Telegraph Days: A Novel

by Larry McMurtry

  I had meant to spend the first night at our old family place, but once I got there I found I didn’t want to. I was a future-looking woman—the past had no grip on me yet. I spent five minutes by the sad little patch of family graves. The roof of the old cabin had fallen in, and the barn was more or less no barn. Passersby had helped themselves to most of the lumber, and why wouldn’t they? Even the beam that Father hung himself from was missing.

  Jakey and Sam, of course, were still impatient. They saw themselves as millionaires already, a piece of rank credulity that irked me, I suppose. But I kept quiet. We all of us have our unrealistic hopes. And Jakey and Sam, though well aware of my quarrelsome nature, had agreed to take me on a long and uncertain journey.

  We made our first campfire close to the Cimarron River—geese were calling and ducks were quacking most of the night. I had picked up a copy of my little Banditti booklet at Hungry Billy’s store and I read it to the boys before the firelight faded. I suppose the narrative gripped them—they didn’t say a word or make a sound. When I came to the killing of the six Yazees, their eyes got really big.

  “Why, your brother Jackson’s a famous man,” Jakey said. “A man who can shoot like that could probably get in a show and be rich. Why would he stay in Rita Blanca when he ain’t even been made a sheriff?”

  “Because he’s a good deputy, that’s why,” I told them.

  I didn’t mention that Jackson Courtright’s skill with the pistol had been a onetime thing.

  14

  THE FIRST THING I witnessed as Jakey and Sam and I rode along the main street of Tombstone was Wyatt Earp, whacking a fellow on the head with a big pistol. I rode right up to the scene before I quite realized that a violent confrontation was taking place. Perhaps it was some form of arrest, though I didn’t see any badge on Wyatt. I had already noticed that the town didn’t suffer from any shortage of Earps, because Virgil and Morgan were taking the air—which was hot—on the porch of one of the big hotels Zenas had hoped to impress me with. The hotel was the Cosmopolitan, which seemed to me an odd name to give to a hotel in a rocky place where most of the inhabitants seemed to be living in tents. I suppose people can name hotels to suit themselves.

  Wyatt Earp drew back his arm to whack his victim again when he happened to notice that I was riding past, with Jakey and Sam.

  “Oh hell!” he said. “Not you!”

  “What a charming welcome, Mr. Earp,” I told him.

  At this point his victim dropped to his knees, groaning quietly.

  “Now you shut up, Frank—I barely tapped you,” Wyatt said. “Get on down to the jail—I’ll be along in a minute.”

  “What’d the poor fellow do?” I asked.

  “Why would that be your business, Miss Courtright?” he asked. Wyatt hadn’t shaved, and did not appear to be entirely sober; but then full sobriety in Tombstone was a rare thing, as I soon found out. He wore the same dingy black coat that he had sported in Dodge City—his brothers Virgil and Morgan were similarly attired.

  “I’m the new reporter for the Tombstone Turret,” I informed him. “I’ll be writing up arrests and murders and court proceedings and the like. Since I’m here I might as well start with this fellow Frank. What did he do? I’m sure the citizens of Tombstone will be glad to read that speedy justice has been served.”

  The cowboy named Frank managed to get to his feet, though he was still distinctly wobbly.

  “Justice?” he said. “You expect justice from an Earp?”

  Then he staggered off, holding his bleeding head.

  “Frank McLaury is a stagecoach robber and a cattle rustler and so is his brother Tom,” Wyatt declared. He stuck his big pistol back in his belt. “And so are the goddamn Clantons and some others. Any whacking they get is well deserved.”

  “Cattle rustling?” I said, in surprise. “All we’ve seen for the last fifty miles are rocks and rattlesnakes. Where would a cow find anything to grass on, in this desert?”

  I was to learn that there were plenty of cattle in the area, and abundant grazing near the Mexican border, but I didn’t learn any of this from Wyatt Earp, who sneered at me unpleasantly.

  “You ought to have married Virgil when you had the chance,” he said. “Now he’s married, and so is Morgan. And I’ll thank you to leave Warren alone. The last thing that boy needs is a bossy wife.”

