Born to the Badge Page 19
Kate Elder disengaged from the knot of soldiers at the bar and walked to the back of the room. Standing behind Doc she put her hands lightly on his thin shoulders and leaned to whisper in his ear. Holliday laughed and looked up as he patted Kate’s behind. When he saw Wyatt, his perfunctory smile snapped off and was replaced by one more earnest. When Kate glimpsed Wyatt, her pouty face hardened like porcelain.
“Wyatt!” Holliday called and waved him over.
Wyatt nodded and signaled for the bartender. The big-bellied pourer waddled along the creaking floorboards for the length of the bar and stood before him with both eyebrows raised like a question.
“Any trouble tonight, Cyrus?”
The barman narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips as though he had to think about his answer. “No, sir. No trouble.” He waited, arching his eyebrows again. “How ’bout some hot coffee, Marshal?”
Wyatt nodded once. “That’d be good.” He pointed to the faro game. “I’ll be back at Holliday’s table.”
As he approached the gamblers, Wyatt noted Kate’s glare of growing hostility, but he only nodded her way and then ignored her. He watched Holliday pull the winning card from the box, and a groan made its way around the players gathered there.
“Well . . . no winners this time. Sorry, friends.” Doc allowed a wicked smile. “All the more reason to stick it to the house next time . . . right, gentlemen?”
He gathered the chips from the lay-out and dropped them into the dealer’s till. Then he pushed back his chair.
“Take over for me a moment, will you, dahlin’,” Doc said as he stood. Pulling Kate down into his seat, he made a partial bow from the waist toward the players. “If you gentlemen would excuse me for a few minutes?”
Kate glared at Doc’s back, but her hands began to take over the dealer’s job as if by instinct. Then, like an actress changing roles, she smiled at her customers and offered the kinds of bawdy pleasantries that make men smile and temporarily forget their gambling troubles.
Coming around the table Doc clapped a hand to Wyatt’s shoulder and turned him toward a back corner where an empty table sat in the dark of an unlighted lamp. Wyatt took off his coat and laid it on the bench at the wall. As soon as they had settled into chairs, the bartender arrived with Wyatt’s coffee and set it down.
“ ’Preciate it, Cyrus,” Wyatt said.
“Anything for you, Holliday?”
Doc looked up at the portly barman and delivered a thin smile. “Did you mean to say ‘Doctor Holliday’?”
Cyrus looked from Doc to Wyatt and then whipped a towel from his apron strap and began to clean the fingers of one hand a finger at a time. He took in a deep breath and began again.
“You care for a drink, Doctor Holliday?”
From his inside coat pocket Doc produced his flask and smiled as if he were greeting an old friend. “If you’ll just fill that with bourbon for me, please. You can put it on my tab.” Holliday smiled as he dug into a vest pocket. “And here’s a little token of my appreciation for your part in the dissipation of my body.” He held up a dollar, pinching the coin between two outstretched fingers like a forceps.
Cyrus cupped his hand under the gratuity, and Doc let it fall. With a meek smile that seemed equal parts apology and gratitude, Cyrus made an awkward bow and started away in his wobbling gait.
Wyatt sipped coffee and then set the cup aside, pushing it to arm’s length across the table. The brew tasted like it had been boiled in a rusty can.
“How’s your dentist work goin’, Doc?”
Doc laughed quietly, but his expression was one of contempt. “Well, it’s not quite what I had in Atlanta.”
Wyatt nodded toward the gaming tables, where Kate kept the players in good spirits. “So is this your supplementary income?”
Doc laughed again, and still there was no trace of humor. “Oh, I’d say it’s the other way around.” He pointed toward Kate, who managed Doc’s lay-out with deft and fluid movements of her slender hands. “And there sits my lovely partner in crime.”
“Looks like she knows what she’s doin’,” Wyatt said.
Doc widened his eyes at the understatement. “She’s half wildcat and all business,” he said, watching her with an amused smile. Coughing wetly, he hunched forward and produced his ever-present linen handkerchief to wipe his mouth. As always he waited to see if a spate of coughing would follow. When it seemed his chest had settled, Doc folded the handkerchief and put it away.
Cyrus returned the flask to the table, and, apparently expecting nothing more from Holliday, he looked at Wyatt. “Coffee all right?”
