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archway labeled LA GRANDE
    STATION, the Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fe’s California Limited would pull that trick off.
    Wyatt, in a black suit with four-in-hand tie and a black homburg, could have been a preacher or perhaps undertaker, as he and his alligator valise threaded through the diverse bustle in the station—from overdressed wealthy wives attended by sleepwalking husbands in impeccably tailored suits to the poorest Mexicans and Indians in ponchos and flimsy cottons. The station interior wasn’t so fancy, not a harem dancer in sight, though the pretty, white-aproned waitresses of the lobby’s Harvey House restaurant did their best to tempt travelers, abetted by the aromas of dishes almost as attractive as they were.
    With a 1:10 p.m. train to catch, Wyatt would hold out till dinner on the dining car, also the domain of famed restaurateur Fred Harvey (though onboard Harvey’s equally famous “girls”
    were replaced by colored stewards); and anyway, Sadie had fixed him an early lunch—weenies and sauerkraut, which you might call her specialty if any of the four or five meals she knew how to cook could be considered any way special.
    He hadn’t married the woman for her culinary talents. When he’d first seen Sadie—Josephine Sarah Marcus, Josie to some, Sadie to most—she’d been in Tombstone performing Pinafore on stage at Schieffelin Hall, a cabin “boy” who did a captivating hornpipe dance. He’d only admired her from an audience member’s perspective, as this was not long after he and his brothers and all their wives rolled into town.
    And Wyatt did have a “wife” at the time, Mattie, a dance hall wench he’d taken up with in Texas who had soon become a drag on his good nature with her incessant nagging, not to mention penchant for liquor and laudanum. He was not proud of breaking it off with Mattie, but neither was he ashamed. Few men could have resisted dusky Sadie in her day, with her full bosom, slim waist, full hips, and that lovely face, big dark eyes, and dimpled chin.
    Furthermore, Sadie had been fun and spirited and adventurous, the only human on God’s earth who could make Wyatt Earp laugh, besides Doc Holliday. Older now, with more heft on her, hiding it in loose shapeless dresses, she could still toss a sparkling-eyed smile at Wyatt and make him see the dangerous dusky Jewess he’d gone head over heels for. But Mattie—in his mind’s eye—why, he could barely form her picture.

    She was gone now, since ’88, died of the drugs and drink, and he felt some pity for her; some.
    Not that Sadie couldn’t be a handful herself, what with her gambling habit and suspicious nature. The latter came from Wyatt’s weakness for women, a hankering that had lessened with age. The former, well, Sadie could just not understand why Wyatt, an affirmed gambler himself, could begrudge her the occasional bet.
    “You’re just not a smart gambler,” he’d tell her. “And you have no business risking your money that way.”
    And some of it was her money, at least when Wyatt’s fortunes were on the ebb not the flow.
    When money got tight, Sadie’s sister would send a check. In a way Sadie’s sibling owed the Earps a little support, since Wyatt helped her establish that oil well claim near Bakersfield.
    But living off his wife’s sister did not sit right with Wyatt.
    When he looked back on his life with Sadie, he knew his fortunes had fluctuated, but mostly they’d lived well enough, and even flourished. These last three decades or so, he’d combined prospecting with saloon-keeping as they chased the money dream from one boomtown to another.
    Sometimes that meant a mining camp, like Coeur d’Alene in Idaho in ’84—he and Sadie ran a saloon there—and other times it might be a city, like San Diego with its land boom in ’87, where Wyatt wound up owning four saloons (two with gambling halls) and a string of harness horses. The latter he’d loved, connoisseur of horseflesh that he was,