The Old Colts (4 page)

William Barclay Masterson
.

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp
.

“You’re supposed to be in California.”

“Trains run both ways.”

“Why didn’t you let me know?”

“I didn’t let anybody know.”

“Wyatt.”

“That’s right.”

“I’ve never been gladder to see a guy in my whole life.”

“You sure fixed me up a welcome.”

They have a closer look at each other.

“You’ve put on some weight,” says Bat, which is untrue but the only thing he can think of to say.

“You’ve lost some hair,” says Wyatt, which is true and only a Wyatt would say it.

“Too many sharp turns under the sheets,” says Bat.

They grin.

“Well, this is where I live, upstairs,” says Bat. “And you, too, as long as you’re in town. Let’s go.”

They retrieve hats and Wyatt’s valise. Then, entering the building, the great gunfighters climb the stairs leaning on each other and puffing like steam engines going up a long grade.

The place of honor
above the mantel of the tile fireplace was overwhelmed by the huge hind end of a bull buffalo with bold lettering on a brass plaque: “TO BAT MASTERSON, THE MAN WHO NEVER TURNED TAIL!”

On one wall was a banner: “IF MEN WILL SPIT, WOMEN WILL VOTE!”

On another wall was another banner: “DOWN WITH JOHN BARLEYCORN!”

“Committee out in Kansas sent me the buffalo ass and I’m proud of it,” Bat panted. “The others are Emma’s. She’s suffragette and W.C.T.U. You remember Emma Walters in Denver, in the burlesque at the Palace, song-and-dance, pretty as a picture. We’ve been married twenty-five years, doesn’t seem possible. A sweet woman, Wyatt—worships the ground I walk on.”

The rest of the living room was a coleslaw of chairs and tables and two horsehair sofas and lamps with frosted shades and tasseled satin pillows embroidered with such sentiments as “I Had A Swell Time At Coney Island!” and “God Bless Our Happy Home” and “Remember The Maine!” and pots of Boston ferns—all of these agglomerated on an Axminister carpet featuring faded pink and purple roses.

“Home sweet home,” said Bat. “You still married to Josie?”

“Yup.”

“Out in California, where d’you hang your hat?” Bat hung his own over a lampshade.

“We own a little place in Vidal. Summers we hitch up a wagon to some mules and camp out in the desert.”

“Give me the bright lights.”

“Thank God I’m a country boy.” Wyatt was shucking his jacket and necktie. “I’ve been in New York two days. Three people tried to pick my pocket, a guy was going to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge, and tonight I get beaten up. What this town needs is a good Marshal.”

“I’d have you wash up,” said Bat, “but you have to go through the bedroom to get to the bathroom and the missus is asleep.”

“No need,” said Wyatt. “I pissed on a Buick.”

They undressed, backs to each other, shoving shoes under tables and spreading garments over the bric-a-brac like bushes.

“Even so, it’s all here in New York,” said Bat, taking up the thread of conversation as he took off a sock. “Wine, women, and song, and bigger and better than Dodge. And no damn cowboys to contend with. Oh, there’s what they call ‘gangsters’ now, but they keep out of sight. You can walk down any street, day or night—”

“Like tonight?”

“Never happened before.”

“Who were they?”

“Oh, a couple of mugs.”

“You know ‘em?”

“They work for a bookie.”

“You owe money?”

“Wait’ll I show you the sights!”

“You owe money?”

“You ever ridden on a subway?”

“Bat, you owe money?”

“Me? Not me. I’m no Vanderbilt, but they treat me handsome at the paper and I play a little poker and hit it big on a horse now and then—you recall, I was always lucky.”

They turned. They stared.

“What the hell are those?” asked Bat. “They still wear longjohns out West?”

“What the hell are those?” asked Wyatt.

“BVD’s—the latest thing.”

“What the hell’s going on out here?”

This was Mrs. Masterson, emerging from her boudoir in bathrobe and bare feet and blear eyes and rag curlers. She was no longer pretty as a picture.

“Ah, good morning, my love,” said Bat. “Like you to meet an old friend of mine from the old days—he’ll be our guest for a while. Emma, this is—er, uh—Mr. Dave Mather.”

“Another Dodger,” said Emma.

“We used to call him ‘Mysterious Dave,”’ said Bat in his BVD’s.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am,” said Wyatt in his longjohns.

