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. “
“Insensible.”
“
“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
“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
