Wyatt in Wichita

by John Shirley

  He decided there was something she wanted to talk about, only she didn’t know how to bring it up. “Whatever it is, Mattie, go on ahead.”

  She blushed, but she didn’t deny it. “I feel like …” Her voice was hushed; he had to lean close to hear her over the noise of the café. “… you maybe don’t have all the regard for me you could, and I know why.” She dropped her gaze. “I can’t say as I blame you much … for not giving me your heart …”

  “Now that isn’t true, that I …” He glanced around at the other people self-consciously. He disliked mushy, emotional talk, especially in public.

  “It is true. It’s the way I’ve been living. You know—” She licked her lips, glanced around. “I wouldn’t have gone into working for … into this work, if not for the fever taking my family. My father was in debt when he died, and selling the land brought nothing. I went to the church, back home, to ask for help—and Reverend Costingale said for me to pray. I did, I prayed, but …” She looked down at her plate, and whispered, “God didn’t buy me breakfast. Only gentlemen have done that for me.”

  He nodded in sympathy. “Out here, there’s not much work for a lady.”

  She looked at him directly. “But a lady is meant to be a wife, Wyatt. To care for a man. That is her proper occupation.”

  “Not everyone thinks so,” he said, stalling. “There is suffrage and such. But to me, the traditional way always seemed natural.”

  “I want nothing more, Wyatt. And if a … a gentleman was interested enough, I would not insist on … on the …” Again she lowered her voice so he could barely hear her above the noise of the other diners in the small eatery. “I would not insist on … on matrimony. But …” Her voice trailed off as she looked for the words or the courage to say them.

  “You might consider …” He had been about to suggest she might be a “mail order bride” for some settler out in Oregon, but then he realized that would only hurt her feelings. And there was no mystery about what she was coming to. She wanted to live with him, with a view to someday becoming his wife.

  She was looking at him steadily, her eyes big and round. “Yes? I might consider …? What, Wyatt?”

  “Ah … we might consider that we …”

  “Yes?”

  He didn’t really want to do it. But she was biting her lip, as if she might burst into tears, in front of all these people. He thought of Urilla, and Sarah. And poor little Dandi—who would be alive now if someone had taken her as wife.

  Perhaps his thought passed somehow, unspoken, from his mind to hers—or perhaps it was coincidence when Mattie said, scarcely audible: “I’m scared I might end up like Dandi, Wyatt.”

  “It seems she wasn’t making a living that way …”

  “But it was in one of those places she died. Working for them, however she did it. And there’s Prudence. And Molly Brennan—I knew Molly. She was shot by that Corporal King …”

  Wyatt cleared his throat. He had known Molly in passing: a softhearted, willowy girl who was only occasionally a prostitute. The cavalryman had become obsessed with her, and found her sitting with Bat Masterson in a saloon in Sweetwater, Texas, acting as Bat’s good luck charm as he played cards. King had come roaring in, pistols blazing, wounding Bat in the leg—Bat had pulled his pistol and returned fire. What Mattie didn’t know, and what Bat had told no one but Wyatt, was that Molly had been killed when she’d tried to intervene between the two men—killed by a wild slug from Bat’s pistol. Bat shot King dead only to find Molly bleeding to death on the saloon floor. Fortunately, the town blamed King. But Bat knew the truth.

  Wyatt thought about Urilla; Bat about Molly Brennan.

  Wyatt smiled, wearily amused at the way Mattie had played the Dandi card and then the Prudence and Molly Brennan cards. Three ladies. And her set of queens beat his hand, for he now found himself incapable of leaving her in the life that had those three ladies—that might well kill Sarah Haspel. And perhaps the ghost of Urilla was urging him on too.

  “I think we might try it,” he said, taking Matti’s plump little hand. “We’ll see how it goes.”

  * * *

  The wind soon died down but a kind of translucent chill seemed to thicken the air, as Wyatt and Bat set out to see the Marshal, hoping to catch him at his office—Smith had a way of taking three- and four-hour lunch breaks, in various saloons, eating sandwiches, playing cards, and drinking. Afterwards another hour or so was spent napping.

