Born to the Badge Read online

  Masterson checked the breech of his Sharps rifle and turned to Bassett. “Charlie, if he gets close enough that I can take a bead on him, stand up and call him down off his horse. If he don’t dismount, I’ll shoot the murderin’ bastard.”

  Duffy appeared anxious. “What if you miss?”

  Wyatt kept his eyes on Kenedy and said, “I’ll drop his horse.”

  Duffy winced as though he had bitten into a sour apple. “I’d rather shoot that damned woman killer through both eyes than touch a hair on that horse.”

  “Sometimes you do what you can,” Wyatt snapped, “not what you want.”

  Hatless, Wyatt stretched out on his belly and eased his Winchester through the grass until he could sight on Kenedy. Behind him the Cimarron murmured. A flock of cranes cried somewhere high in the vast blue of the sky. The steady wind bristled the desiccated grasses and set up a faint tapping sound. Now three hundred yards off, Kenedy came on, his head nodding with the relaxed rhythm of the horse’s walk.

  “Keep comin’, you sonovabitch,” Bat whispered.

  Less than a hundred yards out the Texan slowed, and Bat clicked back the hammer of the Sharps. “Get ready, Charlie.” Bassett got his feet underneath him. Kenedy prodded his mount on, but now his approach seemed staggered and wary. At sixty yards Wyatt sighted high on the seam of soft muscle bisecting the horse’s chest.

  At fifty yards, Kenedy reined up and stood in the stirrups as he stared at the five horses grazing by the river. One of the posse horses nickered and lifted its head, acknowledging the distant rider and mount. But for the flow of the river, the world seemed to stop.

  “Better do it, Charlie,” Wyatt said.

  As soon as Bassett stood and yelled, Kenedy’s horse reared and pirouetted a quarter turn. Bat had not shot, and Wyatt knew he would never have a better chance than he had now as the horse flailed its forelegs and offered its flank. Aiming high behind the foreleg he squeezed off a shot, the Winchester bucking into his shoulder and shattering the silence all around them. In the next instant Bat’s “big-fifty” boomed. Kenedy and the horse crashed to the earth, and the five lawmen were up and running in their long-johns and boots, covering the open ground in long, awkward strides.

  Above the swish of their boots in the prairie grass, they heard Kenedy’s scream pour out into the prairie. Slowing their pace, they leveled their rifles at their quarry. The Texan’s bright red shirt was stained dark and wet at his shoulder. The horse lay on top of him, its finely tuned body now nothing more than a mountain of dead weight.

  “Get me out from under here!” Kenedy pleaded, his voice like a panicked child’s. “I think my leg is broke!”

  For a full minute they struggled to get the enormous corpse of the racer off the Texan’s leg, but the weight was too much. Finally they resorted to dragging Kenedy out. When Bat and Tilghman pulled him by his arms, the kid’s soul poured out of his mouth in a piercing scream that eventually trailed off in a strangely feminine wail. A fresh spate of blood seeped through his shirt.

  “You goddamned sonzabitches!” he shrieked. “Are you tryin’ to tear my fuckin’ arm off?”

  Bat leaned down into Kenedy’s face. “I wouldn’ care if we pulled you apart right here, you murderin’ little piss-ant brat!”

  Kenedy’s face distorted like a wrung-out rag. “You go to hell! I hope I killed that fuckin’ Kelley!”

  Bat clamped Kenedy’s jaw with the heel of his hand and pushed his head back into the grass. He leaned roughly into the boy, putting his face just inches from the killer’s.

  “You kilt Dora Hand, you bastard! That’s who you kilt!”

  Kenedy’s wild eyes held on Bat, then darted to each man. “Well, damn all of you assholes standin’ around in your underwear! Why didn’t you kill me!”

  Bat spat in the grass. “Well, I tried to, goddammit, and prob’ly would have if your damn horse hadn’t reared.”

  Wyatt stood over the racehorse, assessing its mass of finely proportioned muscle. Within a few days, he knew, the animal’s sleek coat would bloat and burst open to the will of coyotes and vultures. It was a senseless waste, just like the killing of Dora Hand had been senseless. Blood painted the grass beneath the fallen steed—a glistening wellspring of bright crimson color. Turning from the carnage, Wyatt walked toward the river to fetch his clothes and round up the horses . . . but mostly to give himself more space to think.

