The tables now turned, Willie, or Nat, or Dick, plots his own revenge on the man who stole his happiness. Soon thereafter, Ruggert and two hirelings catch up with Ruggert’s long-sought quarry and exact a terrible vengeance. Cavalry, deserts his post, crosses paths with four Chinese women, loses his heart to a ratter named Win Finn, lands in Deadwood, where he’s befriended by James Butler Hickok-Wild Bill to you-and wins the shooting competition that earns him his enduring sobriquet. In short order he lights out again, changes his name to Nat Love, enlists in the U.S. But when he’s recognized one day by a chance visitor, his real adventures begin. Taking to his heels, Willie lucks into kind neighbor Tate Loving, who shelters him for several years. Although Willie escapes, his father doesn’t, nor does the family farm. Ruggert, not one to take this slur on his manhood lying down, organizes a lynching party.
What seals his fate, however, is looking the wrong way at the rear end of Sam Ruggert’s hatchet-faced third wife. Willie Jackson’s origins didn’t prophesy a future any brighter than that of most black Americans born in East Texas so soon after the War Between the States that he can still remember his years as an infant slave. How did Deadwood Dick get his name? Readers can learn this, and a whole lot more, in this picaresque Western from a master of the form ( The Thicket, 2013, etc.).
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