The Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  First time I run into Bat in the street while Pard was at my heels, I say, “Look who’s here.”

  Bat stares around and then asks, “Where?”

  “Right there,” I says, pointing down. “Remember that dog I had in Cheyenne? You bought him a big steak.”

  He nods and says vaguely, “Uh-huh.” But I doubt he did.

  “This very animal! He followed my trail over all that distance. It took him three years, but he got here.”

  “Sure he did, Jack,” says Bat, with his familiar smirk.

  “Dammit, Bat, I’m serious. This is the one.”

  “Listen, Jack, I’m heading for Tombstone day after tomorrow. Are you on for it?”

  “I am if Pard can come along.”

  “Who’s Pard?”

  “It’s this here dog I’m telling you about.”

  Bat grinned some more, only now with a certain impatience, nodding his derbied head. “They won’t let him on the train.”

  “Him and me will ride in the baggage car.”

  “Then who am I going to drink with?”

  Having a friend like Pard give me the nerve to stand up to the great Bat Masterson. “Well,” I says, “that’s the only way I’ll go.”

  Bat thought about it for a minute and then, pushing up the brim of his derby with his gloved thumb, he says, “I admire loyalty. If they let him on, I won’t object.”

  Bat by the way was ever the dandy. For winter he had him a real handsome long black wool overcoat with a thick collar of beaver fur. So you won’t think him a heemaneh I might just mention that whenever he took up residence in Dodge he generally lived with a sporting woman.

  9. Tombstone

  GOING TO TOMBSTONE FROM Dodge in early ’81 involved three separate train rides as well as two spells on different stagecoaches, none of which phases was rapid transit, and all of which was fairly uncomfortable, inconvenient, and dangerous owing to much of the passage being across hostile Apache territory. I of course had an additional problem with Pard, whose presence did not inspire good will in many, if any, but him and me made a lot of compromises, me riding with him in freight cars, then him tolerating being tied on top of the stages, amidst the luggage, and we eventually arrived at Tombstone only slightly the worse for wear, which was an old story with us.

  The Oriental saloon and gambling house was Bat’s destination on reaching town, for he heard from the shotgun rider on the stage from Benson, the final leg of our trip, that Wyatt had bought a quarter interest in the gaming room there, but I said I’d be along later, as I wanted to find a hotel or rooming house where they would let Pard share my quarters, for pitching a tent out in the surrounding desert never appealed to me, and the dog, coming from the Black Hills, wasn’t familiar with the godforsaken terrain of southern Arizona, looking at which as we bumped over it on the stage, I wondered what in hell I was doing there. By the way, on that last ride Bat agreed with me (and it won’t come as a surprise that the driver and the other passengers agreed with what Bat decided) that the dog required protection against the fierce sun, and Pard rode inside the coach.

  Tombstone had been in existence for a couple years by now and thus was almost fancy compared to the Deadwood I had knowed in its rawest days, with two fine hotels facing each other across Allen Street, on a block otherwise occupied almost entirely by saloons, and Schieffelin Hall, around the corner and down Fourth, the local opera house and the biggest adobe structure in the U.S.A. The better buildings was of adobe, a new material to me and right attractive, the trouble was you had to live in a place with a burning sun and a water shortage to use it. The rest, and in fact most, of the center of town was hastily built of lumber, which was true of most everything beyond the center, and it soon occurred to me that the place was a fire waiting to happen, given the dry heat of the air even in what elsewhere would be the middle of winter and the open flames used for cooking and all types of artificial lighting in them days. So one of my concerns in looking for a place to stay was how much of a firetrap it might be, which immediately ruled out anything above the ground floor, for though I could let myself down by rope from the window of a burning room, that might be hard to do with Pard.

  You might notice the special attention I was paying to the welfare of a dog and think it foolish or immoral to take an animal that serious, but I tell you I never knowed no other creature who craved my company so much it would trail me for three years and across several states, through territory that, judging from his scars, was not markedly friendly.

