The Old Colts (17 page)

The P.O. beamed and twinkled as he tore off the ticket. “Pass the hat. Who wouldn’t help Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson around here? I’d ante up a dime myself.”

Bat folded the ticket. “Well, hell, all right. I’ll get my ten bucks back from the town one way or another. Tell me, d’you pass out many of these?”

“How d’you think they pay my salary?” The long arm of the local law sobered up and saluted. “Good day, gents. And take it easy.”

“Yes, sir, Ossifer,” said Bat. “I’ll tie ‘er down to a trot.”

They moseyed into the Long Branch Pharmacy on Front Street. Two big glass globes hung from the ceiling down over the counter, both containing liquid, evidently, one blue and one orange. Before the turn of the century, these had been used as retorts in which to percolate herbs and medicinal substances—peppermint leaves and alcohol, for example, produced peppermint oil; digitalis leaves and other chemicals, digitalis for heart patients. Now they survived as eye-catchers.

“Something I can do for you?” asked the pharmacist in white jacket and long nose and rimless specs.

“I want to buy some whiskey,” announced Wyatt. “Two pints—easy to carry.”

“Medicinal purposes?” asked the pharmacist.

“You could say so.”

“I sure need it,” added Bat. “Just got a speeding ticket.”

“Harvey nabbed another one, huh?”

Bat winked. “Also we’ve got a date tonight. Our age, you need a tonic.”

The pharmacist turned solemn. “Well, we’re dry, you know. Got a doctor’s prescription? Can’t wet your whistle without a prescription.”

“I have one,” said Wyatt. “From Dr. Colt.”

“Hmmm, Dr. Colt... Dr. Colt...” The pharmacist frowned. “Can’t rightly say I know a Dr. Colt.”

Wyatt moved round the end of the counter to him, drew three pounds of steel from under his jacket, and placed the muzzle in the pharmacist’s ear.

“You know him now,” said he.

“Yessir, I surely do, sir.” The pharmacist selected two pint bottles from a goodly stock under the counter, and placing one under the spigot at the side of the blue globe, began to fill.

“Blue whiskey?” said Bat.

“Yes, sir,” replied the pharmacist. “Blue whiskey, and orange gin in the other one. That’s how I keep it—state liquor agents in and out of here all the time.”

“Looks like embalming fluid,” Bat commented. “D’you turn blue when you drink it?”

“Not a bit,” the pharmacist assured him. “Leastwise my best customer says not.”

“Who’s that?”

“The undertaker.”

The lights went out in the Popular Cafe that night at ten o’clock.
Like drugstore cowboys champing at the bit, Bat and Wyatt waited on the sidewalk in front for the Fedder fillies.

“They’ll be out any minute,” said Wyatt. “You take Birdie—she’s more your type. I’ll handle good ol’ Dyjean.”

“It isn’t gonna work,” worried Bat.

“With blue whiskey it will.”

“They think we’re too old.”

“They’ll be surprised.”

“They said so, last night.”

“You wait.”

“You know how much luck we had with those damn Ginger Sisters.”

“We’re home. Our luck’s changed.”

“They don’t even believe who we are—we don’t have a prayer.”

“You wait,” declared Wyatt. “Listen, even a blind sow picks up an acorn now and then.”

Arms entwined, a few paces apart, two couples strolled past the
Beeson Museum and Old Front Street toward Boot Hill. The stars were fat, the moon was skinny. The night was a retort in which various elements percolated, so that the air was aromatic of growing grain and broken dreams and bank vaults and oil of romance and cattle pens and sexual satisfaction or your money back.

“You got the gift of gab, all right, whoever you are,” admitted Birdie Fedder.

“Whoever I am?” said Bat. “I assure you, my dear, that I am W.B. Masterson, a sports writer for the New York
Morning Telegraph
—my column’s in it every day.”

“I’ll catch you yet. Kids growing up around here learn a lot about Masterson and Earp.”

“They do? Glad to hear it.”

“If you’re actually Wyatt Earp,” said Dyjean Fedder, “what’re you doing back in Dodge?”

“I’m sorry,” said Wyatt, “but I can’t say.”

“I thought not. You’re just handing me a line. We know a lot about Earp and Masterson around here.”

“Is that a fact.”

The young ladies wore their waitress uniforms, but they had taken off the ticking aprons.

“You’ve never been to New York, I presume?” Bat inquired of Birdie.

“Are you kidding? I went to Wichita once, though. Do they really have trains that run under the ground?”

