Epitaph Read online

  “In the toe!” Ike Clanton repeated, cackling.

  Ignoring Bill and Ike, John Henry Holliday kept his eye on Ringo. “I have no quarrel with you, sir, but if you insist on makin’ one,” he said, his voice mild and musical, “let us choose a time and place when there are no ladies present to have their evenin’ spoiled by a boorish, drunken, belligerent cracker.”

  “Ladies?” Ringo sneered. “I don’t see no—”

  In an instant, Doc was on his feet, cane in hand, ready to beat the man to the ground. Mattie half-stood, crying, “Doc! No!”

  That was when Fred White arrived, alerted by the restaurant staff to an impending fracas. He and Curly Bill shouldered in between Holliday and Ringo, pushing the pair apart, staying between them until it was clear that the two didn’t propose to make a shooting matter out of it.

  “Don’t mind Ringo, Marshal,” Curly Bill said with good-natured smile. “He’s just drunk. No harm done, right?”

  “Dammit, Bill, you told me you’d keep him out of Tombstone!”

  Curly Bill’s smile was rueful now. “I do my best, Marshal. I truly do.” He clapped Ringo on the shoulder and said, “C’mon, Juanito! Time to go.”

  “Yeah,” Ike said. “Time to go, Juanito!”

  Looking vaguely in Ike’s direction, Ringo seemed to lose his train of thought. Then, without warning, he buried his fist in Ike’s belly, doubling the man over.

  There were small cries of surprise and dismay around the room. Ike dropped to his knees, windless and bug-eyed.

  “Ike,” Ringo said as he moved toward the door, “if you had half a brain, you’d be twice as smart.”

  Arms over his chest, Fred White stayed where he was, blocking Holliday’s way. Curly Bill—smiling and murmuring encouragement—got Ike to his feet and steered him out of the restaurant.

  When all three of the Cow Boys had left the building, Fred called out, “It’s over, folks. Enjoy your meals.”

  The fiddler began a sprightly tune. Conversation began to buzz.

  Fred took a step back from Doc Holliday so he could study the man. The Earp brothers all vouched for Holliday. They claimed the dentist never started anything. He was trembling after that little dust-up, and Ringo was always looking for a fight, so could be Holliday hadn’t started the trouble, but some men just seemed to draw it, like shit draws flies.

  “It’s over,” Fred said. “Right, Doc?”

  “Never started, Marshal,” Holliday replied softly.

  “Well, see that it don’t,” Fred said.

  The marshal left, but Doc remained on his feet until Mattie put a hand on his arm. Blinking rapidly, he didn’t seem to recognize her for a few moments. He came to himself at last and sat down, using his arms to control the drop into his chair. “My apologies for the unpleasantness, ladies.”

  “Wasn’t your fault,” Mattie said firmly.

  “You got some kinda history with him?” Bessie asked.

  “Never saw him before in my life.”

  “Well, something set him off,” Allie said.

  “The coughing, I think,” Lou said.

  Presently a team of waiters returned to the table: one with a whisk broom to clean up the shards of crystal on the floor; another bringing a replacement drink to Doc; a third carrying a large silver tray laden with sweets, which were distributed and shared. The girls concentrated on their pie, but Doc didn’t touch a thing. Not even his peach.

  It was Lou who brought him around. “That man is wandering in the wilderness,” she said quietly. “He is angry because he is lost. And . . . he’s afraid.”

  Doc’s eyes came to rest on Lou’s. “Well, now . . . ain’t you somethin’.”

  For a time, he was thoughtful, simply gazing at each of his companions. Apart from Allie—wary but fearless, he judged her—these women had seen him at his lowest, back in Dodge: all but naked, trying not to drown in the blood rising in his eroded lungs. Terrified, and so near to death that he himself did not expect to see the morning. He had no secrets from Mattie and Bessie and Lou.

  Back in control, he squeezed Lou’s hand briefly before addressing them more generally. “Perhaps it would be best if we do not mention any of this to your menfolk.”

  “No argument from me,” Allie said.

  One by one, her co-conspirators nodded their agreement.

