Territory (40 page)

But were there omens in the natural laws of his strange new country? How was he supposed to sort out superstition from fact, when what ought to be superstition had become the heart of a sort of bastard engineering?

The prints were flanked by a pair of American flags threaded with wire along their edges and shaped so they seemed caught in the midst of billowing in the wind. Young trees in pots, their branches studded with artificial flowers among the real leaves, stood on either side of the stage and at intervals along the walls. They interrupted the many gilt chairs placed along the room’s edges for the dancers’ relief.

“What did I tell you?” Mildred said happily. “Bang-up. There’s really no other expression that will do.”

“Passable.”

“If you’re going to tease, I wash my hands of you.”

“No, no, I’ll be very good.” Jesse looked into Mildred’s open, smiling face and knew that in spite of danger, loss, and every other dark fact of life, he would rather be here, now, than anywhere else in the world or time.

The band on the stage consisted of piano, string bass, snare drum, clarinet and fife, and two violins. The floor director called out from the stage, “Ladies and gentlemen! Take places, please, for the grand march!”

Jesse led Mildred to a place in the line of what were about to become dancers. “You
have
done this before?” Mildred asked suddenly.

He looked across their hands and saw that it was a serious question. “A little bit,” he assured her, and the fiddles began to scrape out the opening bars of the march.

The line of marching couples snaked through the hall, admiring one another’s clothes, noting the presence or absence of friends, and who was on whose arm. Mildred nodded and smiled at a daunting number of people. He tried not to feel jealous of any of them. Mildred had been here for over a year, a long time in the life of the camp; she had work and a position in the social fabric, and so she had friends. Jesse was a drifter on his way to Mexico.

Worse, she was a woman in a man’s profession, so she could hardly be starved for sensible male company. In a dime novel, he could rescue her from a runaway coach, and that would settle both their futures. Life set the bar considerably higher.

By the time the floor director called sets for the quadrille, Jesse despaired of ever seeing a particle of happiness again. He turned to look longingly at Mildred on his right, and found her grinning at him.

“Jesse, if you let your thoughts wander, you’re going to forget the figures.”

That pleasant, uncommon sound: his name in her voice. And he was happy again, just like that. Ballrooms were for tonight’s pleasure, not tomorrow’s worries. He could agonize like an undergraduate over breakfast.

“I never forget the figures,” he assured her. The fiddles struck up again, and he bowed to his partner.

They arrived late, but since Kate arrived late everywhere, Doc hadn’t expected anything else. He had no great fancy for the opening promenade, anyway.

They hurried under the overhang and Doc folded the umbrella. Kate peered through the windows at the latecomers in the foyer, and beyond them the dancers in the ballroom swirling through the figures of a quadrille. In the light from the window she was flushed, and her eyes were bright. She smiled at Doc dizzyingly. “Oh, Doc, this beats anything for fun.”

“Even if I take all your waltzes?”

“Now, you have plenty of chances to get your arm around me.”

“Never enough.” Best not to say that he had little enough opportunity to
thwart the chances of other men. But he loved to waltz, and Kate was graceful and bird-light on a dance floor.

The end of a cigar glowed red in the shadows near the door. Doc stepped between it and Kate. But it was Morgan’s voice that said, “Hello, Doc. That Johnson boy growed up yet?”

“If it were any business of yours, I would tell you,” Doc said cheerfully.

Morgan moved into the light and tipped his hat to Kate. “Evening, Mrs. H. Save me a polka?”

“Oh, no,” Kate replied, laughing. “My shoes are brand-new.”

“I promise I won’t tread on ‘em.”

“Then I guess if you wrote your name down for a polka, I wouldn’t hide when it came ’round.”

Morgan turned to Doc. “Jim Crane’s at Gray’s ranch. Frank Leslie went out to bring him in.”

Even tonight, the Earps’ concerns would intrude. Kate was right: they needed time away from Tombstone. “Really?” Doc raised his eyebrows, to make sure even Morgan couldn’t mistake his tone. “Well, then, that’s all taken care of, isn’t it?”

“Hell, yes. Either Frank’ll shoot him, or he’ll shoot Frank and run for Mexico. Either way we’ll be done with him.”

Only Kate’s presence kept Doc from saying,
If you hadn’t thrown in with him, none of us would give a damn about Jim Crane.
Instead he replied, “Of course Frank Leslie will draw on Jim Crane. If Crane is dead drunk and unarmed. Or were you thinking of a back-shooting?”

Morgan’s eyes narrowed; he looked for a moment so like Wyatt that Doc had to review the conversation to make sure he wasn’t talking to the wrong brother. “Frank’s no coward.”

“Did I say so? I only do him the favor of thinking he’s not stupid.”

Morgan sighed. “Damn. I guess we’ll be riding out with a posse after all.”

“Not I,” Doc declared. He felt Kate beside him, a warm presence in the wet night air. “Kate and I are going to Leadville for a while.”

“No, really? Hell, wish I could go with you. But you know how it is— Wyatt’s got all of us runnin’ after something.”

“Don’t let him wear you to a stub.”

Morgan laughed. “There’s too much of me for that.” Doc took Kate’s arm, and Morgan added, “Mrs. Holliday, you remember that polka.”

“You remember it yourself,” she retorted.

As Doc opened the door for her, she squeezed his arm and smiled up at
him. “You’re welcome,” he murmured as they passed into the light and heat of the ball.

Mildred had forgotten an important fact about Tombstone. However sophisticated it had become, it was a mining camp still. There were more men than women in it.

