Telegraph Days: A Novel Page 9

  I expected Jackson to reload and keep trying. He pulled up his mustang and just sat there, empty pistol in hand. He looked confused. Then he put the empty pistol back in his holster and sat there some more.

  I suppose it was then that I realized my brother had a big problem. He had economically killed the whole Yazee gang—six shots, six men—but now he couldn’t hit a crippled steer from thirty feet away.

  From then until the sun went down neither of us could think of much to say.

  7

  ABOUT THE ONLY difference between Rita Blanca and Dodge City was that Dodge City had a railroad. Both communities consisted of one long street with hovels and cheap frame houses on either side. Wagons came and went, and of course there were plenty of cowboys around, but I felt so glum about the situation with Jackson that I was not disposed even to find a good-looking cowboy to flirt with.

  I was glum, but Jackson was in a deep funk. Somehow he had gone from being the best pistol shot in No Man’s Land to being just an awkward seventeen-year-old who couldn’t hit anything, from any distance. I was afraid he might shoot his own horse between the ears while aiming at a jackrabbit or a yearling. At least I hoped he wouldn’t shoot his own horse, but it was a possibility that could not be entirely ruled out. And here we were approaching a town that was noted for its gunfighters—Billy Hickok, for example, or this fellow Earp, whom Aurel Imlah accused of being coarse.

  When we finally came in sight of the ugly straggle of shacks and saloons that constituted Dodge City, Kansas, I thought it best to pull up for a moment and assess the situation.

  “What am I going to do, Sis?” Jackson asked, his young brow as deeply furrowed as I had ever seen it.

  “I can’t hit the side of a barn,” he added, glumly.

  “We don’t need to worry about you hitting the side of a barn,” I told him.

  “It’s moving targets like this Marshal Earp that we have to worry about.”

  “But I hit the Yazees, every damn one of them,” Jackson reminded me.

  “The stakes were high on that occasion—I expect you got inspired.” Jackson approved that comment.

  “That’s it! I got inspired,” he said.

  “Poets can get inspired—I suppose pistoleros can too,” I added.

  “The problem is, I ain’t inspired anymore, which means I can’t hit the side of a barn,” he concluded.

  “It does appear so,” I admitted. “But there’s no need to hit anything, right now. We came to Dodge City to get a book printed, not to engage in shoot-outs.”

  “I don’t want to get in a shoot-out,” Jackson admitted. “But this is supposed to be a mean old town. What if someone insults me—or you? Do you reckon I could get inspired enough to kill him?”

  “From what I’ve read of poets, inspiration is pretty fickle,” I told him. “What I think is that you ought to stop being a deputy until we finish our business here and head back home.”

  “Stop being a deputy?” Jackson asked—he immediately got red in the face. It was clear that the notion did not appeal to him.

  “All right,” I said, seeing that there was no point in pushing that suggestion. “You can stay a deputy, but do me one practical favor: put away that fancy knife and that fancy gun belt.

  “And it wouldn’t hurt to put the pistol and the holster in your saddlebags with them.”

  Once again, my suggestion didn’t please.

  “I’m a lawman—I like carrying a gun,” Jackson said.

  “I know you do,” I told him. “And no reason you shouldn’t. When we get home I’ll buy you plenty of ammunition and you can practice until you’re as good as anyone. But right now you aren’t expert, except maybe in life-or-death situations, which is the very kind of situation we ought to avoid.”

  “I ain’t taking off my pistol, Dodge City or no Dodge City,” my brother said, exhibiting the well-known Courtright stubbornness.

  “What about the knife and gun belt?” I persisted.

  Jackson stuck out his jaw, as if he was determined to balk, but I just sat and let him think about it and finally he relaxed the famous Courtright jaw.

  “I guess I wouldn’t object to hiding my knife and gun belt—I’ve shot up most of the shells in the gun belt anyway.”

  Half a loaf is better than none—it’s not a rule I could live by, but if it got us in and out of Dodge City alive, then who was I to argue?

