Wyatt in Wichita

by John Shirley

  “When was this?”

  “A while back.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because, with men, talk becomes fighting. And killing. Men are stupid that way. And if you get in a hurrah with that son of a bitch, my husband will feel he has to back you up. That’s the Earp boys and there’s no help for it. And I’m like to end up a widow … And with all this … you looking into what happened to that poor girl … It just seems to me like if you push Abel Pierce, Wyatt … he’ll come after you. I’ll keep James home from a fight if I have to feed him a micky. And you’ll be going after Abel Pierce all alone. Put it out of your mind, Wyatt. Forget all about it.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Though Marshal Smith and Bessie Earp despised each other, they’d given Wyatt the same advice. Wyatt did try to take that advice; tried to put the murder out of his mind, but it wouldn’t go. Walking along the wooden sidewalk with Bat, that night, Wyatt looked up at the golden moon in the Bible-black sky, and seemed to see first Urilla, and then Dandi LeTrouveau—and then Prudence crowding between them, the three women gazing sadly down at him from the moon as if it were a port-hole in the darkness.

  “Starting to get cold at night,” Bat said.

  Bat was walking with a certain carefulness, because he’d had a few drinks on duty—all in the name, he said, of keeping peace, but he sobered noticeably when Wyatt said, “Bat, I’m going to go in and talk to Montaigne, whether or not that sour bastard Smith wants me to do it. You coming with me?”

  Bat sighed. “Tell you what. I’ll keep an eye on Carmody, while you’re in there. Those cells are small for three, and I don’t want to be crowded up to that high-smelling rummy.”

  Wyatt nodded. They made a quick stop at James Earp’s gambling hall, and then crossed the street to the jailhouse. Carmody, sitting at the desk, a pipe clamped upside-down in his teeth, looked up from a catalog. Wyatt could see the pages were open to drawings of ladies in their bathing wear. He resisted saying something about that—but Bat rarely resisted saying anything.

  “Why Carmody,” Bat said, “are you thinking of going bathing in the Arkansas in one of those frilly bathing suits?”

  Carmody slammed the catalog shut. “What do you damn fools want?”

  “J’veux mourir!” Montaigne shouted from the cell, distant but shrill. “I am in Hell and you are the devils! J’mourir!”

  “That murderin’ loon’s been howling like that all night,” Carmody said. “I’ll be glad, come the hanging and he’s gone to his maker.”

  Bat pulled a deck of cards from his inside coat pocket. “Carmody, Wyatt and I was arguing about if you had any card sense. Wyatt said no, probably not. I said Carmody’s seen the elephant and more, and he’s got card sense. I propose to test it, with or without the use of cash money.”

  Carmody scowled at Bat’s deck. Then he opened the desk drawer and pulled out a well worn deck with drawings of dancing girls on the backs. “This here is a deck I know to be steady and reliable.”

  “Do you accuse me of something, Carmody?” Bat asked, pulling a chair up to the other side of the desk, as Carmody shuffled the deck. “I ought to call you out. But I’ll let it go, if you’ll deal five cards for draw. How about you, Wyatt, will you take a hand?”

  Montaigne, right on cue for Wyatt’s purpose, let out a long, wordless howl.

  “I’ll play a hand or two,” Wyatt said. “First I think I’ll look in on that Canuck and see if I can get him to shut his yap.” He made it sound like he was going to clout Montaigne quiet.

  “You do that,” Carmody mumbled, squinting at his cards in the light of the whale-oil lamp.

  Taking the cell keys from the hook, Wyatt went through the door behind Carmody, and followed his nose to the drunk. But he found Montaigne dismally sober, shuddering in DTs on his bunk. A candle burned low in a wall niche across from the cell, its sputtering twitching the shadows of the bars.

  Wyatt unlocked the cell door, opened it and stepped cautiously through, keeping a hand on the butt of his gun.

  “You know,” Wyatt said, “I got into a drinking binge, once. Several months it was—drinking so much that when they chucked me in jail, out East a ways, I was shaking too, come the morning.”

  Montaigne peered at Wyatt through swollen eyes. They’d beat him about the face, Wyatt saw, when they’d brought him in, and he was far from healed. “You was under the bottle like me?” Montaigne said, sounding skeptical. “C’est vrai?”

