Telegraph Days: A Novel

by Larry McMurtry

  Now that I’ve had most of a lifetime to think about the matter I’m convinced that there’s no power like outlawry to heat up public curiosity. Folks just can’t get enough of outlaws, don’t ask me why! Just for firing off the six bullets that killed the six Yazees, my brother, Jackson, became famous for the rest of his life, a fact that Jackson, who was mostly a nice boy, hadn’t really come to grips with yet.

  I had been right about the reporters too. Several members of that species were waiting with the others at my office: they had hired a stagecoach in Leavenworth and had come racing hell-for-leather over the prairies, while several others, from papers all over the country, had bought or rented horses in order to join the chase. According to Aurel Imlah, nearly twenty reporters were in town—they formed a raucous mob at best.

  As soon as would-be booklet buyers stopped writing their names on my tablet I rushed off a quick telegram to Joel Tesselinck, telling him to double the order and dispatch the books by Pony Express or any express. Then I closed my window and skipped over to the jail, where I found my admirer Sheriff Ted Bunsen smoking a cigar and drinking straight whiskey out of a glass.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “Are you drinking whiskey while on duty, Theodore?”

  “What’s it look like?” Teddy countered, in that tone men use when they consider that women are being bossy.

  “When I left this place you were dour but reliable,” I pointed out. “Now I’m back and you’re drinking.”

  Actually, just looking at Teddy touched me a little. He was so hopeless I could almost find it in me to be in love with him. A helpless, hopeless man is often pretty close to irresistible, or at least that’s the case if you’re stuck in Rita Blanca, as I was.

  “I suppose Jackson’s hiding from the reporters, like I told him to,” I said.

  “Hide from a reporter—it’d be like hiding from a flea!” Teddy said. “Some of them have been here two days, waiting for you to get back so they can pester Deputy Courtright. And all because of beginner’s luck.”

  As I said, the man’s melancholy touched me. I took his face in my hands and gave him a little kiss.

  “Listen to me, Teddy—this is Rita Blanca’s one chance to make some money,” I said. “These newspapermen are Yazee crazy—they’ll pay good money for interviews with anyone who witnessed the shoot-out. I’m surprised Beau Wheless hasn’t already set things up. I suppose he got overwhelmed.”

  “He didn’t get overwhelmed,” Ted told me. “He got dead.”

  “What?”

  I was purely stunned. Beau Wheless, the principal merchant of Rita Blanca, dead. I felt trembly for a moment from the shock.

  “That mangy old cat that nobody likes bit Beau on the finger,” Ted explained. “The wound didn’t bleed—in no time Beau got blood poisoning so bad the Doc couldn’t save him. We buried him yesterday. Now the whole shebang belongs to Hungry Billy.”

  It was true that nobody liked the mangy cat, which had hissed at me several times.

  “Is that why you’re drunk on the job?” I asked Ted. “Because you miss Beau?”

  “Oh no,” Ted admitted. “I was not that fond of Beau—he always overcharged for brooms and the like.”

  “Then why are you drunk?” I asked.

  “Because we think the Indian’s around,” Ted admitted. “Josh Tell thinks he glimpsed him.”

  Aurel Imlah had once mentioned the Indian, when he was visiting Father. He was said to be a giant outlaw who roamed the plains alone. No one could say exactly what crimes he may have committed, if any. Aurel thought he might have glimpsed him once, from a distance, in a snowstorm. No tribe claimed the Indian, evidently. No lawman had ever gotten close to him, and no soldier had ever shot at him.

  “I don’t know that I believe in this Indian. Sounds like the work of somebody’s imagination.”

  “If you don’t believe he’s out there, then you’re a fool!” Teddy said. “It’s from worrying about the Indian that’s got me drunk on the job.”

  “Even if he exists, he’s just one Indian,” I pointed out. “I doubt one Indian could massacre a whole town.”

  Teddy didn’t answer—he didn’t stop drinking, either.

  14

  ONE THING I had figured out in my twenty-two years is that in a crisis situation it’s a mistake to stop and think. If Jackson had spent even one second thinking about the rampaging Yazees, he and most of the rest of us in Rita Blanca would now be dead.

