Gunman's Rhapsody

by Robert B. Parker

  “Do you live in town here, Mr. Earp?” Josie said.

  “Yes. My brothers and I are building some houses down around the corner on Fremont.”

  “Well, how nice,” she said. “We’re neighbors.”

  “Josie, Wyatt and I are talking a little business.”

  “Oh, Johnny, you’re always talking a little business. I like to know my neighbors. Do you live with your brothers, Mr. Earp?”

  “Virgil lives across the street,” Wyatt said. “Morgan and James live on either side.”

  “And who lives in your house, Mr. Earp, besides you?”

  “Mattie,” Earp said.

  Josie Marcus nodded slowly, her great black eyes holding on his, as if what he were saying was more interesting than she could have imagined.

  “Your wife,” Josie said.

  “More or less.”

  “Josie, if you could just stop talking for maybe a minute or so,” Behan said. “I need to ask Wyatt a couple of things.”

  Josie smiled.

  “Of course,” she said.

  Behan sighed.

  “So we was thinking, Charlie and I, that we needed a Democrat to be sheriff of Cochise County.”

  “So you said.”

  “And,” Behan grinned at Wyatt, “we was thinking that it should be me.”

  Behan paused for Wyatt to speak. Wyatt didn’t speak, and after a moment, Behan continued.

  “Thing is, you being a Republican, and a deputy sheriff and all, it might make it a little hard.”

  The room was warm and still. Wyatt could see Josie studying him as she drank coffee off to his left. She was wearing cologne, and he could smell it from where he sat.

  “Can’t say as I mind,” Wyatt said to Behan.

  “Well, no, ’course not. But if you could find your way clear to resigning in favor of me, it would put me in a nice position to be sheriff when the new county comes.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Well,” and again Behan smiled widely at Wyatt, “I might appoint you under sheriff, if I got appointed.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And if you resigned in favor of me, then Charlie wouldn’t have to fire you.”

  Watching him, Josie saw no reaction at all. He sat quietly, holding his coffee cup in both hands. Even when he drank from his coffee cup he was looking at Johnny above the rim. At the same time she knew he was aware of her. She could feel it. His attention was like the heat of a summer afternoon out here. Not emanating from someplace, but all around, enveloping. She liked the feeling.

  He sat motionless as if waiting for Johnny to finish. She could see that his silence made Johnny nervous. Many things did. Johnny was a nervous man.

  “Charlie said I should tell you that, Wyatt. Nothing personal. Just politics.”

  Wyatt drank some coffee and put the cup carefully back in its matching saucer. The cups were decorated in blue with pictures of elegant ladies on a lawn.

  “I meant what I said, about you being under sheriff.”

  Wyatt stood and turned politely to Josie Marcus.

  “Miss Marcus,” he said, “it’s been a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Earp, and a pleasure as well to meet you.”

  “I hope to see you again,” Wyatt said.

  His eyes were empty as he spoke. His face had no expression.

  Why does that sound so full of sex? she thought.

  “I’m sure you will, Mr. Earp. We’re neighbors, aren’t we?”

  “Yes,” Wyatt said. “We are.”

  “What you want me to tell Charlie, Wyatt?”

  Wyatt turned his gaze slowly onto Behan and held it.

  Then he said, “I don’t want you to tell him anything, Johnny.” And he turned and, without haste, left the house.

  Ten

  John Tyler came in out of the late-afternoon glare of August, into the slightly cooler dimness of the Oriental. The early shift was out from the Toughnut, and the room was loud with miners. Tyler was carrying a gun butt forward in front of his left hip. Wyatt was laying out his faro spread, near the back of the long room. He saw Tyler as soon as Tyler came in, and jerked his head at Blonde Marie, one of the whores waiting for business at a table near the piano. She got up and came over.

  “Go get my brother,” he said.

  “Virg?”

  “First one you see,” Wyatt said.

  “Is there going to be trouble?” Blonde Marie said.

  “Probably,” Wyatt said.

