Wyatt in Wichita

by John Shirley

  “Gentlemen!”

  A man standing on the boardwalk along the road had called out to them as their wagon creaked past. The stranger was shaped like a saltshaker, it seemed to Wyatt; he was wearing a butter-colored three-piece suit looped by a gold watch chain. On his head was a salmon-colored derby; his considerable jowls were broadened even more by bushy side whiskers and his ears were red with the chill. His nose, however, was red with whiskey, if Wyatt was any judge.

  Thinking the man might be a merchant who’d want to order some wood, Wyatt pulled up and nodded to him.

  “Gentlemen, well met,” the man said unctuously, approaching the wagon and extending his hand—which Wyatt dutifully shook, not liking the spongy feel of it—“I chanced to hear you make a remark, as you passed—I believe you mentioned a gold mine. Opportunity, as you know, sometimes bounds as quick as an antelope—the slow hunter misses his game! I must away to St. Louis, tomorrow, to look after pressing business, and cannot hope to take any more gold out of my mine—the Lucky Wood-chuck mine, and a bedrock mine it is. But I’m getting ahead of myself. My name is Swinnington, J. Mundale Swinnington, Vice President of Swinnington-and-Swinnington Investments, Limited—and you’d be—?”

  “I’d be on my way,” Wyatt said, clucking at the team.

  The wagon trundled on, the man in the butter-colored suit sticking his hands in his pants pockets and gazing after them with an innocent, wounded air.

  “Wyatt,” Henry asked, “wasn’t that kinda rude?”

  “I suppose so. I’m tired and hungry, I buried a friend, I near got me and you both shot, I had to pay a toll to the Sioux to keep your hair from getting raised, and my patience is worn through. But Henry, I am not such a tyro that I do not know a swindler. We had ’em come through Lamar, often enough. I knew them in Illinois too, and Wichita.”

  This was a pretty long speech and Wyatt said nothing more till after they’d put their horses up in the livery and eaten elk steaks at a café with the odd name, The Inter Ocean Restaurant. Full of meat and potatoes, they sat in the corner by a window, drinking sarsaparilla; the window was made with cheap glass so warped the passersby looked like apparitions, rippling and unreal.

  “What you going to do with Sanchez’s horse?” Henry asked.

  “Sell it and his saddle, and send the money to his … I suppose she’s his mother, in Laredo.”

  Henry opened his mouth—probably to say something about finder’s keepers—but he looked at Wyatt’s face and changed his mind. “Where you reckon we gonna sleep, Wyatt?”

  Wyatt looked at the boy, thinking he ought to send him on the first stage out—if there was one running through here—to whatever relatives he still possessed, or to Bat’s care in Wichita. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. Henry was just so confident he could remain with Wyatt …

  “‘Where we gonna sleep?’ If you want lice, we can sleep in what passes for a hotel here. But clean straw in the livery can be had, the fella says, for four bits a man, and with our bedrolls and the horses nearby, it’ll be warm.”

  Henry shrugged. “I slept in worse places.” He tried to look out the window, but it wasn’t much use. Not only was it warped but now it was becoming steamed with the warmth of the room; miners, smelling sour and sweaty, crowded the other tables, talking or staring into space; there was a smoky iron stove in the farther corner, and a round-faced Chinese lady brought plates, some of Chinese food, some of venison—beef was harder to get here.

  “How much?” Wyatt asked their waitress, when he was ready to go.

  “Five dollar!”

  “Five …!” Wyatt burst out. “For elk steaks and potatoes?”

  “Five dollars, dammit-sure-yes,” she said fiercely, balling her fists at her side, looking as ready to fight as any brawler. “Or maybe fifty you don’t a-like five!”

  “I’d pay the five, was I you!” someone called. “I have seen her use a meat cleaver to good effect!” The crowd laughed.

  Seeing Wyatt’s disgusted expression as he dug deep in his pockets for the money, a bearded miner at the next table winked.

  “Welcome to Deadwood,” he said.

  * * *

  “I heard a fella say a man was shot in the hills, he come in to the doctor last night,” Henry said, walking up to Wyatt as he was picking up his one change of clothing from the Chinese laundry.

  “Where the devil you been?” Wyatt said.

  “You were sleeping and sleeping and it was an hour past dawn so I got up to look around. I hear ’em talking, when they come out that Inter Ocean place.”

