by Mark Warren
Mick glanced at the knife where it lay, and then looked from one Earp to the other. “Yeah . . . well . . . what about his money?” He canted his head toward his friend in the gutter.
Morgan squatted on the balls of his feet and got in the man’s face. “I hear you tried this over at McClelland’s, too. Maybe you boys better come up with a new game.”
Mick frowned and turned his glare on Wyatt. “You didn’t have to break my goddamn hand.”
Morgan clamped his hand under Mick’s chin and turned the dockworker’s face back to his. “Maybe you shouldn’t be playin’ with knives, sonny boy.” Morgan snorted. “You’re just lucky you didn’t make my big brother mad.” He stood and hitched his head toward the inert body in the gutter. “Now, take your friend outta here. You boys wore out your welcome at Haspel’s.”
Morgan’s gaze lingered on the two horses tethered to the lamp post. Wyatt could see in his brother’s expression that he recognized Rilla’s gelding, packed with gear and standing patiently next to the blaze. But the sober appraisal was short-lived. With his arm wrapped around Wyatt’s shoulder again, Morgan put on the smile that crinkled his eyes.
“Let me get dressed, and we’ll go down to Vansteel’s. I believe I owe you a drink.”
CHAPTER 20
* * *
Fall 1871 to spring 1872: Peoria
The bartender brought coffee for Wyatt and set down a foaming mug before Morgan. “Damn, Leland,” Morgan said, smiling and frowning at once, “there’s more head on this beer than there is hair on a bear’s ass in winter. Is Vansteel still mad at me for quittin’?”
Leland cocked his head to one side, putting on a tease. “I figure you can afford to buy more’n one now,” he jibed. Morgan grabbed for his apron, but Leland dodged him.
Morgan sipped his beer, set down the mug, and backhanded Wyatt’s shoulder. “Well, I’d say we polished off those two jokers from the docks in short order.”
Wyatt broke into a half smile; few people amused him the way Morgan did. “Looks like you’ve learned the trade well enough.”
Morgan struck a noble pose and slapped his right hand over his heart. “I owe it all to Warren. Hell, if I didn’t have a job beatin’ on other people’s heads, I’d probably miss him.” He drank again and gestured toward Wyatt with the mug. “What the hell’ve you been up to?”
“Just tryin’ to keep my head above water,” Wyatt said. He drank from his cup and watched Morgan settle in, waiting for more. Wyatt set down his coffee, and the silence drew out until the space around them took on a private air. “I ran into some trouble with the law.”
Morgan leaned in closer. “What’d you do?” he asked with that devilish spark of humor in his eyes. “You hit the wrong man?”
“Got mixed up with some people I shouldn’t have in the Nations. Had to break out of an Arkansas jail. I reckon there’s a federal warrant out on me.”
“For what!” Morgan barked, all his wit suddenly dampened.
“Said I stole some horses. That’s why I came here to Peoria.”
“Hell,” Morgan huffed, “you’re prob’ly better hid in these slums than you are out on the prairie.” He pointed upstairs. “Only time we see the law around here is when they come to dip their peckers in our goods.” Morg laughed. “They get a discount . . . kind o’ like a permit tax to keep us legal.”
Wyatt checked a movement on the upstairs landing, where two women conversed as they leaned on the balustrade. One with dark hair stared at Wyatt and smoked a thin cigar.
“That Rozilla?” he said.
Morgan turned and waved to her, but she only blew a casual stream of smoke and then looked away. “Yeah, it don’t appear Virge’s married no more,” he said and took a pull on his beer.
“Where is Virge?”
Morgan shook his head as he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “No idea.” When Wyatt looked back at Rozilla, Morgan laughed again. “Virgil’s goin’ through wives like pairs o’ boots. Can’t tell if he’s wearin’ ’em out or they’re just a bad fit.”
Abruptly Morgan’s eyes dulled and he looked down into his beer. “Sorry, Wyatt. I didn’ mean . . .”
Wyatt shook his head and, keeping the heel of his hand on the table, lifted his fingers to wave away the comment. “Thought I’d look for some work here.”
