Born to the Badge Read online

  The long-limbed Texan eyed the gun in Behrens’s hand. “Still don’t mean I won’t get shot.”

  “That all you Texans do?” Wyatt said, “. . . is talk?” He kicked a chair leg, and the man visibly jumped. The room went so quiet that when Wyatt spoke, it was barely over a whisper. “Cairns, no gunplay. Unless one of these whiskey-pissers pulls on us.”

  Wyatt knew how it would play out. In front of his friends the man had no choice. The Texan stood. Man to man they were equal in size, but Wyatt’s fierce will was like a locomotive about to roar out of a tunnel. The Texan swung at him, but Wyatt stepped inside the blocked arm and knocked the drover across the room. The man stumbled into the wall and slid to the floor. He did not try to get up.

  Wyatt walked to the next man. “Your turn, Texas. Pass the hat or stand up.”

  The cowman held his look of defiance for only a moment before his face melted into an ugly sulk. Ida May looked with interest at the money on the table. Wyatt kicked this chair harder, and the drover’s hand moved reflexively toward his stack of coins. He dropped a cascade of silver eagles into the hat and passed it to the next man.

  When the hat was full, Wyatt called in Chandler, who counted out the proper sum of cash, wrote a receipt, and walked briskly from the saloon. When the wagon pulled away, Wyatt took his revolver from Cairns and walked out with his four companions following on his heels.

  On the street Wyatt paid Behrens and the yard-hands a half-dollar each. “This squares it,” he said, “two dollars split four ways. Jimmy, you’re already gettin’ paid. Tell Smith what happened. You can tell him there’s likely to be trouble.”

  “He ain’t gonna like it, Wyatt.”

  Wyatt snugged the Colt’s back into his waistband. “I don’t expect he will.”

  Within an hour, word had come from Delano that the Clements outfit was preparing to ride into Wichita and run the law into their holes. Thirty armed citizens assembled at the bridge, with Wyatt, Cairns, and Behrens among them. Unarmed, Marshal Smith approached on foot, snapping orders to anyone who got in his way. When he saw Wyatt, he stopped, his usually rosy face now dark, his facile smile replaced by a nervous frown.

  “I don’t like the way you handled this, Earp. This is trouble we don’t need.”

  Wyatt regarded the marshal. “Best decide right now whose town it is,” he advised.

  Smith exhaled sharply and squinted down the bridge. “There could be fifty men coming.”

  Wyatt looked across the gentle brown glide of the river, its current a quiet testament to the natural order of the world. The man-made bridge spanning the water was sturdy and well-built, but only wide enough for a single coach and team of horses.

  “Can’t be fifty men coming across all at once,” he said. “Too narrow.”

  Smith said nothing to that. He would be no help, Wyatt knew, but there were men there to be counted upon. He recognized their reliability in the way they waited, their hands relaxed, their eyes vigilant without betraying useless anxiety.

  The sound of horses’ hooves struck the far end of the bridge, setting up a steady rumble in the distance. Every man on the Wichita end went still, watching the oncoming army of drovers. The sound escalated with the horses’ progress across the wood planks, like a long roll of thunder telegraphing the length of the bridge. Cairns stepped beside Wyatt, even as Smith drew back.

  “That’s Mannen Clements up front,” Jimmy said. “The one in the short, gray coat.”

  Wyatt made note of the man leading the small army. Several of the riders behind him had slipped rifles from their scabbards and carried them barrel-up with the stocks propped upon their thighs. Every rider he could see wore a pistol in a holster at his hip.

  Behrens appeared beside Cairns. “Best not let ’em get over here and spread out.” He looked at the marshal. “You wanna select who you want to walk out there to parley?”

  Smith stared across the bridge and swallowed. “Hell, I don’t care,” he said angrily. “Anyone with a badge . . . one of you get out there!”

  “Who’s to do the talking?” Cairns said. “Shouldn’t that be you?”

  When Smith did not respond, Wyatt nodded to a man with a shotgun. “We’ll need that scattergun. That’ll do most of our talking.”

  Marshal Smith cursed, snatched the double-barrel ten-gauge away from the surprised man and shouldered his way up front. “Come on,” he snapped. “And stay close, goddammit!”

