The Last Kind Words Saloon: A Novel

by Larry McMurtry

  “I might be of a different opinion,” Wyatt said.

  But he seemed inclined to let the matter drop, and probably would have had not Ike Clanton, the principal nuisance, come swaggering down the street with a gun in his hand, though it wasn’t pointed at anyone.

  “Get out of that chair and face me,” Ike, who was short, said. “You son of a bitch,” he added, as a kind of flourish.

  Wyatt and Doc looked at one another.

  “Which son of a bitch did you want to fight, Ike?” Doc inquired politely.

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Ike admitted. “You’ve both got a licking coming, though I could save time and shoot you.”

  Wyatt stood up and lazily walked over to Ike, who was clearly drunk.

  “I’m afraid your eyes have got bigger than your stomach, Ike,” Wyatt said. “You could no more whip me than you can fly.”

  “Nor could you whip me, you young fool,” Doc said.

  It was then that the confusion began for Ike Clanton, who had not yet bothered to cock his weapon. Wyatt Earp, who had just been sitting on the porch paring his nails, suddenly got behind him with a rifle, that he used to whack Ike in the head. Ike suddenly saw the ground come up and meet his head, hard.

  “I’ll take your weapon, it’s for your own good,” Wyatt told him. He waved at his brother Morgan, who was a block away, awaiting developments.

  “He’s a rowdy one,” he said, handing his rifle and Ike’s pistol to Doc. Then he took Ike by his pants leg and began to drag him over to Morgan, who was acting as the jailer.

  “Why didn’t you just shoot him?” Morgan asked.

  “No, no . . . it’s too early in the day for gunplay,” Wyatt said. “Jail him until he sobers up and then insist that he leave town and take his damn friends with him. And keep the pistol.”

  Ike Clanton had his eyes open, but did not immediately have anything to say.

  “It’s fine for you to be whacking people with your Winchester, Wyatt, but there are practical aspects to jailing people, one being that the jail’s full. Some of those gamblers we arrested last night ain’t woke up yet.”

  Wyatt smiled. Morgan often got himself into practical difficulties. He had been a studious child too.

  “It could be that you need a bigger jail, too,” Wyatt said. “If you don’t have a cell free, just chain Ike to an anvil or something. Don’t let him go until he’s full sober.”

  With that he walked off. Ike was just beginning to stir. His head had a sizable lump on it.

  At the last minute Wyatt decided to keep Ike’s pistol himself, though it was a poor weapon, of dubious accuracy.

  “I venture to guess that you’ve made an enemy,” Doc said.

  “No, he was already my enemy,” Wyatt said. “I thought best to disarm him.”

  Doc stood up and assessed the situation. Billy Clanton came down the street and was trying to talk Morgan Earp out of his prisoner. Perhaps because of the overcrowded jail; or because Morgan often refused to do what Wyatt said, Billy was soon leading an unstable Ike back up the street toward the O.K. Corral, where the Clantons and the McLaurys had their horses stabled.

  “I guess Morgan can’t tolerate a messy jail,” Doc said, to Wyatt, who shrugged. “He should have picked somebody besides Ike to turn loose. Ike’s a hothead.”

  Wyatt looked up the street and saw that the McLaurys and a few of their hired hands had taken an interest in the proceedings.

  “If Ike goes home I’ll let him be, but if he makes trouble I’ll give him a lick he won’t forget,” Wyatt said.

  “Unless he shoots you,” Doc said.

  “He won’t, I took his gun.”

  “Wyatt, wake up,” Doc said. “There’s more guns in this town than there are birds in the sky. It won’t take Ike more than ten minutes to rearm.”

  Wyatt knew that was true. But he didn’t feel worried. Ike Clanton was a fool and a loudmouth, but not a killer. In his view Ike would avoid conflict, though that didn’t mean the McLaurys would.

  “Wyatt, are you a damn marshal now?” Doc asked. “If you’re not, what business do you have arresting people?”

  “Oh, I didn’t actually arrest Ike,” Wyatt said. “I left the arresting to Morgan and Virg.”

  Doc let it drop, though he had an uneasy feeling. If Wyatt was already in an arresting mood, who could say what might happen later in the day.