“What am I running—a flophouse?” asked Emma of no one in particular.

“The mystery was, how he made a living, heh-heh,” said Bat.

“I’ll bet,” said she.

“You have a nice place here, Mrs. Masterson,” said Wyatt.

“You have blood on your mustache, Mr. Mather,” said Emma.

“My dear, we had the misfortune to collide with a lamppost,” said Bat.

“Drunk,” said his spouse.

“My ribs are stove in—have you got some balm you can apply?”

She went into the bedroom while Bat brought bed-clothing from a closet. When she came back he lowered his BVD’s from the top and she smeared his ribcage with goosegrease from a jar with one hand and held her nose with fingers of the other.

“Owww, be careful,” he accused.

“Do you know what time it is?” she accused.

“Time for the arms of Morpheus,” he smiled.

“But not for mine,” said she. “I’m not bedding down with that stink. You sleep under the stars out here.”

She went into the bedroom again and returned with a clothespin and a slopjar. She held up the clothespin. “Put this on your nose.” She held up the slopjar. “Put this over your head. I won’t have either of you traipsing back and forth with a bladderful of booze.” She handed them to her husband and moved toward the bedroom.

“When you get up—noon, I expect—I’ll be gone.”

“Where to?”

“Coney Island.”

“Goodnight, Mrs. Masterson,” said Wyatt.

“Coney Island?” asked Bat.

“I appreciate the hospitality,” said Wyatt.

“That’s right, Coney Island.”

“What for?”

“To have a swell time.”

They made beds of the horsehair sofas, only to discover that Wyatt’s was too short because he was too long, so that his legs from the knees hung over the end. To remedy, they pushed a table to that end as an extender, and he could lay his lower legs on it.

“I introduced you as Dave Mather. Okeh?”

“Fine.”

“You better be old Mysterious Dave from now on. The papers get wind of who you really are and you’ll be a sensation. Crowds after you like a movie star.” Bat turned out the lights and bumbled around in the dark and furniture until he found his sofa and sat down on the edge. “By the way, how long might you be here?”

“Depends.”

Bat affixed the clothespin to his nose, took it off, and sniffed.

“Damn goosegrease.” He affixed it a second time. “I know one thing. You’ll be with me, and after tonight, being with me won’t be healthy. We better be heeled.”

“Heeled? We wouldn’t know the business end from the butt any more.”

“We can still pull a trigger.”

“Just about.”

“Anyway, we better get permits tomorrow.”

“Permits?”

“Have to have one here.”

“Where’ll we get the guns?”

“I’ve got a drawerful at the office—sell one to a sucker now and then. You might as well know—times have changed. This town’s as tough as Dodge ever was. Maybe tougher.”

Wyatt was silent.

“Well, goodnight, Wyatt.”

“Goodnight, Bat.”

Bat pushed some pillows around and lay down and tangled himself in a sheet. Wyatt was already stretched out, and appeared as well situated as a body could be with his pedal extremities eighteen inches higher than his head.

“I still can’t believe it,” Bat said, after a time. “Nobody else would either.”

“What?”

“Wyatt Earp in New York City. The two of us together again.”

Bat was right as rain. It was an incredible reunion. Friends for forty-four years, until tonight neither had seen nor heard from the other in this new century. They had met as young men, almost as boys, hunting buffalo on the Salt Fork of the Arkansas in the winter of 1872—73; and if, in the granite Wyatt, Bat found the first hero of his life, Wyatt probably found in Bat a kid brother more lickety-split than any of his own. Wyatt was dignified. Bat aspired to be. Wyatt cut the tongues out of hard cases with his fists, a skill Bat envied. Wyatt was greased lightning with a handgun. Bat resolved to jerk and fire till his finger fell off. Behind a big Sharp’s rifle, Wyatt could figure carry and windage close enough to bring a buffalo down five times out of six at half a mile away. Bat would equal or bust. Wyatt was smart. “I think his outstanding quality was the nicety with which he gauged the effort and time for every move,” Bat would one day write of him. “That, plus his absolute confidence in himself, gave him the edge over the run of men.” As far as the callow Bat was concerned, the sooner he could raise his own crop of self-confidence the better.

