Gunman's Rhapsody

by Robert B. Parker

“If that’s how you want it,” Wyatt said.

  “If I was to do this at all,” Clanton said, “it’s got to be that way. They ride with Brocius and Ringo. They was to find out I turned them boys in, I ain’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of living to spend the money.”

  “Nobody will know,” Wyatt said. “Except my brothers.”

  “Say I go over there,” Clanton said. “With Joe Hill, maybe Frank McLaury, and we get these boys to come back. And we get them out of New Mexico and bring them to, say, Frank’s ranch. Then what?”

  “Then I’m waiting with a posse and we take them and you get the reward money.”

  “They’ll make a fight,” Clanton said. “You’re going to have to kill them.”

  Wyatt shrugged.

  “How do I know Wells Fargo will pay the reward if they’re dead?”

  “You got my word,” Wyatt said.

  “No offense, but I don’t know if Wells Fargo will stand by your word.”

  “I’ll get a telegram,” Wyatt said. “I’ll have Marshal Williams put it in writing that they pay for Leonard, Head, and Crane or their corpses.”

  Ike poured more whiskey into his shot glass and drank it off, then drank the rest of his beer and motioned toward the barman that he wanted another one.

  “I’d just as soon see Billy Leonard out of the way,” he said. “I got a ranch in New Mexico that he says is his and he won’t give it up.”

  “So you get the reward money and settle the, ah, land dispute,” Wyatt said.

  Clanton drank again. He looked at Earp over the glass rim as he did. Hard man to figure, Ike thought. His face never showed anything. He never seemed to say more than he had to. You always had the sense that he had some cards held back and that what you were talking about was only part of what he was thinking.

  “How do I know you’re leveling with me?” Ike said.

  “You don’t,” Earp said.

  There seemed to be no change in his expression or any difference in the way he was talking, but something about the way Earp said “You don’t” made the pit of Ike’s stomach tighten. When he was scared it made him angry, and when he was angry he drank more and talked more and louder. He half knew that, but he couldn’t stop it.

  “Maybe you are partners with those boys like they say,” Ike said. “Maybe you got the money and you want them to come in so you can kill them while you are arresting them. Then they can’t peach on you and you got all the cash.”

  Earp was silent, looking at him without expression. It made Ike more uncomfortable. He had some more whiskey.

  “That could be, couldn’t it, Wyatt? What you got to say about that?”

  “You want the deal or not?” Earp said.

  Ike’s stomach clenched tighter.

  “I got to think on it,” he said. “Talk to Frank and Joe. Virgil know about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Might want to talk to him.”

  “Do that,” Earp said.

  “I will,” Ike said. “I will. I can’t just do it because you say so, you know? These people are friends of mine. I got to give it some thought. I got to talk to people.”

  “Not too many people, Ike.”

  “I’ll talk to whoever I damn want,” Ike said.

  “I expect you will,” Earp said. “Might not be a secret, though, time you get through.”

  Twenty-eight

  It was hot and the river was low. The green belt along the San Pedro had narrowed as the water dropped. But there was some shade and there was a small breeze that drifted off the river. Josie and Wyatt spread a blanket in the best shade the sparse cottonwoods provided and put out some food. Canned ham, cold biscuits, canned peaches. Far enough away so they wouldn’t feel it, squatting on his heels, with his sleeves rolled, Wyatt built a fire and made coffee with water dipped from the river. He wore no coat. He wore no handgun, but there was a Winchester behind the seat in the buckboard. His chest where his shirt was open was white, as were his forearms. His face and neck and hands were weathered in sharp contrast. When they had eaten, and put the dishes and leftover food in a sack in the back of the buckboard, they sat beside the river leaning against a tree trunk and drank sweet, strong black coffee from tin cups.

  “You ever think about moving on?” Josie said.

  “Not without you,” Wyatt said.

  “No,” Josie said. “Not without me.”

  Wyatt had unharnessed the horses and tethered them a little downriver at the water’s edge. The horses stayed in the shade, drinking now and then from the river, and cropping at the sparse green buffalo grass. They twitched their skin occasionally the way horses do to shake off flies, and swished their tails sporadically for the same purpose.