  He himself was unarmed at the time, but Wells Fargo was only a block away, and they always had a gun or two that they were willing to lend to sober citizens like himself. A shotgun might be best; it would only be prudent. Wyatt had a kind of crazy look in his eye—it might be well to be armed.

  When he stood up to go inquire about the shotgun, Wyatt Earp was standing in the street; he was still watching the small crowd gathered at the O.K. Corral.

  -56-

  Jessie happened to be looking out her window when Wyatt walked out to deal with Ike Clanton—she was brushing her teeth and getting ready to comb her hair. Wyatt was moving slow, smiling at Ike in a friendly way; but then suddenly he stepped to his right and whacked Ike with the barrel of the rifle he was carrying.

  Ike fell face forward into the dusty street and didn’t move for a while. Wyatt took Ike’s pistol away from him and gave it to Morgan, who slipped it into his coat pocket.

  Wyatt and Morgan chatted a minute, and then Wyatt walked back over to where Doc Holliday waited. Doc appeared to be unarmed.

  Jessie had slept badly, and Wyatt too. Now and then through the night, he put his hand on her, but that was as far as matters went. Jessie hoped it would go farther; after all, she was awake and there they were. But Wyatt didn’t do much and she didn’t dare make an overture herself; he would just go icy, and it might be days before he was friendly again.

  “You married one of the most difficult men on the planet, Jessie,” Doc told her once. “You should have married an old pussycat like me.”

  “Oh yeah,” Jessie said. “Then why did Katie Elder tell me you’ve broken her nose twice?”

  She said it mainly just to keep a conversation going. Katie Elder, though a friend, was not always to be believed.

  “Ha, that liar,” Doc said. “She’s got the biggest nose in the Territory anyway.”

  “If I was to hit her I imagine I’d break my hand,” he said a little later.

  For her part Jessie considered Doc to be the biggest liar in the Territory, but at least he was friendly and her husband wasn’t.

  -57-

  Frank McLaury was for going home. It was certainly rude of the Earps to act as if they owned the town of Tombstone. True, the town had made Virgil Earp sheriff and his brother Morgan deputy, but, so far as Frank knew, they hadn’t made Wyatt anything and Wyatt was the one causing all the trouble. There he was, fifty yards down the street, looking at them as if they were the worst outlaws in the Territory, when in fact they were just harmless cattlemen, come to town for a little gambling and a visit to the bank.

  “Look at him,” Frank said. “You’d think he was the governor or something.”

  “Besides that he killed Pa. I’d bet a hundred dollars it was him,” Ike said. He was still groggy and so far had failed to obtain a new gun. He had lost most of his cash earlier in the day, in a poker game, and would have to borrow from his little brother Billy, or else from one of the McLaurys; but they were known to be a frugal pair, not likely to be sympathetic to his plight.

  A photographer had set up a little studio next door to the O.K. Corral, but the man was a newcomer and could not be expected to lend a weapon on such short notice.

  He wondered what the odds were that Wyatt would have mellowed to the point where he would simply give him his gun back; he decided the odds were slim.

  “I say we just go home—there’ll be a better day,” Frank McLaury repeated. “The Earps have got their dander up, for some damn reason,” he continued. “What do you think, Billy?”

  Billy Clanton, the youngest person there, had no firm opinion.

&
nbsp; “Don’t care,” Billy said. “I’m too young to be let in the saloons, and there ain’t much for me to do.”

  “I guess you could play mumbly-peg with Indian Charlie, if you can find him,” Frank McLaury suggested.

  “No thanks, I don’t think I’ve sunk that low.”

  In fact Billy had his eye on the whore named Sally Whistle, but Sally worked for money and he didn’t have any. All avenues of enjoyment at the moment seemed out of reach.

  Tom McLaury was the most combative member of his family, and he was up for a fight.

  “No Earp, nor party of Earps, is going to run me out of Tombstone,” he declared.

  “Okay then, let’s take a walk and maybe the Earps will just forget about us,” Ike suggested.

  “Walk? Where in hell would you want to walk, in Tombstone?” Tom asked.

  “Just around,” Ike said. He didn’t expect his idea to be welcomed. His brothers were so unused to walking that they would mount a horse just to walk across a pen or corral.

