Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

A Night in Cheyenne
Timid, they set forth as a group—twelve earnest young down-Easters, still wearing their high collars
and bowler hats, strolling from saloon to saloon with as much nonchalance as they could muster. For
the town, which had appeared disappointingly tame by day, assumed a positively sinister aspect at
night.
In the yellow light of the saloon windows, the boardwalk crowd of cowboys, gunmen, gamblers,
and cutthroats looked at them with amusement. “These varmints’d kill you as soon as smile at you,”
said one student melodramatically. Feeling the unfamiliar weight of their new Smith & Wesson
revolvers dragging at their hips, the students tugged at their guns, adjusting their weight.
One man stopped them. “You look like nice fellers,” he told the group. “Take some friendly advice.
In Cheyenne, don’t touch your guns ’less you mean to use ’em. Round here, people don’t look at your
face, they look at your hands, and a great deal of drinking is done in these precincts at night.”
There were not only gunfighters on the boardwalk. They passed several nymphs du pave, heavily
painted, calling out teasingly to them from dark doorways. Altogether they found it exotic and
thrilling, their first experience of the real West, the dangerous West they had been waiting for. They
entered several saloons, sampled the harsh liquor, played hands of keno and 21. One student pulled
out a pocket watch. “Nearly ten, and we haven’t seen a shooting yet,” he said, with a tinge of
disappointment.
Within minutes, they saw a shooting.
“It happened astonishingly fast,” Johnson noted.
One moment, angry shouts and curses; the next moment, chairs scraped back and men ducking away
while the two principals snarled at each other, though they were just a few feet apart. They were both
gamblers of the roughest sort. “Make your move, then,” one said, and as the other went for his pistol,
the first drew his gun and shot him right in his abdomen. There was a great cloud of black powder and
the shot man was thrown back across the room by the impact, his clothes burning from the close
shooting. He bled heavily, moaned indecipherably, twitched for a minute, then lay quite dead. Some of
the others hustled the shooter out. The town marshal was summoned, but by the time he arrived, most of
the gamblers had returned to their tables, to the games that had been so recently interrupted.
It was a cold-blooded display, and the students—no doubt in shock—were relieved when they heard
the sound of music from the theater next door. When several gamblers left the tables to see the show,
they followed hurriedly along to see this next attraction.
And here, unexpectedly, William Johnson fell in love.