Telegraph Days (30 page)

My brother, Jackson, had grown stout and sported a mustache, Teddy Bunsen was still sheriff and still gloomy, Aurel Imlah's beard still looked as if a bird or two could be nesting it, and Mrs. Karoo still smiled serenely at her dinner guests. Hungry Billy Wheless had added a photography gallery to his general store. He filled it with pictures of cowboys and buffalo and horses watering at dusk and longhorn cattle and even the occasional Indian who happened to pass through.

The Yazee raid museum was still there, though, with Hungry Billy being so busy, it bore a neglected air.

The best new thing, of course, from my point of view, was my two curly-haired nieces, Jean and Jan, who were as yappy as I was; they were soon following me everywhere, much as their hens had followed the McClendon sisters, who were still as passionate about Buffalo Bill Cody as ever.

After my nieces, the next most interesting addition to the population was a woman barber, by name Naomi, an olive-skinned woman of sizable girth who had had herself a little barbershop built. Naomi came from the Bible lands somewhere and had a son called Little Pita, who was just the age of my niece Jan. The cowboys had been reluctant to let Naomi shave and trim them at first, but she wielded the smoothest razor in No Man's Land, besides being a high-spirited woman in a place where there weren't many. She soon won over the cowboys and the freighters and anyone else who happened to be passing through Rita Blanca. The cowboys came to like Naomi so much that they fell into fisticuffs over who got barbered first.

Naomi and I soon became fast friends—she was as frank as I was. Sometimes, at the end of the day, we'd walk over to the river together, trailed by Jan, Jean, and Little Pita, and sit and watch the water while the tots got muddy. One of the things Naomi and I were in complete agreement about was the desirability of regular copulation. Since the tots were safely out of earshot I started the discussion by lamenting that local prospects seemed rather thin on the ground.

Naomi rolled her big eyes and smiled her seductive smile.

“I've always been lucky, when it comes to men,” she allowed.

“If you're so lucky, who are you tupping with now?” I asked. Much as I liked Naomi I felt a tiny prickle of jealousy. I wanted to be the one who was lucky, when it came to lovers.

“My Aurel,” Naomi cooed—and the prick became a sting, if not a deep one. I had always found Aurel Imlah attractive, but had just assumed he loved Mrs. Karoo. I guess Naomi had tested that assumption and found it to be false.

“They are brother and sister,” Naomi said, when I mentioned Mrs. Karoo.

Just then three muddy tots came racing into our laps.

“Pita ate my mud pie!” Jean complained. Little Pita did sport a rather muddy mouth, but Naomi showed no alarm.

A little later, with the sun just setting, we all walked home.

“I am big—I like a big fellow,” Naomi admitted. “Aurel is big, if you know what I mean.”

I suppose I did know what she meant, but with the three tots scampering around I saw no need to elaborate on the matter.

I
HAD NEVER
supposed that my brother, Jackson, would turn into much of a husband, but I was wrong. His tots crawled around on him like little possums. My sister-in-law, Mandy, looked as if she had a good-sized pumpkin in her belly—soon there'd be another to crawl around on Jackson.

One thing hadn't changed for the better about Jackson: he was still hard to talk to.

“Is Teddy Bunsen going to sit there being sheriff his whole life?” I asked.

“I don't know—why?” Jackson asked.

“Because you've been a deputy about long enough, don't you think?” I said. “It's high time they made you sheriff.”

Jackson looked startled—evidently the possibility that he might be sheriff someday had never occurred to him.

“But if I was sheriff, what would Teddy do?” he asked.

“Now that's wrong thinking—unambitious,” I told him. “If you're going to live your life in a little hole like this, then the least you ought to settle for is the office of sheriff.”

Jackson and Mandy had a nice enough life, by their standards; but Jackson and I were more or less the last of the Courtrights, a proud family. Few Courtrights had been content to spend their lives at the deputy level. Whatever his feelings on the subject I wanted more for Jackson than he wanted for himself. I wanted him to be sheriff. I knew he was a good deputy, arresting many drunks, and helping to keep the public order. Still, I wanted more—and wanted Jackson to want more.

