Mary Russell - Doc

Wordlessly, Alexander von Angensperg reached toward the girl’s pale and pretty face. His fingers felt cool when he touched her cheek, flushed and pink.

Mary Clare’s age, he was thinking. Poor child. Poor child.

“I will pray for you,” he promised softly, cupping her chin in his hand.

Hope smiled.

The Fates laughed.

Belle frowned.

“Um. Thank you, sir,” she said.

At speed, steel wheels clicking over rail joins have a cradle’s rhythm. Lulled by the heat and the train’s sway, at least half the people in the second-class car were dozing. Wyatt was drowsy himself and Mattie Blaylock was sound asleep, her head drooping against his shoulder.

He was pretty sure Mattie had enjoyed going to Topeka. On balance, anyways. She liked looking in the shop windows and there were some good shows in the theaters, but she was kind of spooked by how the political people acted when Wyatt introduced her. Men would smile and tell Wyatt how he was a lucky fella to have such a lovely lady on his arm, and so on. Mattie’d just stand there without saying anything back, the suspicion plain in her face. The silence would go on until Wyatt said something like “Yes, sir. I guess I am.”

First time that happened, Mattie rounded on him when they got back to their hotel room, like it was his fault when other men paid her a compliment. “I ain’t lovely and I ain’t no lady, and you ain’t lucky to have me, and you know it!” she told him, and he couldn’t tell if she was going to cry or spit. “What am I supposed to do when people say shit like that?”

Wyatt blinked. “Well,” he said, trying to be helpful, “Lou says thank you.”

“A man talks nice , he wants something,” Mattie muttered.

She was pretty bitter about that. You could tell. And truth was, Wyatt did want something, but he was getting better at living with a woman again, and figured now wasn’t the time.

“Nice ain’t always a trick,” he said, watching her undress. “You’re prettier’n you think,” he added, realizing that it was true just as the words were coming out of his mouth. He didn’t say anything about the “lucky” part. Mattie might’ve noticed that, because she just looked at him hard and snorted before she turned her back to him.

Later that night, lying in bed, thinking, it struck him that Mattie’s story was like Dick Naylor’s. It was natural that she was nervy and suspicious. All men had ever done was ride her hard and hit her. But if a horse could change, so could a person, and Wyatt thought maybe Mattie would get used to being treated better, like Dick had. He hoped so, because Morg was right. Mattie wasn’t such a bad person. She’d just been ill-used in her youth.

Sure enough, a couple of mornings after that, when they were getting ready to go out for breakfast, he noticed Mattie gazing at her reflection in the mirror. She tried a little smile then, and he could see her lips shape the words “Thank you,” like she was practicing, the way he had practiced “Mississippi” and “fifty-five.” Before she could catch him looking, he turned away because he didn’t want to spoil it for her. He knew how different you could feel when you saw yourself different, and he liked that he was helping Mattie the way Doc had helped him.

That was when, without warning, a wave of feeling washed over him. It wasn’t love, like he had for Urilla. Even so, it felt pretty good.

As the convention went on, Mattie started saying “Thank you” out loud when somebody said something nice to her, and then she’d glance at Wyatt and he’d nod, sort of proud of her. She still looked embarrassed, and never said more than two words if she could help it, but she started standing up a little straighter, like maybe it wasn’t so bad to be noticed.

Course, nobody in Topeka knew what she used to be. As far as anyone at the convention knew, Mattie was Wyatt’s real wife. And without really wanting to, Wyatt began to wonder how it would be if he and Mattie didn’t go back to Dodge. Like: what if they just got on the train and stayed on it? What if they rode to the end of the rails, out in Colorado? They could get a clean start, both of them. Wyatt could quit busting heads and getting shot at. He wasn’t as good as Johnnie Sanders or Doc Holliday, but he guessed he could make a living dealing faro in Denver. And Mattie could be a new person. Happier, maybe. Less afraid.

Trouble was, a lot of men in Topeka had just spent two weeks telling Wyatt he should run against Bat Masterson for sheriff of Ford County, and how the party would back him if he did. And when Bob Wright came up for reelection, they said, Wyatt ought to challenge him for representative on the Republican ticket. That’s how Prohibition would get passed: one Dry representative elected at a time, until the legislature finally had enough anti-saloon men to do the right thing. But it would mean settling in Dodge for good. Which put Wyatt in mind of the train joke Eddie Foy told, where a conductor comes along the aisle and asks a drunk where he’s going. “To hell, I reckon,” the drunk says, and the conductor answers, “Ticket’s a dollar. Get off at Dodge.”

Halfway across Kansas now, listening to the chug and click of the train, Wyatt stared out the window, letting his thoughts settle some while he watched the land go by. Funny how you were traveling faster than a horse could run, and you knew you were moving, but there was no sense of the land under you. You lost the smell of grass crushed under your mount’s hooves and the sound of the leather creaking beneath your hips. You couldn’t really see anything small. The world was just two big slabs of color. Blue above, green below. Things got simpler.

It came down to this. If he was going to run against Bat, he needed more than suspicion. He needed a reason.

Put up or shut up, he thought.

It was early evening when the train pulled into Dodge. Lou and Morg were there to meet them but not Doc, who was laid up with a cold. Morgan wanted to go to Delmonico’s for a meal, so Wyatt could tell him and Lou about the convention, but Mattie had one of her headaches starting and couldn’t stand the thought of food. They stopped by Tom McCarty’s pharmacy to get her a dose of laudanum; that was the only thing that kept her from throwing up until she had dry heaves. Wyatt got her home and helped her into bed, but soon as she was asleep, he left to take a walk around town.

Morgan was back on duty by then, and he figured Wyatt would want to know what had gone on while he was in Topeka.

Wyatt brushed the report off and asked instead, “Where’s Bat?”

“He’s not at the Lone Star?” Morg asked after a moment.

Wyatt just looked at him, like he knew Morgan was stalling for time. Which he was.

“Well, it’s pretty quiet tonight,” Morg said then. “Maybe he’s over at the Iowa House?”

“Already checked.” Wyatt glanced away before giving Morgan that hard stare that could feel like a shove. “Where’s his money coming from, Morg?”

Morgan’s eyes dropped. “I ain’t gonna lie to you, Wyatt, but I’d rather you didn’t ask—”

“Morg, are you covering for him?”

“Well, see, we just figured what you didn’t know wouldn’t—”

“Where,” Wyatt said very quietly, “is he?”

Morg lasted about three seconds. “Out past Duck Creek,” he said. “A little north of Howells.”

In late November of 1853, when Catherine Masterson gave birth to her second son, nearly a dozen years had passed since the infamous Lilly-McCoy bare-knuckle boxing match in Hastings, New York. Even so, when her son Bat was a boy, men still spoke of that epic contest the way the Greeks and Trojans once spoke of mighty Achilles and brave Hector, in voices hushed by secondhand awe.