  8

  IT WAS SOON evident that the citizens of Dodge City were not overburdened with manners. Most of them didn’t have anything better to do than stare at strangers; nor did they have any suspicion that staring at strangers was rude. Jackson and I trotted down the middle of the one wide street, and many an ugly head turned to look us over. Fortunately I can summon the well-known Courtright hauteur, available as needed, and I easily froze out such citizens as were unlucky enough to meet my eye.

  Four men in black hats and dusty black coats were lounging in front of what seemed to the busiest of the numerous saloons. The men looked like brothers, but then again they could have just been partners in crime.

  We didn’t stop to inquire.

  Even though I had given the men the merest glance I could feel their eyes following us as we passed on down the street. I told Jackson not to look at them, and he didn’t, but I still had the feeling that the Earp brothers, for that was who the men were, felt it was their right to watch our every move.

  It made me want to go back and slap their faces, which is what I would have done in Virginia if four ill-mannered ruffians had stared at me so insolently. But I wasn’t in Virginia—I was an author on the lookout for a printer and couldn’t afford to be sidetracked because a quartet of uncouth men had nothing better to do than stare at me.

  Fortunately the printer’s office, which also happened to be the newspaper office, was in plain sight toward the north end of the one long street.

  An old bald man with big freckles on his head seemed to be in charge. The print shop was uncommonly untidy and the old printer himself could be fairly described as a kind of human inkblot; but he was friendly to a fault—probably glad to see visitors walk in who behaved decently and could actually read. The printer’s name was Tesselinck—I believe he may have been a Dutchman or something. Now and then he would forget himself and suck on his own pen—all in all not an attractive habit, but we were in Dodge City, where mere friendliness counted for more than it might have in other places.

  I plunked my scribbled-up manuscript down on his counter and got right to the point.

  “This is a write-up about the big shoot-out with the Yazee gang down in Rita Blanca,” I said. “I sent a telegram about it. I’d like to get it printed up as soon as possible—my brother and I are anxious to head back.”

  “Are you the telegraph lady down in Rita Blanca?” he asked.

  “Yes sir, that’s me.”

  “Not many females are trained telegraphers,” he commended.

  “Sir, I have no interest in statistics,” I told him. “Will you print my booklet or won’t you?”

  “I see you’re crispy,” he said pleasantly. “I’m a printer, that’s my calling. I will print your book but I have to admit that my eyesight’s feeble. I might need some help with the handwriting.”

  “I’ll help you,” I promised. “How long do you expect this will take?”

  Mr. Tesselinck rifled through the pages, getting several of them smudged with ink.

  “I’m hoping to get two hundred copies,” I explained, at which the inky old printer made a gesture of hopelessness.

  “I don’t have that much paper,” he said. “I might manage fifty right now, and I’ll do the rest when my big paper order comes in.”

  “I suppose fifty’s a start,” I said.

  “How about a cover?” he asked. “It’d sell better with some kind of picture on the cover.”

  Jackson, who had a fair hand for sketching, was looking bored.

  “My brother can draw a cover,” I told the printer. “Cou
ld you loan him a pen and some paper?”

  In a minute Jackson was equipped with some big pencils and a good scratch pad.

  I supposed Jackson would consult me about the content of the picture, but he didn’t. When he had done about a third of the cover I asked to see it, a favor he allowed reluctantly.

  The picture showed Jackson himself, or his equivalent, in a black coat and a black hat, neither of which he possessed, shooting at six startled outlaws, whose horses were rearing and plunging about. One outlaw lay dead in the street and another was in the process of toppling off his horse. The detail of the horses was particularly fine—Jackson Courtright was certainly no slouch when it came to drawing horses in motion.

  In the drawing Jackson had on boots, when in fact he had been barefooted; but the change that annoyed me most was that he had simply left me out.

  “Jackson, where am I?” I asked. “I was five feet from you when you shot the Yazees—I’m the one who yelled at you to draw, remember? Why’d you leave me out?”