  “You are remarkably rude, Mr. Earp,” I told him—then I rode on down the street to the office of the Tombstone Turret, a three-room house in which a lot of ink got splashed. But Zenas, who was not ink-free himself, came running out and gave me a big kiss. Jakey and Sam, who evidently didn’t care for the sight of people kissing, wandered off to wet their whistles. Both had been excited by the abundance of saloons—indeed, so far as I could see, except for a small photography shop, a gun shop, and a general store, there was nothing much in Tombstone but saloons. The four hotels themselves were mainly just saloons with a few bedrooms attached.

  “I just saw Wyatt Earp pistol-whip a fellow he claimed was a stage robber and cattle rustler,” I told my inky lover.

  Zenas just grinned.

  “Stage robbers abound,” he said, “and there’s no shortage of cattle rustlers either.”

  While Zenas was stabling my pacer at a big livery stable called the O.K. Corral, I set about getting my kit off our pack mule. It was really a job for Jakey and Sam, but they had been polite and put up with my sulks and rampages all the way from the muddy Cimarron River to the dusty San Pedro, so I decided to leave them to their carousing—they’d earned it.

  The mule—it was our same old Percy, no longer a youth—tried my patience but I finally got the kit off and Zenas showed up and helped me get it out of the street. Before we could get it inside we heard a general yelling from the direction of the Alhambra Hotel, about a block away.

  This time it was Virgil Earp who was doing the whacking—his victim attempted to hit Virgil with a rifle barrel but Virgil was the more experienced pistol-whipper. He soon gained control of the rifle himself and whacked the young victim yet again with the barrel of his big pistol, which ended the fight. Virgil collared the fellow he was struggling with and dragged him off toward the jail.

  “That unfortunate is Ike Clanton,” Zenas informed me. “The Earps and the Clantons are bitter enemies.”

  “I doubt that the Earps have any other kind of enemies,” I surmised.

  “Virgil’s the town’s marshal,” Zenas informed me. “He has three deputies but he only uses them to herd in the drunks. If there’s serious fighting to be done he calls in his brothers, or else Doc Holliday.”

  I had read that Doc Holliday had been a dentist down in Texas or somewhere, but I didn’t keep up with outlaws unless they tried to rob me, as Jesse James had, so I knew few particulars about Mr. Holliday and for the moment didn’t care to learn more.

  But I had come to Tombstone to be a reporter for the Turret, and also to spend some time with Zenas in what Jesse Morlacchi called “the beds.”

  “I’ve been here twenty minutes and seen two men arrested, both by Earps,” I mentioned.

  Zenas didn’t comment—he had tried to lift my trunk, which was as heavy as if it had been filled with cannonballs. I had to help him wrestle it through the door and back to our room.

  “How much of a crime needs to be committed before you want me to report on it?” I asked. I had been mostly bored by my ride across country and was eager to get to work. I think it irked Zenas a little that I was so businesslike. He wanted me to organize his office and help keep him solvent, but he also wanted me to drop everything and flirt with him when he felt like flirting.

  “Couldn’t we just do it before we get into the business problems?” he asked.

  I suppose I had been slow to notice that he had a certain look in his eye and a certain bulge in his trousers.

  “Well, aren’t you the bold one,” I said, giving his stiffie a squeeze. “I suppose we do have a little catching up to do.”

  The back room w
as the bedroom, where we did a little hasty copulating. If anything, I was impatient. I had just arrived in Tombstone and my businesslike nature would assert itself.

  “There you are, my sweet,” I said brusquely, when Zenas spunked.

  What I really wanted to do was get out in the street and find out what was really going on between the rustlers—if they were rustlers—and the Earps. It could be my first story for the Tombstone Turret.

  15

  AN HOUR OR two later in the day I was standing in the front room of the Turret when Ike Clanton, the accused rustler that Virgil Earp had pistol-whipped and jailed, came wobbling down the street toward the O.K. Corral. Since he had to pass right in front of our office I decided to step out and make his acquaintance. Rascal and rustler though he may have been, I mainly liked Ike Clanton and mostly got along with him well.