“I’ve had better,” Wyatt said.
Cyrus’s face seemed to compress with confusion. “Bring you anything else then, Marshal?”
Wyatt shook his head and then pointed at the abandoned cup. “You can take that with you.”
The barman lifted the cup, frowned into the dark liquid, and then sipped off the top. “Tastes all right to me.”
Wyatt stared at him for several seconds. “Maybe we just have different standards, Cyrus.”
As the bartender walked back to the bar, Doc began to chuckle in earnest. “You know, Wyatt, everybody doesn’t expect you to tell the truth all the time.” When he got no response, he laughed again, leaned forward, clapped his hand to Wyatt’s forearm, and delivered a friendly jostle. “But that’s one of the things I like about you, you know. A man will always know exactly where he stands with Wyatt Earp.”
“The truth always seems easiest, Doc.”
“Maybe so,” Doc said and cocked his head as if he had heard a good joke. “But it’ll bring you just as many enemies as it will friends.” Right away, Doc’s face sobered. “On the other hand, I’ll warrant those friends might be willing to walk through hell for you.”
Wyatt pursed his lips. “Wouldn’ know. Never had to ask anybody to do that.”
Doc nodded and chuckled at Wyatt’s answer. “I doubt you’d even need to ask ’em, Wyatt.”
Cyrus appeared again, carefully balancing a new cup on a saucer, which he lowered to the table. His movements reminded Wyatt of the explosives setters he had known on the railroad crew in Wyoming. This new porcelain set was adorned with a fancy, floral pattern in browns and blues.
“My wife had some fresh-made upstairs,” Cyrus offered. “See if this’n here is any better.”
Wyatt picked up the cup by its tiny ear-shaped handle and sampled the replacement coffee. Setting it down, he began to nod.
“Good,” he said.
Cyrus looked like a man who had bucked the tiger for all the money on the table. When he left, there was a little less waddle in his walk.
Holliday beamed. “I rest my case, suh.”
Wyatt studied the dentist’s self-satisfied expression and drank more of the coffee.
“I hear you had a run-in with Clay Allison,” Doc probed and gave Wyatt one of his wry, enigmatic smiles.
Wyatt hinged a hand partway from the table and then returned it palm down again. “Didn’ amount to much.”
Doc curled his lip and shook his head. “Allison is a vile abomination . . . a degenerate who has no regard for human life . . . not even his own. I would think any encounter with him would be a little more noteworthy than that.”
“How’d you hear about it? There wasn’t any mention of it in the newspapers.”
Keeping his elbows on the table, Doc spread his hands to the room. “I gamble with the Texas boys. A man can hear a lot of news that way. Most of it not good.” Doc twisted his smile into a conspiratorial smirk. “So what happened?”
“I run ’im out o’ town,” Wyatt said plainly.
“Did he misbehave?”
Wyatt turned the fine chinaware cup in its matching saucer. “I reckon I run ’im out before he had a chance to misbehave.”
Doc’s eyebrows shot up. “And he just left . . . just like that?”
“He left.”
Doc waited for more, but Wyatt relaxed in his chair and o
ffered nothing. He picked up the cup with both hands and worked on his coffee.
“No gun play?” Doc probed.
Wyatt shook his head.
Now Doc sat forward to better stare into Wyatt’s ice-blue eyes. “You convinced Allison to leave without resorting to Mr. Colt’s almighty equalizer?”
Wyatt set down the cup and tilted his head to one side, just enough gesture to show he had not revealed the whole story. “Allison was lookin’ into the muzzle of my Colt’s when he made the decision to leave.”
Doc smiled and drank from his flask. “Ah . . . yes,” he sighed, “a most poignant persuasion.” Then his brow furrowed. “Well, something as exciting as that should have found its way into print. I thought the newspaper editors in Dodge ate up stories like that and served them out with a manure shovel.”
Now Wyatt’s attention turned to Doc to let his friend see the disgust in his expression. “It appears some things don’t make it to the papers if they got to go through Bob Wright first.”
“Wright?” Doc repeated. “The storekeeper?”
“And town councilman,” Wyatt added.
Doc frowned. “What’s his stake in all this?”