  Jackson looked annoyed at being questioned. Why should anyone, particularly his sister, question him? After all, he was the regnant male.

  “You’re a girl,” he said smugly. “I saw no reason to put you in.”

  Quick as a striking snake I slapped his face.

  He turned beet red, threw down the sketch, and stomped out the door. It was hardly the first time the little coward had fled my temper. We were brother and sister, after all.

  Mr. Tesselinck went right on numbly setting type. His eyesight seemed to have improved.

  “Do you have anything against girls?” I asked. I was pretty mad.

  “Not a thing, Miss Courtright,” he said. “In fact, I married one.”

  9

  JACKSON CAME BACK and sulked awhile but I bluntly tackled him on the matter at hand.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of damsels in distress?” I asked him. “Plenty of dime novels have damsels in distress on the cover.”

  “Who says you were in distress?” he asked. “You seemed cool as a cucumber to me.”

  But he finally agreed to sketch me in, and even drew me in profile, which is what I preferred. And when my little outlaw book was printed, I was on the cover for the first few editions. But the book kept being printed and reprinted until more than a million copies were in circulation, in the process of which I slowly slipped off the cover, seldom to reappear, which proves nothing at all except that the world belongs to men.

  Meanwhile, back at Mr. Tesselinck’s inky print shop in Dodge City, Kansas, the typesetting went on until the sun went down, at which point Jackson and I had to face the prospect of spending the night in this ugly, dirty town.

  When we asked Mr. T., as we had begun to refer to him, whether there was a boardinghouse in town he shook his head. “There’s a boardinghouse, all right,” he said. “Marshal Earp’s sister-in-law runs it—I fear it’s largely a house of ill repute.”

  Jackson perked up at that news. Having failed so far to locate any decent kissing, I expect he would have made do with some of the indecent sort, but I was determined not to let him slip off down the road of bad habits on our trip.

  Mr. T., though inky, had neighborly instincts. Once he realized that we were stuck in Dodge, he immediately invited us to spend the night at his house, which was just behind the shop. He had a wife named Maudie, and was confident enough as a husband to be sure Maudie would have us.

  He was right. Maudie Tesselinck was pretty, jolly, chubby, and as full of mischief as a parrot. Her house wasn’t neat but it was cheery. Maudie had a big salt-cured ham hanging in her kitchen. Ham and red gravy formed the basis of our dinner.

  “It’s a trial, having to live with an old man who sucks up ink,” Maudie informed us cheerfully. “Besides that, his head’s just getting to be one big freckle.”

  Then she cackled merrily at her own domestic plight, and gave us some muffins with molasses.

  “I’ve heard there’s a large criminal element in Dodge City?” I asked. “Is that true?”

  “There’s five Earps—there’s your criminal element,” Mr. Tesselinck told us firmly. We had discovered that his first name was Joel but we weren’t sure we were welcome to address him informally yet.

  “Pond scum!” Maudie said emphatically, referring to the Earps. “Dog dung—that’s all they are.”

  “I think we saw the Earps this morning, as we were riding in,” I mentioned.

  “If you passed the Tascosa Saloon you saw them,” Maudie said. “They’re always there, looking for a sucker or a weakling to pounce on.”

  Joel Tesselinck played the harmonica, and we all sang to our hearts’ content.

  Jackson had a fine baritone voice, and I once thought of being an opera singer myself. Maudie brought out some castanets, and we all fell to dancing—now and then Maudie would even throw in a Swiss yodel. If there had been any neighbors I’m sure we would have kept them awake—I suspect it was mostly the coyotes who listened to our concert. A few of the coyotes even made free to join in.

  When it came time for bed Maudie made me a pallet on a little porch where she did her churning. Jackson was assigned a settee, which was too short for him and gave him a crick so bad that he spent most of the next day trying to get his head realigned with his neck. Joel Tesselinck boasted such a mighty snore that it kept us both awake. How Maudie slept with a snore like that was a mystery—I suppose wives just somehow get used to husbands. Next morning she was as lively as ever. She kept four or five tame geese and gave us each a goose egg for breakfast, a dish that filled me up from toe to crown.

