Born to the Badge Page 16

Wyatt carried the telegram closer to the window that looked out over the prairie. Clouds were piling up in the west. In the muted light, a few drab-colored birds flitted through the chaparral and nested beneath the eave of the roof.

  He had been thinking of moving on from Dodge. Mattie would be there, and he could see nothing good coming from being in the same town with her. But the telegram had been a personal vindication of sorts. There were people in Dodge who saw what he was and recognized in him something of value.

  “Mr. Earp?” the agent said, his fingers laced before him. “Will you be sending a reply, sir?”

  Wyatt crumpled the telegram and turned again to look north out the window. He allowed the other side of the argument to surface. He had wasted his time in Texas. Being in pursuit of law breakers would always contain a certain amount of futility. Not to mention liability. Being a lawman might never help to better his position in the world. It hadn’t worked for Ed Masterson.

  The massive cloud moved north, looking angry and ominous above the bleak landscape. If it cut to the east, he thought, some of the dry springs he had encountered on the trip down would benefit, and, in thinking this, he knew that he was considering the trail back to Dodge. By going back, he would be in motion, heading toward something to sink his teeth into. But if he was going to do it, he would need more from the job. Something to nest away for the future.

  He turned and walked to the telegraph desk where the clerk waited. Wyatt wrote three words: Arrive three weeks. Then he signed his name. The clerk read his penciled note and nodded gravely, as though grasping the full import of Wyatt’s decision.

  “Good luck, Mr. Earp,” he said and sat to tap out the message.

  Wyatt thought of correcting the obsequious man. Luck played its part, just like in gambling, but it was what a man did—or didn’t do—that played the more decisive role in his life.

  “Wait a minute,” Wyatt said. “Add this.” He scratched more words on a square of paper.

  The clerk lifted his hand off the key and read the note aloud. “ ‘Must increase monthly salary by twenty-five.’ ” He checked Wyatt’s face. “Yes, sir.”

  Wyatt walked outside to his horses and studied the volatile sky for a time. It was a long trip back through the Indian Territory to Dodge . . . and longer still through a driving rain on the open prairie. But he felt a momentum building inside him. And he sensed a purpose with definable borders. He unlashed his slicker from the bedroll on his pack horse and suited up just before the rain began to spatter down on the dry caliche and brittle scrub surrounding the telegraph office.

  By the time he was mounted, the sky opened up and hammered the ground with big heavy drops of rain that snaked over the ground in rivulets that coalesced and ran with purpose into the pockets of low ground and over the edges of shallow ravines. Facing into the storm, he kicked his heels into the mare’s flank and began the long push back to Kansas.

  CHAPTER 17

  Summer, 1878: Dodge City, Kansas

  The spring of ’78 was a record season for longhorns in Ford County, Kansas. Dodge was the center of the market in the plains, and the herds that spread out and cropped the grasses for miles around fed an all-consuming fire of commerce. At night the off-duty drovers gave birth to a new city south of the tracks. It was loud, festive, and unpredictable—as though a great slumbering creature had been roused from a day of fitful sleep, and the officers waited to see what name to put to the beast on any given night. Even with the firearm-carrying ban in effect, the south end of Dodge was real estate leased from hell . . . with alcohol fanning the flames.

  The team of Sheriff Bat Masterson and Assistant Marshal Wyatt Earp descended upon the urban chaos like a new book of the Bible. Swift, authoritative, and unrelenting. A flash of gun-metal and the dull thud of steel collapsing the crown of a man’s hat. Earp and Masterson. Their names were often joined as one, a bicephalous force that suffered no exceptions to the law in Dodge City.

  On a summer night in June Wyatt stood at the bar in the Long Branch drinking coffee and reading with interest a card in the Times, informing the public that Dr. John H. Holliday was now providing dental services at the Dodge House with a money-back guarantee. The pallid man’s sly face surfaced in Wyatt’s mind like the recollection of an old friend. This surprised Wyatt, having not thought of the Southerner since leaving Texas.

  He had just paused to consider stopping by the dentist’s office the next day, when two gunshots rang out south of the tracks. Wyatt stepped outside in time to hear two more pistol reports that pinpointed the disturbance as a block deep into the saloon district south of the deadline.

