Born to the Badge Read online

  On a cool night in early May, Morgan accompanied Wyatt on the rounds, checking the closed-up stores and the alleyways. Morgan was a talker and one of the few people Wyatt liked to listen to. They touched on subjects Wyatt shared with no other man. Only one topic was taboo, and that was the memory of Wyatt’s deceased wife, Aurilla, and the baby who had died with her. Morgan knew never to broach it.

  “So tell me ’bout Mattie,” Morgan prodded. “Are you two hitched . . . official?”

  Wyatt tried the door at Dick Cogswell’s store and then cupped his hand to the window to peer through the glass. “She lives with me for now . . . that’s all.”

  Morgan nodded. “She’s a quiet one, that’s for damned sure. Hard to figure whores sometimes. Sarah Haspel was like that . . . when it was just the two of us, I mean.”

  Wyatt turned, surprised. “You lived with her?”

  Morgan smiled. “Before you showed up in Peoria. She used my name for a while.” He cocked his head at the memory. “That was one wild girl, but she got plumb wore out on life.”

  When the two Earp brothers stepped into the light from the Gold Room, Morgan was drawn to the swinging doors like a moth to a flame. “Think I’ll sit in on a game. You mind?”

  Wyatt almost smiled. “You’re not makin’ any money trailin’ me around town.”

  Morgan’s face turned as earnest and innocent as when he was a boy. “You think Meagher might hire me as a special when the cattle season starts?”

  “Might if he needs you. You got my recommendation.”

  “Hell,” Morgan laughed, “I’d better!” He pushed through the doors, and Wyatt watched him for a time as he picked up an easy conversation with each man he encountered.

  Moving along Douglas Avenue Wyatt passed the New York House and walked to the edge of town, where he saw the dark silhouette of a man standing outside the corral gate of Denison’s livery. The man’s face bloomed with light from a match he struck for a cigarette.

  “You have business here?” Wyatt said as he approached the man.

  “Just checkin’ on my horse, Marshal,” the man said in a relaxed manner. He pushed away from the fence and offered Wyatt a smoke. Wyatt shook his head and looked at the empty corral.

  “What horse might that be?”

  The man turned as if he had not noticed the lot was vacant. “Must be in a stall. I’ll come back tomorrow.” He started past Wyatt, but Wyatt’s hand flattened on the man’s chest.

  “What’s your name?”

  “J-Johnson,” he said with a stutter. “Wesley Johnson.”

  Wyatt turned the man until they stood face to face just inches apart. For a full fifteen seconds, Wyatt studied the man’s build, face, and finally his hat with its braided band.

  “Ever been to Coffey County, Mr. Johnson?”

  Johnson narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. “That’s up northeast o’ here, ain’t it? On the Neosho River?”

  Wyatt tolerated the performance and turned the man back toward the business district. “I want you to walk with me up the street, Mr. Johnson.” He prodded the man into a shuffling walk, and together they moved up Douglas Avenue without any further conversation.

  When they reached the Gold Room, Wyatt slowed and steered the disconcerted man toward the door. “Step inside here with me.”

  “What for?” Johnson said and stopped. Frowning, he nodded down the street. “I need to get back to my room.”

  Wyatt’s manner remained relaxed, even as Johnson grew more agitated. “This won’t take long.”

  Inside the saloon, they stood near the oil lamp perched behind the bar. After sizing the man up for weight and height, Wyatt stared deep into his nervous eyes.

  “You going to stay with your story, Mr. ‘Johnson’?” Wyatt said.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Marshal. What story?”

  Wyatt looked around the room and saw Morgan trying his hand at a faro layout. “Let’s walk down to the city offices,” Wyatt said to the fidgety man. “I wanna have a look at some papers.”

  When they reached the intersection at the New York House, the man claiming to be “Johnson” gestured down Douglas toward the livery. “Let me just go get my personal papers. They’re in my saddlebags.”

  They walked in silence at a steady pace until, ten yards out from the stables, the man bolted away from Wyatt and vaulted the gate as spry as a circus performer. As the stranger sprinted through the dark interior of the livery barn, Wyatt drew his Colt’s and ran around the outside of the building down the alleyway. When he broke into the open area next to the corral, he saw the fugitive scamper over the fence and start through the yard of a neighboring house.

