Epitaph Read online

  “Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth,” Ike said, beginning to squirm.

  “If you’re tired of being hit, you have to hit back, Ike.”

  “Hit back.”

  “You want respect, Ike? You have to take it. You have to fight for it.”

  “Fight for it.”

  “Pull a gun, Ike. You pull a gun, you’re on top. Pull a gun and you’ll get some respect—just like that!” Ringo would say, snapping his fingers.

  Ike rubbed his face with both hands. He hadn’t shaved in a long time. His beard was getting as bushy as the old man’s was.

  “One of ours gets killed, we have to kill a few of theirs,” Ringo told him. “That’s how you get respect, Ike. You gotta make ’em pay.”

  Don’t talk back, Ike thought.

  “Make ’em pay,” he said.

  THEN THERE WAS THE NIGHT when Ike and Billy were up late, drinking and talking about the old man.

  “You recollect that time he told you to get up on the roof, Ike?”

  “Jump!” Ike yelled in the old man’s voice.

  Billy giggled, just like when he was five and saw it happen. “Yeah, he kept telling you, ‘Jump! I’ll catch you!’”

  “I’ll catch you!” Ike remembered.

  “So you jumped, and then bang! He just stepped back and watched you hit the ground.”

  “Don’t! Trust! Nobody!” Ike roared, making his voice as fierce as the old man’s was.

  “You learnt yer lesson yet, boy?” Billy roared, the same way. Then he made his voice humble, like Ike’s was that day, even though Ike was twenty-four when it happened and should have been a man. “‘Yes, sir!’ you said. ‘Yes, sir, I learnt my lesson!’”

  Don’t trust nobody.

  THE OLD MAN WAS DEAD. The dread wasn’t. The dread was still there. A deep hole waiting—wanting, needing—to be filled.

  Ike began to go over the deal with Wyatt in his mind. Ringo couldn’t help him think about this. Ringo was being friendly now, but he could be a mean sonofabitch, too. Even Curly Bill was scared of Ringo sometimes.

  You can go to California, Wyatt said. You can open another café. Just tell me where Henry Head and Jim Crane and Bill Leonard are. You get the reward, I get the votes, and Holliday gets clear.

  Then one night, the hole filled up. They’re all in on it.

  Wyatt Earp must’ve told Doc Holliday. What if Holliday brags on that? And what if Ringo finds out I was gonna sell Henry and Jim and Bill to Wyatt Earp?

  He’ll kill me, Ike thought. Ringo will kill me, just like he did the Hazlett boys.

  RESPITE IN WAR IS ALL TOO BRIEF

  IT DEFIES LOGIC. IT INSULTS COMMON SENSE,” DOC ADMITTED when he told Josie Marcus his plans. “Kate is selfish and mercenary and impossible to live with, but when she’s gone? I miss her like I miss breath. Madness, I suppose. Or plain stupidity.”

  “You love her,” Josie said firmly. “Love isn’t stupid.”

  Eyes narrow, he glanced sideways at the girl, marveling at the lack of cynicism. “That, sugar, is an eminently debatable assertion, but . . . Well, I calculate Kate and I are even now. This will be a fresh start.”

  They were going to meet halfway. In Tucson. In mid-October, when the weather was good. They would spend some time alone in a town where no well-meaning friends could question the wisdom of this reconciliation. They would see if they could work things out.

  Doc wired ahead to reserve a modest but clean room on the outskirts. I’m not a spendthrift, he meant. Unaware of this, Kate got to town early and booked the best room in the best hotel. I’m not a miser, she meant. I love you, and I wanted to please you. That’s what they really meant, though neither could say it aloud.

  Instead of arguing, they split the difference: a nice room in a decent hotel just off the central plaza. They were careful with each other at first, but care soon turned to tenderness, and tenderness to that deep satisfaction in each other’s company, which they always remembered more clearly than the anger and the fights. In that state of grace, they began to discuss what was left of Doc’s future. We don’t have much time, they agreed. Let’s make the most of it.

  They had no real ties to Arizona, and the territory grew more dangerous by the week. Five Cow Boys had been killed recently. That left at least thirty-five others to raise hell with impunity. Outlaws from Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and California were joining them, for Cochise County was considered the last, best place in the country for men who would not be governed. The Chiricahua Apaches were making trouble again, as well. Why stay in this hellhole? That was what they asked themselves in the quiet of their Tucson bed. Arizona was ferociously hot in the summer, numbingly cold in the winter, and plug-ugly most of the year. All Doc had to show for eighteen months in its climate was another fist-sized hollow deep inside his right lung. Kate was ready for a change as well. Why not just pack up and go?

  They settled on the Rockies, for there was reliable research coming out of Switzerland: Whatever caused tuberculosis, the disease seemed to need high concentrations of oxygen to do its worst. Sanatoria in the Swiss mountains were having considerable success with advanced cases of the disease; the higher the altitude, the more efficacious the treatment.

