Telegraph Days (35 page)

“Only five dollars, Mr. Earp?” I said, as I took down the information. “Do you think anyone's likely to trouble themselves about a mule for such a modest sum?”

“Do I look like a spendthrift?” he said. Then he walked out. Those were the last words Wyatt Earp said to me for something like thirty-five years, until I happened to encounter him on a movie lot in Hollywood. Mr. D. W. Griffith was making one of his Westerns—I had done the scenario and Wyatt was there as a firearms consultant or something. When I went up to him and introduced myself he looked blank. I tried a few sallies: mentioned Dodge City, Rita Blanca, Virgil Earp, Warren Earp, Bill Cody, Tombstone, Ike Clanton, and the O.K. Corral, but it was only the mention of Ike Clanton that caused his eyes to light up with a dark light.

“The damned rascal, he got away from us that day!” he said, echoing Doc Holliday's sentiments.

Of course, Ike Clanton did a good deal more than get away from the ruckus at the O.K. Corral. The next day he charged Wyatt and Doc with first-degree murder. They were jailed for a while, but they had a smart lawyer who soon got them off. But Ike and the Cowboys refused to leave it be. A few weeks after the O.K. Corral, Virgil Earp was shot down while crossing the street. He lived, but lost the use of his left arm. A sensible family would have left for safer climes at that point, but not the Earps. Morgan made the elementary mistake of playing billiards with his back to a glass door, through which he was efficiently shot and killed.

Wyatt, with the help of Doc Holliday, swore vengeance and got vengeance. Various of the Earps' sworn enemies soon bit the dust—so many that even Wyatt soon realized he had overplayed his hand, as far as Arizona went. The only thing for him to do was leave, so he left. He and Doc were soon established in Colorado—efforts to bring them before the bar of justice did not succeed.

Meanwhile killings in and around Tombstone continued at a steady pace. The Earps, or for that matter, the Earps
and
the Cowboys, contributed only a modest element to the general lawlessness that prevailed in the area. The deadly Apache leader Geronimo was still out at this time, but folks in Tombstone didn't even have time to worry about Geronimo. It got so bad that Zenas wouldn't even hear of me riding a stagecoach to Benson or Bisbee, much less Tucson, to do a little shopping or buy a load of newsprint or anything.

The truth is, I was just as anxious about him. Rita Blanca, day to day, had never been as dangerous as Tombstone was.

I wrote up my little booklet about the shootout at the O.K.Corral, expecting it to fly out of the office, as my little
Banditti
book had. Now, of course, it's just as great a rarity as the
Banditti,
but at the time it hardly sold at all. People were moving into Tombstone or hurrying out at such a rapid rate that the O.K. gunfight was soon mostly forgotten. I stacked the unsold copies of my booklet in a shed—the next time I went to look, the pack rats had got most of them, which accounts for the rarity. The Earps eventually drifted off to other parts of the West—Virgil became a peace officer in California, Wyatt ran a saloon up in Alaska, and I soon completely lost track of sweet young Warren.

When the chatterer Ike Clanton was shot dead while rustling cattle a few years later, Big-Nosed Kate, whose name by then was Katie Elder, sent me an obituary from the Tucson paper that didn't even mention that Ike had been the cause of a big shoot-out in Tombstone when it was at the height of the boom.

Zenas and I ran the
Tombstone Turret
for two more years, by which time the mines were beginning to flood and the boom was ending. The big hotels were empty and the tent dwellers were gone. Geronimo finally came in, with his little straggle of warriors. The gunfire petered out, but so did customers for the
Tombstone Turret.
Our thoughts were turned more and more to California, where the air was said to be so soft.

One day out of the blue a telegram came offering to sell us a magazine called
California Skies,
whose mission was to extol the beauty of everything under those balmy skies, from the tall timbers to the border with Mexico.

I had inherited some money by that time, and Zenas had one or two rich aunts to call on. Without thinking twice we bought the magazine, moved to Santa Monica, and so far as Tombstone went, felt lucky to have escaped with our lives.

B
OOK
V
 
California Days

I
T WAS ODD
that my lovely, snaggle-toothed Zenas Clark had cared to start up a newspaper in a desert—odd, because the great waters of the world were his first love. Born in Chicago, he grew up on Lake Michigan, he used to say. No sooner had we taken possession of our offices in Santa Monica than Zenas had bought a boat. The offices of
California Skies
were on Ocean Avenue, so that day in and day out, year in and year out, Zenas could look at the water.

We had a fine burst, Zenas and I. Our six lively girls emerged year by year: Belle, Beverly, Bettina, Bess, Beulah, and Berrie.

We had a big shingled house two blocks in from the Palisades. The magazine prospered, and Zenas's rich aunts kept dying, which enabled Zenas to buy bigger and bigger boats, the upshot of which was that—mostly as a stunt—Zenas and four of his sailing friends decided the time had come to sail around the world.

Although I had my misgivings, I was not the kind of wife to put a stop to an adventure like that. I fell in love with Zenas Clark because of his adventurous spirit—it was a little late to try and make him into a settled, salaried man.

The four around-the-worlders set off from San Pedro, with myself and the B's, as we called the girls, and the families of the other bold sailors all gathered at the dock, with plenty of press available. Everybody wished them luck and waved heartily—if stupidly, in my opinion. They had named the boat the
Nellie C.

They made it to Tahiti in good health and great spirits; at least, that's how it seemed in the pictures they sent back.

Neither the men nor the
Nellie C.
were ever seen again—not by us at least. The great waters hold them somewhere: at least, that's one theory.

