Dance with the Devil

by Victoria Wilcox

  “It’s not Sam Junior I’m worried about, Doc. I can handle him all right. It’s Wyatt I’m going to have trouble with. You know how he likes to keep an eye on me. I’m afraid if I tell him I’m leaving with Lou, he’ll put up a stink and try to stop me, say I’m making a mistake, that we haven’t known each other long enough to be going off and getting married.”

  “A week does seem mighty short for a courtship.”

  “I know, but I love her! What else matters? Besides, Wyatt didn’t court Aurilla much longer than that himself. “

  “You and your half-ass storytelling, Morg! When are you going to learn to start at the beginning instead of somewhere in the middle all the time? Who the hell is Aurilla?”

  “Wyatt’s first wife. Didn’t you know? He met her in Missouri when we moved back there from California the first time. Aurilla Sutherland. Her father owned the hotel there in town, and Wyatt fell for her first thing. Had our Daddy marry them quick, as he was Justice of the Peace, but her father said who the hell was Wyatt Earp, and he’d be damned if he’d let his little girl run off with some young nobody. He even tried to get the thing annulled, but Aurilla was already in the family way, so they had to let the marriage stick.”

  “So what happened?”

  “She died of fever before the baby came. All of Lamar was catching it, and it took Aurilla and the baby, too. Near to broke Wyatt’s heart. Only time I ever seen him cry was at her funeral, and he was bawling like a baby. And then he just disappeared out of town for awhile, went over to Arkansas and got himself into some trouble there stealing horses. But he was so broke-up about Aurilla, you see, and damn near drinking himself to death trying to forget about it, so you have to excuse the horse stealing. It ain’t like Wyatt to do something like that when he’s in his right head.”

  But John Henry wasn’t thinking about Wyatt’s horse-thieving past. He was thinking about his own year of death-wish drinking, when he’d learned he had the consumption and life had seemed too bleak to go on living another day, when even the thought of Mattie’s love couldn’t comfort him, but only made his despair deeper.

  “Poor Wyatt, I know how he must have felt . . .”

  “But hell! Why should I care what Wyatt thinks? I’m a grown man. I guess I can get married without his permission!” Then he added with a sheepish grin, “Maybe you can talk to him for me, explain things? You’re better with words than I am. You might even get the story straight and I’d forget half, or leave something out!”

  “Sure, Morg. I’ll talk to him for you, for whatever good it will do.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” Morgan said as he put out his hand. “Well, it’s been fun knowing you. Tell the crowd at the Long Branch to have a drink in my honor, all right?” Then he laughed—that happy, careless laugh of his. “Guess the boys will be laying two-to-one it don’t last with me and Lou, but we’ll prove them wrong, you’ll see! We’ll be rocking in our rocking chairs together, still in love like damn newlyweds when we’re old and gray. I got a feeling about it. This one’s the keeper for me. Wish I could be in two places at one time, though. I was looking forward to seeing some action around Dodge this summer, maybe get a chance to prove myself to Wyatt even. Guess I just got bad timing, huh? And Doc,” he added, “there is one more thing I’d like to ask you to do for me.”

  “You name it.”

  “Keep an eye on Wyatt, all right? See he don’t act too brave, get himself shot in the back or anything. I think maybe he’s the one who’s going to need a guardian angel with that bounty on his head.”

  Morgan was right about one thing: Wyatt needed someone to watch his back, though without knowing who was behind the rumored threats, it was hard to know what to watch out for, or when to be watching. So nobody was paying enough attention on the night of the first attempt on Wyatt’s life, during Eddie Foy’s vaudeville show at the Comique Theater.

  Foy was a favorite with the Dodge City crowd—a strutting, swaggering little New Yorker with a brash sense of humor and a trunkful of offensive jokes about cattlemen—and the cowboys took an instant liking to him, showing their appreciation by capturing him and tying him up rodeo-style and riding him around town on horseback. And Eddie Foy, knowing a good audience when he saw one, laughed long and hard at the joke of it and turned the experience into new material for his twice-nightly show.

