by John Shirley
Wyatt gave a noncommittal grunt and pushed through the curtains. He found Sarah waiting in a small bedroom, off to the left of the corridor; she was perched Indian-style on a small brass-framed bed—not the bed she did her work on, from the look of the room. This was where she slept. Most of rest of the room was taken up by a bureau, with a kerosene lamp on it, and second bed where another girl would sleep. There was wallpaper figured with lilies; over the bureau was a framed tintype of Queen Victoria. A chamber pot, painted with roses, was tucked away in a corner.
“Nice little room,” Wyatt said, coming in. But mostly he was looking at Sarah: She wore a white dressing gown; her feet were bare, her toes painted red. Her hair was curled in sausage ringlets that seemed utterly foreign to her; her skin so pallid now her freckles, hard to see most times, stood out in a dark spray across her nose. Her fingernails, he saw, were chewed up, the thumbnails downright mangled. She seemed heavier, but it wasn’t the plumpness of health, but the sag of drinking.
Sarah shrugged, glancing around as if considering the room for the first time. “I guess it’s okay.”
“How long you been here?”
“Not long. Less’n a week. I had a friend knew Bessie was looking for girls. You run out on me but you was always good to me before then. I figured an Earp would be right enough.”
He winced. “I asked you to come with me. You didn’t want to.”
“Didn’t want to farm. That what you doing?” she asked.
“No. Helping my brother in his saloon. Funny thing is, appears I’m starting up lawing again.”
She laughed—and the laugh cut off suddenly. She looked at him narrowly. “You going to arrest me?”
“My brother owns the place, Sarah. Of course not. Nor would I arrest you, in any case. Hell I’ve been arrested with you …”
“You should call me Sallie. I go by Sallie Earp.”
“Sallie Earp?”
“Because of Bessie Earp—that’s what girls do. They take her name.”
“I know. I just … never mind.” Why was she here? Hoping to get back with him? He’d given her a chance to go with him, start over. She wouldn’t do it. Surely he’d done the right thing, in leaving. But she had that look of mute accusation as she looked at him now. Maybe she’d taken up with Bessie in the hopes of being a burr under his saddle. Make him sorry. He sighed. Too late to change anything. He looked her in the eyes, and asked, “Sarah—did you steal that man’s money?” He was conscious of his hands, hanging by his sides. He didn’t know what to do with them. He put them in his pockets, and then took them out again.
She shook her head, opened her mouth to deny it, but he held her gaze, and she couldn’t quite utter the lie. “… I … ’spect I did take it. Don’t you want to sit down, Wyatt?”
He sat on the other bed. “You can get people in a killing-fight, stealing from them in this business, Sarah.”
“Call me Sallie, in Wichita.”
“I can’t seem to. Don’t think I will, Sarah. You steal from customers, here, why, you’re hurting my brother and my sister-in-law.”
She squirmed on the edge of the bed, and then sat very still, staring at her button up boots. “I’m sorry. I’ll give you the money. I just hated that Plug so much.” Her nose wrinkled. “When he took off them boots, I thought I’d throw up from the smell. And I needed the money, I haven’t put away much, and I’m sickly …”
“You need a doctor?”
She nodded mutely. After a moment she added, in a low voice, “I need the mercury treatment, Wyatt. It takes some time. The doctor wants to be paid in advance …”
The mercury treatment. So that was it. She had “the blood disease.” Syphilis. “You’d better be using those shields here …” If she gave one of Bessie’s customers the French pox there could be a reckoning.
“Bessie sees that we use the lamb’s slippers. For some things …”
Wyatt thought about the mercury treatment. From what he’d seen, it could cause your hair to fall out. You could run paralytic with it, and start drooling, lose your sense. It killed people as often as cured them. But the syphilis untreated would bring madness and death.
He stood up and dug out his billfold, counted out three twenties, pressed them into her small, clammy fingers. “Here. You see a doctor.”
“You won’t tell Bessie?”
He shook his head. “Good luck to you, girl.” He started for the door.
“Wyatt? I wished I’d …”
He turned and smiled at her, feeling it an untrue smile even as he made it. “Just save your money as you can. And get that treatment. Then maybe we can find you some better line of work.” He waved goodbye.
He had run out of advice. He nearly ran from the room too.