  We wandered around for a while, taking in the sights, like a restaurant called the Maison Doree, which had a dinner menu pasted up outside listing a number of dishes that looked misspelled to me, like “boeuf” and “pore,” though what did I know with no education, and I sure couldn’t afford to eat there, for I expect you couldn’t of got out the door without spending at least a dollar.

  But reading the menu reminded me we hadn’t ate in a spell, so I bought a hunk of bread at one store and then got some boiled ham at the nearby butcher shop of a man named Bauer, for to make a big sandwich, and while I was there I asked the butcher, a heavy-set fellow in a bloodstained apron, if he could recommend a place to get a room.

  He smiles and says, “Fly.”

  “Thank you kindly,” I says and, there being no ladies present, I reached down to do up the buttons, but it turned out I had misheard the meaning, which the butcher cleared up.

  “Camillus Fly,” says he. “He takes pitchers. They’re good but they cost too much, and then his wife comes in here and complains about the price of meat.”

  “I don’t require a photographer at this time,” I says. “What I need is a room.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” says he, wiping his big gory knife on a wet rag. “His missus lets rooms.”

  The place was just two doors along Fremont Street, past the assay office where silver claims was filed, and Pard and I strolled there, sharing that sandwich I slapped together while walking, for we was not given to niceties. I did however linger in front of Fly’s house till I swallowed what I had chewed. If I wished to bring a dog onto the premises I didn’t want to show coarse manners to boot.

  But before I had gotten the crumbs brushed off the lapels of my coat, the front door opened and who should step out but my former Dodge City dentist, Dr. John H. Holliday. And after him a lady of the type the French had a name for, I learned when visiting their country with Cody’s show, something on the order of jolly-lard (though having nothing to do with the English words), which means attractive and ugly at the same time. This lady had strong features but lively eyes and a figure you couldn’t miss dressed as she was in clothes that made the most of her bosom and hips.

  Holliday give me a cold once-over, no doubt checking for visible weapons, then looked away, showing no sign of recognition, but his female companion smiles sugar and spice, dropping her eyes quick then raising them slow.

  “How-de-do, sir,” says she. “You got a real nice dog for yourself.”

  Doc looked like he was gritting his teeth under that mustache of his, but it might of been he was just fixing to cough. Old Pard liked this flirty gal, and he cocked his head with the torn ear and wagged his ragged tail at her.

  I just said, “Ma’am,” and touched the brim of my hat. I continued awhile to steel myself against a possible late recognition by Doc, but he had undoubtedly been in so many real fights since what turned out to be an empty threat on my part, and killed so many enemies by gun or knife, as to empty his memory of the incident with me, if it ever registered on him in the first place.

  So they went on, and I goes to the door and knocks, but when Mrs. Fly opens it she tells me the place is full up at that time, so we never did get into the matter of keeping a dog. But it was Pard who finally found us a home.

  We had got out Fremont beyond First Street, where the houses was real close together and so little it looked unlikely there’d be spare rooms to rent, and I was ready to head back when a small wo
man comes along the road carrying a number of parcels, one of which slips from her grasp as she is turning into a house just ahead, but she don’t notice it at all.

  “Excuse me, ma’am!” I hollers, startling Pard, who never heard me raise my voice before, and he kind of shies away.

  The little woman looks questioningly at me, still not seeing the fallen item, so while saying she’s dropped something and doffing my hat, I walk close enough to pick it up myself. It was wrapped in paper and real light.

  “Why, thank you kindly,” says she. “You are a real gent of the sort I wouldn’t look for in this town—excepting my husband of course.”

  You might say I was disappointed in coming across a woman built on my own proportions, with a nice personality and a sweet face to match, to find her already married, but you’d be wrong. What I felt for her right away was affection of a brotherly kind. Maybe we was related in a past life, like they say. No, she weren’t one of my long-lost sisters from that wagon train years ago. However, she did have a connection to somebody I knowed.

  But right now, I says, my hat still in my hand, “Ma’am, I wonder, do you know of anybody might rent a room to me and my dog?”

