To win Urilla’s favor and to gain her family’s consent to a marriage, Wyatt made a dogged yearlong effort to read an entire law book, but the words just wouldn’t stick. Reluctantly, he lowered his sights and got a job as the Lamar town constable. It was not close to what he had hoped to offer Urilla, but it was enough. When she agreed to marry him and her parents gave their blessing, Wyatt felt it proof that he’d made something of himself at last. He didn’t even have time to get over his amazement that such a good Christian girl had married him when Urilla came down with typhus.
“Don’t begrudge the Lord what is his own to give and to take.”
That’s what Urilla told Wyatt when they both knew she was dying, and that she would take their child with her, too: one who hadn’t even lived long enough to quicken and who would never see the light.
Wyatt tried to accept it like Urilla did. When the fever and sickness got worse, he was almost willing to let her go, if only to put an end to her suffering. Then—at the very end—she was lucid again.
He had just enough time to think, The fever’s broken. She’s going to live.
For the space of those few moments, he saw it alclass="underline" how he’d nurse her, and how she’d be stronger every day, and how the baby would come and be joined later by a pack of rowdy brothers and pretty sisters. He could see the home they’d have, and he started to weep because the vision of their future was so clear, because he was so grateful and happy that they weren’t going to lose everything they’d meant to be to each other when they made their vows a few months earlier.
“Don’t cry, Wyatt. I’m going to a better place,” Urilla told him.
Then she was gone. Just like that. And he was left to stare at the husk of that dear girl, and to hear his father’s voice.
It’s your own damn fault, you worthless pile of shit.
If you made more money, you coulda got a doctor.
Shoulda been you …
For a good long while after Urilla’s passing, Wyatt lost his way. He only started going to church again when a Wichita preacher suggested that he honor Urilla’s memory by honoring her faith in the Lord. It was never easy and it was sometimes impossible, but Wyatt kept trying, though he did not fear God so much as he feared Urilla’s disappointment, for he felt her eyes upon him whenever he did what he knew to be wrong or failed to do what he thought was right.
The dead are in a better place. That’s what Urilla had told him. That’s what Wyatt Earp wanted to believe, but this is what he knew. Gone is gone. Some things can’t be fixed.
Shoulda sent him back to school …
Wyatt wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
Could be, it’s better this way, he tried telling himself, for in his experience, not many were improved by age. People generally got meaner and harder and sadder. So maybe it was a blessing to die before life could compromise and coarsen you, and twist you into someone you didn’t hardly recognize. Johnnie was a good kid, but who knows what kind of man he’d’ve been?
“Hell,” Wyatt said, aloud. “I shoulda sent him back to school.”
He wanted to make himself hear his own regret, and to see if his voice was steady.
He was almost back to town before Dick Naylor settled down.
Ladies High
Dime novelists worked hard to make a city marshal’s job seem thrilling. They told stories about showdowns and shoot-outs and so on, but they mostly made it all up. Even in a frontier hellhole like Dodge, policemen spent a lot of time replacing boards in the wooden sidewalks, controlling packs of stray dogs, and trapping skunks or raccoons that made nests under buildings. Nights could be lively, what with the bar brawls and so on, but the allure of that excitement faded the first time a drunk puked all over you. Oh, there were shootings and occasionally a theft, but by the time you got there, the deed was done and the criminal long gone, unless he was drunk enough or stupid enough to get caught red-handed.
So there wasn’t really all that much drama in the job, except for what police always called “family” fights. Wyatt hated them. Given a choice, he’d take fifty drunken cowboys over two drunken lovers. Ask him, “What kind of call do you hate the most?” and he’d tell you, “Family fights. Family fights are always the worst.”
And they were always the same.
Somebody’d come running up, hollering, “They’re killing each other next door!” Get there, and the woman’s screaming that she’s being murdered, so you go in after the husband or the boyfriend or the pimp. But the minute you try to arrest him, the woman would be on your back, pounding on you with her fists, yelling, “Leave him alone, you sonofabitch! I love him!”
Nine times out of ten, she wouldn’t let you press charges, and you’d be back again a couple of nights later. It was unrewarding work, and you could get hurt doing it. Wyatt was laid up for a week one time, not drawing pay, and he got ragged for months about the lamp that whore busted over his head.
Everything about a family fight was a misery, and he avoided those calls when he could, but he appeared to be the only officer around when Deacon Cox came out of the Dodge House, yelling about a pair of his hotel guests who were fighting.
Wyatt shrugged and nodded and crossed the street, feet dragging some after a long night. The argument became more distinct as he climbed the Dodge House stairs and scuffed down the corridor. A female voice, heavily accented, dominated. Her themes were perfidy and abandonment. As proof of her opponent’s faithlessness, she loudly offered his desire to save money so he could return to an old girlfriend. A soft answer turneth away wrath, and that was evidently the gentleman’s policy. Then the term “bastard” entered the conversation. Wyatt reached their door in time to hear the unmistakable sound of a solid slap delivered to a face.
“You speak of my mother again,” said a soft Georgia voice, “I will shoot you where you stand.”
“Son of a bitch!”
Wyatt raised a foot to kick open the door and prevent the murder. He nearly fell, off balance, when the door was flung open.
“Get out,” the gentleman suggested, without looking into the hallway. “And this time? Don’t come back.”
“I don’t need you! There are men lining up for me. I pick and I choose! What I do is less disgusting than looking into stinking, diseased mouths,” the woman snarled, stuffing clothing into a carpetbag. “Be damned to you!” She snapped the bag shut and pushed past Wyatt. “And you can go to hell with him!” she shouted over her shoulder.
For a few moments, both men stood in the hallway, watching as she stomped down the corridor muttering curses under her breath.
“I apologize, Morgan,” the gentleman said. “I swear: this time, it wasn’t my fault—” He stopped and stared.
“I’m Morg’s brother,” Wyatt told him. “People mix us up all the time.”
“Wyatt! Of course. Just last evenin’, I was admirin’ your work from a distance.” The gentleman offered his hand. “John Holliday, sir. I don’t know if you remember me.”
“Fort Griffin. You gave me your card.”
“You ever find David Rudabaugh?”
“He circled back to Kansas, like you said. Thanks for the tip.”
“And Dodge is everything you said it would be … Well, sir, if you will excuse me, I am late for office hours. If, however, you are here to arrest me for creatin’ a disturbance”—the dentist stepped back into his room and pulled a frock coat on over his shirtsleeves—“I shall not dispute the charge, unless you intend to put me in a cell with that insufferable woman!”