Read Online The Last Kind Words Saloon: A Novel by Larry McMurtry - Free Book Online Page A

very drunk, he could hear laughter, though nothing seemed particularly funny to him. He had drunk plenty of whiskey; when he awoke it was to find none other than Wyatt Earp dragging him to safety at the side of the street.
    “You’d be better off living in Montana, Blue,” Wyatt said. “You’re too young to be run over in a damn worthless place like Mobetie.”
    “I need a job,” Teddy said. “Know of any herds heading north?”
    “Blue, I just got here, and besides I ain’t a cattleman,” Wyatt said. “I don’t keep up with herds.”
    “Charlie Goodnight’s probably got some, but he’s stiff, I hear. Don’t he own the panhandle now?”
    Teddy’s head began to throb—the whiskey he drank had been of a low quality.
    “Are you conscious?” Wyatt asked.
    Teddy saw the whore who had made the dare; she was on the porch of the saloon, looking at him. Her name was Emma. She was small but vigorous. And she was sweet on him.
    It took Doc and Wyatt both to get Teddy Blue solidly back on his feet, but when he was upright he went back across the street to see Emma. As soon as he sobered enough he meant to collect on his dare.
     

 
    - 29 -
    A week after Lord Ernle’s death in Palo Duro Canyon, Buffalo Bill Cody died in Denver. Nellie Courtright tapped out the news on a special telegraph key provided to her at Cody’s request. Nellie had been nervous. She wept so hard at the news that she could barely see the special key, and, in any case, she had not been a practicing telegrapher in years; but Cody insisted and she could not deny him. All in all he had been fine with her, really fine. Often they joked about marrying, without doing anything about it.
    Nellie was by then writing for a number of magazines, some of them steady customers. Not an hour after she tapped out “Buffalo Bill is dead” to a grieving world she got a telegram from the New York Sun , asking her to go to Texas and write about the great castle on the Canadian River that a cattleman named Charles Goodnight now seemed to own. Of course Nellie remembered the Goodnights—once she had impulsively kissed Charlie, she remembered. She was needing money just then—she had six girls to educate and clothe so she immediately took the job.
    The railroad would take her most of the way; for the rest she hired a buggy.
    Goodnight had busied himself by providing ample pens for the thousands of cattle he planned to bring up the trail. Nellie was not surprised to see the huge pen, but she was surprised to see San Saba in a smaller pen with several wiry-looking mustangs. She wore a large hat and a leather skirt and was trying to get one of the mustangs to accept the halter—the horse eventually did, and she led it over to the fence.
    Goodnight and Mary met her on the steps of the vast shell of a house—there were tents in the great hall.
    “Hurrah, it’s Nellie, my favorite visitor,” Mary said.
    “Probably your only visitor,” Nellie said. She did not bug Charlie and wondered if he remembered her impulsive kiss. It was hard to know much about Charlie, though he did seem to consider himself the boss of the panhandle.
    “I’m off to south Texas to round up a herd,” he said. “What did you want here, Miss Courtright?”
    “Charlie, we’ve known one another a good long while,” she said. “Can’t you even call me by my first name?”
    “Yes, do it, you big fool,” Mary told him.
    “I was brought up a certain way and it wasn’t the way you two was brought up,” he said.
    Just then Bose walked up with Goodnight’s horse.
    “Hi, Bose,” Nellie said. “Charlie I have to write about you for Collier’s magazine,” she said. “What do you have to say about the late Lord Ernle?”
    “He should have watched where he was going,” Goodnight said. He mounted and rode away.
    “A girl could wait a long time for a goodbye kiss,” Mary said. She sounded annoyed.
    “I saw San Saba in a pen with some mustangs,” Nellie said. “That’s