Gunman's Rhapsody

by Robert B. Parker

  “Whoever he sends,” Virgil said, “they got to go up against you and me and Morgan-and Holliday, I guess, if he’s sober enough to shoot.”

  “Can’t recall,” Wyatt said, “Doc ever being too drunk to shoot.”

  “True enough,” Virgil said. “The skinny bastard can do that, can’t he.”

  “It may not come to much,” Wyatt said. “Johnny’s a pretty careful fella. Wants to get ahead.”

  “Man doesn’t get ahead, around here, at least,” Virgil said. “Being made to look like a horse’s ass in public.”

  “Maybe Johnny don’t know that,” Wyatt said.

  Twenty-four

  Mattie sat in the kitchen in a straight chair with a water glass of whiskey in her hand and tears coming down her face. She didn’t look at Wyatt.

  “Don’t you want your breakfast?”

  Wyatt shook his head. He was standing in the doorway holding a rifle, its muzzle pointed at the floor.

  “I had breakfast with Morgan,” he said. “I just stopped in to pick up the Winchester.”

  “I cooked it special for you,” she said. “Got some fresh eggs from Vita Coleman.”

  She sniffed and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her dress.

  “Christ,” Wyatt said, “do you cry in your sleep?”

  Mattie shook her head and drank from her glass, her eyes fixed on the front of the iron stove across the room.

  “If you’re hoping for sympathy, Mattie, I haven’t got any left. I’m doing what I have to do.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” Mattie said. “If you go, I’ll follow you.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m your wife.”

  “You’re not even that, not really. We never took any vows.”

  “I’m your wife,” she said.

  “You’re a damned drunk,” Wyatt said. “It’s still morning and you’re already drunk.”

  “I’m only doing what you make me do,” Mattie said. “I can’t bear the pain without it.”

  Wyatt took in a big breath of air and let it out slowly.

  “Mattie,” he said. “That’s bullshit and you know it. You been drinking most of the time, long as I knew you. It used to be sherry. Now it’s whiskey. But the drinking ain’t new.”

  “I got nothing else to do,” Mattie said. “I’m alone all the time. You’re never home.”

  Her face was bunched up as if trying to be smaller. She was pale except for a red flush over her cheekbones. She drank again from the whiskey glass.

  “Why would I want to come home?” Wyatt said. “Watch you cry and drink whiskey.”

  Mattie didn’t answer. Her eyes were squeezed nearly shut. She had slept on top of the bed in the dress she was still wearing. She looked at the stove as if to penetrate the black iron with her narrow, wet gaze.

  “I won’t give you up,” she said without inflection.

  “Jesus Christ,” Wyatt said and turned and went through the parlor and out the front door.

  Carrying the Winchester, Wyatt walked up Fremont Street, his boots making soft sounds in the thick dirt. The morning sun was behind him and his shadow spilled out in front of him, angular and much too long. It was already warm, and the sky was high and cloudless. He turned up Fourth Street, past Spangenberg’s Gun Shop on his left, and on the other side, farther up, at the corner of Allen Street, the Can Can Restaurant where he had had breakfast with Charlie Shibell and talked of being a deputy. Long time ago, Wyatt thought. He turned right on Allen past Hafford’s. Across the street, Johnny Behan came out of the Grand Hotel; he saw Wyatt and waved. Wyatt touched his hat brim and kept going. Johnny was a genial man. Careful about giving offense. He won’t come straight at you, Virgil had said. But it don’t mean he won’t come. Hell, maybe he was glad to get away from Josie. Wyatt smiled to himself. Be goddamned glad, myself, if Mattie would run off with somebody.

  Twenty-five

  The way the moonlight fell in the room, he could see Josie’s face as they lay together in her dark bedroom. Her eyes seemed very large in the pale light.

  “You’re very strong,” Josie said. “I feel it when we’re doing sex.”

  “We’re all strong,” Wyatt said. “James too, ’fore he got shot up.”

  “In the war?”

  “Yep.”

  “Yankee?”

  “Yep. Illinois.”