  Coming up Locust Street he saw Bob Rachals brandishing a nickel-plated revolver with fancy pearl grips. The popular trail driver took a wavering bead on something in the alley next to the Comique Theater and fired. A water barrel spumed a spray of water over a terrified fiddle player trying to cover his instrument with his coat.

  “If you’re gonna play the damn thing,” Rachals yelled in a drunken slur, “the least you can do is learn ‘The Yellow Rose.’ ” He cursed and cocked the gun again. Without prelude Wyatt crashed the barrel of his Colt’s into the back of Rachals’s head.

  As they reached the city offices, businessman Bob Wright ran toward them, yelling from half a block away. “Hold on, Earp!” Wright, wearing a knee-length coat over a white nightshirt, burst into the office. “Earp! What are you doing with Rachals? What’s the problem?”

  Wyatt’s eyes traveled down and up Wright’s hastily donned attire. “There’s no problem. He was shooting on the street. Now he’s not.”

  Wright approached Rachals solicitously, stood on his toes, and sorted through the cattleman’s hair, trying to assess the damage to his bleeding head. Still groggy, Rachals opened Wright’s lapels, trying to make sense of who this was combing through his scalp.

  “He’s running the biggest cattle drive we’ve seen this season,” Wright said to Wyatt, pressing the information on him as though it were a mandate from the city council.

  Wyatt moved Wright aside and ushered Rachals into a cell. “I know who he is.”

  Wright lunged after Rachals and jerked him back by his sleeve, causing the drowsy trail driver to bobble like a puppet. “Look here! You can’t arrest him, Earp. I’ve made promises to this man.”

  Wyatt broke Wright’s grip on the prisoner and eased him out of the way. After a startled silence, Wright cursed into Wyatt’s face, spraying flecks of saliva that touched his skin like sparks from a fire. Wyatt heaved Wright into the cell with the Texan and locked it. Wide-eyed, Wright gripped the bars and rattled the door.

  “What in the hell are you doing! I’m on the town council . . . an alderman . . . one of your employers! I order you to open this door.”

  Keeping his anger in check, Wyatt stared as the merchant finished ranting. “You’re interfering with an officer during an arrest.”

  Wright’s skin color deepened, and his eyes bulged. When Wyatt closed the dividing door between office and jail, the cellblock filled with the echoes of the councilman’s strident threats.

  Wyatt locked the office and started his last patrol of the streets before dawn.

  He found Marshal Bassett dealing faro at the Lady Gay and apprised him of the new prisoners. Bassett looked up from the layout long enough to show a sly grin. When he returned his concentration to the game, Bassett laughed quietly and shook his head.

  “You don’t bend for nobody, do you, Wyatt?” Bassett said and cut his eyes back to his head enforcer. He raised his eyebrows. “This’n might come back to bite you in the ass.”

  “Law’s the same for Wright as it is for anybody else,” Wyatt said.

  “Well,” Bassett laughed, “we’ll see.”

  After his night in jail, Bob Wright would not look Wyatt in the eye whenever they chanced to meet on the streets. Nor would he speak to Wyatt, unless out of necessity during a meeting of the town council. A month passed with Wyatt indifferent to the wasted energy of Wright’s r
esentment. If the alderman wanted to spit and fume behind closed doors, that was his privilege. For Wyatt, the book was closed on the affair.

  On a warm night in late July, Wyatt and Charlie Bassett sat in the back of the Long Branch, Wyatt sipping coffee while Bassett thumbed through a deck of cards over a game of solitaire.

  “All I’m sayin’ is,” Bassett repeated, “you gotta play the politics if you wanna keep the job.”

  Wyatt watched the marshal’s tired eyes hide his disappointment at the card he drew. “I reckon things are set straight enough,” Wyatt said. “I doubt that any councilmen will want to butt in on my arrests again.”

  Bassett tilted his head to one side. “As long as you’re assistant marshal, you mean.”

  “Wright tried to boot me out,” Wyatt confided. “Couldn’t make it stick with the others on the council.”

  “Look, Wyatt, I know the rest of the council respects you, but Bob Wright has got a wagonload of money. For the right price, a feller can go at a problem from a lot o’ different angles.”

