Telegraph Days (32 page)

Teddy was so shocked at being caught with his pants down that I feared he might have a stroke.

“That was Mexican Joe,” he informed me.

“Theodore, I would never have guessed,” I said.

T
HE VERY NEXT
day Ted Bunsen showed up at my office and broke off our long engagement, an action which did not particularly surprise me.

“All right, Teddy, you're off the hook as far as matrimony is concerned, but where does that leave copulation?” I asked him.

“We can't be doing it in the jail,” he informed me. “Too many interruptions.”

“How about Joe Schwartz's hayloft?” I proposed.

That possibility seemed not to have occurred to Teddy—like I said, there's such a thing as too hopeless.

“Or we could find a nice spot out on the prairie somewhere and enjoy ourselves on a blanket—would that suit you?” I asked.

Teddy was silent for a long time. I don't think it had occurred to him that copulation might be possible pretty much anywhere, if both partners were willing and able.

“I need to think about it all,” he said.

“Okay—you wander on off and leave me to get on with the town's business,” I told him. “I didn't really want to marry you anyway!”

Ted looked relieved.

“I prayed to the Lord, Nellie,” he said.

“And what's the Lord's opinion?”

“I'm supposed to stay a bachelor, that's the gist of it,” Ted said.

“For once I agree with the Lord,” I told him. Then I shut my window, put out my Closed sign, and got on with
The Good Deputy.

Privately I had already concluded that Ted Bunsen wouldn't do as a husband, even if he dared to risk it. He might come to want me enough, but I don't think he would ever come to like me enough for it
to work. Pleasure scared him, and if a man is going to be scared of pain and easy pleasure then why waste time with him?

Fortunately for me, before I had time to get sad about my rejection—which it's possible to do even if you have very little liking for the man who did the rejecting—a fresh possibility appeared in the person of Andy Jessup, the good old Skivvy Kid, who passed through Rita Blanca with five scruffy fellows who claimed to be geologists. Andy was guiding them down to the Cherokee country, where they planned to prospect for oil.

“Oil?” I asked, when I got Andy off by ourselves. “What kind of oil?”

“Do I look like a scientist?” Andy asked. He still had his sweet smile—it wasn't backed up by very much heat but it still was a mighty appealing smile.

“I'm just curious,” I told him. “Bill Cody always claimed there was a big future for oil, if it's the right kind of oil. I suppose it's useful for greasing wheels and such.”

I found it hard to take much interest in oil, but years later, when Zenas and I were living in California, some of the biggest oil strikes in history were made on Cherokee land. Then I remembered Andy and those five scruffy men. One or two of those old Cherokees got so rich they even bought mansions in Beverly Hills and were able to parade around in fancy motorcars, all because of oil.

I was always glad to see Andy Jessup when he showed up, which was often during my last months in Rita Blanca; with Cody retired to the stage, Andy had become the leading guide to the southern plains. He made friends with Quanah Parker and some other big Comanches and was able to take scientists and rich dudes across the reservation with no trouble from the residents.

I had a big sweet spot for Andy and cried many tears over his death—he was shot down by an ordinary drunk in Abilene, Kansas, for no reason whatsoever except that it was Saturday night and the drunk felt like shooting off his gun. Andy was in a hotel, standing at his window admiring a lightning storm that was moving across the prairie—the drunk's bullet hit him square in the head. They say he was dead before he hit the floor, which I hope is true because no sweeter fellow ever walked the earth.

We never quite found the moment to become lovers, Andy and me. There was some kissing now and then, but we'd always get to laughing about some joke and let the kissing peter out. Andy traveled: I guess he was gone when I was in the mood for him, and there when I wasn't—though that doesn't sound right either. The fact is we were meant to be chums, not lovers, and somehow squeaked through without hurting one another's feelings very bad.

When I think of Andy now, from the high hill of my age, I still remember him coming up to the telegraph office in his long johns—my young darling, the Skivvy Kid.

