Gunman's Rhapsody

Eleven

It was early September before Wyatt talked with Josie Marcus again. He met her on Fremont Street outside Ward’s Market. She was carrying a brown paper bag of groceries.

“May I carry that for you?” Wyatt said.

“Yes you may,” Josie said. “And thank you very much, Mr. Earp.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d call me Wyatt.”

“If you’ll call me Josie.”

“Fair swap,” Wyatt said. “How’ve you been enjoying Tombstone, Josie?”

“Well, it certainly is lively, Wyatt.”

They both laughed at the self-conscious exchange of first names.

“Johnny talks about you a lot,” Josie said. “He’s worried about getting to be sheriff.”

“How about you, Josie?”

She laughed.

“I don’t want to be sheriff.”

Wyatt smiled. He looked to her like someone who didn’t smile easily or often, so when the smile came it was valuable.

“Would you like it if Johnny were?”

“Johnny says it’s a good-paying job.”

“I hear it is.”

“Then I guess I would like it if Johnny were sheriff.”

“Nothing wrong with money,” Wyatt said.

“I know,” Josie said. “My father has money.”

Wyatt was quiet for a time as they stood on the corner of Fourth Street, outside the post office, waiting for a freight wagon to pass, the six big draft horses leaning their mass into the harness.

“You’re from San Francisco,” Wyatt said.

“Yes.”

“And your father has money.”

“Yes. Quite a lot.”

“So why are you here?”

She smiled up at him. Her mouth was wide. Mattie had a thin mouth that turned down at the corners.

“Looking for adventure,” she said.

“With Behan?”

She laughed out loud this time.

“Wyatt, you’re speaking of my fiancé,” she said.

“I know. I apologize,” he said. “But I never thought Behan was much for adventure.”

“Well, maybe,” Josie said. “He’s been a law officer, you know. In Prescott.”

Wyatt nodded.

“That’s adventurous, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

The wagon pulled past. They waited a moment for the dust to settle, and then crossed Fourth Street.

“You’ve been a law officer in a lot of places.”

“Yes,” he said. “I have.”

Her face was sort of heart-shaped, and her eyes were very large and dark and seemed bottomless to him. When she talked she had none of Mattie’s Iowa whine in her voice. In fact, you couldn’t tell where she came from by the way she talked. She sounded educated to Wyatt, and the way he assumed upper class would sound. He wasn’t sure he’d ever met anybody upper class before. Certainly he’d had little to do with the daughters of rich men.

“My brother Virgil was a constable in Prescott,” he said. “I did some teamstering up there for a while.”

“Did you or your brother know Johnny?”

“No.”

They were quiet then. Walking side by side, Wyatt carrying the groceries, they could have been a domestic couple strolling home from the store.

“I heard you buffaloed John Tyler a while back in the Oriental,” Josie said.

“He was making trouble.”

“Everyone says he’s really dangerous.”

Wyatt smiled.

“Maybe they’re wrong,” he said.

She nodded as if to herself, and tilted her head so she could study him as he walked beside her. Outside of Bauer’s butcher shop, across the street from the Tombstone Epitaph, Josie stopped. Wyatt stopped with her. She put her hands on her hips and examined his face for a moment. Whatever she was looking for there, she seemed to find.

“You’d be an adventure,” she said.

“You think so?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s why Johnny worries about you.”

“Because I’m an adventure?”

“Because everything’s inside,” she said. “Everything’s under control. You don’t hate and you don’t love and you don’t get mad and you don’t get scared. You are a dangerous man, the real thing.”

“Maybe I’m not so much like that as you think,” he said.

“Oh, I’m sure you have feelings,” she said. “But they don’t run you.”

“They might,” Wyatt said. “If they was strong enough.”

“Lord, God,” she said. “That would be something to see.”

“It would?”

“It would,” Josie said. “Then you would really be dangerous.”

Wyatt didn’t comment. And they continued down Fremont Street, past the Harwood House toward Third Street, walking quietly, feeling no discomfort in their silence.