by John Shirley
“Suppose Pierce wants to lynch me right out of the jail? Or Murco, some of Chauncey’s friends?”
“I guarantee you’ll not be harmed,” Wyatt said. “I’ll stand a watch.”
Thompson grunted. “I’m sure sorry about ol’ Chauncey. Billy didn’t mean it—he was full as a tick, Wyatt. Didn’t know what he was doing.”
“I’m sure of it. Folks in town know that. Now toss out your weapons and I’ll see you safe to the calaboose …” He set his hand on his gun, signifying his willingness to blaze away if he had to, even though Thompson had the drop on him.
Thompson smiled. “You’ve got some sand, I’ll give you that.” He leaned the Winchester against the doorjamb, and unbuckled his gun belt, tossed it aside. “But I want a cup of coffee, once we get into that jail. Sweetened with brandy.”
“Sweetened with brandy it is, Ben.”
* * *
“I estimate it this way,” said Abel “Shanghai” Pierce. “It’s clear to me and it’s clear to everyone here, that both brothers are responsible for Chauncey’s death, Billy and Ben: the two of them are to blame, and both should hang.” He stood with his back to the bar, elbows propped on it, a flute of champagne looking lost in his big right hand. A prosperous cattleman from Texas, Pierce was six foot four, a rawboned man with a voice that boomed no matter what he said. It was the parade trumpet of his pugnacious bearing. He had a shock of reddish brown hair, matching red mustaches, a high-crowned dove-colored Stetson; on his feet were finely figured stovepipe boots, with higher heels than most, and jangling spurs of silver and gold. He was called “Shanghai” by some because with his oversized golden spurs and general oversized demeanor; he was said to strut like “a Shanghai rooster.” He didn’t like champagne much, but he always drank some when he closed a deal, and he’d made eight thousand dollars that afternoon, thanks to Sternbrest, the Chicago stockyard buyer for the U.S. Cavalry.
“You got it right, boss. The Hell with them Thompsons.” This from Pierce’s ramrod, Grigsby, sitting nearby playing cards. He was lanky and red-faced and missing every third tooth. Grigsby was known for his highly developed sense for cattle and no other kind of sense at all.
Ranged at the bar and the table, the six rumpled, unshaved men with Pierce, still wearing chaps against the thorn brush, were trail hands in various stages of grime and drunkenness—they’d all come from cutting cattle for the freight train just minutes after Whitney had been carried off to the doctor’s office. Normally they’d be heading for the barber and a bath, but the Thompson business had detoured them to this waterhole for a pondering session.
“But then borrowin’ trouble seems like asking for what nature give us already,” said old Dudley mildly. He was a time-worn Texas cowboy known as a purveyor of gnomic pronouncements and homilies. As he spoke, Dudley was trying to throw darts at a target; his wayward darts had chivvied the drinkers at that end of the bar to another corner. “Sorry … I’ll get ’er yet …” He wore a rust-colored sombrero over his stringy gray hair and a Mexican shirt sewn with crude images of guitars and dancing senoritas. The other cowboys told him he was dressed “too young for that leathery rump of yours.” He squinted at the dartboard. “Yes, borrowin’ trouble saves a penny for Hell … that’s what my ma used to say …” Dudley was often the voice of moderation, and forgetting to agree with Mr. Pierce had cost him his ramrod job. But he stuck with the outfit; there wasn’t much else, at his age.
“Ol’ Dudley, he’s always quotin’ his mama,” snorted sour-faced Creighton, aiming brown spit at the cuspidor and missing. “Mr. Pierce is right about Thompson, that’s my view.”
“Sure Mr. Pierce is right!” said the stick-slender young cowboy named George Hoy, drawing two cards. “Damn, I’m out, Grig, I got nothin’, nor even hope of fooling you.”
“I agree with you too, Mr. Pierce,” said a dark figure sitting in the corner, hunched over a cup of coffee. “If his name’s Thompson, why, he needs to hang.”
“Well now, that’s Happy Jack Murco speaking up,” said Hoy, looking over. “And Murco owes me twelve dollars.”