T
O HEAR ZENAS CLARK
tell it, Tombstone, Arizona, was paradise on earth. I suppose Zenas believed it, because he came all the way to Rita Blanca to talk me into helping him with a newspaper he had started up called the
Tombstone Turret.

Zenas still had his old snaggle-toothed appeal, and he must have been getting in some practice with somebody because he was even better at copulation than I remembered him being. On the whole we made a lively couple, which didn't quite remove all my doubts about that wild community.

Rumor had it that the Earps ran the town now and the death rate from gunfire was seldom less than a man a day.

“That's exaggerated,” Zenas insisted. “It's seldom more than three or four a week.”

“Three or four a week does add up, though,” I countered. It made Zenas sulk a little; he hated to be argued with.

“The sun shines every day out of a clear blue sky,” he tried.

“I got plenty of freckles now—why would I want more?”

In fact I even had freckles on the tops of my bosoms, which Zenas could see for himself, since we were naked in my bed when we had the conversation.

“Did I mention that Tombstone has four fine hotels?” he said, grasping at straws.

“I don't care about a bunch of hotels but I do care about your worthy prick,” I told him, “so I'll think about it and maybe join you in Tombstone in the near future.”

“Why not now?” he wanted to know.

“Because I'm the mayor,” I reminded him. “I promised them six months and I mean to give them six months.”

“But you'll come, won't you, sweetie?” he pleaded.

I tickled him in a sensitive place—I wanted his worthy prick to do its job again.

Later, the job finished, I decided I might as well go to Tombstone; I told Zenas I would come as soon as my term ended, in one month. Then I shocked him by announcing my intention to travel over land. I had developed no fondness for trains.

“Good Lord, travel over land, in this day and time!” he protested. “You'll get lost and never be found.”

“I suppose Jakey and Sam can guide me well enough,” I told him. My old cowboy friends were up in Dodge City, wasting their time running a livery stable.

At mention of Jakey and Sam, Zenas boiled up and had a fit.

“They'd only do it because they're sweet on you,” Zenas insisted. “If I catch them I'll pound them to a pulp.”

I've seen too many male fits to take them seriously, especially Zenas's, which usually only lasted about as long as it takes to boil water.

“Of course, they may harbor some affection for me—I hope so,” I told Zenas.

“But I'm not sweet on either one of them. I plan to be chaste in my travels, chaste as a nun.”

After the tupping we'd just done, the thought of me chaste as a nun became, for Zenas, a term of amusement.

“Chaste as a nun,” he'd say, if we were about to attempt copulation.

“As I understand it the boom in Tombstone is based on silver,” I said. “What happens to us and our newspaper if the silver peters out?”

“It won't—there's a mountain of silver,” he insisted. “And there's copper and maybe gold. Before you know it, Tombstone will be as big as Denver.”

I wasn't convinced, but I was in love with Zenas by then, and agreed to move to Tombstone when my term as mayor ended in only one more month.

I suppose my doubt about the likelihood of the boom lasting forever made Zenas a little doubtful himself.

“Look at it this way, Nellie,” he said. “If the boom does fail we'll be just that much closer to California.”

“Smart thinking, honey,” I said.

I
T WAS WITH
many a pang that I took my final leave of Rita Blanca: somehow I felt that I had grown up there. Being its first telegraph lady, and then its mayor, had helped make me a responsible young woman. I had never been one to suffer fools gladly, but the main thing I learned, in the end, was not to insist on too lofty ideals. If you want to be part of a human community you have to suffer fools—patiently, if not gladly—and you must practice civility as best you can. There were normal people, like the McClendon sisters, and great driving fools like Bill Cody, but the tribe of human beings is never likely to be crowded with Aristotles.

I served, in the end, six months and a day as mayor of Rita Blanca. Nobody was happy to see me go. Tears were shed and speeches made. A kind of band played and everybody danced, right down to my little nieces, who were short-legged but nimble. I got hugs and kisses from everybody except Ted Bunsen, who confined himself to a handshake. He had still not quite recovered from having been twice seduced in his own jail. Mexican Joe, his crime forgiven, showed up and played the trombone.

