Doc: A Novel (40 page)

Instead, he himself started learning lessons, and it wasn’t long before young Bat Masterson knew two important things for sure. First off, to box well, you need more than combativeness. You need size and power, stamina and strategy. From the age of twelve, Bat was always fighting out of his class. Unless he wanted to end up like Irish Tom McCoy, dead on his feet in the 119th, he would need a way to even things up.

The second thing he knew for sure was this. Farming is a sucker’s game. You can work like an ox—put everything you’ve got into the land—but if the weather doesn’t break you, the markets will. You want to gamble with stakes like that? You’re better off playing cards. You can still lose everything, but at least you don’t work so damn hard for the privilege, and you by God dress up nice for the occasion.

Which is why, before he turned fifteen, he was determined to run away from home. “Ed,” he told his older brother, “you can stay here and stare at a mule’s ass end if you like, but me? I ain’t never gonna plow another field as long as I live.”

Within a few weeks of leaving, Bat was carrying a frontier equalizer: the big old Navy Colt he won off a drunk in a card game. Over the next ten years, to the line “plowboy” on his résumé, he added buffalo hunter, army scout, professional gambler, city police officer, county sheriff, and saloon owner. In 1907, when he wrote his autobiography, he would extend the list to include “genius with firearms,” “a born captain of men,” “generous to the last dollar.” He decided to leave out “becomingly modest” and “the soul of Christian humility.” That might have carried the joke too far.

Oddly, he failed to mention the central passion of his life and the one constant among the many ways he made his living: boxing. Or, more precisely, prizefighting, for matches were ever more frequently fought by professionals who had nothing against each another personally and were willing to break the law simply because the money was so good.

Bat himself never boxed as a grown man but throughout the 1880s, he would build a reputation as an expert on the Chambers-Queensberry rules. By the end of the decade, he was widely recognized as an honest and reliable referee, called upon to serve in important matches featuring boxing greats like John P. Clow and John L. Sullivan. That experience would eventually land him the best job of his life: covering sports for the
New York Sun
, where he would indulge his flair for flamboyant storytelling to his heart’s content and his readers’ delight until he died pen in hand, at his desk, a fat old man who’d had a hell of a good time ever since he left the farm.

Of course, his sporting knowledge and repute did not appear all at once, like Athena springing full-grown from the forehead of that divine boxing enthusiast, mighty Zeus. Bat Masterson’s apprenticeship began in Ford County, Kansas. Out past Duck Creek, a little north of Howells.

Wyatt found what he was looking for with no trouble. On a windless night in open land, the roaring of four hundred men can carry.

Astride Dick Naylor, he drew up and surveyed the scene. The ropes were pitched and respected. It cost a dollar to get in. Inside the perimeter, a crowd stood ten deep around the ring. A couple of farmwives were doing a brisk business in coffee and fried pork sandwiches; their husbands rented standing room on wagons for fifty cents. There was even a bartender selling whiskey straight from a barrel, two bits a swig.

“What’s the line?” Wyatt asked a stranger.

“Nine to one, on Rowan, but I put a dollar on Hamner. He’s got sand.”

Bat was easy to pick out in the center of the ring, his fancy clothes giving him visibility and authority amid skinny boys clad in denim and dust. His frock coat and bowler hat had been removed, but the white of his shirtsleeves glowed in the moonlight, and the flare of torches made the gold threads of his brocade waistcoat glitter as he followed the action, eyes intent, concentration complete.

Wyatt had refereed fights up in Deadwood, and he’d done a little boxing himself. He recognized competence when he saw it. Bat was short and getting stout, but he was light on his feet, his rhythm and movement graceful and deft as the boxers shifted and fell back and came on. He showed no partiality, enforcing his rules consistently, his voice cutting through the spectators’ shouts with brisk authority. His timekeeping was faultless.

The bout itself was more wrestling than boxing. The opponents were a lanky young drover and a local German boy. You could see that neither was going to do much more than bloody the other’s nose. Even so, they went close to fifty rounds. When at last they’d grappled and pummeled each other into exhaustion, Bat raised the wrist of the cowboy, who’d stayed on his feet slightly longer than the farm kid. Then Bat helped the local boy up and praised him lavishly, inviting the crowd to cheer for an honorable effort.

