But hero or not, Wyatt couldn’t seem to catch the trail of the Shack-leford County rustlers, and after two fruitless weeks in Fort Griffin, he packed up and headed east to Fort Worth. They were hiring police officers there, he’d heard, and until his summer hitch in Dodge City started up again, he needed a paying job. John Henry could have given Wyatt a break and told him who the rustler boss was, but John Larn wasn’t a man to cross. If John Henry divulged what he knew about the rustlers, his own life would be on the line, and he already had enough trouble to worry about. It seemed his card playing fame had spread from Fort Griffin all the way back to Dallas, where the local law heard of it and sent a warrant out for his arrest on the old gambling indictments.
It was Sheriff Bill Cruger who brought the warrant, though he was sorry to have to do it.
“I got no quarrel with you, Doc,” he said apologetically, as he stood in the doorway of John Henry’s room at the Planter’s Hotel. “But the law’s the law, and I got to honor this warrant. I’m afraid I got to take you in and send you back to Dallas to stand trial.”
“But it’s just a gamblin’ charge, Sheriff,” John Henry argued amiably, “surely you don’t intend to inconvenience us both over such a triflin’ matter!”
“Got to, though where the hell I’m going to put you until the next stage leaves for Dallas, I don’t know. The jailhouse at Albany is already full, and so’s the guardhouse up at the Fort.”
It was clear that the Sheriff wasn’t going to shirk his duty and ignore the papers from the Dallas County court, and John Henry knew better than to try to offer the county’s leading lawman a bribe. But maybe there was another way to avoid going back to Dallas . . .
“Tell you what, Sheriff, why don’t you put me under house arrest right here in the hotel? That’ll keep you from overfillin’ your jail, and give me a chance to pack up and get ready for the ride to Dallas. It’ll take me awhile to get my dental equipment put together, and I don’t dare leave it here unsupervised while I’m gone. I’m gonna need it when I get back to take care of that bad tooth of yours. I wouldn’t want you to start hurtin’ again like you were last week . . .”
It was an obvious play, but the only one he could think of on such short notice. Sheriff Crueger had been mighty grateful when John Henry had opened up that badly decayed tooth and taken out the throbbing, rotting nerve. And by the way the sheriff winced at the reminder of it, John Henry could tell that he still remembered the pain.
“Guess you’re right, Doc,” Sheriff Cruger said, rubbing his jaw at the memory. “I guess I could leave you here with one of my deputies to guard the door. I’d hate for you to lose anything valuable just to make a court date.”
“Why, that’s real kind of you, Sheriff,” John Henry drawled in his most gentlemanly manner, “and I’ll be sure to have myself ready in time to catch the stage.” Of course, the stage had other destinations besides Dallas, and it would be easy enough to change his itinerary once he got out of Fort Griffin . . .
“Oh, I know you’ll be on time, Doc,” Sheriff Cruger said in parting, “’cause I’ll have my deputy take you to Dallas himself. Just in case you forget the way.”
And before John Henry could think of another ploy to avoid being sent back to Dallas to stand trial again, he had an armed deputy posted at his door and another in the lobby of the hotel.
Kate had missed all the excitement of John Henry’s arrest, as she had spent the afternoon up at the military fort on the hill seeing the post doctor. After weeks of being sick at her stomach, she still wasn’t getting any better, and the usual remedies of liquor-laced elixirs only made her feel worse. So when she took a notion to try the post doctor for a cure, John Henry had been more than happy to pay for the visit. Kate’s illness had taken its toll on their lovemaking, and if she didn’t get well soon, he’d have to find himself another mistress.
“And where am I supposed to go while you keep Dr. Holliday incarcerated?” she demanded of the deputy at the door when she returned. “This is my room, too! All of my things are here.”
“Sorry, Ma’am,” the deputy apologized, cowering some before her haughty tirade. “I only got orders to keep the Doc here. Sheriff Cruger never said nothing about a lady being allowed in.”
But Kate wasn’t accepting any apologies, and she swore at the man in a most unladylike fashion. “You damned fool! Step aside at once, and let me in!”
