“Then buy a stage ticket to Las Vegas,” he said, tossing her a handful of coins from his vest pocket purse. “I’m sure there’s lots of ways for you to entertain yourself there. Or wear that red dress you had on last night, and maybe you can make some money for yourself.”
It was the wrong thing to say, though he’d meant it as a backhanded compliment. In spite of their fuss the evening before, Kate had drawn plenty of attention in that dress of hers and would no doubt do the same in Las Vegas. But Kate didn’t seem to appreciate his flattery, and flew at him in a rage.
“How dare you! How can you be so cruel after all I have done for you! How dare you treat me like a whore when I have been better than a wife to you! Go then, take yourself off to Dodge City and don’t bother coming back! I won’t be waiting here for you if you do! I’ll go to Las Vegas, or Santa Fe even, but I won’t stay another day in Otero!”
“Then I reckon this is goodbye?” he asked, hardly caring if it were. Kate had near worn him out with her tempers and tantrums, and he was looking forward to a long vacation away from her.
“Damn you to hell!” she said, turning on her heel and storming out of the room.
Somehow, it seemed an eloquent summation of their entire relationship.
Chapter Fifteen
DODGE CITY, 1879
HE HAD REMEMBERED DODGE BEING DUSTY AND HOT, AND IT DIDN’T disappoint him any in that respect. The temperature was ninety-six degrees in the shade the day he arrived, and the Arkansas River was just a muddy trickle of brown water and cow manure. Still, John Henry was glad to be back in the Cowboy Capital—after his angry parting from Kate, he was glad to be anywhere but with a woman. Not that Dodge had run out of ladies, of course. The red light district still seemed to be doing a brisk business, and Tom Sherman’s dance hall was still filled with lovelies eager to please, for a price. But having had his own dance hall girl as a constant companion for the better part of two years, John Henry found it a relief to be alone again, and single.
Wyatt, thankfully, didn’t even ask after Kate when John Henry found him at the Long Branch Saloon. The lawman had other things on his mind, like the lack of lawbreakers to buffalo and lock up in the cooler.
“Quietest cow season in as long as I can remember,” Wyatt said, taking a thoughtful draw on his cigar. “It’s this drought that’s doing it. Texas cattle can’t make it this far without water for the trail, which accounts for there being so few beeves this year. Which accounts for there being so few cowboys to corral, as well.”
“Reckon that should give you more spare time for playin’ cards,” John Henry said with a smile. “Can’t see anything wrong with that.”
“Nothing wrong with card playing,” Wyatt agreed, “when you’ve got the income for it. But if I’m not bringing in lawbreakers, I’m not getting paid. Same as when you’re not pulling teeth.”
Wyatt’s sudden talkativeness came as a surprise, though John Henry was enjoying the conversation. In his recollection, the laconic lawman had rarely put more than two sentences together at one time, being the naturally quiet type, and now here he was speaking whole paragraphs at once. Must have been the lack of family around to talk to, John Henry reasoned, as Wyatt’s brothers Morg and Virg had both left Dodge for better opportunities: Morgan following Louisa Houston up to the Deadwood, and Virgil heading off to the Arizona Territory.
“Hoping to find himself a better-paying law job,” Wyatt commented on Virgil’s move to the Territorial capitol of Prescott. “There’s no money left in Dodge, that’s for sure. What with the decrease in the cows and the cowboys, both, the city fathers decided they’re paying us too much to keep the peace. Cut our salary back, last winter. If things don’t pick up soon, I’ll have to find a town with more snap myself. Which is why I took on to judge the Beautiful Baby of Dodge contest.”
John Henry nearly choked on his whiskey. “You judged a baby contest?” The very thought of it was laughable, but he didn’t let his amusement show.
“Paid five dollars. Didn’t see as how I could turn down the opportunity. Wasn’t really any judging to it, anyhow, just counting up the ballots to see who won. Besides, Jim Masterson had an idea of how to make it interesting.”
“And how was that?”
Wyatt took another slow draw on his cigar, then said with something that almost resembled a smile, “We got the gamblers to buy up the most ballots, six for a quarter, to elect our own choice of Beautiful Baby of Dodge. Should have seen Reverend Wright’s face when we announced the winner.”
