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like in those east Kansas towns where unbearably victorious Yankees would likely cheat those Southern boys every chance they got.
    Some of that was even true, mostly, but it wasn’t comradely fellow feeling that accounted for the welcome Dodge extended.
    The facts were these. Dodge City did not invent or manufacture goods. Dodge did not raise or educate children. It did not nurture or appreciate the arts. Dodge City had a single purpose: to extract wealth from Texas. Drovers brought cattle north and got paid in cash; Dodge sent them home in possession of neither.
    Dead men don’t pay for baths, haircuts, meals, or beds. Dead men don’t buy new clothes, or ammunition, or saddles. Dead men don’t desire fancy Coffeyville boots with Texas stars laid into the shank. They don’t gamble, and they don’t spend money on liquor or whores. And that was why, when the Texans got to Dodge, there was really only one rule to remember. Don’t kill the customers. All other ordinances were, customarily, negotiable.
    So Wyatt was pretty certain it wasn’t illegal to beat a horse. It was just stupid and mean. Dick Naylor was proof of that.
    It was August of ’77 when Wyatt first laid eyes on Dick. Overridden and underfed, the horse was a ewe-necked, long-backed, club-footed three-year-old whose coal-black flanks were marred by weeping spur sores. He was shaking like he had a chill and his eyes were white-rimmed with fear, but they were set well back on a good broad head with a tapered muzzle. There was quality to be noticed, if you had the sense to look.
    The Texan who owned him was shouting and hauling on the lead, trying to drag eight hundred pounds of bony horseflesh where it didn’t want to go. Wyatt hated to see that.
    “Halter’s too tight,” he called. “Loosen the strap behind his ears. He’ll stop pulling.”
    “Go to hell,” the Texan replied, and since no law said you couldn’t wreck your own property, all Wyatt could do was watch.
    Scrawny as the animal was, he had that cowboy scared, for the fella backed away every time the animal bobbed his head and snapped. It’s all show, Wyatt wanted to say. He could’ve reached your shoulder if he wanted to. You’re scaring him, is all.
    The Texan didn’t see things that way. Sputtering curses, he pulled a gun out of his coat pocket and declared, “Why, I’ll shoot you, then, you worthless no-good bag of shit!”
    The shot went wild when the horse jerked on the lead. A moment later, Wyatt had disarmed the idiot and bashed him with his own pistol.
    “Discharging firearms inside city limits is a misdemeanor. Fine’s five dollars,” he informed the Texan, who had crumpled to the ground, stunned but conscious. Wyatt dug into his pocket and counted what he had. “You can go to court or you can sell me this horse,” he said, dropping $2.15 onto the dirt. “I’ll let you off with a warning.”
    “Take him and be damned,” the Texan muttered, gathering up the coins. “I hope he kills you.”
    “What do you call him?” Wyatt asked.
    “Besides sonofabitch? Dick Naylor,” the Texan told him.
    He didn’t seem inclined to explain how a horse got his own last name.

    Two months later, Dodge laid Wyatt off again. Cattle towns needed all the law they could hire during the season. When the weather cooled off, toward the end of October, the streets went quiet. Didn’t matter how well he did his job, Wyatt was always out of work come winter.
    He had harbored some hope that things would turn out different in Dodge. He’d worked there with his brothers Virgil and Morgan for two seasons running, and they got a grip on the town when it was still making national news for being the most violent and lawless place in the country, even counting Deadwood and New York City. When the Earp brothers were hired in ’76, their boss was Larry Deger. Fat Larry was already close to three hundred pounds, too big and too slow to do much more than file the charges when somebody else made an