  “Maybe someday,” Wyatt said.

  “Why not now?”

  “Not rich yet,” Wyatt said.

  “We could go to San Francisco,” Josie said. “You could get rich there.”

  Across the river a coyote stopped in a splash of sunshine and stared at them calmly, then loped on.

  “It’s a city,” Wyatt said. “None of the things I’m good at will make you rich in a city.”

  “You could be a policeman.”

  Wyatt smiled and shook his head.

  “You’re a policeman here, sometimes,” Josie said. “You’ve been a policeman in Dodge City and Wichita and… where, Ellsworth?”

  “ San Francisco,” Wyatt said, “the captain tells you what to do and the lieutenant tells you what to do and the sergeant tells you what to do.”

  He shook his head again. Josie leaned her head against his shoulder. His shirt was damp with sweat.

  “So what are you so good at here?” she said. “Doing what you want to?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you’re Virgil’s deputy, doesn’t he tell you what to do?”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “That makes it different?”

  “Means he’s asking. He’s got a right to ask.”

  “But no strangers.”

  Wyatt shrugged and drank some of his coffee.

  “What else you good at, staying here?” Josie said.

  “I can shoot,” Wyatt said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I like being where it’s not so crowded,” he said. “I’m a farm boy, you know, from Illinois.”

  “Would you ever want a ranch?”

  “Maybe someday. Right now I’m a town man. I got interests in saloons and mines.”

  “Not a city man,” Josie said. Her voice had a happy, teasing quality to it that he liked. “And not a cowboy. A town man. Right in the middle, I guess.”

  “Right in the middle,” Wyatt said.

  “Then I guess that’s where I am,” Josie said. “Right in the middle.”

  Wyatt smiled at her.

  “How’d you get so good at shooting?” Josie said.

  “We’re doing it backwards,” Wyatt said, smiling. “First we fall in love, then we learn about each other.”

  “So how?” Josie said.

  “ Lot of men can be good at shooting, they practice enough.”

  “Anybody?”

  “Not anybody. You got to have sort of the feel for it. Your hand and your eye need to connect in the right way.”

  “And yours do.”

  “Yep. Must be in the blood. All of us do. James before he got hurt. Virgil, Morgan, Warren, too, I suspect.”

  “I haven’t even met Warren.”

  “He’s the baby,” Wyatt said. “I imagine he’ll be along.”

  “All the Earps,” Josie said.

  “You can trust family.”

  “So do you practice more than most men?”

  “Probably.”

  “Why?”

  Wyatt was quiet for a while, looking at the way the sun filtered through the overhanging trees and danced on the still surface of the barely moving river. Josie shifted slightly to be more comfortable. The place where their bodies touched was damp, but neither one cared. They
were used to hot as they were used to cold, and both conditions were simply part of the natural order.

  “If you come to something natural,” Wyatt said finally, “and it’s something that can be put to use, I always figured you ought to polish it up, best you can.”

  She thought about that. Something rustled briefly along the riverbank and went into the water with a splash.

  “Have you killed many people?”

  “No.”

  “But some?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind?”

  Again Wyatt looked at the river. The surface of the water was smooth. Whatever had gone into the river had disappeared without a ripple. Wyatt usually did what he thought he should do, and moved on. Josie was asking questions he had not thought about. It was hard to think about them now, and harder to put them into words. But Josie wanted to know, and he would tell her.

  “I’ve never taken any pleasure in it,” Wyatt said. “But if it needs to be done, I’m willing to do it, and when it’s done, it don’t bother me much afterwards.”

  “Do you remember your first gun?”

  “You mean the first one I shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose it was one of my father’s. He was provost during the war. James and Virgil was gone to the war, and Warren was still little, but me and Morgan used to steal a big old Colt forty-four from my father’s room and sneak off and shoot it. It was a percussion cap pistol, Dragoon model, and we’d shoot a thousand rebs at once with it at the far back end of the cornfield.”

  “Could you hit anything with it?”