Money changed hands with minimal grumbling. Inside the ring, Bat got both combatants to mumble “Good fight” through thick lips, their fists too cut up and swollen to allow a handshake. The crowd dispersed. The gatekeeper counted out the referee’s rake and handed it over. Bat folded a substantial wad of cash into his pocket and walked toward his horse, stopping in his tracks when he caught sight of Wyatt, waiting.

“You got no jurisdiction out here, Wyatt.”

“Didn’t say I did.”

Silence fell. Eyes on the ground, mouth turned downward in thought, Bat tugged at his vest, smoothing the brocade. “Two idiots go at it in a bar,” he proposed suddenly. “They’re disturbing the peace. What do you do?”

Wyatt didn’t bother answering.

“You bash them,” Bat supplied with a shrug. “You don’t argue. You don’t explain. You don’t hesitate. You bash them both, and jail them.” He paused before asking, “What happens after that?”

Indifferent, Wyatt said, “None of my affair.”

“That’s right,” Bat agreed. “That’s right! It’s none of your affair. You broke up the fight. The peace of the city is restored. Fines are assessed. Justice is served.” Once more he paused. “But nothing is
settled
.”

Letting Wyatt think that over, Bat pulled his coat off the saddle and turned away from his horse before shaking the wrinkles out.

“You lock those boys up,” Bat continued informatively, “you’re just giving them time to brood on insult and grievance.” He shrugged into the forest green broadcloth, jerking the sleeves of his shirt down so the gold cuff links showed. “Know how many homicides we’ve had in Dodge, Wyatt? Just the past couple years, say.”

Eyes narrow, Wyatt shook his head slightly.

“Forty-five,” Bat told him, “give or take. A few were knifed, but most of them were gunned down. Ambushed in alleys. Killed on their way out of town. Shot in the back, mostly. Maybe seven had any kinda chance at all.”

“You saying that’s my fault?” Wyatt asked, not buying it.

“No, Wyatt, what I’m saying is, there’s no harm done and quite a bit of good comes of telling idiots, ‘You can settle this fair and square, but we have to take it out of town.’ ” Holding up his fingers, Bat began to count. “One: it saves wear and tear on the saloons. Two: I frisk the bastards for weapons before they square off. Three: when the fight’s over, it’s done with. I see to that! Nobody walks away humiliated, nobody wants revenge, nobody gets shot in the back a few hours later.” He waited a moment before he raised a fourth finger. “Everyone goes home in the morning.”

Wyatt blinked, and Bat immediately pressed his advantage.

“Is there money to be made? Hell, yes! A lot of it. And why not? My fights ain’t legal, but they’re by-God honest, and I earn what I get.”

Wyatt looked away.

“How was Topeka?” Bat asked, for that lay between them still.

“They want me to run against you.”

“I figured. You gonna?”

Wyatt lifted his chin toward where the ring had been. “How does it work?” he asked, like he was just curious. “Are these your fights, Bat? Or are you just getting some of the gate? Because I’m guessing that Bob Wright’s the promoter, and you’re bought. If I’m wrong, then this is the only game in Ford County Bob don’t have a piece of.”

There was a time when Bat Masterson had idolized Wyatt Earp. They had slept side by side. They’d worked to exhaustion in sleet and snow and killing cold, hunting buffalo. They’d doctored broken fingers and sewn up gashes, and loaned money and borrowed it, and backed each other up in brawls. But
goddam
if the man didn’t think he was the gold standard.

Tired of being judged, Bat snapped, “I don’t owe you an accounting, Wyatt. You want to run against me? Run! But there’s a lot you don’t know.”

Like: how elections really worked. Like: who was on his side, and who was playing him for a fool, and why. Like: how Wyatt scared folks without even knowing it because he was cold and intolerant and wouldn’t bend.

“You vote for Prohibition?” Bat asked, jerking his head toward Topeka.

