Robert Parker - Gunman's Rhapsody

At the bar, McCann, lean and pale in a dark suit, was talking to a thin-faced little prostitute named Fancy. Down the bar Ike Clanton had drunk enough whiskey to loosen his mouth. He sidled down the bar and put an arm around Fancy’s waist and said something. She turned away from him. He moved after her. McCann said something to Ike, and Ike shoved Fancy aside. Wyatt watched with interest while he fanned out another hand of faro. Ike and McCann stood facing each other, McCann a good three inches taller than Ike.

“You think I’m scared of you, you prettified, goddamned dandy boy,” Ike said.

His speech was slurred. McCann slapped him hard across the face and it staggered Ike. The room went quiet. One of the bartenders moved down the bar toward them. The other men at the bar moved away from them. Fancy dodged out of the way and looked over at Wyatt. McCann kept his pale-eyed stare right on Ike, and Clanton reacted as he always did.

“You sonova bitch,” he said when he got himself steadied. “Arm yourself and be ready. I’ll look for you on Allen Street.”

Then Ike pushed himself off the bar and rushed out, banging against the doorjamb with his right shoulder. McCann looked after him for a time and then leaned over the bar and put out his hand. The bartender handed him a Colt revolver with a walnut handle. McCann checked to see that it was loaded and left the bar.

At the next table Fred Dodge turned to Wyatt.

“Ike’s going for a gun,” he said.

“Go tell Virgil,” Wyatt said. “ ’Less they do it in here, it’s his job.”

Fred looked blankly at Wyatt for a moment, then stood and ran out the front door. Everyone else, including the faro players, crowded to the door after him trying to watch and stay out of the line of fire. Wyatt put the cards away, took his own Colt.45 from a drawer in the card table, stuck it in his belt, stood and pushed out through the crowd onto the boardwalk in front of the saloon. McCann waited motionless across Allen Street in front of the Wells Fargo office, his gambler’s pallor more obvious in the harsh sunlight.

Ike rounded the corner of Fourth Street a block and a half from Denny McCann. He was carrying a handgun. He arrived at Fifth at almost the same moment that Virgil emerged from the Crystal Palace downstairs from his office. Virgil fell in beside Ike and matched his stride as they approached McCann together.

The street was quiet, and the people watching from the saloons were still.

Wyatt could hear Ike saying, “Stay out of this, Earp.”

Virgil didn’t answer. He was hatless and he wore no coat in the hundred-degree heat. Wyatt could see that he was heeled.

As they passed the front door of the Oriental, Virgil said, “Wyatt, I’m naming you a special deputy as of right now.”

“Sure thing, Virg,” Wyatt said.

When Ike and Virgil beside him came to a point about five feet from McCann, Ike stopped. Virgil moved between the two men.

“Can’t have you boys shooting out here,” Virgil said. “Put the guns away or I’ll have to arrest you.”

“Sonova bitch slapped me, Virgil. No man can do that and get away with it.”

“Slap him back,” Virgil said. “But you don’t hand over that Colt, I’m going to have to take it.”

McCann let his gun hang straight down by his side. But he didn’t put it away.

“Piss on you, bluebelly,” Clanton said. “All you Earps are bluebellies. You’d never stand by a cowboy.”

He shoved Virgil. Thirty feet away on the boardwalk in front of the Oriental, Wyatt moved his coat aside and rested his right hand forward on his hip. Virgil rolled easily with the shove and slammed his left fist into Ike’s face; at the same time he brought his right hand down hard on the barrel of Ike’s gun and twisted it out of Ike’s hand. Ike staggered backward. The punch had cut his lip, and he was bleeding freely. The blood ran down his chin and soaked into his shirt. As soon as he had Ike’s gun, Virgil turned toward Denny McCann and put out his left hand.

“Give me the gun, Denny.”

Holding his left forearm against his mouth, Ike fumbled into his pocket and came out with a jackknife. McCann handed his gun to Virgil.

From the boardwalk, Wyatt said, “Ike.”

Ike turned and looked at Wyatt, still standing with his coat thrown back, his hand on his hip nearly touching his gun butt.

“Fucking bluebellies,” Ike said.

He put the knife back in his pocket.

“There’ll be another time, bluebellies,” he said.

Then he turned and rushed back down Allen Street. Wyatt went back into the Oriental and sat at the faro table. He took the gun from his belt and put it back in the drawer and closed the drawer. Then he shuffled the cards and began to put down a new layout.

They ran into each other having breakfast in the same cafe in Benson. Wyatt had finished some mining business and Johnny Ringo was finished with whatever business Johnny Ringo had. Now, full of coffee and bacon and fried sourdough, they were riding south together toward Tombstone.

The horses were allowed to drink their fill before they left Benson, and now in the hard, dry heat they were allowed to find their own pace. Wyatt was riding the same still-sound blue roan gelding he’d ridden north to Wichita from the buffalo fields. Ringo was on a gray horse with the flared nostrils and smallish head that hinted at Arabian ancestry.

“There’s a lot of bad feelin’ building,” Ringo said. “Curley Bill don’t like how you boys jumped him when Fred White got shot.”

“Don’t know why he would,” Wyatt said.

The road was dry, and the horses kicked up dust with every step. On either side the desert vegetation seemed fossilized in the heat.

“Ike Clanton’s been snarling and spitting like a wet bobcat since Virgil took up for Denny McCann.”

“I think Virgil was takin’ up for the law, John,” Wyatt said.

“Prob’ly,” Ringo said. “But it got Ike a split lip, and he ain’t too good at seeing the differences among things.”

“That’s pretty much Ike’s problem,” Wyatt said.

He edged the blue roan left a bit with his right knee, to keep him from nosing Ringo’s mare.

“Ike’s pretty cinched in with Behan,” Ringo said.

“Uh-huh.”

“And so is Curley Bill,” Ringo said.

“Uh-huh.”

“And Behan’s mad as hell at you.”

“I expect he is,” Wyatt said.

“Hope that girl’s worth it,” Ringo said.

“Miss Marcus,” Wyatt said.

Ringo grinned. He was mostly an easy-tempered man, Wyatt thought. And even when he wasn’t, he kept steady.

“Miss Marcus,” Ringo said.

He was slimmer than Wyatt and not as tall, and he had a kind of gracefulness about him. Like a bullfighter. Wyatt had seen bullfights in Mexico. He hadn’t liked them much, but he’d admired how quick and smooth the matadors were. Johnny Ringo reminded him of a matador. Everything was easy and graceful and much quicker than you thought it would be.

“She’s worth it,” Wyatt said.

The road went uphill, and the horses slowed. Ringo rode easily, relaxed in the saddle, his hands resting quietly on the pommel. He looked as if he could sleep on the horse if he had no one to talk with.

“I ride with Curley Bill,” Ringo said.

“I know.”

“Can’t say I got much use for Ike. Seems to be mostly gut wind and mouth.”

“That’s Ike,” Wyatt said.

“Got nothing against you Earps, either,” Ringo said. “You’re looking out for yourselves like the rest of us.”

“We are,” Wyatt said.

“And none of you is a back shooter.”

“Nope.”

“Which is more than I can say for Ike,” Ringo said.