The Back Stairs
He had received the .30–06 as a gift from his uncle. It was a fairly new model of the Springfield 1903 design, and now here he was: a short, stocky 12-year-old from Deadwood who had just passed his NRA exam without reading a word.
He spent the whole evening admiring the rifle. The gunmetal-black barrel was free of nicks or smudges. The mahogany stock featured diamond-pattern banners etched into the wood beneath the bolt action and again on the butt. Mounted on top was a 5-power Weaver scope, recently sighted in to “destroy a penny at 200 yards.” He hadn’t actually tested that claim. He knew his 178-grain trajectory was zeroed at 50 yards and accurate enough to take a deer at 220.
Leroy had cleaned the barrel three times until the room smelled of gun oil. The torn cotton scrap from an old T-shirt finally came out clean and white. Looking down the bore, the perfect rifling shone like the spiral in the opening of a James Bond movie.
“What a beautiful morning,” Leroy thought as he woke. The snow had melted from all but the deepest rock overhangs and low-lying groves. School was out; summer recess had begun.
His mother was working at the hotel/taxi office they leased from the Ayres family-hardware giants who held supply contracts with the local mines. His father was running the Taxi Restaurant on Deadwood’s Main Street. With his brother Darral still asleep, Leroy pulled on his jeans, a white T-shirt, and red suspenders, then ran out toward Kirk Road.
The road followed Whitewood Creek along the backside of Lead, paralleling the train tracks from Homestake to Deadwood. The tracks were a convenient trail. Leroy walked to the conflux where Yellow Creek joined the Whitewood. This was the spot to hang out-to tell stories of panning for gold, to fight about whose dad was stronger, or to see who could spit the farthest. On hot late-summer days, they jumped in the water, ignoring the toxic mine tailings. But today the water was still freezing snowmelt.
Leroy loved this time of year: the smell of black soil, the spring sprouts, and the wild plum blossoms. Mrs. Almander, who lived across from the Pluma school, had lilac bushes that made the whole air smell wonderfully sweet.
“Where’s Bobby?” Leroy asked the group.
“His mom gave him chores,” someone answered. “He’s stuck until he’s finished.”
“Hey, I got a new gun!” Leroy blurted out.
“Whoa!” The boys were amazed. Many of them couldn’t afford guns; some didn’t even have fathers at home to own one.
“I’m going to walk up to Lead and find Bobby.”
Leroy headed up the hill, cutting through the South Lead cemetery to Gold Street. He found Bobby in his yard, a skinny boy in brown corduroys pushing a rusty reel mower borrowed from a neighbor, Mrs. Biggs. She felt sorry for Bobby’s mother ever since the mining accident killed his father the year before.
“Put some damn clothes on! You tryin’ to blind everyone?” Leroy yelled, seeing Bobby shirtless.
Bobby laughed. “Hey, what you doin’?”
“I got a new gun. Passed my NRA test and everything. Uncle John gave it to me-it was Uncle Abraham’s before he died. C’mon! Let’s go look at it!”
Bobby dropped the mower mid-swipe. The dishes stayed in the sink; the house left a mess. He grabbed a green T-shirt, and they ran back through the cemetery.
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Back at the house, Bobby admired the rifle, opening the bolt to check the chamber. “Let’s go try it out,” he said.
“Ok, we can go to the power line clearing on the next hill.”
Leroy grabbed a box of shells. When they reached the crest, they saw a herd of deer bedding in a grove of jack-pine. Bobby saw them first. He signaled Leroy to stop, put a finger to his lips, and crept back out of sight.
“Deer,” he whispered.
Leroy hesitated. “So what?” he thought. They should just keep walking and let the deer run off. They weren’t hunting; season wasn’t until November. But Bobby held out his hand, signaling for a cartridge.
Without thinking, Leroy handed him one.
A single shot echoed through the hills. Down in the house, Darral woke with a start.
“I got him!” Bobby yelled, his heart racing.
They ran toward the grove. But when they reached the animal, the adrenaline died.
“What do we do with it?” Leroy asked. They sat in the silence for a long time.
“Let’s go get a knife,” Leroy finally decided.
Darral was eating toast when they burst back in. “I got a deer,” Bobby told him.
Leroy grabbed a hunting knife from the drawer and slid the leather sheath onto his belt. He felt like a grown-up as the three of them ran back up the hill.
When they returned to the kill, two spotted fawns were sniffing at the carcass.
“You killed their mom?” Darral started to cry.
“I didn’t know,” Bobby replied, a knot of guilt tightening in his stomach.
The boys solemnly gutted the doe. The fawns watched from a distance, uncomprehending. They dragged the deer down the hill to the house, where their older cousin, Bud, was painting the shed. Bud was eighteen and worked odd jobs for their father. He stared at the carcass, then at the dried tears on Darral’s dirty face.
“What did you guys do?”
No one answered. Bud had seen accidental mishaps before. He sighed. “Ok, here’s what we’ll do. We put the deer in the trunk. We’ll take it to the storage room on the top floor of the hotel and I’ll help you cut it up. Then we’ll haul the meat to your dad’s restaurant for chili.”
They drove to the back door of the hotel. Bud pointed toward the service entrance. “Alright, you two take it up the back steps.” He wasn’t going to be there when they explained this to Leroy’s mother. He took Darral to Lee Street for an ice cream cone instead.
The two boys struggled with the weight. Instead of taking the back stairs to the third-floor storage, they walked right past, and hauled the deer straight through the hallway, into the grand foyer.
Leroy walked backward, gripping the hindquarters, while Bobby held the front legs. The deer’s head bounced rhythmically against the floorboards as they approached the grand staircase.
At the front desk, Leroy’s mother, Edith, was checking in a new arrival-a tall, clean-cut gentleman. The man froze, staring in total shock at the two boys and their bloody prize. Edith went pale, her hands trembling as she continued to process the man’s paperwork.
The boys found out the next day that the gentleman was the new Game Warden for the Black Hills National Forest.
Originally published at https://jallie76.substack.com on April 9, 2026.
