Gunman's Rhapsody

by Robert B. Parker

  “Maybe,” Wyatt said. “Still got to arrest you.”

  He put his hand on Curley Bill’s arm. As he did so, gunfire came from one of the arroyos behind the cribs east of Sixth. Bullets thudded into the house behind them. All three Earps turned, and shot into the darkness. After the gunfire, the silence was intense. No more shots were fired from the arroyo.

  “Go see if we hit something,” Virgil said. And Morgan headed into the arroyo as Dr. Goodfellow rounded the corner at Allen Street and walked briskly toward them carrying his medical bag. His assistant followed, carrying a folded canvas stretcher. Morgan’s voice came from the darkness.

  “Nothing here, Virg.”

  Morgan came back from the arroyo, his pistol holstered. He had to push his way through the crowd that had gathered once the shooting stopped. Goodfellow arrived and dropped to his knees beside Fred White. The pool of blood under White had spread.

  “Gut shot, Doc, down here.”

  Goodfellow unbuttoned White’s pants and felt under White’s shirt. He shook his head. The crowd was very quiet. The sound of Goodfellow’s long inhale was loud in the silence.

  “Not good, Fred.”

  “I know,” White said.

  A kind of audible sigh went through the crowd.

  “I had five rounds left in my gun,” Curley Bill said. “The sixth round went into the marshal. So how could I have been shooting up the street?”

  “Maybe you didn’t,” Virgil said. “Or maybe you reloaded.”

  Someone in the crowd said, “The bastard admits he shot Fred.”

  The crowd moved in closer to the small group in the center.

  “You and Morgan better take the prisoner to jail,” Virgil said. “I’ll be along soon as we see to Fred.”

  Wyatt nodded at Morgan and, one on each side, they walked Curley Bill through the crowd down Sixth to Toughnut Street where the jail stood on the corner. People moved out of the way sullenly, but no one impeded them. Several members of the crowd followed them silently to the jail and stood outside after they went in. Wyatt and Morgan both armed themselves with shotguns, but nothing came of the crowd, and by the time Virgil arrived it had dispersed.

  Thirteen

  It took Fred White two days to die calmly of peritonitis. Wyatt and Mattie walked alone back from the funeral in the early afternoon, on a bright fall day with no wind and the Dragoon Mountains clear and sharp against the cloudless sky northeast of Tombstone.

  “They appointed a new city marshal?” Mattie said.

  She rested her hand lightly on Wyatt’s crooked arm as they walked.

  “Virgil, sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Made him assistant marshal,” Wyatt said, “but since there’s no marshal he’s actually the one.”

  “Why not just make him city marshal, then?”

  Wyatt shrugged.

  “Too many Rebs in the council,” Wyatt said. “They needed someone quick, ’fore the cowboys moved in and rawhided the town, and Virgil’s the man for the job. But the Rebs don’t want to give it permanent to a Republican.”

  “So they sort of half did it,” Mattie said.

  “Just till the special election,” Wyatt said.

  “Won’t Virgil have a head start, though?” Mattie said. “Being as he’s already in the job?”

  “Maybe.”

  They paused at the foot of Fremont Street and looked back at the cemetery on the top of the small rise where Fred White was.

  “I’m glad you weren’t hurt,” Mattie said.

  Wyatt nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “I know you are.”

  “You don’t seem much to care about me anymore,” Mattie said. “But I care about you, Wyatt.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t,” Mattie said, “do you?”

  “Care about you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You use my name. I support you. I don’t embarrass you, running to the whores all the time.”

  “I know. You’re good that way, Wyatt. You do your duty. But you don’t love me, do you?”

  Wyatt was silent for a while, looking across at Boot Hill and at the long empty sweep of hard country beyond it.

  “No, I guess I don’t,” he said.

  “Then why in hell did you take up with me, if you didn’t love me?”

  Again Wyatt was silent for a time, looking out at the barren land.

  “God, Mattie, I don’t know. I guess it was Jim had a woman and Virgil had a woman, and it was time for me to have a woman.”

  “And I was there,” she said.

  Wyatt nodded slowly.

  “That’s about the truth of it, Mattie.”

