Wyatt in Wichita

by John Shirley

  “Could be someone’s following us,” Bat said. “You hear it?”

  Both of them heard the other riders before they saw them, at last: six, maybe eight riders visible as dark shapes against the starry horizon.

  “You think that’s a posse—after Johnson?” Bat asked, clearly hoping it was, as he blew on his cold knuckles. He’d never much cared for long rides—for one thing, they were tough on the seat of your new pants. And he nearly always had new pants. “They could take up the chase.”

  “Could be,” Wyatt said, spurring his horse to greater speed.

  Another four miles, a little more, and they came to a low rise in the otherwise flat prairie. Atop the rise was a sagging, probably deserted sod house.

  But it wasn’t quite deserted—a movement around the side caught Wyatt’s eye: A horse, tied up and restless.

  “That looks like Johnson’s pony,” Bat murmured, as they urged their mounts up the low hill.

  They got within twenty steps of the sod-house—a low, crooked construction of blocks of sod cut from the naked prairie—and saw the posse dismounting on the farther side just thirty yards away. Marshal Smith was there, and Shanghai Pierce, and George Hoy, and some men Wyatt had seen but didn’t know by name, all of them Pierce’s crew.

  And Pierce was cocking a shotgun as he stalked toward the sod shanty.

  “Pierce, hold on!” Wyatt shouted, dismounting and drawing his gun.

  Pierce never looked over, but marched straight into the night darkened doorway. There was the flare of a match as someone, probably Johnson, struck it to see who was there.

  “Pierce! What the dirty devil are you about!” Johnson shouted. “Put that away, that ain’t the—”

  He was cut off by the roar of the shotgun. A muzzle flash lit the interior of the sod hut and in that flickering moment Wyatt saw Johnson flung from his feet, into pitch-black shadow.

  Heart thudding, Wyatt hurried to the hut, hunched to step through the low doorway in time to see Pierce standing over Johnson’s twitching, booted feet on the dirt floor. Gun smoke billowed in the rectangle of moonlight.

  “That’s done for the murdering son of a bitch,” Pierce bellowed.

  “He pull a knife on you, did he?” Wyatt asked, wishing for a lantern so he could see if the knife had been drawn.

  “He did,” Pierce said flatly. “Now back out of my way before this shotgun goes off again. I’ve got ’er filed to a hair trigger.”

  Wyatt hesitated, then felt Bat tugging on his elbow. “Come on, Wyatt. He’s dead. Dead is dead.”

  Wyatt turned on his heel, pushed past Bat and went to find Smith. He found him holding the reins of Pierce’s horse.

  “Earp!” Marshal Smith crowed. “You rode off lickety split but you got here late!” The Pierce outfit laughed at that.

  Wyatt holstered his gun. “Johnson doubled back to this place—how’d you know he’d come here, Marshal? You came from a different direction …”

  Smith spat the dead stub of his cigar into the grass. “We had word he sometimes stayed out here at this dirt-house. Not that it’s any business of yours. Now I’ve got a question for you. What are you doing wearing one of my deputy’s badges?”

  “Was you who gave it to me,” Wyatt said, his heart sinking.

  “And it’s me taking it away. You’re fired, by God. First you sucker punch my jailer, then you pretend you can’t hear me when I tell you to come back! Not that I’d have brought you along, in any case. You were fired from the moment you hit Carmody—struck him foully, with no provocation at all.”

  Wyatt decided that it was pointless to plead that there had been provocation—Carmody threatening him, trying to trip him. It sounded kind of petty, when he thought back on it. And it wouldn’t matter a whit what he said. Marshal Smith was determined to fire him.

  “Johnson should’ve had his chance before a judge,” Wyatt said.

  “And I suppose I should’ve let him split me open so he could whine for a jury?” Pierce said, mounting up. “Come on boys … Let’s leave these intrepid ex-lawmen to finish up. Hoy—you lead Johnson’s horse back to town, we’ll decide what to do with it there.”

  Pierce cantered back toward Wichita. Glaring silently at Wyatt, Hoy went to fetch the pony and followed.

