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assured them.
    “Now that’s plain foolish, Cody,” Wyatt said. “If you were headed into gunplay the last thing you’d want is to have your gun stuck in a damn holster, or worse yet in your pocket.”
    “True,” Doc said. “I doubt Billy the Kid had his gun in a damn holster when he went against those killers.”
    Buffalo Bill Cody smiled—a tired smile though. How to explain to these men, who didn’t even seem to be gunmen, that a show had to be real and yet not real at the same time? Of course they were right about frontier gunplay: the fighter would get his gun out and cocked, as he had when he killed the Cheyenne Yellow Hair and claimed the first scalp for Custer.
    In the show, of course it was more complicated. The good guys had to win—evil could not be allowed to triumph in a show that had even been enjoyed by Queen Victoria herself, as well as many other crowned heads.
    Something similar had just occurred to Wyatt.
    “Say me and Doc face off—who gets to win?”
    Cody was thinking of Nellie.
    “You boys could draw straws or flip coins or something,” he said. “Wouldn’t work for either one of you to win all the time.”
    “I could pay each of you one hundred dollars a show.”
    Doc was taken by surprise.
    “One hundred dollars apiece, for shooting blanks at one another?”
    Cody nodded.
    “Would that be cash?” Wyatt asked.
    “Cash,” Cody assured him. “You’d have to come to Denver for a while—that’s where we’re headquartered.”
    Doc looked at Wyatt.
    “What do you think, squire?” he asked.
    “I ain’t free to think—unlike you. I’d need to clear it with the missus.”
    “Okay, but be quick about it,” Doc said. “We best nail down this job before the real thing comes along.”
    “And who might the real thing be?” Wyatt asked, with a trace of a smile.
    “Just about anybody who likes to shoot and don’t mind playacting,” Cody said. “Maybe that fellow from Georgia—Hardin. I think he was a dentist, like yourself.”
    “Too late, they hung him,” Wyatt said.
    “He was a lunatic, too,” Cody said. “When possible I like to hire people of an unsullied mind. But there are plenty of people out here in the West who are capable of firing off a gun in a show.”
    “Well, I best be off to see Jessie—I hope I don’t wake her up,” Wyatt said.
    “Henpecked, the great Wyatt Earp,” Cody said.
    “You evidently don’t know Jessie,” Wyatt said. “If she’s in one of her tempers she’d put a hyena to flight . . .”
    “So might I, if I get worked up enough,” Nellie said. “That could be the reason my husband lives in the South Seas, if he lives at all.”
    At the banquet table Lord Ernle was winding up his toasts; the bagpipers once again began to squeal.
    “I pride myself on being able to put up with a lot,” Nellie said. “But bagpipers are pretty much my limit.”
    “Want me to shoot one?” Doc asked. “If I’m going to be working with Cody and trying to hit things with a pistol—or not hit things—I need to be practicing.”
    “Even if I didn’t shoot the bagpipers I could puncture a bagpipe or two.”
    “No, no, they’re harmless, Doc,” Nellie said. “But it is true that they’re loud.”
     

 
    - 16 -
    When Wyatt came in, sheepish-looking as usual, Jessie began to steam.
    “I’ve half a mind to throw this whiskey bottle at you,” she said.
    “I’m glad that it’s only half and that the whiskey bottle is better disposed of,” Wyatt said. “How about a kiss.”
    “Are you man enough to try?” she asked.
    “I surely think so,” Wyatt said, and the next thing they knew they were upstairs, squirming on a bed—in one of the whores’ rooms, sort of by accident. At one point she bucked so hard that Wyatt came out, but Jessie caught him with her hand and stuffed him back in—usually she could manage that.
    “Oh boy, pleasant,” Wyatt said.
    “It doesn’t make up for everything,” Jessie informed him. “You should have