Born to the Badge Page 11

  Wyatt felt his past wash over him like the stench of a dug-up carcass. “It ain’t a matter of righteous. I ain’t nearly above it. It didn’t sit well once before though, and I don’t care to slide back into it.”

  “Wyatt, this ain’t the first time I milked off the city’s teat. Remember the time you found that drunk passed out in an alley with five hun’rd dollars on ’im? Hell, I’d a kept the damn money and slept like a baby.”

  They locked eyes until Behrens had to look away. When Wyatt pushed the money back into Behrens’s hand, John scowled at the envelope and exhaled a long sigh.

  “I’ll take the letter,” Wyatt said, “on the chance I go to Dodge.”

  Behrens nodded and curled the envelope in his fist. They strolled back to the street and stood together in the gap of the boardwalk. It was a cool night, and now the stars were strewn to eternity. Probably looked the same over Dodge, Wyatt thought.

  “If you go to Dodge, are you taking the woman?” Behrens asked.

  A team of mules pulled a freight wagon past them and turned north on Main toward the depot. Wyatt watched it until it disappeared around the corner and only the clinking of the traces could be heard.

  “Don’t figure on slippin’ that money to her, John, if that’s why you’re askin’. I’d never see it. It’d go for whiskey.”

  Behrens lowered his eyes and nodded. “All right, I’ll shut up about it.” He stuffed the envelope of money inside his shirt. “What about Morgan? He goin’ with you?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “I reckon he’ll take over my faro tables here . . . see what he can squeeze out o’ the drovers this season.”

  “Well,” Behrens said and blushed as he offered his hand. “You take care o’ yourself, you hear?” They clasped hands and shook, Behrens’s grip like steel. “I’ll write that letter for you tonight.” He snorted an airy laugh through his nose. “I ain’t really sure if I’m doin’ you a favor or buying you a one-way ticket to hell. But . . . it’s a job.”

  Behrens turned to walk to the front of the billiards parlor, but he stopped in the light of the window and faced Wyatt again. “One more thing . . . it’s about your brother James. If Smith gets his way with the council, word is he’ll move your brother’s whorin’ business across the river and up his tax to collect back fines.”

  Wyatt felt a ball of heat spreading in his chest, just as it had before he’d slapped Smith in Rupp’s saloon. He stared into the darkness down Douglas Avenue toward the bridge where James’s and Bessie’s brothel stood as the last stop before Delano.

  “Hell, yeah,” Behrens said, reading Wyatt’s expression. “James stands to lose everything on this side of the river.”

  Wyatt closed the distance between them and thrust his hand out toward Behrens. “Give me the damned envelope.”

  With a vindictive smile, Behrens slapped the money into Wyatt’s hand. “To hell with all of ’em, Wyatt,” John said and went inside the parlor. Wyatt stuffed the envelope into the pocket of his coat and strode off for the Gold Room and his faro table. If he had no future in Wichita, at the very least he planned to take some more of the town’s money with him when he left.

  CHAPTER 12

  Spring, 1876: Dodge City, Kansas

  Dodge had blossomed like a cluster of soiled flowers trying to rise out of a crowded buffalo wallow. From his perch on the wagon box, Wyatt saw it like the scores of other prairie towns he had seen—an assorted jumble of boxy buildings and canvas tents clustered together, all hastily erected monuments to sundry enterprises. The spring rains had softened the soil, which in turn had been churned to mud by hoof and wheel. This dark halo bled out into the grazing fields south of town, where herds of longhorns already nosed the flats along the river for patches of new grass.

  Along the grid of streets and avenues, saloons and false-front stores stood like mismatched gravestones erected so close together as to deny elbow room for the departed. People and wagons and horses were in constant motion, especially near the railroad depot. The town sat on a bluff over the muddy Arkansas with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Rail Line slicing through the south end just above the old Santa Fe Trail. Skirting the southeast side of town, the river was narrower here than at Wichita, spanned by a railroad trestle to the east and a public bridge to the south, both leading to wide expanses of prairie that rolled uninterrupted to the horizons.

