The Last Kind Words Saloon: A Novel

by Larry McMurtry

  To the north, two miles, was the emerging shell of Lord Ernle’s castle. Quanah had heard about it in Washington, from Lord Ernle himself, at a big reception to announce the big international partnership. Still, he hadn’t expected it to be so big. He was skeptical of the notion of a big cattle empire, himself. Cattle were too slow to grow and couldn’t handle the severe plains winters, as had been demonstrated a few winters back when fifty million dollars’ worth of cattle froze to death on the northern plains. If anybody could make cattle work, it would probably be Goodnight, but Quanah remained skeptical.

  Quanah himself was more interested in the social possibilities, as represented by the vast castle going up. He had never been in a castle before and looked forward to visiting Lord Ernle.

  “I hear Lord Ernle has a fine-looking woman with him . . . know anything about her?”

  “She’s tall,” Bose said. “That about all I know about her.”

  “I like tall women,” Quanah said. “Most of my wives are stocky. I hear Lord Ernle is bringing greyhounds . . . I’m hoping to take Lord Ernle on a wolf hunt. Do you know when he’s expected?”

  “Don’t know,” Bose said. He himself had not been in the fight on the Pease River when Quanah’s mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, had been retaken by the Rangers, but he had seen her several times around Austin and he had never seen a sadder woman. Her eyes held no life, no hope. When, one day, he heard she had died, he felt sure it must have been a relief.

  “If San Saba is as tall as they say she is I might ask her to be my wife. I’ve only got three,” Quanah said.

  “Three more than I’ve got,” Bose thought.

  -22-

  Flo had always wondered about something but had never got up her nerve to ask about it, and that was that San Saba always wore a sock on her right foot—a thick sock that she pulled halfway up her calf. She even wore it in the bath, and she bathed every day—at least she did when the water supply permitted.

  San Saba never took off her sock. Otherwise she was careless about her body.

  The day they were supposed to leave for the great new ranch in Texas, San Saba noticed Flo looking at her sock. She was just stepping out of her bath. The sock, of course, was wet. The girl Flo was special to her, so without hesitation San Saba stooped and peeled off the sock.

  There were red markings low on San Saba’s right ankle. Flo was disturbed, without knowing exactly what she was seeing.

  “It’s a brand,” San Saba explained. “I very rarely show it.”

  “Who branded you?”

  “The eunuchs, when I was six.”

  “I guess it hurt.”

  San Saba smiled.

  “It still hurts,” she said. “But now you know my darkest secret. Could you bring me another sock?”

  Lord Ernle, meanwhile, was directing the departure of his large, complicated entourage, which filled a number of wagons, buggies, and other conveyances. There were his pipers, of course, and a fowler and a falconer, and a man to handle the greyhounds. There were two blacksmiths, two cooks, three Irish laundresses, and even an electrician: it was clear to Lord Ernle that electricity was the coming thing and he wanted to see to it that his Texas establishment was absolutely state-of-the-art.

  “No half measures,” he muttered several times. It was his personal motto; he intended to have it latinized and put on a crest.

  San Saba watched it all from her balcony: beyond the tiny town there was the vastness of the plains: colorless, gloomy, vast: the sea of grass, Lord Ernle called it.

  Benny Ernle kept looking at her hopefully, at the dinner table. For years she had summoned her gaiety to enliven Benny Ernle’s meals. The food was excellent: pheasant again, and rabbit, fresh killed. She chose the rabbit, and ate in silence.

  “What? Not off your feed?” Lord Ernle asked.

  “We’ve a hard journey ahead of us—I would be foolish to overeat,” she said.

  Her mood alarmed him—it was a change he hadn’t ordered.

  “Bosh, I overeat every night,” he told her. “Where’s your smile? Your laughter?”

  San Saba looked at him directly; perhaps as directly as her mother had looked at the sultan, when she refused him.

  Lord Ernle made an excuse and left the table.

  It would not be the end of it, San Saba knew. Lord Ernle must not be thwarted, ever. San Saba felt sure there would be punishment, just as there had been for her mother, the Rose Concubine.