“Didn’t pass.”

“Well, thank God for that!” Bat planted meaty fists on hip bones that were already acquiring prosperity’s padding. “You know what I can’t figure? Why in hell would you trust a hypocrite like George Hoover and not me? What makes you think he’s your friend and I’m not?”

For the first time, Wyatt looked surprised. “Friendship’s got nothing to do with it, Bat!” he protested. “All I’m saying is, I never saw liquor do anybody any good, but I’ve seen it ruin a lot of men and—”

“Jesus, Wyatt! You can be so goddam thick! Prostitution’s against the law, too. So—what? Do you think Prohibition’ll stop anybody drinking? You make something against the law, people just want it more! You been to Topeka! Do you have any idea—?”

No. He probably didn’t. Wyatt wouldn’t have looked for a “club” where you had to pay a membership fee for the privilege of buying overpriced rotgut. He had no notion how much money there was in illegal liquor.

Bat took a deep breath, closed his eyes a moment, and held up a hand. “All right,” he said firmly. “Just do yourself this one favor before you go trying to make the whole damn state dry. Go ask your fine new dentist friend something. If Prohibition goes through, how much would Doc Holliday be willing to pay, to get what he needs for his ‘cough’? You ask him, Wyatt, because that drunk’s putting away a couple of quarts a day!”

Bat untied his horse, put a foot in the stirrup, and stretched for the pommel. Hopping twice, he swung up, and looked down. “You gonna do something about this?” he asked, glancing back toward the trampled grass and the smoldering torches.

Wyatt’s eyes stayed level, but something Bat said must have gotten through to him.

“Not my jurisdiction,” he said.

Bat nodded: acknowledgment, not thanks. He gathered the reins and wheeled the horse twice. “Watch your back,” he told Wyatt before he rode away. “And think hard about who your real friends are!”

Late in the summer of ’78, a little epidemic swept through Dodge City. People speculated that a drummer from St. Louis brought it in on the train. It was only a cold but it was a bad one, and pretty much everybody in Dodge suffered through it before the sickness ran its course.

Wilfred Eberhardt probably caught it from one of the Riney boys, and no question: Wil was the one who gave it to Doc Holliday and Belle Wright. The boy felt awful about that. Rather than harm the two people on earth who had been kindest to him since he was orphaned, young Mr. Eberhardt would have marched his manly little self out onto the prairie and died alone, but he didn’t even know he was getting sick until he sneezed right into Doc’s face. That wasn’t good manners, but Doc wasn’t the kind to get angry with a sick child. The dentist gave Wil a nice new handkerchief, and taught him how to use it, and told him to go on home now, and come back when he was all better.

When Wilfred got in from Dr. Holliday’s office, Miss Belle took one look at the boy and put him straight to bed. That was when Wil discovered that it wasn’t entirely bad, being sick. Doc still paid him a dime a day. And Miss Belle brought him tea with honey and read stories to him until she got sick herself.

Isabelle Wright was genuinely fond of Wilfred, a winning child with a streak of appealing sadness under his resolve not to be a bother to anyone. In addition, of course, every moment she spent caring for the Eberhardt children did double duty, for it rubbed her father’s face in what she considered his callous exploitation of the German farmers in the area. On the other hand, if Belle had known just
how
sick she was going to get, she might have asked her mother to take care of Wilfred. Not that it would have changed anything. If Belle hadn’t caught the cold from Wil, she’d have gotten it from one of her own brothers, or from a customer in the store, or from somebody at church.

Being out on the open prairie for twelve weeks at a time was hardship enough without adding a sore throat, a thick head, and a dripping nose to the exercise, so it was a mercy that Alexander von Angensperg was out in the countryside while the cold was making the rounds. Most Dodge Citians were over the illness when he got back to town.

Alex was hoping to see Wyatt Earp before heading toward Wichita on the northern arc of the circuit, but when the little huddle of wooden buildings came into sight, he realized that for all its ugly, violent, noisy crudity, Dodge City had come to represent to him agreeable company and convivial conversation. Approaching the place now felt strangely like a homecoming.