Telegraph Days: A Novel Read online

  “I wasn’t even aware that an honest man had proposed to Miss Courtright,” Bill said, without a glance at me.

  “I proposed to her—don’t you consider me honest?” Virgil said, in a loud, ringing voice.

  “Well, I consider you loud, at least,” Cody said. “As I have only seen you twice in my life I have no opinion on the honesty issue.”

  “Watch your tongue, there’s four of us here,” Wyatt said. He stepped off the porch and then he wobbled. I believe he was dead drunk.

  Young Warren Earp didn’t like what his brother had just said.

  “Only four, Wyatt—four?” he said. “What do you think I am, a toadstool?”

  “Warren, you are not involved in this,” Wyatt said. “It’s between Virgil and the wench.”

  “This is Miss Antoinette Courtright of Waynesboro, Virginia,” Cody informed them. “‘Wench’ is not a term she is used to hearing and I don’t think she ought to hear it again.”

  “Oh you don’t, do you?” Virgil asked.

  Cody didn’t bother answering. It was clear he had no fear of the Earps and little interest in what they might think of me or anything else.

  Ripley Eads turned white, as if he feared there might be gunplay, but before Virgil could decide whether to risk calling me a wench again, young Warren Earp rose from his seat and dove into Wyatt in a running tackle.

  “I am not a toadstool—I’m a full-grown Earp!” Warren said loudly, after he tackled Wyatt.

  Not only was Wyatt Earp dead drunk, his little brother was astraddle of him, making it hard for the famous marshal to put up much of a defense. Fortunately for him he had three stout brothers, James, Virgil, and Morgan, who set about pulling Warren off. Even so, subduing young Warren proved no easy matter. He fought like a tiger cat. Once or twice the older brothers thought they had Warren safely under control, only to have Warren twist loose and pounce on his dusty brother, who rose to his knees twice, only to be flattened by a new assault.

  “Now this is interesting,” Cody said. “The whole of the Earp brethren can barely manage that boy.”

  The older Earps were all obviously horrified at what was happening. They all seemed to feel that they could not possibly allow young Warren to whip the famous Wyatt, and their embarrassment grew as Warren kept breaking loose and launching new assaults. Being left out of the family count had obviously tapped into a deep pool of temper—and now the question was, who was invincible and who wasn’t?

  “They’re losing prestige every time Warren whops Wyatt,” Cody whispered to me. “And prestige might be all that’s keeping them alive in a raw place like Dodge.”

  “Besides that, it’s happening in front of an important witness … me!” Cody added.

  One thing was clear, at least: Virgil Earp now had more important things to think about than calling me a wench. He ignored me entirely and tried to push the conversation to other topics.

  “I hear you’re working up a show, Cody—where’s it going to be?” he asked.

  “It’s not a show, it’s the Wild West, authentic down to the last Bowie knife,” Cody informed him. “I’m in the process of assembling stars and heroes now. We may open in Omaha or we may just do a tryout or two in North Platte.”

  “Anything we could do in your show?” Virgil asked. “Wyatt thinks Dodge City’s mostly lost its snap.”

  Cody laughed—he had a good, deep laugh and he suddenly let it roll out.

  “I can’t see that young Warren’s low on snap,” he said. “I see he’s a smart boy. I prefer to take my opponents from behind, myself—reduces the likelihood of gunplay.”

  By this time a crowd had gathered, either to watch the fight or because they’d recognized Cody—easy to do when he was in one of his fine buckskin suits.

  Wyatt Earp was on his feet, but he still looked shaky. His brothers James and Morgan tried to steady him but he shook them off.

  “I intend to beat the tar out of that young whelp as soon as I sober up,” Wyatt remarked, wiping blood off his nose. “And I may beat the tar out of all of you, for not warning me about his sneak attack.”

  The older brother, James, who was dressed like a bartender and was a bartender—as Cody later told me—was anxious to curb such inflammatory talk.

  “Warren’s as much an Earp as you,” James pointed out. “There was no reason to leave him off the count.”

  “Mind your own business or go tend bar,” Wyatt said. “And shut your damn trap or I’ll whip you first.”