Wyatt located his older brother sitting at a table in the lamplit kitchen, drinking red wine with Bessie and the new girl. The small kitchen was furnished with a hand-pump and did double duty with a tin bathing. James put his wine glass aside and got up to go with Wyatt, pausing to kiss Bessie on the forehead. Wyatt waved at his sister-in-law and hurried out, his mind burdened so that he scarcely noticed Dandi LeTrouveau, seated across the kitchen table from Bessie …
* * *
“Mrs. Earp,” Dandi said, when the two men had gone, “I am in my time, and not suitable for men, but if you will let me wait a day or two …”
A delicate-looking little woman, Dandi wore a frilly yellow dress, cruelly tight at her tiny waist. She sat stiffly, with her hands folded in her lap. Her hair was a luxuriant spill of lustrous brown around a wide forehead, large earnest dark eyes, and delicately round, naturally-rosy cheeks; her petite lips were rouged to seem a little larger than they were.
Dandi’s girlishness would appeal to many customers, Bessie thought. But clearly the girl was no whore. Still, she might be taught …
“There are things you could do for a man while waiting for the red flag to go down,” Bessie pointed out, pouring herself another glass of wine. “But you may wait, if you choose, this once, till you get settled in.”
Dandi leaned forward, lowering her voice, speaking with a touching earnestness. “Mrs. Earp—I have come to town for a purpose. When you offered me work—well I was looking to come to Wichita … and I am grateful for your … for your patronage.”
Bessie smiled at Dandi’s affectation of high-toned diction. “… but I cannot forget my purpose. All else must surrender to that purpose.”
“And what is that purpose, Dandi?”
Dandi hesitated, pursing her lips. At last she allowed, “I am searching for a Texan—Mr. Abel Pierce. His ranch is in Texas but I heard from a man in Kansas City that Mr. Pierce was known to spend a season in the vicinity of Dodge or Wichita. I thought it might be wiser to approach him there, than at his home …”
“Pierce comes through town sometimes. He’s a moneyed man. You have an ambition to marry yourself a wealthy man?”
“That’s not it, no ma’am. He …” She broke off, and seemed to fall into a reverie, gazing at the quivering light of the lamp on the table.
“Perhaps you met him before—did you have a child by him?” Bessie asked the question as if it were her right to know, by preeminent domain.
“I … no I did not have his child. I prefer to keep my own counsel as to why I wish to speak to him, if you please, ma’am. I can only tell you that I wish to speak to him privately. In some discreet place. But … you have not seen the gentleman of late?”
“I have seen him across the street once, but I don’t know as he has sported with us. And I do not know if he is in town right now.” Bessie and frowned. “When I asked if you was ready to come out here for the job, you said … what was it you said … That you had ‘the necessary experience of men.’ Maybe I mistook your meaning, girl. How many customers have you had?”
“Customers …” She looked downcast. “Why … none.”
“None!”
“The only work I’ve done is a tutor for young ladies … a governess. A
nd that taxi-dancing in Kansas City, that’s as close as I got. I had a beau, in New Orleans, and we were … we did not wait till our wedding. But once he had me, he lost interest and I saw him no more …”
“No customers! No wonder you have such tender sensibilities. Why, the girls here have at minimum two men a night—two an hour is a better number!”
Dandi swallowed. “I have no other means … But—I do not think I can do the job. I heard Mr. Pierce sometimes availed himself of your girls and …”
“You hoped to meet him here before you had to do any real work?” Bessie sniffed censoriously. “That is less honest than a whore, girl.”
Dandi winced. “Please forgive me—I simply could not take money to … But … I can be of use!” She brightened, sitting up straight. “I can cook! I can keep house, I can sew—the colored girl has too much work, and her cooking is … she only knows a couple of recipes. Why, I know a great many, and all thrifty! I can keep books for you, and watch over the girls when you’re not here—and I will take no payment at all! I wish to be here, until he … until the gentleman …”
“You can do all those things? Is that right? And did you say, no payment at all?”
“I did! I need only a roof and meals!”