  Knowing that Wyatt had been charitable in bringing her, Mattie had been careful of her words on the trip. Now as their destination became something measurable to the eye, her reticence shifted to restrained anticipation. She sat a little straighter, and her eyes sharpened at the sight of civilization. She put away the knit work that had kept her hands busy for the last miles as the wagon had rumbled across the desolate prairie.

  Considering the moment as one of some import, Wyatt pulled up on the ribbons and hummed a low command to the draft horses. When the wagon came to rest from its ceaseless pitch and bump across the grasslands, he removed his hat, leaned forward, and rested his forearms on his knees.

  “That’s it,” he said simply.

  They sat there on the rise for a time looking down on the burgeoning village, neither traveler turning to face the other. Wyatt quietly cleared his throat.

  “Sometimes,” he began, and nodded toward the town, “a new place gives you a chance for another start.”

  The rattle of the buckboard had been a constant shield against conversation for these last days. Now as they sat inside the quieter swirl of wind and dust, he could almost feel Mattie trying to compose a proper thing to say to him.

  “I know all about that,” she said and turned to face him. Wyatt kept his eyes on the horses as they shifted their weights in the harnesses and trembled an isolated muscle each time a horsefly tried to land on their sweat-slick pelts.

  Mattie pasted on the crooked smile that had become her standard reaction to the disappointments in her life. She laid aside the half-finished shawl and ball of yarn and continued to stare at Wyatt.

  “Only it’s not so easy for a woman as it is for a man,” she volunteered.

  Wyatt made no response. He couldn’t help it that Mattie had not been born a man. There was nothing he could do about that. Relaxing the reins, he stared at the town. Dodge would show more promise, he knew, when the big cattle herds would arrive. His first time here—when he had outfitted for a buffalo hunt—he had felt the undefined excitement of seeing a new town put down roots to get its start. He had been alone in those days, and he supposed his aloneness had played some part in that anticipation. With Mattie beside him now, he knew it would be easy to pick up with the same dreary existence they had learned to live with in Wichita. He sat straighter in the wagon box and made a conscious effort to look for something positive in both their futures.

  “Might be something promising here for you,” he said, trying to put some kindness into his voice.

  When she turned to him, he kept his attention on the distant hodgepodge of buildings. “I’ve got what I want,” Mattie whispered. “I can do everything you need . . . and maybe sew for extra money.”

  He shook his head. “That ain’t what I was talking about.” He tried to contrive some means of converging their two separate conversations into the one they needed, but he didn’t know how. He sensed the usual desperation rising in her until the side of his face felt scorched by her eyes.

  “I’m not whoring, Wyatt.”

  Wyatt, keeping his face neutral, turned to her and took in the full measure of her resentment toward the Earps. “I wasn’t talking ’bout that neither.”

  He returned his gaze to the town below and inhaled deeply through his nose. Just beyond the railroad tracks, he could make out great jagged mounds of white he knew to be sun-bleached buffalo bones piled up for the trip back east, where they would be ground up for fertilizer. He thought to point out the mountain of skeletons to Mattie—something to talk about besides themselves. Instead he listened to the distant sounds of men yelling over the railcars b
anging in the yard.

  “Why are you taking this job, Wyatt? Why aren’t you going into business like you’re always talking about?”

  “I got to start somewhere. As a lawman I’ll get to know the people that count.”

  “But you tried that in Wichita. Look where it got you.”

  Wyatt gripped the reins tighter and watched his knuckles rise under his skin. “Billy Smith’s got too many friends there.”

  “There’ll be Billy Smiths in Dodge, too, Wyatt.”

  He wanted to tell her she didn’t know anything about town politics, but instead he snapped the ribbons on the team’s rumps. The wagon trundled on, and once again the jingle of the harness, the grind of the axle, and the monotonous turning of the wheels filled the space between man and woman.

  Behind them, perhaps a mile back, a train whistle sang out over the land, an unexpected plaintive whine weaving into the layers of the wind. Again Wyatt reined up the horses, and both he and Mattie turned around and watched the dark plume of engine smoke spout upward and arch back over the chine of cars and then spread as a broad black veil that trailed across the prairie and hung there like a stain on the air.

