Doc Read online

  Doctors don’t know nothing, she told herself. They said he’d be dead by now, but I’m good for him. He don’t cough with me.

  She waited until he slipped from her, then lifted herself and backed away. Leaving him asleep in the chair, she lay down on their bed and watched his thin chest rise and fall, rise and fall, regular and even.

  Well, a little shallow, a little labored …

  Don’t mean nothing, she told herself, but he looked so pale in the sunlight, his skin as colorless as his ash-blond hair.

  “Ne meurs pas, mon amour. Non morais,” she whispered in the language of love, and the language of prayer. “Don’t die on me, Doc,” she whispered, over and over, watching him until her own eyelids drooped and closed. “Don’t die on me. Don’t die …”

  When Wyatt Earp rode across the Arkansas River toll bridge into Dodge the morning after Johnnie’s funeral, it was not quite noon and the city was still pretty much asleep. Apart from a few hungover cowpunchers who’d drawn the short straw and had to work the stockyards, the only things moving were cottonwood fluff, dust, and Dog Kelley, who was crossing Front Street with half a dozen skinny greyhounds.

  Dog knew what was coming, and waited. “Wyatt,” he said. “Welcome back.”

  “You still mayor?” Wyatt asked.

  “Reelected in April,” Dog confirmed.

  “Still looking for a chief deputy?”

  “Job’s open yet.”

  “If you’d hired me in the first place,” Wyatt said, “Ed Masterson would still be alive.”

  Dog squinted up toward a clouding sky, scratching at the three-day beard on his stretched-out neck. “Wyatt,” he said peaceably, “you’re probably right about that.”

  Wyatt Earp was the most fearless man Dog Kelley had ever met, and Dog had known a fair number of truly brave men in his time, for he had ridden under the Stars and Bars in the late war, and courage was commonplace among his comrades. That said, Wyatt Earp was not quite the most arrogant bastard Dog had ever met, for Sergeant James H. Kelley had also served in the U.S. Cavalry after the war, scouting for General George Armstrong Custer. It was, in fact, a direct result of Custer’s unwavering, unflappable belief that he was something awful damn special in the eyes of God and man that Dog Kelley had inherited his former commander’s pack of coursers and wolfhounds, acquiring a nickname into the bargain.

  No doubt about it: George Custer took first prize for arrogance. But give the devil his due, Dog thought, watching Wyatt ride on. That prissy goddam sonofabitch comes in a real close second.

  Just then Bob Wright appeared outside his store with a broom. “So,” Bob said to Dog, sweeping up the boardwalk, “Wyatt’s back. That’s good news for the town.”

  “Could be,” said Dog.

  “Say, Dog! You suppose the town oughta hire Wyatt again?” Bob asked.

  Like he hadn’t already decided.

  “Maybe so,” said Dog.

  “Let’s talk about that at the city council meeting,” Bob said.

  Like it was a suggestion.

  “Whatever you say, Bob,” Dog replied, but his eyes were on Wyatt, who was halfway down Front Street now.

  I’ll take honest arrogance over fake humility any day, Dog thought.

  “See you at council,” he said.

  Bat Masterson was sitting in front of the Green Front. He was dressed like he was going to a wedding except for a black mourning band around his arm for his brother. Wyatt drew up.

  “Hey, Wyatt,” Bat called. “You finally shoot that two-dollar horse?”

  “This’s him. You spend all your money on clothes, or just most of it?”

  “Appearances count, my friend. Appearances count.”

  “I was sorry to hear about Ed. What happened?”

  “Drunk shot him.”

  “Hell. You get the drunk?”

  Bat looked like he was deciding something. Then he said, “Damn right I did.”

  “Good.” Wyatt glanced over his shoulder at the Elephant Barn. “When’d that happen?”

  “Monday night,” Bat told him, and looked away.

  It wasn’t until he found Morgan that Wyatt learned the rest.

  The first time a man was killed in Dodge, the corpse just lay around all day until, toward evening, somebody decided to dig a hole in a scrubby little hill northwest of Front Street. The deceased was buried as he’d died: with his boots on and without the dignity of a coffin.

