West was not built with blank cartridges.”
“Great,” Rodman says. “Now you’re talking. What else?”
“So Grandfather lived in his tent in Blacktail Gulch and built George Hearst’s mill ditch and George took a fancy to him and wanted him to become one of his affidavit men. That means somebody who swears to false testimony in court to get Hearst control of another claim. So Grandfather said, ‘George, I guess you don’t need me any more,’ and got on the stage for Cheyenne, and then on the train for Denver, and on the Denver train he met a little farmerish man who said he owned a mine in Leadville that some jumpers were trying to horn in on, and he could use a mining expert who would study the mine, survey it, and testify when the case came up. That little man was Horace Tabor. Ever hear of him?”
He lowers the stereoscope and regards me with a smile behind which things are going on like shadows passing across a drawn blind. “You’re really full of it, aren’t you?”
“What’s the antecedent of ‘it’?”
He throws back his head and roars with laughter. I can see the strong cords in his neck where his beard thins out. “O.K., Pop, I wasn’t trying to put you down.