  “Not so bad as you—you’ve been at it longer. But I was on my way. I stopped drinking, and never had the shakes again.”

  “Merde—That mean you don’t bring me a drink.”

  “I didn’t say that …” Wyatt said, winking, and taking out of his coat the pint of Old Overholt he’d gotten from James.

  Montaigne stared at the bottle, licking his lips. He had just enough dignity to keep from snatching the bottle. “That Smith, he is going to let me go?”

  “Maybe I can get them to let you go—if you talk to me, tell me what happened that night …”

  Wyatt handed the bottle over and Montaigne drank half the pint off almost instantly. He gasped, sagging with relief. “Oh, c’est bonne … What happened that night. What happened. I was walking out to the desert, to drink champagne with the stars. Then I got very tired, and I turned to find sleep. Sometimes I sleep behind the livery. I go there, I go to sleep—then you come and say: Sam, come and talk to the Marshal. And the men beat me and put me here.”

  “I never expected they’d keep you here. I thought maybe you could tell them if you saw or heard something. You were sleeping near the building where that girl was killed.”

  Montaigne drank off the last of the whiskey. “Some more whiskey, please?”

  “That’s all I’ve got. You hear anything that night?”

  Montaigne considered—but addressed something else entirely. “Do you know how I got here, to Wichita? The truth? I don’t know, myself! I only know: Le Cree! I was taking their furs, they said—these sauvages, said I took their furs. Only because I trap a few animals. And they kill my wife and my daughter and my brother too, all together, and I find them dead and I start drinking. And I do not remember how I got to Kansas …”

  “I understand, Sam. Now tell me about the night you were arrested. You hear anything when you were bedding down?”

  Sam looked at the bottle, upended it on his tongue, waiting out the few last drops. He shook the bottle and sighed, and then looked at the candlelight through the bottle glass. At last he said, “That night …” Maybe. I hear a man shout, ‘Come on!’ Cursing the other man. I hear spurs walking by. I keep my eyes closed because the voices sound angry and sometimes they’ll beat me, if they’re angry and they notice me. Because I am someone for them to beat. ‘Here is Sam, someone to beat.’ they say.” He bent over till his head was nearly touching his knees. He rocked gently, clutching the bottle. “Here is Sam, le imbecile…”

  “That’s all? You hear a girl scream? Hear a name said?”

  “No. Just a man saying ‘Yes sir’. He is speaking to his boss … Then I go to sleep and then you come and the Marshal and Carmody beat me and say I have kill a girl.”

  “You go into that cat-house at all that night?”

  “They do not permit me there! Those women would beat me too. One time I look in the back door, only look, and Miss Bessie throw a shoe, and hit my nose!”

  Wyatt smiled. He could imagine that. “Well look, did you say to the Marshal that you’d done ‘evil’?”

  “I did not say anything like this, I said only ‘Marshal please do not hit me, please stop, I feel bad, I hurt, j’ai mal, Monsieur Smith’, and they—”

  “Earp!” Carmody shouted, stomping down the hallway to the cell. “What the hell you doing back there?”

  Montaigne drew back into a corner, like a snail drawing into a shell, and Carmody saw the pint bottle in his hand.

  “You’re giving him whiskey? Marshal Smith don’t want him drinking,
he wants him to suffer till he talks!”

  Wyatt decided he wasn’t going to get any further with Carmody here. All he’d accomplished was to verify to his own satisfaction what he’d already been pretty certain of: that Sam Montaigne was innocent. But he had nothing he could take to a judge.

  “Just thought I’d quiet him down,” Wyatt said, pushing his way out of the cell. He closed and locked the cell door and made to pass Carmody in the passage. He could see Bat beyond, shrugging. But Carmody blocked his way.

  “I heard what you were telling the Marshal, last time you were here,” Carmody growled. “You’re playing boy detective again and Bill don’t like it.”

  Wyatt kept his temper in check. It took an effort: he didn’t like being called boy anything. He possessed an inner certainty that he was more a man than Carmody, so he let it go. “I asked a few questions, out of curiosity, while I was here,” Wyatt said. “Now move aside and no harm’s done.”