  DENVER

  -23-

  The gunfighter skit involving Wyatt and Doc did not, at first, go well at all. For one thing the pair had not bothered to practice—both despised practice, on the whole.

  “Pull a pistol out of a dern holster and shoot it—why would that require practice?” Wyatt wondered.

  “Everything about show business requires practice,” Cody told him, but he didn’t press the point; these moody men would find out soon enough about the practicalities of show business.

  Sure enough, on the very first draw, Wyatt yanked his gun out so vigorously that it somehow flew out of his hand and landed twenty feet in front of him with the barrel in the dirt.

  Doc, meanwhile, had the opposite problem: he had jammed his pistol in its holster so tight that it wouldn’t come out. This behavior annoyed Doc so much that he ripped off the holster and threw it at a bronc, which happened to be loose in the arena.

  The crowd was largely silent: this was not what they had expected; many members of the audience were eager to get on to the dramatic reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand.

  Some bronc riders and a cowboy or two snickered, which did not improve Wyatt’s mood, or Doc’s—or Bill Cody’s.

  “They’ve made it into a comedy routine,” he said to Frank, Annie Oakley’s husband, who happened to be nearby.

  “It was not meant to be a comedy routine.”

  The second night went little better. Some prop man filled Doc’s gun with blanks but forgot to do the same with Wyatt’s. Doc then shot Wyatt six times while Wyatt snapped his useless pistol six times.

  The third night they finally got it right, firing a crescendo of blanks; but the crowd showed little interest. Some called for Wyatt to toss his pistol again.

  By the fifth night they were getting fairly good at the fast draw, but on the sixth night Cody came in with a desperate look on his face; he told them that Harry Tammen, the magnate who owned the show and most of Colorado, had concluded that public interest was waning, and the show closed down.

  “Closed it down—you mean we’re out of work?” Wyatt asked.

  “You’re out of work and I’m out of everything except the clothes on my back,” Cody said.

  “He’s running a sheriff’s sale tomorrow. I think he even plans to sell my horse.”

  “Why the son of a bitch,” Doc said. “What if I go shoot him?”

  Cody merely looked doleful.

  Wyatt and Doc had developed a fondness for the old showman.

  “Why Bill, that’s rotten,” Wyatt said. “What will you do?”

  “Go home and quarrel with Lulu,” Cody said. “That’s my wife, who lives in Buffalo, in the state of New York.”

  “As for you gunfighters, there are other shows.” Cody said. “Texas Jack might hire you, and there’s plenty of gambling dens here in Denver.”

  “No, I guess we’ll amble down the road,” Wyatt said. “Jessie’s getting nosebleeds from the altitude.”

  Cody gave a little wave and turned away.

  “We ought to kill that fellow Tammen,” Wyatt said. “He’s about to put Bill Cody in his grave.”

  “I don’t favor gambling much more here,” Doc said. “Competition’s too advanced. I’ve been playing steady for two weeks and I’m just up eighty dollars, and you know how dangerous I am at the poker table.”

  “I admit you’re fair,” Wyatt said. “Farther than fair I don’t go.”

  “Where will we strike next, boys?”

  He was addressing three of his brothers: Morgan, Virgi
l, and Warren—the latter had brought his Last Kind Words sign with him; all he needed was a saloon to hang it on.

  “Virg has been offered the sheriffing job in Tombstone,” Morgan said. “And he could hire me to deputy.”

  “So I guess me and Warren can just be left out,” Wyatt said.

  “But you don’t like sheriff work—or any work,” Virgil said.

  “True, but I have an even greater dislike of starving,” Wyatt said.

  “There’s Mobetie, it’s a damn sight closer than Tombstone,” Morgan said. “I’m told there’s no law there yet, and no order either. Wyatt wouldn’t be subjecting his lovely wife to high altitudes.”

  “Mobetie, I have no idea of such a place,” Doc admitted.

  “Oh, it’s Goodnight’s country—it’s probably somewhere on his ranch. I’m sure it’s windy,” Morgan said.

  “Ain’t you a dandy,” Wyatt said. “I suspect you know pretty much all there is to know.”

  “Far from it,” Morgan declared.