  Boot Hill received sixty-two more bodies in the next three years—mostly killings, though smallpox took a few one season. At that rate, it wasn’t long before Dodge outgrew its makeshift cemetery. On top of the crowding, there was the additional problem of where to bury townspeople whose friends and families didn’t want to plant their dearly departed next to some overconfident fool who’d picked a fight with the wrong stranger in a bar. So Bob Wright opened the Prairie Grove Cemetery down by the Union Church. It was prettier than Boot Hill, but you had to pay to get in.

  Leave it to Bob, everybody said. Damn if he didn’t find a way to make money off you, even after you was dead.

  “It was a real good funeral, Wyatt,” Morgan told him. “Almost as handsome as the one for Ed Masterson. That priest—Alex? He came in from Wichita. The service was real pretty.” Wyatt was staring at the plank with Johnnie’s name and dates. “Wasn’t sure about his birthday … Did I get it right?”

  “Near enough, I guess.”

  “Alex said you took Johnnie in. After his parents.”

  “Owed him that much. Ramsey got off clean.” Wyatt ran a hand over his face. “I shoulda known better’n to let him stay in Dodge. He was doing good in school. I shoulda taken him straight back to St. Francis.”

  “Wyatt, I been wondering … Why’d you pick a Catholic school for Johnnie?”

  “White school wouldn’t have him.” Wyatt frowned and looked away. “I don’t guess there was any money in his room.”

  “Nope. Just his clothes and some books.”

  A wilted bouquet was lying on the mound. Wildflowers, purple and yellow and pink, but tied with a thin black ribbon. “Who left those flowers?” Wyatt asked.

  Morgan shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

  Wyatt bent over and picked up a playing card half-shoved into the dirt near the bouquet. Ace of hearts. There were some words written on it. “Mix forever with the … elements, brother to—What’s that word?”

  “Insensible.”

  “Brother to insensible rock. Make any sense to you?”

  “Sounds like some kinda poetry,” Morgan said. “Must have been Doc left that. He couldn’t come to the funeral, but he threw a hell of a wake for Johnnie.”

  Wyatt looked surprised. “Why would McCarty do that?”

  “Not Doc McCarty. Town’s got a dentist now. John Holliday. He says he met you down by Fort Griffin.”

  “Skinny? From Georgia?”

  “Yeah, that’s him. Bat says Doc’s real dangerous, but—”

  “Bat’s full of it. Always has been. But there’s talk about Holliday.”

  “No trouble here. Couple of fights with his woman. Kate’s registered as his wife at Dodge House, but about half the time she’s over at James and Bessie’s.”

  “Working?”

  Morgan smirked. “I don’t think she’s there for the uplifting conversation.”

  “His idea?”

  “Doc puts up with it. More like Kate pimps him, the way she finds poker games for him.”

  Wyatt looked at the card in his hand once more before pushing it back into the dirt where he’d found it.

  With anyone else, Morgan would have known what to do next. Take him to a bar or a brothel, or both. Get him drunk, get him laid. Wyatt might have been a happier man, and better liked, if he developed a taste for the commoner vices, but he didn’t drink and he didn’t fornicate. Didn’t even curse. Worst word he ever used was hell.

  “Jake Collar opened up a soda fountain in his place this spring,” Morgan told him. “How ’bout I buy you an
ice cream?”

  They walked back into town. It was getting hot. A gang of drovers came rumbling over the bridge, hollering and waving their hats and shooting into the air. One of them rode up onto the boardwalk and straight into the Long Branch.

  Wyatt watched, indifferent. Wasn’t his job to deal with them, not yet.

  He looked down the street toward where the old Elephant Barn had stood. The debris had been shoved off to one side. New walls were already framed up. A crew boss was yelling orders as two dozen men hoisted a truss into place. Wyatt would pasture Dick out by Anderson’s for now, but he could move the horse back into Ham’s by next week, looked like.

  For a long time, he said nothing at all but he was thinking hard, grateful that Morgan left him alone as he worked out what was bothering him.

  What business did Johnnie have in the barn that night? he wondered. Why would he go there at all? Johnnie Sanders didn’t have a horse.

