Telegraph Days

by Larry McMurtry

  I decided not to mention that Cody thought Jackson lacked flair. There had been enough trouble in Rita Blanca for one day.

  “It’s because I’m short,” Jackson concluded. “Tall people don’t like short people. I wish I’d shot him, the coward.”

  “Just because you didn’t catch the horse thieves is no reason to stand there talking nonsense,” I countered. “Bill Cody is no coward and you couldn’t have shot him because you can’t shoot straight. If you’d tried to shoot Billy you might just have killed that poor freighter’s other ox.”

  In the course of our lives I’ve thrown many things at Jackson—a boot, fire tongs, a simple saltshaker. All I had handy on this occasion was a sturdy glass inkwell. Jackson had just dismounted—the inkwell hit him square in the forehead, knocking him flat—deep black ink began to pour over his face and shirt.

  No deputy sheriff likes to be knocked down by his sister, with an inkwell or anything else.

  “I will arrest you as soon as I get up,” Jackson said. “We’ll see how you like the inside of our jail.”

  If Mandy Williams was shocked that I had floored her groom-to-be with an inkwell, she didn’t show it. Mandy was a practical girl who immediately realized that Jackson’s shirt was going to be ruined forever if she didn’t get it into some cold water quick.

  “Stand up, I need to get that shirt off you!” she commanded.

  “I’ve got a headache,” Jackson informed her.

  “I’ll be back for you and your headache—first I need to get this shirt under the pump,” Mandy insisted.

  “But I’ll be half naked,” Jackson protested, to no avail. Mandy stripped the shirt off him and soon had it under Mrs. Karoo’s pump.

  The lump on Jackson’s forehead wasn’t getting smaller, and he was still dripping ink off his nose.

  “Go stick your head under that pump, Jackson,” I advised. “I regret that I had nothing to throw at you but the inkwell. A stick of firewood would have served my purpose just as well.”

  “You’re still under arrest,” he informed me sourly.

  I suppose I could sympathize with Jackson’s feelings. He shot down the Yazees and became a big hero, but his time as a hero hadn’t lasted very long. The newspapermen came and left, leaving Jackson just a deputy, and a short one at that. Then Bill Cody, a big, tall fellow who looked every inch a hero, showed up, exhibited only minimal interest in Jackson, and immediately hired me. This must have caused more than a little frustration—though, in his frustration, Jackson overlooked the biggest fact of all, which was that the comely and practical Mandy Williams had agreed to marry him. It had always been Jackson’s tendency to look on the dark side, rarely the bright. Like many brothers he had gotten in the habit of blaming most of his troubles on his big sister—in this case, me.

  “Stop glaring at me, Jackson,” I said. “If you want to arrest me, let’s head on over to the jail, though I won’t promise to stay very long.”

  “I guess Sheriff Bunsen will decide how long you’re to stay,” he said, rather formally drawing his gun. He didn’t quite dare actually point it at me.

  “Listen, Jackson, can’t you be practical for once?” I urged. “Mandy needs to wash that ink off you. Why don’t you let her clean you up and I’ll go explain the situation to the sheriff.”

  “You won’t tell it right,” Jackson said. “You’ll tell it so it comes out my fault.”

  “But it is your fault,” I reminded him. “You’re the one who started complaining.”

  “You’re always kissing men!” Jackson declared. “You’re always kissing men.”

  But he seemed to lose interest in his own accusation. He looked so woebegone all of a sudden that I had the urge to hug him, but before I could act on the feeling he put his pistol back in its holster, forgot about arresting me, and walked off to find his fiancée. He even had ink on his pants.

  Who would have thought one simple inkwell would spill out that much ink?

  7

  IT HAD BEEN a while since I had paid Sheriff Ted Bunsen much attention—my susceptibilities being what they are, I have a way of forgetting one man when a more interesting man comes along; and even in an out-of-the-way place like Rita Blanca, men more interesting than Ted Bunsen did come along. Andy Jessup, Zenas Clark, and Buffalo Bill Cody all put Ted Bunsen well in the shade when it came to being interesting.

