The Last Kind Words Saloon: A Novel (5 page)

The sun began to set—once again, on the prairie, there was the squeal of bagpipes. Lord Ernle did not intend to be without his pipers.

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“You mean stage a
holdup?” Doc said. “I’d be wary of it. What if some fool forgot to put blanks in his gun?”

“No, no—no risks,” Cody said. “We’ve done the big fight scenes—Custer’s Last Stand for example—hundreds of times with no mistakes. We’re experienced show people.”

“Maybe you are but I’d want to see all the damn guns,” Wyatt said.

“Fine, you can load them yourselves,” Cody said.

Wyatt and Doc looked at one another.

“Probably be pretty safe,” Wyatt said. “Neither one of us can hit a barn with a pistol, anyway.”

“This will mainly involve practice drawing,” Cody assured them.

“Now that’s plain foolish, Cody,” Wyatt said. “If you were headed into gunplay the last thing you’d want is to have your gun stuck in a damn holster, or worse yet in your pocket.”

“True,” Doc said. “I doubt Billy the Kid had his gun in a damn holster when he went against those killers.”

Buffalo Bill Cody smiled—a tired smile though. How to explain to these men, who didn’t even seem to be gunmen, that a show had to be real and yet not real at the same time? Of course they were right about frontier gunplay: the fighter would get his gun out and cocked, as he had when he killed the Cheyenne Yellow Hair and claimed the first scalp for Custer.

In the show, of course it was more complicated. The good guys had to win—evil could not be allowed to triumph in a show that had even been enjoyed by Queen Victoria herself, as well as many other crowned heads.

Something similar had just occurred to Wyatt.

“Say me and Doc face off—who gets to win?”

Cody was thinking of Nellie.

“You boys could draw straws or flip coins or something,” he said. “Wouldn’t work for either one of you to win all the time.”

“I could pay each of you one hundred dollars a show.”

Doc was taken by surprise.

“One hundred dollars apiece, for shooting blanks at one another?”

Cody nodded.

“Would that be cash?” Wyatt asked.

“Cash,” Cody assured him. “You’d have to come to Denver for a while—that’s where we’re headquartered.”

Doc looked at Wyatt.

“What do you think, squire?” he asked.

“I ain’t free to think—unlike you. I’d need to clear it with the missus.”

“Okay, but be quick about it,” Doc said. “We best nail down this job before the real thing comes along.”

“And who might the real thing be?” Wyatt asked, with a trace of a smile.

“Just about anybody who likes to shoot and don’t mind playacting,” Cody said. “Maybe that fellow from Georgia—Hardin. I think he was a dentist, like yourself.”

“Too late, they hung him,” Wyatt said.

“He was a lunatic, too,” Cody said. “When possible I like to hire people of an unsullied mind. But there are plenty of people out here in the West who are capable of firing off a gun in a show.”

“Well, I best be off to see Jessie—I hope I don’t wake her up,” Wyatt said.

“Henpecked, the great Wyatt Earp,” Cody said.

“You evidently don’t know Jessie,” Wyatt said. “If she’s in one of her tempers she’d put a hyena to flight . . .”

“So might I, if I get worked up enough,” Nellie said. “That could be the reason my husband lives in the South Seas, if he lives at all.”

At the banquet table Lord Ernle was winding up his toasts; the bagpipers once again began to squeal.

“I pride myself on being able to put up with a lot,” Nellie said. “But bagpipers are pretty much my limit.”

“Want me to shoot one?” Doc asked. “If I’m going to be working with Cody and trying to hit things with a pistol—or not hit things—I need to be practicing.”

“Even if I didn’t shoot the bagpipers I could puncture a bagpipe or two.”

“No, no, they’re harmless, Doc,” Nellie said. “But it is true that they’re loud.”

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When Wyatt came in,
sheepish-looking as usual, Jessie began to steam.

“I’ve half a mind to throw this whiskey bottle at you,” she said.

“I’m glad that it’s only half and that the whiskey bottle is better disposed of,” Wyatt said. “How about a kiss.”

“Are you man enough to try?” she asked.

“I surely think so,” Wyatt said, and the next thing they knew they were upstairs, squirming on a bed—in one of the whores’ rooms, sort of by accident. At one point she bucked so hard that Wyatt came out, but Jessie caught him with her hand and stuffed him back in—usually she could manage that.