  Virgil and Morgan Earp glanced nervously around, but James Earp didn’t glance anywhere.

  “I know you’re the famous one, Wyatt,” James Earp remarked. “But don’t let it go to your head. The sun has never risen on a day when you could whip me.”

  “Now that’s well spoken,” Cody remarked in admiration. “I do like a man who can put things crisp like that.”

  “I’m getting about enough of derogatory comment,” Wyatt Earp said, turning toward Bill. “And for my money you’re too damn fancy, Cody.”

  Bill ignored Wyatt’s comments completely and turned toward young Warren, who was sitting on a step, catching his breath.

  “Can any of you boys ride a buffalo?” he asked.

  “Supposing we could, why would we want to?” Morgan Earp asked.

  “Money,” Cody said. “Virgil asked if there was a place for Earps in my Wild West, and the one thing that comes to mind is the buffalo-riding event. We caught a big bull named Monarch and so far no cowboy’s even been able to stay on him for thirty seconds. I’m thinking of offering a big prize for anyone who can stay on Monarch for half a minute.”

  Warren stood up.

  “I can ride anything that’s got four legs,” he announced. “And sometimes I can even ride critters who have only got two.”

  Warren Earp was looking right at me when he made that remark.

  If Cody noticed Warren looking at me he didn’t let on.

  In the far distance we hard a train toot.

  “Gentlemen, we’ve got an appointment with the railroad,” Cody said, in an amiable voice. “I have a little Indian chasing left to do. In my absence Miss Courtright here will be managing my affairs in North Platte.”

  “Her?” Virgil Earp asked—he was suddenly reminded of my existence and my impudence.

  “Yes, she’s a capable manager,” Cody told him. “I intend to put her through Harvard sometime when I can spare her.”

  Then he looked at Warren Earp, who looked loose and lively.

  “I admire your tactics, young man,” he said. “Anytime you feel like trying to ride my buffalo just present yourself to Miss Courtright and you can have a try. There must be somebody who can ride Monarch—and maybe it’s you.”

  “The hell he’ll leave!” Virgil exclaimed. “Who’s going to haul firewood and clean guns if Warren runs off to be in your show?”

  Warren walked over and formally offered to shake hands with me. He stuck out his hand and I shook it firmly.

  “Thanks, Mr. Cody,” Warren said. “I just might take you up on your offer one of these days.”

  His brothers glared, but I don’t believe Warren cared. I gave him a smile and we rode on to meet our train.

  11

  “I CAN ASSURE you right now that you’re safe as a kitten in my house,” Lulu Cody informed me as we were laying the table for my first meal under the Cody roof in their big, drafty house in North Platte, Nebraska.

  “Billy don’t cavort with girls who are smarter than he is,” she added. “And I can see already that you’re smarter than he is.”

  In truth it was nothing more than my excellent Courtright pedigree that got me off on the right foot with Lulu Cody, who, of course, was not half a continent away, in Rochester, New York, as Bill had assured me she would be. The first thing we saw, as we were riding up from the depot in a hired buggy, was the stout, square figure of Lulu Cody waiting for us on the porch. Just the way she stood, her hands on her hips, convinced me that Lulu meant business.
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  “Now look at her! Look at her! No warning!” Bill exclaimed, when he saw her.

  He immediately got red in the face. It was obvious that he was highly vexed.

  “Isn’t she your wife?” I asked. Somehow I was not entirely surprised to find Lulu waiting for us in North Platte, her skirt blowing in the incessant Nebraska wind.

  “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?” he asked.

  “If she’s your wife, why shouldn’t she be here?” I inquired.

  If anything, Bill Cody had less use for my questions than he had for the wife of his youth.

  “Say she is my wife!” he exclaimed. “Does that give her the right to invade every nook and cranny of my life? Can’t a man expect a little privacy once in a while?”

  “How long since you’ve seen Mrs. Cody?” I asked.

  “I spent a whole week with her no more than eight months ago,” he declared, easily managing to feel sorry for himself.

  “If you were married to me—God forbid—a week every eight months wouldn’t be enough,” I told him flatly.