  What he did know was when his brother Wyatt was itching to start a fight—any fight. It was partly the way he hunched his shoulders when he sat, and partly the chill look in his eyes.

  On such occasions—and they were frequent—the prudent thing to do was leave, and Morgan did.

  -24-

  The only person who hated the high-altitude nosebleeds in Denver more than Jessie was Wyatt, who turned plenty pale at the mere sight of blood. Once while they were at it her nose began to spout blood which got on Wyatt’s chest and on his clothes.

  “Oh goddamnit!” he said, and before they were even finished Wyatt pulled out and ran off. She didn’t see him for a week. Wyatt threatened to leave her so often she thought he might have finally done it, but he hadn’t. He had just been salooning, maybe whoring, though maybe not whoring. Wyatt was not easily pleasured—Jessie knew she was finally going to have to look elsewhere for her romance, and the first place she intended to look was Virgil, who could rarely get close to Jessie without his tongue hanging out.

  Still, Jesse knew she had to be careful. The Earps might quarrel among themselves, but they were quick to unite when there was a threat—even just a social threat.

  Wyatt looked awful when he showed back up—he always did after a binge. Cleanliness meant little to Wyatt, though it meant much to Morgan, who always wore creased trousers and a starched shirt.

  Once or twice Jessie had tried to steal a kiss from Virgil, but the results had been disappointing. Doc Holliday had never given her the time of day either. If she really put her mind to it she could usually provoke a little scuffle with Wyatt—and better to fight with her husband than just spend her days pouring whiskey from a bottle to a glass.

  “The future’s settled for a while,” Wyatt told her.

  “What future?”

  “You and me and Warren are going to visit a town called Mobetie, which is probably in Texas.”

  “What about Doc?”

  “Doc’s slow to make a decision,” he said. “I expect he’ll join us eventually.”

  “Why Mobetie?”

  “Why not? It’s a brand-new town. Warren is carrying around his sign, hoping to find a saloon to hang it on,” Wyatt said.

  “Will I have a job . . . bartender, barmaid?”

  “We’ll see about it,” he said.

  That afternoon Jessie let a photographer take her picture. The photographer had a studio. It was boredom that drove her to it. He made her dress like an Indian, which she wasn’t. But it passed the afternoon. In one shot you could see her breasts and even her nipples. Probably Wyatt wouldn’t like that very much. But, by good luck, he never saw that picture—at least not until years later, when it showed up in an Arizona magazine. The reason Jessie got away with it at the time was because Wyatt and Warren were anxious to get off to this place called Mobetie, which was in Texas.

  The first night out it snowed. All they had to make a fire with were cow chips, which didn’t make a very warm fire. Jessie didn’t care. At least they were going downhill and her nose had finally stopped bleeding.

  -25-

  Charles and Mary Goodnight were showing Lord Ernle, their English partner, around the ranch they owned together. They were riding across the breaks of the Canadian River, thick at this season with wild plum bushes. The plums were not quite ready to pick.

  “I wouldn’t mind having a wild plum bush around our house, if we ever get a house,” Mary said. “Do you think they could be transplanted, Charlie?”

  “If you had somebody willing to dig up a plum bush I expect they could be transplanted,” he said.

  Just then Lord Ernle’s greyhounds put up two lobo wolves—in a moment both the greyhounds and the wolves were in full cry.

  Goodnight studied the chase, which was taking place in very broken country. They were on the edge of the Palo Duro Canyon, with ravines and drop-offs aplenty. Lord Ernle was riding his thoroughbred, an unstable animal at best, in Goodnight’s view.

  “Thoroughbreds might be all right for Scotland or someplace level—but not here,” he said.

  “I don’t think Scotland’s particularly level,” Mary said.

  It’s just like her to argue, he thought, but he held his tongue.

  “Most places are more level than the caprock,” he said, civilly he thought.

  Vaguely troubled, he began to lope in the direction of the chase. Benny Ernle was a skilled rider, of course, but he didn’t know the country. He had begun to spur up a little when suddenly the greyhounds disappeared. Lord Ernle was brandishing a pig sticker when he too disappeared.

