Dance with the Devil

by Victoria Wilcox

  “I reckon you’ve already got a bad reputation,” John Henry said. “You know there’s a bounty on your head? A thousand dollars to the man who can fill you full of lead.”

  “I heard of it.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  Wyatt shrugged his broad shoulders. “I guess I’ll shoot first and ask questions later. I’m not much for talking things out.”

  “So I noticed,” John Henry commented as the broken-jawed cowboy moaned in agreement. “Maybe you ought to hire yourself a bodyguard until this bounty thing blows over.”

  “Now who’d be crazy enough to want to take a bullet for me?” Wyatt said, his long mustache moving just a little over a momentary smile. “Only Morgan, maybe, and I’d never ask him to do it. My Ma’s kinda fond of that boy.” Then, the smile gone, he added quietly: “And I don’t believe I could stand to lose him the way poor Bat lost his brother Ed. No, Doc, I figure I’m alone on this one.” Then he put his hat back on, pulling it low over his eyes. “You keep track of that prisoner there. If it gets back to Charlie Bassett that I put you in charge of things, I’ll be looking for another job fast.”

  But as John Henry watched Wyatt leave, the only lawman who’d ever treated him like he was worth talking to at all, he was surprised by the feeling that swept over him.

  I’d be your bodyguard, Wyatt, he thought. I’d be your brother, if you’d let me.

  But it was Morgan Earp who was treating him like another brother, inviting him along for evenings of drinking in the saloons and gaming in the gambling halls and spending time with the ladies. If Morgan didn’t have one lovely sitting on his lap or fetching his drinks, he was looking for one who would do, and with his sun-bronzed good looks and white hot smile, the ladies were always plenty willing. Then after a long session at the tables, Morgan liked to end his night with a visit to the red-light district, spending some of his winnings relaxing with the bawdy house girls there. Morgan was a lively character, all right, and John Henry couldn’t help being amused in his company.

  Kate, however, was not so amused. She didn’t mind Morgan’s drinking and gaming, but his devoted whoring made her wary. Whenever Doc and Morgan were out late together, she was sure that Doc was following his lead and spending some of his own money in the cribs of Dodge City, and sometimes she was right. Mostly, though, she was offended because Morgan had become John Henry’s favorite poker companion instead of her.

  “Damn Wyatt Earp and all his family with him!” Kate said loudly when John Henry came home too late for her liking, loud enough for Deacon Cox to hear and ask her to quiet down some. The Dodge House had traveling families rooming from time to time, who didn’t like to be woken by a marital row going on in the rooms above. “They’re nothing but whoremongers, all of them! And look at what they’re doing to you! You never sleep, you never eat . . .”

  “I’d be asleep already, Kate, if you’d stop shoutin’. Now be a good girl and pour me some water. I’m feelin’ dirty all over from this damn Dodge City dust.”

  “I should think you’d be feeling dirty after spending time with whores. Damn Wyatt!”

  “It wasn’t Wyatt I was with, Kate. It was just Morg. You don’t hate Morg, too, do you? Sometimes I think you must hate every man in Kansas, but me.”

  “And what makes you think I don’t hate you, too?”

  “Then leave. There’s the door. Nobody’s stoppin’ you.”

  But Kate never did walk out the door. Her tempers always passed once she and John Henry had settled their spat with a session of love-making. She just wanted to know that he still cared for her, she said, she just needed to know that it was her he wanted in his bed, and not some Dodge City floozy. She just wanted to hear that he loved her, though he never could bring himself to say it.

  Wyatt disapproved of Morgan’s womanizing as much as Kate did, a fact which John Henry found immensely amusing. That Kate should agree with Wyatt on anything at all was a marvel. For although Wyatt had done his own share of whoring, he was mostly a faithful husband to Celia—mostly, as Morgan recounted, except for a slip now and then while they were on the road together and Celia wasn’t around to take care of his needs.

  “But what the hell’s a man supposed to do, anyhow?” Morgan said with a laugh. “Find a friendly cow, like these cowboys do?” Though Morgan’s humor often ran to the ribald, at least he liked a good joke. John Henry rarely even saw Wyatt break a smile.