“You’re as bad as your brother Morg at story-tellin’, Wyatt,” John Henry said with a laugh. “Get to the point.”
“Point is, it wasn’t even a baby that got elected. The boys chose their favorite whore. And not just any whore, but a big colored woman from one of the whorehouses south of the tracks. We called the name, but the Reverend says he don’t know that name, so Jim and me went to bring her in. She was glad to come, knowing she was about to win $500 gold and didn’t have to do a single night’s work for it. Should have seen the Reverend’s face,” he said again, this time the suggestion of a smile lifting his golden mustache into something akin to a grin. “Best joke I ever took a part in. ‘Course, the finer ladies of Dodge weren’t too pleased by the winner, but she won the ballots fair and square. That’s what comes of holding a Beautiful Baby Contest in a cowtown. They’re lucky the sports didn’t elect a cow.”
John Henry smiled at the story, though he was more amused by Wyatt’s uncharacteristic garrulousness than by the gamblers’ little game. Dodge must truly be losing its snap for the serious-minded Wyatt Earp to spend his days playing practical jokes.
“I reckon you could make some money workin’ for the Santa Fe,” John Henry commented. “There’s no whores up the Royal Gorge, but they’re hirin’ shooters.”
“I’d go if I could get away from Dodge, but money in it or not, I’ve got this badge.”
“Marshal Earp, you are absolutely antique in your fealty. I, for one, am lookin’ forward to bein’ paid for a pleasure trip in the mountains where the weather is more kind. This Dodge City dust-bowl is bringin’ on my cough again.”
He said it lightly, but the truth was that the dusty drought of Kansas was paining his lungs and making him fear he might be undoing the good the Montezuma Hot Springs had done him. So although he was enjoying Wyatt’s surprisingly warm welcome, he didn’t dare stay in Dodge overly long.
Wyatt wasn’t the only Dodge City resident whose job kept him out of the Royal Gorge expedition. The Comedian Eddie Foy was back in town for the summer and too busy entertaining cowboys to consider serving the Santa Fe, though John Henry made a point to invite him along.
Foy was headlining at the Comique Theater again and spent his off hours at the Lady Gay Saloon that fronted the theater, and the owner, Josh Webb, was pleased to have the comic in his establishment, saying that Eddie added an atmosphere of New York class to the place. In return for the atmosphere, Josh gave Eddie his drinks for free—which encouraged both Eddie and his Dodge City admirers to drink even more. Eddie was careful, however, not to imbibe before a show so he could keep his comic wits about him, saving his carousing for the early morning hours when the Comique closed down for the day and he had the rest of the morning to sleep off his liquor. But Eddie couldn’t very well decline a drink at a party in honor of the Santa Fe and the Dodge City boys going off in her defense, especially when his host was going along to Colorado himself as one of the leaders of the expedition. And it was, as John Henry pointed out to him, a cause worth considering.
“The Santa Fe bein’ Dodge City’s own railroad, so to speak, seems like Dodge owes her a little help.”
“So they’ve hired you as a recruiter?” Eddie asked amiably, his rosy face glistening in the summer heat of the stuffy Lady Gay barroom.
“Somethin’ like that,” John Henry concurred. “Sheriff Masterson asked me to help get the word around, not that it needs gettin’. Seems like most of the sports in town
are already hired on. Except for Marshal Earp,” he added, “and Dodge City’s favorite varieties star.”
“Why, Dr. Holliday,” Eddie said with a broad smile, “I didn’t know you were an admirer! But I do appreciate the flattery, though I don’t see how my joining in this little show will help the Santa Fe any. It’s guns they’re looking for, and I’m afraid I’m a powerful poor aim. Why, I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn if the cow painted a bulls-eye on it.”
John Henry considered the problem a moment, then offered a reasonable solution. “Oh, that’s all right. You can use a shotgun if you want to, so you don’t even need to bother aimin’. The Santa Fe won’t know the difference, and you’ll get your pay, anyhow. And I reckon we could use some entertainment if things get slow between volleys.”
“Tempting as the offer is, I believe I’ll serve Dodge City best by staying right here and finishing up my contract with the Comique. The show, as you know, must go on, even without you fine sports around to liven things up. And it sounds like Marshal Earp may need my help to keep the cowboys under control—music, and comedy, having the gift of taming the savage beast.”
