Telegraph Days: A Novel

by Larry McMurtry

  “Buffalo,” he said. “It could just be two, but I’d like to hope it’s a whole bunch.”

  “Be handy to have you here if the Yazees attack,” Teddy said.

  Aurel enjoyed a puff or two before he answered. I think he liked the notion that he was supposed to stay and protect the town, which is more or less what Teddy was suggesting.

  “That sorry Bert Yazee is no early riser,” Aurel remarked—it was his only remark. Pretty soon he left and, I suspect, went to alert his skinners that there might be buffalo to be skinned on the morrow.

  When Jackson and Teddy paid Mrs. Karoo the usual compliments, I walked partway back to the jail with them.

  “Are you scared, Nellie?” Jackson asked.

  “I don’t know what I am,” I told him honestly, for I was neither terrified nor exactly calm. The dangers of violent death just seemed to be part of life, in the West. Even in Virginia plenty of people got murdered right in their homes. A few years back there had been a madman around Waynesboro who went around cutting people’s heads off with a scythe. Naturally we were all terrified and cut down on our picnics until a farm woman who knew how to use a shotgun shot the madman dead.

  Since it was such a pretty night I thought Ted Bunsen might want to indulge in a little courting—after all I didn’t walk down to the jail every night—but he had his mind on the Yazee gang and failed to notice that a small opportunity had been lost.

  “We best clean all the guns,” he said to my brother, which I guess they did, leaving me standing in the street flat-footed. I didn’t want much from Teddy, but I did want something—if not from him, then from somebody, or maybe just from life itself.

  Mrs. Karoo looked relieved when I stepped back into the boardinghouse, which surprised me. I hadn’t been gone that long or that far.

  “In Indian times you might have been snatched between here and the jail,” she explained. “I guess I still get nervous.”

  “If anybody had tried to snatch me, you bet I would have raised a ruckus.”

  “Not if you had been whacked on the head with a tomahawk first,” she said. “You would have been unconscious—and then you would have just been gone.”

  It was a chilly thought, I had to admit.

  “I was east of here, with the Choctaws then,” she said. “They were settled Indians. But Aurel was here when the Comanches ruled No Man’s Land. He’s the one to tell you about the Indian times.”

  “And he thought the Comanches were worse than this Yazee gang?”

  “Oh yes,” she said with certainty. “The Comanches were worse.”

  19

  THE SUN CAME UP and no Yazees came with it—we all had a normal breakfast.

  Watching Aurel Imlah and Mrs. Karoo with their pipes convinced me I wanted to learn to smoke one—the tobacco had such a pleasing smell. When I mentioned as much to Mrs. Karoo she offered to come with me to Beau Wheless’s store to help me pick out my first pipe.

  “Something ladylike, of course,” she said. “Mr. Wheless has a good selection. I’m about ready for a new pipe myself—we can take a look.”

  Several of my Virginia aunts smoked pipes, though my mother didn’t. She would not have approved of my pipe smoking but I was a grown woman now and I could choose my own vices, I guess.

  Beau Wheless, ever the merchant, soon had fifteen or sixteen pipes out of his big pipe case, all of them spread on a counter while he explained the virtues of each one. I had not expected there to be such variety and was trying this one and that one, trying to see which one looked best with my complexion, when Beau Wheless suddenly looked up and got quiet.

  At first I didn’t know why—nor did Mrs. Karoo, who had already picked out her new pipe and was trying on a bonnet. But she looked up too. The blacksmith was in the store, buying himself a new sledgehammer. He looked up, puzzled. Then the old lady who was counting change suddenly stopped counting.

  For no reason that I could immediately pinpoint, everyone in the store suddenly got quiet.

  Hungry Billy Wheless, who had been lounging on the porch, doing as little as possible, suddenly rushed in, white as a sheet.

  “It’s them, Pa!” he said—then we all began to hear the distant rumble of hooves and some faint yelling.

  I’ve come to think that in times of crisis human beings don’t have it in them to be rational.