  “All right, Nellie—since you’re on her side, why don’t you drive this buggy home?” he said. “I feel an urge to wet my whistle.”

  Whereupon he stopped the buggy, handed me the reins, and headed for the nearest saloon.

  Ripley Eads was riding with us. I suppose he was one of your sensitive barbers. He sensed trouble about the same time Cody did and jumped out of the buggy as if propelled by a spring.

  Both men soon disappeared behind the swinging doors of a nearby whiskey palace, leaving me to deal with the formidable Lulu as best I could.

  “Look at them run, the cowards!” Lulu said, when I pulled up.

  She was soundly annoyed but not surprised. Lulu was a pretty woman, despite being stout and the tiniest bit bug-eyed. To me she looked French, and it turned out she was mostly French; she was no shrinking violet, and she scared plenty of men badly, but I want to put on record that in the years I worked for the Wild West, I never had a harsh or unkind word from Lulu Cody. Somehow she figured out right away that I was “safe”; that is, I was not likely to become her husband’s mistress.

  Lulu Cody drew that conclusion at the very moment when I was still more or less musing that I would become Bill Cody’s mistress, at some leisurely point when there was no Lulu handy and no pressing business to interfere with our romance. I now realize that I hadn’t yet come to terms with the extent to which Bill Cody was all business. Oh, he liked to carouse at the end of the day—indeed I seldom saw him entirely free of the effects of the whiskey he drank—but he was still all business. When I assumed he hired me because he wanted to copulate with me, I was dead wrong. He hired me because I was organized, and also responsible. In the world of shows that Bill Cody was swiftly moving into, the organized man (or woman) was rare, and the responsible ones even more rare. The truth is that Bill Cody had as good an eye for character as he did for horseflesh, and nobody had a better eye for horseflesh than Buffalo Bill Cody.

  But that’s to jump ahead.

  Lulu had an elk roast cooking. As soon as I got my stuff inside, out of the dusty breeze, I hurried into the kitchen to try and be helpful to Lulu and the two stout Finnish girls she employed as household help.

  “Give me Finnish girls any day,” Lulu told me, handing me a salt-shaker and indicating that my duty was to salt the soup.

  “Why Finnish?”

  “Because they understand English and I don’t understand Finnish,” Lulu said. “They gossip in Finnish, which leaves me free to get my work done.”

  “Now, this is cozy,” I said, referring to her bright, warm kitchen, which was rapidly filling up with good smells.

  For a moment Lulu looked as if she might cry. She teared up and a tear or two spilled over before she caught herself and bent to check her roast.

  “That’s right—one thing I can do is make a place cozy,” she said. “It’s a fine skill, if you ask me, but Bill Cody hates cozy—he flees it like sinners flee the Lord. The cozier I make it, the farther away he wanders.”

  I knew Lulu was right. My bright efforts to get Bill Cody into a cozy place for romantic purposes had come to naught. Whatever his opinion of copulation, the man was not going to allow himself to be sucked in by coziness.

  “Who was that fellow in the buggy with you and Bill?” Lulu asked.

  “Ripley Eads, a barber and chaperone,” I said.

  “I wonder if he does pedicures?” Lulu asked. “I confess I’m rather partial to pedicures.”

  “It seems unlikely—Ripley’s shy,” I told her.

  The smell of the elk roasting was making me hungry.

  “What will you do about Bill’s dislike of coziness?” I asked, though it was not exactly my business.

  “Do you believe in love potions, Miss Courtright?” Lulu asked.

  “Love potions?” The question took me wholly by surprise.

  Lulu nodded and took a little bottle out of a cupboard and held it out to me. I had mostly read about love potions in novels—and not the better novels, either. Walter Scott and Mr. Dickens didn’t dwell much on love potions.

  Lulu unscrewed the top of the bottle and offered me a smell. I took one sniff and immediately got the vapors. The liquid in the bottle was brown, and unpleasantly murky.

  “Potent, don’t you agree?” Lulu asked. “I got it from a Gypsy. I figure Bill will show up about three hours from now, hungry as a wolf and wanting some strong coffee to do combat with his hangover. Several drops of this in the coffeepot is supposed to do the trick.”

