The Old Colts (12 page)

“Wyatt Earp!” she exclaimed, giving a good imitation of Fanny Brice. “Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson! And forgot their bullets! Good gravy!”

They looked sheepish. She plumped the bedding on a sofa. “Well, come to bed, Bat. You tuck in, too, Mr. Earp. Little boys need their sleep.”

But he couldn’t.
He had much on his mind.
And besides, he wasn’t accustomed to hitting the hay before four in the morning, and it was not quite two ayem. Emma was dead to the world. He eased away from her and out of bed and went carefully into the living room where Wyatt was sawing wood on the sofa, lower legs laid up on the table. He nudged the sleeper’s arm.

“Wyatt, you asleep?”

Wyatt’s eyes flew open and his hand clutched something.

“What’s that?”

“My wallet.”

Before retiring, they had split the four hundred take.

“You mean you don’t trust me?”

“I do not. What d’you want?”

“I can’t sleep. I was thinking—nobody’s taken a shot at me in twenty years.”

“Me either.”

“Funny. Here we put on a show at the Knickerbocker— trying to kill each other—and a little while later, on my own street right in front of my own place, it was no damn show. Rubs me the wrong way.”

“Likewise.”

Bat, in his BVD’s, pulled up a chair and sat near. “Rothstein’ll kill me if he can, you know. That way he scares the shit out of everybody owes him dough. If he’ll bump off Masterson, he’ll bump off anybody—so pay up, boys, or else.”

Wyatt closed his eyes.

“Funny,” Bat mused. “In the old days, when I was in a fix I could set up a faro layout or go out and shoot a carload of hides. You, too. Times have caught up with us, I guess. Or passed us.” He laid a hand on his ribs as though they were still sore. “You really going home tomorrow?”

Wyatt opened his eyes. “Yup.”

“Why?”

“Well, for openers, I was pounded around good and then I got half-choked to death with an iron bar and then you lost all my money and my train ticket and made a damn fool of me in front of a lot of other damn fools and then I was nearly gunned down.” Wyatt yawned. “We’ve run out of rope, Bat. This town’s not big enough for both of us. I’m getting out.”

Bat held his face and hands for a minute, then said in the same mournful tone he had tried out with such success on the congregation in the Knickerbocker Bar, “I’m a dead duck.”

Wyatt closed his eyes.

It was after five and there was gray light through the windows
and the clip-clop of a milkwagon down on 49th Street when Bat rushed into the living room and grabbed Wyatt’s arm and Wyatt’s eyes flew open and he clutched his wallet.

“Wyatt, the hell we have!”

“Have what?”

“Run out of rope! Listen—I couldn’t sleep—I told you I’d think of something! Wyatt, it’s time to pick our peaches!”

Wyatt heaved his lower legs off the table and sat up on the horsehair sofa in some disgruntlement. “What’re you talking about?”

“I’m talking about how to get the big money we both need—enough to set you up so you won’t have to live off Josie—enough to save my ass!” Bat babbled. “More than enough to put us on Easy Street!”

Wyatt rubbed his eyes. “You’re going to sell New York back to the Indians.”

“Goddammit, I mean it! All it’ll take is that four hundred bucks and a few days out of town. You’re leaving anyway, and I better make myself scarce. We’ll go together, okeh? Today. This afternoon. How about it? What’ve we got to lose?”

“Four hundred bucks.”

“An investment!”

“Lobsters.”

“Forget that!”

Wyatt scratched an itch. “If this is another of your lamebrained—”

“This is a sure thing! Wyatt, this is the most sensational son-of-a-bitch idea I ever had in my whole life!”

Wyatt looked askance at him, recalling Emma’s remark about being married twenty-five years to a man who never grew up. He lay down again, curled up, covered himself with the quilt, and closed his eyes. “I’ll sleep on it,” he said.

“Unless we’re too old,” said Bat, and waited.

It worked. After a while Wyatt opened one eye. “Too old to what?”

“Hear the wolf howl.”

The last time Bat had used his valise was on the trip from
Denver to New York in ‘02. It was no wonder, then, that he had to grub for it under a pile of these and those at the bottom of the bedroom closet. He blew off the dust and slung it on the bed.

“Emma dear, I’m gonna be out of town for a few days.”

This was news to her.

“Will you throw in a few things I might need?”

“Such as?”

“Oh, you know. Not much. Couple of shirts and ties, BVD’s, socks, you know.”

“Do you mind if I ask where?”

“Not if you don’t mind my not saying.”

“I have every right.”

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

“You’re on the run, aren’t you?”