  CLANLESS, LAWLESS, HOMELESS MEN

  BENEATH THE SUN AND STARRY SKIES

  CURLY BILL BROCIUS WAS FEELING PRETTY satisfied with the day’s accomplishments as he shepherded Ike Clanton and Johnny Ringo out of Tombstone that evening. True enough, Juanito had gotten a little out of hand at the end, but Fred White was a good old boy. As long as you didn’t make too much trouble right inside town limits, the city marshal was willing to turn a blind eye. Course, Fred understood that Bill Brocius couldn’t really order anyone to stay out of Tombstone, Johnny Ringo least of all. All Bill could do was encourage the boys to seek their entertainment in Charleston, about eight miles south, where no federal, territorial, county, or town officials were around to spoil the fun. That was logic even liquored-up youngsters could understand.

  Curly Bill himself rarely dealt directly with customers, so he was surprised when Old Man Clanton sent him into the city.

  “I’m buying a place in New Mexico,” Mr. Clanton had told Curly Bill last night. “Go into Tombstone in the morning and sell off that new herd. I want better’n five dollars a head and I want cash. Take Ike and Ringo with you.”

  One by one, Old Man Clanton was buying up a string of ranches from the Mexican border to the mining towns of southeastern Arizona. The idea was to turn the entire length of the transport route into private property. Posse Comitatus would take the army out of the calculation. Then all you had to do was buy off the Pima County sheriff and your business was secure.

  Curly Bill admired the old man’s thinking and was determined to bring equal acumen to his own task. Riding from the Clanton ranch to Tombstone, he’d spent hours in careful consideration of which buyer he ought to approach and how. By the time the city came into view, he had settled on the mining district’s second-biggest meat supplier, for the top man would be satisfied with his status and not inclined to try anything new, whereas the next man down might aspire to improve upon his position and would be more open to strategy.

  “Now, Mr. Clanton says I can offer you a real good price on a herd that’s just come in, direct from Mexico,” Curly Bill told Number Two that morning, “but you gotta make up your mind right now. He’s in a hurry to make this deal, and there’s others I can take it to.”

  You could see the man thinking. The cattle on offer would not enjoy their customary stay in Sulphur Springs Valley for fattening. Their meat would be stringy and tough. “I don’t know,” he said cautiously. “If the customers complain about quality, it could cost me a contract.”

  “Just work the cheap meat into the mix,” Bill suggested. “The miners might grouse about a meal or two—or maybe one man’s stew is fine and his friend’s is chewy. They won’t be able to tell what’s going on.”

  “They won’t be able to tell!” Ike said cheerfully.

  Ike tended to repeat things that way. It made him sound stupid, but Ike had his reasons, which were good and sufficient, in Curly Bill’s estimation.

  “Since you’re getting the herd so cheap,” Bill went on, “you could maybe drop your price to the chow houses a little. They get a sweet deal now, and maybe you get a bigger slice of their business next year. In the meantime, you pocket the difference.”

  “Pocket the difference,” Ike said.

  Bill waited patiently, watching the decision come closer. “Everybody wins,” he said with an amiable grin, “except the miners!”

  “Except the miners!” Ike said.

  You could see Number Two wondering if Ike had been born dumb or if his old man made him that way. Then his eyes fell upon Johnny Ringo, who was standing over at the shop window like he wasn’t paying any attention, and Curly Bill’s smile
widened. Old Man Clanton was a shrewd one, all right. Ike’s face almost always sported the kind of yellowing bruises that reminded you how it was ill-advised to make the old man unhappy. And Ringo? All he had to do was stand there and a sensible person would take a herd that still spoke Spanish.

  “Four dollars a head,” Number Two tried. Half the going price.

  “Five twenty-five,” Bill countered.

  “Four fifty.”

  Over at the window, Ringo blew a little noise of annoyance.

  “Four seventy-five,” Two said firmly. “Best I can do.”

  Ringo turned and stared with those dead-snake eyes of his. It was about then that Number Two started to sweat. Granted, the day was warming up.

  “All right,” he said. “Five fifteen.”

  “Toss in an extra twenty for me and the boys,” Curly Bill suggested, upping the ante, “and you got yourself a deal.”