“Not that there’s all that many cowboys to control this season,” Josh Webb put in, having overheard John Henry’s little recruitment speech. “Been so slow in Dodge this year, I’m thinking of selling this place and trying my hand elsewhere. Still, I’ll thank you for not siren song-ing my floorshow away, Doc. Business is always better when Mr. Foy’s in the place, and I need all the business I can get. Though I wouldn’t mind some diversion, myself, along the way. Bound to be a scary ride, with a trainload of the meanest gunfighters around and nothing to do but enjoy the view.”
“And not much view to enjoy at that,” John Henry added, remembering the brown flatness of Kansas that lay between Dodge City and the browner flatness of southeastern Colorado. From what he could tell, it was good country for cattle and trains and not much else, and seven hours of staring at it from the inside of a stuffy railcar with the temperature right around a hundred degrees and nothing to do but sweat could set anyone’s nerves on edge. When those nerves came with quick trigger fingers and loaded pistols, the climate could turn deadly.
“Which is why Sheriff Masterson asked me along,” Josh said, seeming to share John Henry’s thought. “He’s made me a deputy, so I can show a badge if I have to. Won’t be the first time I’ve gone along to help keep things orderly, just warmer this time out. Last time I was deputized, we went after the Dave Rudabaugh gang that robbed the westbound Santa Fe out of Kinsley. Miserable weather it was, snowing so hard we near lost our own trail, let alone finding the robbers. Had to hunker down a couple of days, waiting for the storm to pass, then just when the snow starts to settle, who should come riding up to our camp but ol’ Dave and his gang like they was dropping by for a visit. They warn’t, of course, just looking for a friendly fire somewhere in all that cold. Ours warn’t the friendly fire they was thinking of, unfortunate for them. Sheriff Masterson didn’t even wait ‘till they was warmed again before putting them under arrest. But cold as they was, near froze themselves, they was almost glad to be going back to Dodge, bound up or not. So we took those train robbers in to justice with nary a shot fired. Which is how I hope this new employment will end. Don’t mind so much being deputized and doing my civic duty when it all works out fine and happy. Don’t always, though. Like when Marshal Masterson got shot outside the Lady Gay, right there on my own board walk.”
He stopped talking then, getting a pensive look in his dark eyes, and John Henry respected his moment of silence. The Marshal Masterson he was talking about wasn’t Bat, of course, but his brother Ed, the same man Wyatt had been mourning when John Henry first arrived in Dodge. Josh Webb had been friends with them all from his days of buffalo hunting along the Arkansas River when Dodge City was still just Fort Dodge and the buffalo herds had seemed endless.
Josh, himself, hardly seemed suited for such adventures, though he’d had plenty of them. He had a quiet, contemplative temperament and was so slow to rouse that, at thirty-two years of age, he still hadn’t found a woman with whom he wanted to keep company, though he had ample selection from the string of cribs that lined the alleyway behind the Lady Gay Saloon. But Josh claimed he just had too much wanderlust in him to settle down, blaming it on his having been born across the Mississippi River from the Mormon town of Nauvoo, Illinois, spending his infancy watching wagon trains of the Saints moving west. Or maybe, it was the west itself that caused the wanderlust, calling to him from his youth. Whatever the cause, by the time he hit Dodge City, he’d already tried out the silver country in Deadwood and the gold country in Central City, Colorado, along with Texas, New Mexico, and most of the Indian Territory. But unlike John Henry, who’d seen most of those same places himself, Josh had gone of his own free will and not because he had the law at his back. In fact, he was hand-in-glove with the law most of the time, even when he wasn’t wearing a deputy’s badge. Steady, that was Josh Webb, which made him a good choice to help keep order on the trip to the Royal Gorge.
Steadiness was what it would take with close to sixty of the west’s best gun handlers on the Santa Fe special as it steamed out of the station in Dodge City that hot day in June. For some of the boys, it was the first time they’d had a chance at being in a real War, and they took to it like Rebels going off to whip Yankees, whooping and hollering as the engine built up a head of steam. To John Henry, that Rebel Yell brought back memories of his childhood in Georgia where his hometown of Griffin had been the training ground for Confederate soldiers headed to the fight. He may have been too young to join with them then, but he was plenty old enough now, and this fight seemed just about right, to his mind.