  Carmody stood still for a long moment, then turned sideways, making Wyatt sidle past in the narrow space between the cells and the wall—and suddenly stuck out a boot to trip him. Wyatt nearly fell, but caught himself on the wall. This time, his temper got the best of him. He spun on his heel, cocking his fists in the same instant, and caught Carmody hard on the right side of the jaw, following with a left jab. Carmody was knocked back against the door of an empty cell, sliding down against it till he was crouched.

  Unwisely but understandably, Montaigne laughed.

  Carmody turned and glared at the drunk. Wyatt reached out a hand to Carmody. Best to help the deputy save face. “Sorry, Deputy—thought for a moment there you tried to trip me. Maybe I misunderstood. Let me help you up.”

  Carmody ignored Wyatt’s hand and grabbed the cell’s bars, pulled himself to stand, grunting. He stared hard at Wyatt, lowering his head a little, like a bull threatening a charge. But one hand wandered to his already swelling jaw and he thought better of it. “Get out of here, Earp. Just get the hell out.”

  Wyatt shrugged and slipped carefully past Carmody, then followed Bat out to the street.

  “That wasn’t such a good idea, Wyatt,” Bat said, as they stood in the road. “Carmody is Smith’s bulldog. You hit him, it’s almost like hitting Smith.”

  “I didn’t want to. But he tried to trip me.”

  “You find out anything?”

  “Not much. But I don’t think Montaigne did it.” He took a deep breath of the fresh air—and froze, seeing Shanghai Pierce riding past on a sorrel.

  Pierce turned him a slow, hostile look—and nodded firmly to himself, as if making a resolution.

  He turned away but Wyatt shouted, “Pierce!”

  Bat groaned. “Wyatt …”

  “You can stay here,” Wyatt said, crossing the street to Pierce.

  The cattle baron was reining in to lean on the saddle horn, smirking down at Wyatt. “What do you want—help carrying that badge? Lot of weight, that job, for a skinny young fella like you.”

  “Like to know where you and your men were, the other night, when that girl was murdered.”

  Pierce’s face went cold. He waited a slow heartbeat and then he said, “You talk like I’d know what night and what girl—and what murder you mean.”

  “I thought you might have heard about it. Her name was Dandi, little slip of a thing working for Bessie Earp—but … not a working girl.” He looked at the big rowels on Pierce’s boots. “I met her myself. Thought maybe you knew her.”

  “Might’ve met her, some time. I meet a lot of girls. I don’t ask their names. So I don’t much know one from another.”

  “Wasn’t in the paper,” Wyatt persisted. “But it was the talk of the saloon.”

  “I heard about a whore killin’ herself, if that’s what you mean.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Wasn’t suicide. A man’s accused of her murder, Mr. Pierce. He’s locked up in the jail behind me.”

  He shrugged. “Then it could be murder. Why tell me about it?”

  “She came here to town looking for you. So she said—sometime before she died.”

  Pierce’s face seemed to drain of expression. His horse shifted footing. At last he said, “Many women look for a rich man. My name is around. I did not know any suicidal bar girls. Now I’ve got a question for you. Do you intend to continue to rough up my men, and make yourself out to be the Ulysses S. Grant of Wichita?”

  “I intend to keep the peace, Abel.”

  “You can call me Mr. Pierce. And you stay away from my men. They are not in your jurisdiction—and I don’t care where you’re standing. Now go to the devil.”

  Pierce spurred his horse, tugging on the reins so the horse reared over Wyatt, the animal whinnying, forcing him to step briskly back.

  Pierce laughed, and rode off down the road toward Delano. Wyatt could only watch him go.

  * * *

  Wyatt and Leahy were playing cards in James’s place. It was nearly eleven-thirty p.m., late for Leahy but not for Wyatt. They were in a heads-up game now, just the two of them at the scarred wooden table. Wyatt had gone off-duty a trifle early tonight, as Jimmy Cairns had offered to take his place in the late hours—but then again Wyatt never felt really off-duty, unless he was in his hotel room, in bed, and that could end at the distant sound of a gunshot. Even now, playing poker, something that normally absorbed him, he couldn’t keep his mind off Dandi’s murder. He hadn’t really known her-but he felt he had to do something about it anyway.