“I'm not like you, Sis,” Jackson pointed out, as we were enjoying a
filling meal of fried okra, turnip greens, mashed potatoes, and a small wild turkey that had fallen to Jackson's gun.

“Apparently not,” I admitted. “I guess I got what's left of the ambition in the Courtright family. Father never had much, that I can recall.”

“Father was a gentleman,” Jackson remarked, as if that explained everything.

“Father was a gentleman and you're a good deputy,” I said, wondering why the Courtright men were so dull.

“What about you, Nellie?” Mandy asked. “Will you really stay with us?”

I suddenly realized that the answer was no. I wouldn't stay with them—not long. It was fine to come home to Rita Blanca, which, as Bill Cody had noticed, was the perfect Western town. But soon enough, my days would start hanging lifeless. Even if I secured a little copulation it wouldn't be enough.

“I suppose I'm too ambitious, Mandy,” I told her. “I need some hustle.”

I don't think I had ever admitted that to myself in quite such a blatant way before. After all, I had been running Bill Cody's businesses for over three years. Pretty soon I'd get in the mood to run something else.

Mandy was looking at me seriously.

“I hope you don't want more from life than there is,” she said solemnly.

Then Jean and Jan jumped in my lap, smelling young.

“I probably do, Mandy,” I said. “I probably want more than there is.”

I
HAD BEEN
back in Rita Blanca about two weeks, and was already seriously considering moving on, when the deacons of the community ganged up on me one morning and got me to agree to be the mayor of the place. When the whole passel of them cornered me in the little telegraph office, all dressed in their best clothes, I could tell something serious was afoot. Ted Bunsen, who had become a deacon himself, came right out with the offer.

“We need a mayor,” he said. “The job's yours if you'll take it.”

“I'm flattered, folks—but why me?” I inquired, after they had finished describing the desperate situation they considered the town to be in.

“You're organized!” they said, like a chorus.

I suppose I was, and I suppose it showed, since that had been the first comment Bill Cody had made about me, when he showed up more than three years back.

Somehow hearing it again, from my old town mates, made my heart sink a little. Would I always just be the organized one, in any community I settled in? Why couldn't I be the beautiful, adventurous one?

“We need you to find a reliable schoolteacher and get a school going,” Hungry Billy mentioned. “Your own brother's tykes will need schooling soon, and there's plenty of other tykes running around without their ABCs.”

“Yes, and we need to find a preacher and get a fire wagon of some kind,” Joe Schwartz said. “Dry as it's been this whole town could burn if a big prairie fire headed this way.”

When I asked if they had a salary in mind they all looked nervous,
since it must have been obvious just from the way I was dressed that Bill Cody had been paying me a lot more than they could afford. But they hemmed and hawed and came up with the low figure of four hundred dollars a month, which was one hundred dollars more than I had been expecting. It was a solid salary and left me with no real reason to turn the deacons down.

“I accept, but for six months only,” I told them. “I've been feeling some pretty strong wanderlust lately—it may be that after I get things organized here I may want to strike out and see the world.”

They all looked pleased as punch at my acceptance, so we shook hands all around, though my old beau Teddy Bunsen made so bold as to kiss me on the cheek. The look in his eyes suggested that under certain circumstances he might try to do better. Would I give him the chance?

B
ILL
B
ONNEY
—or Billy the Kid—got off on the wrong foot with me faster than I could snap my fingers, and here's how it occurred. I was in my office, scribbling on a novel I had decided to call
The Good Deputy,
when I glanced down the street toward the jail, where the good deputy himself, my brother, Jackson, was standing outside talking to a tall youth who had just dismounted from a not particularly impressive nag. Pretty soon Ted Bunsen came out of the jail and walked over to where the two men were conversing. It was a rather blowy, dusty day, but the two lawmen and the stranger were well accustomed to dust, as anyone needs to be who lives out on the plains.

