Epitaph Page 31

Close to seventy businesses had been wiped out. Some $300,000 worth of property had been destroyed in an afternoon. The Cosmopolitan and Grand Hotels. The town’s nicest saloons—the Oriental, the Crystal Palace, the Magnolia—were gone, along with the Arcade, of course, where the fire started. Two breweries. A dozen brothels and gambling halls. The Key West Cigar Shop. The ice cream parlor. The bowling alley. The Western Union office. The Tombstone Municipal Court. The Safford and Hudson Bank. The offices of mining executives, lawyers, architects, and engineers with all their records. Restaurants, stores. Gone. All gone.

  After the first night’s scavenging, there was nothing left to steal except the ground itself. Without landmarks and streets, property lines were once again in dispute and the infamous Tombstone Townsite Company launched a second attempt to seize downtown real estate. Jim Clark and Mike Gray distributed tents to hungover Cow Boys, paying them to sit on newly vacated lots in the cheerful hope that some of the legitimate owners had been killed during the fire. Having been elected largely on his promise to fight the Townsite Company’s fraudulent claims, Mayor Clum ordered Chief of Police Benjamin Sippy to clear the lot-jumpers out.

  Chief Sippy gave it a try, but the Cow Boys were on him like starlings mobbing a crow. After ten days, he decided that somebody in his family had just gotten terribly, terribly ill and that he himself required “a leave of absence” so he could rush to his unfortunate relative’s bedside.

  Starting immediately.

  City Council met in emergency session as armed property owners confronted armed squatters amid the ruins. The first order of business was to organize a volunteer fire department. (Its grim motto: “Better late than never.”) Second on the agenda: naming a replacement for Ben Sippy, who was unlikely to be seen again.

  The motion to appoint Virgil Earp as Tombstone’s new chief of police carried without a dissenting vote.

  Mayor Clum had just administered the oath to Virgil when a Western Union rider burst into the meeting with news that he’d been unable to convey via telegram because the Tombstone wires were down.

  “The president’s been shot!” he cried. “Some crazy sonofabitch walked right up to him and put a bullet in his back!”

  Anarchy had arrived.

  HERE WE WILL STAND OUR GROUND!

  MAYOR CLUM WAS THE FIRST TO SPEAK. “DEPUTIZE as many men as you need,” he told Virgil Earp. “Get squatters off the land and guns off the streets. We’ll back whatever you do.”

  Virgil left the meeting and went to find his brothers. They rounded up twenty-five other men, many of them Union veterans Virg knew he could rely on. Deploying his deputies on the edge of what had been Tombstone’s business district, he strode alone to the center of the ruins and announced in a booming, resonant voice, “I am Police Chief Virgil Earp. I intend to enforce all city ordinances and to maintain order. Town lots remain the property of those who held title to them before the fire. All disputes regarding titles will be adjudicated in the courts. Lot jumpers squatting on the property of others are ordered to vacate now.”

  There was laughter and mockery in response, and a taunt from one self-confident drunk: “Well, come on ’n’ git us then, why doncha?”

  This was an error in judgment.

  On Virgil’s word, twenty-seven armed and sober men on horseback swept through the tent camp, jerking canvas shelters up and away, throwing lassos, dragging squatters to the city limits, and driving them out of town.

  Done, in half an hour.

  IN THE FOLLOWING WEEKS, Chief Earp’s men patrolled Tombstone day and night, in fourteen teams of two. Walking slowly and deliberately through town, each officer cradled a shotgun or Winchester in his arms. With the police highly visible and quickly responsive to any threat, order was restored. Businesses reopened in temporary quarters while crews of Chinese laborers swiftly cleared the wreckage.

  Western Union reestablished a wire; it was taken as a good omen that the first telegram received in Tombstone after the fire was an announcement that President Garfield would likely recover from his gunshot wound. Tombstone would recover, too, everyone vowed. It was going to rise from its ashes, bigger and better than ever, just like Chicago had. City Council entered into negotiations with a new telephone company to provide service throughout the town. Another water company announced plans to lay pipe from the mountains. (“This time for sure!” everyone said sarcastically.) Even news that the lower levels of several silver mines were flooding was greeted with cheer. The water was not potable, but it could be pumped out and sprayed on the dirt streets to keep the summer dust down or made available to firefighters in emergencies.