  Mattie’s head dropped and her shoulders shook, but she made no sound.

  “I’m sorry, Mattie, I really am.”

  She didn’t look up or speak. She turned, with her head still down and her shoulders still shaking, and walked away from him, toward the front door of the house they shared. Wyatt watched her go. He wished he loved her. He wished he could even like her. But he didn’t love her and he couldn’t seem to like her. At best, he realized, all he could do was feel sorry.

  “Goddamn,” he said out loud.

  But there was no one to hear him, and so he stood alone and silent in the still day, under the high blue sky, and looked at the door that Mattie had closed behind her, and thought of Josie Marcus.

  Fourteen

  Josie wasn’t like any women he knew, Wyatt thought as he sat with her and Johnny Behan in their front room. She sat in on business. Allie was full of opinions on what Virgil ought to do. Even Mattie sometimes had suggestions and asked questions. But it was in private, at home, and when the business was to be decided the men went to a saloon and decided it. Josie acted like a man. As if business were as much hers as Behan’s. He admired it in her, though he knew that if Mattie acted that way, he would be angry. He felt a small, sad amusement at his unfairness.

  “You been thinking any on what we talked about, Wyatt?” Behan said.

  “No.”

  “Well, damn it, Wyatt, I wish you would,” Behan said. “If you resign as deputy, Charlie will appoint me, and I can show John Fremont that I’ve got experience as a lawman when they make the new county. I get to be sheriff. I make you under sheriff. I handle the civil part. You handle the criminal part, and we split the fees.”

  “ Fremont ’s a Republican,” Wyatt said. “Maybe I should try for sheriff. Put my brothers on as deputies, keep all the fees.”

  “You can’t get appointed. The governor may be Republican, but the county is all mostly Democrats,” Behan said. “Ain’t a cowboy alive going to sit still for having an Earp appointed sheriff.”

  When he was talking politics, Wyatt noticed, Behan’s voice was much firmer.

  “Johnny makes a good point,” Josie said. “It’s pretty certain you couldn’t get the job, nor Virgil, nor Morgan.”

  “But Fremont would appoint for Johnny,” Wyatt said.

  “Yes. He’s close to Fremont. He’s quite close to the cowboys.”

  Behan was quiet, watching Josie and Wyatt. Johnny’s not stupid, Wyatt thought. He knows she’s making more progress than he is. Johnny was a vain man, but it was interesting to see that vanity didn’t run him.

  “Close to Curley Bill?”

  “I got no problem with Brocius,” Behan said.

  “Got a problem with him killing Fred White?”

  “He was acquitted of that,” Josie said.

  “Fred’s dead,” Wyatt said.

  “Even Marshal White said it was an accident.”

  Wyatt knew he had said that, and maybe it was. But it wasn’t an accident that Curley Bill had his gun out, and it wasn’t an accident that he pointed it at Fred White. Wyatt was looking directly into Josie’s eyes and she back at him, and he could feel them dissolve into each other like two streams merging. He held her look and felt almost as if they had coupled. He didn’t say anything.

  “It’s no sin
in politics,” Josie said, after what seemed to Wyatt a long silence, “to be close to all sorts of people.”

  “Maybe there is no sin in politics,” Wyatt said.

  “If you feel that way,” Josie said, “then you wouldn’t want to try for sheriff anyway.”

  Her face was intense. Intelligence flickered in her eyes like heat lightning. Behan watched them closely. Could he feel it? Wyatt wondered. Johnny didn’t miss a lot. Maybe Johnny felt it, and saw it and was trying to use it. Was she? No. She wasn’t. He found that he was smiling.

  “Maybe you should try, Josie,” he said.

  “If I thought I could win, I might,” Josie said. “But I can’t win, and neither can you, Wyatt. Johnny can win, and if he wins you win too. And I win. We all win. Besides, if I were sheriff, I’d have to smoke a smelly cigar and wear a big, ugly gun.”

  “That’d be a sight,” Behan said.

  All of them laughed.

  “Do it, Wyatt,” Josie said, “step aside. For Johnny, for yourself, for me. It’s the right thing.”