  Halfway across the span of the bridge the cattlemen slowed their horses to a brisk walk. The bounce of the riders in the saddle made them appear like a single unstoppable force, agitated and bristling for a fight.

  Smith brusquely led the way, but when he unexpectedly stopped, Wyatt, Behrens, and Cairns found themselves standing in front of him. Far behind them, several citizens broke from the cluster at Douglas Avenue and wandered out onto the bridge to hear the exchange.

  Clements reined up ten feet away. One of the men from Ida Mae’s eased his horse forward, leaned to Clements, and spoke in a low monotone that could not be heard above the clatter of hooves on the boards behind them. The drover’s hand came up to point at Wyatt. Clements noted the deputy scroll pinned to Wyatt’s shirt, and then his eyes fixed on Wyatt’s like two bright nails.

  “Get the hell out of our way!” Clements ordered. “We’re comin’ over!”

  Smith inverted the shotgun and lowered it to the bridge planking like a walking cane, the sound of it tapping on the wood an embarrassment to the men standing with him. “Mannen,” Smith said, clearing his throat, “we’ll need to talk this out.”

  Clements pointed to Wyatt. “This’n here manhandled some of my crew and took money off ’em.”

  “You can settle up with Ida Mae,” Wyatt said. “She owes you boys now.”

  Clements surveyed the guns in front of him. Screwing his mouth into a tight smile, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

  “I got better’n fifty men behind me.”

  Smith started to respond, but Wyatt cut him off by taking a step forward. “We ain’t got that many, but right here, it’s just the few of us. I’d say we’re the ones that count.”

  “We ain’t afraid to die,” Clements said, his raspy whisper a taunt. “How ’bout you town boys?”

  Marshal Smith shifted his weight as though he might step backward. “Now wait, Mannen,” he began, but he said no more, only running his tongue across his lips.

  “ ’Fraid to die?” Behrens laughed and raised the stock of his rifle to his shoulder. The skin on his face went as taut as stretched canvas. “You want . . . we can turn this bridge red right now,” he growled. “But you’re not fuckin’ crossing over.”

  Clements leaned on his pommel a moment and then straightened, taking the weight off his arms. His eyes ticked back and forth between Behrens’s carbine and Wyatt’s undrawn revolver.

  “Cairns,” Wyatt said without taking his eyes off the cattleman, “take hold of that scattergun.” When he heard the transfer, Wyatt watched Clements’s eyes lock on Cairns. TheTexas leader sat his horse stiffly, as Wyatt slid his Colt’s easily from his waistband. He could see in Clements’s face the worrisome calibration of what that shotgun could do. “Cock it, Jimmy,” Wyatt ordered.

  Against the shearing sounds of the water parting around the bridge pilings, the shotgun’s hammers made a crisp, metallic click-click. The light in the sky seemed to open wider over the narrow stage of the bridge. The random rhythm of the horses idly shifting their weights on the timbers and the creak of saddle leather were clear and punctuated, as though these random sounds were meant to fill in the wordless vacuum.

  Wyatt pivoted his body, turning his right side to the front, the barrel of his gun poised at an angle toward the planking like a man about to engage in pistol practice. “I want you to understand something, Mannen,” Wyatt said loud enough to be heard by the men immediately flanked behind Clements. “If one of your men throws down on us—it don’t matter which one—you die first. So this is really about
you. You can turn around . . . or you can go to hell from this bridge right now.”

  Clements again eyed Cairns’s steady hold on the shotgun. Then he studied Wyatt and Behrens. Finally he looked past them at Wichita, spat on the bridge, and curled his mouth into a scowl.

  “There’ll be other days,” he said and raised his arm in a circling motion as he reined his horse around. Like a sleeve pulled inside out, the front horses folded back into the crowd, the slatted muscles in their hindquarters shifting with the syncopated clap of their hooves on the boards.

  Smith bustled forward, teeth bared. “You really think that’s the last of that, Earp?” he hissed.

  Wyatt would not look at him. “More like a start,” he replied.

  Smith exhaled loudly. “You could have gotten us all killed with that stupid bluff!” He glared across the river, as if uncertain what to say next. “Goddammit,” he muttered under his breath.

  Wyatt and Behrens looked at one another, and then, shaking his head, Behrens walked back up the bridge toward town. Wyatt slipped his gun into his waistband and stepped in front of the marshal.