  Near the Town Marshal’s office, they came upon Dave Leahy outside the haberdashery. Leahy was looking critically at his own reflection in the shop’s window, adjusting a new raspberry-colored derby. He had a newspaper under his arm, which slipped to the boardwalk as he tilted the hat—Bat bent and picked the newspaper up.

  “Have you written about the killing, Dave?” Bat asked, glancing at the front page.

  “I have not yet written it up,” Leahy replied, sighing. He removed his new hat, meditatively flicking a speck of dust from it. “I would have composed it immediately but the Marshal came over and asked me to hold my fire.”

  Bat nodded. “You cut a fine swell in that new derby.” Bat looked at the hat with an expert eye. “I may go into the men’s clothing line myself someday. Hats, possibly.”

  “Why’d Smith do that, Dave?” Wyatt asked. “Tell you not to write about it, I mean. Your editors ought to be fuming. Even in this part of Kansas, a murder is news.”

  Leahy shook his head sadly. “It’s your noise about the Texans, I expect. Smith—him and the mayor, they don’t like to make the outfits mad. Smith says he wants to make sure of his facts before anyone speaks their suspicions. And—well—there’s that ‘she was only a whore’ way of thinking.”

  Wyatt snorted. “The newspaper always do what the Marshal says?” Wyatt asked.

  Leahy didn’t like the sound of that and he gave Wyatt a sharp look. But after a moment he had to shrug a concession. “More or less. The owner of the Wichita Beacon is on the town council. It’s that kind of connection. I did write something about you, though, Wyatt. I trust you saw it?”

  Wyatt shook his head. Leahy took the newspaper from Bat and opened it to a small piece on page three.

  On last Wednesday, policeman Earp found a stranger lying near the bridge in a drunken stupor. He took him to the “cooler” and on searching him found in the neighborhood of $500 on his person. He was taken next morning, before His Honor, the police judge, paid his fine for his fun like a little man and went his way rejoicing. He may congratulate himself that his lines, while he was drunk, were cast in such a pleasant place as Wichita as there are but few other places where that $500 bank roll would have been heard from. The integrity of our police force has never been seriously questioned.

  “Now where’d you get that story?” Wyatt asked, frowning, as if annoyed. Of course, he was secretly pleased with it.

  Bat whistled and rocked on his shoes to burlesque playing the innocent.

  “There’s your culprit!” Leahy said, grinning, hooking a thumb at Bat. “But say—it’s true isn’t it?”

  Wyatt nodded curtly. “I don’t think it should be a remarkable thing …” Though in truth he knew that it was at least worthy of remark. Bat would have done the same, he figured, but some deputies would have pocketed that money and claimed the drunk had been pick-pocketed in a saloon.

  Leahy looked at his pocket watch. “Not quite noon—we might find Smith in. What say we go over to the Marshal’s office and see if I can write that story about the girl. You haven’t got any more on her?”

  Wyatt decided to play his cards close to his vest. He had no evidence that could back up a definite accusation. Many people wore spurs. And a set of tracks, in this case, proved nothing. He could imagine the defense attorney’s caustic comment: Are you saying, Mr. Earp, that it is remarkable to find boot tracks outside a cat-house? And he could imagine the jury laughing.

  “Nothing definite yet,” he said at last, as they started off for the jailhouse. “We found a dr
unk out back of the place, but he wanders by there all the time.”

  “Have you considered that someone may’ve come to town looking for her?” Leahy pointed out. “She could have been on the run from a jealous lover.”

  “True,” said Bat, carefully stepping over horse droppings as they crossed the sun washed street. “That jealous lover may’ve found her too, and done her in.”

  “Could be,” Wyatt admitted. “We don’t know that much about her. Bessie says the girl came out of Louisiana and her family name was LeTrouveau. Wasn’t in the profession—she was here on some personal errand, doing some cooking for Bessie to pay her way. Closest she got to whoring was a little taxi-dancing in Chicago …”

  “Dandi LeTrouveau? What a name!” Leahy exclaimed, with a newspaperman’s delight in color. “I must persuade them to let me write it up!”

  When they reached the jailhouse, Bill Smith was just getting up from his desk and reaching for his coat. He had the mischievous air of a man about to look for a drink and a game. He grunted in irritation when Wyatt, Bat and Leahy came in

  “Afternoon, Bill,” Leahy said cheerily. “Hoping you might give me my story at last.”