  As he neared the river, his mind painted the picture of Dora Hand’s lifeless body in the mayor’s bed. Like the racehorse, she had been brought down in her prime. Then the mental image seemed to shift through a will of its own, and Dora’s face became someone else’s. It was his dead wife, Rilla, and the stillborn baby who lay beside her on the bloodied sheets. Here was the memory he had not allowed to take form for years, and now it had found him out at the edge of the Indian Nations where it seemed the world was too vast for a man to be found by even his worst demons.

  Stopping at the water’s edge he looked up at the great dome of Kansas sky and understood, perhaps for the first time, that the life intended for him had been permanently taken from him in Missouri. And, just as surely, he knew life owed him nothing for that. There was nothing owed to anybody. There was only what life threw at a man and what he did in return to survive it.

  If he was going to have any future at all, it was up to him to piece it together. And the sooner the better. There were no guarantees about what time a man had left. He doubted that Ed Masterson or Dora Hand had ever entertained such thoughts. Rilla herself had never spoken of the fragility of life. And his baby son . . . well, of course, he never had the chance to speak any words at all.

  Wyatt pulled on his trousers, and as he did he thought of Mattie. She probably knew something about time running out, but he couldn’t imagine her finding a way out of the self-imposed misery that had become as much a part of her as her timid voice. He had done little for her, he knew—in spite of the pity she had evoked from him. It was time to cut her loose to the past . . . along with the lingering guilt. At thirty years old, Wyatt knew it was time to find a life that would see him through the rest of his days. He had pressed his luck with a badge long enough.

  He dipped his hand into the Cimarron, but, instead of drinking, he watched the water dribble through his fingers and fall back into the murmur of the current. The cobbled surface of the water flashed with mosaics of broken light, all of it unchanged and indifferent to any grandiose gesture he might conceive. He looked back at Bat and the other lawmen, still in their drawers, each preoccupied with some aspect of preparing the prisoner for travel.

  This one last job, he thought. One last duty. Wyatt gathered up his clothes, untied his lariat from his saddle, and started off to round up the horses. Already he felt that he was in motion toward something better. He just didn’t know what.

  CHAPTER 21

  Late fall, 1878: Dodge City, Kansas

  Wyatt, Doc Holliday, and a mercantile broker from Kansas City sat before a spectacled dealer in the Lone Star. The game was five card draw, and Doc was having a good run of the cards, which had propelled him through a gamut of moods—from delight to impertinence and then finally to the indifference that was his most notable reaction to the quirks of fate.

  It was a cool night, just an hour before daylight, and the dance area had dwindled to one couple until, in the middle of an Irish ballad, they too quit the floor and shuffled upstairs. The three musicians remained loyal to their performance and continued to play their instruments to a proper ending.

  “Wyatt, I have a profound question for you,” Doc said in his sly, singsong way of initiating a conversation.

  The salesman looked with interest from Doc to Wyatt, but both gamblers kept their eyes on the dealer’s hands.

  “What’s that?” Wyatt mumbled.

  Doc lifted a hand and swept it toward the front of the room. “What the hell are we doing in this Godforsaken town?”

  Wyatt made a deep humming sound in his chest as he kept watch
on the dealer. “Playin’ poker, Doc.”

  Holliday sat back and smirked. “Yes, I’m playing against a city policeman and a corset salesman, both of whom probably make half the wages of the bootblack down at Mueller’s. And the three of us are playing against a dealer who’s so nervous he’s probably forgotten how to palm a card out of his trousers.”

  The dealer’s hands froze and he looked tentatively from Holliday to Wyatt. His face turned as red as a man who had spent a summer lost on the prairie. His mouth opened as though he might reply to defend himself, but he only removed his spectacles and began wiping the lenses with a soft scrap of cloth he kept for that purpose.

  “Meanwhile,” Doc continued, “all you optimistic gentlemen are trying to squeeze funds from a dentist who has no clientele to speak of.” He looked around the room and made a grim smile. “And the four of us are playing the gentlemen’s game in a place boasting the charisma of an outhouse.”