  On the other hand, I am not the kind of girl who likes to lose boyfriends. Andy, Zenas, and Bill had temporarily hied themselves off to other parts, but good old reliable Ted could be counted on to be sitting in a rope-bottomed chair in the office of the jail, drinking whiskey that might have a fly or two in it. I decided to slip in and give him a kiss or two, so he wouldn’t despair. In fact he was pouring whiskey from his jug to his glass when I came striding in in my forthright way: he jumped about a foot when I surprised him.

  “Hello, Theodore,” I said. “Deputy Courtright has just placed me under arrest—want to help me pick out a cell?”

  “Deputy Courtright might have acted rashly,” Ted allowed. “What’s the charge?”

  “Hitting an officer of the law in the head with an inkwell,” I informed him.

  Teddy, I believe, was already drunk. He had to concentrate hard on his pouring, and even so, he filled the glass so full that a trickle of rye whiskey slopped over.

  “Here, let me drink that down a little, Teddy,” I suggested, taking the glass from him. I swallowed off about an inch of violent liquid before I set the glass down and kissed Teddy.

  It takes very little harsh liquor to make me amorous.

  “The best cells are upstairs,” Teddy muttered.

  “I hadn’t been planning to stay the night but if you could find it in you to be a little friendlier I might change my mind,” I said. Then I bit his lower lip, which caused him to jump. It’s a good thing I thought to set the whiskey glass in a safe place, because under my guidance Teddy got friendlier and friendlier. We took the glass of whiskey upstairs and, between us, finished it off.

  He had shaved off the walrus mustache the week before, which, from my point of view, made all the difference. Who wants to kiss a man with a hedge on his lip?

  “I don’t think I’m supposed to do this in the jail with a prisoner,” Ted remarked as I was trying to work his pants off over his long thin stiffie.

  “Theodore, let me tell you something,” I said, wiggling his stiffie a little. “The more you talk, the less fun this will be—it’s one of those occasions when talk can’t contribute much.”

  Dawn was breaking over the great prairies before Sheriff Bunsen ventured to say another word; and then it was only to mutter about someone named Helen, a slip I noticed instantly.

  “Helen, who’s this Helen? Is she blond or brunette?” I pressed. But the sheriff of Rita Blanca was in a wrung-out state. All I got from him was a snore.

  8

  HONESTY IS NOT something I wasted much time on—strict honesty, at least—but if I were to be honest with myself I’d have to admit that I’m not wholly free of distressing quirks, one being that the minute I inveigle some gent into actually romping through the night with me I wake up determined to avoid ever seeing that particular gent for a while.

  Zenas Clark had been the exception to this rule, and Bill Cody, had he been a little less of a businessman, might have been another. Ted was not an exception, which didn’t mean that the demon of jealousy wouldn’t rouse itself after a night of restless copulation in a jail cell. Steady old Ted had just happened to mutter the wrong name as he was waking up.

  By good luck I only had to walk across the street to discover who the mysterious Helen was. Leo Oliphant was up early, sweeping cigar butts and other debris out of the Whiskey Creek Saloon. He had to sweep around an inert body that happened to be stretched out almost in front of the doors to the saloon. The body looked dead to me, but Leo assured me that the fellow was still drawing breath and sustaining a low pulse.

  “That’s Joe—he must have drunk nearly a gal
lon of whiskey last night—and a gallon of my best whiskey will produce a state similar to paralysis. But it finally wears off.”

  “Do you know a Helen in this town?” I asked, coming right to the point.

  “Sure do,” Leo said. “She’s my wife.”

  “I didn’t even know you had a wife, Leo,” I admitted. “Where do you keep her?”

  “I don’t keep her,” Leo said. “Nobody can keep Helen, but at the moment she’s up in Kansas City attending her mother, who is poorly. Helen despises Rita Blanca and she particularly despises Sheriff Ted.”

  Helen Oliphant’s relations with Ted Bunsen were a matter I would have liked to hear more about, but I didn’t see how I could learn more about it without putting Leo on a track that could only lead to trouble.

  “Goodness, Leo, I didn’t even know you were married,” I admitted.

