Black Hats (5 page)

That hadn’t been fair to Mattie. In cowtowns like Wichita and Dodge, and likewise mining camps like Tombstone, red-light gals were the only females within hundreds of miles who weren’t Indian or Mexican. Who else was a man in that situation expected to lay with?

Still, there was no reasoning on the subject with Sadie, especially when Wyatt brought up the fact that women in the theatrical profession were looked down upon in a similar way, which only sent her flying.

So Wyatt had simply said that the woman who came by was “Katherine Cummings,” which was actually Kate’s married name via the drunkard blacksmith in Colorado.

“She’s a friend of Bat’s,” Wyatt had said offhandedly.

Sadie had a mixed opinion of Masterson, the negative deriving from Wyatt and Bat’s friendship predating her own tenure, the positive from Bat becoming a successful New York sportswriter.

“And why does that mean she has to come around here?” Sadie asked sharply, sitting in the rocker where earlier that day Kate’s behind had rested. By now evening had come, with Wyatt and his wife drinking glasses of warm beer in the cool blue night.

“Bat has a job for me,” Wyatt told her.

“What kind of job?”

“A detective job. Young friend of his out there is getting some trouble from these Prohibition gangsters.”

Her eyes tightened and she looked at her husband as if he had gone dancing around the little porch jaybird naked.

“Why does Bat Masterson have to send all the way across the country,” she asked, “to get that kind of help? Don’t they have younger detectives in New York City?”

“Yes,” Wyatt said, “but not any Bat trusts. He is paying full expenses and there should be several hundred in it.”

Sadie’s eyes tightened again, but in a different way; then they untightened and her chin crinkled. “I don’t care if it’s
five
hundred…”

Wyatt managed not to blink at her prescience.

“…it sounds
dangerous
, and I don’t want you doing it.”

He grunted a laugh. “Practically no danger in it a’tall.”

“You know this for a certainty, Wyatt?”

He patted the air with a dismissive palm. “Hell, I’ve been in one hundred tighter places.”

She frowned and rocked. “I know, but you never can tell—this might be the time.”

“What time?”

“The time when one of those bullets catches up with you.”

“…Sadie, it’s a chance to see Bat again.”

“You saw him, when? Just last year, when you and he worked that prizefight in Ohio!” She stopped rocking and trained those brown eyes on him like the barrel ends of twin revolvers.

“Anyway, you don’t belong to Bat Masterson. And Doc’s long dead, and you belong to me now, and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Managing not to react to her mind-reader’s mention of Doc, he got up out of his hard chair and gave her a kiss on the mouth. She was still awfully pretty, especially in this light. And she could still dance a mean hornpipe.

“You think that kiss’ll buy me off, Wyatt Earp?”

“It had better. I have no money to try.”

She had laughed and swatted him, and he had walked back to his chair with several hundred dollars crinkling in his left boot as he did.

“Expenses paid?” she asked.

“All the way and back again.”

And on this Kate Elder had certainly not stinted—Wyatt was traveling first class and, on the designated Pullman car, he settled into his seat by the window, hat in his lap, knowing that the ride out of Los Angeles would initially be a rough one, the tracks running right down Alameda and playing tag with trolleys and horse-drawn wagons and trucks and automobiles.

Before long, though, the bustle of the city had been replaced by orange groves whose pleasant perfume wafted through the car, helped by the battery of high-mounted electric fans.

That afternoon he watched Arizona roll by the window in all its scruffy glory. Wyatt had never thought of this country as a barren expanse, particularly not this time of year, when the tans of sandy desert were broken by blossoms, the golden poppies and varicolored mariposa mingling with the green of shrubs and cacti. He was at home in Arizona’s desert, but knew just as well its mountains and valleys, the green pine forests and the Petrified One, too.

He’d made and lost a fortune out there on that sun-shimmering expanse. He ridden shotgun on stagecoaches, he’d led posses, he’d mined for gold, he’d gambled and won, gambled and lost, upheld the law and been chased by so-called law on murder charges.

As he gazed upon that rugged landscape, Wyatt Earp knew that he would always live in Arizona, though he might not ever set foot there again, except perhaps to get out and stretch when this train made a stop.

How often had he ridden across this land in pursuit of rustlers or stagecoach robbers? He and his brother Virgil had spent seventeen days on one such pursuit, following the bastards who murdered shotgun messenger Bud Philpot into the mountains….