  So, when I found Ted drunk in his jail cell and the street buzzing with reporters, I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed a shotgun from Ted’s arsenal, went out into the street, and fired both barrels straight up in the air—too straight, as it happened: number four shot was soon raining down upon us, along with a crow and a pigeon that had accidentally flown into the blast. Fortunately neither of the birds hit a newspaperman in their descent.

  At first blush the newsies appeared to be a scraggly lot, the sort of men who smoked their cigars down to stubs and spilled whiskey on their vests.

  The shotgun blasts easily got their attention.

  “Nothing to be alarmed about, gentlemen,” I said. “I’m Marie Antoinette Courtright—call me Nellie for short—and you’ll all need to file your stories with me at the telegraph office, which is just up the street and will be open for business in ten minutes.”

  “That’s all very well, Miss, but where’s Deputy Courtright?” a wiry little terrier of a fellow asked me. His yellow cravat was far from spotless; his name was Charlie Hepworth—many years later I was to work with Charlie Hepworth again.

  “The deputy’s attending to some bookkeeping at the moment,” I told them. “He happens to be my brother.”

  “Who cares if he’s your brother?” a tall, skinny fellow declared. He had a face as thin as a china plate.

  “The deputy will soon be available for interviews—though not free gratis, of course,” I informed them.

  The announcement was not well received, to say the least.

  “What do you mean, not free gratis?” the tall fellow said. “I’m Cunningham Calhoun, of the New York World, by the way, and most people are familiar with my byline.”

  “Not most people in Rita Blanca, sir—our newspapers arrive irregularly, if at all,” I reminded him. “We’re in No Man’s Land, remember.”

  “No Man’s Land—is that where we are, Miss?” a tall, smiling fellow with a few too many teeth crammed into the front of his mouth inquired. I liked the man right off, don’t ask me why. He wore a red bowler hat, the first I’d seen.

  “I thought we were in Texas,” he added. “Our readers welcome news from Texas.”

  “You’re off by a day or two if you’re looking for Texas,” I told him. I liked him so much I might have eloped with him to Texas, if he’d asked me, but failing that, there was money to be made.

  “How much are we supposed to shell out for these interviews?” Charlie Hepworth inquired.

  “A mere ten dollars apiece,” I told them, deciding on the bold approach.

  The newsmen looked a little annoyed, but none of them threatened to leave.

  “I hear Hroswitha Jubb’s headed this way,” the young charmer with the red bowler and the snaggle teeth remarked. “Know anything about that?”

  “She’s my aunt,” I informed them. “We passed her yesterday. Aunt Ros moves at a calm pace but I expect she’ll be showing up later in the day.”

  “We’ve heard about an Indian—what can you tell us about him, Miss?” Cunningham Calhoun asked.

  “I’m a telegrapher, not a bulletin board,” I told them. “I’m managing the Yazee story, which so far as I know is the only story. Rumors about an Indian are probably just yarns.”

  But the young fellow in the red bowler had a mind of his own.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Miss,” he said. “These outlaw stories are a dime a dozen. I’d rather find out about the Indian, if I could do it without getting scalped.”

  “Now, stop your yapping, Zenas,” Charlie Hepworth told him
irritably.

  “That’s right, Zenas,” Cunningham Calhoun put in. “We’ve traveled here in grave discomfort to get the Yazee story, and I mean to get it and, I hope, get it now.”

  The young fellow named Zenas just laughed and wandered off. He had never bothered to line up anyway. His casual attitude toward the Yazee story irritated me but I suppose if I had been a reporter I’d have been more interested in the Indian, myself. After all, as Zenas suggested, heroes killing outlaws happens in a lot of stories—all the way back to David and Goliath, I suppose. It just so happened that my brother, Jackson, had been the David in this case.

  But a giant Indian roaming the prairies, only glimpsed in snowstorms here and there—now that was original, as the young man named Zenas had figured out at once.

  Eager as I was for Jackson to show up and start earning ten dollars an interview, the pesky side of me made me kind of turn. To their annoyance I left the sweaty group of whiskey-stained reporters and went right down the street after the reporter with the red hat.

