Gunman's Rhapsody

“I practice,” Wyatt said. “Mostly in the morning, early. You don’t get good just packing a gun around. You need to work at it.”

“Can you draw very fast?”

“That’s the dime novel guff,” Wyatt said. “Fast ain’t anywhere near as important as steady.”

“I should think you’d want to get off the first shot.”

“Mostly I’d want to hit what I shot at,” Wyatt said.

“Well,” Josie said. “You’re still here. I guess the proof is in the pudding.”

“Never mind about my pudding,” Wyatt said, and they both giggled.

“I’m not sure I ever heard you laugh before,” Josie said. “I certainly never heard you laugh like that.”

“I’m a little different than usual,” Wyatt said, “when I’m with you.”

“You’re pretty different,” she said, and they both laughed again. “I heard that your friend Holliday was involved in the Benson stage holdup.”

“That’s just talk,” Wyatt said.

“I heard he was a friend of Billy Leonard’s,” Josie said.

As they talked Wyatt ran his hands lightly over her body beneath the covers.

“Doc knew him in Las Vegas,” Wyatt said.

Josie rubbed her cheek against his shoulder and shivered slightly as his hands moved over her.

“Don’t mean he helped him hold up the stage.”

“I even heard you boys did it,” Josie said.

“It’s cowboy talk,” Wyatt said.

“So who do you think did it?”

“Billy Leonard, Harry Head, and Jim Crane,” Wyatt said. “Like Len Redfield told us.”

“You know them?”

Her face was close to his. As she talked, he could feel her lips brush his very lightly.

“Uh-huh,” Wyatt said. “Rustlers. Len Redfield too, and his brother. Tight with the Clantons. They all ride with Ringo and Curley Bill.”

“I heard Curley Bill got shot,” Josie said.

“Up in Galeyville, fella named Jim Wallace, a shooter from over Lincoln County. Put one into Bill’s cheek, took out one of his teeth.”

“Oh, poor man.”

“Yes,” Wyatt said. “I was Wallace, I wouldn’t like my prospects.”

“I meant Bill,” she said.

“Oh. Well, Bill’ll get over it, probably better than Wallace will.”

She shifted slightly against him as his hands continued to move over her.

“ Lot of people think you did it, Wyatt. Say Marshal Williams tipped you to the big payload. Even on the posse, people say you and Virgil were just leading them around in circles.”

“Josie, we wasn’t doing the tracking. Billy Breakenridge was doing it first. Then Frank Leslie come out. He was doing the tracking. None of us can track like Frank.”

“I… don’t… care,” she said, trying to keep her breathing steady, “if… you… did.”

“Well,” Wyatt said, “I didn’t.”

His hands moved firmly now, and she pressed against him, squirming a little.

“You… think… Johnny… might be… spreading rumors… because…?”

“Because of us?”

Her breathing was so heavy now that it was hard for her to speak, and when she did it sounded very much like gasping.

“Yes.”

“Could be,” Wyatt said, and she arched against him and her mouth covered his and they stopped talking.

CHRONICLE

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow dies… Jesse James dies… Ralph Waldo Emerson dies… Richard Wagner’s Parsifal is performed.

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CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION

October 26-

At Waltham, in the Universalist Church, yesterday, was held a convention of The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of Middlesex county. In the morning devotional exercises were engaged in, Mrs. E. T. Luce presiding. In the afternoon Mrs. Talbot of Malden was in the chair, and there was a general discussion of the temperance question. Mr. R. B. Johnson presided in the evening when Mrs. R. W. McLaughlin delivered an excellent temperance address. The gathering was a large one, most of the unions being represented.

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THE HARVARD FOOTBALL ELEVEN

DEFEATS THE “TECHS”

October 26-

The Harvard eleven won its second victory from the Institute of Technology team, yesterday afternoon, on Holmes field, in the presence of a fair number of spectators.

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AMERICAN MARINES AT ALEXANDRIA

London, October 25-