  I was still struggling to clear my head.

  “What trick are you expecting it to do, Mrs. Cody?” I asked.

  “It’s supposed to make Bill love me again,” she said. “He did love me once.”

  Then, to my dismay, Lulu Cody burst into tears. She stood in her kitchen and sobbed heavily. The two Finnish maids, who must have been used to it, went about their business.

  “You see what a crazy old woman I am?” she said, when she had cried herself out. “Love potion from a Gypsy! But I have to try anything, if I want to see my husband more than a few days a year!

  “If you were married wouldn’t you want to see your husband more than a few days a year?” she asked.

  “I certainly would. And if the love potion didn’t work I’d try to knock him down with a stick of firewood. I suppose if I hit him hard enough it would keep the so-and-so anchored for a while.”

  “I’ve yelled at Bill, don’t think I haven’t,” Lulu said. “But I’ve never hit him with anything. It would hurt his feelings so.”

  Here I was, just arrived and already in the middle of the Cody marriage. I tried to think of something good to say about Bill, and all I could come up with was Ripley Eads.

  “I might mention that your husband did insist that the two of us not travel together without a proper chaperone—in this case, the barber,” I told her.

  Lulu waved that one away.

  “I told you Bill has very limited interest in smart women,” she reminded me.

  “Of course he’d hire you. If this crazy Wild West ever gets off the ground he’ll need somebody smart to keep up with the payroll and the schedules and such.

  “But woo a smart woman? Not likely,” Lulu concluded. “Of course, he likes to kiss every girl he can catch, as far as that goes. But if Bill thought you two needed a chaperone, it wasn’t to protect you from him. It was to protect him from you.”

  I must have been standing there with my mouth open—why hadn’t I figured that out?—because Lulu gave a short giggle and invited me to fill my plate.

  “No use waiting for Bill,” she said. “It’ll take him two or three hours to get drunk enough to show himself.”

  I did as I was told and ate a pile—it was by far the best elk roast that had ever come my way.

  12

  I WAS INSTALLED in an airy upstairs room, with a fine western exposure, and was unpacking my valise and hanging my clothes in
a roomy cedar closet when I heard the most awful uproar from downstairs. Many people seemed to be shouting—what they were shouting about I could not determine. I put on my housecoat and went hurrying down. It sounded as if there had been a murder downstairs—I couldn’t just stand aloof.

  The first thing I noticed when I came into the kitchen was Billy Cody, stretched out on the floor, one hand grasping his throat. He seemed to be alive but his face had a look of stark terror. Lulu had backed into a corner to await developments, and both the Finnish girls were crying out to the saints. A young fellow about Jackson’s age was trying to get Cody to sit up.

  “What’s wrong with Mr. Cody?” I asked Lulu.

  “That love potion was supposed to work quick but this isn’t how I expected it to work,” Lulu whispered.

  “I should say not—who’s the young man?”

  “Danny Mueller, we’ve been raising him,” Lulu said. “Do you think Bill is acting, or do you think he’s really sick?”

  “How much of that love potion did you put in his coffee?” I asked.

  I’ll say one thing for Lulu Cody—she didn’t flinch from the truth.

  “I put in the whole bottle,” she admitted. “I am not one for half measures,” she added.

  I began to feel a little anxious for Bill Cody. One sniff of that love potion had left me feeling vaporish for nearly an hour. I went over to where Bill lay and introduced myself to Danny Mueller, who was plenty worried. Bill Cody was never in his life to have a more devoted friend than Dan Mueller.

  “Uncle Bill just took two sips of coffee and fell over backwards,” Danny said. “Do you think he’s going to die?”

  I wasn’t confident that he wouldn’t, but I did my best not to let my worry show.

  “I suspect he just needs to throw up,” I ventured. “Let’s drag him outside—the crisp air might help.”

  It was a clear Nebraska night, with many fine stars. We dragged Bill to the edge of the porch and he soon began to throw up in Lulu’s flowerbeds.

  “She poisoned me, goddamn her!” Bill said, when he could talk a little. “Is that any way for a wife to behave?”