  When I caught up with him he was out behind the general store, staring at the wide prairie as if he expected the big Indian to rise up and announce himself in some newsworthy way.

  “Excuse me, sir—I didn’t get your name,” I told him. “I need to put you on my list, assuming you do want to interview my brother.”

  “I’m Zenas Clark,” he said, ignoring my ploy about the list. “I have a question for you.”

  “What?”

  “If we were to get better acquainted would you ever expect me to call you Marie Antoinette?

  “A name like that could dampen the flame,” he said, with an engaging smile.

  I should have slapped him but instead I blushed. I’ve always found it devilish hard to maintain a solid stance when standing face-to-face with a fellow I might end up kissing.

  “You’re as rude as a rooster, Mr. Clark,” I told him. “What makes you think there might be a flame?”

  But that was bravado—just bravado. I was smitten with this fellow Zenas Clark, and he knew it.

  “You only need call me Nellie,” I conceded.

  15

  THE FACT IS I’ve never been able to keep my hands off any man with even half an ounce of appeal—my susceptibility, which, I suppose, is what you’d call it, showed up at an early age, which may have been one reason Father chose to haul me out in the middle of a howling wilderness, to a place where there were very few men for me to seduce.

  In sedate Virginia my behavior with the young males of my acquaintance was a scandal. I was too wellborn to be called a slut, though if I’d had bolder male cousins I might have deserved the word. At first I had to content myself with a lot of playing doctor, sneaking my little boy cousins into the barn and persuading them to drop their pants so I could inspect their little pricks, offering them, in turn, a leisurely look at my little pink notch.

  Of course, I was eager to get beyond doctor-and-nurse games, which, fortunately for me, I was able to accomplish when my tall, lanky cousin Templeton spent a summer with us. Cousin Templeton was three years older than me and rapidly introduced me to the pleasures of copulation. The act, I found, took mastering, but I was getting the go of it pretty well when my pesky cousin Julia spotted us doing it, and promptly told the grown-ups, after which cousin Templeton soon found himself shipped off to West Point, shortly after which our family headed west.

  It soon developed that my new admirer, Zenas Clark, was every bit as entertaining when it came to copulation as Cousin Templeton had been. He happened to notice that Joe Schwartz didn’t seem to be anywhere around his livery stable, whose considerable loft was filled with fragrant prairie hay.

  We were soon in that loft, kissing and probing. Unfortunately, I still had my corduroy trousers on, which slowed matters down a bit and irked Zenas Clark considerably.

  “You’d think it would have occurred to a girl your age why women are supposed to wear skirts,” Zenas complained. “How can I get in when you’re wearing those damn pants?”

  “If you’d let me be for a second I’d be glad to shuck them off,” I told him.

  He let me be and I stood up and was about to shuck them off, when who should appear out of the hay but my brother, Jackson. He had hay in his hair and he was pointing his pistol at Zenas Clark.

  “That’s my sister, leave her be, you skunk!” Jackson demanded.

  Zenas Clark was so startled at having a gun poked in his face that he temporarily lost his voice and his ardor too. Zenas just sat there, shocked.

  “Stop it, Jackson!” I insisted. “Put that pistol down before I box your ears!”

  “I’m the deputy sheriff of Rita Blanca—you’ll not be boxing my ears,” my brother said. “This skunk was about to defile you—I saw it myself.”

  “Be that as it may, I want you to put that pistol back in the holster I got you,” I told him. “I will not be having you shoot Mr. Clark, who happens to be my fiancé.”

  I was talking to Jackson when I said it, but I was looking at Zenas Clark—one of my little tests of a new suitor was to see how he reacted when I suddenly announced our engagement. It was merely a trick, a test of the suitor’s mettle. I had only been enjoying the kisses of Zenas Clark a few minutes, but my sense was he would make as good a fiancé as I was likely to snare in the environs of Rita Blanca.

  When I said it Jackson still had his gun stuck in Zenas’s face, but when Jackson finally came down off his high horse and put the pistol back in its holster, Zenas’s reaction was a snaggle-toothed grin. He grinned, but he didn’t speak out, as I expected him to.