When they first came seeking their fortunes in Arizona, Wyatt and Virgil and younger brother Morgan (and occasionally Warren) did not see themselves as gunfighters, no matter how the rest of the world viewed them. Good-natured James didn’t bear that brand—everybody knew that particular Earp was strictly a bartender. The rest were gamblers and, on occasion, policemen, hard but fair, aware that maintaining law and order in cattle and mining towns took guts and the threat of force.

But both Wyatt and Virgil had gone sour on police work—killing in the line of duty could do that to a man—and Tombstone had been about getting rich in a boomtown, not helping marshal it; Wyatt’s initial plan had been to start a stagecoach line, but others beat him to the punch. So Wyatt bought into the gambling concession at the Oriental, and—in addition to pursuing mining interests—he and his brothers rode shotgun for Wells Fargo, for whom they also did occasional detective work.

Such activities put them in conflict with a loosely organized bunch of local criminals called the Cowboys, Texans for the most part, who rustled across the Mexican border and fenced the cattle through crooked ranchers like Old Man Clanton, whose spread was near Tombstone.

The Cowboys, many of them, were brutal killers, leaving behind a bloody trail of slaughtered
federales
and
vaqueros
.

The area ranchers (whether crooked or legit) were Democrats, Southern sympathizers, while the town businessmen were Union-leaning Republicans from back East. The former stuck a glad-handing, unqualified horse’s ass called Johnny Behan into the sheriff ’s chair, where he could ignore Cowboy crime and get rich collecting taxes.

Behan got on Wyatt’s bad side when the two men cut a deal whereby Wyatt would not run for sheriff on the assurance that Behan would run unopposed and then make Wyatt undersheriff.

The son-of-a-bitch Behan reneged, of course, but Virgil was a U.S. deputy marshal by this time, and after Curly Bill Brocius “accidentally” killed Marshal Fred White, Virgil got the town marshal badge, as well. Morgan became a city policeman, and in time Wyatt was appointed county deputy sheriff. A chilly truce developed between Sheriff Behan and the Earps, who for a comfortable stretch were backed up by Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson and Luke Short…and with gunhands like that enforcing the law, few challengers stepped forward, anyway few sober ones.

But after Bat left town to help out his lawman brother in Kansas, and Short lit out in the aftermath of a questionable gunfight, Virgil lost the next marshal’s election, and the scales shifted to the Cowboy side.

And the Cowboys were in need of some luck, at that, because the Mexican government had increased its
federale
forces, building forts along the border and confronting the rustlers in bloody battle—Old Man Clanton among the Cowboys who justly fell.

This sent the Cowboys reeling into other crime, not just rustling on the American side, but holding up stagecoaches to plunder Wells Fargo shipments.

Then when the new marshal unexpectedly resigned, Virgil got his badge back; and Wyatt decided to take on Johnny Behan for sheriff in the upcoming election. Behan was already stinging from Wyatt stealing Behan’s live-in lady away…a beautiful young actress from San Fran called Josephine Marcus, nicknamed “Sadie”….

A six-thousand-dollar Wells Fargo reward was available for the capture of the killers of shotgun messenger Bud Philpot, and when his posse came back empty-handed, Wyatt approached the new leader of the Clanton clan, Ike, with a deal. Wyatt knew damned well lowlife loutish Ike was in with the stagecoach killers, and proposed that this prize fool lead him to the fugitives in return for the six grand. The glory of the capture, Wyatt knew, would give him a lock on the sheriff ’s race.

Ike said yes, but when the fugitives turned up dead (at neither Ike’s nor Wyatt’s doing), Clanton began to fret that Wyatt would reveal the rancher’s treachery to such deadly compadres of Ike’s as Curly Bill Brocius, Billy the Kid Clairborne and Johnny Ringo. Drunk one night, Ike accused Doc Holliday of spreading Wyatt’s “lies” (though Wyatt had leaked not a word) and Ike damned near got himself killed, saved only by Virgil breaking it up.

Still, Wyatt understood Ike’s worry over Doc, who did travel the same gambling circuit as the Cowboys, and who drank heavily and talked freely and might drunkenly let the damning tale slip.

One day, in October of ’81, Ike Clanton spread threats against the Earps all over town and waved around guns that city ordinance didn’t allow him to carry. The Earps cut him a world of slack—Virgil even played poker with Ike and several Cowboy cronies at the Oriental, shrugging off Ike’s bluster.