  Doc leaned forward, stacking his bony forearms on the table. He hitched his head toward the lone drover sleeping off his drunken spree on the bench beside the wall.

  “The few cowhands still in Dodge are the hard luck downand-outers with little left in their pockets. And if it’s not a stinking cowman it’s an out of luck traveling salesman in a cheap suit.”

  The corset man offered a nervous laugh and smiled at the joke in which he assumed he had played some part. The four men picked up their cards and studied them for a time. After the discards and hits, Doc took the hand and raked the meager winnings toward his stack.

  “Shall we call it a night, gentlemen?” Doc said.

  Wyatt nodded, and the salesman sat back as though relieved.

  Doc leaned on his elbows again. Keeping his attention on Wyatt, he raised both hands a few inches and turned them palms up for an instant before letting them fall back to the table.

  “We can’t very well make our livings gambling against one another, can we?”

  The dealer packed up his accoutrements and shook his head at Doc’s pile of chips. “You’re gonna put me out of a job, Holliday.”

  “Well,” Doc said, feigning a stroke of heartfelt empathy. “Maybe you should take up dentistry. There’s an office set up at the Dodge House. You could move right in.”

  When the dealer frowned, Doc quietly shook with a self-amused laugh and then coughed into his fist until his eyes were teary. Bringing out his linen handkerchief, he waited to see if more was to come. He got his breath and cleared his throat with a wretched scraping sound that made the bartender look his way.

  “Study what and where the demand is . . . then supply it,” Holliday offered curtly. He spat into the handkerchief and shot a look of disdain at the dealer. “That’s all the free advice I’m giving you.”

  When the salesman excused himself and stood, the dealer filled his cheeks with air and exhaled with a quiet flutter of lips. Then he, too, stood and nodded a good night to the table. Picking up his diminished tray of chips he made his way to the bar.

  “What else is in demand, Doc?” Wyatt said. “I’d sure as hell like to know.”

  Doc began counting his chips. “Why? Are you considering a change of vocation? Are you finally tired of hammering your gun barrel over the heads of miscreants and desperados and Texans in general?”

  Wyatt pulled a cigar from his shirt and watched the fiddle player nod to the guitarist as they began a new piece of music. With the room so nearly emptied, the musicians had turned their chairs toward one another. And so began a waltz that poured through the saloon like a redemptive prayer.

  “I’m burned out on the law,” Wyatt said. The tone in his voice brought a soft light into Doc’s eyes.

  “You surprise me, Wyatt,” Doc said. “I thought that you’d be basking in the light of heroic repute after bringing that Kenedy boy back to stand trial.”

  Doc patted Wyatt’s shoulder, but he said no more when he saw the look on his friend’s face. They listened for a time as the artistry of the musicians seemed to elevate the room into something more than a dusty saloon in a Kansas cow town.

  “Kenedy’s father was in town today,” Wyatt finally said as he put away his pocket watch that had lain next to his chips before him. He pulled out a cigar and fingered a match from the box on the table. Before striking the match, he looked Doc in the eye. “The trial was held behind closed doors, and the boy walked out of court free as you please.”

  As he sorted through his chips, Doc pursed his lips into a contemptuous smile. “Ah, yes, my friend . . . the age-old story of mankind’s inviable system of jurisprudence . . . and the quiet jangle of heavy coins on the scales of justice.”

  Wyatt turned the match between his thumb and index as though inspecting its straightness. “It appears that some people can commit a murder . . . and then just pay for it.” He struck the match and lighted the cigar. When he extinguished the match flame with a stream of smoke, he looked at Doc again. “Makes what I do sort of the horse’s ass, don’t it?”

  “Maybe all of us,” Doc said. He gave up on counting his chips and swept them into his hat. “Whose life would you say is meaningful, Wyatt? The judge? The mayor? Rutherford B. Hayes? Dora Hand?” Doc coughed and laughed at the same time. “We like to think we make a dent, don’t we? But it comes to the same for all of us. One short song then the curtain falls.” Doc’s mouth tightened into a wicked smile. “We all just end up tucked away in a wooden box, don’t we? Wyatt, nobody is going to remember you or me after they cover us with dirt. So what’s the point?”

