The Last Kind Words Saloon: A Novel (8 page)

“All you have to do to acquire a barbershop is shoot the barber, which I’ll be glad to do,” Doc said.

“It’s my experience that people will shoot dentists even quicker than barbers,” Wyatt said. “Let’s find a saloon and soak our tonsils.”

They were about to go in one of the battered little frame buildings when a cowboy on a bay horse came surging through the swinging doors. The bay jumped the little porch and went tearing down the street; then it broke into bucking and quickly managed to throw the cowboy.

“That cowboy’s name is Teddy Blue, he works for Shanghai Pierce, or did,” Wyatt said.

“I don’t know him, neither,” Doc said. “That cowboy nearly trampled me—we ought to at least go pummel him.”

“If there’s ever a restless cowboy it’s Teddy,” Wyatt said. “I tried to arrest him once in Dodge, but he got on with a herd and went all the way to Montana. I didn’t know he was back on the plains until I saw him ride out that door.”

“Montana’s a fine place to freeze to death, I hear,” Doc said.

“I need to travel with someone better educated,” Wyatt said. “There are few subjects you can even discuss intelligently.”

“I don’t claim to know much: cards, fucking, and dentistry about covers it,” Doc said.

“I entrusted my wife to my brother Warren, I hope he gets her here safe,” Wyatt said. “What’s the best thing we can do while we’re waiting for them to get here?”

“If you’re not going to let me pull teeth, then next best recreation would be to get drunk.”

“I vote for drunk,” Doc said.

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Teddy Blue, having been
decisively thrown, lay for a while in the main street of Mobetie, Texas. Fortunately none of his fellow cowboys noticed his weak performance as a bronc rider. He had ridden his horse into the saloon on a dare from a whore—his practice was always to accept dares; it spiced life up a little. As he lay in the street, very drunk, he could hear laughter, though nothing seemed particularly funny to him. He had drunk plenty of whiskey; when he awoke it was to find none other than Wyatt Earp dragging him to safety at the side of the street.

“You’d be better off living in Montana, Blue,” Wyatt said. “You’re too young to be run over in a damn worthless place like Mobetie.”

“I need a job,” Teddy said. “Know of any herds heading north?”

“Blue, I just got here, and besides I ain’t a cattleman,” Wyatt said. “I don’t keep up with herds.”

“Charlie Goodnight’s probably got some, but he’s stiff, I hear. Don’t he own the panhandle now?”

Teddy’s head began to throb—the whiskey he drank had been of a low quality.

“Are you conscious?” Wyatt asked.

Teddy saw the whore who had made the dare; she was on the porch of the saloon, looking at him. Her name was Emma. She was small but vigorous. And she was sweet on him.

It took Doc and Wyatt both to get Teddy Blue solidly back on his feet, but when he was upright he went back across the street to see Emma. As soon as he sobered enough he meant to collect on his dare.

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A week after Lord Ernle’s
death in Palo Duro Canyon, Buffalo Bill Cody died in Denver. Nellie Courtright tapped out the news on a special telegraph key provided to her at Cody’s request. Nellie had been nervous. She wept so hard at the news that she could barely see the special key, and, in any case, she had not been a practicing telegrapher in years; but Cody insisted and she could not deny him. All in all he had been fine with her, really fine. Often they joked about marrying, without doing anything about it.

Nellie was by then writing for a number of magazines, some of them steady customers. Not an hour after she tapped out “Buffalo Bill is dead” to a grieving world she got a telegram from the
New York Sun
, asking her to go to Texas and write about the great castle on the Canadian River that a cattleman named Charles Goodnight now seemed to own. Of course Nellie remembered the Goodnights—once she had impulsively kissed Charlie, she remembered. She was needing money just then—she had six girls to educate and clothe so she immediately took the job.

The railroad would take her most of the way; for the rest she hired a buggy.

Goodnight had busied himself by providing ample pens for the thousands of cattle he planned to bring up the trail. Nellie was not surprised to see the huge pen, but she was surprised to see San Saba in a smaller pen with several wiry-looking mustangs. She wore a large hat and a leather skirt and was trying to get one of the mustangs to accept the halter—the horse eventually did, and she led it over to the fence.