  Smith seemed about to follow, turning his horse—but he turned back, for a moment. “As for Masterson here,” Smith began, “Bat, you can stay on as a deputy, if you’re minded to—”

  “I’m minded to tell you to go to Hell,” Bat said, “and urge you to get there quick as you like. I’ll leave my badge at the jail-house when I get back.”

  “See that you do that little thing, the both of you,” Smith said, turning his horse to follow Pierce and his men back to Wichita. He galloped to catch up with them. “Hold up, boys!”

  But one of Pierce’s men had hung back. Wyatt hadn’t seen him clearly before.

  The man sat straight-backed on his tall gray and black Appa-loosa, bathed in moonlight; his pale hair and carefully trimmed mustache and beard turned to silver. He wore buckskin pants, fringed with leather strips, and a yellow duster over a white pearl-buttoned shirt. An ivory-handled revolver slanted low across his waist: a reach-across draw. He presented a mix of finery and raw frontier outfitting. His deep-set eyes were in shadow, though the rest of his face seemed to glow in the pale light.

  But Wyatt could feel the man watching him from those twin pools of shadow. Watching from deep inside … And Wyatt Earp shivered.

  Looking at the stranger’s thick blond hair, it struck Wyatt who this man was. “I expect you’d be Johann Burke,” Wyatt said.

  Burke’s only reply was a short nod. His hands were resting on the pommel of his saddle, holding the reins. One index finger tapped the silver-ringed pommel restlessly, as if he were considering whether to go for his gun. Already, he knew Wyatt for an enemy: someone who had been pushing Abel Pierce and pursuing what he should’ve let go.

  And this man fit the description of the man who had hired Dandi LeTrouveau.

  Wyatt dropped his hand to the butt of his own Peacemaker. He thought, If I shoot this man off his horse, without waiting for him to draw, who, besides Bat, is going to be the wiser? And Bat will say that Burke pulled first.

  He was tempted. This man appeared to be of a breed that Wyatt had only encountered once before—a professional gunfighter. And the chances were, this one was faster and more accurate than a deputy who specialized in knocking men on the head with the barrel of his gun. Still, with his hand already on his pistol, Wyatt might well shoot him off that horse …

  But after a few moments’ reverie, Wyatt had to recognize that it just wasn’t in him to simply shoot a man down in cold blood. So he waited.

  Several more elastic moments passed; the horses shifted, whinnied softly to one another. There was no other sound.

  Burke leaned back in his saddle a little, making it creak, as if shifting to reach for his six gun.

  Then Bat cleared his throat—very deliberately, Wyatt thought. Burke turned his head fractionally to take in Bat, who had a Winchester cradled in his arms, and then he looked back at Wyatt—seemed to decide he didn’t like the odds. Without a word he wheeled his horse and rode away, hurrying to catch up with Pierce and the others.

  “Burke talks even less than you do,” Bat remarked.

  “He fits a certain description. You notice that? The one Bessie gave us.”

  “By God, you’re right … It isn’t enough, though, by itself … I know at least another two men could go by that description.”

  Wyatt turned back to the soddy, and went in, striking a match on the wooden frame of the doorway; the actual door had long since blown away. Johnson had been nearly cut in half by the shotgun blast, just above the waist. And his knife was firmly in its sheath.

  Wyatt rejoined Bat, glad to be away from the smell of blood and death in the sod house. “Knife’s in the sheath.”

  “You surprised? They wanted to be sure he was dead, seems to me
.”

  Wyatt nodded. “And they knew he’d be here. So they had an appointment with him. Probably to pay him off. He was hired to kill Montaigne, so Montaigne’d have no chance to clear himself. Ending the questions about Dandi. That’s my guess, anyhow.”

  Bat took off his bowler and smoothed his hair back thoughtfully. “Johnson was going to leave the territory, with enough gold to make the risk worth it, you figure?”

  “Likely. And when we set off after him, they had to change their plans. Shut him up for good before he could talk to us. That’s how it might’ve been. Hard to know for sure.” He hooked a thumb toward the hut. “I suppose it’s up to us to bury that dice-loading crook.”

  Bat cocked his head and studied the sod hut. “I figure,” he said after a moment, “if we tie a rope to the center-post of that shanty, and get my horse to pull it down, he’ll be buried pretty neatly, and in a trice.”