  Smith looked longingly at his coat. “Well now, as to that …”

  Leaning against the closed door to the cells behind Smith was Carmody, a broad, muscular man in blue woolen shirt and denims that he never seemed to change; he was more jailer than deputy, though he sported a deputy’s badge. His thinning hair was greased back, and his concession to vanity was his long, upturned mustache, the ends waxed and blackened to extend a full two inches past his round cheeks. He was chewing a sandwich of beef and bread, and glaring at the three men as they crowded the small office.

  “You’re supposed to be out in them streets looking for hellions, Earp,” Carmody said, his voice almost lost in his sandwich. “You too Masterson.” Carmody imagined his seniority gave him rank.

  Wyatt ignored him. It was that or slap the sandwich from his hand—which is what he really wanted to do—and that wouldn’t have been wise. He turned his attention to the Marshal. “Bill, I’ve been thinking about this LeTrouveau girl. Could be that whoever killed her is someone that does it … from what Bessie said … well, for pleasure. That being the case, they’ll do it to someone else. I was thinking that if we talk to that bunch who came in with the cows on Friday—”

  Smith was putting on his coat, adjusting his top hat. “The matter is already resolved, so far as you’re concerned, Deputy Earp.”

  Wyatt looked at Bat, who shook his head in puzzlement. It was a long, tense moment before Wyatt asked, “How’s that, Bill?”

  Smith looked at the door to the street. “We got a man locked up for the killing, looks to be our man.”

  “J’suis malade!” came the muffled shout from the cells, behind Carmody. “C’est tout la merde! Tout la monde—c’est merde!”

  “Montaigne,” Wyatt said.

  “That’s who it is,” Smith said. “Sam Montaigne. You found him behind the cathouse not so long after the killing—was you told me he was there. Did you suppose we’d let him fly free?”

  “I thought he might be a witness,” Wyatt said. “Never figured him under suspicion.”

  “Certainly he’s under suspicion. Seems a certainty to me that he’s our man.”

  “Montaigne sounds like he’s delirious,” Leahy remarked.

  “Yuh,” Carmody put in. “Doctor said it was ‘delirious trembles’ he’s got.”

  “Delirium tremens,” Bat corrected him, getting only a blank look in response.

  “Just finding him outside that cathouse is no proof of anything,” Wyatt put in. “Half the men in Delano pass by there. You have something more, I expect?”

  Smith sighed. “Well sir, if you insist. Some months ago, over by the lady’s dry goods emporium, Montaigne came upon Mrs. Hauptmann—kind of an armful, she is, a German matron. Her husband Helmut owns a lot of land here. Well ol’ ‘Champagne’ makes a grab for her bosoms! Now they’re not inconsiderable bosoms, and it’s hard to miss them, on a narrow sidewalk, but ol’ Champagne he up and sticks his face in those bosoms and gives each one a mighty squeeze and shouts ‘Magna-feek!’ or some gibberish like that and, well, we had to haul him down here and kick him around a trifle, cool him off for a day or so.”

  Wyatt shrugged. “It’s a far piece from that kind of coarseness to strangling a girl to death.”

  “T’isn’t just that. Another night, Montaigne was following one of the dance girls from Heinemann’s. She was not a whore, mind you, just a girl that does a dance for a dime. Montaigne was following after her, making noises like a rooster. Well sir, she was pretty nervous by the time she came upon Carmody here and Champagne had to get another licking. We should have drummed him out of town. Some places, they’d have hung him for what he did to Mrs. Hauptmann and don’t think Mr. Hauptmann didn’t want us to do it.”

  “Those are the reasons you figure Montaigne killed that girl?” Wyatt asked. “Because he gave a woman a naughty squeeze and mooned after another? Why, any number of cowboys do the same, after a drink or three, if we don’t keep them the other side of the bridge.”

  “It is more than that,” Smith said. “He confessed to me. Anyways he said he knew he’d ‘done evil’ that night the girl died—those were his words. ‘Jay-mal’! he says, in that French Canadian yammer. Hammond, who sells books, he says he thinks it means ‘I am bad.’ Or ‘I’ve done bad.’”