  On the run Wyatt raised his gun and fired straight up into the air. At the report, Johnson looked back and in the next stride caught a clothesline in the crook of his neck. The line stretched taut and then thrummed a twanging note as it flipped the fugitive flat on his back. When the man hit the ground, Wyatt heard the air rush from his chest as if he’d been punched in the pit of his stomach.

  “Goddamn!” he gasped. “Am I shot?” His voice was dry as sand.

  Wyatt lifted the man by his coat collar. “You try and run off again and you might be.”

  At the marshal’s office Wyatt sat the man on a cell bunk and, leaving the door open, retrieved a stack of circulars from a drawer in Meagher’s desk. Reentering the cell, he shuffled through the papers until he found what he was looking for.

  “ ‘W. W. Compton,’ ” he read. “ ‘Five feet, four inches . . . one hundred forty pounds . . . light-brown hair and moustaches . . . center-peaked campaign hat with four indentions and a braided leather band around the crown.’ ” Wyatt lowered the paper and watched his prisoner glare at the tattered hat sitting on the bed next to him. “Is that you?”

  Leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs, the prisoner let his head sag between his shoulders. “Yeah, it’s me,” he mumbled.

  Wyatt continued reading. “ ‘Wanted for the theft of two horses and a mule from Leroy in Coffey County, Kansas.’ ” Wyatt looked up. “All this sound about right?”

  Surprised to be asked, Compton looked up quickly at his capturer. Then, trying to disguise his show of curiosity, he pretended to probe at the damage on the front of his neck. The clothesline had raked a broad, raw scrape mark under his chin. He nodded and flung a hand toward the stack of papers in Wyatt’s hand.

  “How the hell did you happen to remember me out of all those?”

  Marshal Meagher came in from the night and stood for a moment looking at Wyatt and the prisoner. “Was that you fired off a round behind Denison’s?”

  Wyatt closed the cell door and locked it. “It was.” He handed the Coffey County circular to Meagher, who read it and then stared through the cell bars to inspect the man. “I’ll turn him over to the sheriff tomorrow,” Wyatt said. Walking back into the office, he set the papers back on Meagher’s desk.

  “Mr. Compton,” Marshal Meagher said, squinting to inspect the man’s wound from a distance, “I’m the Wichita chief of police. Are you shot?”

  The prisoner shook his head. “No, but I might be about half-hanged,” he said, lightly dabbing at the wound on his neck. With a heavy sigh, he lay back on the bunk and covered his eyes with a bent arm.

  Meagher turned to Wyatt. “Did you miss?”

  Wyatt hung up the cell key on the peg by the cellblock door. “Fired off a warning shot into the air.”

  Meagher looked back into the cell at Compton. “What the hell happened to his neck?”

  Wyatt opened the loading gate on his Colt’s and ejected the spent cartridge. “Mr. Compton tried to run off but got tangled in a clothesline.”

  Meagher stared at his deputy, as though waiting to see if Wyatt would smile. John Behrens came into the office and looked from Wyatt to Meagher and then through the cellblock door at the prisoner.

  “Who the hell fired off that shot down behind Denison’s?”

  Wyatt loaded a fresh round into
the cylinder and put away his gun. Then, after slipping on his coat, he straightened the hang of the fabric over his gun.

  “That was me.” He nodded back toward the cells. “Horse thief from Coffee County.” He crossed the office to the front door and opened it with a glance back at Meagher. “I’ll go finish my rounds.”

  “Well, dammit, hold on a minute!” Meagher barked, stopping Wyatt. The marshal approached with a question narrowing his eyes. “How the hell did you know who he was?”

  Wyatt stood in the doorway and fitted his hat to his head. He had never seen such curiosity on the marshal’s face.

  “Hat,” Wyatt said.

  Meagher frowned and seemed to wait for more. “Hat,” he repeated, intoning the word as if it had insulted him.

  Wyatt nodded.

  Meagher coughed up a quiet laugh, lifted the stack of circulars only to slap them down on the desk again. “Well, hell, son, go out there and round up the rest of ’em. You need some more clothesline?”