  Leo got a kind of warm look in his eyes—the same kind of warm look that Aurel Imlah got when he happened to be smoking a pipe with Mrs. Karoo.

  “I consider myself a near bachelor,” he said.

  “Don’t you miss Helen?”

  “Does a dog miss a tick?” he replied.

  I suppose life is complicated everywhere, even in a community that was no more than a cluster of hovels in the middle of a big prairie. Why, after a night of vigorous copulation with me, would my longtime suitor Ted Bunsen be muttering the name of Leo Oliphant’s wife?

  Leo Oliphant had the look of a virile man, to me. He was stocky, black-headed, and usually had a grin on his face.

  “Do you think being a bartender makes you cynical?” I asked.

  Leo had a deep, vigorous laugh, and my question made him laugh long and loud.

  “Yes, to your question, but being a bartender’s also made me prosperous,” he replied. “Prosperous enough to afford an absentee wife and a long-legged whore now and then.”

  I walked on up the street. I had the feeling that things might bust out, pretty soon, in Rita Blanca. What I wanted was for Bill Cody to give up looking for the white buffalo, which didn’t exist anyway, and squire me out of town before the trouble started.

  9

  BILL CODY AND Aurel Imlah showed up four days later, by which time I had managed to give Mandy Williams a firm foundation in small-town telegraphy.

  If there was anything else she needed to know, she would just have to learn it on the job, as I had.

  The two hunters returned with no white buffalo, a fact that annoyed Bill Cody no end.

  “I guess Moby buffalo got away,” I said, to tease him, but I don’t think Bill Cody was exactly steeped in Melville.

  “We did see a yellow one,” he mentioned, “but I don’t think a yellow buffalo will play.”

  I had my valise packed and was ready to leave Rita Blanca at a moment’s notice, a fact that didn’t escape Cody.

  “I see you’re ready, that’s good,” he said. “I hope Hungry Billy’s ready too. How many telegrams from generals have piled up by now?”

  There were thirty, which I handed to him.

  “They’re useful for starting fires,” he said, stuffing them in a saddlebag.

  “You’ll be glad to know we ran into Ros Jubb—she said you needed your face slapped.”

  “What’s her present project?” I inquired.

  “Jubb’s Journey to Comanche Land is her next book,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I said a hasty good-bye to Mrs. Karoo and Aurel Imlah and then did the same with Jackson and Mandy. The goose egg on Jackson’s forehead was now purple, with streaks of yellow here and there. Cody looked askance when he saw it.

  “Did a brick fall on the deputy?” he asked, as we were hurrying into the general store.

  “An inkwell accidentally slipped out of my hand,” I admitted. “Did you know Leo Oliphant’s married? His wife’s named Helen.”

  I was fishing, of course—I wanted to know if this seductress, Helen Oliphant, had maybe laid a snare for Bill Cody too.

  “I have little interest in Leo Oliphant or anyone he might have married,” he said, in a testy voice.

  “Sorry, bite my head off while you’re at it,” I responded.

  He didn’t bite my head off but he did have a little pettish fit when Hungry Billy told him that he had decided he couldn’t leave.

  “There’s a passel of work to do and no one but me to do it,” Hungry Billy told him. “I can’t just go off and leave the store my father built.”

  “But I need a photographer!” Cody said—then he gave up.

  “How hard is it to learn to take photographs?” I inquired.

  “Damn hard, if you intend to do it right,” Cody claimed. “I had Mattie Brady taking pictures for me—he’s the best—but he got so famous that he mostly takes pictures of the president now.”

  “Give me a month and I’ll train up and take pictures for you,” I said.

  Cody sighed. He did not like the smallest setback when it came to his Wild West. And there was, I supposed, the little matter of propriety in regard to me.

  “Now we’ve got no chaperone,” he pointed out. “What if it gets in the papers that Buffalo Bill Cody—a married man—is traveling alone with a lithesome young beauty? Lulu would wring my neck and then she’d wring yours.”

  “We could just stay to ourselves and not go into towns,” I suggested, but Cody wasn’t assuaged.