“Well, hell . . . team up with me at Haspel’s,” Morgan said, his enthusiasm back in place. “Ain’t a bad life, I’m here to tell you. Good money and plenty o’ accommodatin’ women. You saw Sarah.” Morgan’s smile stretched across his face. “And there’s McClelland’s. They’re looking for another hard-ass. We’ll see can we keep the clientele from killing the whores.”
Wyatt let his attention drift up to the landing, where the whore with Rozilla made a coquettish laugh. “I reckon I’ll try it,” he said. “Banging on heads might be just what I need for a while.”
The two Earps built a reputation on the Peoria waterfront, providing the owners of three brothels with a show of managerial muscle, drifting from one establishment to the other as the businesses flourished or foundered. The houses of Haspel, Vansteel, and McClelland became Wyatt’s unlikely collective home. Doing his best to leave every memory of his previous life behind him, he fell into the routines of a debauched life with mistreated whores, card sharps, and drunken men, who would as soon fight as take their leave from the premises. The days ran together in blurs of arguments in dark hallways and sporadic violence . . . and might have continued that way indefinitely had not Peoria elected a new mayor on a platform of moral reform.
The first time Wyatt and Morgan were arrested during a police raid on Haspel’s, they were assumed to be customers and fined accordingly by the judge—twenty dollars each. On the occasion of their second arrest at McClelland’s, with their faces now familiar to the court, the fine more than doubled. Unwilling to pay, the Earp brothers spent three nights sleeping on the floor of a filthy, overcrowded cell, until finally two bunks opened up. There were no mattresses, just platforms of rough-sawn pine, which they held claim to for seven more nights.
By the tenth night of their incarceration, Morgan had secured the bunk next to Wyatt’s. Wyatt lay stretched out on his back with his coat rolled under his head and one elbow crooked over his eyes. Morgan sat with his back to the brick wall, his arms wrapped around his bent knees as he listened to the snores of the inmates.
“Sounds a little like Pa, don’t it?” Morgan whispered.
Wyatt turned his head to see his brother looking around at the sleeping prisoners.
“Shit, I ain’t never been cooped up this long,” Morg complained. “What about you?”
Wyatt’s arm lowered to his face again. “What about me?”
Morgan’s voice turned as earnest as when he had been a boy asking about the things that turn a boy into a man. “How long were you in jail that time in Arkansas?”
Wyatt laced his fingers across his stomach and stared up at the heavy timber beams that shored up the roof. “Too damned long,” he said and turned to his brother.
Morgan studied the walls, the window, and the ceiling. “So how’d you break out?”
Wyatt inhaled deeply and let his breath seep out slowly. “Somebody broke out through the roof. The rest of us just followed.” He raised up on an elbow to better look at Morgan. “Don’t be thinkin’ about breakin’ out, you hear? We’ll just do our time.”
When Morgan said nothing, Wyatt lay back and covered his eyes again. He could feel his brother’s questions stacking up—spontaneous and fragile—like a house of cards.
“Why do you reckon these jacklegs ain’t figured out you’re wanted in Arkansas?”
Wyatt had no answer for that. Concentrating on sleep, he tried to ignore the stench.
“Well, what if they find out about it?” Morg persisted.
Wyatt took in a lot of air and then let it ease out. “Every day I’m in here, the odds of that stack against me.”
“Are you worried?”
“When y
ou’re wanted by the law, a part of you stays worried.”
Something scurried across the floor, but neither of them remarked on it.
“Gettin’ arrested and payin’ a fine now and then looks like it’s gettin’ to be part of the job,” Morgan said. “But if you got to dodge a federal warrant . . . hell . . . that ain’t no way to live, Wyatt. Maybe you ought to get out of this line o’ work. Hell, maybe we both should.”
Wyatt refolded his coat and stuffed it back under his head. “If I can get out of this place without Arkansas catchin’ up to me, that’s just what I aim to do.”
Wyatt closed his eyes again, but Morgan leaned closer. “Wyatt?” he whispered, “reckon you’ll ever get married again?”
Wyatt opened his eyes to the plank ceiling and tried to head off the memory, but the image of Rilla crystallized in his mind. Conjuring up her face in the filth of the cell felt to him like a sacrilege, yet he knew it was a transgression worthy of a man who had chosen this profession.