  Wyatt timed his drinking, balancing the hot coffee against the warmth of the evening. “What do you reckon Wright woulda paid Bob Rachals to stop his shootin’ on the street?”

  With the queen of diamonds hovering over the king of clubs, Bassett looked up from his game and went as still as a tintype portrait. “Did you just make a joke?”

  Wyatt raised his cup and drank, keeping his face expressionless. When the marshal’s attention shifted to the door, Wyatt turned to see Jim Masterson cross the room in his quick, catlike pace.

  “Hey, Jim,” Bassett announced, “Wyatt just made a joke.” The marshal frowned. “Least I’m pretty sure he did.”

  Jim stepped to the table and stared at Wyatt as if he had not heard Bassett. “There was some ruckus down at the Comique . . . but I hear it quieted down.”

  Wyatt finished his coffee, stood, and strapped on the gun belt he had hooked over the back of the chair. “How ’bout you and me make the rounds together. We’ll swing by the Comique first.”

  When the officers stepped inside the Comique Theater, the room was as subdued as a church service, as Lillie Beck’s sweet, springwater-clear voice held the audience captive from the stage. The pure delivery of her melancholy song had brought a sheen into the eyes of Doc Holliday, who sat with Bat Masterson at a poker table, where business was suspended for the moment. Holliday was turned around watching the singer, one hand holding his cards, the other on the back of his chair. Standing behind him, Kate Elder rested a hand on the dentist’s frail shoulder.

  When the song ended, the audience broke into wild applause, with whoops and cheers that asked for more. Lillie—the “darling of Dodge”—smiled graciously and threw kisses toward her admirers. Wyatt and Jim waited until she disappeared into the wings, and then they moved outside into the pleasant night air.

  “That is one damned beautiful woman,” Jim said, his voice as earnest as the oath he had sworn to wear a badge. “Whatever the trouble here was . . . I reckon it was Lillie smoothed it out.”

  Wyatt said nothing as he watched three horsemen approach from the east at a walk. Each man wore a loose bandana tied under his chin and a hat pulled low over his eyes. After taking their horses at a walk down the street, the horsemen turned at the end of the block and started back. When they passed through the light streaming out of the Varieties Theater, each man began pulling his bandana up over the lower half of his face. Wyatt caught a flash of metal in one man’s hand. He touched Jim’s arm, and the deputy followed Wyatt’s gaze. The three masked riders kept their eyes straight ahead as they paraded east.

  “What the hell is this?” Masterson whispered.

  Wyatt said nothing. His right hand settled on the butt of his revolver at his hip, then he was as still as the awning post.

  Inside the theater Eddie Foy was taking charge of the festivities, singing a farcical song in his high, comic voice. One horseman whipped his mount with a quirt, and the others spurred their horses until all three came on at a sudden gallop.

  “Jim!” Wyatt called, pulling his gun and extending it forward. “They’re throwin’ down on us.”

  The two lawmen instinctively retreated from the lighted doorway and held their guns at the ready. When the riders were almost abreast of them, the rumble of hooves fell away beneath the explosions of multiple guns firing. Bullets slapped into the theater’s clapboard front like the banging of hammers from a team of industrious carpenters. The music inside stopped, and throughout the room there was a collective scraping of feet and furniture. Wyatt jumped down to the street and grabbed at the last horse’s tail but missed. He dropped to one knee and took aim against the faint backlighting of the sky.

  “Crouch down,” Wyatt ordered quietly. “Keep your shots above the buildings.”

  They let go with several volleys as the riders made a dash down the street. When two rifle shots barked from an upstairs window in the theater, Wyatt spun but refrained from shooting when he recognized the Comique’s bouncer levering another round and aiming east where the riders had turned down Second Avenue toward the river.

  “Lay off on that shootin’!” Wyatt ordered, his voice filling the street. “And get out o’ that damned window!”

  The two lawmen ran toward Second Avenue, rounding the corner in time to hear the three horses rumble like thunder on the wooden bridge. When the horses appeared across the river, Wyatt could make out only two riders.

  “Must’ve hit one,” Jim said between breaths.

