Later, the Ford County Globe reported that the temperature hit sixteen below, and that the plains surrounding Dodge were littered with the carcasses of antelope and deer and livestock and coyotes and birds. Several farmhands froze to death, but John Riney had always been a lucky man, and the proof of it was that Mabel and the boys got to him before he died, digging through the snow with their hands and an iron fry pan. They slid him out of the shed and drug him back into the house, where the door faced southeast and could still be opened, even though the snow on the northwest side reached the roofline.
It was the Lord’s mercy that John only lost parts of his feet and most of his fingers instead of his life, but there he was: a cripple, and no farmer anymore. And you’d have to call that bad luck, except that very year, Dodge City got itself a committee and built a bridge over the Arkansas.
In those days, the river was swimming-deep and too fast to cross without danger most of the time. Freighters needed to double up their ox teams to pull the wagons through it, and that meant a lot of extra work, unyoking and yoking and what all, and then their merchandise got wet because the wagon beds weren’t high enough to stay above the waterline. Or let’s say you were trying to take a herd through the river. Some of the cattle you drove all the way up from Texas would get pulled downstream and be lost, just before you got them to market. Now and then, somebody on your crew’d drown, too. That was a hell of a thing.
So it was pretty bad until Bob Wright figured out that a bridge would make Dodge more attractive as a railhead for the cattle trade. Bob’s old partner Charlie Rath knew how to build bridges, from during the war, so they got together with a finance man from Leavenworth and ordered in a lot of wood, special, and construction began.
Then Bob had the notion that folks would be willing to pay to drive across the only bridge between Hutchinson and the Colorado line just to avoid the trouble of crossing that damn river for free. Which they were. And that meant there had to be a tollbooth, and someone to be there all day and all night to collect the tolls, and you didn’t hardly need more than four fingers, total, to do a job like that.
See? That’s how lucky John Riney was, and he defied anyone to tell him different.
There was a nice tollhouse for him and Mabel and the kids to live in, fairly large and built real tight against the storms, and the boys swam all summer in the river, and John himself could just sit there and let the world come to him. He collected $1.50 for a two-horse team and wagon, $2 for a four- or six-horse hitch, and two bits a man, mounted. Pedestrians were 25 cents, too, but since 1874, John Riney had never once seen anybody walk across the bridge, until this very day.
“Official business,” Bat Masterson told him, ducking under the gate.
“Me, too,” said Charlie Bassett.
They were both carrying shotguns and wearing two pistols apiece. So were Morgan Earp and John Stauber, but those two didn’t cross the bridge. They just waited on either side of the end nearest the tollbooth.
Morgan said, “John, you might want to send Mabel and the kids down to Jake Collar’s for an ice cream or something.”
“Why?” John asked. “What’s going on?”
“Probably nothing, but it might get kinda noisy around here. Better safe than sorry.”
Morg’s brother Wyatt was down at the corner, talking to Jack Brown and Chuck Trask, who were sitting in the upstairs windows down at the Green Front and the Lady Gay, one leg in, one leg out, shotgun stocks resting against their thighs on the outside.
Charlie Bassett let loose a shrill whistle. John Riney swiveled in his chair and saw the dust rise from a crew coming in from the pastureland south of the river.
“Mabel!” he yelled. “Git the boys and git into town!”
“Why?” she yelled back from the kitchen.
“Do as you’re told, woman!”
A crowd was forming on either side of Bridge Street. Whores and gamblers, and Bob Wright, and Dog and Chalkie, and Deacon Cox, and some kids galloping theirselves around on stick horses, hollering and waving their hats like drovers, and Hamilton Bell and Big George Hoover, and a big bunch of off-duty soldiers from the fort, and gamblers making book on what would happen next. Pretty much everybody in town was standing around like they were waiting for a parade to pass by, but it was only Morg’s brother Wyatt, walking toward the bridge down the center of the street.
Mabel came out, drying her hands on her apron. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Wyatt, nice to see you again.”
“Afternoon, Mrs. Riney,” he said, touching the brim of his hat when he drew even. Wyatt leaned his shotgun up against the north wall of the tollhouse, where it was handy but out of sight. “You best go back inside, ma’am. John, keep the gate down ’til I tell you different.”
With Dodge getting closer, the drovers got noisier, and you could hear them whooping now and shooting off their guns. Wyatt waited until the first bunch of them banged onto the bridge. Then he stepped out to stand just behind the center of the tollgate.
A moment later, eight barrels of four shotguns went off like cannon at the corners of the bridge. The next instant, forty-some horses were rearing and squealing, with their riders yelling and trying to check up those ponies.
Wyatt stood quietly during the general uproar and confusion, paying no mind to the curses and demands, just waiting until the cowboys shut up and started to get scared. Which didn’t take long because the bridge was pretty beat up after being crossed by ten million longhorns and Lord knows how many thousands of freight wagons loaded high with buffalo hides before that. When they finally stopped hollering, those Texas boys could hear the groan and creak of a wooden trestle that was none too sturdy anymore, and the roar of the river beneath it. They could see how the roadbed planks were kind of rotten, and they could smell the gun smoke that came drifting out of those street howitzers when Bat and Charlie and Morg and Stauber broke, and tossed shell casings aside, and reloaded.
An older fella pushed his mount through the crowd that was bunched near the tollgate. He pulled up when he saw Wyatt and looked at him, hard.
“Afternoon, Mr. Rasch,” Wyatt said, polite as you please. “I don’t know if you remember me from Ellsworth, sir.”
“I remember you, Wyatt,” Rasch said.
John Riney heard Morg mutter, “Probably still has the headache.”
“I wonder if you’d mind having a word with me before your crew goes into town,” Wyatt said. “John, let Mr. Rasch through.”
John hauled on the counterweight from where he sat, then let the gate drop down again before anyone else could pass. Rasch rode through but didn’t dismount, and Wyatt didn’t ask him to.
“I expect you heard about Ed Masterson,” Wyatt said.
Rasch nodded. “Good man, but out of his latitude.”
“Yes, sir, I agree,” Wyatt said. “Dodge is open for business, Mr. Rasch, but you and your men should know we’ll be enforcing the laws. They can wear their guns into town, but they don’t ride in shooting. First place they go into—livery, bar, store, hotel—they rack their hardware and leave it. They can call for the weapons on their way out of town, but they don’t ride out shooting, either. Anything gets out of hand, we’re busting heads and jailing ’em. Fair warning, sir. It’s twenty dollars apiece to get them out in the morning—”
“Twenty dollars!”
“Yes, sir, and I know you don’t want that expense. This’ll carry more weight if they hear it from you. I’m giving you a chance to talk to them.”
Richard Rasch sat a bit, chewing it over. Then he nodded to John, who lifted the gate for him again. Rasch’s crew formed up around him, listening to what he had to say. When he got to the part about their pistols, there were a few protests and a lot of unchristian remarks. Rasch cut off the backtalk with a look, and waited for shrugs and nods and Yessirs before returning to John to pay the toll.