Well, they say it takes all kinds—a dubious maxim if you ask me. My guides, Jakey and Sam, were the impatient kind, on this occasion. Some fool had convinced them that there was so much silver in Tombstone that you could pick up nuggets in the street—and if you were not content with nuggets you could wander out into the desert and find chunks of silver the size of goose eggs. Naturally my escorts were eager to get going, before someone else found all those.

We finally departed Rita Blanca just after lunch—Aurel Imlah had hunted long and hard and secured just enough buffalo liver to make a
fine repast, which Esther Karoo, old friend of General Sherman's, cooked to perfection.

I had purchased an excellent black pacing horse for my trip to Arizona. I waved, and the citizens of Rita Blanca waved back; soon it got a little dusty and I could just make out the hedges around Esther Karoo's house. Then the town was behind me, though my past wasn't, not quite. I planned to stop for the night at our old Black Mesa Ranch, which we reached in time to see a flaming sunset light our way into the vast West.

I had meant to spend the first night at our old family place, but once I got there I found I didn't want to. I was a future-looking woman—the past had no grip on me yet. I spent five minutes by the sad little patch of family graves. The roof of the old cabin had fallen in, and the barn was more or less no barn. Passersby had helped themselves to most of the lumber, and why wouldn't they? Even the beam that Father hung himself from was missing.

Jakey and Sam, of course, were still impatient. They saw themselves as millionaires already, a piece of rank credulity that irked me, I suppose. But I kept quiet. We all of us have our unrealistic hopes. And Jakey and Sam, though well aware of my quarrelsome nature, had agreed to take me on a long and uncertain journey.

We made our first campfire close to the Cimarron River—geese were calling and ducks were quacking most of the night. I had picked up a copy of my little
Banditti
booklet at Hungry Billy's store and I read it to the boys before the firelight faded. I suppose the narrative gripped them—they didn't say a word or make a sound. When I came to the killing of the six Yazees, their eyes got really big.

“Why, your brother Jackson's a famous man,” Jakey said. “A man who can shoot like that could probably get in a show and be rich. Why would he stay in Rita Blanca when he ain't even been made a sheriff?”

“Because he's a good deputy, that's why,” I told them.

I didn't mention that Jackson Courtright's skill with the pistol had been a onetime thing.

T
HE FIRST THING
I witnessed as Jakey and Sam and I rode along the main street of Tombstone was Wyatt Earp, whacking a fellow on the head with a big pistol. I rode right up to the scene before I quite realized that a violent confrontation was taking place. Perhaps it was some form of arrest, though I didn't see any badge on Wyatt. I had already noticed that the town didn't suffer from any shortage of Earps, because Virgil and Morgan were taking the air—which was hot—on the porch of one of the big hotels Zenas had hoped to impress me with. The hotel was the Cosmopolitan, which seemed to me an odd name to give to a hotel in a rocky place where most of the inhabitants seemed to be living in tents. I suppose people can name hotels to suit themselves.

Wyatt Earp drew back his arm to whack his victim again when he happened to notice that I was riding past, with Jakey and Sam.

“Oh hell!” he said. “Not you!”

“What a charming welcome, Mr. Earp,” I told him.

At this point his victim dropped to his knees, groaning quietly.

“Now you shut up, Frank—I barely tapped you,” Wyatt said. “Get on down to the jail—I'll be along in a minute.”

“What'd the poor fellow do?” I asked.

“Why would that be your business, Miss Courtright?” he asked. Wyatt hadn't shaved, and did not appear to be entirely sober; but then full sobriety in Tombstone was a rare thing, as I soon found out. He wore the same dingy black coat that he had sported in Dodge City—his brothers Virgil and Morgan were similarly attired.

“I'm the new reporter for the
Tombstone Turret,”
I informed him. “I'll be writing up arrests and murders and court proceedings and the like. Since I'm here I might as well start with this fellow Frank. What
did he do? I'm sure the citizens of Tombstone will be glad to read that speedy justice has been served.”