Epitaph Read online

  Getting a grip again, Johnny stood and went to the office window.

  “I warned Wyatt that Holliday was trouble,” he said softly. “He should have followed my advice. And maybe I’ll be doing him one last favor now . . . If Wyatt Earp has any brains at all, which is questionable, he’ll tell Holliday to get out of Tombstone on the next stage. But he won’t. Wyatt will stick with that obnoxious, dangerous, venomous drunk because they’re friends.”

  He turned then to his undersheriff. “I’m not going to fire you, Harry, but from this day forward—now and forever, amen—you and your newspaper are going to make Wyatt Earp carry Doc Holliday on his back, exactly the way John Clum and the Epitaph have saddled me with the Cow Boys.”

  IT WAS NOTHING PERSONAL, EVEN THEN. Using John Henry Holliday against Wyatt Earp was a simple act of political pragmatism. That’s how it would have remained, if not for Josie Marcus.

  SHE’D SELECTED HER CLOTHES CAREFULLY, seeking just the right balance between charming and desirable. Her dress was dove gray and peach pink, very becoming against her skin. Barely visible at the top of the neckline: black lace, a subtle hint about what lay beneath.

  Inspecting her tinted cheeks—color subtly applied—she rehearsed her lines as she set off for the Cosmopolitan. She would take her cue from Wyatt. If he was still exhausted, she would look concerned and say, “I’ve been so worried about you. I hope you won’t think me too forward, but I just had to see how you were.” On the other hand, if she saw what she hoped for when he opened the door—surprise, pleasure, yearning—she would give that shy, silent man a knowing smile and lead him to the bed herself.

  “Miss Josephine!” Mr. Bilicke said when she entered the lobby that morning. “What can I do for you today?”

  “I was hoping to see Mr. Earp,” she said casually. “Is he in?”

  “I’m afraid you just missed him. He left about half an hour ago.”

  “Kwand meem,” she said, miming mild disappointment with an insouciant wave of her small, gloved hand. “It was nothing important. I was passing and thought I’d pay a call.”

  “Would you care to leave a card? Or shall I tell Mr. Earp that you’re looking for him?”

  If she said yes and Wyatt didn’t return the call, it would be a silent message she didn’t want to receive. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll run into him later.”

  She stepped to the door and paused for a moment on the boardwalk to pop open her parasol. That was when she noticed Johnny Behan.

  Their paths had crossed before. Tombstone was big, but not that big. In the past two months, Johnny had seen her with other men—important men, rich men—at the Maison Doree, at the Schieffelin Theatre, at the Can Can Café. She would glance at him with a defiant little smile. He would pretend she was invisible. I’m glad to be rid of you, they told each other wordlessly. I wouldn’t take you back if you begged.

  “Mr. Bilicke? On second thought . . .” she began quietly. Then she raised her voice. “Tell Wyatt I’ll be back this afternoon.”

  Why did she do it?

  Because she was young and in full bloom, witlessly willing to exercise the brief destructive power of beauty. Because there was still no sign from Wyatt that he knew she was free, and she wanted to give him a little push. Because Johnny’s indifference annoyed her. Because she wanted to wound him and believed—rightly—that this would do the job. Because of what he’d done to her on the kitchen table.

  She had seen the word “slut” on Johnny’s lips before and read it there now. She lifted her head and narrowed her eyes and flounced her curls. Believe what you like, she thought as she brushed past him.

  And he did. Oh, he did.

  All along, he was thinking. That hypocritical, two-faced, self-righteous bastard! He was screwing you behind my back, all along.

  “WHAT’S THIS?” Johnny asked Virgil Earp, a couple of days later.

  “Expenses,” Virgil said, pushing a piece of paper across Johnny’s desk. “The federal marshal’s office is covering part of my salary, but the rest is county.”

  Brows knitted, Johnny read the neatly itemized list.

  Salaries: V. Earp, $32; W. Earp, $72. M. Earp, $72; F. Leslie: $72.

  Provisions: $26.

  Losses: Frank Leslie, one horse; Virgil Earp, one horse.

  Johnny looked up, all innocence. “This doesn’t come out of my budget, Virg.”

  “It was your posse,” Virgil pointed out.