Bessie nodded slowly. “Well … it appears, girl, you may be of more use to me on your feet than on your back …”
CHAPTER FIVE
It was a soft, windless early evening when Wyatt Earp next walked the crowded boardwalk to the Delano District’s “Keno Corner”. He was noting all the six shooters, sassily carried in waist sashes and holsters by cowboys tramping eagerly from rickety hotels and bursting corrals. And he was thinking about what Marshal Smith had said a few days earlier, upon presenting Wyatt with a badge, I want you to be reluctant to shoot that gun, Earp. That’s policy. We want the law enforced, when it’s practical, but we don’t want dead cowboys. They get mad when their pals are shot down. Then they get themselves a mob and Hell breaks opens a station in Wichita. Another consideration, to wit: The Town Council simply does not like the bad publicity. We’ve got competition with Abilene, and Ellsworth, and they’re starting up big in Dodge City now too. If they take their herds there because they hear that the Wichita police are blazing away at any fool of a drunk cowboy, why, everybody loses money. Gunplay looks bad in the newspapers. Much of the time, the reporters cooperate with us, but not always. Don’t fire that gun, Earp. Unless you have to. And boy, it’d better be “have to”. Make peace—but not by firing that peacemaker.
Wyatt had his Colt Conversion Revolver on his hip—but he had no true freedom to use it.
“Wyatt Earp!” Piped up a reedy voice, from behind.
Wyatt spun on the boardwalk—to see a boy grinning up at him. The boy was wearing new button-up boots, dungarees, a new white cotton shirt, and had his hair clipped and combed. It took a moment for Wyatt to recognize him—the crooked buck teeth finally did it.
“Why Henry McCarty!” Wyatt said. “You’re a new man!”
Henry beamed. “Ain’t I a gent? And I come to help you with your work!” His eyes dropped to the Deputy Marshal’s star Wyatt wore on his waistcoat now. “You could get the Marshal to deputize me!”
“You’re young to be a deputy, Henry—you’re still between hay and grass. But you can help out at the office, sweeping and bringing in food and such, and I’ll pay you a half-dollar a day myself—if the Marshal does not object to you.”
“I’m your associate, you said!” Henry complained, disappointed. “You need someone to watch your back!”
“I can watch his back, Mr. McCarty, if you’ll allow me,” Bat Masterson said, sauntering up. Seeing the boy’s skeptical look he added, laughing, “I’m more use than I might’ve seemed the other night. That’s Simon Pure too.”
“Henry, let’s hope he’s more use here than he was at skinning buffalo,” said Wyatt. “Didn’t like to get his hands dirty.”
Henry wrinkled his nose. “I wouldn’t like to skin no buffalo neither. Emptying chamber pots was bad enough. I ain’t never doing that again.”
“I sympathize,” Bat said. He looked up at the sound of a gunshot from Rowdy Joe’s.
Wyatt had already started across the street, one hand to the butt of his own gun. “Tell you what,” Bat said, giving Henry two bits. “Go get me a cup of coffee from the café there, and you can keep the change.”
Bat started after Wyatt, who was already obliquely scanning the interior of the saloon through the window. It wasn’t wise to rush in if guns were being fired. A second shot banged into the ceiling—Wyatt spotted the source, a trail hand he recognized from Ellsworth, one of Pierce’s men, wreathed in gun smoke. Hoy, or Hoyt, was his name, wasn’t it? One of the cowboys Wyatt had struck unconscious in the Ellsworth jailhouse.
Just now Hoy was pointing a silvery pistol with a short barrel at a man who looked to be somewhere between Indian and Spanish. “Next one goes through your goddamn heart, if you don’t apologize!” Hoy said, slurring his words.
Wyatt noted that Hoy was turned half away from him. He started to draw his Colt—then remembered what Bill Smith had said.
Wyatt dropped his hand from his gun and pushed nonchalantly into the saloon, as if he were heading for the bar.
“I cannot think of nothin’ to say ‘sorry’ about,” the man with the long, raven-black hair was saying, his face creasing dourly. He looked like he might be a half-breed; part Apache judging by the headband and his mix of Mexican and Indian garb.
Wyatt began sidling his way toward them …
Hoy pointed the gun at the other man’s forehead and cocked it. “Think again, you Mexy son of a bitch.” His hand was unsteady with drink but he couldn’t miss at that range.
“Why George, he didn’t insult us, to my mind,” said an older cowboy, with shoulder-length graying hair and bushy brows, seated at the poker table. “Leastways not enough to shoot him over.”