  “He doesn’t seem dangerous like his brothers,” Josie said. Her voice had an affectionate teasing sound.

  “Oh, James will fight if he has to, best he can with that shoulder. But he’s an easygoing boy. I think James’s done most of the shooting he wants to do already.”

  “How ’bout you?” Josie said.

  He loved the sound her voice made in the dark room. “I don’t mind shooting,” Wyatt said.

  “The men say you are a very good shooter.”

  “I practice,” Wyatt said. “Mostly in the morning, early. You don’t get good just packing a gun around. You need to work at it.”

  “Can you draw very fast?”

  “That’s the dime novel guff,” Wyatt said. “Fast ain’t anywhere near as important as steady.”

  “I should think you’d want to get off the first shot.”

  “Mostly I’d want to hit what I shot at,” Wyatt said.

  “Well,” Josie said. “You’re still here. I guess the proof is in the pudding.”

  “Never mind about my pudding,” Wyatt said, and they both giggled.

  “I’m not sure I ever heard you laugh before,” Josie said. “I certainly never heard you laugh like that.”

  “I’m a little different than usual,” Wyatt said, “when I’m with you.”

  “You’re pretty different,” she said, and they both laughed again. “I heard that your friend Holliday was involved in the Benson stage holdup.”

  “That’s just talk,” Wyatt said.

  “I heard he was a friend of Billy Leonard’s,” Josie said.

  As they talked Wyatt ran his hands lightly over her body beneath the covers.

  “Doc knew him in Las Vegas,” Wyatt said.

  Josie rubbed her cheek against his shoulder and shivered slightly as his hands moved over her.

  “Don’t mean he helped him hold up the stage.”

  “I even heard you boys did it,” Josie said.

  “It’s cowboy talk,” Wyatt said.

  “So who do you think did it?”

  “Billy Leonard, Harry Head, and Jim Crane,” Wyatt said. “Like Len Redfield told us.”

  “You know them?”

  Her face was close to his. As she talked, he could feel her lips brush his very lightly.

  “Uh-huh,” Wyatt said. “Rustlers. Len Redfield too, and his brother. Tight with the Clantons. They all ride with Ringo and Curley Bill.”

  “I heard Curley Bill got shot,” Josie said.

  “Up in Galeyville, fella named Jim Wallace, a shooter from over Lincoln County. Put one into Bill’s cheek, took out one of his teeth.”

  “Oh, poor man.”

  “Yes,” Wyatt said. “I was Wallace, I wouldn’t like my prospects.”

  “I meant Bill,” she said.

  “Oh. Well, Bill’ll get over it, probably better than Wallace will.”

  She shifted slightly against him as his hands continued to move over her.

  “ Lot of people think you did it, Wyatt. Say Marshal Williams tipped you to the big payload. Even on the posse, people say you and Virgil were just leading them around in circles.”

  “Josie, we wasn’t doing the tracking. Billy Breakenridge was doing it first. Then Frank Leslie come out. He was doing the tracking. None of us can track like Frank.”

  “I… don’t… care,” she said, trying to keep her breathing steady, “if… you… did.”

  “Well,” Wyatt said, “I didn’t.”

  His hands moved firmly now, and she pressed against him, squirming a little.

  “You… think… Johnny… might be… spreading rumors… because…?”

>   “Because of us?”

  Her breathing was so heavy now that it was hard for her to speak, and when she did it sounded very much like gasping.

  “Yes.”

  “Could be,” Wyatt said, and she arched against him and her mouth covered his and they stopped talking.

  CHRONICLE

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow dies… Jesse James dies… Ralph Waldo Emerson dies… Richard Wagner’s Parsifal is performed.

  * * *

  CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION

  October 26-

  At Waltham, in the Universalist Church, yesterday, was held a convention of The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of Middlesex county. In the morning devotional exercises were engaged in, Mrs. E. T. Luce presiding. In the afternoon Mrs. Talbot of Malden was in the chair, and there was a general discussion of the temperance question. Mr. R. B. Johnson presided in the evening when Mrs. R. W. McLaughlin delivered an excellent temperance address. The gathering was a large one, most of the unions being represented.