  Wyatt nodded. He just wanted to get back to the hotel, to Mattie, and sleep. He had a deep weariness on him. He was thinking of Dandi LeTrouveau and Montaigne and Johnson—and of men like Pierce and Burke.

  But a while later, when the moon was sinking past the horizon and they were halfway back to Wichita, Wyatt remarked, “There is one place more I might go, to look into this matter. Kansas City.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Seems to me this town grew by half since last I was here,” Bat said, looking around. Buildings of many stories rose on either side, and the timber skeletons of new ones stood starkly in every vacant lot. Wyatt and Bat were riding in the comfortably padded passenger seat of a hansom from the Kansas City train station to a quarter near the cattle yards, where it was said the dance halls were located. Wyatt watched the lamplighters go from gas-lamp to lamp, lighting up the dusk …

  “Thirty, forty thousand live here, thereabouts,” Wyatt said. Thinking how it’d grown since he’d been here losing money at poker and forgetting Urilla. He regretted ever having to come back. The memories were sour. But it had grown so fast it seemed almost a different town.

  He shivered as rising the wind lifted the horse’s mane, and carrying a smell that hinted of snow. Wyatt put up the collar of his coat.

  “That bridge over the Missouri River’s an impressive thing,” Bat said. “I remember, before they built that, what a dickens it was getting across. The damned ferrymen would charge a finger and the end of your nose.”

  “Made their money from settlers, headin’ west—whole town’s a kind of toll station.”

  “Cattle’s the thing now, gents!” The hansom driver called over his shoulder. He was an Irishman with curled mustachios and plug hat. “The cattleman’s association, they have a building grand as a castle. You can smell the cattle near everywhere in town. Smells like money, in Kansas City.”

  “What say we find a hotel, before we go on this fishing expedition of yours, Wyatt,” Bat said. “I have no desire to take that train twice in a day.”

  “We’ll get a place for the night. But I want to go back to Wichita first thing tomorrow.” After a moment, he decided it was time to tell Bat of his plans. “I may be leaving Wichita when the cold lets up, at least for a time. There’s money to be made in the Black Hills …”

  “Wyatt—not you too! Let me get you a cold compress!”

  Wyatt smiled. “I have not got the gold fever—though I may prospect while I’m there.”

  “Going to mine for gold in the miners’ pockets?”

  “Yes. But my plan is not poker, either. That hotel will do, driver …”

  Bat insisted on putting on a clean shirt and brushing his hat before he’d set out with Wyatt from the Western Sunset hotel to find the dance-halls, and it was quite dark when they were at last on their way. In a dark blue suit, a gray bowler hat, his mustaches freshly waxed, Bat made a fine figure; a gold-headed cane in his left hand paced their way along the wooden sidewalk. Wyatt, in black but for his white shirt—frock coat, vest and broad brimmed hat—was a dour contrast to his companion. Both men had their guns concealed under their coats.

  Horses clacked by on the cobbled street, pulling buggies and ice wagons and drays filled with beer barrels—nearby was a brewery, biggest in the west, adding its smell of rancid hops to the stench of cattle from the yards some blocks away.

  “There it is—Faranzano’s,” Wyatt said, pointing across the intersection.

  They stopped on the corner and regarded the establishment, a rather grand concoction of wood and brass with much gold-painted scrollwork around the sign:

  FARANZANO’S HALL OF DANCE

  ~ Where Gentlemen meet Ladies ~

  “I might mention,” Bat said, his voice low and serious, “that I have heard stories of the Italians, in certain businesses—especially in places like New York and Chicago and Kansas City. They have a kind of loose club called mafie—it means ‘army’. Been around since the Middle Ages. Not so much an army as a secret society. They have a code called omerta. Something about dealing with things amongst themselves …”

  “What of it?”

  “I’m just saying that we may find there is no one Italian fella to deal with—sometimes it happens that one becomes many. It seems prudent we step as lightly as we can. For all this is a dance hall, I am not speaking of the steps of the quadrille.”

  Wyatt nodded, and they crossed the street.

  * * *

  “You dance a nice waltz, Mr. Earp,” said the big-boned girl with the luxurious brown hair.