  He even looked glad to see me when I stepped out and introduced myself.

  “Why hello, Miss Courtright—got any cocaine?” he inquired. The sun was bright in the street—Ike had to squint to make me out. Actually we did have a bit of cocaine in the office—mixed with cool water it made a good headache remedy. I supposed, from the lump on his temple, that Ike Clanton had a headache.

  “I believe we do—come on in,” I said, leading Ike into our inky domicile.

  The ink put him off a little—I suppose he was a bit of a dandy.

  “A man could easily get smudged in a place like this,” he commented. Zenas chuckled.

  “I’m the new reporter for the paper, as well as being Mr. Clark’s fiancé,” I informed him. “What did you do to cause Marshal Earp to whack you with that pistol?”

  Ike gave a bitter laugh and swigged down a glass of well water with a little cocaine in it.

  “I complained about that damn Wyatt beating up my friend Frank McLaury for no reason at all,” he said. “But even if I hadn’t complained Virgil would have whacked me anyway. Just walking freely in the street is crime enough for the Earps, whom I don’t suppose you’ve met.”

  “Oh, I met the lot of them in Dodge City years ago,” I told him. “Mainly I find them coarse, though I exempt Warren from that judgment.”

  “You’re a kind little lady or you’d call them worse than that,” Ike said.

  “I used to run the telegraph office in a place called Rita Blanca—I doubt you would have heard of it,” I volunteered.

  “Oh, I’ve heard of it,” Ike said. “That’s where some lucky deputy laid out the whole Yazee gang, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “You’re not mistaken—my brother was the deputy.”

  “I wish he were here, then,” Ike said. “I’d have him go shoot every last Earp except Warren.

  “Though if Warren should get in the way I can’t promise much,” he added.

  I got my reporter’s twitch when he said that.

  “Are you suggesting there’s going to be a battle, Mr. Clanton?” I asked.

  “Not if they don’t crowd us,” he said. “If the Earps will let us be I imagine we’ll just go home.”

  “Who’s us?”

  “Why, the Cowboys,” he explained. “Myself and my younger brother Billy, and Frank and Tom McLaury, and one or two other fellows who might want to get in with us.

  “The Earps just better leave us alone,” Ike added.

  Then he thanked me politely for the headache remedy and went on up the street toward the O.K. Corral.

  Zenas was quick to explain that the Cowboys, capital C, were just a loose gang of border ruffians who robbed stages and rustled Mexican cattle and generally made themselves a nuisance, not only to the Earps but to pretty much anyone who happened to be traveling in the region between Tombstone and the border.

  I gave it all some thought.

  “This place is shaping up to be wilder than Dodge City, or Rita Blanca either,” I told him.

  “It’s a lot wilder,” he admitted. “Hardly a day goes by without a shooting or two, and some of the time it’s the Earps who start the gunplay.”

  “Does the place have a coroner?” I wondered. “I like to be precise when I file my reports.”

  “We have a coroner and a judge and a magistrate,” Zenas assured me.

  “Do you think the Cowboys really mean to fight it out with the Earps anytime soon?”

  Zenas just shrugged.

  “It all depends on the moods,” he said.

  “Moods?”

  “The Earps’ mood—the Cowboys’ mood.

  “Maybe the Cowboys will just get on their horses and go home,” Zenas said. “If they’ll just ride off I expect the Earps will let them go.”

  I peeked out the window, cautiously. If hot lead started flying I wanted to be in a position to dodge it.

  Down at the Earps’ end of the street I didn’t see a soul stirring; but I looked the other way and saw five men milling around in the general vicinity of the O.K. Corral. The man Wyatt had beaten was standing by a horse, but no one seemed to be in any hurry to depart.

  In fact Ike Clanton seemed to be riled up. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he was gesticulating angrily. Then the whole group ambled across the street and disappeared—they were on the other side of the photography shop, which I had not yet had time to visit.

  “Since you spoke of moods, I might just mention mine,” I told Zenas. “Mine’s what you might call a nervous mood.”

