by Mark Warren
When Virgil spoke and held out his hand, Nicholas hesitated for only a moment then turned to face his son squarely. He said something Wyatt could not hear and took Virgil’s hand, and they both went inside. Wyatt blew out the lantern and walked to the house. As he crossed the yard, he felt a little taller than he had at dawn, walking to the barn. But more than that, he felt his steps infused with a new purpose. And a new direction.
After two months with the Banning company—loading and unloading luggage, shoveling horse manure, hauling grain from the feed bins to the holding corrals, greasing axles, and repairing everything on the coaches that had vibrated loose or broken—Wyatt worked his way to the better matched responsibilities of wrangler. Once among the horses, his easy manner of controlling the more temperamental animals quickly marked his worth among the other hands.
Banning, a robust fellow with a strong moral code that he openly shared with all employees, grew to like Wyatt, not only for his work with the horses, but also for his quiet manner among men. Despite grumblings from the veteran drivers, the stage line owner gave Wyatt his first experience at handling a coach on the run from the San Pedro harbor into Los Angeles proper and back. Banning gloated in his unprecedented decision to hire a eighteen-year-old driver, for Wyatt never lamed a horse, upset a passenger, or lost luggage . . . not even a single piece of mail. Furthermore, he never failed to meet his schedule.
But there was better money in the freight lines, and so the two Earp brothers signed on with the Taylor Company, which made regular runs to Salt Lake City and Prescott. Due to his age, Wyatt again stepped onto the low rung of business, while Virgil picked right up driving behind a triple brace of horses. Just as he had at Banning’s, however, Wyatt was soon graduated from the menial work of loading crates up to the position of driver.
On the occasion of his first route, Wyatt, following Virgil’s wagon out of San Berdoo, whistled a signal and pulled up at a lone ranch at the east end of San Timoteo Canyon. By the time Virgil had pulled his team over and stepped down to the road, Wyatt had thrown a lead rope over the neck of a stout dun mare and was walking it from the traces, watching the rear hooves as he stepped backward to assess a subtle limp.
“What is it?” Virgil asked, unable to keep his big-brother irritation out of his voice.
“This’n’ll never make it to Prescott,” Wyatt stated simply. “Fetlock’s flared up. She ain’t lame yet, but . . .”
Frowning at the horse, Virgil was unable to detect which leg showed an injury. “Well, how bad is it? Why don’t you switch off with your spare?”
Seeming not to listen, Wyatt studied a ranch house beyond a row of peach trees.
“What are you aimin’ to do?” Virgil said, holding the annoyance in his voice.
“See if I can trade off.”
Now Virgil turned his frown on the house. “This here’s the Clanton place. Word is, they’re runnin’ stolen livestock through here. Hell, Taylor thinks they got a few with his brand on ’em, but he can’t get the sheriff to come out here on a hunch. Taylor’s lost three good draft horses in the last month.”
Wyatt looked deeply into Virgil’s eyes. “That right?” He coiled the lead rope as he continued to size up the ranch. “Then let’s go see if we can get one back.”
When Wyatt turned and started toward the house, Virgil hurried up alongside his brother. “I ain’t sure Taylor’s gonna like this.”
“He’ll like it less if we pull into Prescott a day late and a horse short,” Wyatt said, pulling the mare over to the ditch by the Clantons’ gate. He knelt, sank his hand in a small pool of water, and churned the mud with his fingers. Cupping a fistful of soft, brown mud, he moved to the mare’s rump and ground the clay mixture into the T branded there, spreading the smear as though the animal had lain down and rolled in a small wallow.
“What the hell’re you doin’?” Virgil asked.
Wyatt kept working the edges of the mud stain. “Gettin’ this’n ready for the auction block.”
They had not walked half the distance up the entrance road before two riders came out to meet them. The one leading came on hard, kicking his boot heels into his horse’s ribs. He appeared to be about Wyatt’s age, curly-haired and short, with beady eyes that jumped back and forth between the Earp brothers. The other one—clearly a brother to the nervous one—was closer to Virgil’s age and seemed to maintain a perpetual dense expression of mild surprise.