  She was a hefty creature so it was fitting that she came out with such a big lie, Wyatt supposed, working hard to keep from stepping on her prodigious feet with his black boots. She was only a couple inches shorter than he was, a broad-shouldered, wide-hipped, long-faced woman with hands that outmatched his own. Her hair was her pride and she kept flouncing it with tosses of her head as they turned in the waltz. She wore a green velvet ball-gown, which strained at the seams; the crinoline bustle, glimpsed when he’d first paid his money, seemed small on her. He had actually tried to ask a more dainty girl to dance, but this one, seeing him coming, had leapt from her seat, flashing her fan like a bird showing its feathers for mating, and intercepted him with such verve he was swept helplessly to the dance floor.

  They were laboring through a three-step played by a quartet of dispirited musicians in the corner. The music was by Strauss—or so the lady, Millicent, had informed him—and apart from that he had so far learned from her only that Mr. Faranzano left the general operation of the dance hall to the scowling white-haired Miss Gillespie, at the door, and Mr. Santilli: a big, round-faced man, falling asleep on a chair in a corner. Wyatt figured him for a bouncer.

  “Well Wyatt, have you no respect for Johann the Younger?” asked Bat, grinning, as he whirled by with the very girl Wyatt had been hoping to dance with. “You are dancing in something closer to square dance time.”

  Johann? The name startled Wyatt, for a moment, till he realized that Bat meant Johann Strauss. There was an unnerving abundance of Johanns.

  “Suppose a gent wanted to spend extra time with a lady from this hurdy-gurdy,” Wyatt whispered. “Who’d he talk to? That Gillespie woman?”

  Millicent colored and gulped. “Why … yes, I expect so. I don’t … You see, I’m Catholic.”

  “How’s that figure in, miss?”

  “Mr. Faranzano doesn’t permit Catholic girls to, ah, see the gentlemen outside of the Dance Hall. He being a good Catholic himself. The others, being damned anyway, are fair game, he says.”

  Wyatt found himself looking in fascination at her prominent, crooked teeth as she spoke. “Oh … I see …”

  She danced a little closer, whispering urgently, “But, Mr. Earp, that doesn’t mean you couldn’t see a lady here, outside the dance-hall, was you to make a discreet … rendezvous?” She batted her eyelashes. Her breath had a smell to it that made Wyatt think of a pond when the water’s drying up.

  “Suppose I wanted to … to ask for the hand from a girl here. Maybe Mr. Faranzano might deal with me on
that one. Was he to be remunerated.”

  “Oh!” Her face was fairly scarlet now. “He might indeed. He’s up those stairs. There’s an office. At this hour he’ll be going over his accounts or on the telephone.”

  “On the what?”

  “You have not heard of the telephone! They say there are close to three thousand of the instruments now! He talks to certain members of his … an organization he belongs to.”

  Wyatt cast his mind back. Telephone. He had read about them but hadn’t yet seen one. “Oh yes. Like the telegraph but with a voice. I don’t believe we have them in Wichita yet. Faranzano is up that stairs, eh? Now, a friend of mine met a girl from here, once. Her name was Dandi. Miss LeTrouveau. She was from Louisiana, originally. He spoke warmly of her.”

  “Oh!” Millicent sniffed contemptuously. “She was not … Mr. Faranzano brought her here for the other part of the business. She worked here, yes. He took her out of an orphanage, as with so many other unfortunates.”

  “An orphanage? But was she not a grown woman?”

  “She was in her teen years, when she came here. I understand her mother had died a year before, and she took up residency in the orphanage—as a kind of tutor, for the children, and to give her a place to live. She stayed and stayed and then Mr. Faranzano came to the orphanage looking for suitable girls. And he bought several of them, including that snobbish little Dandi person.”

  “He bought them from an orphanage?”

  “It’s often done, in that end of the business, I believe. She left us … she run off. She never would do more than dance. She kept finding excuses and I thought we was well rid of her. But Mr. Faranzano was furious. He doesn’t allow …” Her voice trailed off as she realized she was saying too much. And the song was coming to an end. “Would you …” She lowered her voice to a whisper behind her fan. “Would you like to … That is, before, we were discussing …”

  “I will take up the matter, I believe, with Mr. Faranzano …” Wyatt said, bowing to her. He caught Bat’s eye and nodded toward the stairs leading to Faranzano’s office.