The shooting was a clear-cut case of attempted murder and self-defense, so no charges were brought against Masterson, and as soon as he was recovered enough from his wound to make the trip, he went back to recuperate on his family’s farm in Kansas. His buffalo hunting days were over, anyway, he said, since the herds were almost all wiped out, and he was thinking of going into some new line of work, law enforcement maybe, to protect other innocent people from the likes of Corporal Melvin King. And though he’d probably always have a limp from that bullet wound to the pelvis, he counted himself lucky to be alive at all—poor Mollie had bled to death in the back room of the saloon before anyone could call for the post surgeon.
If it hadn’t been for the shooting of Mollie Brennan, Sweetwater wouldn’t have had much of a reputation at all, good or bad. There were only thirty full-time residents in the town, not counting the Seven Jolly Sisters and the soldiers who came to visit from the nearby fort. But small and rough as it was, Sweetwater looked like paradise to John Henry after that long ride up from Throckmorton County, breathing in road dust all the way and shivering in the bitter January cold—though it was Kate who seemed to be taking the trip the hardest. The long hours riding over rough roads had left her with a dull aching in her back, an ache that didn’t go away even after they’d spent a night at Tom O’Laughlin’s Sweetwater Boarding House and Hotel.
By morning, Kate’s backache had grown worse, reaching clear around her until it tore at her belly and made her cry out in pain. And then the bleeding started, a smear of bright red that stained her lacy underclothes, but soon the blood was darker and more profuse, gushing out of her with every gripping pain. And as she lay huddled in the bed, clutching a wad of sheeting to her bleeding body, Kate moaned and cried in despair. She knew she was losing her baby and there was nothing to be done but wait until the tiny life within her was swept away.
In spite of all his fine professional education, John Henry had no idea what to do with a woman in too-early labor. Outside of the physical intimacies that caused conception, he was as ignorant as any Victorian man about women’s medical problems. His maiden aunts had never shared any such knowledge with him, nor had the embarrassing subject of childbirth ever come up in his proper conversations with Mattie. And though he’d gotten used to seeing his own blood coughed up from his diseased lungs, seeing Kate lying in bed with a bloody sheet drawn up between her legs left him feeling downright helpless, and painfully responsible as well. It was his child she was carrying, after all, a child he’d never meant to make, but having made it, he had decided to do right by it. Now the child was dying, and for all he knew, maybe Kate was dying, too. And though he didn’t care for Kate enough to marry her, he certainly didn’t want her death on his conscience, either. Selfishness, Mattie might have called it, but that was how his thinking ran as Kate lay bleeding and moaning in despair.
Finally, unable to bear Kate’s misery any longer, he sent for the post surgeon from Fort Elliott to come care for her, and left the hotel room looking for a saloon and a drink to steady his nerves. A man didn’t belong in a laying-in room, anyhow, and by the time he’d had a few tumblers of whiskey and played at cards a little, Kate’s situation didn’t seem like such a problem anymore. Loose women got pregnant all the time. Lottie Deno had admitted as much, saying that she’d had several children of her own and wasn’t even sure who the fathers were. Maybe Kate’s baby wasn’t even his. Maybe it was Johnny Ringo’s, conceived while Kate was still sharing her bed with the cow thief.
It was long after dark by the time he got back to the adobe-walled boarding house, feeling comfortably drunk and ready to be generous about Kate Elder and Ringo’s baby she was having. Perhaps the doctor from Fort Elliott had been able to save it, and Kate would take it back to its real father and leave John Henry to finish his Dodge City trip in peace. He’d be happy to pay her way back to Fort Griffin, and even give her something to set her up again there. He could still be a gentleman, even if she was nowhere near being a lady.
But the sight that greeted him when he opened the door of the sod-roofed room pushed the comfortable cloud of liquor clear from his mind. Kate was still in bed, but she wasn’t writhing and crying anymore. She was lying flat on her back, eyes closed and face as pale as white linen, her legs spread wide apart. And kneeling at the end of Kate’s bed, a heavy-figured woman was reaching some kind of silver tool up inside her, pulling out wads of bloody tissue.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” John Henry demanded, his hand flying to the pistol in his pocket. “What do you think you’re doin’?”