  To his surprise the McLaurys and his brother Billy suddenly ambled off toward the photographer’s shop, smoking cheroots as they went.

  “Hey, we could get our pictures taken,” he said.

  “No, I’ve not got time for such frivolity,” Frank McLaury said. “I’ll saunter over to the depot and back, and hope the Earps will break a leg, or do something, by the time we get back.”

  “And I still say we ought to be sensible and just go home,” he added. It might be a long wait before the quarrelsome Earps got in a better mood.

  “Heck no, I’m in a fine mood myself,” Tom said. “If the Earps know what’s good for them they’ll leave me be.”

  At that point Ike gave up.

  -58-

  “There’s laws against mobs assembling in this town,” Wyatt insisted. “And if there ain’t I’ll make one up myself.”

  “You’re afflicted with the means today, Wyatt,” Doc informed him.

  Just then two ore wagons went blazing through town, covering the whole area with dust—for a moment it was difficult to see even as far as the O.K. Corral.

  “Ike and Billy and Frank and Tom,” Doc counted. “Four ignorant cowboys don’t make a mob. And anyway Billy Clanton is too young to count.”

  “What about Indian Charlie—he’s lurking around,” Wyatt said.

  “I have no quarrel with Indian Charlie,” Virgil mentioned.

  “I guess you boys are forgiving of sinners,” Wyatt said. “I say we go run a bluff on them and chase them out of town, so the sight of them won’t be so damn aggravating.”

  “Hold on, I’ll just go borrow that shotgun from Wells Fargo,” Doc said. “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. That’s a sentiment I wouldn’t mind having on my gravestone, if I’m lucky enough to have a gravestone.”

  “Do you really want to do this, Wyatt?” he asked. “I don’t see the necessity, myself.”

  “It’s just a bluff, Doc . . . no shooting unless we really have to.”

  His own weapon, at the moment, was the sorry pistol that had once been Ike Clanton’s. He had got it back from Morgan.

  Doc quickly borrowed a serviceable .12 gauge. Morgan and Virg, professional lawmen both, each had Colts.

  When they headed up the dusty street, Virgil took the left side, Morgan the right, with Wyatt and Doc in the middle. Two more ore wagons came through and an abundance of dust lingered.

  To their surprise, when they got within bluffing distance of the O.K. Corral, neither Clantons nor McLaurys were in sight.

  “The damn scamps, where’d they go?” Wyatt asked.

  “Probably gave it up and left,” Doc said.

  “Maybe they’re smarter than I gave them credit for,” Wyatt said.

  Indian Charlie appeared suddenly, causing everyone to jump, but he was merely raking up horse turds from the livery stable.

  “This is a damn waste of time,” Wyatt said.

  “Now didn’t I predict that very thing?” Doc said. “I told you to leave it be.”

  But just as he said it gunfire erupted and Morgan went down.

  “No, no . . . I don’t want this,” Virgil said. “I’m the sheriff.”

  Then he went down too.

  Ike Clanton quickly ran into the photographer’s shop and was not shot. Both McLaurys fired and Wyatt killed them both. Somebody hit young Billy Clanton, who died after a brief agony.

  Doc was nicked, Wyatt untouched. A wagon had to be brought to bring Morgan and Virgil to the doctor.

  When Wyatt walked in on Jessie she grabbed him and held him tight and kissed him passionately.

  “You fool, you could have been killed,” Jessie said, crying.

  “Yes, but I wasn’t; let go,” Wyatt said.

  NELLIE’S VISITS

  by Nellie Courtright

  ONCE I GOT BITTEN by the journalism bug there was nothing to stop me from going wherever the stories took me, which was pretty much all over our Old West as it was waning. I often saw the Goodnights—or at least Charlie; his Mary had died. Sturdy as she seemed, the panhandle of Texas was just no place for a lady—not then. The plow had never touched the range country, not then.

  The first time I visited Charlie after Mary’s death we sat out on the porch until late at night, not talking much, just watching the stars come out. I lived in Santa Monica then, a block from the Pacific, which didn’t allow for many stars.

  “I’m an old bachelor and it don’t suit me,” Charlie said. “I’d be mighty pleased if you’d marry me.”