Goodnight and Mary met her on the steps of the vast shell of a house—there were tents in the great hall.

“Hurrah, it’s Nellie, my favorite visitor,” Mary said.

“Probably your only visitor,” Nellie said. She did not bug Charlie and wondered if he remembered her impulsive kiss. It was hard to know much about Charlie, though he did seem to consider himself the boss of the panhandle.

“I’m off to south Texas to round up a herd,” he said. “What did you want here, Miss Courtright?”

“Charlie, we’ve known one another a good long while,” she said. “Can’t you even call me by my first name?”

“Yes, do it, you big fool,” Mary told him.

“I was brought up a certain way and it wasn’t the way you two was brought up,” he said.

Just then Bose walked up with Goodnight’s horse.

“Hi, Bose,” Nellie said. “Charlie I have to write about you for
Collier’s
magazine,” she said. “What do you have to say about the late Lord Ernle?”

“He should have watched where he was going,” Goodnight said. He mounted and rode away.

“A girl could wait a long time for a goodbye kiss,” Mary said. She sounded annoyed.

“I saw San Saba in a pen with some mustangs,” Nellie said. “That’s unusual.”

“It is,” Mary allowed. “None of Charlie’s horse breakers like to deal with mustangs so he let San Saba have a try and she seems to be doing a fine job, which surprised Charlie no end.”

At dusk they ate a simple meal of greens, mainly, using only a tiny corner of the great table Lord Ernle had brought in. They also had the rump of a young antelope.

“It’s rather like veal,” San Saba said. Flo ate with them—Mary liked her and had persuaded her to cut her hair. In one little room of the great house they found an immense quantity of powders, unguents, lotions, and the like. Nellie, who paid attention to her appearance, was amazed by the profusion.

“All this and only three females to use them,” she said.

“Oh, Benny brought that stuff for his boys,” San Saba said. “He liked to have five or six around—and call me Saba, I’ll call you Nellie.”

Nellie knew there were men who favored boys, but she didn’t know where Lord Ernle would have found any in the empty panhandle of Texas.

“I’ve got this magazine to satisfy, Saba,” Nellie said. “Wouldn’t you at least let me do an article about you? I’ll be discreet, I promise.”

San Saba smiled and changed the subject.

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Sultry nights and lightning
were bad things on a cattle drive, Goodnight knew. He insisted that his cowhands keep their horses on a short rope at such times, as a precaution against stampedes. It was the right thing to do, but not all cowboys were wise enough to do it, some were unable to sleep with a horse practically right over them.

Goodnight was renowned in Texas for his vision, which few could equal. Once his own wife Mary held up a cattle drive for several hours because she and the trail boss thought they saw Indians. Goodnight arrived, glanced at the Indians, cussed for a while before informing Mary and the trail boss that what they saw was merely a pair of yucca plants.

Goodnight’s hearing was the equal of his eyesight, and on this particular night it was his hearing that saved him. To the west he heard a thunderclap and the sky went white with lightning; before it fully darkened the cattle were up and running. Goodnight yelled a warning, then he swung on his horse and ran; the thunder in the heavens was soon drowned out by the hoofbeats of thousands of cattle.

The stampede filled the plains; cattle were running on a front fifty miles across. What Goodnight knew that the cowboys didn’t was that three huge herds were stampeding: his, a herd belonging to cattleman Shanghai Pierce, and one belonging to Dan Wagoner. There could be as many as ten thousand cattle running—maybe more.

Some stampedes could be turned, if the cowboys were skilled enough. But there was no turning this mass, Goodnight knew. In a lightning flash he saw Bose, fifty yards away and running for his life. Blue balls of static lightning ran along the horns of some of the cattle.

Goodnight’s deep-chested gelding Mackenzie—he was named for the great cavalry officer Ranald Mackenzie—had as much wind as any horse. Goodnight was no trained bareback rider; he could only cling to the gelding’s mane. If he fell off he’d be dead. Fortunately the plain was level, with few dips.

At the castle the women sat on the unfinished porch, chatting late. Nellie made a few notes—she intended to write about the now-abandoned castle.

“You don’t know what a luxury this is for me,” Mary said. “Having women to talk to. Talking to Charlie is much like talking to a stump.”