  She was like a terrier after a rat, he thought. And very beautiful.

  “Sure,” Wyatt said. “I’ll do it today.”

  “By God, Wyatt, that’s the way,” Behan said. “And you’ve got my word on the rest of it. I’ll keep my part of the bargain.”

  “How about my brothers?” Wyatt said.

  Behan didn’t hesitate.

  “Certainly,” Behan said. “It’s going to be a big county. There will be enough for everybody.”

  He put out his hand, and Wyatt, still looking at Josie, shook it briefly. Behan smiled with pleasure and thought about what he’d said, and liked it so much that he said it again.

  “There will be enough for everybody. Everybody.”

  Behan was probably lying, Wyatt thought, still looking at Josie. Johnny didn’t always mean what he said, and sometimes he didn’t even know he didn’t. But Wyatt didn’t care. Wyatt knew why he had agreed to it. Later that day, he wrote a one-line letter of resignation: “I have the honor herewith to resign the office of deputy sheriff of Pima County.”

  Fifteen

  Allie was cooking bacon and biscuits for all of them.

  “How could anybody vote for Ben Sippy ’stead of you, Virgil?” she said.

  Virgil drank some coffee, and put the cup down and wiped his mustache.

  “Ben Sippy’s a good man,” he said.

  “Not as good as you,” she said.

  Allie put a plate of biscuits on the table and began to fork thick slices of bacon out of the frying pan onto another platter. Virgil took a biscuit.

  “Don’t matter whether he’s any good or not,” Wyatt said. “Vote was three hundred eleven for Ben, two hundred nine for Virgil. It’s done.”

  Allie put the bacon on the table.

  “And Wyatt ain’t deputy anymore, and Morgan plays pool more than he works.”

  Morgan took a piece of bacon in his fingers and ate it.

  “And damn it, use a fork and knife at my table,” Allie said.

  Morgan grinned at her.

  “You cook too good, Allie. I can’t take the time.”

  She pretended to hit him with her big serving fork.

  “So what are we going to do, Virgil?”

  “Right now we’re going to eat breakfast,” Virgil said.

  “I can see that,” Allie said. “But I want to know what we’re going to do for money.”

  “Make some more biscuits, Allie.”

  “You ain’t finished them.”

  “But we will,” Virgil said, “and then we’ll want some more.”

  Virgil’s voice didn’t change, but Allie stopped talking and began to cut flour and lard together. She knew how far Virgil could be pushed. Which was farther by her than by anyone else. She wasn’t afraid of his anger. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her. But she loved him, and she didn’t want to make him mad.

  The men were quiet for a while, eating.

  Then Morgan said, “So how come you resigned, Wyatt?”

  Wyatt finished his coffee, and Allie brought the pot over from the stove and poured him some more. It was November and overcast. There was a wind coming off of the Dragoon Mountains to the east, and it drove a fine rattle of grit against the back windows of the kitchen.

  “They’re going to break up Pima County,” Wyatt said. “Make a new county with Tombstone in the middle of it. Means there’s going to be a lot of politics going on, and I kind of wanted to stop working for a Democrat before that happened.”

  “You think Bob Paul will make a run for sheriff?” Morgan asked.

  “I think he will, and he’s a Republican and we should be supporting him. Won’t hurt us with John Clum either.”

  Virgil nodded.

  “And that quarter interest in the Oriental is bringing in some profit,” he said. “And the five hundred leasing our share of the Comstock mine to Emmanuel. And we got the north extension of the Mountain Maid claim.”

  Wyatt knew all of this, and so did Morgan. They knew that was for Allie’s benefit. All three of them knew, also, that the share of the Oriental and the lease on the Comstock share were Wyatt’s. But the brothers never distinguished ownership among themselves. And all three of them knew that. And so did Allie, who appeared to be totally absorbed in rolling out the biscuits.

  “Still, you being deputy sheriff might have been helpful,” Virgil said.

  Wyatt said nothing.

  “John Clum likes you,” Virgil said. “Says he wants a two-gun man for sheriff. I know he’s talking to Fremont about you.”

  “He can talk to Fremont whether I’m deputy sheriff or not,” Wyatt said.