  “I like trains,” Mattie said. “They make a place feel connected to something.”

  Wyatt turned to her as though she might explain her thoughts, but Mattie only smiled sadly off into the distance. He popped the ribbons again and didn’t stop until they were inside the town.

  After securing a room at the Dodge House he unhitched the team at the hotel’s livery. When he returned to their room to clean up, he found that Mattie had brushed his hat until its original rich black color emerged from the gray coat of dust he had carried from Wichita. While she laid out their clothes, he cleaned up at the porcelain wash basin and carefully shaved around the broad sweep of his moustaches.

  As he dressed, Mattie poured fresh water into the basin and performed her female ablutions. They went about their routines without speaking, and while Wyatt was grateful for the silence, he could see the strain in Mattie’s melancholy face. There was no clear answer as to why he had brought her with him, but for the one that had originally thrown them together: he felt sorry for her. He supposed that, by intuition alone, she knew this as surely as if he had spoken the words aloud.

  Wearing a clean, starched shirt and his black frock coat, he stood before the mirror and adjusted his hat on his head. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, he watched as she secreted a bottle of laudanum into the drawer of the bedside table. Even before they had left Wichita, she had begun to use the medication on a regular basis. It was taking something from her, he knew, but he could not broach the subject without arousing the brooding anger that had become her defense against such words.

  “Thank you for getting my clothes ready,” he said into the mirror. She glanced up and smiled, but her smile seemed directed inward at a world she had manufactured inside her head. He watched her for a time as she continued to sort out her belongings on the bed. She began to hum, and her movements took on new energy, like a woman who had fallen into the good fortune of being settled in a life where settling was hard fought and seldom won. As she continued to hum, he left the room, half-sure she did not know that he had gone.

  When he announced himself to the clerk at the courthouse, he was given directions to Mayor Hoover’s business on the main thoroughfare in town. Wyatt walked Front Street to Hoover’s Saloon, stepped out of the wind, and closed the door behind him. Isolated in the main room, three men smoked cigars at a table, two of them leaning forward in quiet conversation. The third man was so heavy that leaning forward might have proved a liability to the table. Wyatt remembered him—the German named Deger. They had played poker together in his buffalo hunting days. When Wyatt approached them, the men quieted and looked expectantly his way.

  “Mayor Hoover?” Wyatt stopped at a distance and looked from face to face.

  A fleshy man with clear eyes and light-brown moustaches raised a smoking cigar. “I’m Hoover.”

  “Wyatt Earp.”

  Hoover’s face showed nothing.

  “From the Wichita police force,” Wyatt added.

  “Oh, yes,” Hoover replied melodically. He groaned as he stood. After offering a perfunctory handshake, he motioned to the man beside him. “This is our county sheriff, Charlie Basset.” Basset stood and equaled Hoover in size, but the skin on his face was weathered from a life in the sun. His eyes pinched in a sly inspection of Wyatt’s appearance. His grip was firm.

  “And Larry Deger, our town marshal,” Hoover said, rounding out introductions. “You’ll be working for him.” Not attempting to rise from his chair, Deger held out a bloated hand. The German had not impressed him years ago, but Wyatt would have to reassess his opinion of the man if he was to police under him. “Sit down, Earp,” Hoover said in the distracted tone of business interrupted.

  Deger cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at Wyatt. “Haff we met before?”

  “Could be,” Wyatt said.

  The German’s plump facial features tried to squeeze together as he continued to scrutinize Wyatt, but it was Bassett who spoke. “How’s the season looking over in Wichita?”

  “It’s early yet, but I think Dodge is gonna pick up most of the business this year.”

  Hoover smiled and pointed toward the front windows with his cigar. “This town’s going to double in size inside of two months. Lot of money coming in.”

  “And a lotta hell to pay,” Bassett said. “We’ve already run through a handful of officers who couldn’t handle shit.”

  Deger grunted his affirmation and shifted in his chair. That the chair held together was a tribute to the woodworker who had crafted the furniture.