  Goodnight spurred up, but he knew what he would find before he found it. The drop-off, when he came to it, was sheer and about twenty feet. At the bottom the thoroughbred was trying to rise, on broken forelegs; two of the greyhounds had suffered the same fate. Lord Ernle lay flat on his back, dead. There was no sign of the wolves.

  Mary, a careful rider, showed up a little later.

  “Oh, Charlie, my god,” she said.

  An old, short, very dirty man was bending over Lord Ernle; he carried a short knife and had been skinning a skunk.

  “Why it’s Caddo Jake!” she exclaimed. “It’s his shack I use for my school.”

  “Skunks are plentiful along the Canadian,” Goodnight reminded her. “That’s about all Jake traps.”

  A hundred yards west they found a little trail down the caprock; they went down it carefully and hurried to the bodies.

  “Who was that fool?” Jake asked. “He came flying off that bluff and nearly hit me.”

  “An Englishman,” Goodnight said. “Has he moved?”

  “No, and he ain’t going to—neck’s broke,” Jake said.

  “Now I don’t have a rich partner,” Goodnight thought.

  Mary had begun to cry.

  -26-

  The minute San Saba saw Benny Ernle’s body, which was brought back in a wagon, she knew that her life was in mortal peril—and Flo’s life too. The butler, the farrier, the cook, the blacksmith—all the men who worked for Benny were looking at her silently. She had been Benny’s favorite for a long time. She had ordered them all around, been queenly, sharp, harsh as the occasion demanded it. Now if they could catch her she would pay, and not just with the normal lusts. Old Hamid, who took care of the dairy goats, was said to have been a torturer in his youth. San Saba didn’t want him practicing his ancient skills on her body or Flo’s.

  The Goodnights were her only hope and she at once approached them.

  “Mrs. Goodnight, I’d like to come work for you and I’d like to bring Flo. I assure you we’ll be a useful pair, and if we stay here we’re lost.”

  Mary looked at the men ringing the courtyard: she saw what San Saba meant. The men were looking at the two women, the one not exactly black, the other not exactly white.

  Charles Goodnight didn’t see the looks. What he didn’t see was why, having lost one partner, he should acquire two women.

  “Hire them to do what?”
he said stiffly. “We don’t even have a house yet.”

  “Yes you do, there’s this one,” Mary said. “It’s on your land—you could just claim it.”

  “Claim this pile, why we’d rattle around in it like gourds,” Goodnight said; but, in a minute, he saw that the idea had some merit.

  “We could start our college in it, and maybe a courthouse too. I guess we’d have to round up a town of sorts before it would work.”

  “Come to think of it, there’s Mobetie,” Goodnight said. “It’s small enough to be readily moved.”

  “We can sew and cook and launder, and I could even help you teach school. I have fluent Spanish, which you Texans will be needing pretty soon.”

  Mary Goodnight clapped.

  “See, Charlie?” she asked. “Just yesterday I heard you telling Benny that you’d soon need somebody to speak Mexican so you can keep track of the vaqueros on the long drives out of south Texas; and now here’s someone showed up.”

  “Besides all that I’m pretty good at breaking horses,” San Saba said.

  “A woman break horses?” Goodnight said, startled yet again.

  “Yes, an old gaucho taught me,” she said. “Benny owned a million acres of the pampas, and more cattle than you’ve got in Texas.”

  “What? I doubt it,” Goodnight protested.

  “It’s true though,” she said. “I came to love the pampas—they’re not unlike this country here. And the beef was excellent.”

  “I’ve heard that, but I’ve not yet had time to visit,” he said.

  “I am no hand at breaking horses,” he added. “Most of my remuda is half broke and dangerous to the cowhands.”

  “Try me then, Mr. Goodnight—I can do what I claim.”

  Mary hugged San Saba, who hugged her in turn.

  “Let’s hire them, Charlie—I’m tired of being the only respectable woman in this part of the country.”

  It was on the tip of Goodnight’s tongue to question the respectability of two of the three, but he realized that Mary did need company and it wouldn’t do to be too picky. Besides, in his years on the plains he had often seen whores go on to become excellent wives to some farmer or cowhand; better wives in some cases than women with unblemished records in all departments.