The Old Colts Read online

  “What’s this about a doc?”

  “He’s not a doc, he’s an actor—unemployed. So I got ‘im cheap through Eddie Foy. Now listen, Wyatt, to make this a real show, it’s gotta be real.”

  “I don’t think I can do it.”

  “Goddammit, you’ve gotta. They gave you a lot of dough, don’t forget that.”

  “And you lost it.”

  “And we’ve got a packed house—I asked a bellhop. Now I’ve told you the play.” Bat takes the tall man by both arms, pleading. “Listen, pretend. Pretend that bar’s the Long Branch thirty years ago—remember? You’re Clay Allison on the prod, you’re drunk as a skunk, and you’ve been bragging around Dodge you’re gonna lay Masterson low. You start out looking for me, you walk into the Long Branch, big as life and twice as ugly—and there I am. We look at each other and we know. Only one of us is gonna walk out of there. Pretend that’s how it is.”

  Wyatt yawns. “Then can we go home and get some sleep? I can’t take these late hours much longer.”

  “Sure thing. Now you can do this, Wyatt. You’ve got to, or my name’s mud.”

  “You’ve got something up your sleeve. Why do we need a doc?”

  It is eight minutes of midnight.

  The Hotel Knickerbocker is situated at the corner of Broadway and 42nd. Night or day, its main bar, at the rear of the first-floor lobby, is one of the busiest Scotch-and-watering places in midtown. Men can be men here. Women, by unwritten rule, are scarce as hens’ teeth. It is a room of calfskin wallets, rich tweed, friendly wagers, formal profanity, the aroma of bay rum, fine felt hats, the best bumbershoots, orderly digestion, and polite flatulence. The decor is eclectic—floor of mosaic tile, walls panelled in English oak, a high ceiling Flemish in design. Over the massive tables, on the wall opposite the mirrored bar, hang “Old King Cole,” an expansive oil by Maxfield Parrish, and “Trophies of the Chase” by Frederic Remington. Attired in smart white jackets and white shirts with stiff collars and black bow ties, the staff of six bartenders, four scrubbers, and eight waiters is amiable and efficient.

  If is seven minutes of midnight.

  Efficient the staff must be this night in May, for the Knickerbocker Bar is mobbed with males. They have come in from touring honky-tonks and cruising cabarets. They have come in from upstairs saloons and downstairs dives, and from the theater, and from supper clubs such as Sherry’s, Rector’s, Maxim’s, Delmonico’s, and the Cafe des Beaux Arts. To be here on time they have missed deadlines, dropped dice, folded winning hands, bid adieu to bookies before placing bets, put down drinks undrained— a few have even excused themselves out of soft beds and hard embraces. They have come to see what Bat Masterson will do when confronted by “Mysterious Dave” Mather, a real Westerner with a real gun and, apparently, a real score to settle. Will he bluff and bluster? Will he try to pull the pack-of-Spuds trick a second time? Or will he, in the end, and to his everlasting humiliation, back down and beg for mercy?

  It is six minutes of midnight.

  The word has spread like wildfire. The show is SRO. Everyone who knows the great gunfighter by handshake has tried to be here. Some are sober. Some are soused. Every seat at every table is taken, and every inch between the tables and along the walls. The bar is lined two-deep, the brass rail sags, the air is infernal with cigar smoke, the bartenders bob, the waiters weave, the room rumbles with coughs, conviviality, and suspense. Eyes flick frequently to the clock over the bar. What makes this suspense tasty, almost sensual, is that it is safe. There will be no shooting. This is but a practical joke of classic proportions, conceived by Damon Runyon, and everyone will be “in” on it except the goat himself, W. B. Masterson, Esq. And so they wait, a hundred men and more, as children wait for treats or fireworks, itchy, breathless, jumping up and down inside. They watch the doorway, and the tardy clock. New Yorkers all, they are used to telling time, not to having time tell them. They wonder if he will appear. They wonder what the hell will happen.

  It is five of midnight.

  He appears.

  The room stills.

  He smiles, and affects surprise at the size of the house. He wears tonight a good gray worsted suit and a pearl derby cocked at an aggressive angle.

  The rumble resumes. Eyes are averted from him, tongues loosed again so that he will not “catch on.”