  Blonde Marie turned and walked out the front door of the saloon. A blare of sunlight splashed briefly into the saloon as the door opened and swung shut behind her. Wyatt sat quietly behind the faro table, a deck of cards in his hands. Without looking, he cut the cards with one hand and shuffled them and cut them again. He seemed idle. If Tyler saw him, he gave no sign of it. Tyler pushed his way through the miners standing two deep at the bar. He was deliberately rough about it, making no effort to avoid stepping on toes and jostling drinks. Several of the miners looked at him, but no one complained. Tyler ordered whiskey, and when it came he drank it down in a long swallow. Then he turned to a miner next to him, and put his hand flat against the man’s face and shoved. The miner staggered and fell backward, landing on the floor in a half-sitting position, catching the rest of his fall with his hands. He was a smallish man with a thick beard, his shoulders strengthened and bowed by labor underground. He seemed more startled than angry as he sat on the floor.

  “Hey,” he said.

  The miner could see the gun Tyler was carrying, and it made him careful.

  “You were in my way,” Tyler said.

  “Hell I was,” the miner said.

  He got to his feet. His hands were clenched at his sides.

  “You saying to me that I’m a liar?” Tyler said.

  “I wasn’t in your way,” the miner said. His eyes kept shifting from Tyler ’s face to Tyler ’s gun. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “And I say you were,” Tyler said. “And I say you’re in my way right now.”

  “In your way for what?”

  “You know me?” Tyler said.

  “Yeah, I know who you are.”

  “Well, I say you better get out of this saloon now, ’fore I get mad,” Tyler said.

  “I got a right to be here,” the miner said.

  “No,” Tyler said. “You don’t. Not anymore. Go drink someplace else, ’less you want really bad trouble.”

  “You got no right to push me,” the miner said.

  “Get out of here now,” Tyler said. He let his hand drift downward toward the gun. The miner’s friends began to back away, and stubborn though he was, the miner found himself stepping back.

  “I don’t have no gun,” the miner said.

  “I do,” Tyler said.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Tyler,” Wyatt said.

  He was standing just to Tyler ’s right and slightly behind him. Tyler wheeled to face him, his shoulders hunching slightly. This was no miner.

  “What do you want?” Tyler said.

  “Want you to stop causing trouble in my saloon,” Wyatt said. He seemed relaxed. His left hand hung quietly by his side. His right rested lightly on his hip, just forward of his holster.

  “Your saloon?”

  “Quarter interest.”

  “Don’t make you the owner,” Tyler said. “Joyce owns the rest.”

  “You’re in my quarter,” Wyatt said.

  The room was quiet. A wide circle had formed around the two men, and it was in continuous flux as people kept shifting to get out of the line of fire.

  “You don’t mean nothing to me, Earp.”

  “I’d like you to leave my saloon,” Wyatt said. “Now.”

  “Don’t prod me, Earp.”

  “Now,” Wyatt said.

  The silence grew tighter. The front door opened and shut. Neither Tyler nor Wyatt looked at it. Someone whispered, “Here’s Virgil.” The whisper seemed to take some of the tension out
of Tyler. His shoulders sagged.

  “That’s the way you want it, Earp,” he said and turned and started toward the door, where Virgil stood, his eyes adjusting. Tyler bent forward slightly, and his right shoulder tensed. In one smooth gesture Wyatt brought his revolver out from under his coat and hit Tyler across the back of the head with the barrel. Tyler staggered and fell forward, and the gun he’d been pulling spun ahead of him on the wood floor of the saloon. Virgil picked it up. Tyler, on his hands and knees, shook his head trying to clear it, and Wyatt stepped forward and kicked him in the side. Tyler sprawled flat. Wyatt stepped up beside him and put the big Colt against his right temple, finger on the trigger, thumb on the hammer.

  “I don’t want to see you in my saloon again, Mr. Tyler. You understand?”

  Tyler lay facedown, twisted sideways trying to ease the pain in his side. There was blood seeping through the long black hair at the back of his head. Wyatt banged the muzzle of his revolver against Tyler ’s temple.

  “You understand?”

  “Yes,” Tyler said hoarsely.