  But Wyatt had a reputation to uphold, especially after he and Bat were enlisted as deacons for the new First Union Church. It wasn’t a spiritual calling, exactly, as they were both asked to wear their sidearms to church—having the law there, armed and obvious, helped to keep things reverent during services and made the congregation feel a little more comfortable during the rowdy cattle season. But Wyatt’s being made a deacon said a lot about how the people of Dodge felt about him: a brave and trustworthy lawman and a model of manly virtue. It was only the wrongdoers, and Kate, who seemed to disagree.

  With the cattle season in full swing, Dodge City became an island of humanity in the middle of a sea of manure. The town was surrounded by acres of cow lots and stock-pens where thousands of head of Texas longhorns waited shipment to eastern slaughterhouses. By day, the sky was dung-colored with the dust the milling animals kicked up off the shaggy prairie. By night, the air was filled with the sound of their bawling, a mournful undertone to the rollicking clatter of saloon pianos and dance-hall fiddles that went on from dusk until dawn.

  But then the rains came, spilling down from the sky so fast that the Arkansas River overflowed its banks right up to the back doors of the dance halls south of the railroad tracks, and the cattle business slowed up some. Thirty-eight herds were stuck on the far side of the Arkansas, and the cowboys who guarded them had to sleep out in the rain with the lights of Dodge just a frustrating flooded-stream away. There was sure to be trouble when those tired cowboys finally hit town, over-ready for some rest and relaxation, and Assistant Marshal Earp put out the word that he needed some extra deputies to help keep things under control.

  Morgan was the first to apply for the job, and the first to be turned down. As the Marshal’s younger brother, Wyatt explained, it would look like favoritism if Morgan got a paid position on the force before all the other applicants had been interviewed. Just wait awhile, Wyatt suggested. Maybe, if there’s still room later on . . .

  John Henry understood what Wyatt couldn’t explain. Much as Morgan idolized his older brother, Wyatt, in his own quiet way, loved his younger brother even more devotedly.

  But Morgan wasn’t out of a law job for long. Taking Wyatt’s refusal like a challenge, Morgan applied to Bat Masterson for a position with the County Sheriff ’s office instead, and was soon wearing a Sheriff ’s Deputy badge, showing the star around the saloons of Dodge like a medal of honor.

  “I guess I showed Wyatt,” Morgan bragged to John Henry, as he watched him buck the tiger at the Lone Star’s best Faro table. “Showed him good. He thinks I’m just a kid! Sheriff Bat knows better. I can shoot as straight as Wyatt if I have to, and faster. Bat Masterson knows a natural-born lawman when he sees one.”

  “I thought you were a natural-born ladies’ man, Morg,” John Henry remarked, looking up from the game. “It’s damn sure you’re not a natural-born card player.”

  “Faro’s too fancy,” Morgan complained. “I like simple games. Give me a pretty set of dice . . .”

  “A loaded set, you mean,” John Henry said. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you play with straight dice yet.” Then, nodding to the dealer: “That looks like another winnin’ bet for me, Sir.”

  “How the hell do you do that?” Morgan said, as John Henry collected his colorful stack of winning coppers: blues for the tens, reds for the fives, yellows for the ones. “It’s like you’re a mentalist or something, the way you always pick the winners like that.”

  “It’s just trainin’. I’ve spent more time on the dealin’ side of the layout than I ha
ve on the playin’ side. That dealer can’t deal a card I haven’t already counted. I’ll put ten on the red queen to win, Sir,” he said, and remembered that the red queen had been Lottie Deno’s favorite card.

  “Well, like I said, I guess I showed Wyatt, treating me like that. You notice he didn’t have any problem putting Virg on the force first thing. He no sooner hits town, then Wyatt’s pinning a badge on him.”

  “You’re digressin’, Morg. Who the hell is Virg?”

  “Virgil Earp, of course, our big brother. Didn’t I mention they got in last night? Had to wait on the far side of the Arkansas until the river come down enough to cross. Eleven wagons in the outfit, and mostly it’s all Earps: Pa and Ma, Newt and his family, Jim and Bessie and her gal, my sister Adelia, and our little brother Warren . . .”

  “Another brother?”

  “Ma breeds boys, that’s what Pa says. All of them big and handsome, like me!”

  “And not a bit vain, of course,” John Henry commented, though if the rest of the Earp boys looked like Wyatt and Morgan, there wasn’t all that much vanity to it. They were both handsome, strapping men, the kind other men admired and all the women fawned over. It was pleasant having such good-looking acquaintances and basking in some of the reflected glory. For though he’d had plenty of ladies call him handsome and take on over the Irish blue of his eyes and the gold of his hair, he knew he didn’t have half the masculine, muscular charisma of the Earp brothers.