  “I reckon we’re done here,” he said. “I’ll come by later for my pay.”

  Before he had reached his horse, Wyatt heard Smith light into Cairns in a muffled tirade of exasperation. Wyatt mounted and watched the deputy lower the hammers of the shotgun.

  “It weren’t no bluff, Billy,” Cairns said flatly and pushed the shotgun into the hands of its owner. Smith frowned at Cairns’s back as the deputy walked up Douglas Avenue. Wyatt met Smith’s eyes briefly before reining the chestnut around and heading for the livery.

  CHAPTER 3

  Summer, 1874: Wichita, Kansas

  After the incident on the bridge, Marshal Billy Smith showed no inclination to use either Behrens or Wyatt for police work. Instead, to back his deputies, he agreed to an armed committee of citizens that could be summoned at a moment’s notice by ringing a triangle hung from the rafters of the courthouse porch. But the standoff at the bridge had served Wyatt’s interests. Word of how he had handled Mannen Clements spread quickly, and two gaming houses took him on as a dealer, his very presence ensuring order.

  On the first night the alarm sounded, Wyatt was working at the Gold Room. Gunshots had echoed across town for several minutes before Wyatt closed his faro game, stood, and removed his new coat. After draping the coat over the back of his chair, he rolled his sleeves midway up each forearm. Borrowing the manager’s pistol, he walked toward the gunfire and found the vigilance group gathering on the corner near Friar’s Saloon. Keeping to the boardwalk, he paralleled the armed citizens as they walked toward the front of the saloon, where a rowdy group of Texans had formed a ring around two men—one a deputy of Smith’s, the other a lanky, long-haired drover who raised his pistol above his head. The shot he fired echoed loudly between the buildings before the report was swallowed by the night sky.

  The drunken shooter staggered and threw back his head to laugh. “Ah-roooooh!” he sang, howling like a coyote. “I’m Hurricane Bill, goddammit!” He raised his gun again and fired straight up into the darkness, then he weaved his way over to the boardwalk, where he flopped down heavily into a chair. From there he aimed unsteadily, and the Texas crowd parted just before he fired off a round into the street. The bullet kicked up dust beside the helpless deputy and whanged off the hard-packed dirt to smack into a storefront on the opposite side of the street.

  “You want help with this, Botts?” Wyatt called out to the deputy.

  Relief flooded the officer’s face. “I damned sure do!”

  “I’ll take that as official,” Wyatt replied and walked directly to the seated Texan.

  Confident in their numbers and fogged with liquor, the Texans paid Wyatt no mind. Pushing one man out of his way Wyatt stepped quickly to Hurricane Bill and kicked his wrist with the toe of his boot. TheTexan’s gun clattered to the boards, and he grabbed his wrist and wailed like a petulant child. Wyatt jerked up on the arm of the chair, and the drunkard crashed onto the boards and into the light of the open door of Friar’s. Wyatt picked up the gun and straightened to see a familiar face. George Peshaur walked out of the saloon. When the scar-faced Texan recognized Wyatt, his whiskered face tightened like a wrung-out rag.

  Inside Friar’s the music stopped, and the customers crowded the door and windows, vying for a vantage to see the loudmouthed Bill sprawled across the boardwalk. Peshaur flung an empty bottle onto the walkway, where it clanked off the boards and rolled into the street with a hollow ring.

  “Well, shit! It’s the goddamn California boy,” he roared. “Ain’t there anywhere in this fuckin’ world I can go without trippin’ over your sorry ass? What . . . are you the errand boy in this piss-pot town now?”

  Wyatt ignored Peshaur’s taunt and, gesturing toward the man laid out on the walkway, called over to the deputy. “Botts, are you taking this man to the jail?”

  Botts, who had been content in the anonymity of the crowd, now approached and drew his revolver. His sinewy hand tensed with a stranglehold on the gun’s grips.

  “Hell, yeah, I’m takin’ the sonovabitch to jail. And anybody else that wants to go with ’im.”

  Wyatt waved the gun at the Texans standing mutely in the street. “Then go over there and pick out a few. Anybody carrying a gun’ll do.”

  Wyatt handed the confiscated pistol to the deputy. When he saw that the citizens’ group had leveled their guns at the mob in the street, he stuffed the barrel of his borrowed revolver back into his waistband. Botts jerked Hurricane Bill to his feet and pulled him into a reeling walk down the street. Wyatt turned back to Peshaur.