  * * *

  THE HARVARD FOOTBALL ELEVEN

  DEFEATS THE “TECHS”

  October 26-

  The Harvard eleven won its second victory from the Institute of Technology team, yesterday afternoon, on Holmes field, in the presence of a fair number of spectators.

  * * *

  AMERICAN MARINES AT ALEXANDRIA

  London , October 25-

  At a civic dinner here last night, Lord Charles Beresford, who commanded the gunboat Condor, which took part in the bombardment of Alexandria, in describing events occurring after the bombardment, characterized the American Marines at Alexandria as brave fellows. He said they rendered valuable assistance in saving many buildings during the conflagration.

  * * *

  REPORTS OF THE SUPERINTENDENT

  OF THE YELLOWSTONE PARK

  Washington , October 25-

  P. H. Conger, superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park submitted his report to the Secretary of the Interior today. He says that hunting has been practically suspended, and deer and elk are no longer killed. He regards the salary paid assistant superintendents as too small. He suggests that the law dividing the responsibility of the government of the park between the War and Interior departments be changed so as to place the park under the interior department. The hotel built by Rufus Hatch & Co. is completed, and is represented as commodious and well kept.

  * * *

  NIHILISTIC STUDENTS ARRESTED

  St. Petersburg , October 25-

  Arrests of Nihilists continue daily. Today a number of students were arrested and upon the person of one of them was found a manifesto headed “Executive Committee to the Czar.” The document demands general amnesty for political offenders, entire freedom of the press and speech, and a parliament elected by the people. Unless these demands are complied with the writer threatens rebellion, vengeance upon the nobility and the death of the Czar.

  * * *

  MILWAUKEE BEER

  From the celebrated Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company Milwaukee, Wis. for sale in half or quarter bottles or in bottles bearing my trade-mark and name.

  Joseph Gahm

  83 Commercial Street

  * * *

  MEN WITH A SWEET TOOTH

  Said the young blonde in attendance at the candy counter in Macy’s: “Oh yes indeed, many gentlemen buy candy here and from the fact that they eat from the package, and tell us it is for themselves, I believe they have a sweet tooth and like candy as much as we girls.”

  Twenty-six

  It was the beginning of June. Wyatt stood at an open window in the office of Earp/Winders Mining trying to find a breeze. Behind him with his shirtsleeves rolled and his collar unbuttoned Virgil sat at a rolltop desk with his feet up, occasionally wiping sweat off his face with a blue handkerchief. In the shade of the overhang downstairs in front of the Crystal Palace the temperature registered at 104.

  “Hear Johnny’s been coming around after Josie,” Virgil said.

  “Yeah. It’s her house. She’s told him she don’t want to see him, but he comes around some anyways.”

  “Going to do anything about that?”

  Wyatt smiled.

  “Morgan maybe done it for me,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  A freight wagon pulled by six sweat-darkened mules labored past, heading east up Allen Street. There were three whiskey barrels standing upright and lashed side by side to the back of the driver’s seat.

  “I was up in Tucson couple weeks back, with Winders, about that new shaft extension on the Mountain Maid. I knew Johnny’d been after Josie about letting him back in, so I asked Morgan to keep an eye on her. You know Morgan wants to be a tough nut like his brothers.”

  Virgil smiled.

  “He is a tough nut,” Virgil said.

  “Like his brothers,” Wyatt said.

  “ ’Cept maybe a little too quick sometimes,” Virgil said, “proving it.”

  “Hell, Virg, you remember when you was his age.”

  Virgil grinned again. “I was never his age. What’d he do?”

  “Well, Josie told me that Morgan came by, said he was going to sort of sit around for a while, case Johnny showed up and bothered her. So she gave him some coffee and they sat in the living room and they talked. You know Morgan.”

  “He could talk to a sage chicken,” Virgil said.