“Oh boy, pleasant,” Wyatt said.

“It doesn’t make up for everything,” Jessie informed him. “You should have taken me to that party. It’s the only party there’s been around here and you let me sit home.”

“Jessie, the dern party was right underneath you,” Wyatt said. “All you had to do was step out on the balcony.”

“You know what I mean. I might have wanted to show up with my husband.”

“So I’m forgetful,” Wyatt said. “I’m still your damn husband.”

“Even so you don’t often perform.”

“Maybe my resources are just limited in that line,” he said, wondering why women wouldn’t just shut up.

“In your case it’s mainly that you’d rather drink,” she said.

“Let’s change the subject, Jessie, we’re moving to Denver. Old Bill Cody has offered me and Doc a job in his show.”

Jessie sat up and pulled her gown back over her breasts.

“In his show, how?” she asked. “And what would I do?”

“Me and Doc would pretend to be gunfighters and shoot blanks at one another.”

“What if they weren’t blanks?” Jessie asked.

“Doc thought of that too,” Wyatt told her. “Cody swears there’ll be no mix-up with the bullets.”

“What about me?”

“Denver’s a big place—we’ll soon find you another bar to tend—might call it the Mile High Saloon, unless Warren shows up with his own sign and wants to invest in a saloon himself.”

“Okay,” Jessie said. She was sick of Long Grass.

“Is Doc coming?” she wondered.

“I believe he’s thinking it over,” he said.

“Okay, I’ll come,” Jessie said.

Denver was bound to be better than where they were.

Then she got up and washed herself.

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Lord Ernle kindly lent
Bill Cody a private railroad car to get him back to Kansas, where he could get a train to Denver. At the last minute Nellie jumped in with him, though Denver was in the opposite direction of Rita Blanca, where she lived.

Her reason for traveling a hundred miles in the wrong direction was that it would give her more time with Bill Cody—nobody in her life had meant as much to her as Bill. He had only shown her kindness and had helped her in a million ways.

This evening, as they traveled, she wiped a trickle of tears out of Cody’s eyes, using a cotton handkerchief.

“What is it, honey—what is it?” she asked. Cody was looking out the window. Both knew what it was.

“I just tear up when I cross the plains,” he said. “Most of my happiest years were spent on the plains. I was here when the plains were so thick with buffalo you could barely ride through them on a horse.”

“It must have been a sight,” Nellie said.

“Oh yes . . . and the tall grass in Kansas was fine—I won’t be seeing it again, I fear. I’m done.”

“Don’t say that, Bill . . . you know how much I need you,” she confessed.

They exchanged a soft kiss . . . it left Nellie fluttery. They were alone in a private car. Her husband, if she still had one, was thousands of miles at sea. They kissed again.

“We’ve never . . . we’ve never,” she said. “I hate to miss you.”

“You didn’t miss me, honey,” Cody said. “We’ve done a bunch of kissing, and you’ve shown me your bosom a few times.”

“Oh Bill . . . oh Bill,” Nellie said, pulling him close.

Bill Cody put his hand on her and then he went to sleep.

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Goodnight had scarcely swung
off his mount when Mary Goodnight burst out of the shack she used for a schoolhouse and gave him an enthusiastic kiss, startling the three towheads Mary had been teaching and probably startling several of the cowboys too. Kissing like that didn’t occur every day, in the Palo Duro area.

Odd how women change, he thought. In the several years he spent wooing Mary he had never been allowed such an aggressive kiss. Often, in those days, Mary would turn her head at the last minute, leaving him with only her shoulder to kiss.

“It took you a while to drag yourself back here,” Mary told him.

“We hung two horse thieves on the way back—that slowed us down,” he said.

He knew at once that the comment was a mistake. Mary jerked back as if she had been quirted.

“How old were they, Charlie?” she asked.

“Old enough to know right from wrong,” he said.

“Answer my question!” Mary demanded—she was beginning to color up.

“Twenty-one, at least,” he told her. “There were no trees nearby. We caught ’em with the stolen horses and hung them from a telegraph pole,” he said. “I don’t think it damaged the pole.”