  “Well, ain’t you a pushy little piece of town shit!” Peshaur snarled. “Always stickin’ your nose where it don’t belong!”

  “You’re drunk,” Wyatt said. “Get off the street.”

  “Damn right I’m drunk, but ’at don’t mean I can’t handle you.”

  Wyatt had begun rolling his shirtsleeves back to his wrists, but now he stopped and let his left arm hang loosely by his side. His right hand thumb hooked in his waistband next to the butt of the revolver. Two drovers pulled at Peshaur, coaxing him back toward Friar’s.

  “Come on, Georgie, ’fore he d’cides to shoot ya.”

  Muttering a few choice words about the law in Wichita, Peshaur allowed his friends to pull him inside. Wyatt turned to face the remaining Texans, who now began to disperse and scuff their way to other saloons on the thoroughfare. Across the street the citizens’ group eased from the walkway out into the street and milled around as if deciding whether or not they should stand guard in the business district. Wyatt unrolled his sleeves, turned on his heel, and started back for the Gold Room.

  When he stepped inside the saloon, he found his faro table vacated, his coat still perched stiffly on the chair where he had left it. In one corner of the room, James and cigar merchant Dick Cogswell played poker with two others at a back table. James waved his brother over. Wyatt started to return the borrowed gun, thought better of it, and walked to his layout, where he donned the coat. When he had settled the garment comfortably on his shoulders he moved to the rear of the room.

  James laughed. “Well, your customers gave up on you, little brother,” he said, nodding at the idle faro layout sprawled across Wyatt’s table. “Come sit in with us.” James hooked a chair with his boot and slid it from another table. Wyatt opened the front of his coat, slipped the borrowed revolver from his waistband, and set it upon the table. Then he sat.

  James frowned at the revolver and then carried the frown to Wyatt. “Where the hell’ve you been with that, son? Are the cards not giving you enough excitement?”

  Before Wyatt could answer, Jimmy Cairns strode into the room and dragged another chair to the table. “I hear you were down at Friar’s,” Cairns said. He spun the chair around backward, straddled it, and sat, stacking his forearms before him on the curve of the chair back. “Smith sent me to tell you he don’t want you thinkin’ you
were on duty as a special.”

  “I reckon Botts is satisfied I was there,” Wyatt said dryly.

  “What happened?” James asked, looking from Cairns to Wyatt.

  “Texans,” Cairns said, as though the single word were explanation enough. “Discharging weapons on the street, resisting arrest. Wyatt here put it over on ’em. We got five o’ them jaybirds in a cell right now.”

  James smiled and raised his whiskey glass to his brother. “Well, Wyatt . . . here’s to volunteering to do the marshal’s job for him . . . without pay.”

  No one joined his toast, so James downed the drink and poured another. After he drank this one, he gave Wyatt his deadpan stare and began shaking his head.

  “Not much future there, brother, long as you make Smith look inept.”

  Dick Cogswell snorted as he gathered the loose cards from the last play. “Smith doesn’t need much help with that now, does he?” he mumbled.

  As the others laughed, James leaned and thumbed the sleeve of Wyatt’s black coat.

  “This is new, ain’t it?” When Wyatt nodded, James squinted. “Guessin’ that’s a new shirt, too.” James smiled. “Hell, son, you’re startin’ to look like a professional of the green cloth.”

  “Every occupation’s got its tools,” Wyatt said and took the deck from Cogswell. “A well-dressed man might look like he’s got a wad o’ money to lose.”

  Cairns laughed quietly to himself. “That’s why you backed that big Texan off with your gun, ain’t it? Didn’t wanna soil that shirt.”

  As his hands deftly shuffled the cards, Wyatt held Cairns’s eyes with his own. Then, when he glanced toward the door, both James and Cairns turned to see what had claimed Wyatt’s attention. Big George Peshaur stood at the bat-wing doors, his eyes scouring the room and settling on Wyatt. TheTexan pushed through with three other men following in his wake. Unarmed, the Texans moved toward the bar, the rowels of their spurs jangling collectively like a sack of loose nails. When they bellied up to the bar, Wyatt ignored them and finished dealing the cards.