  “Yep, and then sure enough, Johnny comes knocking at the door and Josie lets him in, and there’s Morg sitting there with his coffee. Well, Johnny says, ‘What the hell is he doing there?’ And Morgan says he’s keeping company with his brother’s girlfriend. And Johnny tells him to get out of his house, and Josie reminds him it ain’t Johnny’s house. It’s her house paid for by her father, and Johnny says it don’t give her the right to live in it and be a slut for the Earps. So Morgan knocks him down, and Johnny gets up, and Josie says Morgan was annoyed as hell. ‘I’m losing my goddamned punch,’ he says, and knocks Johnny down again, and this time Johnny stays down for a while, and when he gets up, sort of tottering, Morgan runs him out the front door.”

  “Good, Johnny wasn’t packing,” Virgil said.

  “Wouldn’t matter if he was,” Wyatt said. “He wouldn’t jerk on Morgan.”

  “You never know,” Virgil said. “You never know how far you can push somebody.”

  A single rider with a big hat and a checkered blue shirt rode a lathered chestnut horse up Fifth Street and turned the corner. He reined and got off the horse in front of the Oriental across Fifth Street from the Crystal Palace. He led the horse down to the watering trough in front of the Arcade and let him drink. Then he brought the chestnut back and tied him to the rack in front of the Oriental and went in.

  “Josie thinks it’s Johnny doing most of the talking about Doc holding up the stage,” Wyatt said.

  “Be a way to get at you,” Virgil said.

  “Sort of roundabout, ain’t it?” Wyatt said.

  “Johnny’s a roundabout guy,” Virgil said.

  Wyatt nodded, as much to himself as to Virgil. Below the window, three whores walked up Allen Street toward Sixth Street carrying groceries. Wyatt recognized them. They worked for Nosey Kate Lowe. They’d have an early supper at Nosey Kate’s and get ready for work.

  “I was to find Leonard, Head and Crane,” Wyatt said. “Might sort of settle the question.”

  “Guess it would,” Virgil said. “You got an idea how you’re going to do that?”

  “Well, they’re someplace,” Wyatt said.

  “Guess so,” Virgil said.

  “And somebody knows where.”

  “Specifying who?” Virgil said.

  “Well, I’d be willing to bet Ike Clanton knows.”

  “Ike rides with the cowboys. Him and the McLaurys,” Virgil said. “You think Ike will turn in his friends to help you?”

  “Sure,” Wyatt said. “Make it worth his while.”

  “He don’t like us,” Virgil said.

  “I ain’
t going to ask him to do it ’cause he likes us.”

  “What you got to offer him?”

  “I’ll think of something,” Wyatt said.

  “I expect you will,” Virgil said. “Just don’t get yourself in a position where you got to trust Ike.”

  “Not likely,” Wyatt said. “But maybe I can get Leonard and the boys to trust Ike.”

  “Be a stupid thing for them to do,” Virgil said.

  “Which one of them three boys you figure to be the smartest?” Wyatt said.

  Virgil grinned.

  “I’d say none of them.”

  “That sounds right to me,” Wyatt said.

  Twenty-seven

  Wyatt and Ike Clanton had a drink together at the Oriental in the late afternoon with the heat still oppressive. Ike was drinking whiskey with a beer chaser. Wyatt nursed a cup of coffee. Ike was a fancy-looking man, Wyatt thought. Curly hair and a tricky little Vandyke beard. His mouth seemed somehow loose as he talked, and the fine network of broken veins that spidered his sun-darkened face suggested how much beer and whiskey he’d drunk in a lifetime of ranch work and saloons.

  “I want the credit for capturing those three boys,” Wyatt said. “Be a big help to me if I run for sheriff, and it’ll take the pressure off Doc.”

  “Meaning you’ll get them to confess and it’ll clear Doc’s name,” Clanton said.

  He had on a white cotton shirt. He had rolled the sleeves up and unbuttoned the collar. Sweat was glossy on his neck and his bare arms. He swallowed a shot of whiskey and some beer.

  “That’s about right,” Wyatt said.

  “But I get the reward,” Clanton said.

  “You get them back here where I can grab them and you get the money.”

  “Secret.”