  Stacking the Deck

  One by one, the Dodge City fathers assembled around the poker table on the second floor of Wright’s General Outfitting. Cigar smoke climbed the walls, pooling in the ceiling, filling the room like a fog.

  “Anybody know where Dog’s at?” Bob Wright asked, half an hour into the game. “I’ll raise, I guess.”

  “Start without him,” Deacon Cox suggested. “Call.”

  “Can’t do that, Deacon. Dog’s the mayor.”

  Chalkie Beeson folded. “Why ain’t you mayor, Bob?”

  “I’m awful busy these days, what with being representative and going to Topeka all the time. Anyways, it was Dog’s turn. Deacon?”

  “Pair of jacks.”

  “Well, all I got’s a pair, too, but they’re ladies,” Bob said, sounding apologetic.

  “Damn,” said Deacon. “Your deal, Chalk.”

  Several hundred dollars circulated. A great deal of detail about Chalkie Beeson’s new brass band was conveyed and ignored. A bottle’s contents disappeared. Finally the click of nails and the ropy thump of a long, nearly hairless tail announced the arrival of a bony harlequin hound hauling its narrow carcass up the stairs, a few steps ahead of Dog Kelley.

  “ ’Bout time, Dog,” Bob said quietly.

  “That is the ugliest animal I ever seen,” Chalkie said, just like he did every damn time the council met. “He ain’t got enough room in that skull for a prairie dog’s brains.”

  “Don’t have to be smart to be fast,” Dog said, sitting. “Told you not to bet against him Sunday. What’s the ante?”

  “Sawbuck,” Deacon told him. “Bob? Let’s get started.”

  “Well, all right, then,” Bob said. “I call to order the Dodge City Council meeting of June fourth, 1878, at”—Bob pulled out his pocket watch—“at nine forty-five P.M. Let’s begin with a prayer. Mayor Kelley?”

  Placing his palms together just like his dear old mother taught him, James H. Kelley aimed his eyes heavenward. “May the saints preserve us, the Blessed Mother protect us, and the Lord Jesus Christ save us from honest men and Methodists.”

  “Amen to that,” said Chalkie. “You don’t drink? Fine, but don’t tell the rest of us to go dry. Deacon! Ante up.”

  Deacon Cox tossed ten dollars into the pot.

  “And may God damn George Hoover to eternal hellfire while he’s at it,” Chalkie added. “Tell me that jackass ain’t putting together a Reform ticket to run against us again.”

  “The man is an opportunist,” Deacon said.

  “Know what an opportunist tells you?” Dog asked, looking straight at Bob. “Tells you who’s winnin’.”

  Takes one to know one, Bob thought.

  “Raise you twenty,” Dog said.

  Bob folded. “You fellas see who’s back in town?” he asked. “Wyatt.”

  There were groans around the table.

  “He wants chief deputy,” Dog told them, and the groans got louder.

  “Newspaper’s on his side, too.” Bob reached down for a copy of the Dodge City Times lying on the floor by his chair. “Says here, Mr. Wyatt Earp, who served with credit on the police force last summer, arrived in this city from Texas on Saturday last. We hope he will accept a position on the force once more.”

  “That teetotaling killjoy,” Chalkie muttered, tossing twenty into the pot. “Jesus. Business fell off something terrible when he was cracking heads last year. Call.”

  “That was mostly his brother Virgil,” Dog pointed out.

  “James and Morg’re good people, though,” said Deacon, folding.

  Chalkie had two pair, kings and tens. “What’ve you got, Dog?”

  “Deuces,” Dog said, but there were three of them.

  “Damn,” Chalk said. “Deuces! Is that all?”

  “Good enough to beat you,” Dog told him.

  “I’ll give odds George Hoover gets Wyatt to run against Bat Masterson on the Reform slate,” Chalkie said. “Any takers?”

  “No percentage in a sure thing,” Dog said, scooping up the pot.