“Subways? They certainly do. A nickel a ride—from the Bronx into Manhattan and on to Brooklyn.”

“You could of read all that in a book.”

“Could have but didn’t. I happen to have some liquid refreshment with me,” Bat purred, producing the pint. “Would you care for a nip, my dear?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Birdie uncorked the bottle and fired down a dram. Bat followed her example. She was taller than he, and already rising in his esteem.

“I know Wyatt Earp lives in California,” said Dyjean.

“He does. I do.”

“Where?”

“Well, I’ve lived in San Diego and spent considerable time in San Francisco, and I have a house now in Vidal. Have you been to California?”

“Don’t make me laugh. Garden City, Kansas—fifty-three miles. That’s how far west I been.”

“And east?”

“Wichita. Me and Birdie went once.”

“I have some whiskey.” Wyatt produced a pint. “Like a drink?”

“Sure, why not?”

Dyjean uncorked the bottle and give it a good tilt, a sociable act which seemed to Wyatt, as he followed her example, a hopeful sign.

“You’re married,” Birdie accused Bat as they resumed their stroll.

“That’s right. Twice over.”

“Twice!”

“I have two Indian wives. Comanche. Took ‘em with me to New York and put ‘em in vaudeville. They’ve got a crackerjack act—shoot arrows at each other and throw tommyhawks and bring me in a damn good income.”

Birdie giggled. “You liar. You’ve got one wife and you’re a real live wire. You all are. I bet you give your old lady fits.”

“I bet I do. But listen, she’s no duck soup to live with either.”

“How long’ve you been hitched?”

“Twenty-five years.”

“No kidding. Say, how old are you?”

“Old enough to know better.

“I’ll drink to that.”

Birdie stopped and held out a hand. A gracious Bat gladly produced the bottle.

“Are you married?” Dyjean asked Wyatt.

“I am.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“What?”

“That you’d say so. They never do. They always say they’re not till they get what they want and then they tell you they are. Married. I wish I was.”

“You should be. A strapping girl like you’d make someone a mighty fine wife.”

“Don’t say that.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I might cry.”

“Here.” Wyatt stopped and quickly produced the pint. “This will help.”

Dyjean uncorked. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You’re nice, whoever you are.”

“Thank you, Dyjean.”

Two steps and two snorts later they reached Boot Hill and gathered in a foursome to take in the sight. What they saw was a puny, pee-poor grassed area with a gravel walkway through it and surrounded by a low stone wall. A number of headboards were stuck here and there, the lumber suspiciously new, with burnt-in names and dates and epitaphs: Levi Richardson, Cockeyed Frank, Dora Hand, Alkali Ike, Toothless Nell, Two-Toed Pete, etc.

“Damnation,” said Bat in disgust. “This isn’t Boot Hill.”

“Another damn tourist trap,” said Wyatt.

“How would you two know?” asked Dyjean.

“How would we know?” demanded Bat. “Because we did a hell of a lot of planting up here, that’s why! And because I recollect they dug ‘em all up and moved ‘em out to Prairie Grove Cemetery—when was that, Wyatt?”

“Around 1879.”

“I thought maybe they’d brought some of ‘em back, but they haven’t,” said Bat, subsiding. “Just another damn game for the ginks, that’s all.”

“Well, ha-ha-ha, this takes the cake,” jibed Birdie, hands on hips. “A fake Bat Masterson and a fake Wyatt Earp come back to a fake Boot Hill.”

The two males scowled at her.

“Come on, don’t go ‘way mad,” she said, slipping her arm in Bat’s.

“No, don’t get all het up,” said Dyjean, slipping her arm in Wyatt’s.

“Okeh,” said Bat.

“Likewise,” said Wyatt.

They strolled the gravel walkway through the headboards, then separated, each couple sitting in the starlight at a discreet distance from the other on the low stone wall, each gentleman’s arm about his lady’s waist as they studied the names and dates and epitaphs and partook of Dr. Colt’s prescription from the Long Branch Pharmacy and whispered sweet nothings in the nearest ear.

EDWARD HURLEY

SHOT JAN. 1873

HE DRANK TOO

MUCH AND LOVED

UNWISELY

“Where you from, Birdie girl?” Bat inquired.

“Right here—where else?” she sighed.

“Dodge?”

“No such luck. Down on the farm—Ford County. Sixteen miles south of here. You hiding the bottle?”

“No, here.”

