Gunman's Rhapsody

Forty-five

It was a Wednesday night, three days after Christmas. Wyatt and Virgil were at the bar in the Oriental. Virgil had a glass of beer. Wyatt was drinking coffee.

“Allie was wondering when Mattie was going to move into the hotel with the rest of us,” Virgil said.

“Allie’ll have to ask her direct,” Wyatt said. “Mattie ain’t got much to say to me.”

“You ask her to come with you?” Virgil said.

“I told her she could.”

“And she said no?”

“She didn’t say anything,” Wyatt said. “Mostly she just cries.”

“Nobody’ll bother her anyway,” Virgil said.

“I know,” Wyatt said.

“How about Josie?”

“Allie asking about her too?” Wyatt said.

“Nope, me.”

“Hell, Virgil, this whole thing is about Behan wanting her back,” Wyatt said. “He’s not going to kill her?”

“Be a way to get at you,” Virgil said.

“No, Johnny ain’t much. But he won’t hurt her.”

“I agree he ain’t much,” Virgil said. “But since the fight and the trial he got a lot of people on his side now. And some of them are much.”

“Curley Bill?”

“Yep, and John Ringo. Billy Breakenridge is a pretty good man. And Dave Neagle.”

“And none of them would hurt Josie,” Wyatt said.

“How ’bout Ike?” Virgil said. “Frank Stilwell? Pete Spence?”

Wyatt nodded.

“Okay. Maybe they would,” he said.

“So whyn’t you send her to San Francisco, let her father look after her, until we clean this up?”

Wyatt drank some of his coffee, holding it in both hands, looking over the rim through the ribbon of steam that rose from the cup. He put the cup down and grinned at Virgil.

“ ’Cause she won’t go,” Wyatt said.

Virgil grinned back at him.

“I understand that,” he said.

Virgil finished his beer.

“Well,” he said, “time to go home.”

“The Cosmopolitan Hotel is not home,” Wyatt said.

“No, but the perimeter’s a hell of a lot easier to secure.”

“Home sweet home,” Wyatt said.

Virgil said good night and turned and walked out of the front door of the Oriental.

Wyatt gestured at the bartender for more coffee, and watched as it was poured. From the street came the sound of gunshots. Wyatt thought there were four. Shotguns, he was pretty sure. Two guns, both barrels? He turned toward the door as Virgil pushed into the saloon. The left side of him was bloody.

“I’m hurt, Wyatt,” Virgil said.

He seemed calm enough, but Wyatt knew that the first shock of injury often left you calm. It hadn’t yet started to hurt like it was going to.

“Where?” Wyatt said.

He stepped to his brother’s side and put his left arm under Virgil’s right arm and held him upright. Wyatt held a Colt.45 in his right hand, pointing at the floor with the hammer thumbed back.

“Empty building across the street,” Virgil said.

“I meant, where are you hurt?”

“Left side, left arm,” Virgil said.

“Can you walk to the hotel?”

“Yes.”

Wyatt turned to Blonde Marie.

“Go across the street and get Goodfellow,” Wyatt said. “We’ll be at the Cosmopolitan.”

Without a word Blonde Marie ran from the saloon.

They moved slowly out of the saloon, crossed Fifth Street, and walked almost the length of the block to the Cosmopolitan Hotel. It took them longer than it took the news. When they reached the hotel lobby Sherman McMasters was there, and Doc, and Morgan, all armed. Warren, slighter and darker than his brothers, was at the top of the stairs with a shotgun. Allie stood beside him. Her eyes were big, her face was white. When she saw them she clattered down the stairs.

“Bring him to our room,” she said.

Dr. Goodfellow came into the lobby, and behind him Blonde Marie, who stopped awkwardly just inside the door to stare at the Earp women as they gathered around Virgil.

“Oh Virgil,” Allie said, “oh goddammit, Virgil.”

Virgil put his right arm around her.

“Still got one arm to hug you with, Allie.”

Allie rested her head briefly against his shoulder and took in some air, and some of her briskness came back.

“Well, that’ll be plenty,” she said.

Wyatt and his brothers waited in the lobby while Goodfellow and a doctor named Matthews worked on Virgil. Blonde Marie in a burst of enthusiasm had sent one of the other whores to get Dr. Matthews, just to be on the safe side.

Doc was drinking in the lobby, walking back and forth with a whiskey glass and a bottle, swearing to himself, his black coat open and tucked on the right side behind the butt of his revolver. Sherman McMasters and Turkey Creek Jack Johnson were outside on the porch with shotguns. At two-fifteen in the morning, Dr. Goodfellow came down the stairs.

“Wound in his side is nothing,” Goodfellow said. “But his left arm’s a mess. We’re going to have to take the elbow out.”

“Will he be able to use it afterwards?” Wyatt said.

“Not much,” Goodfellow said.

“He can still shoot,” Wyatt said.

“A handgun,” Goodfellow said and moved past Wyatt to take some medical supplies from George Parsons. Wyatt turned and looked at Morgan.

“You heard the doctor?” Wyatt said.

“Yes.”

“Shots came from that construction on the corner,” Wyatt said. “Get a lantern.”

He and Morgan went out of the hotel and walked back up Allen Street, the lantern casting its uncertain light ahead of them. It was a cold night, and the stars seemed very high. The saloons were still. Light and sound spilled out of the Oriental across the street and the Crystal Palace on the opposite corner. The life in the saloons seemed to intensify the empty silence of the street. On the corner of Fifth Street, Huachuca Water Company had a building half built. They went in.

“Virgil would have come out of the Oriental and walked across Fifth Street,” Wyatt said. “So they would have to have been standing about here. Two men with shotguns.”

Morgan moved the lantern.

“No shell casings,” he said. “Nobody used a Winchester.”

“Goodfellow said it was all pellets,” Wyatt said.

They stood looking around the partial room. It seemed colder in the empty, partly open building than it had on the street.

“Virgil’s always been fine,” Morgan said.

Wyatt nodded.

“Seems funny,” Morgan said, “thinking about him not being fine.”

“I know.”

“I mean he can still shoot a Colt, I guess. But he can’t shoot a rifle, can’t fight a man except one-handed. I mean, it’s like Virgil ain’t quite there anymore.”

“I know.”

“I guess Virgil will still know what to do,” Morgan said.

“It’s not the same,” Wyatt said.

“No, I guess it isn’t,” Morgan said.

“And it never will be.”

The lantern light picked up something lying beside a stack of rough siding. Morgan went over and squatted down, holding the lantern up.

“Somebody’s hat,” he said and picked it up.

Wyatt squatted beside him and they examined the hat. It was like everyone’s hat except that inside it, crudely burned into the leather sweatband, was a name: “I. Clanton.”

“Ike,” Morgan said. “Sonova bitch Ike Clanton.”

“Doesn’t mean he did it,” Wyatt said.

“What the hell does it mean?” Morgan said. “Mean that Ike goes around, throws his hat away in empty buildings?”

“Means we got a place to start,” Wyatt said.