by John Shirley
The cold wind had subsided, but the clouds moved too fast in the sky, and it was still overcast, and chilly. He could smell mesquite and moldering leaves and something dead—a deer, or buffalo, probably, decaying out in the plains.
Along about noon, when he was wondering where to find water and forage, his horse twitched its ears forward, lifting its muzzle in a way that told Wyatt there were riders coming.
Ten minutes later, Bat Masterson and Virgil Earp came riding around the bend, emerging from a screen of cottonwoods.
Virgil waved his hat, in that way he had, and Bat grinned as the two men cantered up. The three riders reined in, their horses snorting curiously at one another.
“Ben Thompson sent a wire,” Virgil said. “Suggested you might need some watching over.”
“You’re late for that,” Wyatt said. “But it came out well enough.”
“You finished what you were about?” Virgil asked.
“I did,” Wyatt said, in a way that hinted he didn’t want to talk about it any further. Virgil caught the hint, and just nodded.
“I told you he’d be riding, Virgil,” Bat said. “Why, a sturdy plainsman like Wyatt here would scorn the train.”
“Still wish I’d taken a train,” said Virgil. “Wyatt seems just fine and I’m longing for a warm hotel room.”
“Town’s not so far back,” Wyatt said. “There’s good pasteboard play there, I hear. Cattlemen in town wanting to throw away their money on cards. You might do nicely.”
“By God,” Virgil said, “there’s no reason to head back to Wichita right quick. I believe I will act on your suggestion. Bat?”
“I’ll ride on with Wyatt.”
“Then be damned to you both—I’m for Medicine Lodge!” Virgil chuckled, clapping his hat on his head, and rode off at a good pace to the South.
Wyatt and Bat rode on toward Wichita in silence. At last Wyatt said, “Burke killed Dandi. Told Pierce she committed suicide. Pierce was covering up his shame at the whole thing. That’s about it. Except … I made a deal with Pierce—gave him my word I’d kill Burke myself and speak of all this no more. I can’t tell Leahy; I can’t tell anyone. No one’s to know about him and Dandi. And I said you could be trusted to keep quiet too.”
Bat nodded. After a moment he said, “Burke’s done for?”
“He’s cold as a wagon wheel. And buried, more or less. He nearly did for me. But I had some luck.”
Bat nodded again, squinting off into the Eastern distance. “But … isn’t that Burke’s horse?”
He pointed—Wyatt turned in his saddle to see the unmistakable horse, the color of storm clouds, running unsaddled along the top of a low ridge some distance to the East. It paused, and looked toward them, then shook its head fiercely and turned to gallop out of sight.
It was gone. But that sickly, murderous horse would continue wandering out there somewhere. Dandi would still be dead and Sanchez and Montaigne were still dead. And Urilla … Urilla was dead.
Right then he didn’t feel much better, having killed Burke. He just felt like going home to Mattie.
* * *
“He said what?” Wyatt demanded, one chilly afternoon, at the smoky bar in James’s place.
Dudley leered—he’d recently lost a front tooth and the gap showed black. “He said you was working out some kind of scal-lawaggin’ deal with Marshal Meagher.” He looked at his empty whiskey glass intently, and licked his lips.
Wyatt growled to himself and signaled to the bartender. Dudley’s glass was refilled, he drank half of it down, wiped his mouth, and went on, “Marshal Smith said he heard you’d back Meagher for Town Marshal if he’d go easy on them whores your sister in law has and if he’d hire you and your brothers on for some cooshy job. Said Meagher was taking bribes and you was turning your back on them bribes and …”
“And when did he say this?” Wyatt asked, between clenched teeth.
“Why, an hour ago, in Red’s place. He was just heading back to his office and—Whuh oh.”
This last, as Dudley watched Wyatt Earp stalk toward the door, his hands balled into fists.
Dudley chuckled. “Want to see this. Glad I stayed on in Wichita. Entertaining kinder town.”
He and a few other no-accounts shuffled out the door to follow Wyatt down to Smith’s office.