“You boys’re trespassin’,” the younger one barked. “This here’s Clanton land.” He straightened in his saddle, punching his chest with his thumb. “And I’m a Clanton.”
Wyatt ignored the rancher’s ill-mannered introduction and swept a hand toward the mare. “Might’a found one o’ your horses,” Wyatt said, hitching his head back toward the freight teams. “Out on the road yonder.”
Checking the surprise on his face, Virgil could not help glancing at Wyatt. He stepped forward and offered his hand to the older Clanton.
“Virgil Earp,” he said. “Me and my brother are makin’ a freight run to Prescott.”
The younger Clanton squinted at the two rigs stalled on the canyon road. When he looked back at Wyatt, the skin around his eyes tightened, making a fan of lines across each temple.
“I’m Phin,” the older Clanton said, reaching across his horse’s neck. He shook Virgil’s hand. “This here’s Ike.” Phin’s face wrinkled as he appraised the mare. “I don’t think that—”
“Might be ours,” Ike interrupted, pretending to study the horse’s markings. His quick eyes angled away from the smear of mud on the horse’s rump. “Think I remember that white blaze around the eye.”
Phin now stared stupidly at the horse. “Guess we could ask Pa,” he offered.
Ike turned quickly to scowl at his brother. “I can handle this, aw right?”
Wyatt tossed the coil of lead rope to Ike. “Can you boys sell me a horse? Something stout enough to harness to my rig? I don’t like crossin’ the Mohave without a spare.”
Ike looked suspiciously from Wyatt to Virgil and back. “Yeah, we can prob’ly do that.” He turned in his saddle, stiffening one arm on the cantle. He nodded toward the outbuildings. “Come back there to that holding pen beside the barn. I’ll bring up a mount and then we can talk some business.”
With the Taylor horse in tow, Ike and Phin rode to the pen and dismounted at the gate, but when Wyatt came abreast of them, he kept walking past the holding pen to a larger corral that extended across the grassed floodplain of the creek running through the bottom of the canyon. Two dozen horses were spread out over the pasture, each looking well fed and fit for work. When Virgil came up beside him, Wyatt kept his eyes on a knot of horses idling in the shallow water.
“Look at that big sorrel gelding,” Wyatt said quietly and nodded toward the creek. “That look like a Taylor brand to you, Virge?”
Virgil narrowed his eyes. “Been altered, but . . . hell, yes, that’s the big T, all right.”
Wyatt climbed the fence and started across the meadow.
“Now, wait a minute!” Ike yelled. “Those out there ain’t for sale.”
Wyatt kept walking. At the creek he studied the brand, stepped slowly into the water and began talking to the sorrel until he was able to stroke its neck. Then, in an instant, he took a fistful of mane, threw a leg up over the spine, and brought the gelding on at a comfortable gallop. The two Clanton boys dismounted and stood flat-footed at the fence. Neither wore sidearms, but from each of their saddles the stock of a Winchester carbine jutted from a leather scabbard.
Virgil opened the gate, and Wyatt rode the new mount out of the corral, coaxing it to a stop before the Clantons. “Looks like you boys found one o’ ours. Seems a fair trade, don’t it?”
Ike tried for a laugh, but he was unconvincing. “S over T. That’s our San Timoteo brand.”
Not bothering to check the mark again, Wyatt just shook his head. “Somebody’s burned over the T, that’s all. We’re obliged to you for holdin’ on to
’im.”
When Wyatt offered his arm, Virgil clasped it and swung up onto the sorrel’s haunches, and together the Earps started down the dirt track to the road where their wagons and teams waited.
Out of earshot, Virgil glanced back to see the Clanton brothers in a heated argument. “Well, at least they’re too busy fussin’ at each other to wanna shoot us. But I wish you’d let me know when I ought’a bring my artillery along. I felt naked as a jaybird back there. We’re damned lucky Old Man Clanton didn’t greet us at the gate with a scattergun.”
When they reached the road, Virgil walked straight to his rig and strapped on his cartridge belt and holster and unlimbered the company shotgun from under the driver’s box. Wyatt harnessed up the new off-wheeler, all the while keeping the Clantons’ gate in sight. His shotgun was propped within reach on the sidewall.
“Where’s your pistol?” Virgil asked.