  The Comique Theater was located at the back of Josh Webb’s Lady Gay Saloon, and Eddie Foy’s antics were just a background for the real entertainment there, as Sheriff Bat Masterson dealt Spanish Monte when he wasn’t busy doing his law work. Having the County Sheriff as house dealer gave the place a slightly more respectable air than the other gambling houses in town, though from what John Henry could see, the Sheriff wasn’t any more honest than the rest of the Dodge City dealers. Bat Masterson had fast hands and a slippery shuffle, and John Henry kept a steady eye on him as he dealt the cards. As a slippery card-dealer himself, he knew real competition when he came across it.

  “Watch the deck, Sheriff,” he cautioned. “I believe I saw a card or two trying to slide off the bottom there.”

  “Are you calling me a cheater, Doc?” Bat Masterson asked, his brown eyes flashing a warning and his neatly-barbered mustache twitching. “A false accusation like that could catch you a night in the cooler.”

  There was a politely mutual dislike between the two men, started when John Henry had first sighted the dandified lawman and continued when Masterson had discovered John Henry’s outlaw past. But they still managed to play cards together amicably enough.

  “Now, Sheriff,” John Henry said blandly. “The games are town business, not county business, you know that. You’d have to get Marshal Earp to come arrest me, and as the Marshal is a personal friend of mine—”

  “Why the Earps would choose a killer like you for a friend is beyond me.”

  “And how about your own friendship with that killer, Ben Thompsen?” John Henry asked. “He’s twice the outlaw I am, yet I hear you two are bosom companions.”

  “Ben saved my life back in Sweetwater. Held off a lynch mob until I could get out of town. Does a man need more reason than that?”

  “Ah, yes, the night poor Mollie Brennan died. I hear she was a sweet thing,” he said tauntingly. Rumor had it that the Sheriff still carried a torch for the dead saloon girl, and was staying a bachelor in her honor. “Kate, my dear, why don’t you refill my glass?”

  With Morgan Earp gone, Kate had taken up her old place at his side in the gambling halls, and she seemed to be enjoying having him all to herself again. “Why don’t you leave the cards and come dance with me, instead? Mr. Foy is about to call a quadrille.”

  “Gather ‘round, folks!” Eddie Foy invited from the stage, “Choose your partners! Swing the right hand lady!”

  “And miss out on beatin’ our fine Sheriff at his own game? I wouldn’t dream of it! Deal on, Sheriff Masterson. Kate, you go on and catch yourself a cowboy to dance with you. I am feelin’ a winnin’ streak comin’ on.”

  “All balance left!” Foy called, “Alamon right!”

  “I don’t want to dance with a dirty cowboy,” Kate said petulantly. “I want to dance with you. Don’t you want to show me off in this new gown you’ve bought me?”

  He was about to remind her that it was his gambling winnings that had paid for her new gown, and that if she kept expecting expensive gifts like that, she needed to let him play in peace, when his thoughts were cut short. A staccato of gunfire and a crash of window glass brought the dancing and the games to a halt.

  Kate screamed and Bat said, “Drop!” And in a second, both John Henry and the Sheriff were lying face down on the dance hall floor. Kate took a moment longer to join them, struggling with her layers of ruffled petticoats and lace-trimmed satin.

  “Damned Texans!” Masterson cursed as the firing went on. “Treeing the town again! Sounds like a whole army of them out there.”

  “Not an army,” John Henry said, instinctively counting the shots. “Eight or ten,
maybe, no more. Where’s Wyatt?”

  “He’s out on patrol duty. Damn!” Bat said again, as a slug whizzed past his head. “He’ll find them and put a stop to this soon enough.”

  “If they don’t stop him first,” John Henry said when a lull came in the shooting. “I’ve got to get out there and warn him!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That was a lot of lead for a howdy. It may be Wyatt in particular those Texans are gunnin’ for, tryin’ to collect on that thousand dollar bounty. Better lend me your pistol, Sheriff.”

  “Not a chance, Doc. We’ve got plenty of law around here without deputizing the likes of you. Wyatt can handle it, whatever it is.”

  There wasn’t time to convince the Sheriff or retrieve his own revolver from behind the bar where he’d checked it earlier that evening, so he rolled over and grabbed Kate, running his hand up under her gathered skirts and along her smoothly curving thigh.