Outside the Eagle Brewery, where Wyatt ran a faro game, he went out to catch some cool night air only to find himself with a whiskey-talking Ike Clanton in his face.

“Let’s go for a walk, Wyatt,” the boozy, woozy rancher slurred. He was a round-shouldered character, bordering on stocky, with a scraggly goatee.

“Got a game to mind, Ike.”

“You can’t run forever—tomorrow morning! We’ll go man for man!”

“I don’t want to fight you, Ike. There’s no money in it.”

Ike snorted a laugh and staggered off down Fifth Street, then turned and shouted: “I’ll get my boys, you get yours, and we’ll fetch this feud to a close! How about it, Mr. Wyatt Earp? What are you
smilin’
about? Maybe you don’t think I’ll be after you all in the morning!”

“Ike.”

“
What
?”

“You talk too much for a fighting man.”

And Wyatt went back to his game.

Surely the whiskey would drop Ike before need of any bullet doing it. By morning, all this fight talk would be forgotten and Ike would be working off his hangover over coffee in some cantina.

But when Ike spent the next morning staggering from one saloon to another, running his mouth about killing the Earps, Virgil had to disarm the jackass in the street, kissing him along the side of his head with the barrel of a Colt and dragging him into court for a fine.

And later when Cowboy Tom McLaury approached Wyatt on the street to complain about this outrageous treatment of poor Ike, Wyatt had to give McLaury similar treatment—slapping his face, and whacking his skull with the long barrel of the Colt. Shortly thereafter, the Cowboys gathered at Spangenberg’s gun shop and made a big show of buying ammunition while Wyatt watched through the window glass.

Any number of times, Wyatt and Virgil might have arrested the mudsills for carrying firearms; but the lawmen preferred to let the Cowboys run out of steam and ride out of town.

They didn’t.

Instead, the Cowboys gathered at the O.K. Corral, made more threats about the Earps to various passing citizens, and—two of them leading horses—walked through the corral onto the vacant lot next to Fly’s Photography Studio, which was also a lodging house where a certain Dr. John H. Holliday roomed; so drygulching Wyatt’s gambler friend seemed a likely reason for this congregation.

Various townspeople informed the Earps of the threats emanating from the O.K. Corral, as the lawmen stood on the sidewalk outside Hafford’s Saloon. Any number offered aid, but Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan were professionals who preferred not to involve civilians in enforcement matters.

The trio was about to make their way toward the vacant lot when Doc Holliday sauntered up to offer his help.

“This is our fight, Doc,” Wyatt said. “No call for you to mix in.”

Doc reeled as if slapped, but his indignation was touched by his usual dark humor. “That’s a hell of a thing for you to say to me, sir!”

Virgil handed Doc a sawed-off shotgun and said, “Keep that under your coat.”

Taking it, handing Virgil a spiffy gold-topped cane in return, Doc said, “Well, certainly, Marshal—I would not want to create any undue excitement amongst the citizenry.”

Virgil, who was not renowned for his sense of humor, only said, “Raise your right hand, Doc.”

Doc did.

“Do you swear to—”

“I do. Shall we get on with the ball?”

Then the three blue-eyed, dark-blond Earp brothers and the hollow-cheeked, haunted-eyed blonder Doc started up Fourth Street. The Earps were indistinguishable from one another, six-footers with handlebar mustaches and black Stetsons and long black coats and black trousers with black string ties adorning soft white collars. Doc’s hat was a wide-brimmed black but his long coat (worn cape fashion, over his shoulders) was gray, his shirt pastel, his mustache as sweeping as his companions’ but his lips pursed in a whistle. The steps of the Earp brothers had a grave inexorability, but skeletal Doc seemed almost jaunty.

The fall afternoon—it was going on three p.m.—was crisp and cold, the wind making their coats flap and slap at their legs, and the icy sting on Wyatt’s cheeks only helped keep him alert. Snow dusted the street, making their footsteps crackle; the wooden sidewalks under overhangs were empty, but eyes glittered in store-front windows. Word had spread.

“Wyatt,” Morgan said softly, the youngest Earp’s eyes moving to and fro, “how do we know how many of these damned Cowboys we’re facing?”

“We don’t.”

“God knows how many have ridden in to back Ike’s play. What if they’re on horseback?”