  “Not much. It was too big a gun for us.”

  “Your father ever catch you?”

  “Nope. I suspect he didn’t want to. I’m pretty sure he knew. Be hard shooting off a forty-four Colt around our cornfield without somebody noticing.”

  “And you liked shooting it.”

  “Sure.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Lotta people like it. You ever fire a handgun, Josie?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there’s a lot of power there. You squeeze off a shot and you feel it.” Wyatt made an enlarging gesture with his hands. “You create it out of nothing… right there in your hand.”

  “And it makes you powerful.”

  “Yes,” Wyatt said. “It does.”

  Twenty-nine

  “Things are looking up,” Virgil said. “Ben Sippy skedaddled, and I’m the acting city marshal.”

  The two men leaned on the hitching rail outside the Oriental.

  “Skedaddled?” Wyatt said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Not just away visiting for a couple of weeks?”

  “Clum says there’s money missing.”

  “Ahhh,” Wyatt said.

  He was dressed for work in a dark suit and a starched white shirt.

  “You going to be around?” Virgil said.

  “Sure, I’m dealing here, doing some undercover work for Wells Fargo, me and Morgan. I’ll be around, you need a special deputy.”

  Virgil nodded. Wyatt waited. He knew Virgil. There was something else. Half a dozen miners, off shift, passed them and turned into the Oriental.

  “What’s going on with you and Mattie?” Virgil said.

  “Hearing about it at home?” Wyatt said.

  Virgil smiled.

  “You’re with Josie,” Virgil said, “but you’re still living with Mattie.”

  “It’s my house,” Wyatt said. “I’m not going to leave it.”

  “And Mattie won’t?”

  “She won’t,” Wyatt said.

  “You and she still… ah, there any poontang there?”

  “Hell no,” Wyatt said. “I sleep in the front room.”

  Virgil nodded.

  “Guess you can’t just throw her out,” Virgil said.

  “No. I threatened it one night and she said if I did she’d just sit outside the house all day.”

  “Wouldn’t help much, next sheriff’s election,” Virgil said.

  “Nope.”

  The two men looked at each other a moment.

  “Sorry if it’s causing trouble with Allie,” Wyatt said.

  “Can’t be helped,” Virgil said. “You can’t stay with Mattie just ’cause Allie wants you to.”

  “I didn’t think Allie liked Mattie,” Wyatt said.

  “She don’t.” Virgil took his hat off and fanned his face with it. “Hot as hell, ain’t it?”

  “Better get used to it,” Wyatt said. “That’s where we’re all headed.”

  Virgil grinned at him and put his hat back on.

  “Guess I’ll walk around town,” he said. “You got them miners in there getting drunk, waiting for you to fleece ’em.”

  “That’s what they were sent here for,” Wyatt said. Virgil strolled down Allen Street. Wyatt turned and went into the cooler dimness of the saloon.

  At the bar Denny McCann nodded at him. Ike Clanton was there, too, with whiskey in front of him. He ignored Wyatt. Wyatt went to the faro table and sat down. Three miners came over directly, carrying their drinks, and sat down with him. Wyatt shuffled and spread the first layout of the evening. He liked dealing faro. He found it relaxing. He had good hands and calmness. The game could engage his attention without demanding it. His reputation kept most of the players in check, and he could think about Josie and the time to come. The house won, of course, and he took a percentage of the winnings.

  At the bar, McCann, lean and pale in a dark suit, was talking to a thin-faced little prostitute named Fancy. Down the bar Ike Clanton had drunk enough whiskey to loosen his mouth. He sidled down the bar and put an arm around Fancy’s waist and said something. She turned away from him. He moved after her. McCann said something to Ike, and Ike shoved Fancy aside. Wyatt watched with interest while he fanned out another hand of faro. Ike and McCann stood facing each other, McCann a good three inches taller than Ike.

  “You think I’m scared of you, you prettified, goddamned dandy boy,” Ike said.