The arrival of fifty gunfighters from Dodge City was enough to convince the few Denver & Rio Grande employees to turn over the roundhouse and telegraph office at Pueblo, and the boys congratulated themselves on an easy victory. But there were more violent skirmishes farther up the road: in Denver, the D&RG used a battering ram to force entry into the Santa Fe occupied general railroad offices; in Colorado Springs, they fired shots at the defenders; at Cuchara, two Santa Fe men were wounded and two killed before the station was surrendered. So there would surely be more fighting to come in Pueblo when the D&RG showed up to take back the roundhouse by force. But until then, it was sit and wait.
John Henry had never been good at waiting, being of a naturally restless disposition, and he found it particularly hard to wait in the crowded quarters of the Pueblo telegraph office where Bat had assigned him and Josh Webb guard duty. Though actually, it was him who was doing the guarding and Josh who was left in charge of the telegraph equipment, as he’d learned some Morse code somewhere in his travels and knew something about operating the wire as well.
“You know, the Royal Gorge isn’t the only wonder along that part of the Arkansas,” Josh Webb commented as they swapped stories and tried to stay awake. Besides the boredom of guard duty, they were both dozy from the summer heat that filled the telegraph office like a cook stove. “They’ve got sea monsters up there, too.”
“You’re ramblin’, Josh. How could they have sea monsters when there’s no sea for a thousand miles of here?”
“I didn’t say they were live sea monsters, Doc. It’s sea monster bones they’ve got up there. Found ‘em in a rock quarry close to Cañon City. At first, they thought it was buffalo bones they were digging up, ‘till the bones got to be too big for any buffalo you ever saw. That’s when a professor from up in Colorado Springs makes a visit and says it’s not buffalo bones, it’s ancient monsters they’re digging up. It was the newspaper that called ‘em sea monsters. The professor called ‘em Dinosaurs, but sea monsters sounds more interesting.”
“So did the paper happen to explain how sea monsters got to the Royal Gorge?”
“Not in so many words. But the reporter did mention a Scottish legend about a lake creature that swims up an underground river from the North Sea. I suppose Cañon
City’s monster could have swum up an underground river to the Arkansas, aways back.”
John Henry had to hold in a laugh, hearing Josh Webb’s fanciful blending of science and mythology. For himself, he didn’t believe in sea monsters any more than he believed in fairies. He did, however, know something about dinosaurs, having seen the reconstructed skeleton of a Hadrosaur at a museum in Philadelphia, its bones hung together with wire into a fantastical shape that defied belief—and yet there it was, bigger than life and impossible to disbelieve.
He’d had something of a trial of his faith, studying on that dinosaur, for his mother, he knew, would not have believed in the thing even if she had seen it with her own eyes. As the Lord had created the earth in six days and on the seventh rested from His labors, there was no time for anything as old as dinosaurs. She would have told him that they were just buffalo bones, bleached and hardened by the alkali desert, or the remains of Indian horses that had died before they found the cool waters of the Arkansas, and he would have believed her, as a child. But looking at those bones in the museum in Philadelphia, he knew for the first time that his mother may have been wrong about some things. It was a knowledge that had left him feeling unsettled somehow, and unfaithful to her saintly memory.
“So what do you believe, Josh? Do you believe the Lord created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, or do you believe in the dinosaurs?”
Josh Webb knit his dark brow and ruminated the question.
“Well, Doc, I suppose it all depends on what kind of days you’re talking about. There’s some days go by too fast, like when Eddie Foy is doing his variety show, and there’s some days go by too slow, like sitting guard duty in this wire office. The hours are all the same, but they don’t feel the same. So it wouldn’t seem unreasonable to me if the good Lord had his slow days and his fast days, too, and maybe on some of ‘em, he got more done than on others. Maybe it only seemed like six days of creation to Him because he was working so hard, whereas, to us it would seem more like six million years dragging by, waiting for the world to start. So I suppose I can believe in the Bible and the dinosaurs both, and not get confused between the two.”
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