Doc - Mary Doria Russell [72]
Dog laughed. “Chalk, you’re gonna owe me fifty bucks on the Fourth.”
Bob Wright waited to comment until Wyatt was well out of earshot.
“Naw …” he said then, like he was talking himself out of thinking something. “Probably just a coincidence …”
“What?” Dog Kelley asked.
“How he got them to leave their guns at Ham’s.”
“Kickback,” Chalkie said darkly, wishing he’d thought of it before Ham.
“Well,” said Deacon Cox, always reasonable, “makes a certain amount of sense to corral the horses first thing and leave the guns at Ham’s instead of letting them come through town heeled. We should’ve written the ordinance that way in the first place.”
“Golly, Deacon,” Bob said, “you must be rolling in money. Me, I could have used the extra business when they came back to the store.”
“C’mon, Bob,” Dog groaned. “You’re pullin’ in boxcars of cash, and everybody knows it.”
“I got expenses, too,” Bob pointed out. “Why, shipping costs alone can kill a merchant out here! Anyways, I better get back to the store.”
By then the saloons were getting noisy. Bridge Street was almost clear, except for Nick Klaine, who was leaning against a hitching rail, still scribbling notes for the Dodge City Times. Bringing up the rear, Bat Masterson came even with the newspaperman and told Charlie Bassett to go on ahead and start the patrol without him. It wasn’t much of a chance to take. Rasch’s boys wouldn’t be drunk for at least twenty minutes yet, and Bat wanted to make sure Nick got the facts right—especially the part about how he and Charlie were deputized to work within city limits, but the sheriff’s office still had jurisdiction in the county. So this was not a demotion but an expansion of responsibility.
Nick listened, and nodded, and wrote a few words. When he looked up from his notes, Wyatt was already dragging a dazed and weakly protesting young Texan to the jail. “Doesn’t waste time, does he.”
“Nope,” Bat said. “He was like that even back when me and Ed and him was hunting buffalo. Size up a herd. Move downwind of the animal most likely to be a troublemaker. Drop that one first. See, now, here’s the difference between me and Wyatt and these cowboys,” Bat continued, warming up. “Drovers are tough, but if you’re with a cattle crew—why, there’s always thirty, forty other men nearby. You got a trail boss. You got Cookie driving a chuck wagon, making meals for you like he was your mamma. Each man’s got eight or ten horses at least in the remuda. Something goes wrong—say, your horse breaks a leg or you do? Why, there’s always help near. Now, buffalo hunters? That’s a different story. You hunt buffalo, you’re the only thing on two legs for four thousand square miles. Jesus! Wet, sick, thirsty, starved, trampled—you’d just handle it or die trying.”
Nick Klaine nodded, gazing at Wyatt.
“Yep. Do or die!” Bat said. “Most I ever had was a three-man crew. Just me and Ed and Wyatt—”
“Bat!” Wyatt yelled.
“Doesn’t waste words, either,” Nick observed. “Guess you better get to work.”
All that night, when Bat and Charlie weren’t settling things down before an argument turned into a fight, or backing up a faro dealer whose customers suspected fraud, or making sure a whore got paid, Bat was going over and over in his head how he’d have written the confrontation at the tollbooth if he were working for the newspaper. RASCH ACTIONS, he’d have headlined it, and he thought that was pretty clever. Or maybe NO RASCH ACTIONS. He couldn’t decide which was better. He was particularly pleased with his analysis of why cowboys weren’t near as tough as the self-reliant ex–buffalo hunters who wore the badge. That was what you called “a good angle,” and as the night went on, Bat regretted more and more that he hadn’t saved it up for D. M. Frost instead of giving it away to Nick Klaine, because the Ford County Globe reached more constituents than the Dodge City Times.
The next morning, same as always, Bat bought both papers and read them before he went to bed. Being an elected