Deadwood - HBO

dang

I can't believe they killed off Wild Bill already

 

I hear you Wossa

I'm really upset.

Now I know how my wife feels when she watches Survivor

I really don't care for Montana. Why don't they shoot his ass.

When they shot that guy in the first one, I slowed it down. Wild Bill had fire coming out of both guns while Montana was looking down and still pulling out his gun. Had Bill not shot him, that dude prob would have killed Montana.

 

Blah

 

wild bill was just the "hook". he was only in there to get you watching and now it's up to the other players. molly parker gets third billing (she's the widow) so i have to think her character is in for the long haul.

i'm enjoying it, myself. can't wait for carnival to come back. also the sopranos new season is better than last season. more action and tension, tho i could live without the family crisis shit...

 

Deadwood is kick ass

I'm really into it.

I'm trying to figure out when Wyatt Earp comes to town though.

Some shit is about to go down soon. The show is funny as hell.

 

didn't know he did? Ive missed the last two and I'm really pissed....wonder when the dvds come out?

 

there's a picture of him at www.deadwood.com

 

great show. i had no idea frontiersmen were such potty mouths.

carnivale and deadwood are the two good ones. sopranos has been really hit or miss. six feet under was crap last season. maybe it'll get better next season, but i dunno. tried watching the wire, but just couldn't get into it. maybe i'll catch it in re-runs.

 

here's another one

http://www.cityofdeadwood.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={269A8C80-9F36-4D72-A17D-DF18E23E10FF}

I've been wondering about Seth. I don't like him much, but I guess he's part of it.

Don't read the time line part at the bottom

 

Wyatt Earp spent a winter in Deadwood
Researched by Jeannine Guern

Wild Bill Hickok wasn’t the only famous gunslinger who walked down Deadwood city streets in 1876. Although they were short-term visitors, two of the fearless Earp brothers were also drawn to the gold rush camp of Dakota Territory.

Wyatt and Morgan Earp arrived in Deadwood several weeks too late to renew acquaintance with their old friend, James Butler Hickok. Wild Bill was murdered by Jack McCall in a Deadwood saloon on August 2. The Earp brothers arrived later that fall.

They left Dodge for Deadwood on September 9, 1876, in a wagon drawn by the best four-horse hitch money could buy, heading for new adventures and a possible prospecting fortune in the Black Hills.

At Sidney, Nebraska, they met up with a friend from buffalo hunting days on the Kansas prairie, Bat Masterson, who caught gold fever when news of the Deadwood strike reached Dodge in July. Resigning his position as Wyatt’s deputy in Dodge City, Bat was replaced by Morgan. The Earp brothers continued to maintain law in Dodge for another few months before they too succumbed to the lure of the latest gold rush.

When they met Bat in Sidney, he was heading back to Dodge with a pocketful of cash won at Cheyenne gaming tables. Masterson warned the Earps that Deadwood was overcrowded with prospectors. Every claim for miles around had already been staked, he told them.

“I’ve started for Deadwood and I’m going in,” insisted Wyatt. “I may strike something the rest have overlooked.”

Pointing horses northward, Wyatt and Morgan headed for the hills. After building his reputation in the wild and wooly cattle shipping towns of Kansas – Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, Wyatt swore he had washed his hands of the law enforcement business. But he might have given some thought to the possibility of being called on to tame the newest and wildest town of Dakota Territory.

The brothers arrived in Deadwood to find the situation exactly as described by Masterson, who once characterized Wyatt as “a shy young man” who did not drink liquor, “… more intelligent, better educated and far better mannered than the majority of his associates.”

“I have been with him in more than one all night session where whiskey was consumed as rapidly as drinks could be drawn from the barrel, but Wyatt did his tanking up on coffee,” said another Kansas City associate.

Deadwood gulch was jammed with prospectors, miners, promoters and fortune hunters. After looking over the situation, Morgan decided to return to Dodge before winter closed in. Wyatt, customarily a winning gambler, was confident a sober man could prospect for gold dust at the gaming tables of Deadwood saloons.

A different opportunity presented itself, however, when Wyatt realized his horses would be one of the few teams left in Deadwood that winter. The narrow gulch had no room for grazing; no farmers to put up hay. Feed prices were prohibitive and stock was driven over the mountains to winter pasturage on the flats. Wyatt recognized the approaching winter would create a big demand for fuel for wood-burning stoves. Fallen trees, the “dead wood” the gulch was named for, covered the surrounding hills, but the only means of transporting firewood to town was on the backs of enterprising Chinese or on hand-drawn sleds.

Many years later Wyatt described his winter in Deadwood for biographer Stuart N. Lake:

The man from whom I rented a stable had filed on a timbered hillside a few miles from town where he had been cutting and piling wood during the fall, expecting to sell it when winter set in. But, like the rest of the camp, he had forgotten all about transportation. I had a hunch that a fuel shortage was coming, so I tied up that wood supply with a contract to pay the owner two dollars a cord, at his property. As it was mostly deadfall, he made a fine profit. I rigged a wagon box for use on wheels or runners that would carry two cords to the load, and hired a man to help me load and throw off at two dollars a trip. Buyers did their own piling. I could haul four loads a day, sometimes five, which meant eight or ten cords daily. I sold it in Deadwood at twelve dollars a cord, cash in hand before unloading. Every haul was contracted for in advance, and many a time I have driven down the main street of the camp with men running alongside bidding twenty, thirty and even fifty dollars a cord for what I was obligated to sell at my regular price to someone to whom I had promised delivery. For special night hauls I charged stiff premiums. Once a man routed me out of my blankets for wood to keep a big poker game going until morning. He paid one hundred dollars a cord and ten dollars for my helper – the thermometer was at forty below zero that night and there was a forty-mile northwest wind howling.

I didn’t gamble much that winter. I delivered wood seven days a week and when night came I wanted to sleep. But I was young and tough, so were my horses, and we came through to spring in fine shape physically, with a profit of about five thousand dollars.



Earp said gunmen in Deadwood were as proficient as in any Western community, except possibly Tombstone. He described watching the outcome of an argument that started in the Montana Saloon between Turkey Creek Jack Johnson and two partners. In a two-against-one duel, Turkey Creek faced them off, standing in the road that ran beside the cemetery at the edge of camp. Johnson killed both men and suffered only minor flesh wounds.

When spring arrived and wood was no longer in demand, Wyatt explored the hills and confirmed that all likely looking gold claims were already staked. By June he was ready to leave Deadwood. He sold his team and went to the stage office to reserve a seat on the Cheyenne stage. Wells-Fargo Agent Gray, who saw Wyatt’s departure as an answer to his problem of safely shipping out the spring cleanup of the gold mines, posted a bulletin on the Wells-Fargo office door: