Gunman's Rhapsody

by Robert B. Parker

  “What you boys want?” he said.

  “Benson stage got held up,” Behan said. “Bud Philpot got killed. We tracked ’em here.”

  “I got nothing to do with no stage holdup,” Redfield said.

  “Got two horses in the barn,” Behan said. “Been rode hard, and recent.”

  Virgil said, “Why don’t we just take a look, John?”

  Behan nodded.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  Wyatt’s horse pricked his ears up and forward. Wyatt heard it too, behind the house. He moved the horse forward and around the corner of the house. Bent low as if to conceal himself, a man was running for the brush cover, trying to keep the house between him and the posse. Wyatt’s horse shifted into a trot, and Wyatt caught up with the man and passed him and turned the horse in front of him. Morgan came around the other side of the house on the dapple gray mare he was so proud of. As the man broke the other way, Wyatt turned him again and, with Morgan on the other side, slowly herded him, his desperate dashes becoming shorter and more breathless, back out in front of the house until he stood exhausted in front of the posse.

  “You know him?” Behan said.

  Redfield didn’t speak.

  “What’s your name?” Behan said.

  The man’s breath was rasping loudly in and out. Behan had to ask him again.

  “Luther…” he said. “… King.”

  “I’m Sheriff Behan,” Johnny said. “I’m head of this posse, and we’re looking for the people held up the Benson stage.”

  “I… didn’t… have… nothing… to do… with that,” King gasped.

  “What you doing, sneaking out the back way?”

  “I didn’t do nothing but hold the horses,” King said. “That’s all. Just holding the horses. I didn’t know there’d be no shooting.”

  Redfield stood motionless on his porch, his arms folded tight over his chest. The horsemen sat quietly in a semicircle around King so that he had to look up to look at them. Behan sat his big white-stockinged bay gelding directly in front of King.

  “Who’d you hold the horses for?” Behan said.

  “I can’t tell you that,” King said. “You know I can’t peach on my friends like that.”

  Bob Paul leaned forward in his saddle, his forearms resting on the pommel.

  “You know who this man is, Luther?” He nodded toward Holliday.

  King shook his head.

  “This is Doc Holliday. You know who Doc Holliday is, Luther?”

  “Yes.”

  Holliday sat motionless on his horse and stared at King.

  “You wonder why Doc Holliday is on a posse, him not being too much of a lawman usually?”

  Behan smiled. Several of the riders laughed audibly. King shook his head.

  “He’s here on a mission of vengeance,” Paul said. “His beloved Katy was on that stage, and somebody shot her.”

  “I didn’t do no shooting,” King said. “I just held the horses.”

  He looked down, and away from Holliday.

  “Then you better tell me who done the shooting,” Holliday said. His voice was hoarse and there was no inflection to it.

  “I can’t,” King said.

  Holliday lowered the shotgun slowly toward him.

  “Somebody’s going to die for Kate,” Holliday rasped.

  “For God’s sake, man,” Virgil said. “For your own sake, tell him.”

  “Who?” Holliday said.

  Tears began to well in King’s eyes.

  “Billy Leonard,” King blurted, his voice thick. “And Harry Head and Jim Crane. I just held the horses. I didn’t see nothing. I didn’t do nothing.”

  “Rustlers,” Wyatt said.

  “Where are they now?” Holliday rasped.

  “They lit out. Head disappeared soon as the shooting started. Billy and Jim, they changed horses here, rode west across the river, going like hell.”

  “Lenny rides with the rustlers too,” Wyatt said. “Him and his brother.”

  “Got nothing on Len,” Behan said. “He had no way of knowing. He just traded some horses.”

  “And tried to let Luther here get away,” Wyatt said.

  “Appreciate your help on this, Wyatt, but I’m the sheriff, and you’re just along to help shoot, you know what I mean.”

  Wyatt looked at Virgil, and both men smiled in a way that Behan didn’t understand, though he knew he didn’t like it.

  “We’ll take Luther back to Tombstone,” Behan said. “Rest of you can follow on, see if you can’t run down these other fellas.”

  “Behan and all his deputies?” Wyatt said.

  “Under heavy guard,” Virgil murmured.

  “I’m sorry about your wife, Mr. Holliday,” Luther said.

  Doc grinned at him. “Kate ain’t my wife,” he said. “She wasn’t on the stage. She didn’t get shot, and if she had, I wouldn’t care.”

  King looked as if he, Holliday, had said too much too fast, but Doc was already turning his horse, the shotgun back in the saddle scabbard under his leg. His shoulders shook. It might have been laughter, Wyatt knew. Or he might have been coughing.

  Twenty-one

  Propped against his saddle, Holliday wrote by firelight in a small notebook.

  “You writing about our thrilling adventures, Doc?” Wyatt said. “Sell it to one of those magazines in New York City.”

  “I’m writing a letter to my cousin,” Holliday said.

  “You got a cousin can read?” Morgan said.

  “This one can,” Holliday said. “She’s a nun.”

  “Goddamn,” Morgan said. “A nun? You a papist, Doc?”

  “She is,” Holliday said. “And I don’t want to hear anything about it.”

  Morgan shrugged. There was a thin rasp in Holliday’s voice that Morgan recognized. Doc sure did have a hair trigger.

  “You telling her about us heroic lawmen?”

  Doc snorted.

  “I’m telling her that I’ll mail this tomorrow because I’m hauling my sore ass back into Tombstone,” he said, “instead of chasing around in these mountains like a goddamned fool.”

  “Quitting, Doc?” Virgil said.

  “You’re goddamned right I am,” Doc said. “We ain’t going to catch Billy Leonard or anybody else riding around these mountains. I’m going back and wait for them to show up.”

  “He’s right,” Masterson said. “I’m a little saddle sore myself.”

  “You’re getting soft, Bat,” Wyatt said.

  “I’m getting smart,” Masterson said. “We’re just in the foothills and we’re low on food. You want to wander around out here, until you run out altogether, God bless you. I’m going to get a bath and a hot meal and maybe a whore.”

  “We’ll resupply at Joe Hill’s ranch,” Virgil said.

  “Resupply my ass,” Holliday said. “Hill’s in with the rustlers as much as Len Redfield.”

  “Sure,” Wyatt said. “But he’ll sell us food.”

  “I’m going back with Doc,” Masterson said and rolled over in his blankets, with his back to the fire.

  “Free country,” Virgil said.

  One by one, the posse dropped off to sleep, leaving only Holliday still sitting up by the fire writing in his notebook. The next morning, he and Masterson saddled up right after breakfast and rode their tired horses at an easy pace west toward Tombstone.

  Two days later, Johnny Behan, with Billy Breakenridge and Buckskin Frank Leslie to track, caught up with the Earp posse in the valley of the San Simon River near the New Mexico border.

  “King busted out,” Breakenridge told them, laughing, while Behan was ahead with Leslie looking for sign. “Henry Jones was drawing up a bill of sale for King’s horse to John Dunbar, and King went out the back door, mounted up and rode away.”

  “Who had him?” Virgil asked.

  “Harry Woods,” Breakenridge said. “Standing right there.”

  “Amazing that Harry didn’t see him go,” Virgil said.
/>   “Amazing,” Breakenridge said.

  “Amazing that a horse happened to be saddled out back,” Virgil said.

  “Amazing.”

  “We’ll be out awhile,” Virgil said. “Somebody ought to go back and look for King.”

  He looked at Breakenridge.

  “Billy?”

  Breakenridge shook his head.

  “I’m with Johnny,” he said.

  “Why not Johnny?” Morgan said. “He’s the damn sheriff.”

  Virgil smiled and shook his head without saying anything.

  “Johnny won’t go,” Wyatt said.

  “It should be you, Wyatt,” Virgil said. “You’re the best of us anyway.”

  Wyatt nodded.

  “How long you planning to be out?”

  Virgil shrugged.

  “A week if we’re lucky, maybe more. See what Johnny says.”

  “He’s talking ’bout a week,” Breakenridge said.

  “Luther’s got a two-day start on me, three at least by the time I get to Tombstone.”

  “What I don’t want,” Virgil said, “is for Luther to be swaggering around town making us look like a bunch of goddamned jackasses.”

  Wyatt nodded.

  “If he’s around town,” Wyatt said, “I’ll make sure he don’t swagger.”

  He and Virgil grinned at each other. Then Wyatt turned his horse and rode slowly away, toward Tombstone, thinking about Josie Marcus. There was nothing new in that. He thought about Josie Marcus most of the time.

  “A week,” he said to the chestnut gelding he was riding. The horse’s ears moved slightly. “A goddamned week.”

  Twenty-two

  Wearing a freshly laundered shirt, bathed and clean-shaven and smelling of bay rum, Wyatt knocked on Josie Marcus’s door on a pleasant March evening, just getting dark and lyrical with the sound of desert bird-song.

  “Wyatt,” she said.

  “Evening, Josie.”

  “I thought you were with the posse.”

  “Posse’s still out,” Wyatt said. “I came back to see about Luther King.”

  Josie smiled.

  “He’s not here,” she said.

  “Neither is Johnny,” Wyatt said.

  “Why, so he isn’t,” she said, and smiled. “May I come in?”

  “Yes,” Josie said. “You may.”

  She stepped aside and held the door, and he took off his hat and walked into the small living room that looked out onto Third Street.

  “Would you like coffee?” she said.

  “Yes, please,” Wyatt said.

  He waited while she went into the kitchen and made the coffee. The room was silent. Third Street was far enough from the center of town so that there was no street sound, except the occasional sound of a horse going slowly by. There were flowers in a pottery vase on the table by the window.

  Josie returned with two cups of coffee in saucers on a small wooden tray. She handed one cup and saucer to Wyatt.

  “Won’t you sit?” she said, and nodded toward a straight-backed wooden chair with curved arms and an upholstered back, which must have been freighted in from San Francisco.

  He sat, carefully so as not to spill the coffee.

  “Have you had any luck finding Luther King?” she asked.

  Wyatt smiled.

  “Luther’s probably in Mexico by now,” Wyatt said.

  “I see. Will you be rejoining the posse?”

  Again Wyatt smiled.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think I will.”

  “Do you know when they’ll be back?”

  “Be out another week for sure,” Wyatt said.

  This time it was Josie who smiled.

  “Did you really come back to look for Luther King?” Josie said.

  “If I’d seen him, I’d have collared him.”

  “But you didn’t, and now you’re here,” Josie said. “Did you plan to collar me?”

  Wyatt drank coffee, and put the cup back down carefully in the saucer, and looked up at her. His face was serious.

  “Well, yes,” he said. “In a manner of speaking.”

  There was a little more color in Josie’s face, he thought, and maybe she was breathing a little quicker, but it was hard to see because it was nearly dark out and Josie had not lit a lamp. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she stood and picked up the two cups and saucers and put them on the tray and carried them without a word into the kitchen. He heard her put the tray on the kitchen table. Then she came back into the room, walking quite briskly. He stood, afraid she was going to show him the door, but she didn’t. She walked right up to him and put her body against his and raised her face and said in the softest voice imaginable, “I’ll go peacefully.”

  In the bedroom it was a blur of discarded clothing and tangled bedclothes, the smell of soap and perfume, the feel of her mouth, her body arching, hair, hands, thighs, the sound of her breathing, the sound of her voice, urgency, tension, strength, submission. Wyatt had been with women everywhere he went. He had never been with a woman like this. When it was over he lay as if stunned beside her on the bed in the now-dark room. Her head leaned against his chest.

  “Mother of God,” he said.

  She moved her head on his chest and said nothing. He lay without thinking, still in the high wash of emotion slow to recede. A team went past on Third Street. He heard the creak of harness and the sound of the horses. He felt as if he had walked through a passage into a country he’d never seen, and from which he could never return.

  “It is all different now,” he said.

  She moved her head again, only a little, on his chest. Slowly thought came back. Would it always be like this? Probably not. But it could always be good. Was it like this with Behan? No. What about Mattie?

  “So what do we do, Josie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We have to be together.”

  “Yes.”

  And there it was. His life, which had been one thing this morning, was another thing tonight. She had to do something about Behan. He had to do something about Mattie. Mattie would be hurt. Behan would be angry. Maybe there’d be trouble. But that was only incidental. The shape of his future was now set; he knew in ways he could never articulate, could never understand or even think about, that the possibility which had begun to assemble when he’d first seen her face in Pinafore on Wheels, perhaps the only insubstantial possibility that he had ever allowed himself to entertain, had coalesced in this moment of frantic unification, and become no longer possibility, but the singular determinant of the rest of his life.

  “It’ll stir up a lot of trouble,” Wyatt said.

  “I don’t care,” Josie said.

  “No,” Wyatt said, “I don’t either.”

  “So we might as well make the most of it,” Josie said and kissed him, and he rolled toward her and the future once again surged over them.

  Twenty-three

  “Allie’s pretty mad,” Virgil said. “Told me she didn’t want you coming to the house no more.”

  “She knows about Josie,” Wyatt said.

  Virgil drank some beer and put the glass down and wiped his mustache on his sleeve.

  “Everybody in the damn town knows,” Virgil said.

  Wyatt nodded slowly, looking into his coffee cup.

  “Including Mattie,” he said.

  “What you going to do about Mattie?” Virgil said.

  “Damned if I know,” Wyatt said. “She won’t leave, and I can’t throw her out. She can’t take care of herself.”

  “No,” Virgil said.

  “Couple of days,” Wyatt said, “she’d be in a crib east of Sixth Street.”

  “I know,” Virgil said. “Maybe you could move out on her.”

  “She’d follow me,” Wyatt said.

  Virgil nodded. He was drawing little circles with the bottom of his beer mug on the wet tabletop.

  “Besides,” Wyatt said, “it’s my house.”

  “Yep.�
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  “What you going to do about Allie?”

  Virgil kept drawing his little circles while he looked across the room and out through the half-doors into Allen Street.

  “I told her my brothers would always be welcome in my house.”

  “How she like that?”

  “She said to me that it was her house too, and she didn’t marry no goddamned brothers, she married me.”

  Wyatt smiled.

  “Tough, ain’t she,” he said.

  “Yeah, and good-hearted. She feels bad for Mattie.”

  “Hell, Virgil, I feel bad for Mattie, but there isn’t anything I can do about it.”

  “You could give up Josie,” Virgil said carefully.

  “No,” Wyatt said, “I couldn’t.”

  Virgil continued to look out at Allen Street. It was not the kind of conversation he enjoyed.

  “Guess maybe I understand that,” he said after a while. “Not so sure I could give up Allie either.”

  “I don’t want to give you and Allie no trouble,” Wyatt said. “I can stay away from your house.”

  Virgil shook his head, and looked, for the first time in the conversation, straight at his younger brother.

  “No,” Virgil said, “ ’less you stop being my brother, or it stops being my house, you are welcome. Allie understands it. She don’t like it, but she will do what I say about this. You come over just like always. There won’t be no trouble.”

  Wyatt nodded.

  “What about Behan?” Virgil said.

  “House belongs to Josie,” Wyatt said. “Her father paid for it.”

  “So Johnny’ll have to get out?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Makes him look like a fool,” Virgil said.

  “Wasn’t my intention,” Wyatt said.

  “It don’t help us in town to have this happen,” Virgil said. “It don’t help us to have Johnny Behan against us, either.”

  “I can deal with Johnny,” Wyatt said.

  “He won’t come straight at you.”

  “No.”

  “But it don’t mean he won’t come,” Virgil said.

  “Or send somebody,” Wyatt said.

  They were quiet together for a time. Listening to the saloon sounds. The click of glasses, the low murmur of the men at card games. The sound of booted feet. An occasional high laugh from one of the whores who worked the saloons.