  “Well, Billy Breakenridge is on my payroll,” Johnny said, “and I’ll pick up Frank Leslie’s salary, as far as the Cochise County line. I can’t pay him for the time in New Mexico, but I might be able to get the county to cover his horse if it died in Cochise. Morgan and Wyatt were your deputies, so their salaries are a federal expense. And your horse would be, too.”

  There was a long silence.

  “I guess you might be right about that,” Virgil said. You miserable little chiseler, he meant.

  “You could try billing Wells Fargo if the feds don’t cover everything,” Johnny suggested helpfully. Go to hell, he meant, and take your brother Wyatt with you.

  VIRGIL LEFT THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE and walked a few steps away from the window so Behan couldn’t see him stop and stare at the boardwalk with his jaw set and his breath coming deep and hard. “That sonofabitch,” he said softly. “That son of a bitch.”

  Still fuming, he looked up just in time to see Wyatt leaving the alley behind the Oriental. Which was strange. Because the other news they’d gotten after chasing Bill Leonard, Henry Head, and Jim Crane around the desert was this: Milt Joyce had refused to renew the contract for Wyatt’s quarter interest in the saloon’s gambling concession.

  The Oriental had been a reliable source of income and one that would be hard for Wyatt to replace. Worse yet, that income would now go to Johnny Behan, to whom Milt had leased the gambling concession a few days later at a nice discount—one Democrat to another, you understand. City councilman to sheriff.

  Bastards, the two of them.

  So what in hell was Wyatt doing out behind the Oriental?

  Virgil was about to call out to his brother when he saw Ike Clanton, of all people, leave the same alley and hurry off in the opposite direction.

  “Wyatt!” Virg yelled, dogtrotting across the street to meet his brother down at the corner. “What’s going on? What were you doing with Ike?”

  “Nothing,” Wyatt lied.

  Because that’s what politicians have to do.

  THIS ONE IS A FOOL, AND WILL PAY FOR IT ONE DAY

  IT’S A LOT TO THINK ABOUT,” IKE SAID, THE DAY THEY made the deal.

  “You want me to go over it again?” Wyatt asked.

  “Go over it again.”

  “Wells Fargo is offering a reward of twelve hundred dollars apiece for the men who attacked that stagecoach. That’s thirty-six hundred dollars for the three of them.”

  Ike nodded. “I just gotta tell you where to find ’em.”

  “And I’ll do the rest.”

  “You’ll do the rest,” Ike said. “And I get the reward.”

  “You get the reward.”

  Ike frowned. “Why don’t you want the reward?”

  “I’ll get the credit for bringing them in, and that’ll be better than money.”

  Ike frowned harder, suspicious again. “Better than money?”

  “Yes, because I’m running against Johnny Behan for sheriff next year. If I arrest Bill Leonard and Henry Head and Jim Crane, it’ll look real good to the voters. And Doc Holliday will be in the clear.”

  “Doc Holliday,” Ike said. “I don’t like him.”

  “I know, Ike, but I do. He’s a real good dentist. He’ll fix you up if you get a toothache.”

  “He talks too fast. No. He talks slow, but he says . . .”

  “Too many words,” Wyatt supplied, for he, too, found Doc wordy and confusing.

  Ike looked over his shoulder, getting nervous about one of the Cow Boys seeing him with an Earp.
“Thirty-six hunnert. For the three of them.”

  “It’s a lot of money,” Wyatt said. “You could use it to get away from your old man. Go back to California. Maybe open another café.”

  “I’m a good cook,” Ike said, confident about this. “I can open another café.”

  “And you can take your sisters with you, so your old man can’t hurt them anymore. You could make a new life, Ike. Start fresh. I had sisters, too,” Wyatt reminded him. “It’s important to take care of them when your old man is a mean sonofabitch.”

  Ike’s face darkened. “He is. He is a mean sonofabitch. I had to protect the kids.”

  “Me, too, Ike. That’s just how it was for me.”

  Ike circled around again. “What about Billy?”

  Ike had taken care of Billy, his younger brother, the way Wyatt took care of Morgan. “He can go with you to California if you want,” Wyatt said, “but I think he gets along with your old man.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, Billy gets along with the old man,” Ike agreed. “So I just gotta find out where Henry and Jim is.”

  “And Bill Leonard, too.”