  “But he didn’t actually say he’d killed anyone—”

  “Earp!” Smith said, flushing, glancing at Carmody meaningfully. Carmody came to stand close beside him. “You going to continue to take on with me like a cross-examining lawyer? You were hoping to take credit for an arrest yourself, I’ve no doubt. Maybe thinking of running for Town Marshal?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “No. I’m thinking that you can’t be sure that Montaigne did it.”

  “He did it, sure enough,” Carmody said. “He’s weeping about bein’ evil and such. He did it.”

  “And that’s that, young Earp,” Smith said flatly. “You want to keep that badge? Because I’ll tell you, I’ve had some questions. Your Bessie Earp was arguing with Carmody here about the licensing fees. We permit some sporting if the proprietors pay a fee. The fee was raised and she’s kicking. Says she pays it when she hasn’t. She supposes herself too lofty to pay for her sporting license! That makes her and her girls illegal. Now we’re giving her time to change her mind but if she doesn’t come around, your brother James may have to bail his wife out of this same jail. I’ve had just about enough of your freshness, boy. Now I’m going to eat my lunch. You want to keep working here, you’ll put all this hogwash out of your mind and get back to watching those streets.”

  With that, Smith stalked out the door.

  * * *

  Wyatt found Bessie in the back room of James’s place. “Bessie. How are you?”

  She was seated at the table, with a rack of bottles at her back, a lantern overhead, squinting at figures in a ledger, a pair of spectacles on her nose. She took the spectacles off and looked at him with raised eyebrows. “You never in your life would come to just ask how I was, Wyatt Earp.”

  “A man can’t inquire after his sister-in-law?”

  “Not this brother-in-law, here. But sit down, pull up a barrel. Will you take a drink?”

  Wyatt sat on whiskey barrel. “No, I’ll sit on it but I won’t drink it, not tonight.”

  She smiled. And waited, sharpening the nib of her pen with a small knife.

  “Bessie, you’ve been feuding with the city over, ah, licensing, and they’re nippin’ at my heels about it. James has the money, if you don’t.”

  “It’ll be a double payment, then. Smith conveniently forgot one. But I’ll pay it, seeing as it’s coming round to you. Next time I’ll demand a receipt.” She watched Wyatt, as she spoke. When he made no move to leave, she added, “There’s something else.”

  “The girl, Dandi—do you h
ave an address for her family? Did she say anything about a jealous boyfriend—names of any kind, from her life before Wichita?”

  Bessie toyed with her nib. “I … No, I know nothing of her family. But there was something else. I didn’t like to tell you, it’s just a kind of instinct you get in my business, to keep your peace. But she mentioned she was looking for Abel Pierce. She had business with him.”

  “Abel Pierce. Did she say if she’d found him?”

  “She did not. I heard no more about it.”

  “Has anyone mentioned seeing him at the house that night?”

  “Not to me.”

  “What was her business with him?

  “She didn’t say. Not outright. But I asked if he’d gotten her with child and she said I was not far wrong. That’s all there was.”

  “Abel Pierce …”

  “Wyatt—if you’re planning to accuse him in this, you’d better have yourself some evidence. He’s—”

  “I know, I know. He’s Ace-high around here. I’ve heard it.”

  “Where’d you say you found the girl, this Dandi?”

  “I was recruiting up in Missouri, a place in Kansas City … Faranzano’s Dance Hall, it was called. This Faranzano had brought her from Louisiana …”

  “Faranzano. A pimp?”

  “Along them lines, though from what I saw he puts on airs. Way I heard it, he would have the girls dancing with the gents for a dime, for awhile, then, come the right time, he’d push them into whoring. Far as I know, she’d only done the dancing. I didn’t actually talk to the man. I spoke to a couple of the girls after hours, when they were on their way home. Dandi caught my eye. She was interested in coming to Wichita. Looking for Pierce I guess …” She took a cheroot and a match from somewhere in her bosom, lit the lucifer with a thumbnail, puffed the tobacco alight, and leaned closer to him. “Now, you don’t say this came from me. But Pierce was here once, playing cards. One of the whiskey girls told me Pierce said you might be sorry you’d crossed him up in Ellsworth. The time would come, he said.”