  “Good,” Wyatt said. “Now get out of my saloon.”

  Tyler tried to get up, and collapsed back down to his knees. Virgil stuck Tyler ’s Colt in the pocket of his coat and stepped forward and got hold of the back of Tyler ’s coat collar, and dragged Tyler to his feet. Wyatt holstered his revolver, then walked past Virgil and opened the front door and held it. The hot light poured in, bringing in with it the strong smell of dust and horses. Virgil half walked, half dragged Tyler into the street. Wyatt closed the door behind them and the room was dim again. He went back to his faro table and examined the layout carefully to make sure it was orderly. At the bar the miners began to talk again. And within moments the surface of saloon life had closed, unruffled, over the incident.

  Eleven

  It was early September before Wyatt talked with Josie Marcus again. He met her on Fremont Street outside Ward’s Market. She was carrying a brown paper bag of groceries.

  “May I carry that for you?” Wyatt said.

  “Yes you may,” Josie said. “And thank you very much, Mr. Earp.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d call me Wyatt.”

  “If you’ll call me Josie.”

  “Fair swap,” Wyatt said. “How’ve you been enjoying Tombstone, Josie?”

  “Well, it certainly is lively, Wyatt.”

  They both laughed at the self-conscious exchange of first names.

  “Johnny talks about you a lot,” Josie said. “He’s worried about getting to be sheriff.”

  “How about you, Josie?”

  She laughed.

  “I don’t want to be sheriff.”

  Wyatt smiled. He looked to her like someone who didn’t smile easily or often, so when the smile came it was valuable.

  “Would you like it if Johnny were?”

  “Johnny says it’s a good-paying job.”

  “I hear it is.”

  “Then I guess I would like it if Johnny were sheriff.”

  “Nothing wrong with money,” Wyatt said.

  “I know,” Josie said. “My father has money.”

  Wyatt was quiet for a time as they stood on the corner of Fourth Street, outside the post office, waiting for a freight wagon to pass, the six big draft horses leaning their mass into the harness.

  “You’re from San Francisco,” Wyatt said.

  “Yes.”

  “And your father has money.”

  “Yes. Quite a lot.”

  “So why are you here?”

  She smiled up at him. Her mouth was wide. Mattie had a thin mouth that turned down at the corners.

  “Looking for adventure,” she said.

  “With Behan?”

  She laughed out loud this time.

  “Wyatt, you’re speaking of my fiancé,” she said.

  “I know. I apologize,” he said. “But I never thought Behan was much for adventure.”

  “Well, maybe,” Josie said. “He’s been a law officer, you know. In Prescott.”

  Wyatt nodded.

  “That’s adventurous, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The wagon pulled past. They waited a moment for the dust to settle, and then crossed Fourth Street.

  “You’ve been a law officer in a lot of places.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I have.”

  Her face was sort of heart-shaped, and her eyes were very large and dark and seemed bottomless to him. When she talked she had none of Mattie’s Iowa whine in her voice. In fact, you couldn’t tell where she came from by the way she talked. She sounded educated to Wyatt, and the way he assumed upper class would sound. He wasn’t sure he’d ever met anybody upper class before. Certainly he’d had little to do with the daughters of rich men.

  “My brother Virgil was a constable in Prescott,” he said. “I did some teamstering up there for a while.”

  “Did you or your brother know Johnny?”

  “No.”

  They were quiet then. Walking side by side, Wyatt carrying the groceries, they could have been a domestic couple strolling home from the store.

  “I heard you buffaloed John Tyler a while back in the Oriental,” Josie said.

  “He was making trouble.”

  “Everyone says he’s really dangerous.”

  Wyatt smiled.

  “Maybe they’re wrong,” he said.

  She nodded as if to herself, and tilted her head so she could study him as he walked beside her. Outside of Bauer’s butcher shop, across the street from the Tombstone Epitaph, Josie stopped. Wyatt stopped with her. She put her hands on her hips and examined his face for a moment. Whatever she was looking for there, she seemed to find.

  “You’d be an adventure,” she said.

