Bill stepped out of Nuttal & Mann’s saloon and looked both ways down the street. The camp looked abandoned. Camp, who was he kidding? Deadwood had become a town. There was movement to his right, but it was just some townies trying to get a better view of whatever action there might have been.

Bill’s hand hovered over his pistol – a ColtCo gas-driven deal he had won in a card game with a drifter. The drifter hadn’t wanted to part with it and had attempted to give Bill a demonstration of its usage, but nobody was faster than ol’ Bill. Nobody.

Yep, Deadwood was quiet. He could hear the grunts from the Chinaman’s pigs just off the main street, the chirrup of starlings in the trees to the north, the whistle-buzz-thump of the massive iron-and-brass construct that had just put a foot through an ice shed behind the tavern down the street.

“My Lord in Heaven,” Bill hissed.

It resembled a giant beetle on two legs, with Jack McCall perched at its helm. McCall laughed as a gout of flame burst from an armature.