Of Grave Concern (6 page)

11

The Dodge House dominated the southeast corner of North Front Street and Railroad Avenue, just across from the depot and not far from the jail. Not only did it seem to be the biggest concern in town, but it also appeared the neatest, with a broad porch and steps affording the best refuge from the Ganges of mud flowing through town.

“It's not the Palmer House,” I told Eddie, “but it will do.”

Police Judge Frost had agreed to the terms of my release, as outlined by Potete, pending the hearing in district court. However, Frost did not consent to release the injured tramp to my employ. The city would have its five-dollar fine for vagrancy first, Frost said. I objected, saying that if a man were fined for having no money, the city was compounding the crime. I declared on principle that I would not contribute to such insanity. Of course, my principle was based on not having the five dollars to begin with.

I registered at the Dodge House, but made a fuss about having to inspect the rooms first, so as to think I was doing them a favor by reluctantly staying there. Of course, we'd settle up the bill later.

I chose a corner room, with windows that looked south and west. When I took a glance, my heart sank.

Potete had been right—the grass, which was rippling fiercely in the wind, seemed to roll on forever. Bisecting this field of green was the railroad, which shot like an arrow to the west. Southward, a trail led out of town, crossed a wide toll bridge spanning a creek, then disappeared into a series of low green hills.

I placed Eddie's cage on a table next to the bed, then lifted the cloth. He scrambled about and regarded me with a black seed of an eye that was decidedly critical.

“Don't worry, love,” I said. “Another tight spot, I know. But we'll get ourselves out of this one, and then—”

“‘Nevermore!'” quoth Eddie.

 

 

The sun was red in the west and the town was beginning to stir in anticipation of the night to come. More cowboys were about, and music was drifting from some of the saloons. Already I could hear an argument over a card game had spilled out the front door of the Saratoga Saloon into the muddy street.

A teamster straddled a cowboy and was attempting to cut the other's right ear off with a Bowie knife, but the cowboy was jerking his head so vigorously, the teamster couldn't get a good angle on the fleshy prize.

The teamster was a big man, well over two hundred pounds, and little of it was fat. He wore buckskin and denim, and his long brown hair flowed over his shoulders like water.

“You cheated me out of ten dollars gold and I aim to have my satisfaction!” the teamster bellowed, the knife flashing overhead. “Now hold still, so I don't take more than's fair.”

I shrank back and pressed myself flat against the wall of the Saratoga.

“You're crazy, Gary,” the cowboy protested, showing far more pluck than his position would suggest. “It's not my fault if your luck is as rotten as your teeth.”

Gary held the cowboy's head down with one meaty hand while the cowboy fought and kicked and chewed on the fingers caging his jaw. The teamster drew back the knife—and it was a wicked knife, with a brass guard and a blade that must have been ten inches long—and took a sweeping stab at the cowboy's ear. Just as I thought I was about to see the blade pierce the cowboy's skull, the teamster was jerked explosively backward by somebody who had grabbed a fistful of his long hair.

The blade sliced empty air.

“Drop it,” the man holding the hair said, and I thought I could hear a bit of Texas in his voice. He was tall and lean, wore a blue shirt under a black vest, and on his right hip was strapped an absurdly large handgun. He knelt and drove one knee into the small of the teamster's back.

The teamster bellowed in rage. A string of expletives flew from his mouth that threatened to peel the green paint from the bat-winged doors of the Saratoga.

“Is this how you want to finish your hand?” The Texas drawl became more pronounced. “Down in the mud, with me on top of you like you was a steer? Or do you want to get up and walk away from here like a human being? Your choice, Garuth.” The man drew out the name, getting almost four syllables out of it.

“Don't call me ‘Garuth,'” the teamster roared. “Nobody calls me that!”

“If you don't drop that knife, everybody'll be calling you ‘the dearly departed.'”

“You think you're something just because they let you carry your iron north of the deadline,” Garuth said, his eyes narrowed to hateful slits because the man in the blue shirt was pulling the skin of his face toward the back of his head. “If you didn't have that horse pistol strapped to your leg, you wouldn't be so brave.”

The man in the blue shirt sighed and nodded for the cowboy to come over.

The cowboy, who had the blood from Garuth's fingers smudged across his lips, edged over and carefully drew the gun from the holster. I don't know guns—I hate guns—so I can't tell you what kind of firearm it was, except to say it was shiny and one of the biggest revolvers I have ever seen.

“All right, Garuth. Now we're even.”

“Get off'n me!”

“You're between hay and grass now.”

“You can suck eggs, Jack Calder!”

“Drop the knife before somebody gets hurt.”

“Just try and make me.”

Calder sighed.

“Hit him on the crown of the head with the butt of the gun,” he told the cowboy.

“What?” Garuth shrieked.

The cowboy turned the gun around so that he held it by the barrel and began lining up the handle with the back of Garuth's head.

“Do it already.”

“I want to do it right,” the cowboy said.

Garuth dropped the knife.

“Shucks,” the cowboy muttered.

“Thanks,” Calder said as he took the gun and returned it to his holster. Then he rubbed the palm of his right hand on his jeans. “Garuth, you have to take a bath every so often. Your hair is full of. . . I don't know, smells like horse apples and axle grease.”

“But I just hit town.”

“You could take the time to bathe. If you can't afford a hotel, there are plenty of cheap tent baths.”

“You going to take me to jail?” Garuth asked.

“No,” the man said.

“But—”

“Shush up,” the man said. “I don't have all of tomorrow morning to spend testifying to Judge Frost about how Garuth insulted your person.”

“But he tried to kill me!”

