Gunman's Rhapsody

“You better be careful what you’re doing, ski

Doc stared at him for half a second and then threw the other drink into his face, glass and all. In a continuation of the gesture his hand continued on under his own coat and came out with a short silver Smith amp; Wesson revolver. He thumbed the hammer back as he drew the gun.

“Are you ready to die today?” Doc said.

There were red smudges on his cheekbones and his voice was high and metallic. He held the gun straight on the big man’s face.

The big man wiped the whiskey from his face and stared at Doc’s gun.

“You scrawny little bastard,” he said. “I ought to take that thing ’way from you and wring your goddamned neck.”

“Do it.” Doc’s voice had dropped to a shrill whisper. “Go ahead and do it, you sonova bitch.”

The space around the two men had cleared; one of the bartenders leaned across the bar and spoke to Doc.

“No sense to this, Doc, it was just an accident.”

Without taking his eyes off the big man, Doc swatted at the bartender with the back of his left hand. The bartender pulled his head back out of the way. Wyatt and Virgil got up from their table and walked over. They reached Doc at about the time the owner of the Oriental, Bill Joyce, appeared around the end of the bar.

“Goddammit, Doc,” Joyce shouted.

“You can be next,” Doc said.

The big man wasn’t backing down. He kept staring at Doc, his hand lingering close to his right hip.

Wyatt stepped in front of Doc, and Virgil stepped in close against the big man, pressing his own hip against the big man’s right hip.

“Enough,” Wyatt said. “Enough.”

“Get out of the way, Wyatt.”

Wyatt shook his head and with the palm of his open left hand gently pushed Doc’s gun away from the big man and up so that it pointed toward the pressed-tin ceiling of the bar. Then he closed his hand around the gun with two fingers between the hammer and the cartridge. They stood motionless for a moment in that posture and then Doc slowly opened his hand and Wyatt took the gun. He eased the hammer down and handed it to the bartender, who stowed it behind the bar.

Looking at the big man in the black coat across Wyatt’s shoulder, Doc said, “What’s your name?”

“John Tyler,” the big man said. “You better remember it.”

Doc smiled. “What’d you say it was?”

The two men looked at each other for another moment, each restrained by an Earp, then Tyler shrugged and turned and left the bar. He shrugged the collar up on his black coat and went outside without looking back. There was a brief surge of cold air as he opened the door and went out onto Allen Street.

By the time they got Doc back to the table the red smudge on his cheekbones had faded and the shrillness had left his voice. Bill Joyce sent him two fresh drinks. Doc picked up a glass of whiskey and held it up to the light. He examined it closely and smiled and nodded his head and drank it and put the empty glass down. Virgil had a sip of beer. Wyatt drank some coffee.

“Ought to drink more whiskey, Wyatt,” Doc said. “It’s very liberating.”

“Be liberating you right out of this world, one of these days,” Virgil said.

“Worse ways to go,” Doc said and drank from the other glass.

Before he went to bed Wyatt put some wood into the big iron stove in the parlor. He left the bedroom door open so that the heat would spread. He put his revolver on the floor beside his bed and got in under the heavy quilt where Mattie lay on her back. He could smell the whiskey on her breath. As he settled in, she turned away from him on her side, her back to him. He didn’t mind. He felt no desire. When he was with her he felt leaden.

Helps keep the bed warm, he thought. Good for something.

She’d been fun once. A good-natured whore with an easy temperament when he’d met her in Dodge. His brothers had women with them, and Mattie Blaylock was eager to accommodate the man who’d run Clay Allison. But the fun had been mostly saloon fun. At home ironing his shirts, Mattie had lost much of the brightness that had gleamed in the gaslit cheer of the Long Branch. In truth, he realized, much of the brightness and the good nature had come from alcohol, and, domesticated, she could no longer consume enough of it, even boosted with laudanum, to be much more than the petulant slattern that was probably who she really was. Still, she could cook and her sewing brought in some money. And he didn’t have to spend much time with her. His brothers were here. There were prospects in Tombstone. There was money to be made. And he could use up most of his time trying to make it. Only at night did he feel loss, at night, or in those moments when she tried to make of their situation something more than it was. He hated her attempts to be affectionate, and he hated much worse her attempts to elicit affection from him. If she would merely provide him the domestic service he needed, he would ask for little more. A man needed a woman at home. Virgil had Allie, whom he considered a mouthy little bitch, but Virgil liked her. James and Jessie, Morgan and Lou, Wyatt and Mattie. He made a face in the cold darkness. Still, there was a symmetry to it, all the Earps, all their women. He thought about Josie Marcus with the big dark eyes whom he’d seen on stage. He knew she would be different. He felt his throat thicken, and the center of himself fold inward. He felt Mattie’s backside pressed against his under the comforter. He inched away, so that there was space between them, and thought no more of Josie Marcus, and lay leaden until he fell asleep.

Four

In July, Charlie Shibell, who was the Pima county sheriff, came over from Tucson and they ate antelope steaks, beans, and biscuits in the Can Can.

“Need a deputy,” Shibell said. “You got the background and I hear you got the temperament. You want the job?”

“How much?” Wyatt said.

“Pay ain’t the thing,” Shibell said. “Part of the job is to collect taxes; most of it’s easy collection-mining companies and the railroad. You keep a percentage.”

“Of everything I collect?”

“Yep.”

“Got to shoot anybody?”

“Not so often,” Shibell said. “When you do, you give me a voucher for the ammunition.”

“I got to keep regular hours?” Wyatt said.

“You mean, go to the jail and sit there every day? Hell no. You get them taxes collected, we’ll be happy over in Tucson.”

“I’m your man,” Wyatt said.

An hour later, with a star on his shirt, he walked up Allen Street to Vronan’s bowling alley, where his brother James tended bar. Wyatt had a badge again, like Virgil.

Behind the bar James poured his younger brother some coffee. He did it with his left hand. Wyatt knew he did almost everything with his left hand. He had taken a Rebel miniball in his right shoulder at Sharpsburg. And eighteen years later, his right arm still wasn’t much use. He could use it as a kind of support for his left hand, and he had learned to compensate so that most people didn’t notice that he was mostly one-handed until they had gotten to know him well.

“Morgan will want one too,” James said.

“He can do special deputy work for us,” Wyatt said.

“Virgil gets to be city marshal,” James said, “be a lot of special deputy work.”

Wyatt gri

“Better send for Warren,” he said. “Be work for all of us.”

Jim shook his head.

“Not my kind of work.”

“Got plenty of Earps for shooting,” Wyatt said. “We need you to manage our affairs.”

“Soon as we get some,” James said.

“We’re building the houses,” Wyatt said. “Some of our mining claims could work. We make some money dealing cards. Virgil’s a deputy marshal, and now I got this tax-collecting job and Virgil’s going to run for city marshal. Morgan got his shotgun work for Wells Fargo. And he and I do some private work for them, too. Things are looking up for the Earp brothers.”