  With construction sites under the watchful eyes of Virgil Earp’s police force, pilfering was minimal. The summer heat continued unabated and tempers could still flare, but brawls, knife fights, and shootings were stopped before they started, the potential combatants knocked cold before they had a chance to come to blows. No one was above the law. Mayor Clum himself was arrested and fined for riding his horse through town at too great a speed.

  New buildings went up with astonishing dispatch, but it was not merely a town that was built that summer—it was a genuine community. Twenty thousand individuals had traveled to Tombstone for reasons of their own; after the fire, a sense of common purpose united miners and merchants, wheelwrights and prostitutes, bartenders and ministers.

  Tombstone felt itself joined to the rest of the country as well, for President Garfield’s condition became a national obsession as the summer of 1881 passed. Each morning began with a breathless wait for the daily bulletin telegraphed to the nation by the president’s doctors. If the news was encouraging, the mood was buoyant. Any setback—another bout of fever, another agonizing failure to dig the bullet out of his back—was met by murmurs of anxiety and concern.

  If Tombstone’s Republicans felt as though a beloved brother or father or son was fighting for his life after a shocking and unprovoked attack by a madman, others in Cochise County snickered at the long faces of those whose darling president had been shot and wished aloud that ole Charlie Guiteau had done a more thorough job of shooting that Yankee sonofabitch. They muttered complaints as well about the Earps, who were using their badges as an excuse to beat up anybody they didn’t like. And though signs of hostility were confined to sullen looks and muttered backtalk when the Cow Boys visited town, there was lurid speculation about what might happen to those Yankee law-dogs should they dare to ride out of Tombstone.

  Mayor Clum and the Tombstone City Council did not mind at all that rowdy visitors found Virgil Earp’s enforcement of every ordinance oppressive and excessive. If those visitors came into town for supplies and a good time but left the next day with crushing headaches and ringing ears and fogged minds . . . well, that was just too bad.

  “We’re all in this together,” Tombstone’s citizens told one another that long, hot summer. “Cow Boys be damned! It’s us against them,” everyone said.

  The shining silver city on the hill against barbarians at the gate.

  WHICH WAS PRECISELY not how Johnny Behan had wanted things to go.

  He was out of town the week of the fire, down in Bisbee again, meeting copper-mine executives and financiers. They were Republicans to a man, but he had stressed his effectiveness at working across party lines when he was sheriff of Yavapai County, and he made a strong case for himself as a man who understood the concerns of those in the mining industry as well as the issues confronting cattlemen and farmers in southeastern Arizona.

  “If Republicans and Democrats work together, Cochise County can be the engine of prosperity for the whole nation,” he told them. “The war’s been over for years, gentlemen. Let’s stop fighting each other and pull together!”

  News of the fire did not arrive until three days after the blaze, when the Tombstone telegraph wires were restrung. Johnny rode for home as soon as he heard. All along the way, he was met by outraged constituents who claimed the Earps had taken over the city. Walking around like they owned th
e place. Stopping men on the public streets, demanding that they hand over weapons. Coldcocking anyone who argued. Arresting people for shit like cursing, for crissakes! Prissy goddam sonsabitches . . .

  When he got back to town, Johnny went straight to Virgil and conveyed Democrat sentiment to Tombstone’s new chief of police, one lawman to another.

  “I answer to the mayor and City Council, not to the voters,” Virgil told him. “The charter calls for me to prevent disorder, not to deal with brawls and shootings after they happen—”

  “Virg, I understand that, but Democrats are citizens, too, and—”

  “Hell, Johnny! I’m not checking voter registration cards! If Democrats don’t want trouble with me, tell ’em not to break the goddam law.”

  “But there are all these new ordinances,” Johnny started to point out.

  “Yes, and they’re posted all over town.”

  “Virg, half the men in Cochise County can’t read. You of all people oughta know—”

  Virgil’s mood shifted from annoyed to hostile. “Oughta know what?”

  “I’m just saying that even someone like Wyatt would have trouble reading those signs, and—”

  “You leave my brother out of this,” Virg snapped. “Anyways, this is a city matter, Sheriff, not county.” So it’s none of your goddam business, he meant.

  And that, Johnny discovered, was the consensus throughout the city. Nobody would give him the time of day. For months, he’d been urging the formation of a volunteer firefighting brigade, presenting it as a bipartisan organization that could get men from both sides of the political divide working together for the good of the community. The June 22 fire was a dramatic demonstration of the wisdom of his plan, but when he brought up the matter with City Council—just as a citizen of Tombstone, mind you, not as a politician running for anything—there were indulgent chuckles around the room. “You’re right, Johnny, but you’re a little late,” he was told. “We took care of that when you were down in Bisbee.”

  Worse yet, Wyatt Earp had actually run into a burning building—twice—to rescue a woman who was trapped inside, and in recognition of his bravery, he had been elected recording secretary of the Tombstone Volunteer Fire Brigade. “I’m real pleased to hear it,” Johnny said, but he was thinking, Secretary! Christ, that’s a laugh! Wyatt had a good memory, but Johnny would’ve laid dollars to dimes that Wyatt was telling his younger brother what happened at the meetings so Morgan could write up the minutes for him.

  The final slap in the face came when Cochise County’s district attorney reported to the federal district court that the felony case against John Henry Holliday was without “the slightest evidence to show the guilt of the defendant.” Judge Wells Spicer promptly dismissed the charges. It took three hookers and a quart of whiskey to get through that night, but when the hangover receded, John Harris Behan was prepared to face the facts.

  Doc Holliday was a free man, his bail money released. As far as anybody knew, he’d left town already—thus depriving Johnny of the brush he’d hoped to tar his rival with. Wyatt Earp was a town hero: a brave firefighter, a fearless lawman, with clear title to his property and a real shot at taking the sheriff’s office in the county’s first election. That crazy little weasel Charles Guiteau and a local fire had dragged Cochise County straight right back to 1865. Sixteen years after Appomattox, it was “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” against “Dixie” all over again.

  A bipartisan coalition was no longer realistic.

  So. Wyatt Earp would have Republicans, Tombstone, and Millville. Johnny Behan could count on Democrats, Sulphur Springs Valley, and towns like Charleston and Galeyville. Thanks to Holliday’s drunken girlfriend, rumors were still going around that the Earps had been in on the stagecoach robbery back in March, which might give Watervale and Benson to Johnny as well.

  And thinking of girlfriends . . .

  While there was no doubt in Johnny Behan’s mind that Wyatt was screwing Josie Marcus, it came to him that it might be useful if Mattie Blaylock got caught turning a trick. That would be easy enough to arrange, and then Harry Woods could suggest in the Nugget that Wyatt was a pimp. Better yet, they could catch Mattie during a raid on Ah-Sing’s opium den one night! That would put a dent in Wyatt Earp’s shining armor. His brother had a tavern that catered to Chinks, too. Maybe Harry could convince people that the Earps were pro-Chinese . . .

  I can do it, Johnny thought. I can still pull it off.

  In the meantime, the Earp brothers themselves couldn’t have been more helpful, for each time one of them took a man’s gun away, or knocked some poor sonofabitch cold for disorderly conduct, or imposed a fine for vulgar language, they made an enemy of that man and all his friends. And every enemy of the Earps was another angry voter who’d support John Harris Behan for sheriff, come November 1882.

  “CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?” Virg asked, holding up the Epitaph at breakfast a few weeks later. “Behan just hired Frank Stilwell as a deputy!”

  “He hired Curly Bill Brocius to work with Billy Breakenridge, too,” Morg said. “Tax collection!”

  “Pushing up county revenue,” Wyatt said, “and Behan’s take.”

  “Yeah, I guess a man could say no pretty easy to a short fella with specs on,” Morg said, “but with Curly Bill smiling behind Billy B.? You’d pay pretty quick.”

  Higgs’s tail thumped against a table leg. Morg tore off a little piece of toast and slipped it to him.

  “Morgan,” Lou said, “you’re teaching him to beg! More coffee, anyone?”

  Wyatt held up his cup, and she refilled it. The others shook their heads.

  “Stilwell’s a killer,” Virg said flatly. “Who’s Behan gonna hire next? Johnny Ringo? Old Man Clanton? That mouthy little bastard Willie Claiborne?”