  The Yazee gang was riding down upon us, six abreast. We all ran outside and confirmed that fact. The sensible thing, then, would have been to run and hide—but did we? Not at all. Instead we ran out into the street, in order to get an early look at our own doom. I suppose if it had been a tornado bearing down on us, or a prairie fire or a tidal wave, we’d have behaved just as foolishly—like chickens with their heads cut off, or something.

  There it is: out we all ran, offering our foolish selves to the killers, quite unaware, of course, that we were about to witness one of the most talked about gunfights ever to occur in the American West, or anywhere.

  The Yazee gang came trotting toward us, coming steadily on but not at a dead run or anything. They all had rifles except Bert Yazee, who had his big club. Being six abreast, they pretty much filled the street.Then, as we all watched, Bert Yazee pulled up, and so did his brothers. Bert lifted that big skull-smashing club over his head and let out a high yell, after which the Yazees came racing straight toward us, this time at a dead run. They were coming to massacre us all.

  My first thought as a sister was to race over to the jail and protect my little brother—how I expected to accomplish that I had no idea. But I started running and got nearly to the middle of the street, which had come to look as wide as an ocean, when I realized I wasn’t going to make it: the Yazees were coming at me too fast.

  Ted Bunsen came running out of the jail with his rifle raised, but before he could shoot, one of the Yazees shot him and sent him sprawling, whether dead or alive I didn’t know.

  “Nellie! Come back!” Beau Wheless yelled, but by then it was too late to turn back. There I was, facing six wild killers, with no weapon of any kind.

  I’m dead, I thought—I’m dead!

  And at that moment I didn’t really seem to mind all that much. I felt rather distant from it all, as if I were already gone.

  Then Jackson, my brother, came stumbling out of the jail, looking as if he had just awakened. His hair stood up, his shirttail was out, and he was barefoot. His aim, I believe, was to rescue me, but for that it was too late. But Jackson was a swift runner and managed to get to my side when the Yazees were still maybe forty yards away. He had his holster and his new pistol was in it but so far it had not occurred to him to draw the weapon.

  “Jackson, draw your gun!” I yelled. “Draw your gun or we’re dead!”

  The only reason we weren’t already dead, I’m convinced now, was because Bert Yazee wanted to club one or both of us with his big club and slowed the advance just a little. I could see Ted Bunsen struggling to sit up but he was not going to be able to be any help—now the Yazee gang was closing with us fast!

  When Jackson realized he had his pistol, he did draw it, but my Lord! He was slow as molasses. Getting his pistol out of his holster seemed to take a week, and then he nearly dropped the pistol, which, so far as I knew, he had never fired.

  “Jackson! Shoot!” I yelled. Jackson frowned for a second, as if annoyed by my bossiness, and then he finally cocked the pistol. By this time the Yazees were on us—I saw Bert Yazee with his killer’s grin raise that big Ponca war club, meaning to club Jackson first.

  But before the club fell Jackson raised the pistol and shot Bert Yazee dead as dead.

  Then Jackson swung his pistol in a short arc and fired five more times. Each shot rendered a Yazee fully as dead as Bert. The last killer fell under his horse’s feet and got thoroughly trampled as well.

  On the faces of the dead men were looks of profound surprise.

  Jackson looked at his pistol as if he had never seen such a thing as a revolver before.

  “It’
s a good thing there wasn’t seven of those killers,” he said mildly. “I used up every one of my bullets.”

  Ted Bunsen got to his feet and managed to hobble over—he had only been hit in the shoulder. He stared down at the six dead men, looking puzzled, as his eyes were showing him something he couldn’t quite believe.

  Ted didn’t say a word, nor did most of the townspeople, at first. Rita Blanca was quiet, except for one of the Yazees’ horses, which had wandered off to a water trough and was sucking in water, loudly.

  We weren’t dead—none of us—and yet death had come so close that it took a while for us to accept that we were still alive. A stillness settled over us. Even Beau Wheless was silenced for a time. How could it be that we were really spared? How could it be that in no more than a few seconds my little brother had wiped out the deadliest gang in the West? Nobody knew about shock in those days—we were all in it, but we didn’t have the word.

  The person least affected was Jackson Courtright himself.