  “You got yourself a deal!” Ike said happily.

  “Ike,” Ringo said, “the devil himself is going to recommend you to God, just to keep you out of hell.”

  Ike’s mouth worked a bit. You could see he was trying to decide if that was good or bad, but he shut up while he figured it out.

  “I’m going to the library,” Ringo said on his way out the door.

  “Always reading,” Bill said, shaking his head. “Juanito’s a strange one.” Smiling brightly, he returned to the business at hand. “Mr. Clanton requires cash, sir. That won’t be a problem, will it?”

  It was, but Number Two came around on that as well. Afterward, Bill and Ike met up with Ringo again and they had themselves a time in the bars and brothels out past Sixth Street before heading over for a real good meal at the Maison Doree.

  It was too bad Fred White got drawn into that little standoff with Doc Holliday—what in hell was that all about?—but Ringo didn’t shoot anybody and only broke a glass. Ike’s belly would stop hurting in a few days, and Bill himself was pleased to have something cheerful to report to Ike’s old man.

  Yep, he thought as the Clanton ranch house came into view in the moonlight. It was a damn fine day, all around.

  IF OLD MAN CLANTON HAD A FIRST NAME, nobody living used it. As far as anyone in Arizona knew, he’d been born with a week-old beard and iron-gray hair. Mean, straight out of his mamma’s womb.

  His wife called him “sir.” Once, just after Ike was born, she tried to run away, but the old man tracked her down and brought her back bleeding. “Try that again,” he told her, “I’ll nail your feet to a four-foot plank. That’ll stop you running.”

  It was about that time the old man quit shaving himself and started making his wife do it. Once a week, in honor of the Sabbath, he’d lie back and let her take a straight razor to him. He smiled once a week, too, when she scraped that razor’s edge over his neck. It amused him to know that she was that close to killing him but didn’t have the sand to do it.

  She was weak. That was the old man’s opinion. She came of weak stock, and she was a bad breeder. Most of her brats lived, but they were worthless, all of them. Except maybe the youngest—Billy was the best of the lot. Alonzo, though . . . There was something wrong with that one, right from the start. The night that ugly little toad was born, the old man took him to a horse trough, meaning to drown him, but Ike came running up, sniveling and promising to take care of the brat.

  “Take him then,” the old man said. “Cryin’ little babies, the pair of you.”

  Alonzo was feeble-minded and seemed happiest with dogs. Cows liked him, too. They’d walk right up to him, let him pat their noses. He had cow eyes—calm, quiet, stupid eyes—but sometimes he’d panic, the way cattle panic. He’d run in big circles, screaming and screaming with those cow eyes open wide, flapping his hands like chicken wings.

  Ike was the only one who cried when Alonzo died.

  “Figures,” the old man said. “That just figures.”

  WHEN THE WAR BROKE OUT, Old Man Clanton took his three oldest boys—Joe, Phin, and Ike—traveling across the South to enlist in one regiment after another. They’d stay in camp just long enough to get the signing bonus, take off in the middle of the night, and then do it again in the next state over.

  The old man didn’t give a damn about abolitionists or the Cause. “Not our fight,” he told his sons. “Fight for niggers or fight for planters and either way, you’re a damn fool. Damn fools deserve what happens to ’em.”

  The old man’s drinking got worse when his wife died. Ike was nineteen by then. He might have gone off on his own like his older brothers had, but Ike stayed and that was his misfortune.

  True to his watered-down nature, he took his mother’s place, trying to keep the littler kids fed and out of trouble. Billy was only four and he was a handful, but Ike took special care of him.

  “Do as you’re told, and don’t never talk back,” Ike always warned Billy. “Just say whatever the old man says, and you’ll be all right.” But Billy never listened to Ike. Billy never much listened to anybody. And what puzzled Ike was, the old man seemed to admire Billy for that.

  After the war, the old man took the family to California for a while but he couldn’t make a go of it there, so they doubled back in 1877 and settled in a portion of nowhere called the Arizona Territory. The old man staked out a townsite, called the place Clantonville, and prepared to become rich. He put ads in newspapers, expecting to draw settlers who’d buy parcels of empty land off him and make him mayor. Nothing much came of the scheme, but he didn’t blame himself. His failures weren’t for want of trying, and that’s what infuriated the old man about his son Ike.