* * *
Wyatt knew he ought to hold back. He knew he ought to take a ride in the country and think it over. He might call Smith out in court, sue for slander. But this was just one button too many. Smith had jailed Montaigne, then allowed him to be killed; Smith had stood by while Plug Johnson was murdered and Smith had obstructed investigation into Dandi LeTrouveau’s murder. Had ridden with that murderer Burke in his posse. He had cut Wyatt from the town police on a pretense, and now he’d slandered him, lying about Meagher and lying about the Earp brothers. He had gone just exactly one step too far—And thinking about it Wyatt felt a long-capped wellspring of chill fury bursting up, driving him unstoppably down the street.
Marshal Smith was stepping out of the jailhouse, just then, calling out to Carmody, who was heading off on some errand. Smith seemed to want to remind Carmody of something. Forgetting all about it when he saw Wyatt Earp striding toward him.
“What are you saying about my brothers?” Wyatt demanded. “What are you saying about me and Meagher? What’s all this business about bribes and dirty deals, Smith?”
Carmody rushed up to them as Smith sputtered, “Why I—there’s been talk, that’s all I—now you just back off, boy, you just—”
That’s all he got out before Wyatt cracked him on the jaw with a sharp right, making him reel back.
“Here now!” Carmody shouted, as amazed as he was angry, fumbling for his gun. Wyatt turned and drove a fist into Carmo-dy’s gut. The big deputy folded over and sat down, wheezing, his face mottled.
Smith was reaching for his gun but Wyatt slapped it away with a hard left backhand, snapping his right fist to catch Smith with an uppercut. Smith went over backwards, moaning, to slide down against the wall. He ended up sitting beside Carmody, his head wobbling.
The two men looked comical that way, sitting side by side, one with a wobbling head, the other gasping for breath like a landed fish, and the small crowd that had gathered behind Wyatt laughed and hooted.
Wyatt turned and looked at them. Saw that one of them wasn’t laughing: a stout man with flaring mutton chops he knew to be on the town council. Wyatt knew then, as sure as winter follows autumn, he’d be fired. He shrugged and turned back to Smith.
“You say anything you want about my family,” Wyatt told Smith, “except I require it be the truth.” He turned and walked back the way he’d come.
* * *
Wyatt found Bat Masterson playing cards in James’s, and sat down at the table, shaking his head at the dealer to indicate he didn’t want into the game, which was itself a prodigy.
Bat looked at him, then folded his hand and nodded toward a small, quiet corner table. Wyatt nodded and they went silently over to the table, sidling through a pack of drunken cowboys to get there.
Bat turned a chair around backwards, sat leaning his elbows on it; Wyatt ordered them drinks and sat across from him.
Wyatt drank a glass of beer, occasioning lifted eyebrows from Bat, before he finally spoke. “I just beat the dickens out of Marshal Smith …” He looked mournfully down at his swollen knuckles.
Bat grunted. “You came out on top—but you don’t look happy about it,” he observed.
“I was starting to get some kind of steady life here. Give it a little time I might’ve been appointed U.S. Marshal. But I just heard that Smith was telling lies about me, saying I was corrupt and my brothers were getting special deals … And I thought about all the rest he did and …”
“It all came out at once.”
Wyatt nodded. “It did. Can’t take it back now. I’ll be arrested—or fired.”
“I think they’ll decline to arrest you, in consideration of your reco
rd. But the job … You beat up a town marshall. That is frowned upon. You’ll be fired.”
Wyatt snorted. “One mistake after another. With Urilla. Then in Illinois …” He shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about the gunboat and the drowned girl. “Nearly let Burke kill me, making mistakes. I did let him kill Sanchez—failed to stop the bastard, anyhow. Sanchez was a good man. Then this—should have kept my temper. Another damned mistake.” Wyatt spun his empty beer glass on the table. It whirled—and fell over with a clunk.
Bat waited—but Wyatt said nothing else. He had been as open with his thoughts as he knew how to be.
At last Bat said, “If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not a real man.”
Wyatt looked at him. “How’s that?”
“Out there in the world, taking your chances like a man, you’re going to make mistakes. Anybody lives so careful he doesn’t make mistakes—that’s not a man.”