  When Wyatt did not respond, the marshal slapped his shoulder and turned him toward the boardwalk. Both men walked out into the cold, the marshal still in his shirtsleeves.

  “You just keep doin’ what you’re doin’. You and me are gonna get along fine. Wish I had about three more like you.”

  Wyatt lingered on the tread boards and looked out over Wichita’s main thoroughfare. “Got a younger brother in town. If you need a special come the cattle season, he would be a good one.”

  Meagher struck a match and lighted a cigar. Squinting through the smoke he tossed the match out into the road.

  “We talkin’ about James?”

  Wyatt kept his eyes on the stores across the street as he shook his head. “Morgan.”

  The marshal studied his cigar as he rotated it between his finger and thumb. Then he turned to Wyatt and narrowed his eyes.

  “This brother . . . he got any experience?”

  Wyatt nodded. “He wore a badge in Montana.”

  John Behrens came out of the office buttoning his coat. Closing the door, he stepped beside Wyatt and jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the jail.

  “How’d you nail that jaybird? Has he been pickin’ up livestock around here?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Name’s Compton. Got a circular on him a few weeks ago.”

  “And you read those?” Behrens asked, smiling.

  Wyatt gave Behrens a look. “I read ’em.”

  Behrens’s smile faded. He waited, squinting at Wyatt, his lips parted as though trying to minimize the sound of his breathing.

  “So how’d you nail ’im?”

  Meagher sucked on the cigar and spewed a spreading plume of smoke into the cold air. “Hat,” the marshal offered, saying it much as he had before. Behrens turned to Meagher and frowned, but no more explanation was forthcoming.

  The three officers stood in a flank at the edge of the boardwalk. Turning their heads slowly, they surveyed the street, the vigilance in their eyes reflecting light from the saloon across the street as brightly as the badges pinned to their vests.

  “I’ll keep your brother in mind,” Meagher said to Wyatt. “Coupl’a months from now I might could use him.” The marshal looked up at the stars dusted across the black blanket of the prairie sky. “Long as he’s the kind that don’t mind bangin’ on a man’s head if the situation calls for it. Can’t have a man who’ll let them wild-ass Texas boys walk over ’im.”

  Wyatt stepped down into the street and buttoned his coat against the chill of the night. “If there’s any o’ that to be done, we’ll be the ones doing the walkin’.”

  Meagher grinned. “You got any more brothers like you we can call on?”

  “There’s six of us,” Wyatt said.

  The marshal whistled a low sliding note that trailed away to nothing. “If we stuffed that many Earps into the same town, there’d likely be a lot o’ goddamn Texas boys tiptoein’ around our fair city.”

  Behrens coughed up his raspy cackle of a laugh. “Maybe we could get them Texas boys to just start their cattle north to us on the trail . . . while the goddamn drovers stay back in Texas and kill each other. Save us a lot o’ trouble.” He started to laugh again but caught himself. “Hell, what am I sayin’? If that happened . . . we’d be out of a job.”

  Meagher sniffed and flicked a brick of red cigar ash into the street. “You just now figurin’ that out, John?” He took a last drag on the cigar and tossed the butt into the road. “Cold as hell out here,” he said and walked back into the office.

  The two deputies continued to stand as they watched three men shuffle out of the saloon just east of the city offices. As the trio began to stumble down the sidewalk, the shortest man began to sing in a high Irish tenor, but one of his friends clamped a hand over his mouth and looked back repeatedly at the two officers.

  “So, what about this man you arrested?” Behrens asked Wyatt. “What’s this about a hat?”

  “It’s on the poster,” Wyatt said.

  Behrens studied Wyatt’s face for several seconds. “And that’s how you knew him . . . this man Compton . . . by his hat?”

  Wyatt nodded.

  Behrens chuckled. “Well, damn, Wyatt. If I ever turn outlaw, remind me to change my hat ever’ week or so.”

  Wyatt pulled his coat collar up around his neck. He turned and gave Behrens his poker face.

  “If you ever turn outlaw, come on into town to the marshal’s office and I’ll remind you.”