San Saba was weaving; abruptly she stopped.

“What is it?” Mary said. She suddenly had the sense that the earth itself was moving. The porch they sat on began to shake a little.

“It’s cattle,” San Saba said. “We best get in that tower Benny had built. Quick.”

“Good lord,” Nellie said. She could just see a kind of mass, to the south.

“Quick, quick, quick,” San Saba said, pulling Flo with her. She began to herd the women up the stairs into the strange tower Benny had had built. She was just in time too: cattle began to surge through the castle, smashing the great table. A steer tried to come up the stairs behind, but his long horns wouldn’t allow him into the stairwell.

“It’s a flood of cattle,” Nellie said—the whole castle shook from their passage.

Just as Nellie thought the whole structure might collapse the tide of animals began to ebb. The lightning still flashed, but not so close by: the distant plains danced with lightning.

In one of the flashes Mary saw Bose, carefully making his way through the remnants of the herd, toward the castle.

“Trust Bose to come through,” Mary said. “Charlie says he’s the best cowboy there is.”

“Even better than himself?” Nellie asked.

“I don’t think Charlie considers himself a cowboy—Charlie mainly considers himself a boss.”

It occurred to Mary that Charlie just might be dead. He had told her many times that anybody can be dead, and dead any day.

It could just be a matter of a man’s luck running out.

In the lightning flashes she could see the carcasses of a dozen or more cattle, trampled to death by the surviving herd.

Mary got a lantern going and the light caused Bose to lope over their way.

“Glad you made it, Bose, where’s Charlie?” Mary asked.

“Don’t know,” Bose said. “He was riding bareback, off east of me. Then I didn’t see him again.”

Mary felt a stab of fear. Her husband might well be dead. For all her griping at him, she really did love him.

“He might have gone back and tried to find his saddle,” Bose said.

“Anybody killed?”

Her imagination was in full flower—she was imagining her husband dead.

Nellie Courtright had the same thought. Lord Ernle, Bill Cody, and now Charlie.

“Could you go find him, Bose? I’m plenty worried,” Mary said.

“I’ll find him,” Bose said. “Probably just looking for that saddle.”

“And hurry please,” Mary said.

Bose nodded, but he didn’t like to hurry; once he was out of sight of the ladies he slowed down, and took his time.

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“We’re lucky this town
had a good-sized tree,” Doc said. He was speaking about Mobetie, Texas, the town with one tree. He and Wyatt had just been concluding a successful night of card playing when the stampede arrived. The cowboys knew what it was—Teddy Blue was out the door and on horseback in seconds; but some of the gamblers were not so quick: they milled around in the street and three of them paid the ultimate price for it: they were trampled to jelly. Fortunately Wyatt remembered the one tree and the two of them got up in it just as the surge of cattle filled the street.

“Too many goddamn cattle,” Doc said, but no one heard him.

Wyatt had supposed he was alone in the tree, except for Doc; but then he felt something bump him. It felt like a head; in the next flash he saw that it
was
a head; indeed, two heads: twisted heads with bodies attached.

“Oh my god, we climbed the hanging tree,” he said, after which he immediately jumped to the ground, twisting an ankle in the process. It was several minutes before he could stand up but by then the big stampede had subsided.

“They’re just carcasses,” Doc pointed out. He himself had descended rather hastily but did himself no damage that he could find.

Dawn was breaking—the clarity of early morning lit the vast plain. Wyatt looked up at the two cadavers: both of them were young.

“I wonder if Teddy Blue made it to safety—or Charlie Goodnight,” he said.

As the light improved it was possible to see that, though the cattle had stopped running, hundreds of them were still there.

“There’s hundreds of cattle around Mobetie,” Wyatt said. “We could cut off a hundred or so and start a ranch. Jessie could be the cook.”

“No,” Doc said. “I abhor the mere presence of cattle.”

“It would be easy money,” Wyatt reminded him.

“Once you get beyond a milk cow you’ve got too many cattle,” Doc said.

“You wouldn’t have to milk any,” Wyatt said. “Maybe we could get Teddy Blue to come cowboy for us.”

“The day he starts is the day I part company with you boys,” Doc said.

“Oh, forget it,” Wyatt said. “We’ll just go on to Arizona.”

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