  Tired of shop talk, Lou asked, “Has anyone seen Doc lately?”

  There were blank looks around the table.

  “Been a while,” Morg admitted. “We’ve been kinda busy, honey.”

  They’d made well over a hundred arrests in the month after the fire, but things had settled down now that everybody understood Tombstone tolerated no nonsense. Virgil was going to tell City Council it was safe to lay off most of the men he’d deputized in June. In the event of trouble, the chief would call upon his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, with the Vigilance Committee available as reinforcement. He was keeping just two officers on the payroll: James Flynn and A. G. Bronk, both tough, reliable men who took no sass.

  Which meant it was time for Morgan to go see John Meagher about getting his job back. “I’m going over to the Alhambra today anyway,” he told Lou. “I expect I’ll see Doc there.”

  “Well, tell him I miss him,” Lou said, “and invite him for supper.”

  “DOC GAVE NOTICE JUST AFTER THE FIRE,” John Meagher told Morgan. “We got the bail money back after Spicer dismissed the charges, and Doc said something about taking a rest cure. Haven’t seen him since. He didn’t look good, Morg. I figured he went back to that sanatorium.”

  Morgan frowned. “Seems like Doc woulda told me before he left town.”

  “Yeah. Well, anyways,” Meagher said, “with him gone, we’re short a dealer, so if your brother’s still willing to bank your game, I’ll give you a table.”

  Still thinking about Doc, Morg hesitated for a moment before he snapped to. “Thanks, John. I’ll start tonight.”

  He meant to go home and tell Lou that, but decided to stop by Molly Fly’s first, to see if she knew where Doc went.

  “Thank the Lord!” Molly Fly cried. “Oh, Mr. Earp, I’ve been so worried about him!” Leading the way up the stairs, she filled Morgan in on the past month, her voice dropping as they got closer to Doc’s room. “He won’t let Dr. Goodfellow come and see him anymore. There’s bleeding deep in one of his lungs, but he says there’s nothing to do about it but rest. At first, he’d take a little soup or something, but now he doesn’t touch the trays I bring up. He just sleeps. And he’s so thin! Why, you can hardly see him
under the sheet!”

  Quietly, she opened the door and stood aside as Morgan went in.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Oh, Doc . . .”

  Eyes sunk in his skull. Ribs barreled from the constant labor of hauling in air. The whole body—just bony hills and fleshless valleys.

  “Mrs. Fly, why didn’t you tell us he was this bad?”

  “I wanted to, but he made me promise I wouldn’t!”

  Morgan picked up a bottle of laudanum. “Do you know how much of this he takes at a time?” The landlady shook her head, but judging by the number of empties in a wastebasket, the answer was obvious: too much. Not a rest cure, Morgan thought. Eternal rest.

  “Get Louisa,” he told the landlady. “Tell her to find my brothers. We’ll take him home to my house.”

  When Mrs. Fly had hurried off, Morgan sat on the side of the bed and gripped Doc’s shoulders. “Doc, wake up! C’mon, you gotta get on your feet. Sit up! C’mon, Doc. You gotta get up and walk.”

  “Please,” Doc whispered. “Please. Just . . . let me go.”

  GEORGE GOODFELLOW WAS A DECENTLY TRAINED PHYSICIAN, but he’d had little experience treating tuberculosis. “John, I know you don’t want to hear this,” he’d said, “but you really ought to consider permanent retirement to a sanatorium.”

  “Why? So I can die of boredom instead?”

  “Be serious,” George snapped. “Your life is at stake, dammit.”

  What young Dr. Goodfellow could not have known was that John Henry Holliday was all but broke. Lawyer’s fees had nearly cleaned him out in May. There would be no more help from home. When Kate’s allegations were reprinted in Atlanta’s papers, his family had given up on him. The only one who still answered his letters was Sister Mary Melanie, and nuns had very little in the way of ready cash.

  He hadn’t worked since the fire, when—in the literal heat of the moment—he had risked his life amid soot and ash and smoke, hoping to save the piano in the Cosmopolitan Hotel. That, at least, should have been obvious to George, and there was an edge in Doc’s voice when he pointed out that “sanatoria—like physicians—want payment for their services, however useless they might be.”