Wyatt was honest, too, all wool and a yard wide, and there were damned slim pickings of such men on the plains. Most admirable of all, his hero had an iron rail for a spine. Years later, in the February 1907 issue of
Human Life,
Bat described Wyatt Earp as “absolutely destitute of physical fear.” Bat the boy hoped he had been born brave—but supposing he hadn’t, and guts were a commodity you could go out and get, he knew where to go. In the Wild West you wanted a fearless friend, one you could rely on in a tight spot, and now he had one. And so, he swore, would Wyatt.

The next twenty-five years tested the two to the utmost. Come day, come night, come snow, come dust, in silent street and ear-split saloon they backed each other’s play. Up and down a frontier where whiskey was dear and life was cheap, each was ever-ready to sacrifice his own precious hide to save the other’s. Even when events separated them, a wire from Wyatt put Bat, wherever he was, on the next train, and the reverse. They were marshals together in Dodge, with all the shit and shooting that implied, and deputy sheriffs of Ford County. They hit leather out of Tombstone after Luther King, who bushwhacked poor Bud Philpot off the seat during a stage robbery, and brought the murdering mother back. When competitors tried to steamroll Luke Short out of Dodge because he’d hired a lady piano player for the Long Branch, Bat and Wyatt and Charlie Bassett and Neal Brown and several others like-minded and armed came in from various points of the compass, appointed themselves a “Peace Commission,” settled matters PDQ, had their picture taken for posterity, and paid for a piano tuner. In the late ‘80s the pair worked in cahoots at times as secret agents for Wells, Fargo, ranging even into Mexico when required. Later they found congenial employment and lodging in Denver. Bat presided over a faro layout at the Arcade, and Wyatt dealt from the top of the deck at the Central, but they commanded the same respect and lived in the same boardinghouse. It was there, in Denver, that their trail finally forked. Bat married and started a boxing club—no connection —and eventually lit out for New York City. Wyatt headed north, to the Dakotas after gold, and later to the Yukon. History did not record their farewell.

As boy buffalo hunters they met. As middle-aged men, and legends in their own time, they parted. About the breadth of their relationship, in terms of people and places, much was known; about its depth, little.

One fact was indisputable. In twenty-five years they had never thrown down on each other.

Bat’s ribs hurt like blue blazes.

“Wyatt?”

“What?”

“You might as well know. I’m henpecked as hell.”

“Me, too.”

Bat came over, pulled up a chair, and sat down. “Something else. I’m stone broke. If John D. Rockefeller offered me one of his dimes, I’d grab it.”

Wyatt sniffed, reached, detached the clothespin from Bat’s nose, and affixed it to his own. “So am I,” he said. “Broke.”

“No. I heard you made a pile in Alaska.”

“I did. Then I got shystered in real estate around San Diego. Then my claims in Nevada petered out. I’m living off Josie’s money, and she never lets me forget it. That’s why I’m here.”

“Why?”

“I need a new stake. Bad.”

“I’ll be damned. So do I. I’ve had a long streak of bum luck. I’m in hock to a bookie up to my neck. That’s why we got manhandled tonight. That’s why we gotta carry iron from now on. The next time they won’t be so gentle.”

They were silent.

“I thought, New York City’s where the money is and Bat is. If there’s anybody I know who can take a pot with a pair of treys, it’s Bat.”

Bat detached the clothespin from Wyatt’s nose and affixed it to his own. “Trust me. I’ll think of something,” he said, and went back to bed.

Under the goosegrease Bat’s ribs began to burn, and one
frond of a Boston fern dangled down far enough from a table to pester his forehead. He twisted and looked over through gray light and could see his friend’s big feet on the end table outlined against a window.

“Wyatt?”

“What?”

“You comfortable?”

“As can be.”

“Sorry about the sofa.”

“No, I’ve got a cricky right shoulder—pain comes and goes. Arthritis.”

“My legs cramp a lot. My feet get so cold I have to wear socks in bed. Poor circulation.”

“Bat, how old are you?”

“None of your damn business. How old are you?”

“None of your damn business.” They were silent.

“We didn’t even recognize each other,” Bat said.

“A couple of old Colts,” Wyatt said.

They were silent.

“Wyatt?”

Wyatt barely heard him over the early-morning roar of the city cranking up for another go-round. “What?”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“Thanks.”

“Damn glad.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

“That was bad tonight. You hadn’t come along, I’d be in the hospital really bunged up.”

“How much do you owe?”

“Over three thousand.”

“My God.”