Her dance card was full; she’d had to decline the honor of dancing with half a dozen gentlemen. She danced the schottische with Frederick Austerberg, who begged for a repeat of the pleasure at the ball the Turnverein Society planned for August. She enjoyed a breathless, light-footed polka with Richard Rule, who was smiling for the first time since the news about Garfield had arrived. Sheriff Behan partnered her in a mazourka, good-natured when she couldn’t at first remember the steps; after the dance, until her next partner claimed her, he talked sensibly about town politics. She danced with a young officer from Camp Huachuca, who told her about his sisters back in Minnesota. She thanked God that her shoes fit her well, because she didn’t sit down for five minutes together.

Jesse Fox’s name was on her card for the Lancers, the last dance before the intermission. She’d seen him in the sets in the course of the evening, and had even been on his left in one of the quadrilles. His partner for that dance was a very young lady whose name Mildred couldn’t remember, a fey-looking brown-eyed creature. During the schottische he’d caught her eye; he was standing against the wall near the stage, and when she looked, he donned a mournful expression. She’d grinned at him.

“So, Mrs. Benjamin,” said John Dunbar, beaming and blotting his face with his handkerchief. He’d just galloped her through a polka redowa. “Who shall I deliver you to?”

Mildred checked her dance card to be sure. Yes, she’d been looking forward to this. “Mr. Wyatt Earp has put his name down for the waltz.”

“And here comes the lucky fellow.”

Wyatt Earp slipped sideways between the milling couples at the edge of the floor. He looked surprisingly grim; but as he approached, he smiled at Mildred.

“Hi, Wyatt, good thing you didn’t waste any time, or I’d have been tempted to keep the lady,” Dunbar said to him. “She’s like dancing with a feather.”

“Good to hear. I’m no great hand at dancing, but I’ll try to do you justice, Mrs. Benjamin.”

Interesting, she thought. A man who’s not much for dancing comes to a ball anyway, and not to escort his wife. Why, then? “Oh, I’m sure we’ll get along, Mr. Earp. Thank you, Mr. Dunbar.”

Dunbar bowed to her. “Pleasure’s mine, Mrs. Benjamin.”

When she turned back to Earp, he said, “If I get in a scrape, you’ll pull me out, won’t you?”

Mildred folded her fan. “But, Mr. Earp, on the dance floor the lady must be guided by the gentleman. Besides, you wouldn’t want to be rescued by a female, would you?”

To her surprise, Earp only smiled wider. “Oh, a little nudge with your elbow or a nod the way I’m supposed to go—that wouldn’t be against the rules. Would it?”

“You may count on me,” she said gravely. He nodded and, when the floor manager called for the couples to assemble for the Aurora waltz, led her onto the floor.

Earp was in luck, then, and so was she; the Aurora was the simplest waltz she knew. One didn’t need to pay careful attention to the figures, and could converse with one’s partner. Earp proved to be a precise, rather stiff dancer, but he knew what the calls meant, and didn’t lag behind the measure in executing them.

When they reached the top of the set and came together to waltz, it was Earp who began the conversation.

“How do you like your work, Mrs. Benjamin?”

“Very much.”

“I’d think it would put you in the way of a rough crowd.”

“Oh, reporters are the most protected of creatures. Even the roughest fellow knows that if he gives us trouble, he’ll suffer for it in print.” She smiled brilliantly at him.

He quirked his eyebrows, and his mouth under his moustache. Mildred thought he knew she’d meant that as a barb. But he was amused, or chose to be amused. As they circled decorously back to the top of the set, Earp asked, “How did you meet Mr. Jesse Fox?”

“He came in to buy a paper. Is he one of the rough crowd?”

“He’s not much known, and doesn’t always keep good company. I’d worry to see a sister of mine take up with him.”

He looked sincerely concerned for her. Mildred found herself warming toward him; he was kind, and had more of a sense of humor than she’d expected. Then she remembered Mattie Earp, and Sadie Marcus, and Allie’s
ironic comment. “But then,” she replied, “you’re very protective of your womenfolk.”

At that point they cast off, turning away from each other at the top of the set and passing to the bottom. When they reached it, whatever reaction he might have shown was gone. They had little chance to talk until they were head couple again, and waltzing.

“I suppose Virgil’s missus has been giving you an earful,” he said as they went up the set.

“It does seem hard that your wife has so little social life.”

Another man might have recommended, as delicately as possible, that she mind her own business. Earp smiled sadly instead. “You’d have to know Mattie. I’ll bet she seems shy to you. But on her own, she does things she regrets mightily later. I have to protect her from herself.”

“Really?”

“I think she’s … well, maybe not quite right. It’s good of you to offer her a little decent female company.”

Which, in two short sentences, dealt with both his wife and his sisters-in-law. By the time Mildred arrived at the top of the set she had an entirely new opinion of Wyatt Earp.

They cast off again, and when they arrived at the bottom of the set it was Mildred who had her social face fastened on once more. The dance called for couples to all swing as the last figure in the sequence, and when they did, Earp said, “You won’t say anything about that to anyone, will you?”

They were parted by the dance, and the top couple whirled up and back and up the set between them. When Mildred came together with Earp again, she said to him, as sweetly as she knew how, “Of course not, Mr. Earp. What sort of name would I deserve, if I blackened a helpless woman’s character behind her back?”

His face turned red and rigid. They finished the dance in silence, and Earp’s arm, when he led her off the floor, was like stone under her hand. He left her without a bow, and without giving her over to her next partner.