Deadwood · Season 3
I just.. I feel shunted aside or the like, not involved as much as previous.
Adams, you were busy with Star.
That you sent me off to see.
Thinking you'd be back before time for the murders.
So it wasn't like a decision you made to have the murders while I was signing the papers?
You've no idea how fuckin' badly you're boring me. [Knock at the door] Yeah?
That captain's brought over another envelope.
[To Silas] Won't you see with me what this might portend?
What's Al doing?
Like I fuckin' know.
If we was trailing water, we might get took for ducklings.
These last months have made me expert. It was gunfire, and it came from your saloon.
Has not the press a duty, Merrick, qualifying its accounts in time of war?
Are we at war now here in the camp? Has that fact been suppressed as well? Absent formal declaration, Al, information which affects this community is not my prerogative to disseminate. To do so is my sacred responsibility.
Whores currently disseminating a dose, for example?
To inform within decency's limits. We've had this discussion before.
Citizens better die postulating than touch indecent ink.
Make a list of the infected whores and account for this morning's gunfire, and I'll publish it all.
I won't, fucking Merrick, because neither's to my fucking interests. Just as you owning a print press proves only an interest in the truth, meaning up to a fucking point, slightly more than us others maybe, but short of a fucking anointing or the shouldering of a sacred burden - unless of course the print press was gift of an angel. I'd want to be there for that hand-off myself. Maybe you should print an extra saying the speeches are on again.
It's the learning fuckin' nothin', Al, that keeps me young.
A. W. Merrick, Mr. Langrishe, publisher of "The Deadwood Pioneer."
Ah! Accounting for the halo I see above you.
Shit blizzard's early today.
[describing Mrs Ellsworth to Hearst] A haughty cunt. Formerly weak for dope. Most fundamentally a sexual peccant, though I'm sworn against providing specifics.
Whatever's toward what he wants. Not a flying fuck if it's true or how fucking soaked in blood.
That talk serves no purpose.
What talk to a murderer does?
I'd not be insulted in my own rooms, Mr. Ellsworth.
Where shall we go for me to do it?
What makes you think any good will come of confronting Hearst now?
Now is when he's killing people.
What, you feel he'll leave off soon?
Tactics and timing ain't the issue.
The hell you say.
Erm, it occurs to me Al, as you and he are so evidently well-acquainted, the decent interval that Mr. Langrishe is owed to make his domestic arrangements I might spend hearing you talk of him.
Ever wonder if you expressed yourself more directly, Merrick, you might fucking weigh less?
I see no logic in that whatever.
I don't want to talk of Langrishe, he makes me fucking nervous.
A. W. Merrick, Mr. Langrishe, publisher of the Deadwood Pioneer.
Ah! Accounting for the halo I see above you.
Shit blizzard's early today.
He takes his tone with you as a familiar.
Oh, we're well-acquainted, Mr. Swearengen and I.
Mmm, new friends, old campaigners.
The infrequent bloody win.
Always superfluous, bloodshed. The deeper damage is best.
[Giving Jack a tour of the camp] The Ellsworth house, richest claim next to Hearst, that woman.
What sort of plays does she favor?
Oh, Christ, she told me and I fucking forgot. Goes through her men like Sherman to the fucking sea.
Shall I accompany as your second? My obvious unsuitability might confuse him.
Nigger General and Hostetler brung that horse back to camp that got away from ‘em and trampled the Sheriff's boy.
Is that so?
Wherever the two of them was, I guess they didn't feel their lives were in enough danger.
I did not shame myself. I keep an open mind in that area. Kid yourself about your behaviour, you'll never learn a fuckin' thing. I knew it was comin' too. Fuckin' Captain, holdin' me down. I knew what the fuck was next.
When he chopped off your finger?
He didn't chop off my finger! Hearst chopped my fuckin' finger off; the other fuck held me down! They hold you down, y-you can't get at 'em to help yourself. Fuckin' cold in here anyway, isn't it?
You want a blanket?
If I do I'll put it round me, you ain't boss of the fuckin' bedclothes! They hold you down from behind. Then you wonder why you're helpless. How the fuck could you not be?
I don't like it either.
Another one that held me down, that fuckin' Proctor when I tried to get to that ship. He fuckin' held me, fuckin' wouldn't let me go. Fuckin' in my mind, y'see, she was being restrained, couldn't get back off, that had got on the boat to fuckin' New Orleans to go suck prick in Georgia. She changed her mind, and I was bein' restrained by that fat, bastard orphanage Proctor! Anyway, that's it, that's the end of it, that's the fuckin' conclusion ... CHRIST, I'D'VE WISHED TO- [catches himself] Though probably she'd'a thrown be overboard anyway, but I'd'a wished to get to that fuckin' ship. But I was bein' restrained. I couldn't get from where she'd left me. He held me to that bed, her callin' from the ship that had changed her mind.
Dolly [quietly]: I don't like it either.
No, huh? ... What?
When they hold you down.
I guess I do that, huh, with your fuckin' hair?
No
No?... Well, bless you for a fuckin' fibber.
Where the fuck have you been?
I was looking for someone whose name you told me never to say again.
Amongst further instructions including not to look for him when he's fucking disappeared.
Well, I held off saying where I was.
I can repose no truth in someone who traffics with that type douche bag.
I don't think Hawkeye's a douche bag. [Al slaps him]
Who you believe you can salvage, Adams, is the douche bag you must avoid and no effort of yours can preclude at some point finding past help. And you yourself, being his consort in similar fucking straits. And all the energies I've poured into you gone for naught. I vow on that fucking subject, I find you dead 'cause of him I'll kick your corpse in the ear for the waste of my fucking time.
Anyways, what'd you want?
I've named you to represent me in my dealings with fucking Hearst. Tolliver too, in that connection.
Tolliver in connection with Hearst?
As he's put us in tandem, fucking Hearst.
You and Tolliver?
If I sought an echo, Adams, I'd now be addressing a fucking mountain. I'm in waters I don't know, nor soundings I can take. To bring me the knowledge I need, my second needs to seem capable of disloyalty.
If that's supposed to be a compliment, thanks.
Which is to say, being loyal he can forego loyalty's display. Like not searching out a friend who don't want to be found, just hoping he makes his way back, hmm?
How's Dan gonna take your choosing me?
That's my fucking problem to deal with.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Deadwood pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
