Gunman's Rhapsody

One

The road from the railhead in Benson ended with an uphill pull into Tombstone, and the horses were always lathered as they reached level ground and finished the trip on Allen Street in front of Wells Fargo. They were blowing hard when Bud Philpot tied the reins around the brake handle and climbed down to help the passengers out. Wyatt stayed up on the box holding the double-barreled 10-gauge shotgun that the company issued to all its messengers for the stage run. The intown guards were issued twelves. When the money box was on the ground, Wyatt climbed down after it and followed as Philpot carried it into the office. Since he’d hired on as a shotgun messenger there had been no holdups, and when there had been holdups, before he took the jo0b, they had always taken place on the road. Still, he saw little sense in being ready for no holdups, so he forced himself always to assume that one was about to happen.

Wyatt rode the empty stage with Philpot on around to Sandy Bob’s barn on the corner of Third Street. Then he got down and walked a block down to Fremont, where he and his brothers had been building houses. There were four of the houses done, including the one he lived in with Mattie, and another one under way.

Virgil was there with Allie, sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. Virgil was five years older and a little thicker than Wyatt, but they looked alike and people sometimes mistook Wyatt for his brother. He was always pleased when they did.

“Thank God,” Mattie said when he came into the kitchen.

She had on a high-necked dress and her hair was tight around her square face. Her cheekbones smudged with a red flush made her look a little feverish. Probably whiskey. Whiskey made her lively. Laudanum made her languid.

“Safe at last,” he said.

“Don’t laugh at me, Wyatt,” Mattie said. “You know about Victorio leaving the reservation.”

“I heard,” Wyatt said. “But I didn’t see him on the road from Benson.”

“Oh, leave her be, Wyatt, you know the Apaches are real,” Allie said. “People are coming in from Dragoon.”

“That so, Virg?”

Virgil nodded. He held his coffee cup in both hands, elbows on the table, so that he had only to dip his head forward to drink some.

“Everybody in Tombstone’s worried. There’s talk they’ll attack the town,” Mattie said.

She spoke in a kind of singsong, like a girl telling someone her lesson.

Wyatt broke the shotgun, took out the shells and put them in his pocket. He closed the shotgun and leaned its muzzle up against the door frame.

“How many Apaches are out?” Wyatt said.

“Clum says ’bout fifty.”

“How many armed men we got in Tombstone?” Wyatt said.

Virgil dipped his head forward and drank some coffee.

“More ’n fifty,” he said.

Wyatt nodded absently, looking past Mattie out the back window at the scrub growth and shaled gravel that spilled down the slope behind the house.

“Well, I’m glad you’re home safe,” Mattie said and got up and walked to him and put her arms around him. He stood quietly while she did this. And when she put her face up he kissed her without much emphasis.

“Go down the Oriental, Virg? Play a couple hands?”

Virgil nodded. He put down his cup, stood up, took his hat off the table and put it on his head. Allie frowned at Virgil.

“Maybe we’ll just come along,” Allie said. “Me and Mattie. See what the high life looks like.”

“No,” Virgil said.

“Why not?”

“No place for ladies.”

“Ladies?” Allie said. “When did we get to be ladies?”

“Since you married us,” Wyatt said and opened the door.

“I didn’t marry no ‘us,’” Allie said. “I married Virgil.”

Virgil grinned at her and took hold of her nose and gave it a little wiggle.

“And a goddamned good thing you did,” he said.

Then he went out the door after Wyatt.

They walked a block up to Allen Street. It was winter, and cold for the desert with the threat of snow making the air seem more like it had seemed in Illinois before a blizzard.

“Kinda hard on Mattie,” Virgil said.

“I know.”

“She’s doing the best she can,” Virgil said.

“So am I.”

They walked along Allen Street. You could see the breath of the horses tied in front of the saloons. The early evening swirl of cowboys and miners moved hurriedly, wrapped in big coats, hunched against the cold.

“She ain’t much,” Virgil said.

“No,” Wyatt said, “she ain’t.”

“Still, you took up with her.”

“Yep.”

Virgil put his left hand on Wyatt’s shoulder for a moment, then they pushed into the Oriental where it was warm and bright and noisy.