“I ain’t hardly over bein’ married the first time, Morg.”
The following week on a rainy May mid-afternoon, Wyatt and Morgan stepped into Vansteel’s saloon. They took the table nearest the front windows, as the other daytime patrons had preferred to drink in the darker privacy of the back of the room. Leland brought their regular drinks and then lingered to hear Morgan describe the squalor of the jail cell.
“Yeah,” Leland said, “they made a raid here, too. This new mayor has got a church steeple stuck up his arse.” Leland frowned. “How come you boys didn’t shell out the cash and be done with it?”
“It was a helluva lot o’ money,” Morgan said. He leaned forward and dropped his elbows on the table. “I wish you’d explain to me why they got to have a law against providin’ whores. It’s a necessary service, ain’t it? Men need it. They’re willin’ to pay. It’s supply and demand . . . good income for the girls, too.”
Leland shrugged. “I reckon it don’t sit well with the Bible thumpers and the married folk.”
Morgan snorted. “Hell, half o’ our customers are married. Prob’ly go to church, too.”
Leland conceded this point with his silence. Wyatt sipped his coffee and looked out the window at the rain turning Water Street to sludge. He recalled a buffalo wallow he had once seen in the Smoky Hill country, where there must have been a hundred swallows gathering mud for their nests. When his outfit had come upon it, the birds rose like a great sparkling net swirling in a vortex of wind. For a time his thoughts remained with the prairie and the endless expanses of grass that stretched toward whatever horizon one chose to face on the plains.
“Did you get hauled in?” Morgan asked Leland.
Leland raised both palms like a man being robbed at gunpoint. “Hey, I’m just a bartender,” he said in a mocking singsong voice. His innocent eyes rolled up to the top landing. “I don’t know what goes on up there.” He dropped his hands and smiled. “By the way,” he said, turning, “got something for you.”
He walked behind the bar and searched the pockets of a checkered coat hanging on the wall. When he returned, Leland dropped a postmarked letter on the table before Morgan.
“From James,” Morg said and squinted at the postmark. “In Montana!” Excited, he looked at Wyatt for a reaction. “What the hell is he still doin’ in Montana?”
“I reckon they got saloons in Montana,” Wyatt said.
Morgan unfolded the paper and cocked his head slightly for the reading. “ ‘Brother Morg,’ ” he began. “ ‘Virgil wrote and told me where to find you. If you have tired of life in Peoria, you should pack up for Montana. We got winters up here that would snap the hairs off a well-digger’s ass, but the weather is fine now and there are men swarming through here for the gold fields. I am more than happy to relieve them of their nuggets by letting them nestle up next to my precious rubies of the night. Do you know where Wyatt is? You boys ought to come up and join me here in Deer Lodge. Business is good. If you know where Ma and Pa are living now, send me an address. A letter I sent to Lamar was returned. And send me Wyatt’s if you have it. Your brother, James.’ ”
Morgan studied the letter again, his eyes fixed on a spot halfway down the page. “Hell,” he said and looked up at Wyatt. “I might wanna go make my fortune up there, too.”
“Which way?” Leland chuckled. “The gems in the stream beds . . . or the brothel beds?”
Morgan’s smile broke off, and he squinted at Wyatt. “Is that what he meant by ‘rubies’?”
Leland patted the tawny hair on the top of the younger Earp’s head. “Sounds like he’s in the same business as you boys.” He walked back to the bar, retying his apron strings and rolling his sleeves to his elbows. Wyatt picked up the envelope and read the return address.
“I might just head up there,” Morgan declared. “I could stand a little gettin’ rich.” He stacked his forearms side by side, fists to elbows, and leaned closer. “You ought’a come with me, Wyatt.”
Wyatt finished his coffee. “I was thinking I might get back to the plains . . . try my hand at hunting buffalo again before the herds are gone. Head up my own outfit this time.”
Morgan’s eyebrows came together into a tawny peak. “What about that warrant?”
Wyatt faced the rain again, thinking. “I reckon most of the threat will come from the towns. I’ll avoid ’em as best I can.” He studied the dilapidated buildings across the muddy street, where a boy and a ragged old man huddled under an awning on the sidewalk and scraped food from a can with a stick. “I’ve had enough of towns to last me for a while,” Wyatt said.