It wasn't
quite
the end of Zenas Clark, though, because two years later two Portuguese sailors turned up at the offices of
California Skies
with a little coffee-colored boy—our little Benjy!—who was Zenas's son by a Polynesian beauty, I guess, and a boy of such buoyant spirits that he was soon loved by all. The sailors wept when they handed him over: he grew up the darling of the household and the office, merry as the day was long.

I confess I held back a little, at first, wondering about Zenas. Maybe he wasn't being rocked in the bottom of the deep—maybe he had just got tired of running a magazine in Santa Monica. Maybe, on another island somewhere, another Benjy was being conceived. But I didn't get on a boat and go looking for him. If Zenas and I agreed upon anything it was that chastity was a negative virtue which shouldn't be allowed to impede positive, vigorous people.

Zenas's disappearance didn't long impede
me,
of course. I was attractive, rich, and free—as the editor of
California Skies
I got asked to all the balls and events, and I went to them all, trailing my girls after me. Men came and went: bankers, railroad magnates, architects, high-born crooks, and of course, once the movies came along, lots and lots of actors. I saw no reason to tie myself formally to any of them, so I didn't. My girls grew to become belles in their own right, popular at every soiree. Belle herself had the best business head of anyone in the family, so I eventually put
California Skies
in her hands—frankly, I felt that if I had to edit one more article on Yosemite I might choke. But the magazine grew until it was a huge operation with a staff of forty. I think Belle might have been swamped had it not been for the arrival of rowdy Charlie Hepworth, the old newsy who had taken such a fancy to me long ago that he had tried to fornicate with me in my telegraph office in Rita Blanca.

Charlie was cigar-stained and inebriated as ever, but he did know the journalism racket, so Belle and I made him general manager, which worked well for all concerned. Randy old Charlie ran the magazine efficiently and had an abundance of skirts to chase in his off-hours.

“I still carry the torch for you, though, Nellie,” he told me, from time to time, with a certain light in his eyes.

“I know you do, Charlie, which is why I don't intend to put my
virtue in jeopardy by crowding up in a telegraph booth with you.”

Then we shared a big laugh.

Once I had the magazine in steady hands I decided it was time to do something about the big pile of manuscript that I had continued to scribble on between crises of one kind and another.

This was my book
The Good Deputy,
which, once I forced myself to read through it, didn't seem half bad. By this time I was running a household of some twenty souls: my girls, their beaus, a troop of maids and gardeners and governesses and music teachers. My girls grew up speaking Spanish readily but I wanted them to have French and also some acquaintance with the arts.

It was on the whole a lively household—we had moved up into the Beverly Hills by then—but not, on the whole, a household very conducive to authorship. So I rented myself a cottage in Pasadena and set about making my manuscript into a book. By good luck I succeeded: my book became the biggest best seller since General Grant's
Memoirs.

Well, the rich get richer, I suppose. Mainly in
The Good Deputy
I had just written about a heroine much like myself, who rambled all over the West, as I had. The book sold four million copies—not right off, but eventually—and it was translated into several languages I had never even heard of.

After that I reigned, for a time—though Virginia-born, I became the queen of California. I opened fairs, made speeches, gave dinners for whatever kings and potentates happened to pass through southern California—and once the movies cranked up, many did.

Of course, I knew Mr. Griffith and old man Zukor, who seemed old even when he wasn't—and Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford—and the upshot of it all, once
The Good Deputy
was published, was that I got asked to write scenarios, a trade at which I proved rather adept. After my vast novel it was a relief to write something short, like scenarios, that I could knock out in maybe twenty minutes.

So the years sailed on and the Old West, the West of Dodge City, Rita Blanca, and the O.K. Corral, quickly receded into myth. Over in Victorville, California, Western films were being rolled out by the dozen. I even wrote a couple myself, though I never took the trouble to visit Victorville.

And then, late in 1916, a telegram came that shook me to my core: it was from Bill Cody, and the message was simple:

NELLIE I'M DYING STOP COULD YOU COME AND SEE YOUR BILL

Could I come? Would I come? Two hours later I was on a train to Denver.

I
NEVER REALLY
lost sight of Bill Cody, nor he of me. In a way I suppose you could say Bill Cody was my lodestar. To lose Bill would have meant to lose a part of myself—the dreaming part. Once every month or two he'd send me two dozen roses—I sent him back champagne, or maybe a fine cognac.

I read of his triumphs in the great capitals of Europe. The old queen came out of mourning to see the Sioux dance. Little Annie Oakley took Paris by storm. Four kings and a crown prince rode in the Deadwood Stage. The show ran for months on Staten Island, just as Bill had predicted—it hosted millions at the big Chicago Exposition of 1893.

I knew, too, of Bill's troubles and humiliations. He tried to divorce Lulu and failed. He sold the Wild West at various times to various people, some of them nice, like Pawnee Bill, and some of them not, like the old press lord Harry Tammen of Denver, who was doing his best to make an event of Cody's dying.

I found Bill Cody in a common hotel room in Denver. He still had that great handsome head, and wonderful smile. Other than his clothes, all that was in the room were his pistol and a bottle of whiskey. When we embraced there were tears in his eyes, and in mine too.

“Bill, is this cheap room the best they can do for you?” I asked. “Why don't you just go home?”

He smiled a wry smile.

“Not up to arguing with Lulu,” he said.

“All right—then I'm going to move you to a suite. I'm not rich for nothing.”

I soon had him installed in the best suite in the hotel, which seemed to pick his spirits up a little.

Handsome as he was, Bill looked bad. He had not lied—he was dying. All the gear he had to move was his pistol, his whiskey bottle, and a shirt or two.

“I ought to shoot Harry Tammen,” he said. “He sold everything I owned at sheriff's auction—including my horse, Isham.”