Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

“Because, boy, you have a reputation now.”
Johnson laughed. “Everybody in town knows who I am.”
“Not anymore,” Earp said.
It turned out that Foggy Bill Johnson, the man who gunned down Clem Curry and then went up
against his brother Dick, was indeed a notorious celebrity in Deadwood. Every man who fancied
himself sharp with a gun was suddenly asking to meet him.
After two days of extricating himself from gunfights, Johnson realized that Earp was right. He
would have to leave Deadwood soon. He had just enough money to buy fare and freight on the
express stage, and purchased his ticket for the following day. When the light was low, he took one of
the horses and checked to see that Little Wind’s grave had not been disturbed. So far, it hadn’t. The
ground had hardened up in the cold and he had left no tracks. Even so, he forced himself to leave
immediately, lest he be noticed.
Earp, meanwhile, had grown tired of gambling and a desultory courting of Miss Emily. He had
expected Deadwood to offer him a position as marshal, but no offer was forthcoming, so he was
going to head south for the winter.
“When’re you leaving?” Johnson asked.
“What’s it to you?”
“Perhaps you could ride with me.”
“With you and your bones?” Earp laughed. “Boy, every bandito and desperado from here to
Cheyenne is just waiting for you to leave Deadwood with those bones.”
“I’d be sure to make it if you rode with me.”
“I think I’ll wait, to escort Miss Emily.”
“Miss Emily might come tomorrow, too, especially if you were riding with us.”
Earp fixed him with a steady look. “What’s in it for me, boy?”
“I bet the stage would pay you as a messenger.” A messenger was a guard; they made good money.
“Can’t you do any better than that?”
“I guess not.”
There was a silence. Finally, Earp said, “Tell you what. If I get you through to Cheyenne, you give
me half your shipment.”
“Half my bones?”
“That’s right,” he said, smiling broadly and winking. “Half your bones. How’s that sound?”
“I realized then,” Johnson wrote on the evening of September 28,
that Mr. Earp was like all the others, and did not believe that these crates contained bones at all. I was
faced with a moral dilemma. Mr. Earp had been friendly to me and helpful more than once. I was
asking him to face real danger and he thought he was risking his life for treasure. It was my obligation
to disabuse him of his greedy misconception. But I had received quite an education out West, one that
Yale had been unable to provide. A man has to look out for himself, I’d learned. So all I said to him
was, “Mr. Earp, you have cut yourself a deal.”
The stage would leave Deadwood the following morning.
He woke a few hours past midnight. It was time to retrieve the crates of bones. By prearrangement he