  “So now Virg is here, and first damn thing Wyatt does as soon as he sees him is pin a badge on him, Dodge City Police. I guess it didn’t look like favoritism to hire his big brother, like it would have to hire his little brother. Damn it, Doc, when’s he going to stop thinking I’m just a kid? I’m twenty-eight years old, for hell’s sake!”

  John Henry looked up at Morgan and smiled. With his unruly head of russet hair, his easy grin and ready laugh, his love of playing games and chasing the girls, Morgan did seem more like an overgrown adolescent than the full-grown man that he was, especially when he stood in the shadow of his solemn older brother. And there was that other slightly mystical side of Morgan, as well, that made him seem like a wide-eyed innocent somehow in spite of his worldly habits. Even John Henry felt a little patronizing of him, though they were nearly the same age.

  “I don’t reckon he ever will stop treatin’ you that way, Morg. From what I can see, Wyatt thinks he’s your protector and he’s not gonna do anything to put you in harm’s way. He says your Mother’s kind of fond of you, too.”

  “Aw, hell!” Morgan said, reddening with embarrassment. “Is that what it is? Is he still playing guardian angel? I swear, I learned how to climb years ago.”

  “You are a sorry story-teller, Morg! Why don’t you start at the begin-nin’ for once?”

  Morgan ran his hand through his tousled hair and gave an exasperated sigh.

  “I was a little boy, not more’n four or five years old, and I tried to climb a big tree back of our house, the way I’d watched Jim and Virg doing. I climbed it pretty good, too, ‘cept I didn’t know how to get back down, so I was stuck up there and scared. I started yelling for Ma, and she came out of the house running, but she couldn’t reach up high enough to get me down. That’s when she sent Wyatt up to sit with me. ‘Just hold onto him, Wyatt!’ she says. ‘Don’t let him fall! You hold on tight and don’t let him outa your hands, no matter what. I’ll go get Pa from out in the corn to come reach little Morgan down.’

  “’Yes’m,’ Wyatt says, and that’s just what he did. He shimmied up that tree and slipped his arms around me so tight I could hardly breathe, but he never did let go. Even when I got tired and started to slip, Wyatt just kept holding on, like our Ma said. And when I slid off that limb and fell all the ways down to the ground, Wyatt was still holding on. He fell right down with me, and by the time Ma come back with Pa, we were both lying on the ground with the wind knocked out of us, and Wyatt’s arms still tight around me, holding on for dear life. Ma started screaming, thinking we’d both been killed for sure, but Pa just started laughing.

  “‘Well, Morgan, looks like you got yourself a guardian angel,’ Pa says, ‘but it woulda helped if he’d had himself a pair of wings!’ Ever after that, Ma liked to call Wyatt my Guardian Angel, tell him it was his bound duty to hang onto me and see I didn’t get into any more trouble. Ma had her hands full with little Adelia and baby Warren, and couldn’t watch over me all the time, and she was afraid I’d get myself hurt or killed someways. I always was the wild one of the family, I guess, always getting into mischief.”

  “You remember all of that from when you were four years old?”

  “I don’t have to remember it,” Morgan said, reddening again. “Ma tells that story on me every time we get together, reminds Wyatt it’s his job to watch over me. And you know Wyatt, once he takes on a job he don’t let go of it. Takes everything serious as God’s word. But dammit, Doc, I don’t need no guardian angel anymore! I wish he’d let me go on and grow up. I’d be a damn good lawman, if he’d just give me the chance.”

  “You’ve got that Sheriff ’s Deputy badge. Isn’t that lawman enough?”

  “You know county lawing’s not the same as city lawing, not here in Dodge. What happens out in the county, anyway? The cows get loose or the cowboys run over somebody’s crop. It’s here in Dodge where the action’s going on, right here in the gambling joints. This is where the gun-play happens,” he said, fingering the six-shooter stuck down in the waistband of his trousers, legally carried with his new badge. “What good is being able to wear a pistol if you don’t get to use it?”