“Cleaning up,” the woman replied, not bothering to look up at him. “Lieutenant Finley sent me over when he realized it was just a stillbirth going on. The post doctor’s too busy treating sick soldiers to bother with something as ordinary as a birthing, so he sent for me.”
And something about the way Kate was lying there, so still and white against the dingy linen sheets, gave John Henry a sudden feeling of dread. “She’s not—she’s not dead, is she?” he asked slowly, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“No, she’s not dead,” the woman replied, “just passed out from the pain. This scraping hurts worse than the birthing, so they say. Poor little baby’s dead, though. Are you the father?”
“So she said. I only found out last week . . .”
“Well, I guess she’d know,” the woman said casually. “She’s been around men enough to figure things out. Kate’s no holy Virgin Mother, now, is she?” Then she turned and gave John Henry a knowing look, and he saw the garish paint on her eyes and cheeks, the hardened gaze of a woman who’d lived a hard kind of life. “Me and Kate worked together over at Charlie Norton’s dance hall here last year,” she commented, “when she first come down from Dodge City.”
“Kate was here?” he asked. Kate had never mentioned Sweetwater to him—of course, she’d never said much about her past at all after St. Louis, and he hadn’t asked. Her life was her own business, and none of his.
“Hell, Kate worked everywhere,” the woman answered, “like we all do, following the cowboys and the cattle drives. Summer in Dodge, spring and fall in Texas, winter wherever we can find a job. You go where the men and the money are, in this business. I’ve known Kate ever since she hit Wichita. I never figured to see her like this, with another baby. She said she couldn’t have any more children, scarred up like she was from the first childbirth. I’m surprised she got this one in her at all. Poor little fella never had much of a chance, I guess.”
And something the woman said suddenly struck John Henry hard in the heart.
“Little fellow . . .” he repeated, looking up quickly from under his sandy lashes.
“Your son,” the woman replied, “if you are the father.” Then she laid the bloodied tool down on a dirty cloth beside her, and pulled the stained sheet back over Kate’s bare legs. “It was a baby boy. Four or five months along, I’d guess. They’re still mighty small at that age, but you can see what they’re made of. Guess Kate don’t have any more luck with babies than she do with men.” Then she turned back to John Henry and nodded. “She’ll be asleep awhile, if you want to clear out now. I’ll stay here with her until she’s ready to take care of herself, you won’t need to worry yourself none. There’ll be a new company of soldiers coming into the fort this spring, and plenty of work for whores like Kate and me.”
But Kate wasn’t like the coarse-talking whore with her bloody surgery. Lying there on the bed, so still and so pale, Kate looked as fragile and delicate as a fine china doll. Too fine, John Henry thought, for life in a coarse place like Sweetwater, Texas.
“No,” he said quietly. “I won’t leave her here. Kate’s . . .needy,” he said, trying to explain the way she was. If she woke up and found him gone there was no telling what she would do. Kill herself, maybe, or come looking to kill him. Why he would choose to stay with a woman like that he couldn’t even explain to himself. Now that the baby was gone, he ought to feel freed of his responsibility
to her, but somehow he did feel responsible still. It was his son she had lost, after all—and for a moment, something like sadness started to well up inside him.
“I won’t leave her,” he said again. “I’ll stay until she’s ready to go on to Dodge with me.”
“Well, well,” the woman said, looking up at him with a little envy in her painted eyes, “maybe Kate’s bad luck has finally turned. Maybe she’s finally found herself a husband, after all.”
It was springtime before they left Sweetwater and headed on again to Dodge City after Kate’s slow recovery from the stillbirth of her baby. She had lost a lot of blood between the birthing and the midwife’s primitive surgery, and then an infection set in draining her strength even more, and for weeks she didn’t even have the energy to leave her bed.