Wyatt thought about it. He took a long, slow breath. He decided that Bat was probably right. “Not sure I needed whoppers that big …”
“You want another beer?” Bat asked. When Wyatt shook his head, Bat leaned toward him with a smile. “How many times you wallop him?”
Wyatt shrugged. “Two or three. Him and Carmody. They were sitting on the sidewalk looking kind of startled when I left.”
The two men looked gravely at one another. Then Bat laughed—and after awhile, Wyatt had to join in.
More than one patron of the gambling hall looked at Wyatt with some surprise. Is that Wyatt Earp … laughing?
After the laughter faded, Bat took a deck of cards from his jacket and said, “How about I make you feel better by taking all your money?”
Wyatt shrugged and said, “Let’s get a fresh deck.”
EPILOGUE
“Here’s your last clipping in a Wichita paper, I expect,” Mattie said dourly. She closed her nightgown, then sat up on the bed and dropped the clipping from the Beacon onto the sheets where he could see it.
He was lying on his side, wearing only his trousers, head propped on his fist, gazing out the half-curtained window at the gray late morning sky. Occasional spits of snow slanted by. He could hear bullwhackers cracking their whips, wagons rattling, people calling to one another. He was not really in the mood to go out, yet—it had gotten cold again, he had no work in Wichita, now, and was feeling low in his spirits. The only good news had been hearing that Jack McCall had been hung in Yankton, Dakota Territory, for the murder of Wild Bill Hickok.
Bat had left town a couple days earlier, taking the train to help his brother Ed with some lawing over in Dodge City. Virgil was out of town, James was in a bad mood, Mattie was peevish with cabin fever—and Wyatt had not been making friends of late …
“I don’t believe I want to read that newspaper hogwash,” Wyatt said, irritably. But he picked up the clipping anyway.
… On last Sunday night a difficulty occurred between Policeman Erp and Wm. Smith, candidate for Town Marshal. Erp was arrested for violation of the peace and order of the city and was fined on Monday afternoon by his honor Judge Atwood, $30 and cost, and was relieved from the police force… The remarks that Smith was said to have made in regard to the marshal sending for Erp’s brothers to put them on the police force furnished no grounds for an attack, and upon ordinary occasions we doubt if Erp would have given them a second thought. The good order of the city was properly vindicated in the fining and dismissal of Erp. It is but justice to Erp to say that he has made an excellent officer and hitherto his conduct has been unexceptionable.
“Now why would you want to clip that?” Wyatt demanded. “Not exactly high praise. They didn’t even spell my name right—this time my last name.”
Fired twice in Wichita, he thought. Not a good record. It really was time to move on …
“I kept it,” Mattie was saying. “because it says you were an excellent officer, is why. Most people don’t hold it against you, what you did—but you shouldn’t have knocked Marshal Smith down like that.”
“I know it. I just lost my temper. I suppose some of the other things Smith did, before that, they kind of lit the fuse.”
“Well, you’ve got a long fuse, all right. Can we get something to eat?”
“I suppose.”
“We’re going to California, pretty soon, aren’t we? Or Arizona?”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
A knock sounded. Wyatt slid off the bed, took his pistol from the bedside table, and went to the door. “Who is it?”
“It’s Dave Leahy!”
“A moment, Dave.” Wyatt stuck the gun in his belt, picked up a red undershirt from the floor, and pulled it on before opening the door.
“Sorry to disturb you folks but they asked me at the telegraph office if I could bring this to you …”
Wyatt opened the envelope and read the telegraph—and his spirits rose.
To Wyatt S. Earp, Wichita
Heard you free for new job. Need help Dodge City. Hard noggins here need creasing. Job on offer. Good pay. Come quick.
Bat
Wyatt smiled and folded up the telegraph. “Seems Bat needs my help …”
Mattie called out from the bed, “Where’s he need your help at?”
“He’s still over in Dodge. I haven’t decided to go for sure, Mattie. But maybe we should. Maybe I can be of use in Dodge City, somehow …”
The End