  John Henry let his Faro bet ride without him for a moment and gave Morgan another long look. “And that’s just what Wyatt’s afraid of, Morg. This is where the gun-play is. He doesn’t want to lose you the way Bat lost his brother. If I were you, I’d be thankful I had a brother who loved me like that. I’d be thankful to have anybody care about me like that.”

  Morgan shrugged. “You got Kate, Doc. She cares a heap about you. That’s something, ain’t it?”

  “Sure, Morg, that’s somethin’,” John Henry replied, turning back to his game, and feeling suddenly more alone than ever, standing on the outside of that warm circle of the Earp clan and wishing he could be one of them. “I’ve got Kate, all right. What more could I possibly want?”

  Chapter Twelve

  DODGE CITY, 1878

  THE FOURTH OF JULY CAME TO DODGE CITY WITH ALL THE USUAL revels: fireworks, dance hall brawls, patriotic gunfights between Yankee cattle buyers and Southern cowboys. It also brought a girl who swept Morgan Earp right off his bachelor feet and quickly ended his short career as a Kansas lawman.

  John Henry wouldn’t have believed that love-at-first-sight meeting if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. But he was standing right there beside Morgan when it happened as he was making a purchase at the sales counter of the General Store.

  “You keep buyin’ that licorice, you’re gonna need my services,” John Henry had remarked.

  “Can’t help it, Doc, gotta sweet tooth. Always did, so says my Ma.” Then he looked up and caught a glimpse of a dark-haired beauty behind a shelf of calico. “Gotta sweet tooth for something else, as well!” he said, giving the girl a grin.

  It was no surprise when the girl gave him a smile back—Morgan was always catching the eyes of the ladies like that. The surprise came when Morgan stopped looking at any of the other ladies, caught up in that one moment by the charms of Miss Louisa Houston, granddaughter of General Sam Houston of Texas Independence fame.

  Louisa was traveling with her father, Sam Houston Jr., the illegitimate son of the General and an Indian woman who’d fallen to the old man’s charming ways. With his famous father’s name and fondness for liquor and his Indian mother’s dark-haired good looks, Sam Houston, Jr. had charmed a few women himself, including Louisa’s mother, a beauty who died soon after her daughter’s birth and left the baby for Sam Jr. to raise. But though Sam didn’t seem cut out for
much besides drinking and carousing, he was a devoted father when it came to his little girl. Louisa Houston, darkly beautiful as her Indian grandmother, had been raised like a real princess, living in the nicest hotels in the frontier west and wearing the finest clothes her father’s dwindling inheritance money could buy.

  The Houstons had arrived in town just in time to join in the holiday festivities before heading on to Montana, where Sam Jr. was looking for some northern grazing land for his small herd of Texas cattle. And by the time they were packed again and ready to head on up the trail, the lovely Louisa had convinced Morgan to resign his Deputy Sheriff ’s badge and go along for the ride.

  “So that’s how it is, Doc,” Morgan explained, when he dropped by John Henry’s rooms at the Dodge House to say goodbye on his way out of town. “Louisa’s leavin’ with her father, and I can’t let her get away, so I’m going along.”

  The day was early yet, not even ten a.m., and John Henry had been asleep still when Morgan banged on the bedroom door, though, thankfully, Kate was already up and gone to breakfast. She always made sure to have some cutting remark ready whenever Morgan came to visit, though she hated Wyatt most.

  “I know I said I’d never let no woman tie me down,” Morgan went on, as John Henry, still wearing the knee-length nightshirt he’d slept in, proceeded to shave and dress for the day. “But I’m not ashamed to say it, Doc: I’m in love! And if Lou will have me, I mean to marry her as soon as we get to Montana.”

  “You mean if Sam Houston Junior will have you,” John Henry commented. “Sam’s careful of that girl, I’ve noticed. And I hear he’s got a regular arsenal on him. You know he learned to use a knife from Jim Bowie before the Mexicans got him at the Alamo? I’d be wary of becomin’ target practice, if I were you.” Then he wiped the shaving soap from his face, ran a handful of cologne through his sandy hair, and pulled off his nightshirt. Even in the near-hundred degree Kansas summer heat, a man had to dress properly: long flannel drawers under woolen trousers, cotton undershirt beneath crisp shirt bosom and starched collar and cuffs, round-collared vest buttoned under wool suit coat, linsey stockings inside ankle-high leather boots. He’d be sweating today before he even got out of his room.