  “We’re not going to that damned restaurant again. Or any other around here.” But his mind was on Burke. So Burke had found a doctor here. Was probably still in town. And Wyatt had confirmed there was no law in town. Now and then the miners would get up a deputation and lynch somebody. He didn’t expect them to help a stranger—not Burke and not Wyatt Earp.

  They stood on the wooden sidewalk, looking up and down the dirty street. Few people were about yet. Morning sun flashed from melting patches of snow; a chill wind gusted scraps of oilpaper, and bits of straw.

  “How do we eat, if we don’t eat at the cafes here?” Henry asked, with an intense concern.

  “We’ll cook our own meals, when we can, and do some hunting. I’ve got the makings of a tent.”

  “There’s a feller down the street, got an open-air shed, he’s selling hot oatmeal and molasses out of it. A dollar a head.”

  “That’s a lot for oatmeal but we might avail ourselves of it.”

  “When do you figure we head up into the hills—?”

  “Today. We won’t go far.”

  Henry looked dubious, perhaps thinking of what might be lurking in the hills. “Hell, there’s trees for wood right here, Wyatt, over yonder …”

  “The bigger trees, good for lumber, have been cut down. Wood burning trees around here are on land that’s claimed. Claimants don’t allow forage on ’em so it’s easier to hire wood hauled in. Any more questions?”

  “Well let’s get it done then, by God.”

  Wyatt smiled to himself at the boy’s manly pretensions. “I’ll take you up with me once or twice but I’m going to find somebody to look after you. Maybe I’ll send for Mattie, if the stage comes in—it doesn’t come often, they say.”

  Henry scowled down at his shoes, and Wyatt sighed, realizing he was going to have to disappoint this boy even more, some day soon. The boy needed a father, and Wyatt couldn’t be that father. He felt neither qualified nor capable. And with Johann Burke around, Wyatt suspected that Henry was going to be increasingly in the line of fire. The boy might catch a bullet, if he trailed after Wyatt.

  Still, Wyatt thought he might be able to teach him a few things—for a while. “Right now, Henry, let’s get us some of that oatmeal, and some supplies, then I’m for the piney woods and a power of work. If you want to go, you’ll soon have your reward: blisters, a complainin’ back and a sour disposition.”

  “Be an improvement over working for Doc Black,” Henry allowed, as he led the way to the oatmeal.

  Wyatt kept watch for Burke, but didn’t much expect to see him. He’d be laid up somewhere in town, convalescing most likely. He considered calling him out, for Sanchez’s sake, but it didn’t seem right to call out a man lying abed with a gunshot wound. And if it chanced that Wyatt were killed, what would become of Henry? Burke would most likely kill Henry too.

  He’d make a fight with Burke, soon enough. He just hoped that he saw Burke first. A gunfighter “Joe Hand” might be, but Burke was quite capable of shooting a man in the back.

  * * *

  “Mr. Burke, I believe?”

  Johann Burke, sitting up in bed, looked up from his newspaper, squinting through the lamplight at the man standing in his door-way—a stout man in a yellow suit.

  “I locked that door,” Burke remarked. As he spoke he lowered the newspaper over the bedclothes, covering his right hand, which closed over the butt of his pistol ly
ing beside him.

  “The lock’s been kicked in, at some point, I believe sir,” said the stranger. “It opened quite readily. The hotelier is unlikely to repair it, and unlikely to tell you it has been broken.”

  “I’ll break his jaw, that’s what’ll get broken, if I live to see him. You a messenger from Mr. Pierce?”

  “No sir, I am a free agent. I heard the woman who changes your bandages speaking to the hotel’s cleaning lady about you. And it happens I’m on the same floor. They say you’re looking for the man who shot you.”

  “The man who shot me is dead. I’m looking for the man who rode beside him. He should be dead too.”

  “That bespeaks a respect for symmetry, the harmony of the universe.”

  “It what? What the goddamn hell do you want?” He pulled the gun out from under the newspaper, but didn’t bother to aim it.

  The stranger took his point anyway. “My name is J. Mundale Swinnington. I manage investments, and do a bit of, you might say, private detective work. That is, I follow people, when asked. That sort of thing. Now our lady of the bandages says you were asking after an ‘Earp’?”

  “That’s his name.”