John Henry passed the time at first by playing poker and bucking the tiger at the one Faro game in town, but it wasn’t long before he’d beaten all the regular townsfolk and couldn’t find anyone foolish enough to go up against him again. So when the gambling ran out, he hired himself on as a contract dentist for the soldiers at nearby Fort Elliott, and collected in fees what he hadn’t already taken in at cards. With four companies garrisoned there, and no other dentist for two-hundred miles, the post commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hatch, was grateful for the service at any price. A soldier with a bad toothache was as good as worthless, and the doctor did seem to do nice work.
But John Henry was restless to get moving again. The siren song of Dodge City kept calling to him from the end of the trail, and he was eager to answer it. The coming cattle season was going to be the biggest one Dodge City had ever seen, the biggest in all of Kansas for that matter, and there would be enough cowboys in town to make him two fortunes—one from the gambling and another from the dentistry. So when Kate was finally healed enough to face another forty-hour stagecoach ride, they packed up and left Sweetwater behind without even bothering to say goodbye. At least John Henry didn’t leave with any sad farewells; Kate did cry a little when the stage pulled out of Sweetwater. Her baby was buried there, after all, in a tiny grave on a low rise just outside of town.
“But we’ll have another, Doc,” she said, sitting close beside him in the stage as they drove on up the trail. “Now that I know I can still conceive, I’ll give you another son. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, my love?”
But John Henry didn’t answer her, as he stared out the window and into the rising cloud of dust. What he really wanted he would never have, and what he had he didn’t really want anymore.
Chapter Eleven
DODGE CITY, 1878
IT WAS THE MOUNTAIN OF BONES THAT FIRST CAUGHT JOHN HENRY’S eye when the stage finally pulled into Dodge City that morning in early May.
“Looks like they’re killin’ men in Dodge faster than they can bury ‘em,” he commented to Kate as he looked out the window of the stage and got his first view of the town.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she retorted, straightening the veil of her small hat and primping one last time, preparing for her entrance. “That’s just buffalo bones left over from the big hunt. They’ll be sending them off to make bone china soon. At least the bones smell better than the carcasses used to.”
“Smells pretty bad around here, yet,” John Henry said, taking a careful breath and thinking that famous Dodge City was just as rank as any other cowtown. For all its grand reputation as the Cowboy Capital, Dodge City seemed to be an ugly little town, not much bigger than Fort Griffin Flat and without Fort Griffin’s interesting landscape of pecan-shaded river and rugged bluffs. Dodge City was as flat as the treeless prairie that surrounded it, with one wagon-wide main street and the tracks of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad running right through the middle of town. South of the tracks, the muddy Arkansas River formed the boundary between the city and the open range country. North of town, past the few short side-streets of plain family homes, the only high ground was capped by a windswept cemetery.
It was a short walk along dusty Front Street to the Dodge House Hotel and Billiard Hall, a two-storied wooden building with a wide front porch and a hitching post outside. The Dodge House was billed as the finest hotel in town, though the two billiard tables in the lobby and the gang of cowboys huddled over their cues made it look more like a saloon than a nice hostelry. The cowboys looked up with appreciative stares as Kate accompanied John Henry into the hotel, and laughed as she pretended not to notice their attentions. Even dressed in sedate traveling clothes and with her rouged face hidden behind a demure veil, Kate was an eye-catcher.
“Hey there, honey,” one of the cowboys called out with a lewd laugh, “want to play with my billiard balls?”
“Y’all settle down over there, ya hear?” the balding man at the front desk chided, looking at the cowboys over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses, then he nodded to Kate and John Henry. “Never mind them, folks. They just had a little too much sour mash last night, that’s all.”
“Sour mash?” John Henry asked. “I haven’t heard that phrase in awhile. Are you from Georgia, Sir?”
“Yessir,” the man said, putting out his hand. “The name’s Deacon Cox, and I own this fine establishment. And whereabouts are you folks from? Maybe I know y’all’s kin.”
“I don’t think so,” John Henry said quickly. “I’ve been gone awhile, and the lady is from Europe.”