“Yes and no.” He was buttoning his vest. He winked at her. “Let’s just say, honeybunch, that I seek a more salubrious clime. Anyway, I’ll go by the office first and ask Lewis for a leave of absence. Then I’ll be back, and Wyatt and I’ll be gone geese.”

“So will I.”

“Do you mind my asking where?”

“A meeting.” She opened a bureau drawer and began sorting out his things. “Where we sit around and spit and hate men.”

“Bully. As TR says.” He harnessed himself into his shoulder holster—which she noted—put on his jacket, surveyed himself in a mirror, pulled his wallet, came up behind her, and laid two twenties on the bureau top. “Here. You’ll need some dough-re-mi. Buy yourself some pretties. See some shows.”

She looked at the bills, then turned, suddenly, and flung her arms around his neck and drew him to her with such urgency that his breathing was obstructed by one of her rag curlers. “Oh, damn you, Bat,” she said. “Why do men do things like this?”

“Nature of the beast.”

“But you’re gone even when you’re here.”

He put his arms about her bathrobe. “Em, you knew you married a sporting man. Give us a kiss.”

She gave.

“Bat, will you please remember to wear socks in bed at night if you’re cold?”

“Sure thing.”

“How long’ll you be gone?”

“A week, more or less.”

She pulled back and looked him square in the eye and there was a tear or two in hers. “I love you, Bat.”

“My slopjar sweetie.”

She gave him another.

“One thing I’ll tell you, cupcake.” He was already adjusting his tie in the mirror over her shoulder. “When I get back, the Mastersons’ll be in clover.”

He was back from the
Telegraph
in an hour. Wyatt’s bag was packed, and he held up his shoulder holster with its freight.

“We’re leaving these, aren’t we?”

“Oh, no. We’re packing rods.”

Wyatt frowned. “Now you listen. If you sucker me into any more—”

“Just till we’re out of town.”

Bat went into the bedroom and came out with his valise strapped. Wyatt had armed himself and put on his jacket and hat.

“You bid the lady of the house farewell, I presume, Mr. Earp.”

“I did.”

“What’d she say?”

“‘Send me a picture postcard.’ I hope you told her you’re catching a train.”

“I did.”

“What’d she say?”

“‘Toot-Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye.’” Bat went to the buffalo ass on the wall and gave the tail a twist for luck, then gave his grand salon a final gander, then grinned. “Choo-choo, here we come!”

Wyatt stood like a stone wall. With a finger he rearranged some splayed hairs in his mustache, thinking. “No. Something I want to attend to first.”

“What?”

Wyatt told him.

Bat whistled alarm and said, slowly, “That would be very dangerous.”

“They’ve got it coming.”

“I don’t care to get it going.”

Wyatt smiled, then picked up his bag and headed for the door. “You’ll come.”

“The hell I will.”

“Unless you’re too old.”

They mosey through the cigar store on
43rd Street, past the wooden Indian and through the swinging door into the race room. It is three-thirty in the afternoon and the three bookies behind desks, including Eddie the Cuff, are active on the phones and boys are chalking up results on the track boards and the room is crowded with lovers of horseflesh and vicarious participants in the “Sport of Kings.” No one pays the new arrivals any attention as they shoulder through the crowd toward the billiard table at the rear of the room where, as they hoped, the two muscular-mugs pinstripe assassins are playing three-cushion, one bent over the table assaying an angle, the other watching him and chalking his cue tip. Mr. Earp moves up behind the one standing, Mr. Masterson behind the one bent. Mr. Masterson’s eyes at this moment are a glittery gray, Mr. Earp’s a cold and lethal blue. In a single motion Mr. Earp draws his Colt and raises it high. In a single motion Mr. Masterson draws his Colt and raises it high. Simultaneously they swing down and coldcock the mugs over the heads with the antique iron of the gunbarrels. The mugs fall forward over the table without a sound and commence to slide floorward in the manner of Texas cowhands. Before they hit the deck, however, Messrs. Earp and Masterson holster revolvers and catch the unconscious crushers and hoist them onto the table and lay them out on the felt as though on a slab in the morgue, faces up, arms at sides. This event has by now drawn the undivided attention of the entire room. Bookies hold the phones. Bettors and hangers-on stand where they are and goggle. Boys at the boards lean with arms asleep. Mr. Earp steps lively to the ball rack and returns to the table with two black eight-balls, one of which he hands to Mr. Masterson. Prying wide open the mouths of the seemingly moribund mugs, they ram the eight-balls in as they might apples into the mouths of roast holiday hogs, and stand back to approve their handiwork. Approving, the great gunfighters turn then and traverse the silent room with measured pace, Mr. Earp expressionless, Mr. Masterson nodding pleasantly to Eddie the Cuff, and disappear through the swinging door, Mr. Masterson humming the sprightly “Yacka Hula Hickey Dula.”