Murco didn’t address the twelve-dollar debt. “It seems to me that, what with the various friends Thompson’s got in this town, he’s going to wing it out of here with his skin intact, soon enough. They’ll slide him out of the jail when the night’s dark. Unless someone was to get to him in that jail, first …”
“Now how would you propose a man could do that short of shooting his way in?” Pierce asked, cocking his head, putting his champagne glass on the bar. “Morton and that new deputy’s guarding him. I’d hate to have to dodge the U.S. Marshals all the way back to Texas.”
“Well sir, if someone was inspired to it, I expect he could get those deputies out of that jail, long enough for somebody else to get in there and finish up their business … There is a way, I believe. As I said, it’s a matter of inspiration.”
Pierce leaned back against the bar, idly spun the spurs of one boot on the brass foot-rest, and considered his choices. Murco made it sound effortless, but this was a risky undertaking. The law was already concerned to question Pierce about some rather precipitous hangings, on his holdings back in Texas; it wouldn’t be wise to burn his bridges in Kansas too. But on the other side of it, he hated that son of a bitch Thompson.
Who was Thompson to buck him? Abel Pierce had shaped the Texas cattle industry; had worked to make his mark since running off from Rhode Island at the age of nineteen. He’d stowed away on a ship bound to the Gulf of Mexico and was unceremoniously pitched off the ship near the town of Houston. In Texas he’d learned all there was to know about cattle, working for W.B. Grimes. He’d learned other sorts of things in the Civil War. Despite his Yankee origins, he’d signed onto the Confederate Army—for his Uncle Fergus had convinced him the Bible endorsed slavery. He’d butchered cattle for a whole Army and had been impressed with the vast amounts of money spent on beef. Back in Texas after the war, he’d carved out an empire—and he demanded deference from every man he worked with. Was he not a direct descendant of John Alden? Was he not kin to old President Franklin Pierce? Closest thing to American royalty.
Along came Ben Thompson, innocently asking to run his cattle with Pierce, then demanding a second count at the end of the drive. He came within a hair of accusing Pierce of stealing several hundred head. Didn’t matter if it was true—Thompson had called him low-down, and a thief, and they’d nearly dueled over it. Thompson then told a cattle buyer over in Dodge City that Pierce could not be trusted, costing Pierce a lucrative deal.
Ben Thompson deserved to die for that effrontery alone. And here he’d been in complicity with the murder of the sheriff—Whitney had always shown Pierce the respect he deserved—and he’d shot up the town to cover the murderer’s escape. The more Pierce thought about it, the more he felt his blood rising in him. Ben Thompson had blackened Shanghai Pierce’s reputation and Bill Thompson was a murderer. Both of them deserved a summary hanging—had for a long time. Ben Thompson had killed a number of men himself, before coming to Ellsworth. Gunfights? Executions, if you were fighting a man who couldn’t shoot straight. And now people knew what Pierce’s preference was, in the matter of Thompsons. They had heard him declare it. Making Thompson his enemy, anyhow. That alone was reason enough to see it through. Once the deed was done, the town would back him up…
Pierce made his decision. “Let us go over to the Ellsworth Inn, Murco. We’ll stop by the hotel safe, and then we’ll speak of what inspires a man.”
* * *
Wyatt Earp and Ellsworth’s Town Marshal were not congenial companions. The two men sat silently in the cramped office of the jailhouse, a structure of wood and stone no bigger than a typical log cabin, Morton on a chair, boots up on the desk, and Wyatt poised awkwardly on a stool. It was evening, the sun not long down, and it was painfully quiet in the office. From outside came the distant sound of a saloon accordion, a fiddle sawing away; the laughter and clip-clop of two farmhands riding past the jail. Som
etimes Wyatt could hear the faint sound of moths batting themselves against the kerosene lamp on a cabinet for forms and circulars. Morton was smoking a rolled cigarette, drinking from the brandy bottle that was supposed to go to Thompson, now and then giving a sharp sideways glance at Wyatt.
They simply didn’t like one another. Morton seemed to think Earp had been showing off, or insane, taking Thompson in; Wyatt thought of Morton as a bent lawman.
It could be he judged Morton all the harsher because of his memories of what he’d done himself, in Arkansas and Illinois. But he had made up his mind that there were laws, and then again—there were laws. Some laws mattered a lot more than others. And laws against promiscuous shooting, and lynching—those laws mattered.