Wyatt clipped in the trace-chains and straightened, looking over the sorrel toward the Clanton Ranch. “Right here.” He patted the small bulge beneath his shirt at his waistband.
“You had that all along?” Virgil said, his voice working up some anger.
“Better to have it than not,” Wyatt said.
Virgil stared at his brother for a time, shook his head, and marched off for his wagon.
In Prescott, at the Red Desert Saloon, Virgil and three seasoned drivers pressed Wyatt into the mandatory celebration that marked his crossover into what freight-haulers called “independent captain of the horse’s ass.” Ushering his younger brother to the bar, Virgil stood drinks for everyone and explained to Wyatt that by tradition, he must down every drink bought for him. Before an hour passed, Virgil and a big Texas muleskinner carried Wyatt to a cot in a back room of the saloon, where he lay sick when he wasn’t groping for the back door to heave up his gut. Finally, when the stomach cramps would not let him rise, he made use of a chamber pot he found under the bed.
In the morning when Virgil came to fetch him for the return haul to San Berdoo, Wyatt’s face was the gray-green of tree lichen. “I don’t think I can sit up,” Wyatt mumbled, “never mind drive a team.” He squeezed his eyes shut to the open curtain his brother had flung aside.
Crinkling his eyes, Virgil laughed and shook his head—goddamned man of the world that he was. “Best thing to do is have another drink right now,” Virge counseled.
Wyatt opened his eyes and slowly raised his head to a notion that would have been laughable did he not feel so sick. Virgil gave him a helpless shrug.
“I ain’t joshing you. Keep you from comin’ out of the drunk too fast.”
“I can’t come out of this drunk too fast to suit me.”
Virgil coughed up his deep rumbling laugh. “You’ll grow to it.”
“I ain’t sure I want to.”
“Hell,” Virgil chuckled, “every man’s gotta learn how to drink.”
Wyatt laid his forearm over his eyes and sank deeper into his misery. “I can’t see that it ever does a man no good to surrender his good senses.”
Having no reply to that, Virgil left the room. He was back in a few minutes with a shot of whiskey and a tall glass of lukewarm beer. He set both on a table by the cot and turned to look out the window, giving his brother some margin of space for dignity. Something stirred on the floor in the corner of the room, and Wyatt tried to focus on a man getting to his feet.
“Who the hell is that?” Wyatt said.
“Helped carry your drunk ass in here,” the man snarled, answering for himself. Then he laughed. “You California boys don’t appear to hold your liquor any too well. I figured you to puke your life away last night.”
“Big George, here, is from Texas,” Virgil explained. “Runs the route from El Paso.”
Ignoring the man’s insults, Wyatt swung his legs to the floor too fast, and the nausea erupted from his gut like boiling soup. He grabbed for the pot that reeked of the night’s vomitus and managed to spew most of the burning fluid where it belonged. Virgil could not help turning to witness the whiskey demon’s hold on a brother who took such pride in self-control.
“You look like hell,” Virgil said, a rare tenderness in his voice.
“Smell like it, too,” said George.
“I oughta look like hell,” Wyatt groaned. “Figure I spent the night there.” He frowned at the unlikely remedy on the table. “You sure about this?”
“It’s the common cure. Just drink it and let’s get going.” Virgil stared at Wyatt’s misery for a time, opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it. “I’ll be outside,” Virge said. “I already harnessed your team.”
The disheveled Texan poured water into a basin, bent, and scrubbed his whiskered face. He dried with a dirty towel and peered into the wavy mirror wired to the wall. Under his eye a gray scar caught the morning light. It lay flattened like a leech attached to his skin.
“You boys should come over to Texas some time,” he said. “We’ll teach you how to drink.” George snorted, tossed the towel on the washstand, and walked out.
Wyatt stared at the whiskey again and shook his head. He tested his legs by crossing to the washbasin. Staring at the grim image in the mirror, he saw that his shirt was stained and clotted with the putrid rejections from his stomach. There was no water left in the pitcher. Peeling off the shirt, he submerged it in the basin that the Texan had used. After wringing out the material, he repeated the process. When he had cleaned himself and wormed his way back into the wet shirt, he considered walking outside and bracing up for the job waiting for him, but nausea turned again in his gut. He sat down on the bed and, after thinking about it for a long minute, downed the whiskey in two forced gulps. This he chased with half the beer before he was convinced he had made a mistake.