Then the three men, seemingly amiable, walked across the street toward the general store, where they were soon joined by Hungry Billy Wheless, who hurried out to shake the stranger's hand. Then they all wandered around in the street for a while, pointing to this thing and that. It occurred to me, as I watched, that the stranger must be asking questions about the Yazee raid. At once Jackson pulled out his pistol and swung his arm, more or less as he had on that fateful day when the Yazee brothers met their end.

That sort of thing was always happening in Rita Blanca. A cowboy or two would ride in and want to see where the big fight had occurred. Gawkers like this young stranger were just the kind of people Bill Cody meant to sell tickets to, once he got his model of Rita Blanca up and going.

For a time I stopped paying attention and went back to my scribbling, but in fact I had managed to rough out only a paragraph—in the story my hero and his family were proceeding up the Missouri River by boat, accompanied by Bill Hickok and some thirty immigrants,
most of whom would be lucky to last a year—when who should come flying up the street but my nieces, Jean and Jan. Neither of them was much taller than a low-slung pig, but they were racing at top speed. When they finally got there and jumped into my arms they were so out of breath they couldn't speak. I could feel their little hearts fluttering when I hugged them.

“Billy the Kid,” Jean gasped.

“Billy the Kid,” Jan chimed in. “Ma said tell you.”

“Okay, you told me, many thanks,” I said, giving the stranger a little stronger scrutiny. From what I could see he could have been any stranger off the trail, but I thought I ought to go take a closer look—who knows but what I might be able to fit this famous young killer into my
Good Deputy
somewhere? The tykes wanted to send a few telegrams to an imaginary rabbit they were corresponding with, but I lugged them out, one under each arm, and carried them with me down the street.

Billy the Kid had a rifle, none too new, which he liked to lean on as he talked. He wore an old black hat that didn't fit his head, and sported a dusty jacket that his long arms stuck out of about a foot. A small pistol had been casually stuck in his belt. Evidently Hungry Billy had been given permission to photograph him—the big camera was being set up as I approached. Jean and Jan, shy all of a sudden, wiggled free and raced off to find their mother. Young Mr. Bonney was nearly as snaggle-toothed as Zenas Clark; on Zenas I found it appealing but in the case of the Kid it wasn't.

The group of men had been chatting away, but of course that stopped when I walked up. In the course of history I suppose we gals have shut down millions of conversations, just by showing up.

Nobody said anything for a moment, and then Ted Bunsen decided it might be his responsibility to introduce me.

“This here's Nellie Courtright, she's our mayor,” Ted said.

“Mayor?” Bill Bonney said, with a rude guffaw. “The way I hear it she's Bill Cody's heifer,” he said, at which point I walked up to him and slapped his face, not gently.

“I'm nobody's heifer,” I told him bluntly. “If you can't be respectful you can leave.”

Bill Bonney looked startled and took a step back. Close up he
looked young, and he was young. Probably he had never been close enough to a woman to be slapped by one before.

“You don't need to be touchy, missy,” he said. “It was only a poor joke.”

“I'll decide what I need to be touchy about,” I said. “I doubt you would have made that remark if Mr. Cody had been here.”

“Well, he ain't here, is he?” the youth said. “Anyway, I withdraw the remark.”

“Sis, lay off,” Jackson said, which was a mistake. “Billy just wanted to know about the Yazee shoot-out.”

“Don't be instructing me, Deputy,” I warned him. I expect my face was red—I have always been quick to react to insult. Bill Bonney's face got red too—he had misjudged how much trouble his casual remark would get him into.

I decided to let them all escape, so I motioned to Billy and showed him exactly where I had been standing when the Yazees bore down on us. He seemed grateful for my tolerance and sort of awkwardly tried to work his way back into my good graces by parading his gunfighter's expertise.

“The Yazees had never been bested, so they got cocky,” he said. “I've seen it happen before.”

He spoke as if giving us a lecture.

He marked off where each of the horsemen had fallen and walked out in the middle of the street and paced around.

“They didn't bother to spread out,” he said. “That's what gave the deputy his chance. If they'd come at you twenty yards apart I doubt the deputy could have got more than two of them. Bunching up like they did was foolish behavior. They didn't bother to study their move, so now they're dead.”