  “You’re not going to deny that we’re engaged, I hope, Mr. Clark?” I said, with a touch of the old Courtright hauteur.

  “Why, no—I’d be pleased to be engaged to you, but on one condition,” Zenas said.

  “Which is?”

  “Which is that you never wear those damn pants again.”

  I didn’t particularly like the fellow presuming to tell me how to dress.

  “And if I should be in the mood to show up in trousers?” I asked.

  “I’d be gone so quick you wouldn’t even notice,” he said.

  I saw no reason to take such an absurd threat seriously—if there was one thing I had confidence in it was the strength of my womanly charms.

  I rather liked it, though, that Zenas Clark was such a tit-for-tat kind of fellow, much like my cousin Templeton. I can’t say that I much care for the type of gentlemen who are overly polite, not that there was exactly a surplus of that species, at least not out here in No Man’s Land.

  At the moment I couldn’t allow myself to dwell on my stimulating possibilities with Zenas Clark because first I had to coax my brother, Jackson, down from Joe Schwartz’s loft and get him primed to give a bunch of ten-dollar interviews with the various reporters who were waiting to see him, most of whom were even then getting drunk over in Leo Oliphant’s saloon.

  I knew that might not be an easy task. Jackson Courtright was not much of a talker at the best of times, and he was very apt to sulk and stall when he felt himself to be on the spot. Besides that, he had been half asleep when he killed the Yazees and his memory of killing might be rather vague.

  “Jackson, I want you to tell the reporters exactly what you told me,” I instructed, as the three of us were making our way down from the loft.

  “I have no idea what I may have told you and I don’t care to remember it even if I could,” Jackson said, in that poutish way of his—it made me want to slap him.

  “You said it was as if the gun grew out of your arm,” I reminded him. “Just say that. It’ll make a fine headline.”

  In fact it did make a fine headline, in many papers: YOUNG DEPUTY SAYS THAT GUN THAT FINISHED THE YAZEE GANG SEEMED TO GROW OUT OF HIS ARM.

  But all that came later, because just as we stepped out of the livery stable, two old ladies wandered out of the general store and suddenly began to scream.

  “Now what do those old biddies think they’re sc
reaming about?” I wondered.

  “The lance,” Zenas said. “How do you suppose that lance got there?”

  I suppose coming from the dim loft into the bright sunlight blinded me, because I failed to see a tall, thin lance sticking up right in the middle of the street. As a result of the screaming various citizens ran out assuming we were under attack—Ted Bunsen came from the jail and the blacksmith from his forge and Hungry Billy Wheless from the general store. Aurel Imlah even came trotting down from his hide yard, carrying a Winchester.

  Yet, as far as I could tell, we weren’t under attack. When I looked at the lance from a closer distance I noticed a pair of green goggles hanging from it. At least I knew where the goggles came from: my aunt, Hroswitha Jubb.

  “Those goggles belong to Ros Jubb,” I told everyone. “She does her best to keep dust out of her eyes when she travels in dusty places.”

  “Miss Courtright’s right about that,” Zenas declared. “Ros Jubb is never without several pair of her famous green goggles.”

  “Oh now,” Cunningham Calhoun demurred. “I know Ros well and I doubt she’d come all this way for a simple outlaw story.”

  “She’ll be coming—Miss Courtright told us that, Cal,” Charlie Hepworth said.

  I had already mentioned that we had spotted my aunt Ros, but Cunningham Calhoun’s attention must have been elsewhere at the time. He might have been a famous reporter for the New York World, but it didn’t keep him from missing a lot.

  “What if the mysterious Indian left the lance in the street?” Charlie Hepworth asked. “What about that, Cal?”

  “If some Indian’s done in Hroswitha Jubb, I’d say that’s just as big a story as the Yazees,” Zenas said. “It might even be a bigger story.”

  His comment gave his fellow newspapermen pause. Most of them had been meaning to snatch a quick interview with Jackson, and then skedaddle; but if something had happened to the most famous woman writer on earth, then that put a kink in their plans.