CHAPTER 21
* * *
Summer, 1872: Peoria
It would take three months for the contract to run out with the man to whom Wyatt had leased his horses. He could not leave Rilla’s gelding behind, not in Peoria. Biding his time after Morgan had set out for Montana, Wyatt stayed on as a bartender in a dive closer to the docks.
In the middle of August, John Walton appeared at his bar and slapped down a small felt purse that clinked with heavy coins. The two men with him leaned on the bar and stared at Walton as if awaiting orders.
“Wyatt Earp!” Walton said through a wide smile. “I heard you were on the riverfront.”
“John,” Wyatt said and extended his hand over the bar.
As they shook, Walton studied Wyatt until finally he remembered the men beside him. “Give us three beers, Wyatt, would you?”
Wyatt served the drinks and lingered when Walton opened the drawstring on the felt bag. The jovial entrepreneur inverted his purse, letting a waterfall of three-dollar gold pieces tumble onto the polished wood. Wyatt picked one up, made change from the till, and held out the coins in his palm, waiting, but Walton only smiled.
“You could be making better money working for me, Wyatt,” Walton said and raised his chin at the bottles of whiskey and the glasses lined up on the shelves. “You rate better than this.”
Wyatt laid down the coins. “I’m leaving Illinois, John, as soon as I can get my horses back.”
“And when is that?”
“I let the fellow at the stable lease ’em out to a wheelwright. He’s using ’em to deliver a new wagon to Beardstown next week. After that I’m gone.”
Walton pursed his lips, collected his money off the bar, and dropped the coins into his bag. “Can you pick up your horses in Beardstown?”
“Reckon I could. Why?”
Walton jerked a thumb toward the river. “I’ve got my keelboat docked here. You work for me on the run downriver, and you’ll have sixty dollars in your pocket for your trip.”
Wyatt gave Walton a questioning look. “For poling?”
John shook his head. “Enforcing. Same as you’ve been doing at Haspel’s. We’ll tie up each night near a village, take in customers, stay on the move, and keep ahead of the law.”
Wyatt gripped the edge of the bar, leaned on stiffened arms, and stared blindly at the sundry assortment of patrons in the room. “
Sixty dollars,” he said, as though weighing the words on his tongue. He watched Walton’s eyebrows lift with the pending offer. “When do we leave?”
On Saturday night, Wyatt stood on the deck of Walton’s floating brothel and took in his last view of Peoria’s docks and the dimly lighted streets beyond. The gunboat was moored forty yards out from the river’s west bank, where an oarsman delivered customers in a leaky rowboat. The long one-room cabin on board was more depraved than he remembered, stinking of urine and filthy pallets in the cribs along the perimeter of the room. Only two improvements had been made: the once curtained-off cribs were now wooden cubicles with latch-locked doors, and the crude bar selling watered-down whiskey now featured a countertop of varnished wood. Wyatt reasoned that enforcing aboard would be easier than at Haspel’s or McClelland’s, due to the confined space and to most customers’ aversion to swimming ashore if they ran afoul of the rules.
Lighting a cigar, Wyatt watched a boatload of passengers ferry from the pier. The group was loud, the revelers well on their way to a drunken spree. A slurred chanty echoed over the water, and one man stood to lead the song, until the oarsman ordered him down. When the boat came alongside, Wyatt tied the bow and stern lines and stepped back to size up the patrons. Five strapping dock workers, a long-haired gambler, and a bandy-legged street vendor pulled themselves over the rails. The eighth passenger was Sarah Haspel.
“So, you’re back at it,” she said through her sly smile.
“Just enough to get downriver,” Wyatt said, giving her a hand to climb aboard.
Her eyes seemed to flicker with a mischievous flash of light. “And what’s downriver?”
“My horses,” he said.
She stared into Wyatt’s eyes before allowing an amused smile to surface on her painted lips. “Your horses,” she echoed, mocking his tone. Shaking her head, she walked inside the cabin, leaving the rowdy knot of customers on the deck with Wyatt.