  “Jackson, you’re a hero,” I told him. My voice sounded like the voice of someone else, not me. It was the voice of someone who had been as good as dead, and yet was still alive.

  “You’re not just a hero, you’re a big hero!” I told him. “You wiped out the whole Yazee gang! That makes you the biggest hero in the whole West!”

  Jackson was just a youth, seventeen years old, and he had done the only thing there was to do, other than die. He hadn’t died, and he still looked sleepy. In fact he yawned while I was telling him what a big hero he was.

  “I guess shooting a pistol is a lot easier than I thought it would be,” Jackson said. “When I finally got it out of my holster it was like it just became part of my arm.”

  He was standing now three feet from the corpse of Bert Yazee, the most feared killer in that part of the world, but Jackson didn’t look at Bert or any of the other dead Yazees. Dealing sudden death to six humans—even if they had been merciless killers—might give most of us qualms, or queasy stomachs, or twinges of conscience, or something, but it had no affect on my brother that I could tell. If he’d had a plate of flapjacks in front of him I expect he would have eaten them without sparing a thought for the Yazees.

  There may just be something in the Courtright character—something a little cold-blooded. We’re not ones to weep for a man—at least not long.

  There’s just a distance in us—Virginia gentlefolk that we may be.

  “I need to get my boots on,” Jackson said. “I’m apt to get bit by a stinging lizard, or else step on a grass burr. I hate those mean little stinging lizards!”

  Then, with the whole town watching, Jackson strolled back into the jail and finished his nap.

  BOOK II

  Telegraph Days

  1

  THE FIRST PERSON to recover from the shock of the big fight that wiped out the Yazee gang was Beau Wheless—for maybe ten minutes Beau was as stunned as the rest of us, but then his business instincts kicked in and kicked hard. A capacity for rapid response to commercial possibility probably explains why Beau Wheless was the richest man in Rita Blanca.

  “Come on, Billy, help me line up these Yazees,” he said to his son. “Let’s pile up their guns and valuables—and search close. I think we’ve got the makings of a fine little museum here.”

  I thought the man must be daft.

  “Museum of what—dirty clothes?” I asked.

  But Beau was energetic, not to mention smooth. His eyes were already looking far ahead in time and seeing the endless march of dollar signs, visible at the moment only to himself.

  “Let’s call it the Museum of the American Outlaw … what better place to have it than right here in Rita Blanca?” he said.

  It takes a true businessman to look at six bloody, bedraggled, filthy corpses, their eyes open to the heaven they wouldn’t be going to, and see a museum.

  “Would you charge admission?” I asked—my glimpse into how the mercantile mind worked made me think there might be something to this fellow Beau Wheless after all.

  “Free admission to reporters and a dime to strangers and idle passersby,” Beau said. “Maybe we’ll raise it to a quarter later on.”

  “Okay, where will this museum be?” I asked.

  “In the window of my store, to start with—until we get a nice room ready for it,” Beau said.

  “And where are all these reporters you said could get in free?” I asked.

  Just then Hungry Billy gave a cry, dropped to his knees, and puked. He had just pulled a sack full of objects I couldn’t identify out of Bert Yazee’s saddlebags.

  “Ears,” Ted Bunsen declared, when he went to take a look. “Billy’s found a big bag of ears.”

  “They’ll be perfect for Beau’s museum,” I said, rather tartly.

  In fact Ted Bunsen looked peaked. Being shot in the shoulder was clearly a source of discomfort.

  “I’m taking you to Doc Siblee,” I told him. “You could have a broken collarbone.”

  For once Teddy didn’t argue with me. I think he was feeling pretty low. For one thing he was shot, and for another, he had not played a very effective role in the defense of the community that was paying his wages, such as they were.

  My little brother, who had never fired a pistol before, had become a great hero, while Teddy had been able to be no help. In the heat of battle he probably didn’t think about that angle, but the battle had cooled and there it was.

  Stiff as I usually was with Teddy, I didn’t enjoy seeing him so disappointed with himself.

  “Now, Theodore,” I told him, “I want you to cheer up. This is No Man’s Land. There’ll be plenty more outlaws for you to slaughter, I’m sure.”

  “Doubtful,” Teddy said, though he smiled when I gave his hand a good warm squeeze.

  The Doc was not long in discovering that I had been right in my diagnosis. Sheriff Ted Bunsen had a broken collarbone.

  2

  IT WAS IMPORTANT that I took the trouble to walk Ted to the Doc’s. Otherwise he might well have balked, as men are prone to do when anything medical is suggested to them.

  But I was not through with Beau Wheless and his plans for an Outlaw Museum. By this time Hungry Billy and the helpful blacksmith had drug the dead outlaws to the undertaker’s shed, where they were rapidly being squirted full of embalming fluid.

  “We can’t allow them to get rank before the reporters get here,” Beau informed me. “Have you sent off any telegrams yet?”

  “No, but I’ll inform the paper up in Dodge,” I said. “It’ll be a relief to travelers to know they don’t have to worry about the Yazees anymore.”

  “Do it!” Beau said. “Then we can expect a crowd of reporters to come down on us in about three days.”

  “Three days?” I asked. “We’re a long way from anywhere, Beau—or haven’t you noticed?”

  “Nobody can cover distance like newspapermen on the scent of a story,” he said. “Half the forts in Kansas are full of reporters who are just waiting for some general to corner some Indian that the U.S. Army can blame Custer on.”

  “But Custer wasn’t killed in Kansas,” I pointed out. “He was killed in Montana.”

  “All that means is that the reporters will be drinking too much whiskey and losing money at cards—our story will be the biggest thing on the horizon, as soon as you send that wire.”

  The casual way Beau said “our story” irritated me for a moment. Strictly speaking, it seemed to me, the story involved only my brother, Jackson, and the now-defunct Yazee gang. And yet Jackson was over in the jail, taking a nap—he had no inkling yet that there even was a story, one that would render him famous for the rest of his days. The Yazees would be famous too, although their fame would have to be posthumous.

  Beau Wheless already had his big camera out—he meant to photograph the dead Yazees as soon as the embalming was done.

  “Here’s a notion for you, Nellie, once you get that wire off,” Beau said. “You need to write up a booklet abou
t all this—there’s a printer in Dodge who could print it off for you,” he told me, with a gleam in his eye.

  “You’ve seen outlaw books,” he went on. “They needn’t be longer than dime novels. I’ll pay for the printing and we’ll split the profits down the middle—if you’ll hurry and write it up, maybe we can get it on sale before the hordes arrive.”

  I had a hard time imagining hordes in Rita Blanca, but Beau Wheless was an experienced man and I was just a young woman. The only thing I didn’t like about Beau Wheless was his Adam’s apple, which was large; it jerked around unattractively when he talked.

  “I’ve never written a booklet before, but I suppose I can put my mind to it,” I said. “But let me remind you that I’m not destitute. I can pay to have my own booklet printed, and then I wouldn’t have to share the profits with anyone. Of course, if you chose to sell the booklet in your store you’d be welcome to a fair commission.”

  Beau looked a little pained.

  “But it was my idea,” he said.

  “And it was my brother who kept you from being slaughtered,” I reminded him.

  “Go write it, then,” Beau said. I suspect he saw his defeat as temporary.

  “Avoid long sentences if you can,” he advised. “People who read outlaw books don’t care to have long sentences wrapped around their throats.”

  Then he and Hungry Billy and the blacksmith propped the dead Yazees up on some boards they had knocked together.

  All afternoon, as I was in my office scribbling out the story of the big shoot-out in Rita Blanca, I could see Beau Wheless popping in and out of his little photographer’s tent, taking picture after picture of the once dreaded Yazee gang.

  3

  SCRIBBLING OUT STORIES and sketches has always come easy for me. From girlhood I had written little stories, more or less in the manner of Mrs. Edgeworth’s or Mrs. Ewing’s. Mrs. Browning was, for the time being, still more than I could aspire to. I kept my sketches in a box, which I forgot to bring with me when we headed west. I let my big sister Millicent read a few of my sketches and she thought I ought to be sending them off to magazines—but then Milly died and I let that project drop.