Birdie had one for Ford County.

“Big family?”

“Three brothers and three sisters—I was the middle girl. Fat chance I had.”

“So you came up to Dodge.”

“I was twenty-one.”

“The bright lights.”

“I could see my future on the farm—there wasn’t none. An old maid for sure.”

“Stuck in the kitchen.”

“And no tips.”

GEORGE HOYT

SHOT JULY 26, 1878

ONE NIGHT HE TOOK A

POTSHOT AT WYATT EARP

“LET HIS FAULTS, IF ANY,

BE HIDDEN IN THE GRAVE”

“Me and Birdie are cousins—her folks’ farm was just down the road from ours.”

“Sodders?” Wyatt asked.

“Our grandfolks. Sod houses and all that, way back when. I guess they had it awful hard.”

“They sure did. How come you came to Dodge?”

“Well, we was both in the same boat. Cook and do chores and hope some boy with cowshit on his shoes would marry us so we could cook and do chores. Our folks didn’t mind we left—one less mouth to feed. So we come to Dodge and took a room together and waited for the lightning to strike. Been here seven years now.”

“How’s it turned out?”

Dyjean hesitated. “I can’t even talk about it, ‘less I have a drink.”

“Certainly.”

Dyjean hung the bottle high and long.

“Blue,” said she, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. “Long Branch.”

SHOOT-EM-UP JAKE

RUN FOR SHERIFF 1872

RUN FROM SHERIFF 1876

BURIED 1876

“Anyways,” Birdie continued, “we roomed together and got waitress jobs at the Popular and been there ever since. Waitressing, waiting— same difference.”

“For what?”

“Whatta you think?”

This time Birdie didn’t ask for the bottle. She took it. But before she could drain it, Bat grabbed it back. This girl had a hollow leg.

“We was young and dumb,” she said. “We thought we’d have lots of dates and we could pick and choose—oh, brother. The town boys wouldn’t give us the time of day—they go with the town girls. George Beanstone and those stuck-up bastards.”

“Beanstone?”

“The banker’s son. Anyways, we soon found out, me and Dyjean. If we wanted any fun, we had to take it where we could get it.”

“Where was that?”

“The O’Neal House.”

“The O’Neal House?”

“Where we’ll be in about ten minutes after you get us boozed up enough.”

“Why, we wouldn’t—”

“The hell you wouldn’t!” Birdie suddenly dissolved. “Traveling salesmen!” she blubbered, hitting him in the chest with a fist. “Old coots like you!”

JACK WAGNER

KILLED ED MASTERSON

APRIL 19, 1878

HE ARGUED WITH

THE WRONG MAN’s BROTHER

“It didn’t,” said Dyjean. “Turn out, I mean. We been at the Popular seven years. I was twenty-one when Birdie and me come to Dodge—do your own ‘rithmetic. The town boys couldn’t see us for sour apples.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Too bad? That’s terrible! How many library books can you read? How many picture shows can you go to on your nights off? How lonesome can a body be?”

Before Wyatt could offer consolation, Dyjean had the bottle and provided her own. He polished off the little left. This girl had a hollow leg.

“You must have a little fun now and then,” he said lamely. “Everybody does.”

“Oh sure.”

To his embarrassment, Dyjean suddenly burst into tears and buried her face in his chest.

“Oh sure we do! Just like tonight!”

“Tonight?”

“Drinking and sitting around looking at old graves and then going to the hotel!”

“The hotel? We wouldn’t—”

“The hell you wouldn’t!” Dyjean bawled into his shirt front. “We’re whores now, me’n Birdie—no better’n whores! Only we don’t get paid for it—all’s we get’s blue boo-hoo whiskey!”

ALICE CHAMBERS

DIED 1878

SHE WAS A FAVORITE OF MANY

“CIRCUMSTANCES LED ME TO THIS END”

“We don’t need a light,” whispered Birdie.

“Okeh,” whispered Bat.

“Where’s him and Dyjean?”

“Next room. 110.”

“Could they walk in on us?”

“Door between’s locked.”

“Is there a key?”

Birdie took off her blouse and skirt. Bat took off his coat and slung it over the back of a chair.

“What in the world’s that?”

“A shoulder holster.”

“No, I mean in it.”

He took it out. “My gun.”

“I’ve never seen such a big gun—yes I have. In the Beeson Museum. What is it?”

“A Colt forty-five.”

“That’s what they used in those days, wasn’t it? Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp.”