“You ruthless bastard, who made you a judge?” she asked.

“But we caught ’em with the stock,” he stammered. Mary’s rages—and they were not infrequent—always baffled him. He had no idea what to do about them.

“This is a raw place, and you’re a raw piece of work yourself, Charlie Goodnight.”

“Well, I’ve not had your education.”

“I was talking,” she said. “Please have the courtesy not to butt in.”

“What do you want?”

“I wish you could bring those boys back to life, but you can’t. So I’ll give you ten years, if I can stick it out.”

“Ten years to do what?”

“To make this into a proper county, with judges and courts and all that goes with a county. And after the courthouse I want a college, where people can learn their algebra. Do those two things in a timely fashion and maybe I won’t leave you for brighter climes.”

“Not many climes are brighter than this place here,” he reminded her. “There is hardly a tree in thirty miles and very damn few clouds that could create cool.”

“Don’t quibble, Charlie—it don’t become you,” she said. She turned to leave but stopped again.

“Did you bury those boys proper?” she asked.

Goodnight wondered how he could have blundered so—it was not for the first time, either.

“We were in a hurry,” he mumbled.

“Well, those lucky boys—they’ll never have to be in a hurry again.”

She looked hard at the towheads, and walked away.

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Bose had unsaddled Goodnight’s
horse and was looking for a stray jar of turpentine. The jar had once had a proper plug, but the plug had got lost; Bose intended to replace it with a homemade plug, whittled by himself. While he looked he heard loud talk behind him, loud talk between Boss Goodnight and his missus. Bose knew better than to take too much interest in loud talk between husband and wife.

When the talk stopped and Mary Goodnight went back into her shack of a schoolhouse Bose saw Boss Goodnight standing alone. He looked rather defeated, but, of course, such defeats weren’t permanent. And with Boss Goodnight such defeats were rare.

After a bit he walked over to Bose.

“Well, I lost that fight,” Goodnight said. “Did you win many fights with women, Bose?”

“I don’t deal with women, Boss,” Bose said. “If there’s any around the Palo Duro I don’t see them.”

“That’s what I meant,” Goodnight said. “You found a place of safety and I ain’t been so provident.”

“Still, Miss Mary can cook,” Bose reminded him.

Most of Mary’s friends called her Molly, not Mary, but Goodnight did not permit himself this intimacy, and Bose followed the practice of his boss; this despite seven years of courtship and eight of marriage.

Mary had her playful moods though—sometimes she even liked to wrestle with him in bed—and she was surprisingly strong. Twice she made his nose bleed. He had never made her nose bleed, though once he did bruise her with his elbow.

“How come you won’t call me Molly, like my friends do?” she asked, once.

“Too shy.”

“But I’m your wife . . . you pestered me till I gave in. There’s no reason you can’t call me Molly.”

“Too shy,” he admitted, and it was God’s truth.

“You don’t really want me calling you Molly, do you?” he asked, a day or two later.

Mary didn’t answer; he didn’t call her Molly.

As he was standing with Bose he remembered that Mary had asked him to bring some chalk, and he had remembered it despite Lord Ernle’s shindig. He got it out of his saddlebag and took it to the schoolroom: three benches, a blackboard, and a high stool for the teacher.

“Just put it on the bench and don’t interrupt,” she said, without looking up from her perch. “Right now we’re reading about the Rhine maidens.

Goodnight knew that matters were still frosty, all because of two young horse thieves hung from a telegraph pole.

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In the night Mary’s
sour attitude changed—though less often now that they temporarily lived in the tent, where they had two handsome cots side by side.

“How come when you finally get home all I get is snores?” she wondered; she was a foot from him, in the dark.

“You’re sure not much of a hand with women,” she added.

Hard as he tried to stay ahead of Mary, mostly he always felt behind. “Here I am, available if I’m handled easy, and what do I get but snores.”

“It’s the middle of the night—ain’t that the usual time for snores?”

“If you slept on your elbow, like I do, you’d be far less likely to snore,” she informed him.

“A man lying flat on his back, like you do, is naturally apt to snore.”

Goodnight began to get annoyed. Why talk if it was only to gripe at him?

“I should have stayed in Long Grass another month . . . maybe then you’d appreciate me when I showed up.”