  “You think so?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s why Johnny worries about you.”

  “Because I’m an adventure?”

  “Because everything’s inside,” she said. “Everything’s under control. You don’t hate and you don’t love and you don’t get mad and you don’t get scared. You are a dangerous man, the real thing.”

  “Maybe I’m not so much like that as you think,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m sure you have feelings,” she said. “But they don’t run you.”

  “They might,” Wyatt said. “If they was strong enough.”

  “Lord, God,” she said. “That would be something to see.”

  “It would?”

  “It would,” Josie said. “Then you would really be dangerous.”

  Wyatt didn’t comment. And they continued down Fremont Street, past the Harwood House toward Third Street, walking quietly, feeling no discomfort in their silence.

  Twelve

  Mattie had gone to bed already when Allie Earp came into Wyatt’s front room without knocking.

  “Virgil wants you up on Allen Street, Wyatt. Some cowboys are shooting at the moon, and Marshal White and Virgil have gone up there.”

  Wyatt took his Colt revolver from the top of the sideboard, looked to see that it was loaded, and headed out the door without saying anything. It was near the end of October and nights had grown cool in the desert. But the air was still, and Wyatt didn’t mind being coatless. The moon was high and clear and nearly full as he hurried up Fremont Street, and then up Fourth to Allen. The street was full of people. One of the bartenders was standing outside Hafford’s Saloon looking up toward the east end of Allen.

  “Up there, Wyatt,” he said. “ Sixth Street.”

  Wyatt kept going. Several other men on the street recognized him and pointed east. From the corner of Sixth Street, Wyatt could see his brother and Fred White halfway down the block toward Toughnut Street, near where Morgan was rooming for a time with Fred Dodge. They were walking toward a group of cowboys. Wyatt walked after them. As Virgil and the city marshal approached, the group scattered, heading into the darkness among the cribs east of Sixth. One man stayed, facing Virgil and Fred White, a big man, hatless, wit
h a lot of curly black hair. He had his pistol out. As Virgil and White approached the cowboy, Virgil separated away from White, stepping into the street and coming at the cowboy from his right, while White came at him straight on.

  “Evening’s over, Bill,” White said, and put out his hand.

  The cowboy moved the gun toward White, and Virgil came in from his right side and locked his arms around him.

  White said, “Gimme the gun, Bill.”

  There was a single gunshot, and White staggered backward. Wyatt reached them as the shot sounded, and he slammed his big Colt against the side of the cowboy’s head. The cowboy sagged, and his gun fell to the ground. White was down. The gunshot at close range had set his shirt on fire, and Morgan, who had rushed out of Fred Dodge’s cabin at the sound of the shots, dropped to his knees to pat it out with his hands. When he was finished his hands were bloody.

  “Fred’s shot,” he said.

  Wyatt looked closely at the dazed cowboy that Virgil still held in a bear hug.

  “Curley Bill,” Wyatt said. “You sonova bitch.”

  “Gun went off,” Curley Bill said.

  “He ain’t lying,” Fred White said, lying quietly on the ground. “I could see he didn’t pull the trigger.”

  Still kneeling beside White, Morgan picked up Curley Bill’s gun and handed it up to Wyatt.

  “Go get some help for Fred,” Virgil said. “Can you stand by yourself, Bill?”

  Curley Bill said he could, and Virgil let him go. Fred Dodge, who had come out of his cabin behind Morgan, started up the street on the run for Dr. Goodfellow.

  “Five rounds still in the cylinder,” Wyatt said to Virgil, looking at Curley Bill’s gun.

  He opened the cylinder and worked the hammer.

  “Looks to me like he’s got the trigger sear filed so he can fan it.”

  “No wonder it went off,” Virgil said. “Where you shot, Fred?”

  “Gut shot, Virgil.”

  None of the Earps said anything. They all knew the news was bad.

  “Bill Brocius,” Wyatt said. “I got to arrest you for shooting City Marshal Fred White.”

  “Virgil hadn’t ’a grabbed me, it wouldn’t ’a happened.”