  “Bill Leonard, too. I tell you. I get the reward. You get the votes. And I can take care of my sisters.”

  “And Doc Holliday gets clear. You got it now,” Wyatt told him. “Don’t tell anybody else, Ike. This has to be our secret.”

  “Our secret,” Ike said. “Don’t tell anybody else.”

  “I won’t either,” Wyatt promised.

  And he kept his word, but it wouldn’t matter in October. Not to Ike. Not to anybody.

  THE SEASON OF SPRING CAME ON

  WHEN TOMMY MCLAURY WENT INTO TOMBSTONE for supplies at the end of April, he didn’t go straight to the grocery store. Instead, he rolled past Calisher’s and pulled up just beyond First to see how Mrs. Earp’s garden was doing and to give her one of his hound pups.

  He was hoping Morgan Earp would be out of town and that Lou would be out front tending the garden so he could talk to her a while. But he had it planned out in his mind, in case Mr. Earp was there that afternoon. Maybe sitting out on the front porch reading a book. Or having a cup of coffee and a smoke.

  “Morning,” Tom would say. “I don’t know if you remember me, sir. I’m Tom McLaury.”

  Morgan might not have said anything then. He was the friendly Earp, the good-natured one, but he’d remember about the mules, so Tom planned to explain how Billy Clanton came by and why the McLaurys couldn’t return the animals to Lieutenant Hurst though they meant to. Then to get off the mules, Tom would say, “I am happy to see those flowers are doing well.” If Mr. Earp was surprised to learn that Tommy was the neighbor who’d brought them, Tom would say, “Yes, sir, I’m the one,” because his conscience was clear. He might have sinned in his heart—coveting another man’s wife—but he hadn’t done anything to get himself shot by a jealous husband, either. He’d say, “Mrs. Earp was trying to get lilacs to grow here, and I guessed they wouldn’t do well. So I brought her plants that like to bloom in this kind of country.”

  There might have been an uneasy silence then, but ice would surely break when the puppy began to whimper. Tommy would hop down and go around to drop the gate. “My hound bitch had a litter,” he’d say. “I was thinking—since you’re gone so much—maybe Mrs. Earp would like one. I thought she might get lonely or scared sometimes, being on her own like that. A dog can be a good companion.” Tommy would open the box in the wagon bed and hand over a fat, squirming pup. “There’s seven others, back at the farm,” he’d tell Mr. Earp. “My hounds are good dogs, but I can’t keep ’em all. I’d take it kindly if you and Mrs. Earp would take this one, sir.” Then they might talk about the puppy a bit, but in the end Tommy expected Mr. Earp would look him in the eye and say something like “This is neighborly of you, and the flowers were, too. But no more.” And Tom would take that with good grace.

  From the start, he had been troubled that Lou was not free to accept his love or the life he wanted to offer her. When he brought the flowers last month and helped her plant them, Lou herself told him not to bring her any more gifts. That was a sorrow to him, but he accepted it. Thing was, he really did have eight pups to dispose of, so he told himself that if Lou took one of them, she’d be doing him a favor and that would make them even for the flowers. And from then on, Tommy could touch his hat to her and Lou could smile at him in a nice neighborly way, just like her husband would have wanted.

  Except Morgan wasn’t home that morning. He was playing pool over at Bob Hatch’s Billiard Parlor when Tom McLaury brought that puppy into town.

  FOR A LONG TIME, Morgan Earp couldn’t understand the point of playing games. If he had time to pass, he preferred to read. He’d never paid any attention to billiards until he lived in Dodge and started watching Jacob Schaeffer play at Dog Kelly’s saloon. These days, Jake was the world champion of straight-rail billiards, but even three years ago, when Jake was just a skinny young bartender with plenty of time to practice, Morg knew he was something special. Watching Jake nurse balls was like watching Wyatt work a horse or listening to Doc Holliday play piano. You couldn’t hardly believe how good he was. That’s why Morg didn’t even think about learning the game in Dodge. Jake set a fence that was too high for a regular person to clear.

  When Bob Hatch opened a billiard parlor in Tombstone, Morgan still wasn’t interested. Then Doc Holliday told him about how Bob kept a bunch of live frogs in a jar on the bar and claimed he could tell the weather from them.