  He strolls down the bar, shaking hands, waving, nodding, until he reaches Runyon and is handed a drink. Among those who gang about him are Billy Jerome, Hype Igoe, Alfred Henry Lewis, author and brother of W.E., his editor at the Telegraph, Charles Stoneham, and Gabby Dan McKetrick.

  It is a minute after midnight.

  Then two, then three.

  When asked, the next day, what they talked about with Bat at the bar during this intermission, those near him will be unable to recall.

  It is four minutes after midnight.

  Eyes go to the clock again, then to the doorway, then to the clock. Only a few present have seen “Mysterious Dave” Mather in the flesh. Will he appear? If he does, will he have the moxie? Can he put on an act tough enough to put the fear of God in a fearless man? What in hell will happen?

  It is five after midnight.

  He appears.

  The room stills.

  They would curse out loud if they could. Mather is nothing much—a tall nondescript nobody of some years in a coat of one sort and trousers of another, with a slouch hat brim pulled low over his eyes. He is a hick who does not even wear a gun at his hip.

  The rumble resumes.

  Mather moves slowly down the bar, and stops.

  “Masterson.”

  He speaks, and no one pays him heed.

  “Masterson!”

  This salutation gets him absolute silence. Someone drops a pin, and the impact can be heard.

  Bat steps out from his friends. A lane between the two men clears. They face each other at perhaps twenty paces.

  Bat speaks easily. “Hello, Mather. Long time no see. What’s on your mind?”

  “You’ve run your bluff long enough, Masterson,” is the gruff response. “I’m here to show you up for what you are.”

  Bat steps to the bar, puts down his glass, steps back into the lane. “You’re drunk,” he says.

  Mather unbuttons his jacket, lays back the left side to reveal a shoulder holster from which protrudes the butt of an enormous relic Colt revolver.

  “Draw,” he says.

  “Let’s step outside,” Bat suggests.

  “Draw.”

  Bat unbuttons his jacket, lays back the left side to reveal a shoulder holster from which protrudes the butt of an enormous relic Colt revolver.

  The crowd is gripped by general consternation. My God, Masterson is armed! Mather had to have a gun, a necessary prop—but Masterson, too, is armed!

  “You’ll regret this, Mather,” warns Bat.

  “I said draw!”

  And on this injunction, Mather draws the revolver calmly from beneath his arm, points it upward, lets go a round into the Flemish ceiling, then calmly replaces the gun.

  The report deafens. And as it roars from ceiling to floor, from mirror to wall, there begins in the room a mass movement as curious as it is understandable. Unlike the Masterson vs. Plunkett showdown at the Waldorf, which was memorable for panic on the part of those present, the reaction to this action is deliberate. Gentlemen slide very, very slowly from chairs under tables. Gentlemen lower themselves very, very slowly down the walls to the floor. Gentlemen along the bar move very, very slowly away to crouch and crawl over the gentlemen already under the tables. Bartenders and scrubbers sink very, very slowly from sight behind the bar. This, too, is panic, but of a slow-motion sophisticated sort.

  They cannot conceive it. But a lethal weapon has indubitably been discharged in the Knickerbocker Bar. A nonentity when he walked through the door, the man nicknamed “Mysterious Dave” has become before their eyes a figure of grim face and great height and murderous intent. Masterson is armed and means business. T
he joke has backfired, maybe mortally. Runyon has erred. The rest have made a fundamental miscalculation. What they are unwilling witness to, they realize too late, is the real thing. This may be Broadway in 1916, but it might as well be Front Street in 1876. This, literally, is kill or be killed. They have read the dime novels, they have seen the gun-and-gallop movies, and laughed. They laugh no longer. Souls shrivel. Hearts stop. Blood ices. Peckers shrink. Nuts dry.

  “Draw, goddamn you!” Mather shouts.

  Masterson draws and fires at Mather as Mather draws and fires at Masterson.

  By a fraction of a second, Masterson is faster.

  Mather is staggered, and toppling against the bar, fires a fusillade of shots at random.

  Masterson fires at him again.

  Mather hits the floor.

  Masterson steps nearer, firing repeatedly, filling the fallen foe with lead.

  THE END.

  The room is a hell of smoke and echo.

