Bless his heart, he thought. Robert must be doing well.
John Henry himself was still using a foot-pedal model, but it occurred to him then that if he hired little Wilfred Eberhardt to work the drive, it would provide the boy with a small income and save his own energy for the skilled labor.
He laid the catalog aside and, for a time, simply appreciated the quiet in his room. He was alone but not lonely. Kate’s absence was a relief, he decided, not a deprivation. He was, he believed, no longer prone to the paralyzing bouts of homesickness that used to overwhelm him, when the yearning for all he had lost was so powerful that his only defense was to hold himself still until the sorrow washed through him and left him empty again.
The heat was building under the roof of the hotel, but the air was dry and not so hard on him as the murderous swelter of a Southern summer. He closed his eyes and listened to the strangely lulling concert that Dodge in daylight produced. The brassy bellow of cattle, the timpani of hooves. A cello section of bees buzzing in the hotel eaves. The steady percussion of hammers: carpenters shingling the roof of a little house going up on a brand-new street extending north from Front.
Tap tap tap BANG! Tap tap tap BANG …
… The rolling thunder of artillery, the pop and crackle of small-arms fire. Wilson’s voice: “A’lanna’s burnin’, Mr. John! They’re in Jonesboro—” And Chainey’s: “They’ll come here next, Mr. John!” But Mamma is too sick to move, and he has to stand them off, and he can hear the harsh Yankee voices, the crude, vile language—how can they speak so with ladies near? He is firing and firing—all by himself now. Who’ll load the guns if Wilson and Chainey have run off? There’s no one else to save her, and the bullets are gone. “Use a rock, son,” Robert yells, but there aren’t any rocks and—
“Ce n’est qu’un rêve. Je suis ici, mon amour. It’s only a dream. Wake up, Doc. Je suis ici. Je ne vais pas te quitter.”
Kate was there, her arm over him, her small, soft, living body stretched along his back, her voice low and sure.
“It’s just that goddam dream again. Wake up, Doc. Wake up.”
She was glad she’d arrived at their hotel room in time, pleased to help him as he fought his way out of the nightmare, happy to cradle him during those first awful moments when eviscerating grief seemed briefly fresh.
“It’s over now,” she told him again and again. “I’m here, Doc. I won’t leave you.”
She had forgotten by then that she had not left him, that she had been thrown out. She had no memory of being told not to come back. She knew how to calm him after the dream, how to steady him while he coughed until his throat was raw and his chest burned. She knew how much bourbon was enough to help him catch his breath, and she knew how to make him forget, for a time, his mother’s illness and his own.
Afterward, she always asked, “I’m a good woman to you, ain’t I, Doc?” He always agreed. When he fell asleep again, she felt the satisfaction of a job well done.
“Oh! I stopped by Wright’s for you,” she told him when they were getting dressed for the evening. “There’s a new Harper’s, and something from that priest.”
Kate didn’t mention the letter from Martha Anne because she’d thrown it away. It was for Doc’s own good. He was always bad-tempered and gloomy when that girl wrote to him. Nor did she comment on the look she got from that little Wright bitch when Kate identified herself as Mrs. Holliday and asked for Doc’s mail.
Frowning, Doc took the large brown envelope from Alexander von Angensperg and opened it carefully. “How thoughtful,” he said quietly, and held up the score to Brahms’ Second Symphony.
He was still studying it when Kate left. She tended to go out earlier than he did, to look for the night’s best game. She did so that evening serene in the knowledge that she could leave Doc Holliday anytime she pleased, and that he would always take her back.
Three of a Kind
When Wyatt left the dentist’s office on the morning of June 10, he had every intention of asking Bat Masterson about Doc Holliday’s suspicion that Johnnie Sanders had been robbed before he died. That said, the notion of figuring out who’d killed the boy never crossed Wyatt’s mind.
Dead Negroes were a dime a dozen after Reconstruction, and ever since the Little Bighorn, the U.S. Army had been busy making “good Indians” out of as many native men, women, and children as the cavalry could round up and shoot. After what happened to Mr. and Mrs. Sanders back in Wichita, Wyatt simply wasn’t all that surprised by their son’s death. The sad truth was that a half-Indian colored kid like Johnnie was asking to get killed by standing there in his own skin, minding his own business.
Course, Johnnie wasn’t minding his own business, and Wyatt bitterly regretted the part he’d played in the boy’s demise. Still, even if Doc Holliday was right about what happened, whoever clubbed the kid was long gone. What Wyatt wanted to know was, what happened to the money?
Maybe that night’s take had been stolen, but the dentist thought the boy had cleared $1,800 just since the end of April. Johnnie started dealing back in October. There might be twice that much somewhere. Three times, even!
If Wyatt could find that money, Roxana would be within reach. He could enter her and Dick in the rest of the summer’s races, and pay James back out of the winnings. Breed Roxana to Dick in the fall and next year, he’d have a colt and some kind of decent future back in sight.
So he wanted to find out why Bat thought Johnnie Sanders’ death was an accident. Except Bat was out of town, doing something for the county probably, and by the time Wyatt had established that, a fight broke out in broad daylight just outside the Bon Ton and shots were fired. Morg and Jack and Chuck and Stauber and Charlie came running, straight out of bed and still wearing long johns. Then half a dozen soldiers from Fort Dodge decided to mix in, just for the hell of it, evidently; Wyatt never did work out whose side they were on. Even Fat Larry came lumbering out of the jail and bashed a few brawlers before he had to sit down and hold his chest. The whole business ended up taking the rest of the afternoon. By the time it was over, Wyatt was back on night duty, looking at three straight shifts with no sleep and no extra pay for his trouble, apart from his cut of the fines.
By dawn the next day, he was so whipped he couldn’t think straight, and that was probably why he was stupid enough to show up at Bessie’s back door with a filthy, drunk brunette clutching an oilskin.
Bessie couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The girl was a two-bit streetwalker so low, she couldn’t even afford the rent on a crib—just throw that greasy oilskin on the dirt and let the cowboys ride.
“What do you call yourself?” Bessie asked the girl.
“Mattie,” the girl mumbled. “Mattie Blaylock.”
“How long you been working, Mattie?”
“Since November.”
“Of 1867,” Bessie muttered. She shot a hard look at Wyatt, who suddenly found his shoes interesting. “You sit down here for a minute, Mattie,” Bessie said before yelling, “James! Your brother brought us a girl.”
Drying his hands on a bar towel, James stepped outside and took it all in. The hooker, slumped against the back stairs. Bessie, tight-faced, arms crossed. Wyatt, miserable.
“I’m sorry, James. I caught a vaquero trying to cut her,” Wyatt told him. “I threw him in jail, but she keeps following me, and … I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Wyatt,” Bessie whispered fiercely, “your brother and I run a clean house—”
“I’m not saying give her a job!” Wyatt dug into his pocket and handed over some crumpled bills. “Just let her sleep here?”
“Here? She’s probably got fleas! Not to mention—”