(1986) Deadwood by Pete Dexter Page B

. . ." He rubbed his chin, going over the symptoms. "It could be torpid fever," he said.
    "He don't look like that," Swearingen said. "His carriage's good. Torpid fever's yellow-skinned and swoped posture."
    "All I know," Boone said, "if he don't intend to live long I wisht he'd hurry up with it. It's a lot of wasted thought he's already caused if he's about to die."
    "There's a time for everybody," Swearingen said. He was thinking of the boy. He had been thinking of the boy, one way or another, since they hooked up at Fort Laramie.
    Boone stood up and put Frank Towles's head back in the bag. "How much did you say?" Swearingen said.
    "Two hundret dollars," Boone said, and sat back down. Al Swearingen was one of maybe four people Boone knew who had two hundred dollars. Probably had it in his pocket. "I could let you have it for less," he said. "You could take it back with you when you went to Cheyenne again."
    "I just been to Cheyenne."
    "I'll take a hundret and fifty," Boone said. "I ain't anxious to see that place right now."
    Swearingen smiled at him. "Sitting Bull been visiting you in your dreams?"
    "Shit," he said.
    "What about Wild Bill?" he said. "You scairt of Wild Bill Hickok?" Boone didn't see where it was going. "All the things I ever heard about you," Swearingen said, "nobody ever mentioned scairt."
    Boone put one of his bug-eyes on him then, full weight. "If there was a legal warrant for Wild Bill," he said, "I'd put his head right here on the bed next to Frank Towles."
    Swearingen looked back and believed him. He remembered the way his oysters tried to climb back up inside when Bill ordered him into his own wagon and made him hand the reins to a whore. "What if it wasn't a legal warrant?" he said.
    "What if it wasn't?" Boone said. He'd forgotten the cool feeling in his own balls the night before, when Bill had caught his eyes in the bar. He wished Al Swearingen would get to what he was going to say about the two hundred dollars. Wild Bill had took enough of Boone's time already.
    "I heard that he come to Deadwood to the same purpose he went to Abilene and Cheyenne," Swearingen said.
    "He ain't got the authority here," Boone said.
    "Not yet."
    "Don't play the larks with me," Boone said. "Say what you're going to say."
    Swearingen said, "If you was to put two heads there on the bed, what would that cost?"
    "Frank's worth two hundret dollars, at least," Boone said. "I already told you that."
    Swearingen shook his head. "If he was there with the other head we was talking about, that might be worth two hundred dollars," he said.
    "To who?"
    "If it was the head we was talking about," he said, "to me."
    "A hundret dollars each," Boone said.
    But Swearingen saw what he was thinking. "No," he said, "two hundred for both of them, and you can keep Frank Towles."
    It seemed different to Boone, put that way. The line between right and wrong was the law, and once you was on the safe side of it, there wasn't much you couldn't do, if you used common sense who you done it to, and kept it out of view. The thought he could end up staring at the sky through tree limbs never entered Boone's mind while he was working, because he stayed on the safe side of the line.
    Taking Wild Bill seemed to cross that. If worse came to worse, you couldn't even say you mistook him for somebody else, with that head of hair. Boone had never killed anybody popular before. He wondered if you took their place afterwards. He was considering that when he happened to look down at Frank Towles's head in his lap. "You only take somebody's place," he said out loud, "if they're a better class than you."
    Swearingen nodded, like he'd been thinking the same thing. Boone didn't like that. He wished there was some way to kill Al Swearingen instead, and collect two hundred dollars for that. He pictured Swearingen trying to talk him out of it. It didn't make sense to kill Wild Bill instead of a whore man.
    Like everybody else in Deadwood, Boone May sometimes wished the