  “How in hell does he do that?” Morg wanted to know.

  “Well, I don’t imagine Arizona weather is all that difficult to predict,” Doc said. “Most of the year, your best bet is ‘more of the same.’ If it is August and you say, ‘It will be stinkin’ hot tomorrow,’ I calculate you’ll be correct a minimum of thirty times out of thirty-one.”

  But Morgan stayed curious about the frogs, so he stopped in at the pool hall to ask Bob Hatch about them. Bob came from Maine, and he was kind of hard to understand until you got used that choppy, sing-songy way he talked and how he skipped his r’s. When Morg asked about the frogs, Bob said, “These heah ah toads,” and “Down east, they sing louda when a stoam’s a comin’.” So Bob and Morgan got to talking about the difference between toads and frogs, and the differences between toads from Maine and toads from Arizona. During that discussion, Morg bought a beer. Bob offered to let him try his hand at billiards without charging him a table fee, and Morgan Earp’s fate was sealed.

  “There’s no such thing as a free sample,” Hattie Marcus would have told him, and she’d have been right, for once he got started, Morgan Earp could not get enough of playing billiards.

  He liked the crack of the ivory balls on a well-hit break, and their hushed roll across the felt. He liked the feel of the cue in his hand, the smell of tobacco and chalk. He liked the sound of the beer mugs clinking and Bob’s toads chirping. Soon, playing billiards for Morgan was like practicing piano for Doc. “It will yield to persistence,” Doc always muttered when he was having trouble with a new piece, and that was the way Morgan felt about all the little puzzles in billiards. You had to see the lay of the balls after the break and find a series of moves in them. You had to vary the cue speed and shape your shots so you’d be in position for the next hit or make your opponent scratch. It was a hard game to play well, and he understood now why Doc got so cranky if you talked while he was practicing. Morgan, too, liked the way everything around him sort of faded while he was at the table.

  Which is why he wasn’t aware that somebody on Allen Street was hollering for him until Bob Hatch called, “Moe-gan! Lady outside. Wants you!”

  Morg went to see what the trouble was, and there was Allie, fists on her hips, glaring at him from under that big slat-brim bonnet of hers.

  “I knew it was going to come to this,” she informed him, like he had any idea what she was talking about. “I told Virg, and he was supposed to say something, but nobody does anything around here except me! So now
I’m telling you to get home and look after your affairs, Morgan Earp.”

  With that, she stalked off, her little feet going about twice the speed of Morg’s and her mouth going faster than that.

  “Look at you! What kind of grown man spends all his time playing with sticks and balls? When are you going to stop drifting and do something with your life? That’s what she’s asking herself, Morgan! Either marry her or let her go!”

  It went on like that, down Allen Street and up First Street, with Morgan amused, then bemused, then confused, and sort of insulted. When they turned onto Fremont, Allie came to a sudden halt and waited for Morgan to see what she saw: Lou, standing in the front yard, surrounded by the flowers that “a neighbor” brought her.

  Holding something in her arms like it was a baby.

  Smiling at Tom McLaury.

  “Prettiest man I ever saw,” Allie declared, “and one to give you Earp boys a run for your money. He’s gonna be somebody someday. He’s already got two hundred acres under alfalfa! Well? Don’t just stand there gawping. Do something!”

  It was all body, what he felt. A punch in his chest like his heart made a fist. A great cold wave of emotion that was probably fear but which he named anger.

  “McLaury!” he bellowed. “Get the hell away from her!”

  Alarmed, Tommy touched his hat to Lou, climbed onto his buckboard, and slapped the reins on his team’s back. He was out of reach by the time Morgan came stomping up to the house, but if Morg expected Lou to be embarrassed or ashamed, he had another thing coming.

  “You had no call to shout at him like that,” she started, a fat spotted puppy squirming in her arms. “He was just being nice. I told you I wanted a dog, Morgan. You never did anything about it and Mr. McLaury did, and I am grateful!”

  “And you don’t think he wants something in return?”

  “And you think I’d give him something in return? Is that what you’re saying, Morgan Earp? You’re gone six days out of seven, doing I-don’t-know-what up in Benson and Tucson, and you have the nerve to ask me if I’d cheat on you? I’m here all by myself, and just last week, a drunk tried to get into the house—”