  His speech was slurred. McCann slapped him hard across the face and it staggered Ike. The room went quiet. One of the bartenders moved down the bar toward them. The other men at the bar moved away from them. Fancy dodged out of the way and looked over at Wyatt. McCann kept his pale-eyed stare right on Ike, and Clanton reacted as he always did.

  “You sonova bitch,” he said when he got himself steadied. “Arm yourself and be ready. I’ll look for you on Allen Street.”

  Then Ike pushed himself off the bar and rushed out, banging against the doorjamb with his right shoulder. McCann looked after him for a time and then leaned over the bar and put out his hand. The bartender handed him a Colt revolver with a walnut handle. McCann checked to see that it was loaded and left the bar.

  At the next table Fred Dodge turned to Wyatt.

  “Ike’s going for a gun,” he said.

  “Go tell Virgil,” Wyatt said. “ ’Less they do it in here, it’s his job.”

  Fred looked blankly at Wyatt for a moment, then stood and ran out the front door. Everyone else, including the faro players, crowded to the door after him trying to watch and stay out of the line of fire. Wyatt put the cards away, took his own Colt.45 from a drawer in the card table, stuck it in his belt, stood and pushed out through the crowd onto the boardwalk in front of the saloon. McCann waited motionless across Allen Street in front of the Wells Fargo office, his gambler’s pallor more obvious in the harsh sunlight.

  Ike rounded the corner of Fourth Street a block and a half from Denny McCann. He was carrying a handgun. He arrived at Fifth at almost the same moment that Virgil emerged from the Crystal Palace downstairs from his office. Virgil fell in beside Ike and matched his stride as they approached McCann together.

  The street was quiet, and the people watching from the saloons were still.

  Wyatt could hear Ike saying, “Stay out of this, Earp.”

  Virgil didn’t answer. He was hatless and he wore no coat
in the hundred-degree heat. Wyatt could see that he was heeled.

  As they passed the front door of the Oriental, Virgil said, “Wyatt, I’m naming you a special deputy as of right now.”

  “Sure thing, Virg,” Wyatt said.

  When Ike and Virgil beside him came to a point about five feet from McCann, Ike stopped. Virgil moved between the two men.

  “Can’t have you boys shooting out here,” Virgil said. “Put the guns away or I’ll have to arrest you.”

  “Sonova bitch slapped me, Virgil. No man can do that and get away with it.”

  “Slap him back,” Virgil said. “But you don’t hand over that Colt, I’m going to have to take it.”

  McCann let his gun hang straight down by his side. But he didn’t put it away.

  “Piss on you, bluebelly,” Clanton said. “All you Earps are bluebellies. You’d never stand by a cowboy.”

  He shoved Virgil. Thirty feet away on the boardwalk in front of the Oriental, Wyatt moved his coat aside and rested his right hand forward on his hip. Virgil rolled easily with the shove and slammed his left fist into Ike’s face; at the same time he brought his right hand down hard on the barrel of Ike’s gun and twisted it out of Ike’s hand. Ike staggered backward. The punch had cut his lip, and he was bleeding freely. The blood ran down his chin and soaked into his shirt. As soon as he had Ike’s gun, Virgil turned toward Denny McCann and put out his left hand.

  “Give me the gun, Denny.”

  Holding his left forearm against his mouth, Ike fumbled into his pocket and came out with a jackknife. McCann handed his gun to Virgil.

  From the boardwalk, Wyatt said, “Ike.”

  Ike turned and looked at Wyatt, still standing with his coat thrown back, his hand on his hip nearly touching his gun butt.

  “Fucking bluebellies,” Ike said.

  He put the knife back in his pocket.

  “There’ll be another time, bluebellies,” he said.

  Then he turned and rushed back down Allen Street. Wyatt went back into the Oriental and sat at the faro table. He took the gun from his belt and put it back in the drawer and closed the drawer. Then he shuffled the cards and began to put down a new layout.

  Thirty

  They ran into each other having breakfast in the same cafe in Benson. Wyatt had finished some mining business and Johnny Ringo was finished with whatever business Johnny Ringo had. Now, full of coffee and bacon and fried sourdough, they were riding south together toward Tombstone.