  Wyatt looked from one to the other. “County and city work together on this?”

  “Hell, yes,” Bassett said. “Half of my deputies work for the city sometimes. Goes the other way, too. We got to put up a combined front to control these Texas boys.” Bassett smiled and took a long pull on his cigar. “Word is,” he bobbed the cigar twice toward Wyatt, “you’re a hard case.”

  “I don’t back down on the law, if that’s what you mean.”

  Basset’s smile widened, his teeth showing around the cigar. “I hear you’re pretty quick to bang a man’s head for ’im if he steps out of line.” The sheriff raised his eyebrows and chuckled from deep in his chest.

  “I deal it out fair enough,” Wyatt said.

  Bassett snorted and waved his cigar like a checkmark in the air. “Hell, I’m all for it. My policy is to crack their heads before they can show me what bad men they are. That way, everybody gets to live a little longer.”

  Wyatt sat unmoving in his chair. His stillness was made all the more noticeable by the heavy shifts Deger made in trying to hear the conversation over his own breathing.

  “Some heads need crackin’,” Wyatt replied. “Some don’t.” He made no effort to match Bassett’s smile.

  Hoover sat forward. “We want you to be our enforcer, Earp. Let ’em know right up front we keep a tight lid on our town. For all I care, these Texas sons of bitches can eat each other for breakfast on the south side of the tracks.” He jabbed a thumb at his silk cravat three times. “Over here, we make the rules. We enforce them.” He changed direction to poke his cigar at Wyatt. “You enforce them.”

  “What’s the pay?” Wyatt said.

  “You’re to be the assistant marshal. We start you at seventy-five a month. You’ll get bonuses for arrests and court appearances. One dollar for each.”

  “What about deputies?”

  Hoover stuck his cigar in his mouth and looked at Deger. The rotund marshal turned his lips down in the shape of a hanging horseshoe, the lines of his mouth cutting deeply into his flaccid jowls.

  “Right now I haff two,” Deger said.

  Wyatt looked at Basset. The sheriff held up three fingers.

  “We’ll need more when the season tops out,” Wyatt said. “Do I have power to appoint?”

/>   Again Hoover looked at Deger, who shrugged. The mayor leaned to Wyatt, and the skin on his face reddened and drew tight as a drum.

  “Long as it’s not from Kelley and Wright’s crowd . . . and you keep it to the right number.”

  “Who’re Kelley and Wright?”

  Hoover frowned as if he had detected a foul scent wafting through the room. “Dog Kelley and Bob Wright. We just beat out that crowd in the elections. They control a lot of the commerce, and they like the law to look the other way when it comes to their businesses. They’ll hamstring our administration if they can.” Hoover made a dismissive gesture with his hand and sat back in his chair. Cocking his head to one side, he lifted the cigar but stopped short of inserting it into his mouth. “So . . . you think you’re ready for Dodge City, Earp?”

  Wyatt tolerated the question without expression. “I’m ready.”

  Hoover studied his new employee and shot a smile at Bassett before turning back to Wyatt. “I believe you just might be.”

  After two weeks on the job, Wyatt had met most of the merchants and was careful to avoid all talk on the rival political factions, which were more deeply entrenched in Dodge than they had been in Wichita. Kelley and Wright regularly pressed him for information about Hoover’s plans, but Wyatt held a firm grip on the lessons he had learned at Wichita. If the next election brought a new boss, he would need to fit into that possibility.

  Like other cattle towns, Dodge had drawn a line to separate respectability from the rowdy arena where the Texas drovers would blow off steam when they flooded the town come June. Unlike Wichita and its wayward sister, Delano, where the river served as such a barrier, here the line was arbitrary. South of Front Street and the rail line, the grid of city blocks was monopolized by saloons, gambling halls, entertainment houses, and brothels—many strategically named with Texans in mind, all of them spruced up in gaudy fashion to draw the rougher element.

  Though his future might be better served dealing with the citizens north of the line, Wyatt knew that it was the south side where he would earn his pay. The best he could plan for was to earn a reputation as an enforcer of the law that would carry over to any sector of the social order.