“No, Ma’am,” the deputy replied. “Like I said, I’m real sorry for the trouble, but ain’t nobody going in or out of this room until I take the Doc down to the stage tomorrow morning. Sheriff says I got to take him to Dallas for trial, and that’s what I’m going to do.” He was a young deputy, still a little awestruck by the badge he was wearing, and firmly committed to honoring his appointment.
“You’re taking him to Dallas?” Kate asked, startled for a moment out of her rage. “I thought you worked for the county sheriff.”
“Yes, Ma’am, I do. But seems like Dallas has a long record on the Doc, and now they’re after him for skipping town on a gambling charge. The way I hear it from Sheriff Cruger, the Dallas law don’t forget too easy, and they’re planning on making an example of him this time. Maybe even give him some jail time instead of just a fine like they usually give for gambling. I guess Dallas is getting real cosmopolitan these days, trying to clean up the streets.”
“Well, they can start by cleaning out their courthouse!” Kate fumed. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let them put him behind bars again!” and if John Henry hadn’t come to the door at that moment, Kate’s anger might have ruined the plan that he was formulating.
“Why, Kate darlin’,” he drawled, “has the deputy here done somethin’ to offend you?”
“The deputy is exceedingly offensive! He won’t let me into our room. He says he’s keeping you locked up here alone until the stage leaves for Dallas.”
“I am sorry, Kate, but that’s the arrangement I made with Sheriff Cruger. House arrest seemed preferable to spendin’ the night in jail.”
“And where am I supposed to go?” she demanded again. “Where am I supposed to sleep? And what of my clothes? Am I to be turned out into the street?”
John Henry sighed and nodded to the deputy. “Might you let Miss Elder come into my room for just a moment? Perhaps, if she could just put a few things together, get a change of clothing? You can examine her bags if you like. She’ll just have a dress or two, a corset and shimmy and pantalettes . . .”
And as John Henry had hoped, the young deputy turned crimson with embarrassment at the mention of women’s underpinnings, and he sputtered: “No, Sir! That won’t be necessary! I won’t need to look into her bags! You go right ahead, Ma’am, and get your clothes and . . . and . . . things . . .”
He couldn’t even finish his sentence, for blushing so badly, and Kate smiled triumphantly as she swept past him into the room.
John Henry winked at the guard as he pulled the door closed behind Kate. “You know how women are, don’t you deputy?” he said in a confidential tone, though it was clear the deputy was thankfully an innocent still. A more experienced man wouldn’t have been so distracted by the thought of a lady’s scanties, and would have supervised the visit to make sure his prisoner didn’t do anything suspect. But the young deputy stood in embarrassed silence outside the door, while John Henry grabbed Kate by the shoulders and spoke in hushed and hurried sentences. He had one last, desperate plan of how to get himself out of Fort Griffin before the stage left for Dallas, and it was going to be up to Kate to work it out.
It was three in the morning when the fire-alarm sounded, rousing everyone in Fort Griffin. A fire in a town made of picket houses and board-front stores could mean disaster unless enough water could be carried up from the river to put out the blaze before it spread. When the fire-alarm bell was rung, everybody in town was expected to come running, and that’s what they were doing, pouring out of the saloons and bawdy houses and forming a bucket line that reached down the main street of town all the way to th
e Clear Fork of the Brazos River.
The only person in town not racing to answer the alarm was John Henry, who was pacing his hotel room waiting for a signal knock at his door. If Kate had set the blaze properly, lighting the woodshed behind the Planter’s Hotel on fire as he had instructed her to do, soon everyone in the place would be smelling smoke and running in a panic—hopefully even the steadfast deputy standing guard at his bedroom door. But if the guard were too foolish to save himself from a fire, Kate could always pull her derringer on him. She’d carried it out in her bag that evening, hidden away under her laciest garter belt, just in case the deputy had decided to take a look inside after all. That garter belt would have been enough to make even a worldly man a little modest, but the deputy had, thankfully, never bothered to open the bag. Still, the thought of Kate trying to overpower an armed guard didn’t help John Henry’s nerves any.
Outside his room, the darkness of the early morning sky was colored crimson from the flames of the burning woodshed in the horse lot behind the hotel. Kate’s fire must be a regular conflagration to be making so much flame and ashy smoke, and he only hoped that she would be able to get to him before he suffocated right there in his room or died in the blaze if the fire spread to the hotel itself. It was a dangerous escape he’d planned for himself, but the only one he could think of under the circumstances.