  She looks down at Pard and frowns, but what she said was favorable. “Well, you’re all right, ain’t you?” I reckon this was directed at Pard. To me she says, “If I was you, I’d get me one of them little houses.” Still holding that armload of bundles, she nods in the direction of further along Fremont, where there was some shacks of raw lumber. “But if you don’t like Mexicans you won’t be happy, for it’s mostly them from there on.

  “I get along with anybody who ain’t nasty,” I told her. “I seen enough trouble in my life to want as little as I can get away with from here on in.”

  She laughed quite a bit, and says what I considered remarkable, “Do me and you happen to be related? We sure look at things the same way.”

  “Let me introduce myself, ma’am. My name is Jack Crabb, and this here’s my dog Pard.”

  “Now, no more ma’am, please, Jack. Just call me Allie. And don’t think me forward. As I say, I got me a husband, a great big fellow in fact. When he first asked me to walk out, I says, ‘Whyn’t you pick on somebody your own size?’” And telling how he laughed, she herself was so amused, tears come to her eyes. Then she settled down and said, “They’re asking twenty a month.” I realized she meant the shacks near the Mexicans. “But they’ll take fifteen, and that’s a fact.”

  “I’m real obliged to you, Allie. And give my respects to your mister, for he is a fortunate man.”

  She was real pleased at this, but her kind of plain-talking woman in them days wasn’t used to praise, seeing it as flattery whose purpose was suspect. “Get along with you,” says she, “before the neighbors, who happen to be my relatives, get the wrong idea and tell Mr. Earp.”

  “Earp?”

  “Yes, sir,” she says proudly. “My husband.”

  “Am I hearing you right? You are Mrs. Wyatt Earp?”

  She laughs again, but this time it ain’t with entirely good feeling. “My man is Virgil Earp! Wyatt’s his younger brother.”

  “Oh, I’m real sorry, Allie.”

  I had a feeling she was not insulted by the apology, but she just smiled and wished me the best on renting a place, and she went on in her house.

  As it happened, me and Pard did get that shack and paid what Allie said we ought to of, to the landlord, an educated higher type of fellow who come to Tombstone to make his fortune the smart way, namely in real-estate speculation and not by working in the silver mines. So living on the same street I frequently run into Virgil Earp’s little woman and become the same kind of friend to her as I had been with them working girls at the Lone Star in Dodge, in saying which I don’t intend no disrespect to Allie (for if she heard me say that, she’d spit in my face), who was of spotless virtue. What I mean is only I was just her friend and nothing more.

  Another person I met was Mattie Earp, who was Wyatt’s wife, a modest-looking woman, quiet and reserved, as befitted the companion of an egotistical type like Wyatt, you might say, except that the next female he took up with, and stayed, was completely different. Anyhow, the Earp brothers, and there was even two more, James and Morgan, all lived along the same street, in fact Morg and his woman for a while moved in Allie and Virge’s house, little as it was. The Earps was the closest brothers to one another I ever knowed, one for all et cetera, and I don’t see that as a bad thing in itself, whatever the era, but especially in that one, and in fact I was real envious.

  Speaking of the latter, the furnishings of the shack, left behind by the former tenant, was not much of an improvement on Bill’s barrel, which might of made Pard feel at home, but I required at least something to get me off the dirt floor in a region noted for rattlesnakes, gila monsters, and scorpions, so I scouted around town and found a used canvas cot I expect somebody stole off the Army and bought a serape from one of the Mexican women who was my neighbors in the other direction from the Earps, and also a couple tortillas wrapped around a wad of frijoles cooked with chilis, which made me real nostalgic for the time I spent in Santa Fe with a big fat passionate gal named Estrellita, I being only sixteen at the time, with quite a bit more vigor than I had at forty, and often full of pulque, which I hadn’t tasted since. It was just my good luck that I hadn’t went on to become another Bill Crabb.

