Doc - Mary Doria Russell [150]
Trouble was, a lot of men in Topeka had just spent two weeks telling Wyatt he should run against Bat Masterson for sheriff of Ford County, and how the party would back him if he did. And when Bob Wright came up for reelection, they said, Wyatt ought to challenge him for representative on the Republican ticket. That’s how Prohibition would get passed: one Dry representative elected at a time, until the legislature finally had enough anti-saloon men to do the right thing. But it would mean settling in Dodge for good. Which put Wyatt in mind of the train joke Eddie Foy told, where a conductor comes along the aisle and asks a drunk where he’s going. “To hell, I reckon,” the drunk says, and the conductor answers, “Ticket’s a dollar. Get off at Dodge.”
Halfway across Kansas now, listening to the chug and click of the train, Wyatt stared out the window, letting his thoughts settle some while he watched the land go by. Funny how you were traveling faster than a horse could run, and you knew you were moving, but there was no sense of the land under you. You lost the smell of grass crushed under your mount’s hooves and the sound of the leather creaking beneath your hips. You couldn’t really see anything small. The world was just two big slabs of color. Blue above, green below. Things got simpler.
It came down to this. If he was going to run against Bat, he needed more than suspicion. He needed a reason.
Put up or shut up, he thought.
It was early evening when the train pulled into Dodge. Lou and Morg were there to meet them but not Doc, who was laid up with a cold. Morgan wanted to go to Delmonico’s for a meal, so Wyatt could tell him and Lou about the convention, but Mattie had one of her headaches starting and couldn’t stand the thought of food. They stopped by Tom McCarty’s pharmacy to get her a dose of laudanum; that was the only thing that kept her from throwing up until she had dry heaves. Wyatt got her home and helped her into bed, but soon as she was asleep, he left to take a walk around town.
Morgan was back on duty by then, and he figured Wyatt would want to know what had gone on while he was in Topeka.
Wyatt brushed the report off and asked instead, “Where’s Bat?”
“He’s not at the Lone Star?” Morg asked after a moment.
Wyatt just looked at him, like he knew Morgan was stalling for time. Which he was.
“Well, it’s pretty quiet tonight,” Morg said then. “Maybe he’s over at the Iowa House?”
“Already checked.” Wyatt glanced away before giving Morgan that hard stare that could feel like a shove. “Where’s his money coming from, Morg?”
Morgan’s eyes dropped. “I ain’t gonna lie to you, Wyatt, but I’d rather you didn’t ask—”
“Morg, are you covering for him?”
“Well, see, we just figured what you didn’t know wouldn’t—”
“Where,” Wyatt said very quietly, “is he?”
Morg lasted about three seconds. “Out past Duck Creek,” he said. “A little north of Howells.”
In late November of 1853, when Catherine Masterson gave birth to her second son, nearly a dozen years had passed since the infamous Lilly-McCoy bare-knuckle boxing match in Hastings, New York. Even so, when her son Bat was a boy, men still spoke of that epic contest the way the Greeks and Trojans once spoke of mighty Achilles and brave Hector, in voices hushed by secondhand awe.
Homer sang of boxing matches. Vergil wrote of them. Pindar called down the blessings of Zeus upon them. In paint and in marble and in bronze, on vases and in murals and with heroic statuary, ancient artisans depicted the boxer’s manly beauty, with its cauliflower