“You could have lived without your ear.”

“But it was my good ear.”

He told Gary and the cowboy to take off and plan on spending the night at opposite ends of Front Street, or there would be hell to pay. They sprang away as if magnetically repelled.

Then Calder glanced over and saw me still pressed up against the saloon.

“Are you all right, miss?”

“Just startled,” I said, peeling myself off the wood. “But thank you for asking.”

“Sorry about that,” he said. “They're not wicked boys. Just stupid.”

“Well, Mister Calder,” I said. “Are you an officer of the law? I don't see a badge. Perhaps you just go about town dispensing justice as sort of a public service?”

“Hardly,” he said.

“Are you a Pinkerton, then?” My voice broke only a little.

“No,” he said, and coughed. “But I'm a member of the Vigilance Committee. I also work for the businessmen who put up surety in exchange for bail at the district court here.”

“You work for them? How?”

Calder smiled. He was looking down, inspecting my clothing, and I could guess he wasn't thinking anything complimentary. It occurred to me that I'd rather have this man as an ally instead of a foe, considering how decisively he broke up the aural assault.

“I track down those who fail to appear and deliver them to the court.”

“You're a bounty hunter.”

“Some call me that,” he said coldly.

“Do you also collect rewards?”

“At times.”

“Then you're a bounty hunter. That's why you can carry a gun on this side of town and the others can't. What did Garuth call it? ‘The deadline'?”

“The tracks are the deadline,” Calder said. “North of the tracks, you can't carry firearms. South of the tracks, anything goes.”

“Dodge City is full of demarcations, isn't it?”

“If you'll pardon me,” he said, “I have business. . . .”

“Of course, how rude of me,” I said. “Do you have an office?”

“Across from the courthouse,” he said. “Frazier and Hunnicutt. I work out of the back.”

“Ah, I'll remember.”

“Why?” He seemed puzzled and somewhat alarmed.

“I may have to turn myself in,” I said. “There's a considerable reward, they say.”

He looked at me as if I had just fallen from the sky.

“That was an attempt at humor, Mr. Calder.”

“It doesn't strike me as funny.”

“It would be, if you knew my situation.”

“I'm sure I don't,” he said.

“Nor would you like to, apparently,” I said.

“I have no time for—”

“For what?” I asked. “What do you take me for?”

“I take you not at all,” Calder said. “Your business is your own, miss.”

“My name is Ophelia Wylde,” I said. “I prefer ‘Ophelia' or ‘The Reverend Professor Wylde' to ‘miss,' if you don't mind.”

“Of course,” he said, the corners of his lips betraying him. “Reverend.”

“From the train, I saw a cemetery at the edge of town. Could you tell me the name of it?”

“You don't know?”

“I would not ask if I did.”

“That's Boot Hill.”

 

 

I left wicked Front Street—and the smugly disapproving Jack Calder—behind.

On Bridge Street, I worked my way north, then ambled west along Chestnut, where most of the brothels on the north side were concentrated, and then on Walnut. The blocks north of Walnut were where most of the permanent residents of the city lived, and their homes ranged from shacks to limestone cottages, all with clotheslines and vegetable gardens out back. The hill I had seen from the train encroached on the northwest corner of town, with some homes and a few businesses hard against its flanks.

But Boot Hill was really more of a ridge, pointing south, than a hill. I hiked up, discovering it to be composed of a peculiar mixture of clay, sand, and rocks, with patches of buffalo grass and soapweeds. The tops of the scattered soapweeds, a type of yucca, were heavy with their bell-shaped white blossoms. Loose sand and gravel skittered beneath my feet as I climbed, and a few times I slid back a few feet when I attempted too steep an angle.

The hill came to a bulbous point overlooking the town, and it afforded a good view of the Arkansas River, which serpentined across the plain a half mile south. Even at the summit, there was the stench of cows. Herds of several thousand longhorns dotted the valley.

No buffalo.

No Indians.

On the opposite side of town, I could see the brick-and-stone Ford County Courthouse, by far the largest building in town. A few blocks from the courthouse, atop a low ridge, was a white steepled church.

In the center of town, I could see the Dodge House, and it was clear now that it was really several buildings stitched together. On the roof of the main building bristled an array of meteorological instruments for the government weather station. I could see the west window of my corner hotel room, and much of both Front Streets.

The saloons on both sides of the tracks blazed with light, and little knots of cowboys drifted from one to the other. Their rough laughter carried to me on the still air. There were a few soldiers, little groups in blue, having come from Fort Dodge, a frontier outpost five miles to the east.

From up on Boot Hill, it was easy to imagine the cowboys and the soldiers and the townspeople as animals. The good citizens and the soldiers were mostly herd animals, I decided, but the cowboys ran in packs, like wolves. The most unpredictable and therefore most dangerous of the cowboy animals were the loners—the lobos.

I walked over to the cemetery, on the side of the hill facing town.

There were a few dozen graves, identified by white crosses or wood markers, and a few rectangles of sunken earth that had not been marked at all. A cemetery visit is essential research for any medium, because you very quickly gain the names of residents and a brief family history, told in years and ages.

But at Boot Hill, there was scant information to work with.

The town was too new, having been settled only five years before. There hadn't been time for many permanent residents to have been planted here. Most of the wooden markers, at least when the graves had markers, indicated transients, murder victims, or other unfortunates.

Some carried brief, hand-lettered epitaphs:

And so forth.

Death by natural causes seemed to be virtually unknown in Dodge City. It would be a healthy place to live if only you could duck the flying lead, avoid knives and ropes, and keep from freezing to death in winter.