In the cell behind them, Thompson was reading a three-week old newspaper from Wichita, yawning with boredom.
“When’s the judge coming?” Thompson asked, for the fourth time, rustling the paper as he turned a page.
“I sent the message,” said Morton, pouring another tot of brandy. “If he ain’t indisposed, he’ll come. But it’ll be in his own good time.”
“You’re drinking up all my brandy, Marshal …” Thompson began. But broke off when Happy Jack Murco creaked open the heavy oaken door from the street. “Murco!” Thompson shouted, coming to white-knuckle the bars. “It’s your fault Whitney’s died!”
Murco ignored Ben Thompson. “You two better get over to the Generous Lady. There’s a half crazed cowboy threatening to kill that yellow-haired female workin’ there.”
“He’s threatening Mattie?” said Wyatt, getting up. He strode quickly out the door, before Murco could answer—but Morton was close on his heels. Morton had to take two strides for Wyatt’s one to keep up as they crossed the dark street. The only light spilled onto the walk and the rutted road from the windows of saloons and the hotel.
“See here, Earp, you are deputized by me, and I decide what goes here, dammit!” Morton said, when they’d reached the front door of the saloon.
At just that instant Wyatt spotted Mattie, forty yards down the street, waving cheerfully at a drover and stepping into the little rented cabin she slept in, probably to make herself some supper—or lunch, considering her hours. She was in no danger, it was clear. What was Murco so worked up about?
Wyatt had a thought, and turned to look at the jailhouse. “Marshal, I believe I’ll let you handle this after all.”
He turned and walked back toward the sheriff’s office.
The Town Marshal shrugged, surprised at Earp’s unpredictability, and went into the saloon to look for a dangerous cowboy who’d never been there.
Wyatt returned to the jailhouse, slipping through the darkened doorway, just two minutes before Murco returned with Shanghai Pierce and five of his men.
* * *
“Where’s Dudley?” Pierce asked, looking at his followers congregated outside the little jail. The others shrugged. Pierce reckoned Dudley had had the sense—and Pierce knew it was good sense, despite himself—to linger at the bar.
Pierce nodded at Murco. Hiding the act from the street with his body, Murco slipped Pierce the key to the jail cell; Pierce passed it to Grigsby. “Grigsby, you and Creighton and Hoy, go ahead on in—keep your pistols about you, though Thompson won’t be armed—and drag that hound out here. Give him a thump on the melon if he sets up a ruckus. We’ll take him out to those cotton-woods by the river and hang him there.”
Grigsby nodded, led the other two into the jail’s office. The door closed behind them. A few moments of quiet were broken by a muffled shout, a thud, a grunt, and the sound of a man falling.
“Lord they worked fast, getting him out of that cell,” Pierce muttered.
Murco frowned and drew his gun, stepped into the office. He nearly tripped over two men on the floor, one lying atop the other: Grigsby and Hoy. Creighton was draped over the desk. Creighton was groaning; Hoy beginning to stir himself. None was worth a damn at the moment. None seemed to have been shot—just badly thumped.
Thompson laughed at Murco from the jail cell—and then looked to the shadows in the corner by the door.
Murco never did see Wyatt Earp buffalo him with the barrel of his pistol. He was out cold before he knew what hit him.
But Pierce knew what had hit Murco—as soon as he and Jim Banner stepped through the door and found Wyatt pointing two pistols at them, three inches from each man’s nose.
Wyatt cocked the pistols. “Boys, it is illegal to take a prisoner from the jail without the consent of the judge or the Marshal. Murco hasn’t got the stature. And I won’t allow it anyhow.”
“Who the hell are you to not allow it?” Pierce demanded.
“My name’s Earp. I’ve been deputized, and I’m going to have to insist that you take these beautiful dreamers out of here, and make yourself scarce. That means leave Ellsworth, and now.”
* * *
It was in the bright morning light streaming through the window of the jail house that Wyatt woke in the office chair to find Morton taking a thick handful of currency from Ben Thompson. The gunfighter was handing the cash through the bars of the cell.