  “I have seen him. I had an encounter with a rather rude individual—I remarked on his rudeness and a miner said to me that I had best keep my opinion to myself, for he had seen this man back down Ben Thompson, and some others. This worthy identified the individual as one Wyatt S. Earp.”

  “Is that right. I expect he’s here to prospect?”

  “He has business here, at the retail end of things, I understand.”

  “I’m laid up a day or two, maybe longer. But you keep an eye on that man. I’ll tell you when to lead me to him.”

  “As for remuneration…”

  “If by that you mean will you get paid, you will. I’ll give you fifty dollars now and fifty when the day comes.”

  “That is agreeable to me, sir. Shall I help you find your money belt?”

  * * *

  The next morning, Wyatt sold Sanchez’s horse and saddle for seventy-two dollars together. He added twenty-eight of his own and sent the total, with a note of explanation and praise for Tomas Sanchez, to the woman in Laredo. The letter went out with that morning’s stage. Then he and Henry set off to work in the hills.

  Henry complained most of the first day. Wyatt didn’t say much to his complaints, except, “Is that so?” Then he’d hand him another tool.

  They cut down medium-sized trees, white spruce and pine, mostly with a two-man crosscut saw, Wyatt doing as much pushing as pulling. Then they cut off the limbs with hand saws, stacked the small wood they wanted to keep beside the wagon, cut the fallen logs into sections, splitting them with a chisel to make planks long enough to be lumber for sluices and rockers and mine timbers, and loaded the lot. The weather, in this higher elevation, was still knuckle-stinging cold, and sometimes hail rattled through the tree branches overhead.

  Henry had blisters and his back hurt but he lost his sour disposition about the time they came into town to sell their wood. They sold the entire load for a hundred dollars to a man who marked it up to sell to the miners and merchants. Some of it went to the Homestake Mine to help shore up the ceiling timbers, and to support new adits and drifts.

  They spent the night in Deadwood, Wyatt feeling glum because he wanted to gamble but didn’t feel he could safely leave Henry alone for any length of time. The boy would become bored, and wander about, and Burke might still be about.

  There was no telegraph here, not quite yet, but Wyatt considered sending a letter to his brothers and Bat, on some outbound freight wagon. It’d be good to have someone to watch his back. But he wasn’t even sure Burke was still in town. Reports varied on that score.

  So they took their ease under horse blankets in the none-too-clean straw of the livery stable, Wyatt reading a dog-eared copy of Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe in the light of the kerosene lamp. The book was a gift from Wyatt’s younger brother Morgan, who had read it through three times. Now and then Wyatt read sections aloud to Henry, in the hopes that some of the book’s refinement might rub off on the boy. It was embarrassing, however, when the boy asked him the meaning of words that Wyatt wasn’t sure of himself. Churlishness? Meeter? Even more embarrassing was when Wyatt had to read Rowena’s dialogue out loud. He didn’t affect a woman’s voice, but even so Henry would snigger behind his hand.

  “… Proud damsel,” said De Bracy, incensed at finding his gallant style procured him nothing but contempt—“proud damsel, thou shalt be as proudly encountered. Know then, that I have supported my pretensions to your hand in the way that best suited thy character. It is meeter for thy humour to be wooed with bow and bill, than in set terms, and in courtly language.”

  Wyatt cleared his throat before the next part.

  “Courtesy of tongue,” said Rowena, “when it is used to veil churlishness of deed, is but a knight’s girdle around the breast of a base clown …”

  “Well, Wyatt!” Henry exclaimed. “It’s but a damn girdle around a clown’s breast, is it?”

  “Hellfire! Read it yourself, boy!” Wyatt snapped, throwing the book at him.

  Henry caught the book, laughing. “I might too!” But he contented himself with gawping at the illustrations. “Lordy I’d like to get me a crossbow—and a sword like that’n. You could cut old Burke down to size with that … You reckon he’s looking for us, Wyatt?”

  “If he isn’t now,” Wyatt said, lying back and tilting his hat over his eyes, “he will be.”

  * * *

  “My father …” Wyatt paused in speaking to pull the crosscut saw, and take a breath. “… he liked to say …” He pushed the saw back as Henry pulled. “… that a thinking man can hardly bear the kind of toil that raises blisters …”

  “I reckon I’m a thinking man,” Henry said, rasping the words out as he struggled with the saw.