  When we were leaving, Maudie gave me such a hug that I knew I had found a new friend.

  “Just ride on past the Earps and button your lip,” she said as I was getting ready to visit the print shop and pack my booklets.

  It sounded like good advice to me—the Earps’ grimy appearance had put me off them anyway. One of Maudie’s geese followed me all the way to the print shop but I have little patience with geese and ignored this one as best I could.

  10

  WITH MY HELP Joel Tesselinck soon finished printing up my booklet, while Jackson applied himself to gluing on the covers. Joel ran out of paper one shy of fifty—forty-nine copies is all we had to take home with us.

  “That order of paper could come any day,” Joel assured us. “You’re welcome to stay around and wait, if you like. Maudie enjoys your company.”

  “I wish we could stay,” I said, “but I’m the telegraph lady of Rita Blanca and I have to get back to my duties. Forty-nine copies is better than none.”

  Little did I suspect, at the time, what a rarity had been created that day in Dodge City. Long after No Man’s Land became a part of the state of Oklahoma, when there were only a few old-timers left who could remember seeing the West as it had been and maybe made the acquaintance of such famous figures as Custer and Cody, Hickok and the Earps, people began to make collections of books about the Western life that was now long gone. The bright star of outlaw books was that first little forty-nine-copy edition of my Banditti write-up.

  Joel Tesselinck was true to his word. He soon got in his paper and printed off the other one hundred and fifty one copies, which he promptly dispatched to Rita Blanca by old Josh, the mail runner.

  But the paper for the new batch was of a different weight from the paper of the first batch, so the great prize for collectors was that first little forty-nine-copy run. I was told that a collector in Kansas City paid five thousand dollars for a copy of that first little print-up—though that may be an exaggeration.

  After all, some of the finest homes in the West could be bought for a lot less than five thousand dollars. But there are hundreds of fine homes in the West, and only the forty-nine copies of my book—so if rarity is the standard, I guess my Banditti booklet deserves the prize.

  All that, however, is well ahead of my story.

  We wrapped the forty-nine booklets in two neat packages, tied with string. When it came time
to go Jackson was aching to put his fancy gun belt back on, but I persuaded him to hold off until we were out of town. Instead of going back down the main street, past the saloons and their riffraff, we cut back behind the saloons and would have passed out of Dodge City without incident had it not been for the inconvenient fact that the Earp brothers were also out behind the saloons, in the process of shoeing their horses. Three of the Earps were in their undershirts, working at their sweaty task, while the fourth brother, who turned out to be Wyatt, seemed content to supervise. He still wore the same grimy coat and dusty hat.

  “Uh-oh, there they are,” Jackson said, when he saw the four Earps.

  “I’ll do the talking, if there is talking,” I informed him.

  The three Earps who were working away at their horseshoeing glanced at us without much interest, but the indolent Wyatt, who sported a mustache that looked nearly as scratchy as Ted Bunsen’s, strolled out to intercept us.

  “Hold up there, young lady,” he said. “What’s a pretty pullet like you doing in my town?”

  “I had some printing business to attend to, if you must know,” I told him. “What makes you think it’s your town?”

  “Because I’m Wyatt Earp,” he said, “I’m the marshal here in Dodge.”

  “That makes you an employee, not an owner,” I pointed out. “The town can buy you or the town can fry you.”

  I looked him in the eye, dispensing a bit of Courtright hauteur along with my glance.

  Marshal Earp looked shocked. I doubt anyone had stated his true position quite so bluntly, much less looking at him as if he were merely an insolent worm.

  “She’s got you there, Wyatt,” one of the sweaty brothers called out. “The town can buy you or the town can fry you.”

  “You shut up, Virg,” Wyatt said, without even turning around. He did turn red in the face, though. Though he did not appear to be as old as some of the brothers, I suppose he had appointed himself the boss of the family.