  Bob Wright could have argued that point with Dog, for he had grown wealthy dealing in a sure thing. The men at this table represented half a million dollars in gambling, prostitution, and liquor, but Bob could match them—on groceries alone. It was only a month into the season and Bob had already cleared more than $12,000. Drovers ate on their way north. They ate while their herds grazed and fattened on the grassland south of Dodge. They continued to eat until the cattle were sold and loaded onto the trains to be shipped east. Occasionally, they even made time to eat while they were in the midst of drinking, whoring, and playing cards. There was money to be made, as well, supplying groceries to townspeople and to restaurants like the Iowa House and Delmonico’s, where cattle buyers and railroad officials dined. And then there was the Fort Dodge trade, and the railroad crews. Even lawmen and prostitutes had to eat. Nobody seemed inclined to legislate against the selling of canned goods, coffee beans, and soda crackers, so Bob Wright didn’t stand to get hurt all that much if the Prohibitionists took hold in west Kansas, the way they had in the eastern part of the state.

  It was that steady stream of morally unobjectionable cash that allowed Bob to admire the iron self-control George Hoover needed to keep a straight face while he talked about putting brothels and gambling dens and bars out of business.

  Big George aimed to be on the right side of Front Street when civilization arrived, and that was smart. Any day now, the politics and the economy of Dodge City were going to shift from one side of the tracks to the other. And when they did, there’d be no going back. Saloon owners like Chalkie and Dog considered it the cost of doing business when they replaced window glass shot out by drunken cowboys, but there were families moving into town now and random gunfire scared them. Local grangers feared the Texas longhorns would infect their own stock with tick fever, and local farmers complained that the drovers cut their fences and let the herds trample cropland. Soon, settlers like that would hold more votes than those who served the cattle interests. When they did, old-timers like the men at this table—who’d built towns up from the bare ground—they’d be on the outs. It had happened in Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Caldwell. It was going to happen in Dodge, too, and soon.

  Chalkie Beeson was right about half of it. George Hoover intended to run for mayor on a Reform ticket again, and this time he’d have the railroad men behind him. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe had a lot invested in the roaring hell that was Dodge, but its owners had begun to back Reform demands to close the saloons and dance halls on Sundays at least. Eastern visitors were disturbed by the open drunkenness that offended George Hoover’s birdy little wife, Maggie, and by the same brazen prostitutes who annoyed Bob’s own wife, Alice.

  Even Bob was starting to be concerned. He tried to keep his daughter inside when the drovers were in town, but Belle had a mind of her own. He couldn’t watch her round the clock or keep her locked up half the year. Short of posting an armed and gelded guard in the hallway, there wasn’t much more Bob could do, apart from getting
her married off before she got out of hand.

  Ignore it, deny it, or fight it, change was inevitable. “The smart man doesn’t just wait for the future,” Bob often told his children. “The smart man shapes it.” His whole life was proof of that.

  He had come west alone in 1856, a boy possessed of nothing but a fierce desire to better his condition. He was still driving freight for the Mexico trade when he saw the commercial potential of a site where the Santa Fe Trail crossed the Arkansas River just west of Fort Dodge. It was spang in the middle of the buffalo range, but it could have been a fine homestead, with a trading post, maybe. There was a spring-fed creek nearby. Geese and duck, three seasons out of four. Fish year round. Otter, beaver, and muskrat for the fur trade.

  Bob kept his eye on that piece of land, especially after he got himself appointed sutler to Fort Dodge after the war. In those days, the fort was just about the only thing on the prairie between Kansas City and Denver. Soldiers had no recreational alternative to standing at the bar in Bob’s store, spending all $13 of their monthly pay on drink. Given the fort’s atmosphere of general boredom, simmering rancor, and the assiduous cultivation of grudges, manly moments of indignation or disagreement were liable to get physical. Bob insisted it was no extra trouble to deliver whiskey to combatants who’d been hurt badly enough to require a stay in the post hospital. Didn’t even charge extra for the service!

  When the medical officer complained about drunken brawls breaking out among convalescents, the fort commandant prohibited liquor on the post. Bob considered this an infringement on his constitutional right to sell whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted, to whoever had the cash to buy it, but there was no sense paying a lawyer to argue the point. The solution was to ride five miles west, stake out that creekside site on the bluffs above the Arkansas River, and invent Dodge City.