  At the near end of the bridge they found a body sprawled across the planks. The felled man moaned and rolled off his side onto his back. Wyatt spread the man’s shirtfront to inspect the wound. By the dim cast of light from town, he could see a shoulder wound and splinters of bone slick with blood. The Texan tried to lift his head, digging his chin into his collarbone to inspect the damage.

  “My shoulder . . . it’s shot all to hell!” he wailed. “Goddamn . . . it hurts like a sonovabitch!”

  “You think about that when you and your friends were pouring lead into the theater?” Wyatt said.

  “We weren’t shooting at the damned theater!” he snapped. Then his head dropped back onto the hard planking, and he bared his teeth. “God-damn! It hurts like a fuckin’ sonovabitch!”

  Wyatt took hold of the man’s greasy hair and jerked his head to better see his face. “Then what the hell were you shootin’ at?” he demanded, tightening his grip on the man’s dirty hank of hair.

  The wounded man’s eyes flared with contempt. “I’d like to a’ hit you, you damned sonovabitch.”

  Letting go of the hair, Wyatt gathered up the man’s collar in a fist and raised him several inches off the ground. “Who talked you into this?” he demanded, but the drover’s head fell back limp when he passed out.

  When Doc McCarty arrived, Wyatt walked down the riverbank and washed the blood from his hands at the edge of the muddy Arkansas. Jim Masterson followed, and together they stood watching the currents swirl around the bridge pilings and slide away into the night.

  “Bad wound for a cowhand,” Jim said. “He’s lost a lot of blood. If he even makes it, he’ll sure as hell need to find himself another line of work.”

  Wyatt rolled down his sleeves and buttoned the cuffs. “No need to start feelin’ sorry for ’im ’cause he’s hurt,” he said and turned to Jim to drive home his point. “Could be you or me bleeding out on the sidewalk up at the Comique right now,” he explained. “Just like your brother.” Wyatt shifted his attention back toward the business district, taking a fierce hold on something among the flickering lights of the town. “Somebody made a goddamned bad choice tonight.”

  Jim hissed and spat. “Yeah, guess he’ll just have to live with a busted shoulder.”

  Wyatt’s voice was clear over the shearing of the water. “It ain’t him I’m talking about, Jim.”

  When the wounded Texan died, Wyatt felt the gazes of the citizens hold a little longer on him whenever they passed
him on the street. The Texans lost no opportunity to show their disdain, most of them simply giving Wyatt a cold stare, but the bolder ones condemning him with an arc of tobacco spat from a safe distance.

  In truth, there was no way to know whose bullet had killed the young drover. But Wyatt knew. He had known it was a hit when he squeezed off the shot. What surprised him was how little it meant now that it was done. The Texan—Hoy, his name was—had played a high-stakes game and lost. He had to have known the risk. Wyatt supposed money had been the incentive that made the cowhand lose sight of the possibilities, and he was half sure where that money had come from.

  As for Wyatt’s part in the cowhand’s death, he knew that he had prepared himself for it ever since he had witnessed the street fight back in Omaha City when he had been little more than a boy. What mattered now was that the Texans understood the rule of the law in Dodge City. It was uncompromising. You broke the law, you paid a price. Wyatt had no control over who did or did not decide to cross over that line. His job, as he saw it, was simply to supply the consequences.

  He let three days pass before walking to Bob Wright’s store. There under the awning he leaned on a post until the store’s few customers had left. Upon entering he walked to the counter and watched the alderman enter figures in a ledger, the scratching of his pen the only sound in the room.

  “Be with you in a moment,” Wright mumbled absently. When he lifted the pen to examine his work, the complete stillness of the room seemed to speak to him. He brought up his head quickly. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, trying to cover the dry catch in his throat with a forced cough.

  “You heard about Hoy?”

  Wright’s face flashed through a gamut of twitches and frowns as he licked his lips. “Who?”

  Wyatt’s expression was wooden. “The young Texan who died out on the street. You knew him?”

  Wright’s face darkened suddenly with the hostility of a sulking child. “I don’t know what you are talking about.” He snapped down the front of his vest with both hands, and a daub of ink from the pen bled into a small dark sunburst on his trousers. Seeing the stain, he slapped the pen on the counter and fussed with the stain using a rag. “What is it that you want, Earp?”