  “The Wild West will be family entertainment, Nellie,” he informed me. “Performers ain’t narrow-minded people—they like their frolics, and you can’t get around human nature. For me to travel alone with a lively beauty such as yourself is sure to produce publicity—and the wrong kind of publicity at that.”

  I realized from the look in his eye that I had gone from being an asset to being a risk—a big risk. He was about to abandon me to protect his shows—I saw it in his eyes. I know Billy liked me but he liked his Wild West better, and would ditch me if he had to to protect it.

  I needed to think quick and I did think quick. We were not too far from where Ripley Eads’s barbershop had burned down—I could smell the ashes still.

  “Let’s take Ripley Eads!” I said. “He lost his barbershop. He’s got no place to operate. Won’t the Wild West need a barber?”

  Bill looked at me with admiration—once again I had shown myself to be organized.

  “Of course it will need a barber,” he said. “Ripley will do fine.”

  Then he gave me a little soft smile and an appraising look. I believe he liked it that I was quick-minded enough to come up with a chaperone in a flash, in the hope of not being left behind.

  Ripley, of course, was as pleased as Bill. He was trying to rent a corner of the jail to cut hair in, but most of his customers had seen the inside of a jail cell from time to time and might not be comfortable coming into one just for the purpose of barbering.

  The three of us left Rita Blanca about the middle of the afternoon—I was on my roan and Ripley astraddle our mule, Percy, who had fattened up considerably during his days of easy living in Rita Blanca. Nearly the whole town showed up again to see us off—or rather to see Buffalo Bill off. Nobody cared much whether Ripley or I went or stayed. Bill Cody, of course, was in full fig, wearing one of his fine buckskin suits. Mrs. Karoo cleaned it for him.

  The man did like to make a show!

  I cried a little bit when we rode past my little telegraph office.

  “I won’t tolerate much blubbering,” Bill said, amiably. “If you are able to work up fond memories of a stinkhole like this, then I can’t wait to show you Broadway.”

  “No, I’m thinking of haircuts,” Ripley said. “I suppose play actors are particular about how they cut their hair.”

  “Not as particular as the Indians,” Bill replied.

  “Indians?” Ripley replied. It was clear that he had not given much thought to that aspect of his new job.

  “There’ll be Indians, but not for a while yet,” Cody said. “And I expect they’ll mostly want to do their own hair.”


  “I hope so,” Ripley said.

  “You didn’t see the Indian on your hunt, did you?” I inquired. Being out on the barren plains always took adjusting to—part of it was worry that the Indian might appear. What if he was one of those Indians who Cody had said would get the best of him?

  “What Indian?” Cody asked.

  I explained about the snowstorms and the lance and Ros Jubb’s goggles—before I could finish Bill Cody gave one of his big, hearty laughs. He even slapped his leg.

  “That’s not an Indian, that’s just Mickey—he’s Frisian,” he said. “Mickey likes to wonder around spooking people. I may get him in my Wild West if he’ll consent to settling down.”

  At the time I had no idea what a Frisian was, but I didn’t feel like admitting it. Now and then Bill Cody would chuckle a little, as we rode, at the ignorance of people who couldn’t tell Indians from Frisians.

  I never mentioned the Indian again.

  10

  EXCEPT FOR WHEN they needed to shoe their horses the Earp brothers seemed to live in front of a low dive called the Tascosa Saloon, which was on the main street of Dodge City. They stood there like big black birds of a feather, watching us come. At least the four older Earps stood—the youngest brother, Warren, sat on the steps whittling a stick. He was a willowy youth, maybe a few years older than me. I decided on the spot that if fate put me much in the company of the Earps again I would concentrate my attentions on young Warren.

  Cody had no interest in the Earps—that was easy to see. I think he planned to go trotting straight on through Dodge to the train depot.

  But Virgil Earp, no doubt still stung by my rejection, came hurrying out to intercept us. I guess Bill Cody concluded that it would be impolite just to ignore the man completely, so he drew rein. Ripley and I did the same.

  “Hello, Mr. Earp,” Cody said. He wore no pistol but had a rifle in a scabbard under his leg.

  “Hello, yourself, Cody,” Virgil said. “I see you have an impudent wench with you who considers herself too good to accept the proposal of an honest man.”