  Wyatt’s cards were lukewarm tonight. He felt like he was pouring money down a sump. He had tried to give up gambling, once or twice, because of what had happened, when Urilla took sick. He told himself he could be a dealer without being a player. But gambling had entered deeply into him, and taken up residence and though he’d learned to keep it contained, he could never evict it.

  “I’ll take two,” he said, tossing down his discards.

  Ought to get back to Mattie, he supposed. She sulked if he stayed out late playing cards. Urilla …

  Dave Leahy dealt two cards. He held his own rather awkwardly—he was not a habitué of the gambling halls—and squinted at them through the tobacco haze.

  “You haven’t written your story on the murder yet?” Wyatt asked.

  “Boss doesn’t want me to, not yet,” Leahy mumbled unhappily. “Maybe not at all. And I’ll tell you something—that J’ai mal business that Smith was gassing about? It doesn’t really mean ‘do evil’. I looked it up. It means I hurt. You know—I’m in pain. ’Course, you can do a literal translation and almost make it come out the way the Marshal wants. But my guess is, Montaigne’s talking about his drunkard’s sickness. He has been deprived of his daily dose. And for all I know … could be he did kill her. He was harassing the ladies, from time to time …”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Mattie heard two men, sounding Texan, last to be with Dandi. One of them probably did it. Montaigne has a distinct voice, an accent. And it isn’t Texan. And I talked to him. I know when a man’s lying. I fold—you’ve got beginner’s luck, Dave.”

  “I’m no beginner!” Leahy crowed, happily reaching for the chips. “No—I’ll let it all stand as my ante. You want to deal?”

  “You go ahead.” Wyatt’s mind was mostly elsewhere. He was watching a man enter the saloon. Dudley, from Pierce’s outfit, his clothes as begrimed as they were fancily sewn; his sombrero hanging down his back with his long gray hair.

  Dudley went to the bar, dug deep in his pocket, began counting his change. All copper change. He looked sober, and looked like he didn’t want to be and couldn’t afford much more than a beer.

  Wyatt signaled his brother, who was walking by with his hands in his pocket, and when James bent near Wyatt whispered in his ear.

  James straightened, looking at Wyatt with raised eyebrows. “You want me to put what in it?”

  “You heard me right.”

  James shrugged and went behind the bar. He spoke to Dudley, who squinted through the murk at Wyatt, then nodded
brusquely and came to the poker table.

  “I heard a rumor about some whiskey and cards offerin’, but in fact I have no stake for the game, boys,” Dudley said.

  “Dave,” Wyatt said, giving Leahy a look that carried a silent message. “You won’t mind a third?”

  Leahy looked at Wyatt, then at Dudley, sensing intrigue. “Won’t mind at all.” Leahy assumed a nonchalant air that was all too transparent, Wyatt thought, but Dudley, hanging his sombrero from the back of his chair and sitting down, all in one motion, didn’t seem to notice. Wyatt moved his chair closer to Leahy.

  Leahy almost jumped out of his seat, feeling Wyatt’s hand prodding his leg under the table. He looked down, saw five silver dollars stacked on the edge of his chair, beside his hip. Leahy picked them up and clicked them together, stacked them in front of Dudley. “I am willing to stake you this far, my friend—” Leahy said heartily, “—because I sense luck in you. But you must repay me twenty per cent.”

  “Done and sworn before Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Dudley declared; and his grin, with ground-down yellow teeth, etched even more deeply the lines on his weather-seamed face. His shoulder-length white hair swished about his head as he reached for the bottle of whiskey James put on the table. “I lost everything last night—” He looked at Leahy and added hastily, “Not that I’m not feeling lucky today!” He raised his shaggy eyebrows, seeing that James had put two tumblers down instead of shot glasses—and seeing James set down a second bottle in front of Wyatt. “You boys are serious drinkers, by God!”

  “That’s right,” Wyatt said, pouring a tall drink from his bottle. “Here’s how.” As Leahy and Dudley watched in astonishment, he drained it with three quick gulps. He set the tumbler down with a clack. “Now sir, let’s see if Texans can drink like Missourians.”

  Dudley rocked back in his chair a little at that. “As good as …! Ha!” He poured a tumbler, and drank it off, shuddering afterwards, his face flushing. “How’s that!”