Virgil lifted him up onto his wagon and patted his knee for encouragement but got no response. When Wyatt took up the reins, his arms trembled. He was weak and dizzy, his hands as colorless as the underbelly of a fish.
“You gonna make it?” Virgil asked. Wyatt looked at his brother but said nothing. Big George from El Paso was perched on his wagon seat, practicing his gloating grin.
“Hey, California boy!” he laughed, snapping his reins. “Come over to Texas, and I’ll buy you a round!” Wyatt watched the Texan’s heavy wagon trundle east down the road.
“Don’t let him bother you,” Virgil called out from his wagon. “Hell, he’s always got a burr up his ass.”
Any hope Wyatt held out for pushing through his misery was lost in the first leg of the trip. Every mile of jostling on the plank seat plunged him deeper into his suffering. For two days the driver’s box seemed but the anteroom to death itself. He put nothing but coffee into his stomach.
Not until the third day did Virgil dare approach his brother for a talk. Wyatt was working his way around his team, checking each horse’s hooves. Virgil moved quietly past him to the creek, knelt, and dipped his canteen below the surface. The silence between them was something new, but Wyatt seemed in no mood to repair the rift. Virgil rose and slowly screwed down the cap as he watched Wyatt reach up to stow his farrier’s rasp in the toolbox. Still working on the fit of the canteen cap, Virgil ambled over.
“Every man’s got to have his first drunk, Wyatt. Thank God we only got to do it once.”
Virgil waited for a reply as his brother walked around his wagon checking the lashing. When Wyatt had made the full circuit he fixed Virgil with a solemn stare.
“Any man who would repeat that experience by his own will is a damned fool.”
Virgil started to speak but thought better of it. Wyatt picked up the grease bucket and rounded the wagon again as he dabbed the swab at the wheel hubs.
“If there’s any more freighter traditions I ain’t yet met, you can take ’em for me.” Wyatt handed the bucket to his brother, but Virge seemed not to notice.
“Well . . .” Virgil muttered, but he said no more. He gave Wyatt a gentle slap on his upper arm and moved back toward his wagon. Wyatt walked to
his team and checked the bits.
There was something to be gained from every experience, Wyatt knew, and if a man did not take clear notice of it, he was walking blind along the lip of a ravine where he ought not to be. He climbed up to the driver’s seat to wait their departure and took this time to catalogue the lessons that had come his way in the last few days. First, no man’s solemn word was without its liabilities. Not even Virgil’s. A man didn’t carry his own instincts for nothing. If he didn’t abide by the private set of rules God gave him, he might as well be living someone else’s life.
And last, though Wyatt did not yet know in what business he would seek his fortune, it would most likely be through transactions with other businessmen. For such dealings, a man needed to be sharp enough to hold the upper hand. The sobriety he now intended to swear by would certainly afford him that. It only made good sense.
CHAPTER 9
* * *
Spring, 1867: Freight runs from San Bernardino to Salt Lake City and Prescott; then to Julesburg, Colorado, to supply the railroad grading crews in southern Wyoming
Wyatt settled into the freighter’s life, covering the routes to Salt Lake City and Prescott, until, due to his age, he was occasionally forced to yield the driver’s box to an older employee. He sat in to take the reins only when one of the men was sick or incapacitated, which happened not enough for his liking.
Hearing about an opening for a driver in another company, he hired on with Charles Crisman, but within weeks Crisman negotiated a grading contract, leveling the way west for the Union Pacific Railroad as the rail crews laid down track into southern Wyoming.
Relocating to Julesburg, Colorado, Crisman offered considerably higher wages to select members of his old freighting crew—Wyatt among them. Increased pay, no matter how it came, had to be considered a sign of progress. “Go where the money is”—that had always been his father’s credo. And beyond the financial improvement, there was also the satisfaction of moving around, seeing new places. He liked not knowing what was ahead. Not knowing made room for the possibility of striking it big in some unforeseen venture. Keeping his options open and circulating, he decided, was the best way to encounter opportunity.