The Last Kind Words Saloon: A Novel by Larry McMurtry

deputy. He says the thieves and murderers are too much for him. Guess we’ll have to go help him and bring my sign.”
    “Tombstone’s a mining town,” Mary said. “They’re usually rough.”
    Then Warren began to guzzle whiskey, from a bottle he had in the buggy.
    Jessie had no way to stop him; she knew better than to come between an Earp and his bottle.
    “Arizona,” he said, to no one in particular, and then he slid slowly out of his chair and under the table.
    “If I had a dollar for every man I’ve seen passed out drunk, I’d be rich,” Nellie said.
    Nobody disputed her claim. Jessie knew a few of her stars. On this occasion Venus shone bright in the west, while Jupiter was nearly as bright in the heaven straight above. Jessie thought it was mean of Wyatt to send her off with his brother. She was not convinced that there even was a place called Mobetie: unless it had a bar there’d be no place for her to work. But Wyatt and Doc just saddled up one day and rode off, but not before Wyatt borrowed fifty dollars from her.
    “How you going to pay me back, Wyatt, you don’t even have a job and it’s still hundreds of miles to Arizona?”
    Wyatt mounted up and rode off as if no one had spoken, taking the fifty dollars. He knew she was upset but he chose to ignore it. His view was not only that he got to borrow the fifty dollars but he shouldn’t have to endure a discussion about it. So he didn’t.
    Jessie cried off and on all that day. Warren showed up eventually and drove the wagon over the endless plain.
     

 
    - 35 -
    Doc began to have long coughing jags, bringing up copious quantities of phlegm. Wyatt was a light sleeper at best. Doc’s coughing always woke him and that would be the end of sleep for that particular night. The two of them had gone back to Long Grass because of the rail—which would route them here and there and maybe bring them to Arizona in a week or two.
    On their trip back to Long Grass cattle were everywhere—there had been a big stampede. Doc was outraged. He had never been fond of cattle and could barely even tolerate horses.
    “If the cowboys had been doing their job these plains would be empty.”
    “Yes, and then what would we eat if we were hungry?” Wyatt asked him.
    “And I don’t know why you’re in such hurry to get to Arizona—it’s just a place, and at the end of the day, most places present mostly the same problems.”
    “You have no optimism, Wyatt,” Doc said. “We might break the bank in Arizona, if we can just get the cards to go our way.”
    He was holding back a cough, though.
    “I won’t lag around a pistol, though,” Wyatt said. “A dern pistol’s heavy on the hip.”
    “Jessie’s a qualified bartender,” Doc reminded him. “I bet she’d support you until you’ve got on your feet.”
    “No she won’t, the hussy,” Wyatt told him. “And she said she’d leave me if I tried to take any of her earnings.”
    “Do you ever wonder what it will be like to die?” Doc asked.
    “No, I spend very little time in idle speculation,” Wyatt said.
    Then he had an idea.
    Out back of what had once been called the Last Kind Words Saloon was a considerable dump, where the townspeople threw their trash; the dump was full of bottles and cans and other likely targets for rifle or pistol. What better time or place to practice.
    “Let’s go shoot,” he said to Doc, who immediately drew his gun and whirled around. To his surprise the streets of Long Grass were empty.
    “Shoot who?” he asked.
    “No, no . . . not a cowboy or even a person, just shoot for practice, in case some show like Cody’s comes along and hires us to do an act like we did in Denver.”
    Doc followed him around to the dump and watched him line up about thirty targets, mainly bottles and cans.
    “This is a silly business,” Doc said, but he allowed himself to be persuaded and was soon popping away at the various targets and missing most of them.
    “Cody did mention that there