They were fifteen minutes early. Bat wouldn’t allow Wyatt
with him when he bought the tickets—a round-trip for himself, one-way for Wyatt, upper Pullman berths. They went together then across the great Grand Central hall, giving Wyatt time for a good gawk, and down the marble stairs and onto the underground platform, where they still had ten minutes to twiddle their thumbs before boarding.

“Let’s have my ticket.”

“Not on your tintype,” said Bat. “I paid for it.”

Being readied, the train hissed and chuffed and whined.

Porters and conductors and baggagemen and cleaning crews were on and off, on and off.

“I haven’t been on a real train in a dog’s age—Long Island doesn’t count,” said Bat. “Which side d’you mount from?”

“What train is this?”

“‘The Wolverine.’”

“Where to?”

“If I told you, you might not go.”

“What do we do when we get there?”

“I told you that, you sure as hell wouldn’t.”

“Then I sure as hell better not.”

“We’re gonna draw four deuces.”

“Goodbye.”

“Too late now.”

“Does anybody else know where?”

“No. I told Lewis the same thing I told Em. The two of us are dropping out of sight a few days.”

“What direction?”

“West.”

Wyatt brightened. “That’s more like it.”

Bat put down his bag. “Wyatt, tell me something. How come you pulled out of the Arizona Territory after Tombstone?”

Wyatt clouded, and put down his bag. “They framed me—the politicians. If I’d stuck around, they’d have hung me for Stilwell.”

“I thought so. The bastards. After all you and your brothers’d done to clean up the place.” Bat tipped his hat to a Kewpie Doll tripping down the platform. “Did you ever hear how I left Denver?”

“Nope.”

“I was having a drink by myself one morning at the opera house, the bar there, feeling pretty down in the dumps. I’d lost my shirt bankrolling fights. Somebody snuck up behind me and stuck a gun in my ribs. It was Jim Marshall—you remember him. The mayor and chief of police hired him to come over from Cripple Creek and do the job—they didn’t have the guts. Well, Marshall told me Denver was too up-to-date for an old gunhand like me. Said I had till that afternoon to get on a train. So I did. Sort of took the heart out of me. Came to New York.”

Wyatt shook his head.

“What I’m saying is, they gave us the boot, Wyatt. We were like those old Colts in my desk. They used the hell out of us, then threw us away. No damn gratitude. Well, I was thinking about it last night—that’s how I got this brainstorm. The West owes us. So if you have to know, that’s what we’re gonna do.”

“What?”

“Collect.”

Wyatt thought that over, then actually smiled. Bat grinned at him. It was good to be going away together again, loaded and ready for bear. It was like old times. On the shady side of middle age they might be, true, but they had been through thick and thin together, and nothing between them had changed, personally. Bat was a little thicker, Wyatt a little thinner, that was all.

People pushed along the platform. A whistle shrilled. Wyatt continued to smile, despite himself, and Bat to grin. The hiss and chuff and whine of the Wolverine excited them now. A bell clanged and a conductor cried “
Boooooooooord
!” and they swooped up their bags and almost kicked up their heels.

The day does not dawn. The day of 3rd May is buried at
birth under a crepe of cloud blacker than any in local memory. For those good folk abiding in and around Dodge City, Kansas, it is a day of portent. The Lord, they believe, is madder than a wet hen about sin or something. He may at any moment unleash His wrath in the form of lightning bolts, or floods, or tornadic winds, or quaking of the earth, or all of the above at once. But at eleven o’clock in the morning there occurs a phenomenon the causes of which can only be divine. It is as though He’s given things a think and changed His mind. It is as though a mighty hand passes o’er the heavens. The clouds roll back, as in ancient times the seas. A brilliant sun blesses His creation, set in a sky of benign blue. Some take note. A farmer, on his way to the elevator with a wagon of wheat, whoas his team in awe. Over a back fence, gossips lift their faces and their conversation to a higher plane. A minister, off on foot to console one of his flock, falls upon his knees in the middle of the street. Several of the faithful telephone the
Daily Globe
to inquire if the phenomenon heralds a Second Coming. Little do they know, or little reckon. But if they do not, the Lord does. It is indeed a Second Coming, and He has made a miracle in its honor. For at 11:14 exactly, the “Scout” clangs and grinds to a stop at the Santa Fe station in Dodge City, and two gentlemen descend the steps of their car to take their legendary place once more upon the plains of Kansas. They are William Barclay Masterson and Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp.