The Last Kind Words Saloon: A Novel (7 page)

“We ought to kill that fellow Tammen,” Wyatt said. “He’s about to put Bill Cody in his grave.”

“I don’t favor gambling much more here,” Doc said. “Competition’s too advanced. I’ve been playing steady for two weeks and I’m just up eighty dollars, and you know how dangerous I am at the poker table.”

“I admit you’re fair,” Wyatt said. “Farther than fair I don’t go.”

“Where will we strike next, boys?”

He was addressing three of his brothers: Morgan, Virgil, and Warren—the latter had brought his Last Kind Words sign with him; all he needed was a saloon to hang it on.

“Virg has been offered the sheriffing job in Tombstone,” Morgan said. “And he could hire me to deputy.”

“So I guess me and Warren can just be left out,” Wyatt said.

“But you don’t like sheriff work—or any work,” Virgil said.

“True, but I have an even greater dislike of starving,” Wyatt said.

“There’s Mobetie, it’s a damn sight closer than Tombstone,” Morgan said. “I’m told there’s no law there yet, and no order either. Wyatt wouldn’t be subjecting his lovely wife to high altitudes.”

“Mobetie, I have no idea of such a place,” Doc admitted.

“Oh, it’s Goodnight’s country—it’s probably somewhere on his ranch. I’m sure it’s windy,” Morgan said.

“Ain’t you a dandy,” Wyatt said. “I suspect you know pretty much all there is to know.”

“Far from it,” Morgan declared.

What he did know was when his brother Wyatt was itching to start a fight—any fight. It was partly the way he hunched his shoulders when he sat, and partly the chill look in his eyes.

On such occasions—and they were frequent—the prudent thing to do was leave, and Morgan did.

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The only person who
hated the high-altitude nosebleeds in Denver more than Jessie was Wyatt, who turned plenty pale at the mere sight of blood. Once while they were at it her nose began to spout blood which got on Wyatt’s chest and on his clothes.

“Oh goddamnit!” he said, and before they were even finished Wyatt pulled out and ran off. She didn’t see him for a week. Wyatt threatened to leave her so often she thought he might have finally done it, but he hadn’t. He had just been salooning, maybe whoring, though maybe not whoring. Wyatt was not easily pleasured—Jessie knew she was finally going to have to look elsewhere for her romance, and the first place she intended to look was Virgil, who could rarely get close to Jessie without his tongue hanging out.

Still, Jesse knew she had to be careful. The Earps might quarrel among themselves, but they were quick to unite when there was a threat—even just a social threat.

Wyatt looked awful when he showed back up—he always did after a binge. Cleanliness meant little to Wyatt, though it meant much to Morgan, who always wore creased trousers and a starched shirt.

Once or twice Jessie had tried to steal a kiss from Virgil, but the results had been disappointing. Doc Holliday had never given her the time of day either. If she really put her mind to it she could usually provoke a little scuffle with Wyatt—and better to fight with her husband than just spend her days pouring whiskey from a bottle to a glass.

“The future’s settled for a while,” Wyatt told her.

“What future?”

“You and me and Warren are going to visit a town called Mobetie, which is probably in Texas.”

“What about Doc?”

“Doc’s slow to make a decision,” he said. “I expect he’ll join us eventually.”

“Why Mobetie?”

“Why not? It’s a brand-new town. Warren is carrying around his sign, hoping to find a saloon to hang it on,” Wyatt said.

“Will I have a job . . . bartender, barmaid?”

“We’ll see about it,” he said.

That afternoon Jessie let a photographer take her picture. The photographer had a studio. It was boredom that drove her to it. He made her dress like an Indian, which she wasn’t. But it passed the afternoon. In one shot you could see her breasts and even her nipples. Probably Wyatt wouldn’t like that very much. But, by good luck, he never saw that picture—at least not until years later, when it showed up in an Arizona magazine. The reason Jessie got away with it at the time was because Wyatt and Warren were anxious to get off to this place called Mobetie, which was in Texas.

The first night out it snowed. All they had to make a fire with were cow chips, which didn’t make a very warm fire. Jessie didn’t care. At least they were going downhill and her nose had finally stopped bleeding.

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Charles and Mary Goodnight
were showing Lord Ernle, their English partner, around the ranch they owned together. They were riding across the breaks of the Canadian River, thick at this season with wild plum bushes. The plums were not quite ready to pick.

“I wouldn’t mind having a wild plum bush around our house, if we ever get a house,” Mary said. “Do you think they could be transplanted, Charlie?”

“If you had somebody willing to dig up a plum bush I expect they could be transplanted,” he said.

Just then Lord Ernle’s greyhounds put up two lobo wolves—in a moment both the greyhounds and the wolves were in full cry.

Goodnight studied the chase, which was taking place in very broken country. They were on the edge of the Palo Duro Canyon, with ravines and drop-offs aplenty. Lord Ernle was riding his thoroughbred, an unstable animal at best, in Goodnight’s view.

“Thoroughbreds might be all right for Scotland or someplace level—but not here,” he said.

“I don’t think Scotland’s particularly level,” Mary said.

It’s just like her to argue, he thought, but he held his tongue.

“Most places are more level than the caprock,” he said, civilly he thought.

Vaguely troubled, he began to lope in the direction of the chase. Benny Ernle was a skilled rider, of course, but he didn’t know the country. He had begun to spur up a little when suddenly the greyhounds disappeared. Lord Ernle was brandishing a pig sticker when he too disappeared.

Goodnight spurred up, but he knew what he would find before he found it. The drop-off, when he came to it, was sheer and about twenty feet. At the bottom the thoroughbred was trying to rise, on broken forelegs; two of the greyhounds had suffered the same fate. Lord Ernle lay flat on his back, dead. There was no sign of the wolves.

Mary, a careful rider, showed up a little later.

“Oh, Charlie, my god,” she said.

An old, short, very dirty man was bending over Lord Ernle; he carried a short knife and had been skinning a skunk.

“Why it’s Caddo Jake!” she exclaimed. “It’s his shack I use for my school.”

“Skunks are plentiful along the Canadian,” Goodnight reminded her. “That’s about all Jake traps.”

A hundred yards west they found a little trail down the caprock; they went down it carefully and hurried to the bodies.

“Who was that fool?” Jake asked. “He came flying off that bluff and nearly hit me.”

“An Englishman,” Goodnight said. “Has he moved?”

“No, and he ain’t going to—neck’s broke,” Jake said.

“Now I don’t have a rich partner,” Goodnight thought.

Mary had begun to cry.

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The minute San Saba
saw Benny Ernle’s body, which was brought back in a wagon, she knew that her life was in mortal peril—and Flo’s life too. The butler, the farrier, the cook, the blacksmith—all the men who worked for Benny were looking at her silently. She had been Benny’s favorite for a long time. She had ordered them all around, been queenly, sharp, harsh as the occasion demanded it. Now if they could catch her she would pay, and not just with the normal lusts. Old Hamid, who took care of the dairy goats, was said to have been a torturer in his youth. San Saba didn’t want him practicing his ancient skills on her body or Flo’s.

The Goodnights were her only hope and she at once approached them.

“Mrs. Goodnight, I’d like to come work for you and I’d like to bring Flo. I assure you we’ll be a useful pair, and if we stay here we’re lost.”

Mary looked at the men ringing the courtyard: she saw what San Saba meant. The men were looking at the two women, the one not exactly black, the other not exactly white.

Charles Goodnight didn’t see the looks. What he didn’t see was why, having lost one partner, he should acquire two women.

“Hire them to do what?” he said stiffly. “We don’t even have a house yet.”

“Yes you do, there’s this one,” Mary said. “It’s on your land—you could just claim it.”

“Claim this pile, why we’d rattle around in it like gourds,” Goodnight said; but, in a minute, he saw that the idea had some merit.

“We could start our college in it, and maybe a courthouse too. I guess we’d have to round up a town of sorts before it would work.”

“Come to think of it, there’s Mobetie,” Goodnight said. “It’s small enough to be readily moved.”

“We can sew and cook and launder, and I could even help you teach school. I have fluent Spanish, which you Texans will be needing pretty soon.”

Mary Goodnight clapped.

“See, Charlie?” she asked. “Just yesterday I heard you telling Benny that you’d soon need somebody to speak Mexican so you can keep track of the vaqueros on the long drives out of south Texas; and now here’s someone showed up.”

“Besides all that I’m pretty good at breaking horses,” San Saba said.

“A woman break horses?” Goodnight said, startled yet again.

“Yes, an old gaucho taught me,” she said. “Benny owned a million acres of the pampas, and more cattle than you’ve got in Texas.”

“What? I doubt it,” Goodnight protested.

“It’s true though,” she said. “I came to love the pampas—they’re not unlike this country here. And the beef was excellent.”

“I’ve heard that, but I’ve not yet had time to visit,” he said.

“I am no hand at breaking horses,” he added. “Most of my remuda is half broke and dangerous to the cowhands.”

“Try me then, Mr. Goodnight—I can do what I claim.”

Mary hugged San Saba, who hugged her in turn.

“Let’s hire them, Charlie—I’m tired of being the only respectable woman in this part of the country.”

It was on the tip of Goodnight’s tongue to question the respectability of two of the three, but he realized that Mary did need company and it wouldn’t do to be too picky. Besides, in his years on the plains he had often seen whores go on to become excellent wives to some farmer or cowhand; better wives in some cases than women with unblemished records in all departments.

“I’ll hire them if you say so, Mary,” he said. “I guess eventually we’ll figure out what they’ve been hired to do. I hope they don’t mind rough camping, though—that’s what it’s gonna be, for a while.”

“We don’t mind,” San Saba said.

Mary hugged the Creole girl, too.

“You two can call me Molly,” she said. “That’s what Chief Quanah calls me—and my friends as well.”

“What does the Colonel call you?” San Saba asked on a whim.

Mary burst out laughing.

“What would he be a colonel of?” she said. “When he’s not cussin’ he calls me Mary, but I’m Molly to my friends.”

“Fine name,” San Saba said.

MOBETIE

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As Wyatt and Doc
were approaching Mobetie, on a day that was very dusty they ran into a small hunched man making a modest camp near the Canadian River. He was skinning a skunk at the time and had forty or fifty more hides piled up behind him. He showed no apprehension when they showed up; in fact he even offered them a stew he had prepared. The stew was in an Indian bowl—which tribe neither of them knew.

“I’m Caddo Jake, I live by the skunk,” the old trapper said. “Care to buy my hides?”

“No, and for that matter anything can wind up in a stew,” Doc said.

“It’s jackrabbit in this one,” Caddo Jake said.

“Oh, well that’s different,” Doc said, helping himself to a bowl of the stew, which he enjoyed.

“Caddo Jake’s a known fibber, I expect you just ate skunk,” Wyatt said.

They had stopped to count the buildings in Mobetie—it didn’t take long.

“I just count seven,” Wyatt went on. “And one of them’s a barbershop.”