His anxious thoughts were interrupted by three swift taps at the bedroom door, then another three—the code he’d given to Kate—and he let out a gasp of relief as she burst into the room.
“The guard’s gone! I didn’t want to have to shoot him, but I would have.”
And in the noise and the confusion of the town crisis, no one noticed them leaving their room and running right down the front stairs and out through the lobby of the hotel along with the other boarders, some still wearing their nightshirts and bedclothes. John Henry’s own clothes were packed into his valise along with Mattie’s precious letters and a packet of dental hand tools. Everything else would have to wait until he could send a message to Shaughnessey asking him to send along his trunk. It wasn’t the first time that Shaughnessey had kept his things for him, though this time he wouldn’t be coming back to Texas to collect his belongings again. He was through with the Lone Star State and its overly-efficient legal system. Texas was a shame to the rest of the South, making such an awful fuss about guns and gambling.
John Henry had told Kate to hire him a horse and leave it saddled and waiting just up the street from the hotel, away from the fire that was distracting everyone’s attention. With an hour’s hard ride, he could be upriver into Throckmorton County and out of Sheriff Cruger’s jurisdiction by the time he was missed. It would take several days for another warrant to be issued for his arrest there, and by then he’d be long gone on a stage headed north to Dodge City. It was a perfect escape and had worked out just the way he’d planned—except for the fact that there were two horses waiting in the early morning darkness and not just the one he’d counted on.
“Who’s the extra horse for?” he asked, and Kate laughed as she gathered up her skirts and stepped into the stirrup of a pretty dappled gray.
“For me, of course!” she said. And as she straddled the saddle, John Henry saw that she was wearing men’s trousers under her flounced skirt. “Don’t look so surprised, Doc! Did you expect me to ride side-saddle?”
“I didn’t expect you’d be comin’ along at all,” he said, tying his valise behind the saddle of the big black that Kate had left for him. “It’s gonna be a hard ride, not a pleasure trip.”
“I don’t mind the ride,” she said, twisting her glossy dark hair into a knot under a too-big cowboy’s hat. “I’ve done harder things in my life. And you know I can handle a horse.”
It was true that she was an expert horsewoman, but doing stage tricks on a trained horse wasn’t the same as traversing the Texas panhandle and the Indian Territory beyond.
“No, Kate,” he demurred, as he swung up into his saddle and gathered the reins with leather-gloved hands. “It wouldn’t be fair to take you along when the law may be comin’ after me.”
“But I want to be with you. I love you, Doc! You know that I do!”
But John Henry looked down into her flushed face and shook his head. “Oh, Kate,” he sighed, “this arrangement of ours isn’t about love. It never was. We were just keepin’ company, surely you know that. I never gave you cause to think it was anything more, did I? Stay here in Fort Griffin. A beautiful woman like you won’t have any trouble findin’ another man to take you in.”
And for a moment Kate said nothing, her breath going out in a gasp as though she had just been hit by a blow. Then she put her head up proudly, and said with tears in her eyes:
“And who will want a pregnant mistress?”
His sudden jerk on the reins made the horse whinny and reel around.
“What did you say?” he demanded.
“I said I’m pregnant. The post doctor told me so this afternoon. It’s not an illness I’ve been suffering from after all, only morning-sickness.” Then her tears turned to laughter, and her words rushed out so fast that John Henry could hardly take them all in.
“I was told I would never be able to have another child after the hard time I had bearing my son. And when he died, I thought that I would never have another baby of my own. And after all these years, I never did conceive again. But now, I finally have! And I have your baby inside me, my love! I have your life within me!”
John Henry was speechless in his bewildered astonishment. Then something she had said struck him hard. “My life? But I’m dyin’, Kate. You know I’ve got the consumption.”
“No, my love, you’re not dying!” And she reached for his gloved hand and laid it against the gentle swell of her belly. “You’re alive in me! Feel how the life grows inside! Our baby, Doc, our child . . .”