  Gentlemen crawl out from under tables and take unsteadily to their feet along the walls and rise from behind the bar and stare at the tragedy they have wrought. Mouths open and close in horror. There are groans of guilt. Tears flow freely.

  Bat has gone to his victim, bends over him, then straightens. “Is there a doctor?” he appeals.

  By fortunate coincidence, a well-dressed elderly gent toting a black bag walks through the doorway, spots the man prostrate on the tile, comes at once to him, kneels, conducts a brief examination, and rises to pronounce his verdict.

  “He’s gone.”

  Just then, by fortunate coincidence, three bellhops appear, and at the direction of the doctor, lug the late “Mysterious Dave” Mather out the door.

  Raising his voice so that all may hear, Bat addresses the room in funereal tone. “I’m sorry,” says he. “I had no choice. It was him or me.” He shakes a sorrowful head. “He was a friend of mine once. He leaves a widow and six children in Kansas. Let’s every one of us do what we can for them.”

  And removing his pearl derby, he moves to the far end of the room, extends the hat, and passes gravely along the ranks of mourners.

  There is scarcely a dry eye in the house now, and by the time he is halfway to the lobby door, the derby is heaped high with currency. Damon Runyon, it is noted, has dropped in his entire roll.

  Bat presses the hat tightly to his breast with one hand, while with the other he accepts additional offerings and stuffs them in the pockets of coat, vest, and pants.

  He attains the door, turns, and for the last time speaks to the stricken throng.

  “On behalf of his family, gentlemen, I thank you. Now let us bow our heads in prayer.”

  More than a hundred heads are bowed. In all the years of its existence, the Knickerbocker Bar has never known a moment as historic.

  When it is over, Masterson has gone.

  “What a show!” Bat chortles.

  They toddle down West 49th Street on the way to 300, Bat emptying his pockets and adding to a roll of bills big enough to choke a horse.

  “How much did you pay those people?”

  “Ten apiece for the bellhops, twenty for the doc—peanuts. Wyatt, you played it perfect—you oughta go on the stage!”

  “Those friends of yours will ride you out of town on a rail.”

  “No they won’t—they can take a joke. They’ll keep this under their hats, though. Who wants the world to know how bad he’s been conned?”

  “I never fired blanks before—they sure are smoky.”

  Bat locates a last bill in a vest pocket and overlaps it. “What a wad! Must be four hundred bucks here, maybe more!”

  “Fine. Hand it over.”

  “Hand it over!”

  “What I said, pard. Remember, I left a wife and six kids in Kansas.”

  “Sure you did. Listen, we’ve got a stake now, and there’s a horse at Pimlico tomorrow—”

  “I mean it. Now I can buy a ticket home. I’m saddling up in the morning.”

  A bitter Bat halts. “That’s right—leave me in the lurch.”

  An intractable Wyatt proceeds. “You’re always in a lurch.”

  “But what in hell’ll I do alone? You heard Grogan, you know the tight I’m in.”

  “Buy some more blanks.”

  Bat bounces after him, thinking, taking three steps to Wyatt’s one. “Wait up. You’re a hard man, Earp. Okeh, here’s what I’ll do. I’ve got a heart of gold. I’ll split with you. Two hundred will get you home, and maybe two hundred will get me off the hook for a—Jesus!”

  A bullet blows the derby from his bean.

  A bullet buzzes Wyatt’s ear.

  They leg it behind the flight of steps leading into 300 West, then peek over the steps through the balustrades. Two doors down the dark street, two men rear up behind their flight of steps and blaze away again.

  Grogan’s pinstripe torpedoes.

  Wyatt already has Peacemaker in hand. Bat draws his. They rise, squint, and squeeze triggers.

  Clicks.

  The Tombstone Terror and the Pride of Dodge City duck and gape at each other.

  “Where’s the bullets?” Wyatt hisses.

  “I—I forgot ‘em!”

  “Forgot ‘em!”

  “I—I—when I loaded us with blanks—upstairs—for tonight—I forgot to bring bullets!”

  “You lead-head dumbbell!”

  The sound of running. They rise again to see. The gunmen run from their flight of steps to the next. Now they are within fifty feet of their targets.

  They blast away again. Bat and Wyatt duck again. Slugs whang the balustrade above them, splintering chips, and ricochet along the curb.

  Gunshots snap and pop in the canyon between the buildings. Lights wink on in apartment windows as residents take unkindly to the racket.