  “Give me your derringer, darlin’! I’ll take the rest of you later.”

  “No!” she said, and pushed him away, her eyes hot with anger and the derringer still snug inside her lace-edged garter. “Let them kill him. It’s better than he deserves! I hope they collect every bit of that bounty!”

  John Henry grabbed her shoulders and dragged her to her feet. “Damn you!” he cried, as the firing started up again, further down the street now, and answered by a volley of pistol shots and a blast from a shot-gun. “I could have been out there by now!”

  “I’m just trying to protect you. You don’t know the kind of men those bounty hunters are. You don’t know . . .”

  “And what do you know about it?” he demanded, a sudden suspicion taking him. “I swear, Kate, if you’re hidin’ something from me, I’ll . . .”

  “Let her go, Doc,” Bat Masterson’s steady voice commanded. “Or I will put you in the cooler.”

  And as John Henry’s hands slid away from Kate shoulders, he saw the welts rising on her honey-colored skin.

  But Kate put on a cool smile. “It’s all right, Sheriff. He’s just had a little too much to drink tonight, haven’t you, my love? He wasn’t really going to hurt me. There’s no need to lock him up. Why don’t I just take him home and let him sleep it off?”

  “I am not drunk!” he said hotly.

  “Maybe not, but you are acting dangerous,” Bat Masterson said, “asking for my pistol and mistreating the lady like that. I think maybe you should go on home now and call it an evening. Ma’am, you let me know if he ever treats you hard like that again.”

  “Oh, I will, Sheriff,” she said, purring like a cat with a mouse in its claws. “Come, my love. The night is young for us, yet. There’s better games than this back in our rooms.”

  But lovemaking was the furthest thing from John Henry’s mind. Kate knew something about those Texas bounty hunters, he was sure of it.

  By the next morning, the whole town was talking about the shoot-up outside the Lady Gay Saloon, and how Marshal Earp and a few of his deputies had hurriedly saddled their horses and chased the Texans out of town. The Marshal had even managed to wing one of the shooters, a cowboy named George Hoyt, who fell wounded from his horse on a hill just south of the Arkansas River and was brought back to Dodge to be treated by the town doctor. The cowboy’s wound was a bad one, the bullet severing an artery in his arm, and by the time Dr. McCarty had sewn him up again, Hoyt had lost a lot of blood—too much, the doctor thought, to have much chance of recovering.

  The one thing Hoyt was strong enough to do was confess that the shooting hadn’t been just an innocent treeing of the town, but was a hired job paid for by some big Texas cattleman looking for Wyatt Earp. Unfortunately, Hoyt died before saying who the cattleman was, and the Ford County Globe eulogized him in undeserved style:

  George was nothing but a poor cowboy, but his brother cowboys permitted him to want for nothing during his illness, and buried him in grand style when dead, which was very creditable to them. Let his faults, if he had any, be hidden in the grave.

  “Let his faults damn him right to hell,” was John Henry’s comment, as he read the obituary. “And next time those boys come gunnin’ for Wyatt, I’ll be ready.”

  He glanced at Kate as he spoke, watching for her reaction, but she didn’t flutter an eyelash. He’d already tempted her with pretty baubles, trying to get her to talk, and even threatened to kick her out if she didn’t tell him what she knew of the bounty hunters. But Kate was as hard-headed as he was and insisted that she knew nothing more than she had already said.

  “I only know that you are safe, my love. That’s all that matters to me. You know how I love you, Doc.”

  He knew, all right. But knowing didn’t make him feel any easier.

  August came in a blaze of summer heat, 106 degrees in the shade wherever there was any. The Arkansas River that had been booming to overflowing just two months before now wallowed into a muddy stream that hardly gave enough water for the livestock to drink. John Henry, who didn’t tolerate the heat well under the best of circumstances, could hardly make it across the street from the Dodge House to the Long Branch Saloon without the searing sun making him sick to his stomach and the blowing dust choking his lungs. If he hadn’t promised Morgan that he’d watch out for Wyatt, he might have packed up then and headed on to Colorado for awhile, where the air was cool and clear. Even Sheriff Bat Masterson, with all his civic responsibilities, left town for a month, traveling to Hot Springs, Kansas where the mineral baths might cure the vertigo that had plagued him ever since his wounding at Sweetwater.