  Virgil stirred sugar into his coffee, nodding his head slowly while he did it.

  “True,” he said.

  They were quiet again. Allie brought the new batch of biscuits to the table. The men ate. Virgil looked at Wyatt thoughtfully.

  But all he said was, “That new woman of Behan’s is pretty good-looking.”

  “Can’t say what she sees in Johnny,” Morgan said.

  “From San Francisco,” Virgil said. “Heard her father’s got money. Heard he bought that house for her and Behan.”

  “So what’s she see in Behan?”

  “No accounting for the man a woman’ll take up with,” Virgil said.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Allie said from the stove.

  And Virgil reached over and gave her a slap on the backside. He and Morgan laughed, and Wyatt smiled a little and ate another biscuit.

  Sixteen

  It was early evening after dark. Wyatt was with Morgan in the Wells Fargo office. Wyatt, in from Bisbee, and Morgan, from Benson, were standing by with their shotguns while the strongbox was opened and the money locked in the safe.

  Virgil came into the office with a boy, maybe nineteen. The boy looked frantic.

  “Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce,” Virgil said, nodding at the boy. “Shot a man in Charleston, they want to lynch him.”

  The Wells Fargo clerk swung the door shut on the big black safe and straightened up.

  “You can’t keep him here,” the clerk said.

  None of the three brothers looked at him.

  “Who’d he shoot?” Wyatt said.

  “Mining engineer named Schneider.”

  “Hell, I know him,” Morgan said. “He manages the smelter over in San Pedro.”

  “Well, now he don’t,” Virgil said.

  “You gotta hide me,” Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce said. “They’re gonna kill me.” His eyes were damp as if he had been crying, and his voice sounded thick.

  “No,” Virgil said. “They ain’t going to kill you.”

  “You got to get him out of this office,” the clerk said.

  “We’ll take him across to Vronan’s,” Virgil said. “Jim’s there. Morgan, you go down and tell Ben Sippy where we are. Have him bring Behan and anybody else he can get, and meet us there. Tell them to bring a buggy.”

  “You see Doc,” Wy
att said, “bring him along.”

  Morgan nodded. He gave Virgil his shotgun and left, running.

  “We don’t need Doc,” Virgil said.

  “Good gun,” Wyatt said.

  Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce was crying again.

  “They’re gonna find me,” he sobbed. “We can’t stay here. They’re gonna find me.”

  Without looking at him, Virgil patted Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce on the shoulder.

  “Get him outta here now,” the Wells Fargo clerk said. “I don’t want to have to report you to the regional manager.”

  “He’s a good gun,” Virgil said. “But he’s crazy.”

  “That’s right, and it scares hell out of the kind of citizens who might want to string up Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce.”

  “You got a point,” Virgil said. “C’mon.”

  He put an arm around Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce and turned him toward the door.

  “I ain’t going out first,” Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce said.

  Tears were running down his face.

  “Wyatt’ll go first,” Virgil said.

  “You crying when you jerked on Schneider?” Wyatt said.

  Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce cried harder. Wyatt shook his head and went out the front door onto Allen Street with his shotgun. His left arm around Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce, and Morgan’s shotgun in his right hand, Virgil followed him. Up Allen Street at the east end of town, a group of miners was gathered. Both Wyatt and Virgil walked with the shotguns by their side, muzzle down and aiming at the ground. The miners saw them. A guttural mass murmur came from the miners, and one voice above the rest said, “There he is.”

  Virgil and Wyatt kept walking across Allen. Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce would have run, but Virgil’s grip on his shoulders kept him in check.

  “Walk easy,” Virgil said.

  “Like dogs,” Wyatt said to Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce. “You run, they’ll chase you.”

  Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce continued to sob. He was much shorter than Virgil and slight. And he was shaking with fear.

  “Where’d you get him?” Wyatt said.

  “Constable from Charleston, tall skinny fella, big Adam’s apple, I can’t remember his name, was trying to get him out of town ahead of the mob. I was out on the Charlestown Road running the stallion, and the constable recognizes me and says, ‘You got a fast horse, you take him into Tombstone.’ So I put him up behind me, and here we come.”