  “No gumption,” he’d mutter. “No try.”

  Course, all of Ike’s try went into keeping the old man happy, but there’s no pleasing some people. Ike opened a little restaurant for miners in Millville, and he did pretty well, but then it was “Getting ideas now? Getting above your old man, are you? I’ll teach you to act high and mighty! I brought you into this world, and I’ll send you to hell whenever I please.”

  IT WASN’T UNTIL THE OLD MAN got into the cattle business that the family really made good. Billy was only sixteen on his first raid, but the old man liked how he handled himself. “Best of the lot,” the old man always said. “Good-looking, too, with a temper and some real guts.” Ike, on the other hand, was useless. That was the old man’s opinion.

  Nobody was inclined to argue the point with him, not even Ike, who generally took things as he found them. The old man was just part of a world that included rattlers, scorpions, and a hundred kinds of cactus. You had to be careful in a world like that. You had to know what to watch for, what to listen for, what to avoid. Ike had made a particular study of his old man and knew when bad spells were coming on. After their mother died, Ike taught Billy and the girls how to see them coming, too.

  “It’s like thunderstorms,” he told them.

  The old man would get quieter and quieter, like that heavy, windless heat before a storm. Then there’d be a rumble of orders and threats, like thunder in the distance. Shut your goddam mouth, or I’ll shut it for you! Don’t speak till you’re spoken to! Do as you’re told, God damn you, and be quick about it! The old man’s mood would get darker and darker, like clouds piling up, and he’d get angrier, like wind rising. Then he’d explode. Lightning would strike the nearest target. Give! Me! My! Due! the old man would yell over and over, a blow landing with each word, until he’d spent his fury on that week’s unlucky child. Muttering would signal an end to the storm. That’ll teach you to talk back, you mouthy little bitch. Or Shoulda put you in a sack when you was born and drowned you like a sick pup, you worthless little bastard. Then it was over, like a storm blowing itself out or passing on, out of sight.

  You could learn to live with rage like that. It was predictable. You could see it coming and take cover. That’s what Ike tried to teach his sisters and his little brother Billy. Do as you’re told. Don’t talk back. Say whatever the old man says.

  Mostly the girls took
his advice, but when they didn’t, Ike stepped in and took the beating for them. He was proud of that, but there’d been a price to pay.

  “HOW LONG YOU WORKED FOR HIM?” Sherm McMasters asked Curly Bill once.

  “Old Man Clanton? Must be a coupla years now,” Bill said.

  They were bringing a herd north after a raid into Mexico. The younger boys were settling the animals into a draw for the night while the older ones made camp. Ike had the cook fire going, with the beans heating in a kettle. There was a Dutch oven in the embers. Biscuits tonight. Say what you would, Ike was a damn fine cook.

  “Pay’s good,” Sherm acknowledged, “but he’s a tough man to deal with.”

  That made Curly Bill smile. “Sherm, the old man’s easy as pie. Right, Ike?”

  Ike nodded. “Do what he tells you. Say what he says.”

  Ringo was lying on his back, head propped against his saddle, holding a book up to make the best of the sunset and the firelight. “The old man’s like everybody else out here. Nobody goes west except failures, misfits, and deluded lungers.”

  “Failures, misfits, and lungers,” Ike said, adding chilies to the beans.

  “That may be stretching things some,” Sherm said, but he was real quiet about it. He wanted Curly Bill to hear but wasn’t taking a chance on setting Ringo off. Old Man Clanton might take a horsewhip to you, but Ringo would kill you.

  “I think Juanito may have the right of it,” Curly Bill decided after a time. “A fella’s doing well back east, he’s likely to stay put. I wager there are very few men who wake up in Philadelphia, say, or Cincinnati and look into their mirrors and think, I’m prosperous and my life is wonderful. I guess it’s time to turn my back on all this good fortune and head west!”

  “Head west,” Ike said.

  Ringo’s book went down against his thighs. “Ike,” he said wearily, “we could replace you with a goddam parrot and nobody’d notice the difference.”