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sometimes driving a rubber-tired sulky himself, traveling the racing circuit from Chicago and St. Louis to Escondido and Tijuana.
    There’d been horse stables in San Francisco, and two saloons in Nome, Alaska, where during that gold rush he’d hobnobbed with playwright-sportsman Wilson Mizner and famous book writers Jack London and Rex Beach, and palled with Tex Rickard, Jack Dempsey’s first fight promoter.
    Sometimes he and Sadie lived high, enjoying the best quarters in mining camps as saloon-keeper Wyatt concentrated on digging the gold from miners’ pockets via drink and gambling; other times, when the Earps were themselves prospecting, a camping-out style of life ensued, which Sadie didn’t mind at all, hearty gal that she was.
    Finding both copper and gold at the Happy Days mine had provided good income at first—supplanted by Wyatt going into Needles to fleece the troops on payday—though the cost and toil of all that underground work, dropping shafts and such, was considerable, particularly for Wyatt and Sadie, who were getting a little long in the tooth for that kind of work.
    Through all the days of horses and saloons and cards and gold, Wyatt had from time to time taken up his long-barreled .45 for local law work or to rent himself out to Wells Fargo or some mining company or even the Los Angeles coppers. Though he thought of himself as a professional gambler, and entrepreneur, Wyatt knew his reputation as a gun-toting Western lawman always followed him.
    Hell, he had capitalized on it—often hanging a big sign on his saloons saying wyatt earp, prop.—and ever ready to let card players know they were sitting down with a sagebrush celebrity. His attitude was not one of arrogance or pride, but with fame the bane of his existence as it was, he figured he might as well get something out of it.

    And, no denying, he was good at lawing. He’d done police work of one kind or another since he was a kid back in Lamar, Missouri, and between his skills and reputation, carrying a badge—whether public or private—remained a trade he could always fall back on.
    This was why he’d allowed himself to get back into the detective game, of late. A few months every winter at the Happy Days hadn’t amounted to much in several years. And the cards hadn’t been running much better for him than for Sadie, though he felt confident luck would turn his way. This meant the occasional lie to his darling girl: she thought the Bill Hart job had paid one hundred dollars, when four hundred was the true tally.
    He had given her the C-note, while the other three C’s were currently residing in his left boot.
    The Sante Fe’s much vaunted speed meant he’d be in Chicago, late morning, third day out—with another twenty hours on the 20th Century Limited before reaching New York. Three hundred was a good stake for the poker games he hoped to encounter on his four days of train travel.
    The five hundred Kate Elder had given him, Sadie knew nothing of—just as she knew nothing of the private bank account Wyatt held certain of his earnings in, out of her reach.
    He couldn’t keep from Sadie that a female guest had dropped by the bungalow yesterday. He would liked to have, only their nosy neighbors would certainly have told Sadie about the well-dressed, well-preserved matron who’d dropped by. But admitting that it had been Kate Elder, that was another proposition altogether.
    Sadie and Kate were oil and water, Kate having been a friend of Mattie Blaylock, them having as soiled doves shared various cages over assorted saloons. Even though Wyatt had thrown Mattie over for her, Sadie remained to this day jealous of that poor dead pitiful soul, resentful as hell that Wyatt had once cohabited with “such a creature.”
    That hadn’t been fair to Mattie. In cowtowns like Wichita and Dodge, and likewise mining camps like Tombstone, red-light gals were the only females within hundreds of miles who weren’t Indian or Mexican. Who else was