Hearing Wyatt get to his feet, the Marshal turned, pockmarked face made uglier yet by a scowl. “Earp …” he muttered, tucking the money out of sight in a coat pocket. “I spoke to the judge, who has granted me the power to fine Thompson twenty-five dollars for disturbing the peace. He has now paid his fine.” He turned the key on the jail cell, and opened the barred door. “Okay, Ben, head on out. Your brother was seen riding toward Abilene … You’d best follow him and hope Marshal Hickok hasn’t shot him dead yet.”
Ben grinned and clapped his top hat on his head. He came to Wyatt and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Wyatt, I’m just about cleaned out of money, for now, but if you’ll come to Abilene …”
Wyatt shook his head. “You owe me nothing.”
“We’ll see about that,” Ben said, chuckling. He slapped Wyatt on the back and headed out the door.
Wyatt stretched, grimacing. He’d slept badly in the chair and his bones ached. He turned to see Morton glaring at him. “I understand,” Morton said, pausing to sip coffee from a tin mug, “that you buffaloed one of my men last night. He’s laid up with an aching head and will be of no use to me. I could arrest you for that.”
“Did I do that? That was no twenty-five dollars you just took from Ben Thompson, Morton. It was a good deal more. You want to talk about that?”
Morton’s eyes narrowed. “You want your share, do you?”
Wyatt stared. He didn’t see what was so bad about taking a little extra in “fines” from an unlicensed gambling house or a freelance whore, as he’d seen Jim Masterson do. He was not above shearing a fool at poker. In the recent past, he had been no angel. But outright bribes to get a man out of jail he could not stomach. That kind of thing gnawed at the roots of civilization.
He just shook his head, put on his hat, and went to the door.
“Wait a minute,” Morton said, and added grudgingly, obviously not wanting to say it: “The mayor wants you to stay. He’s offering you Whitney’s job.”
“I kind of like Ben Thompson,” Wyatt answered. “But he nearly shot me dead and he brought his drunk brother into the street for a fight and he shouldn’t be surprised that Chauncey Whitney died in that fuss. Ben needed a month or two in jail, at least, for that foolishness, though it wasn’t him that pulled the trigger. Your judge let him go for twenty-five dollars. I conclude this town’s not my size. Now goodbye to you, Morton, I’ve got business over to Wichita …”
Half an hour later, riding out of town on a sorrel standard-bred stud, Wyatt felt some relief when he left the smell of Ellsworth behind: the smells of crowded cattle, and mountains of buffalo hides, and overflowing outhouses.
The air was sweet and pure, out here on the plains.
CHAPTER THREE
Abel “Shanghai” Pierce rode a big, gray-white Arabian stallion out onto the plains east of Ellsworth, under blue
sky and cottony clouds; rode out to talk to his Uncle Ferg, who had died about fourteen years earlier.
Pierce had taken Old Dudley with him, as he often did on such expeditions, because Dudley seemed to accept the necessity of talking to the dead, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And two guns were good to have on the plains. Billy Thompson could be hiding out here somewhere.
Dudley, riding a chestnut white-faced mare, asked no questions when they paused atop a modest swell in the plains. A patch of delicate purple blossoms, little trumpets running tandem up stalks of rich green, swayed in the morning breeze.
“Capital grazin’ here,” Dudley said, blinking around at the flowers, the rippling buffalo grass. He would have preferred to be nursing his aching head in bed at the hotel,
“Wonder what them purple flowers are,” Pierce muttered.
“Why sir, it happens that I know,” Dudley said. “They are found in Nebraska too, and my Mama, back in Nebraska, she loved ’em so, God bless her.” His eyes filled with tears, thinking of his mother, dead of the ague more than six seasons now. When he was hung over, his heart seemed sorer than usual, and at such times he was prone to weeping. His brother had told him of his mother’s death—he and Bud had run across one another in an Abilene saloon. She had died and he hadn’t been there to hold her hand. The stalks before him shook in the desultory wind with the motion of a woman’s disapproving finger.
“Well what the devil are they called then?” Pierce demanded. “Those purple flowers.”
“Eh? Oh yes, sir, they’re lady’s tresses, is what they call ’em.”
“Lady’s tresses …” Pierce realized, then, what it was that drew his eyes to these lady’s tresses. They reminded him of that girl in Louisiana; she had a dress figured with purple flowers at the bosom. Had she really laughed at him, when he’d asked her to be his wife? The woman had been a gold-digger who liked lavish gifts. Laughing at a Laird.