  When Wyatt said nothing, the two men remained motionless for a time, listening to the lilt of the waltz as though it were reaching them from some foreign place to which they might never gain access. When the last note was played, Doc watched the musicians pack up their instruments, then he tossed his hat brim-up on the table, the chips rattling inside the crown.

  “Most of the poor bastards I’ve known tell me there’s some kind of immortality in simply passing on their seed.”

  Wyatt pulled the cigar from his mouth and narrowed his eyes. “You figure on doing that, Doc?”

  Doc scowled and coughed up one more laugh. “Hell, no.” He groaned and turned his head away to hock up sputum from his chest. He pressed his handkerchief to his mouth, folded it, and put it away.

  “Where’s Kate tonight?” Wyatt asked.

  Holliday snorted. “Probably in the stockyards bedding a prize bull. She claims I’m not enough for her these days.” He tapped his fingertips to his chest. “Says this stuff is wearing thin on her feminine sensibilities.”

  Wyatt turned his cigar and studied the orange coal glowing from the tobacco. It was the first time Doc had acknowledged his disease in Wyatt’s presence. Wyatt reasoned that because Doc had saved his life, he could broach the question that few men would.

  “You’re dying, ain’t you, Doc?”

  Holliday laughed and assumed a philosophical tone. “We’re all dying, Wyatt. I’m just doing it faster than most.”

  They sat without talking, listening to the silence expand inside the room now that the momentum of the music was no longer there to push time forward. Wyatt checked his pocket watch again, snapped the case shut, and let the simple gesture announce his intentions. He nodded to Doc, stood, and carried his chips to the cashier at the bar. With the transaction complete, he walked outside to the boardwalk.

  The night air carried a chill, and the change of season felt hopeful to Wyatt, as though the welcome cycling of the plains toward autumn might just as naturally bring transition to his life as well. He drew on the cigar for a dose of reality. The street was quiet but for the tinkle of a piano down the street.

  Doc stepped out on the boardwalk and took a pull on his flask. He closed his eyes, exhaled his pleasure, and then pocketed the whiskey.

  “That stuff help?” Wyatt asked.

  Doc smiled and patted the flask under his coat. “Better than a prayer.”

  A horseman passed by at a trot and crossed the tracks to the south side
. Then a collective laugh erupted two blocks away from the Varieties Theater, and, in the lull that followed, the quiet of the prairie seemed to stake its permanent claim over the town . . . and over all the foolish dreams of the people who lived in it.

  “Doc, I reckon you already made a dent.”

  “Oh, really?” Doc replied, his voice both hoarse and doubtful.

  “Weren’t for you,” Wyatt said staring out into the plaza, “I prob’ly wouldn’ be standing here right now.”

  Doc lowered his gaze to the edge of the walkway and tumbled coins in his trouser pockets. “Wyatt,” he said with an uncharacteristically nervous laugh, “did you ever consider that you might be saving my life?”

  Wyatt paused with the cigar an inch from his mouth. He turned to see Holliday’s smile fade to a contemplative frown.

  “How many brothers do you have, Wyatt?”

  “There’s six of us in all.”

  Holliday drank heavily from his flask and exhaled a burst of whiskey-scented breath. “I’ve met Morgan and James. What are the others like?”

  “We’re all different . . . and all the same. You know how it is with brothers, Doc.”

  Holliday screwed down the cap on the flask and turned his head to the pink glow spreading through the clouds in the east. He took in a deep ragged breath and then let it out so slowly it might have been a sigh.

  “Not really,” he said.

  The sun appeared then like an ember smoldering inside a mass of cotton. The two men watched it rise above the yellowing prairie grass, spreading its scarlet color across the land like blood resurfacing from a mythical battlefield. Neither commented on the display. When the red hue faded and the morning yielded to the prosaic drab tones of dying buffalo grass, Wyatt stepped down into the street.

  “I’m going to make the rounds,” he said. “Walk with me.”

  They did not talk as they crossed the plaza and started down Bridge Street on the way to Locust. Turning toward the row of lighted saloons, they moved along the boardwalk and let the footfall of their boots mark time. Their shadows moved ahead of them on the tread boards, two dark, elongated shapes that sometimes fused into a single amorphous wraith floating across the sunlit walkway.