  Then just as the whole town seemed about to dry up and blow away with the prairie wind, the rains returned, flooding the dry-bottomed Arkansas and turning the streets of Dodge into mires of mud. And with the rains came rumors that a thousand Cheyenne Indians had broken away from the reservation at Fort Reno in the Indian Territory, and were headed north to the Dakotas.

  The Indians were led by the infamous Chief Dull Knife who was intent on returning his people to their ancestral lands, no matter what stood in the way. The killing started soon after they crossed over the Kansas line where two ranchers were murdered and left for the buzzards. In Comanche County, a gang of cowboys was shot down as they sat unarmed around their campfire. On the Salt Fork of the Cimarron River, a settler was shot in the neck, his wife was wounded, and their baby had a bullet put through its breast. In Meade County, a man’s throat was slit from ear to ear. In Ford County, a Negro cooking breakfast for a cattle crew was butchered. Then just south of Dodge City, Dull Knife’s band made a massacre, killing ten people, wounding five more, and slaughtering most of six-hundred head of cattle.

  The residents of Dodge City were in a terror, expecting to be overrun at any moment by the bloodthirsty Cheyenne. And as the firehouse bell rang to call the citizens to arms, Mayor Dog Kelley telegraphed the governor to send weapons: The country is filled with Indians.

  By the morning of the 20th of September, every farmer within thirty miles of Dodge had come into town for safety, and in response to Mayor Kelley’s telegram, the adjutant general arrived with the first shipment of 6,000 carbines and 20,000 cartridges. His train was met by a mob of citizens and the Dodge City Silver Cornet Band, led by the Long Branch’s own Chalk Beeson, and the local paper reported: The scene at the depot reminds us of rebellion times.

  With the cavalry from Fort Dodge called out to help quell the uprising, and only nineteen men left at the fort to help defend the nearby town, Dodge City became an armed camp. Bawdy houses became shelters for the families of farmers come into town for protection, and good citizens joined in with cowboys and gamblers to go out in support of the army. The Santa Fe Railroad even outfitted a special locomotive to carry the civilian soldiers to suspected attack sites, with Wyatt Earp and Chalk Beeson leading a posse that rode the train to put out a range fire set by the Indians.

  Kate was terrified and refused to leave the Dodge House Hotel, keeping a constant watch at the window for savages and drawing he
r derringer so many times in fright that John Henry decided he’d be safer somewhere else and headed for the Long Branch Saloon. Of course, he could have taken up one of those government carbines and gone out with Wyatt and most of the other men in town, but the thought of doing anything to aid the army didn’t sit well with him. As long as the United States Cavalry still wore the hated Yankee blue, he couldn’t bring himself to fight on their side.

  So he was one of the only able-bodied men still left in town when Wyatt returned with some Indian prisoners, and Wyatt was the only lawman in town when cattleman Tobe Driskill and his cowboys hit Dodge a short time later, expecting to find the place empty and open for the taking.

  John Henry was playing alone at the Long Branch Faro table, taking cards from Cockeyed Frank Loving, when there arose a commotion of pistol shots and breaking glass out on Front Street. His first thought was that the Indians were arriving to pillage the town, then he recognized the celebratory shouts of Texas cowboys, and he swore and dropped to the floor.

  “Fool cowboys are at it again! Card playin’ is getting damned dangerous in this town! Get down, Frank, unless you want a hole between your eyes.”

  The dealer did as he was told, cowering on the floor while outside the cowboys discussed in loud profanities what they ought to do to the Long Branch. John Henry gave a fleeting thought to making an escape by shimmying across the floor to the back alley door. Then one of the cowboys cursed and John Henry forgot all about escaping.

  “Well, hell!” he heard the cowboy say, “it’s Earp!”

  “And this time he’s going to get it!” another voice exclaimed. “You’re such a fighter, Earp, here’s your chance to do some. If he makes a move, boys, let him have it.”