“When you live with me, I will love you and punish you,” the Old Mister mumbled one quiet afternoon. “I will kidnap you, and you will give yourself up to me, and you will wear no clothing while you scrub floors, but I will feed you sweets … Here. Drink this. Go on. It’s only a little.”
Repulsed. Intrigued. Frightened. Intoxicated. Maggie hardly knew what she felt, except she wished she’d never left Belfast. She was so lonely, and the Old Mister was the only one who seemed to like her, and she liked the liquor. Sweet port, it was. Warming in the cold damp winter. So warming that it was possible to ignore an old man’s cold, bony hands.
“Any port in a storm,” Old Mister would mumble. Then he’d giggle, like he’d made a joke.
Young Missus could see what was going on between her father-in-law and the new maid, and she despised Maggie for it. “You are a wicked girl,” she whispered fiercely. “You’ll be punished for what you’re doing with him.” Young Missus could slap her and make Maggie’s life a trial, but she couldn’t fire her. Only the Old Mister could do that. He held the purse strings and ruled the house, and it was he who led young Maggie Carnahan to walk in lasciviousness, lusts, and excesses of wine—
All that was behind her now. Maggie Carnahan was dead. A clean new soul had risen in her place, rejoicing in Jesus. Mrs. George Hoover was a teetotal Methodist, the wife of a good man, and a rich woman—No! Better than a rich woman. She was a lady.
At the end of July, Margaret Hoover overheard talk about Wyatt Earp and the new dentist’s work. She began to pay attention to the deputy’s demeanor when she saw him at church on Sunday. It’s time he did more for temperance than pray, she decided, and that afternoon she urged her husband to approach Wyatt about the convention in August.
Big George was surprised that Margaret had thought of such a thing and was inclined to dismiss the notion, but his little wife could be remarkably insistent. Before long she had convinced him that this was a good opportunity to involve Wyatt in politics. In fact, George became so certain of the wisdom of the plan, he invited Nick Klaine along when he went to see Wyatt at the Iowa House. Which meant the newspaperman was right there taking notes for the Dodge City Times when the offer was made.
“Wyatt, I know you’re on duty in a few minutes, so I’ll get straight to the point,” George started out, after saying “Afternoon” to Doc Holliday and Morgan. “The Republican Party needs men like you. You’re respected, you’re honest, and you can’t be intimidated by the saloon interests. We’d like you to act as the Ford County representative to the party’s state convention next month. This could be the year that Prohibition gets onto the Kansas platform. Yours could be the vote that puts it over the top. Now, the convention lasts two weeks, but we can get you the time off, and we’ll cover your lost wages and expenses. What do you say?”
Wyatt didn’t say anything at all. George’s earnest smile remained unaltered, although the effort to maintain its confident brightness became somewhat more visible as the seconds ticked by. He glanced at Nick Klaine, whose pencil was poised in anticipation of Wyatt’s answer. “You see, Klaine?” George cried. “This is a momentous decision and this is just the sort of judicious consideration I expected from Wyatt Earp!”
In point of fact, Wyatt was considering the offer carefully, but he was also choosing his words, still avoiding the letter s in front of people. “I’ve been dealing faro at the Alhambra, Mr. Hoover.”
“We all do what we have to, to make a living, Wyatt,” George pointed out smoothly, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t work for a better and more moral nation.”
I guess, Wyatt would have said ordinarily. Instead he just shrugged, which made him seem more reluctant than he really was.
“You don’t have to give me an answer right now,” George said, “but representing us at the convention could lead to other things. Just think about the possibilities, is all I’m asking.”
George said good day to them all and left with Nick Klaine. Wyatt looked at Morg, who said, “Why not?”
Doc sighed, and put his head in his hands, and wondered how his life had come to such a pass that he was surrounded by Republicans. “You’ll need a suit,” he warned Wyatt. “You can’t go to Topeka dressed like that.”
The idea of buying new clothes was enough to make Wyatt say, “Oh, hell, then,” and brush the whole idea off.
For the next couple of days, he went about his business, working on his words whenever he was alone, until the sounds came natural. Wasn’t long before he was confident enough to call, “See you on Sunday,” right out loud to the preacher. And he produced a sarcastic but clearly enunciated “Very funny” when Morgan played like he was going to punch him in the mouth at supper one morning.
Wyatt had done some hunting while he was out saying “Mississippi,” and Mattie cooked up a pretty good venison stew. She’d invited his brothers over for a meal, but Wyatt regretted it because all Morg and James would talk about was his new teeth.
“You still ain’t seen Eddie Foy’s act?” Morgan cried around a mouthful of deer meat. “Well, hell, you should go! What are you waiting for?”
“I don’t know, Wyatt,” James said, all serious. “You smile? Somebody might die of apoplexy or something. Might cause a riot, even. You don’t want to be responsible.”
“James is right, Wyatt. Start slow,” Morg urged. “Just hang around outside and listen for a while. Course, you’ll want to alert the docs—”
“Yeah,” James agreed, “you might need McCarty and Holliday, both, if your face cracks.”
“And don’t laugh!” Morg pleaded. “You laughed once already this year. Do it again, it’ll be the Apocalypse for sure! We’ll have the four horsemen and the rain of fire—”
They went on like that for so long, Wyatt got fed up and put off going to hear the Irishman’s show just to prove they couldn’t rag him into anything. After a while, though, Morg and James let up on him, and Wyatt started thinking how maybe one night he would just swing on by the Commie-Q after all.
In early August a long dry spell finally broke with a thunderstorm followed by a steady downpour that was keeping the streets quiet. There were just a few woeful horses out in the rain, heads down, tied at the rails; most men were willing to pay half a dollar to corral their animals just to keep their tack dry on the Elephant Barn’s indoor racks. The saloons and dance halls were more crowded than usual because of the weather. You could hear the pianos and fiddles and hollering when you passed by the open doors. Get a few paces beyond, though, and the drumming of the rain on the galleries above the boardwalks drowned the noise out.
Around eleven, Wyatt found himself walking past the Commie-Q. He still wasn’t quite ready to go inside yet, but he was willing to stand around outside the theater, just like Morg said: close enough to hear the songs and jokes.
The strange thing was, he didn’t even know that he’d been avoiding the Commie-Q before he got his teeth fixed. If anybody had asked, he’d have said he didn’t spend any time at the theater because there hadn’t been much trouble there since he got back from chasing Dave Rudabaugh around, though Morgan said there’d been a ruckus at the beginning of the season when some drovers had threatened to lynch Eddie Foy because he was telling jokes on Texas, and they took it wrong.
According to Morg, even when those boys had a rope around his neck, Eddie kept smart-mouthing them, and they admired his nerve so much, they let him live. Word of the event had passed along the trail as the Texans drifted home, and now the Commie-Q was every cowboy’s destination, along with the brothels and the gambling halls of Dodge.
Eddie’s act was a lively combination of Irish step dancing and Negro hambone mixed with songs and patter. Drovers would go see the show over and over until they knew all the jokes and could yell out the punch lines with him.