  “We’re goners!” Bat laments.

  “If you get me killed, too!” Wyatt warns.

  Full of confidence by the failure to return fire that their antagonists are defenseless, the two torpedoes leave the cover of their steps and start to stalk their prey, crouching low, automatics at the ready. Closer they come, closer.

  “Look!” Bat points.

  Through the window of a second-floor apartment appear the head and shoulders of a woman, plus her arms, plus her hands, which hold a slopjar.

  As Grogan’s gangsters prowl below, with unerring aim Emma Masterson dumps the slops.

  The mugs are thoroughly doused. They sputter, cough, curse, and reel.

  “Keno!” Bat hurrahs.

  And while the assassins are thus diverted, with almost adolescent agility Mr. Earp and Mr. Masterson dart from behind the balustrade and skedaddle up the steps to safety.

  So frazzled were they that they flopped down in chairs for a breather.

  “What were you playing down there?” Emma Masterson stood in a doorway, her arms full of bedding. “Cops-and-robbers?”

  The gentlemen declined comment.

  “I didn’t see you two shooting.”

  Bat scowled. “We forgot bullets.”

  His spouse smiled. “Probably just as well. Who were they?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Welcome to New York, Mr. Mather. How long are you staying, by the way?”

  “Leaving tomorrow, ma’am.”

  Bat hoisted his carcass and took off his coat. “Emma, now he’s pulling up stakes, you might as well know. He isn’t Dave Mather. Emma, meet the one and only Wyatt Earp.”

  “Wyatt Earp!” she exclaimed, giving a good imitation of Fanny Brice. “Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson! And forgot their bullets! Good gravy!”

  They looked sheepish. She plumped the bedding on a sofa. “Well, come to bed, Bat. You tuck in, too, Mr. Earp. Little boys need their sleep.”

  But he couldn’t. He had much on his mind. And besides, he wasn’t accustomed to hitting the hay before four in the morning, and it was not quite two ayem. Emma was dead to the world. He eased away from her and out of bed and went carefully into the living r
oom where Wyatt was sawing wood on the sofa, lower legs laid up on the table. He nudged the sleeper’s arm.

  “Wyatt, you asleep?”

  Wyatt’s eyes flew open and his hand clutched something.

  “What’s that?”

  “My wallet.”

  Before retiring, they had split the four hundred take.

  “You mean you don’t trust me?”

  “I do not. What d’you want?”

  “I can’t sleep. I was thinking—nobody’s taken a shot at me in twenty years.”

  “Me either.”

  “Funny. Here we put on a show at the Knickerbocker— trying to kill each other—and a little while later, on my own street right in front of my own place, it was no damn show. Rubs me the wrong way.”

  “Likewise.”

  Bat, in his BVD’s, pulled up a chair and sat near. “Rothstein’ll kill me if he can, you know. That way he scares the shit out of everybody owes him dough. If he’ll bump off Masterson, he’ll bump off anybody—so pay up, boys, or else.”

  Wyatt closed his eyes.

  “Funny,” Bat mused. “In the old days, when I was in a fix I could set up a faro layout or go out and shoot a carload of hides. You, too. Times have caught up with us, I guess. Or passed us.” He laid a hand on his ribs as though they were still sore. “You really going home tomorrow?”

  Wyatt opened his eyes. “Yup.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, for openers, I was pounded around good and then I got half-choked to death with an iron bar and then you lost all my money and my train ticket and made a damn fool of me in front of a lot of other damn fools and then I was nearly gunned down.” Wyatt yawned. “We’ve run out of rope, Bat. This town’s not big enough for both of us. I’m getting out.”

  Bat held his face and hands for a minute, then said in the same mournful tone he had tried out with such success on the congregation in the Knickerbocker Bar, “I’m a dead duck.”

  Wyatt closed his eyes.

  It was after five and there was gray light through the windows and the clip-clop of a milkwagon down on 49th Street when Bat rushed into the living room and grabbed Wyatt’s arm and Wyatt’s eyes flew open and he clutched his wallet.

  “Wyatt, the hell we have!”

  “Have what?”

  “Run out of rope! Listen—I couldn’t sleep—I told you I’d think of something! Wyatt, it’s time to pick our peaches!”