  “That’s not the whole saying,” Wyatt said, as the log fell into two parts. “A thinking man can hardly bear that kind of toil, unless he learns to take pride in the work, and interest himself in it. Keeps the mind busy till he’s done.”

  “Hard to find much interest in it,” Henry said, looking at his hands ruefully. “Especially …” He looked at the sky between the treetops as a cold rain began to fall from the fast-rolling clouds. “Especially when I got a bad case of shivering the whole day through … Wyatt—don’t you think I ought to be able to … I mean, I can shoot some, but … couldn’t you give me a lesson or two? Suppose Burke finds us out here and you’re away from camp?” With some reluctance, Wyatt nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that …”

  So in the mornings, for half an hour before setting to work on the trees, Wyatt gave Henry shooting lessons. They fired the rifle and pistol at snags and pinecones. “Henry,” Wyatt said, one morning, “I’m no great shot. One thing I know is, the winner of a gunplay is the one who takes his time. Never mind that flashy trick shooting. Fanning your gun, all that … you can’t hit a damn thing that way. Mostly, the other fella’s going to be nervous, and fire wild. Take your time and aim and keep a cool head and you’ll come out all right …”

  * * *

  It was after their fourth trip out that Wyatt decided he’d pop his cork if he had to spend any more time around Henry—not that the boy wasn’t good company, especially now that he’d learned to work some, but Henry was as talkative as Bat, and unlike Bat he had a boy’s prattle about him.

  “Henry,” he said somberly, as they drove their wagon into Deadwood, just about dusk, “I believe I’ll give you leave to spend an evening alone with Sir Walter Scott. I plan to get me a bath and play some cards.”

  “I’ll come with you and watch fer cheaters, Wyatt!”

  “Won’t be necessary. You need a wash yourself. You’re getting to be ripe. After dinner, you go on and have yourself a hot bath, and a haircut.”

  “I ain’t got the spondulicks!”

  “I’ll give you some of your pay for cutting wood—and
I’ll meet you at the livery. Later on.”

  “Suppose …” Henry looked about at the miners, the ladies; the gamblers and saloon keepers bustling the muddy street.

  “If you’re thinking of Burke,” Wyatt said, “I heard from Toothless Mike, when I went for water at the creek: Says he saw him ride out of town.”

  “Might not’ve been for good …”

  “If you see Burke, give him the slip and find me. I’ll be in the Number Ten Saloon, that place right over there, turning a card. But first, let’s sell this load of wood and have us one of those expensive steaks …”

  “Now that I can interest myself in …”

  “Henry—make sure that’s all you get interested in.” Something else had occurred to Wyatt—he had seen Henry staring at the prostitutes and the town’s handful of respectable women. Only natural, at his age. Still, they’d take him but good—and maybe give him a dose in the bargain. “Stay away from those working girls—don’t even stop to talk to ’em. Raise your hat and hurry on.”

  * * *

  The “No. 10” Saloon hadn’t been built more than a year or so before, but already it had the sepia of antiquity: it had been prematurely aged in pipe smoke, cigar smoke, gun smoke—and wood smoke leaking from the bullet-dented Ben Franklin stove in the corner. It was given a distinct aroma too, from a thousand spills of beer and liquor.

  “Supposed to be spring, out there,” groused Toothless Mike, a bespectacled miner with a mane of white hair and, in fact, several teeth remaining. “But it’s still cold as billy hell. Two cards.”

  Wyatt dealt out the two cards, and looked at his own hand. Aces and … a pair of nines. And a queen of hearts kicker. “Colder up in those hills,” he remarked, as he considered the odds.

  “Weather’ll turn soon, Wyatt,” said Charlie Utter tilting his cards a little to see them better in the light of the lamp hanging from the ceiling. “Colorado Charlie” was a long-haired, stocky frontiersman, in beaded buckskin and a weather-beaten broad-brimmed vaquero hat. Despite his frontier stylings he was clean as a whistle; he even kept his nails shining, though the mud got into everything here. He had an air of authority about him too, maybe earned in his many crossings of the Rockies leading prairie schooners to Oregon. Wyatt knew Charlie Utter from when they’d worked the railroads together, Wyatt hunting buffalo and elk for the men laying the track, Utter scouting for the surveyors.