Gunman's Rhapsody

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 grinned.

“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.”

“In a little while,” James said, “they’ll probably be changing the name of this place to Earpstone.”

Wyatt smiled. He was holding his coffee cup in both hands, as if to warm them. When he drank he raised the cup only slightly and sipped by dipping his head down to it, his eyes moving slowly as he looked about him. Always on the lookout, James thought. All the time looking for the main chance.

“Things are looking up,” Wyatt said, “for the Earp brothers.”

He drank again from his coffee cup, his eyes looking out over the rim at the few miners who were bowling at midday, at the rough bar, at the door that opened onto Allen Street, looking at everything there was to see… and more.

Five

“You got no goddamned right rummaging around in my shed,” Frank McLaury said to Virgil Earp.

“Tracked them Army mules to here, Frank.”