“Damn you Dudley, he said that Texas is stolen, and Davy Crockett was a sniveling coward!”
“My Grand Uncle, he is Mexican,” the man said, calmly, as if there weren’t a pistol pointed at his head. “He was at the Alamo battle, I just tell you what he said, they find this Crockett hiding—”
“Now that’s a dirty lie!” Hoy fired—but into the ceiling, as Wyatt Earp had stepped up behind him and struck his arm upwards with his right hand, crooking his left arm around Hoy’s neck from behind.
Bat Masterson was stepping up to Hoy’s left, his gun drawn but held casually, pointing nowhere special, as if he were going to twirl it to amuse himself. But his readiness to use it if needed came across to Hoy’s friends.
“Cowboy,” Bat said, “this is no way to debate history. What if the university professors was to go at it that way? Bullets would be flying through the lectern!”
There was laughter at that, and the older, long-haired cowboy smiled and deftly plucked his friend’s gun from his fingers. “I’ll hold that, George, so’s you can get it back later. They got the drop on you sure.”
Hoy struggled to break loose—and felt no give in Wyatt’s grip. “Let me loose, damn you, I’m not heeled now!”
“In a moment. Bat, pat him down, just for luck,” Wyatt said.
Bat holstered his gun and patted Hoy down. He nodded to Wyatt who released the furious cowboy.
Hoy turned to see who’d grabbed him. “Who the hell snuck up like a goddamn red savage—Oh shit!” He rolled his eyes. “It’s that Yurrip! From Ellsworth!”
“My name is Earp,” Wyatt said, correcting his pronunciation, “and mostly I’m from Iowa, by way of Missouri.”
“You’re the son of a bitch who cracked my head in Ellsworth!”
“I’d-a rather not had to,” Wyatt said. “Come on, we’ll go outside and cool down. Maybe Mr. Lowe doesn’t mind that hole in the ceiling much …”
Hoy and three of his friends looked at Bat’s gun, and at Wyatt’s hand settling casually on his own pistol, and after a few moments of grumbling in
decision, they reluctantly filed outside. Wyatt and Bat followed, watching them closely.
The older cowboy, Dudley—no one was never sure if it was a first or last name—remarked, “Mr. Lowe don’t care about another bullet hole in the ceiling more or less—we was counting them last night. Fifty seven!”
“Them ceilings,” one of the cowboys offered, “is double-thick oak, ’cause there’s rooms upstairs.”
“Some calibers, I hear, can go right through,” said Dudley.
“We won’t experiment with ceilings and caliber any further,” Bat said. “Not tonight nor anytime in Wichita.”
Wyatt nodded. “It’s all over. You boys are too eager to pull your pistols. Wanton shooting can kill folks unintended. I won’t have it.”
Hoy, all this time, was glaring at Wyatt. But now the cowboy hooted with laughter. “He won’t have it! You ain’t much older’n me, and you’re a Deputy? You ain’t the Marshal nor the Mayor neither! Just exactly who the hell do you think you are?”
“I told you how to pronounce my name,” Wyatt said mildly. “You behave yourself or I’ll knock your heads together just to see what sound it makes.” He put out his hand to Dudley for Hoy’s gun, locking eyes with the old Texan, and after a moment’s hesitation Dudley surrendered it. “I’ll keep the smoke-wagon at the jail, you can get it in the morning. You boys keep the peace now and we’ll all get along.”
“What the hell,” Bat said, trying to defuse the tension, “I’m buying drinks—who’s with me?”
“I never turned down a free drink yet,” Dudley said.
Grumbling, the Texans went back inside, Bat riding herd on them from behind. Hoy paused at the door and, lacking a gun, shot a dark look at Wyatt, just before plunging back into the saloon.
You, the look said. There’ll come a time.
Hoy was sure to tell Pierce about this, Wyatt reflected. And he would make it sound as if Wyatt had played a dirty trick on him; as if he’d been disrespecting Texans. Pierce would have another reason to think of Wyatt Earp as an enemy.
He saw someone standing in the shadows of the alley beside Rowdy Joe Lowe’s, then—watching him. Knowing Wyatt had spotted him, the man stepped into the light that spilled from the saloon’s window. It was the half-breed from the saloon.