  I was so surprised I almost fainted—then I remembered that I had kissed him once.

  “I’m flattered, Charlie,” I said. “But as far as I know I’m still married to Zenas.”

  “How long has he been gone?” he asked.

  “About eighteen years,” I said.

  Charlie gave a kind of snort.

  “You don’t have a husband, you just have an excuse,” he said. “I’ll throw in a hundred head of cattle, to sweeten the offer,” he said.

  “Charlie, I’m a city girl,” I said. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself out here on the baldies.”

  “That’s that, then,” he said. “Good night.”

  Some years later I heard he married his nurse and I also heard that he got swindled out of most of his land. He might have been a great man, Charlie—I’m glad I kissed him and also glad I didn’t marry him—I saw enough of the prairie during my years in Rita Blanca.

  I had long forgotten Wyatt Earp and his violent brothers when he was brought to my attention by a story in a newspaper about a riot that took place in Oakland. There had been a big prizefight and Wyatt Earp had been the referee. Wyatt awarded the fight to a man named Sharkey and the crowd didn’t like the verdict and rioted for a while, though Wyatt himself escaped unharmed.

  The piece mentioned that Wyatt lived in San Pedro, just down the beach a ways. I found him in the phone book and called him up and got Jessie—I don’t think she really remembered me but she invited me to drop by anyway. I had a little rolltop convertible then, so I put the top down and went briskly down to San Pedro.

  I had barely arrived before I wished I hadn’t. Wyatt and Jessie lived in a dilapidated little bungalow. Their yard was filled with junk: old tires, some buckets, a saddle, tools of various kinds, a wheelbarrow, and the like.

  Wyatt was sitting on the porch in an old wicker chair he had found someplace. I don’t think he really recognized me, but Jessie sort of did. She had always been a large woman, but now she had spread, while Wyatt seemed to have shrunk. The famous hero of the O.K. Corral was now a rheumy-eyed old man who spent his days spitting tobacco into a coffee can.

  “No point in asking him about the killing,” Jessie said. “Wyatt don’t remember much—there’s days when he barely remembers me.”

  Then she tried to introduce us—sunken as she was, she had some trace of manners.

  “Wyatt, we used to know this lady,” she said. “We knew her in Long Gra
ss. She wrote for the newspaper.”

  Wyatt looked at me but I’m not sure he saw me.

  “Did you know Doc?” he asked. “Doc died of the TB, up in Colorado.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about it—I didn’t know him well.”

  By then I was sorry I had come. There was nothing to be had from the Earps, and their sorrow was making me sad. Jessie did tell me that Wyatt had taught Sunday school, at a big church up on Wilshire.

  As I was picking my way through the junk in the yard I saw something I had all but forgotten: Warren Earp’s Last Kind Words Saloon sign, lying on top of some tires. There it was in San Pedro, far from Long Grass, where I first saw it.

  “Jessie, can I buy this sign? I remember it from Long Grass.”

  Jessie seemed puzzled, that anyone would want such a thing.

  “Just take it, honey—we got no use for it,” she said. “Warren Earp drug it around all over the place. We never did know what he meant by it.”

  “How is Warren?” I asked, to be polite.

  Jesse looked at me in surprise, as if I had forgotten something I was supposed to know.

  “Dead,” she said. “Dead a long time ago.”

  So I took the sign, not quite sure why I wanted it, put it in the back of my convertible, and drove away.

  The End

  PHOTO CREDITS

  Frontispiece: National Archives, “Some of [Aztec’s] Punchers.” Aztec Land & Cattle Company, Holbrook, Ariz. Terr. By Ames, 1877–89. 106-FAA-92B

  Long Grass: National Archives, “Government pack mules and packers.” Photograph taken near Mexican border 1883. 111-SC-89096

  Denver: Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming, U.S.A.; Vincent Mercaldo Collection, P.71.1556

  Mobetie: National Archives, “Roundup on the Sherman Ranch,” Genesee, Kans. Cowboy with lasso readied looks beyond the herd on the open range to his fellow cowpunchers waiting on the horizon, ca. 1902. 165-XS-27

  Tombstone: Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, History and Archives Division, Phoenix, #97-2604