Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

Deadwood
Deadwood presented a bleak aspect: a single street of unpainted wooden buildings surrounded by
bare hills—the trees had been cut down to provide lumber for the town. Everything was covered in a
thin crust of dirty snow. But despite the dreary appearance, the town had the charged excitement of a
boomtown. The main street of Deadwood consisted of the usual mining-town variety—a tin shop, a
carpenter shop, three dry goods stores, four stables, six grocery stores, a Chinatown with four
Chinese laundries, and seventy-five saloons. And in the center of it all, boasting a wooden secondstory
balcony, stood the Grand Central Hotel.
Johnson staggered up the front steps, and the next thing he knew he was lying on a padded bench
inside the hotel, attended to by the proprietor, an older man with thick glasses and thinning greased
hair.
“Young fellow,” he joked, “I seen men in worse shape, but a percentage of them was dead.”
“Food?” Johnson croaked.
“We got plenty of food here. I’m going to help you into the dining room and we’ll get some vittles
into you. You got any money?”
An hour later, he was feeling distinctly better and looked up from his plate. “That was good. What
was it?”
The woman clearing the table said, “That’s buffalo tongue.”
The proprietor, who was named Sam Perkins, looked in. Considering the rough surroundings, he
was extremely polite. “I’m thinking you need a room, young man.”
Johnson nodded.
“Four dollars, payable in advance. And a bath can be obtained down the street at the Deadwood
public baths.”
“Much obliged,” Johnson said.
“That pretty slash on your face is going to heal by itself, leave a scar, but that leg needs attention.”
“I am in agreement,” said Johnson wearily.
Perkins asked where Johnson had come from. He said he had come from the badlands of Montana
near Fort Benton. Perkins looked at him in disbelief, but said only that it was a long way to come.
Johnson stood up and asked if there was someplace he could store the crates on his wagon. Perkins
said he had a room in the back, available to hotel guests, and that only he had the key to the lock on its
door. “What do you have to store?”