  Behrens’s eyes pinched, and his whiskered face sucked in at the cheeks. Wyatt started down the street to finish his rounds.

  “Hey,” Behrens called out, “was that a joke?”

  Wyatt kept walking.

  “Wyatt Earp just told a goddamned joke!” Behrens crowed and provided the sole laughter for the occasion.

  CHAPTER 9

  Summer, 1875: Wichita, Kansas

  When the longhorns came north again, so came the Texas drovers who prodded the rangy beasts up the trail. This time the cowpunchers’ entrance into Wichita was less celebrative, less grandiose than in previous years, when a rowdy hurrah of gunfire on the streets had announced the end of their trail obligations. Wyatt, Morgan, Jimmy Cairns, and John Behrens met the cattle crews outside the city limits and delivered a new set of official mandates: First, all beeves would be driven to the stockyards by skirting the south side of town and approaching from the east, not through the main streets of the business district, as had been the time-honored practice. Second, no firearms were to be worn, concealed, or carried within town limits.

  “You want us to pay for your liquor and women and fancy restaurants, but we cain’t carry our guns to defend ourselves?” one trail boss complained. “Might as well ask us to come into town naked as a newborn.”

  “Please, for God’s sake, don’t do that,” Morgan said, holding a straight face. “My mare happens to be in heat right now, and she is not known to be choosy about her siring selection.”

  Wyatt turned to Behrens and pointed to a herd of cattle spread out by the river to the southwest. “Why don’t you and Morg take the word over to that outfit? Jimmy and I’ll finish up here with this brand.”

  When the two lawmen rode into the swale, Wyatt stepped closer to the Texan to deliver his message quietly. “Your men don’t need a gun for drinkin’ and whorin’ and eatin’. We’ll have a check-in station at the bridge.” He thought of Morgan. “We’ll have a man there to look after your possessions. You can drop your hardware there and then go into town. Nobody will be carryin’ in Wichita, so your men will have nothin’ to defend themselves against.”

  The drover cocked his head and cracked a sneering smile. “Nobody ’cept the law, you mean.”

  “That’s right . . . except us.”

  The Texan’s mouth tightened into a disagreeable knot. Shaking his head, he leaned and spat to one side.

  “Shit!” he said and carried a doubtful look back to Wyatt. “And what if some tin-horn gambler pulls a belly gun on one o’ us a
cross a poker table? What then?”

  “You just tell your boys to behave. We’ll take care of any problems that come up. We’re here to protect your trail hands just like we are everybody else.”

  The Texan rubbed at the whiskers on his face, the sound as dry as wind-blown sand. “Well, I can tell ’em. But they’re gonna do whatever the hell they want.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Not good enough. These men work for you. You tell ’em what you expect from them while they’re in town. They’ll stomach it better comin’ from you.” Wyatt held the man’s gaze with his own. “If we have trouble with your crew, we might have to throw the lot of you into the calaboose.”

  The boss frowned and watched some of his men pester the cook at the gate of the chuck wagon. “I’ll do what I can,” he said, still clearly troubled by the proposition. Then he narrowed his eyes at Wyatt. “You the new marshal?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Deputy.”

  “But you’re Earp, right?”

  Wyatt nodded. “I am.”

  The Texan pursed his lips and looked back at his crew. “These boys’ve been talkin’ about cuttin’ loose in Wichita for the last two weeks. This’ll go hard on ’em.”

  Wyatt booted into his stirrup and mounted his mare. He had three other cattle outfits to see before his work outside of town was done.

  “Go harder on ’em if they don’t stand by our rules,” he said and reined his horse around and took her at a walk toward a crew camping farther downstream on the river.

  By late afternoon the saloons began to fill with drovers, and more were coming in off the grassy flats below the river. Wyatt and Jimmy Cairns were checking for loose treads on the boardwalk on Main Street when Charles Hatton, a prominent attorney appointed to handle the city’s legal affairs, came toward them at a brisk walk from across the street.

  “There may be some trouble brewing down at the Keno Corner,” Hatton announced. “Where is Marshal Meagher?”

  Crouched over a board, Cairns looked up, set down a hammer, and removed a pair of ten-penny nails he had pinched between his lips. “He’s at home.”