  After our home had been set up this far, I left Pard to guard the premises and went in to the Oriental saloon, where I had last seen Bat. Well, wouldn’t you know he was already employed there, dealing faro for the house, and there was Wyatt Earp, striding around looking important in his role as one of the owners, and when I come up to the table and Bat had a free minute, he says, “They can put you on as barkeep. Go over and introduce yourself to Frank Leslie.”

  First I should say I had seen a few saloons in my day but never anything as lavish as the Oriental, where the enormous mahogany bar alone, including the so-called altar, the back-bar with its lineup of bottles and fancy etched-glass mirror and a cash register big as an organ, was supposed to of cost a hundred thousand dollars. They kept on hand a framed article clipped from the Tombstone Epitaph on the opening a year before, which said nothing like it could be found this side of San Francisco: “Twenty-eight burners, suspended in neat chandeliers, afforded an illumination of ample brilliancy, and the bright lights reflected from the many colored crystals on the bar sprinkled like a December iceling in the sunshine.”

  Bat told me to go see the head bartender, one Buckskin Frank Leslie, who I had not heard of till then but who had already, like so many of them on the staff of the Oriental, had a colorful life and been an Indian scout for the Army in an earlier day as well as a performer in one of Cody’s shows, though he rarely talked about these matters, and had also killed a man in Tombstone the previous summer, which I certainly heard about from Allie Earp next time I run into her and says where I was working.

  At the moment though I didn’t know none of this but just saw a brushily mustachioed gent in a barkeep’s red vest over quite a fancy white shirt with studs of what seemed precious gems and cuff links likewise, who was not just pouring drinks but making quite a show of it, holding the bottle high in the air and at an angle that produced an arc of crystalline liquid glittering in the light of them chandeliers and catching it in a glass held as low as his arm could reach and without a lost drop. It was an amazing performance, and I complimented him on it.

  “Mr. Leslie, I’ve been of the profession myself for a few years, but never did I see such an exhibition of mixology.”

  He thanked me and when I told him what Bat had said, directed me to put on a apron and start right away if I wanted to.

  “Mind showing me how to do that trick?” I asked.

  “All it takes is practice,” says he. “Better do it outside, with bottles filled with water.”

  I went around the bar and took the folded apron he found on a shelf. It was freshly laundered and slightly
starch. Everything at the Oriental was of the best quality and well maintained. There was more drinkers at the bar than you would of thought for early afternoon and not in a Kansas cattle camp at the end of a drive. I would of thought more of them might be out at the silver mines, but by then there was a lot of other trades in Tombstone that was practiced near the saloons.

  Most of the customers on hand stayed at his end of the bar to watch Frank’s fancy tricks, of which I had seen only the simplest. Sometimes he’d flip a glass end over end as he was just starting the pouring with the bottle in his other fist, but by the time the point of the high-arching stream got there, the glass would be right-side up to receive it, and always without the least splash. That last effect or lack thereof was the one I never did master, however much I practiced.

  Though the drinkers had to wait awhile before Frank could serve them, nobody was attracted to the immediate service at my end of the bar, I was acquainting myself with the bottles lined up along the bottom of the altar and the higher ones alongside the big mirror. Quite a few of the potions available was new to me, for most of what I poured in my time at the Lone Star was the plain red whiskey common to that place and day, and we was not above watering it on occasion when the ready supply ran low or, with some of the characters who worked there, as part of their profit-skimming effort. Gin and brandy was also offered for them with those tastes, and on occasion one of the house girls might take a sip of sherry wine instead of the usual weak tea, but much of the elaborate variety of fiery liquids available at the Oriental I was looking at for the first time. For example, Apache Tears, brewed, said the label, right in Tombstone, and Tanglefoot, Bill Cody’s pet word for a drink, appeared to be a real trade name, as was White Mule and Red Dog, Bumblebee, and Prickly Ash Bitters, not to mention a fluid named Cincinnati Whiskey, which of course led me to guilty thoughts of Mrs. Aggie Hickok and the lost money I was supposed to deliver to her.

  “Hold on,” says someone standing at the bar behind me. “I believe there’s an outstanding warrant against you in Dodge.”