He was still disbelieving, but as he looked down at Kate, he couldn’t deny that there had been a change in her lately. Her breasts had grown fuller, the delicate veins across them faintly blue against the honey of her skin; her smooth and curving waist had grown wider; her flat stomach feeling fuller against his hips when they made love . . .
And suddenly, he knew that what she said was true. They’d been together almost every night since he’d returned to Fort Griffin, and many mornings as well, their affair so passionate that it had nearly worn him out.
“All right,” he said finally, swallowing his pride and facing up to his gentleman’s responsibility, “all right. I’ll take you along with me. But I can’t promise you anything once we get to Dodge. Hell, Kate, I don’t even know if I’ll get there alive myself.”
“I’ll take care of you, Doc. Don’t I always take care of you? What better nurse could you have than a doctor’s daughter? And we’ll find another doctor there, one who will know what to do about your disease . . .”
“I said I can’t promise you anything, Kate. Please don’t ask me. But I will take you with me. It’s the least I can do . . .and it’s all I can do, for now.”
“You won’t be sorry, Doc! We’ll get to Dodge City soon enough, and I’ll bring your child into the world and everything will be fine for us. You’ll see, my love. Everything is going to be just fine!”
But as they spurred the horses and rode off together into the crimson-skied darkness, John Henry had the feeling that nothing would ever be fine again.
Chapter Ten
SWEETWATER, 1878
THEY LEFT THE HORSES WITH A LIVERY STABLE OWNER IN THROCKMORTON County, then took the stage north across the Texas panhandle to Fort Elliott, two-hundred-fifty miles away, where the new Dodge City and Pan-handle Line took on passengers. It was a long, hard trail even by coach— forty hours from Fort Griffin to Fort Elliott over roads so rough and rocky that the horses had to be changed out every twenty miles and the passengers arrived bruised and exhausted. Most travelers were thankful for the chance to layover a day or two at Sweetwater, close to Fort Elliott, befor
e continuing on across the Indian Territory to Fort Supply and Dodge City, another grueling two-hundred miles away.
Sweetwater was the closest thing to a town that there was along the Dodge City Trail, with one general store, one dance hall, a scattering of saloons, and a combination restaurant and boarding house with a Chinese laundry next door. But though the Chinese laundry seemed like a sure sign that Sweetwater was about to boom and turn into a real little city, the truth was that the boom had ended when the buffalo had died out, and Sweetwater would never be anything more than what it was—just a collection of dirt-floored, sod-roofed adobe buildings huddled together in the windy, treeless waste of the Texas panhandle.
The only memorable thing about the little town was that it had been the scene, two years back, of the tragic killing of a pretty dance hall girl named Mollie Brennan. Mollie was the favorite among the “Seven Jolly Sisters,” the saloon girls who entertained the soldiers and the buffalo hunters who visited the town. But being popular in a God-forsaken place like Sweetwater could be a dangerous thing, and Mollie Brennan had the misfortune of getting caught in a fight between two of her beaus: a soldier from Fort Elliott named Melvin King, and a young buffalo hunter and teamster called Bat Masterson.
Corporal King had a jealous streak, along with the mistaken notion that Mollie was his special girl, and when he learned one night that she was over in the dance hall entertaining one of the buffalo hunters, he loaded his six-shooter and went looking for a fight. If what he’d heard was true, and Masterson was trying to seduce Mollie and steal her away, Corporal King meant to do something serious. When he got to the dance hall and found his pretty Mollie dancing close in Bat Masterson’s arms, he put his pistol into play without asking any questions.
Mollie caught sight of the soldier just as his thumb hit the hammer and she screamed and turned to throw herself between her partner and the bullet that was aiming for him, hoping perhaps that Corporal King wouldn’t shoot if she were standing in the way. But the soldier was a fast draw and a quick shot, and he’d already pulled off his round before he saw Mollie spin herself into his line of fire. It was too late to do anything but watch in horror as the ball passed right through her and crashed into Masterson’s pelvis, knocking him to the floor. But Bat Masterson was almost as fast as the soldier was, and as Mollie crumpled to the ground and his own legs went out from under him, he drew his revolver and fired off a shot that hit Melvin King square in the heart, killing him instantly.
Dance with the Devil Page 17