Robert Parker - Gunman's Rhapsody

The road from the railhead in Benson ended with an uphill pull into Tombstone, and the horses were always lathered as they reached level ground and finished the trip on Allen Street in front of Wells Fargo. They were blowing hard when Bud Philpot tied the reins around the brake handle and climbed down to help the passengers out. Wyatt stayed up on the box holding the double-barreled 10-gauge shotgun that the company issued to all its messengers for the stage run. The intown guards were issued twelves. When the money box was on the ground, Wyatt climbed down after it and followed as Philpot carried it into the office. Since he’d hired on as a shotgun messenger there had been no holdups, and when there had been holdups, before he took the jo0b, they had always taken place on the road. Still, he saw little sense in being ready for no holdups, so he forced himself always to assume that one was about to happen.

Wyatt rode the empty stage with Philpot on around to Sandy Bob’s barn on the corner of Third Street. Then he got down and walked a block down to Fremont, where he and his brothers had been building houses. There were four of the houses done, including the one he lived in with Mattie, and another one under way.

Virgil was there with Allie, sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. Virgil was five years older and a little thicker than Wyatt, but they looked alike and people sometimes mistook Wyatt for his brother. He was always pleased when they did.

“Thank God,” Mattie said when he came into the kitchen.

She had on a high-necked dress and her hair was tight around her square face. Her cheekbones smudged with a red flush made her look a little feverish. Probably whiskey. Whiskey made her lively. Laudanum made her languid.

“Safe at last,” he said.

“Don’t laugh at me, Wyatt,” Mattie said. “You know about Victorio leaving the reservation.”

“I heard,” Wyatt said. “But I didn’t see him on the road from Benson.”

“Oh, leave her be, Wyatt, you know the Apaches are real,” Allie said. “People are coming in from Dragoon.”

“That so, Virg?”

Virgil nodded. He held his coffee cup in both hands, elbows on the table, so that he had only to dip his head forward to drink some.

“Everybody in Tombstone ’s worried. There’s talk they’ll attack the town,” Mattie said.

She spoke in a kind of singsong, like a girl telling someone her lesson.

Wyatt broke the shotgun, took out the shells and put them in his pocket. He closed the shotgun and leaned its muzzle up against the door frame.

“How many Apaches are out?” Wyatt said.

“Clum says ’bout fifty.”

“How many armed men we got in Tombstone?” Wyatt said.

Virgil dipped his head forward and drank some coffee.

“More ’n fifty,” he said.

Wyatt nodded absently, looking past Mattie out the back window at the scrub growth and shaled gravel that spilled down the slope behind the house.

“Well, I’m glad you’re home safe,” Mattie said and got up and walked to him and put her arms around him. He stood quietly while she did this. And when she put her face up he kissed her without much emphasis.

“Go down the Oriental, Virg? Play a couple hands?”

Virgil nodded. He put down his cup, stood up, took his hat off the table and put it on his head. Allie frowned at Virgil.

“Maybe we’ll just come along,” Allie said. “Me and Mattie. See what the high life looks like.”

“No,” Virgil said.

“Why not?”

“No place for ladies.”

“Ladies?” Allie said. “When did we get to be ladies?”

“Since you married us,” Wyatt said and opened the door.

“I didn’t marry no ‘us,’” Allie said. “I married Virgil.”

Virgil grinned at her and took hold of her nose and gave it a little wiggle.

“And a goddamned good thing you did,” he said.

Then he went out the door after Wyatt.

They walked a block up to Allen Street. It was winter, and cold for the desert with the threat of snow making the air seem more like it had seemed in Illinois before a blizzard.

“Kinda hard on Mattie,” Virgil said.

“I know.”

“She’s doing the best she can,” Virgil said.

“So am I.”

They walked along Allen Street. You could see the breath of the horses tied in front of the saloons. The early evening swirl of cowboys and miners moved hurriedly, wrapped in big coats, hunched against the cold.

“She ain’t much,” Virgil said.

“No,” Wyatt said, “she ain’t.”

“Still, you took up with her.”

“Yep.”

Virgil put his left hand on Wyatt’s shoulder for a moment, then they pushed into the Oriental where it was warm and bright and noisy.

He liked saloons . He liked the easy pace of them, the way the light filtered in through the swinging doors and profiled the dust motes hanging in the still air. In winter he liked the warmth from the coal stove and the mass of men. In summer he liked the way the half-dark room was cooler than the desert heat. He liked the smell of beer, and the card games, and the sense of oneness with the men who, like himself, liked saloons. He liked the lazy undercurrent of trouble that always murmured just below the surface of things.

The only women who came to the saloons were whores. He liked the whores with their easy manner. Sometimes he went to a room with one. Sex aside, they seemed more like men to him, men who let things come to them and didn’t fret. There was comfort in a saloon, and possibility, and he liked to lounge at a table sipping coffee, and size up things as he rolled prospects around in his head. He always drank coffee, or root beer. Whiskey made him feel sick. One glass made him dizzy. Virgil had beer.

“Mistuh Earp.”

He knew the voice with its soft Georgia drawl slurring the r ’s. And as always when he heard the voice he felt a small flicker of excitement. The voice was trouble.

“John Henry,” he said without turning around.

The speaker was very thin with ash-blond hair. He stepped around from behind him and hitched a chair and sat at the table. There was something citified about him, something in the graceful way he moved that seemed out of place in the boisterous saloon. He was holding a glass of whiskey.

“Virgil,” he said.

“Doc.”

“You boys working or just enjoying the atmosphere?”

“Enjoying,” Wyatt said.

“How’s Mattie?” Doc said.

His eyes were restless as he talked, always moving, looking at the room, looking at everyone, never settling on anything.

Wyatt shrugged.

“You still trailing Big-Nose Kate along?” Virgil said.

Doc laughed.

“A man will do a lot for a small dose of free poontang,” he said. “Look at your brother.”

“That’s not Wyatt’s problem,” Virgil said.

“No? So what is it? A weakness for hopheads?”

Wyatt looked at Holliday silently, and for a moment Doc saw what Clay Allison had seen on the street in Dodge.

“No offense, Wyatt. You know me. I’m a drunk. I say anything.”

“No offense, Doc.”

“But how come you stay with Mattie, Wyatt? Hell, you don’t even like her.”

“We all got women,” Wyatt said.

“And you don’t want to be the only one,” Doc said.

“I brought her down here,” Wyatt said. “She wouldn’t get along well on her own.”

Doc looked at Virgil.

“You understand your brother?” he said.

Virgil smiled slowly.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I do.”

Doc shrugged and shook his head. He went to drink and realized his glass was empty. He stood.

“Be right back,” he said. “You boys want anything?”