Wyatt turned his attention to the faro game, but he was seeing the image of Bob Wright standing wide eyed behind the glass of his store window. “I reckon he’s one of those enemies you were talkin’ about.”
Doc frowned again and followed Wyatt’s eyes to Kate at the lay-out. When she shot him an impatient glare, he flattened his pale hands on the table and pushed himself up.
“Duty calls,” Doc announced with the droll insouciance of a jaded soldier.
“Take care, Doc,” Wyatt said and leaned to his coat to check the pockets for a cigar. Finding none he finished the coffee, stood, and was surprised to see Doc still standing next to him.
“I don’t care how goddamned important a man thinks he is,” Doc said quietly, his voice as personable as Wyatt had ever heard it. “If he’s the enemy of my friend . . . then he’s my enemy, as well.”
“Forget it, Doc,” Wyatt said and patted Doc on the upper arm. Under Wyatt’s hand the frail dentist’s shoulder felt like a sack of sticks. “You already saved my skin once. I figure I’m the one in debt to you.”
“Friends don’t keep score, Wyatt. You ever need my help, all you’ve got to do is just ask.”
Moving back to his faro table, Doc changed places with Kate and quickly assumed his professional deportment, talking to the players as if he had never left the game. Wyatt stopped at the bar and pointed at the shelf to the cigar brand he favored. Cyrus brought down two, and Wyatt laid down his money.
“Tell your wife she makes good coffee.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do just—” Cyrus’s mouth stopped moving, and he froze in a frown as he stared over Wyatt’s shoulder.
Wyatt half turned to see Kate Elder approaching him, her eyes fixed on him and glowing with an internal heat. Pivoting on his heel he straightened to face whatever was coming.
“Kate,” he said by way of a tentative greeting.
She stopped so close to him that he could see individual specks of powder she had applied to her face. Her breathing came more quickly than it should have.
“I vant to talk vit’ you . . . alone.”
“All right,” Wyatt said.
Kate turned her hot-coal eyes on Cyrus, and the barman closed his mouth and moved away. She pivoted to the bar where Wyatt would shield her from the back of the room where Doc gambled.
“When I leaf da Earp empire, I leaf it for goodt! I vant it to stay dat vay! Do you understandt?”
“Can’t say as I do,” Wyatt replied.
“I vant you to stay da hell away from Doc. We don’t need anyt’ing you or any uff da Earps have godt.”
Wyatt looked into the mirror behind the bar, and in the reflection he watched Doc dole out two bills to a winner. By the look on Holliday’s face, it was clear to Wyatt that Kate’s tirade was a private one Doc knew nothing about. When Wyatt turned back to Kate, she appeared ready to spit.
“I got nothin’ to do with my brother’s whorin’ business,” he said quietly. “Never did. Anything that ever happened between the two o’ you . . . or Bessie . . . it’s got nothin’ to do with me.”
Kate smirked. “You men haff godt no idea vhat it’s like to whore all da night with a bunch of stinking strangers. But you make all da rules and tell us when we godt to do dis and godt to do dat! Don’t you?”
Wyatt looked down at his boots briefly and tried to muster up the patience he had once needed with Mattie. Then he looked Kate squarely in the face.
“I don’t reckon James forced you to whore for ’im. I reckon you made up your own mind ’bout that.”
“Vhat else vas I to do?” she hissed. “You tell me!” Leaning to her right she looked past Wyatt to the table where Doc plied his trade. When she focused again on Wyatt, her face tightened, and her voice lowered to a raspy whisper. “You godt-damn men . . . you Earps . . . and everyone like you . . . you don’t know vhat it is like for us girls in dese rail-roadt towns. Da men make all da godt-damn rules.”
“Men gotta follow rules, too, Kate,” Wyatt said and with his forefinger tapped the badge pinned to his blouse. “And they hire someone to make sure they do.”
She glanced at the metal shield, spewed air through her lips, and coughed up a cynical laugh. “And you t’ink dat badge make you somet’ing better dhan da rest uff us?”
Wyatt stood quietly before the spiteful woman, taking her insults like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. Conflict with a female was nothing like the confrontations he was accustomed to facing as an officer of the law. He didn’t know how to fight what he could not understand.