“Is that right?” Cox said, giving Kate a once-over. “Why, no offense ma’am, but I could have sworn we’ve met before. You look a lot like a girl we used to have workin’ over at Tom Sherman’s Dance Hall. No offense intended, of course. She was a real looker.”
“No offense taken, Mr. Cox,” Kate replied with a silky voice and a restrained smile.
“We’re lookin’ for a room, Mr. Cox,” John Henry said. “Something nice and quiet. I generally sleep late in the mornings and don’t like to be disturbed. And I’ll be needin’ an additional room to use as a dental office, if you don’t mind my practicin’ here in your hotel.”
“A dentist at the Dodge House?” Deacon Cox said. “Hell, no, I don’t mind, be real good for business.” Then he added with an apologetic nod to Kate, “Beggin’ your pardon, Ma’am, for my language. I’m used to rougher folks, not doctors and such. I’d be happy to put you up and have your office here, too. Now, if you’ll just sign the guest register . . .” and he handed the ink pen to John Henry. “You’ll be in the room at the top of the stairs with a nice view of town.”
John Henry laughed under his breath as he signed his name to the book. From what he’d seen so far, there wasn’t any such thing as a nice view of Dodge, unless it was from the boot-end of a stage headed back out of town.
“I wonder, Mr. Cox, if you’ve heard whether Deputy Earp is back in town yet?”
“Which one?” Deacon Cox asked. “We got two Earps in Dodge.”
“Two Earps?” John Henry asked in surprise.
“Sure do, Wyatt and Morgan both. They’re brothers, you know, ‘course Wyatt’s the main one. Morgan just kind of drifts in and out as it pleases him, more of a gambler than a real lawman. Ain’t neither one of them back in Dodge yet, though they’ll probably be comin’ in soon. We got a hundred herds of cattle headed up this way from Texas. Goda-mighty, you never saw a town boom like this one does in cattle season!” then he nodded to Kate, “beggin’ your pardon again, Ma’am, for my language. Like I said, I ain’t much used to fine folks at the Dodge House. Now how ‘bout I help you carry up those bags? Stairs are kind of narrow and rickety, but hell, this ain’t Chicago! You know what they call us back there in Chicago? The Beautiful, Bibulous Babylon of the West, that’s what. Printed it in the Chicago papers! Now, I ain’t sayin’ we’re beautiful, and I ain’t never heard of bibulous, but they got the Babylon part right, I reckon. It’s a real babel around here when the cowboys hit town!”
“It means having a heavy intake of alcoholic drink,” John Henry said, growing weary of the man’s voluble conversation.
“What does?�
�
“Bibulous. From the Latin verb ‘bibere,’ to drink. What they’re sayin’, in a rather florid fashion, is that this is one well-distilled town.”
“Well, they got that right! Never seen liquor flow like it does around here. Hell, we got everything from Frenchy champagne to rot-gut to cold beer on ice . . .”
“And where might I find the Earp brothers when they do return to Dodge?”
“Any place there’s trouble, I reckon, but mostly they hang around the Long Branch Saloon,” then his eyes narrowed suspiciously behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “Say, you’re not that fellow who’s gunnin’ for Wyatt are you?”
“Gunnin’ for Wyatt?”
“The bounty hunter. I hear there’s a thousand dollar price on his head put up by some Texas cattle-King who didn’t like Wyatt sniffin’ around his business.”
“Me? A bounty hunter?” John Henry said with a laugh. “No Sir, Mr. Cox, I am just his dentist! Now if you’ll kindly show us the way to our room . . .”
But though he laughed off the bounty hunter talk, John Henry had an uneasy feeling. Maybe Wyatt had learned something about the rustlers of Shackleford County, after all, enough to draw a bounty from the rustler-boss, John Larn. Wyatt had better watch his back if Larn’s men were after him, and keep his pistol loaded up all around as well.
Kate only waited until the bedroom door was closed behind them before venting herself on John Henry.
“You didn’t tell me Wyatt Earp was going to be here!” she said angrily.
Dance with the Devil Page 18