  Then I looked down the street toward the jail again and nearly jumped out of my skin, because in the street that had been empty a moment earlier, here came the Earps, plus a skinny stranger that I suppose must have been Doc Holliday. They were all wearing dingy black coats. Wyatt and Morgan had big pistols in their hands. Virgil Earp held a walking stick. It was windy enough that Doc Holliday had to keep adjusting his coat, under which I thought I saw a shotgun.

  “Zenas, the Earps are coming—do you think we ought to warn the Cowboys?” I asked.

  Zenas ran to the window, took one look, and pulled down the shade.

  “This office just closed,” he said. “Let’s hide under the desk.”

  16

  OF COURSE, ZENAS had done the prudent thing—pulled down the shades, locked the door. But my reporter’s temper was up—I could not bring myself to crouch under a desk at such a time. From deep in my memory rose once again the charge of the Yazee gang—all I could think of was to get out in the street and rescue my brother.

  To Zenas’s dismay I unlocked the door and dashed out—I even took my tablet, which would be a poor weapon if I were challenged.

  The Earps had come level with where I stood. The Earps ignored me, though Doc Holliday gave me a quick glance. Just then a short man wearing a badge came out and tried to stop the Earps’ advance—but they hardly paused.

  “That’s the county sheriff,” Zenas explained. He had popped out behind me, hoping to drag me to cover.

  “I don’t think they listened to him,” I said. Then I noticed that Zenas and I were hardly the only solid citizens in the street. The photographer, Camillus Fry, whom I had not yet met, was standing there with a black cloth over his arm—I suppose he had been making a picture when he sensed the menace. More than a dozen other citizens were just standing in the street gaping; they had blank, trapped looks on their faces—all of them were mobile, and yet they didn’t flee. I had seen that look before, in Rita Blanca, when a cyclone was bearing down on the town—we all knew we ought to run and hide, and do it quick, and yet we didn’t move. Fortunately the cyclone just missed us.

  The Earps, with Doc Holliday on their right flank, continued their advance, despite the fact that they had no accurate notion of where the Cowboys had gone. The Cowboys’ mood or rationale I can only guess at. They were somewhere on the other side of the photography shop, perhaps feeling muddled, with no clear notion of what ought to happen next. They may well have all been outlaws—but were they fighting men? The Earps, of course, were fighting men and not much else. If gunplay should begin, it was highly likely that there would be fewer Cowboys when it e
nded.

  “Nellie, bullets are going to fly,” Zenas warned. “We ought to get behind that wagon if you won’t hide under the desk.”

  He was dead right, of course, but I was too stubborn, or maybe too curious to consider anything of the sort. I wanted to see the fight, if there was one; and I wanted to be the first one to write it up, as I had written up the Yazee charge in my Banditti book.

  I didn’t have long to wait—suddenly the Earps and the Cowboys bumbled into one another. The latter had been ambling out toward the street, not really expecting it to be so full of Earps.

  Probably the Earps supposed that they could easily stare down the Cowboys, as they had stared down so many of their kind. But this time, the two groups were too close together for the staring down to take effect.

  “You’re all under arrest!” Virgil said loudly, at which point Frank McLaury made a motion in the direction of his gun but didn’t really pull it.

  “Hold on now, I don’t want this!” Virgil Earp said—but whether he wanted it or not, he had waited too long to stop it, because two gunshots rang out almost as one.

  Unfortunately I was directly behind Wyatt and Morgan Earp—I couldn’t plainly see who those two were shooting at, nor who was shooting at them, if anyone was. I think Wyatt and young Billy Clanton may have exchanged shots—I also think Morgan Earp fired at least one round at Frank McLaury before the shooting became general.

  Though I twice heard a bullet’s whiz I remained rooted in the street, and so did everyone else who had chosen to watch the fight.

  Ike Clanton, who did not seem to be armed, came running up to Wyatt and took his arm. I suppose he hoped to call everything off, but if so, his timing was sluggish. Wyatt yelled something at him that I didn’t hear, at which point Ike hurriedly left the fracas and ran into the photography shop, not to be seen again for a while.