“Kate, there ain’t—”
“Just stay avay from Doc!” she said in a rush. “He don’t need to be mixed up vit’ you Earps!” She rose up on her tiptoes, leaned toward Wyatt, and stabbed her finger to his chest. “You don’t control Doc.” She turned the finger on herself and tapped her breastbone where it showed above the lacy border of her dress. “Doc and I . . . vee are toget’er . . . vee decide vhat vee do.”
Wyatt felt a strange chill pass through him, as if a window had opened up somewhere behind him. He turned his head and caught Cyrus and the manager staring at him from the far end of the bar. The bookkeeper returned to his work, but the bartender stood stock-still holding a whiskey bottle by the neck in each hand. Now Cyrus seemed to awake from a trance, and he set the bottles on the counter before him and began clinking glass as he rearranged other bottles on the shelves.
Turning back to Kate, Wyatt began shaking his head. “I got no control over Doc, Kate. He’s the one citizen in Dodge I gave some leeway on the gun ordinance. Seems to me I—”
“Dat’s right . . . he safe your life dat night at da Comique. So now vhy don’t you repay da favor and leaf him be?”
When she brushed by him to march toward the back of the room, Wyatt felt the space around him open up as if he had been loosed from a trap. He watched her angry stride smooth out to approach Doc’s table. As for Doc, he was completely absorbed in his game.
Cyrus made his way slowly along the bar and stopped behind Wyatt. He leaned both forearms on the countertop and quietly observed the faro game until Wyatt made a motion to leave.
“You ask me,” Cyrus mumbled in a deep monotone, “that lady is a little tetched in the head.” When Wyatt turned to face the bartender, Cyrus was staring at Kate and shaking his head in tiny increments. “I wouldn’ worry about what she told you, Marshal.” He pushed his lower lip forward, shook his head more deliberately, and then turned his gaze on Wyatt. “You ask me, she ain’t to be trusted.”
“Why do you say that?” Wyatt asked.
Cyrus frowned and shrugged. “She’ll say whatever comes into her head if it’ll git ’er what she wants.”
Wyatt rested an elbow on the bar and watched Kate laugh with Doc’s customers. “I got no idea what she wants.”
“Who . . . Doc? She’s got ’im, don’t she?”
Cyrus gave Wyatt a skewed smile. “Doc thinks a lot o’ you. Talks about you. She don’ never seem to like it when he does.”
Wyatt turned to grip both hands on the bar. He stared at Cyrus and lowered his voice to a bare whisper.
“What’re you sayin’?”
Cyrus shrugged again but held a confident gleam in his eyes. “I know it don’t make sense, but you can’t always make sense out o’ some women.” He allowed a conservative smile. “She’s jealous.”
Wyatt frowned. “Of me?”
Cyrus’s expression turned sly. He lifted an eyebrow and nodded once. After watching Wyatt’s face for a time, he began to shake his head.
“There ain’t no logic to it, so don’t even try.”
A collective groan arose from Doc’s customers. Doc, himself, was smiling as he picked up the chips from his lay-out.
“I won’t,” Wyatt said and walked out of the Lady Gay.
CHAPTER 20
Fall, 1878: Dodge City to Cimarron River
In the predawn of a cool October night, Wyatt lay in bed staring at the water stains on the ceiling of Lillie Beck’s hotel room. He wondered how long a man could hold a job like his in Dodge City and still fool himself into thinking it might lead to something more profitable. Or, for that matter, how long could he expect to live? There were only so many moments of grace in his profession—like the night Doc Holliday had saved him from a fate like Ed Masterson’s.
He rolled his head to one side and looked at Lillie, deep in slumber. She was young, not yet prey to such thoughts about mortality. He wondered why he didn’t want her more than he did. She could have any man within earshot of her angelic voice . . . or close enough to appreciate the allure of her finely sculpted face. If an admirer got as close as Wyatt was now, there was no question. She was the kind of woman who caused practical men to dream beyond their means.
Lillie had no ambitions, Wyatt decided. Even Mattie had carried inside her a hunger to get to a better place. Wyatt remembered the day she had fled James’s brothel and set out across the frozen prairie. He could not imagine Lillie doing something like that. Lillie Beck had already arrived at some complacent, self-deluded destination with which he could never be satisfied. Wyatt wanted more, he realized, than Dodge City could give.