  Why pay doctors, Kate asked, if simply spending time in thin air could cure you? She could open another boardinghouse—in Denver, maybe. Doc could do a little gambling, and Kate would look after him. They would live frugally and wait the disease out while the mountains did their work.

  THAT WAS THEIR PLAN, four days before the gunfight.

  If anyone had asked, “What about Ike Clanton?” Doc would have answered with a question of his own: “You mean the idiot who told that revoltin’ joke about oysters? What about him?”

  IKE WAS PANICKING, IS WHAT.

  “Ringo knows,” he insisted, pleading with Wyatt to understand how scared he was. “He looks at me funny! He knows all about it.”

  “Keep your voice down!” Wyatt said, his own voice low, for if there was so much as a rumor of him being involved with Ike Clanton, any edge he had over Johnny Behan in the sheriff’s election next year would blow away. “Ike,” he said, trying to stay patient, “did you tell Ringo?”

  Ike shook his head, eyes wide.

  “Well, then, he can’t know. You and me are the only ones who know. But if you keep talking about it like this, the whole town’ll know!”

  “The whole town’ll know,” Ike repeated, close to tears. “The whole town’ll know! And Ringo will kill me!”

  Exasperated, Wyatt gripped the man by the arm and steered him deeper into the alley. “Ike, nobody knows. It’s over. All three of the men who attacked that stage are dead now. The deal is off! You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”

  “No!”

  “And neither did I,” Wyatt told him. “So nobody else knows!”

  “But you told Holliday he was in the clear!”

  “No! I didn’t, Ike! Holliday don’t know.”

  “Holliday will tell Ringo and Ringo will kill me!”

  It went on like that—round and round and round—until Wyatt was ready to kill Ike himself. “Holliday don’t know, and I’ll prove it to you,” he said finally. “Go home. Stay out of Tombstone and stay quiet. I can fix this, Ike. Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry” was what Ike said, but what he thought was this: Don’t trust nobody.

  “YOU KNOW WHERE DOC IS?” Wyatt asked Morgan that night, over at the Alhambra. “John Meagher says he took a couple of weeks off.”

  “Yeah, I was afraid he was sick again, but Molly Fly said he looked fine and he was going to Tucson to visit a friend for a while.”

  “Well, go on up there and find him, will you?”

  “In Tucson?”

  “Quick as you can,” Wyatt said. “I need him here, Morg. It’s important.”

  “NO,” KATE MOANED. “No. No. No. No. No.”

  She didn’t sound alarmed, only annoyed, so Doc kept his eyes on the table until the cards played out half a mi
nute later. “What is it, darlin’?” he asked then, but when he looked up, he knew what had upset her. Morgan Earp was standing in the doorway of the gambling hall, searching faces.

  Doc raised a hand. Morgan came straight over.

  “Wyatt needs you,” he said.

  “Did that other molar finally crack in half? Morgan, I warned him—”

  “No, it’s something else. He wouldn’t tell me what’s going on, but he needs you back in Tombstone right away.”

  “No!” Kate cried. “No, no, no, no, no!”

  “DOC, WHY?” she demanded, back in their room. “Wyatt Earp crooks his finger, you don’t even know what he wants, and you go running! Why?”

  “Because Morgan asked me to.”

  “And I’m asking you not to!”

  Doc opened the wardrobe and pulled out his valise. “I don’t believe this will take long, darlin’. While I’m in Tombstone, I’ll close out my affairs. When I get back to Tucson, we’ll go on up to Globe and do the same for you. Then, I promise, we shall stamp the dust of Arizona from our feet.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  Deliberately misunderstanding, Doc turned, a shirt in hand. “Of course, you will! Colorado’s as much your decision as mine—”

  “No. I’m going with you to Tombstone.”

  “Morgan and I will be takin’ a freight train to Benson, darlin’.”

  “If you can take a freight, I can take a freight.”

  “And it’s a bad road from Benson to Tombstone—”

  “If you can do it, I can do it.”

  He’d learned this much: When Kate made up her mind, he might as well quit arguing. “Suit yourself,” he said.

  NO TIME FOR SPEECHES NOW. ’TIS TIME TO FIGHT!

  THEY WERE ALL TIRED. THAT WAS PART OF IT.

  The McLaury brothers got up long before dawn on the day of the gunfight. Their youngest sister was getting married, and Tommy needed to clear up some business in Tombstone before he and Frank left for Fort Worth. That’s where their brother Will lived with his three little kids. The six of them were going to take the train north to Iowa so they could all be there for Sarah Caroline’s wedding.

  Virgil Earp was still recovering from a punishing but fruitless effort to track down three men who’d broken out of jail a few days earlier. His posse had covered nearly 100 miles when a sudden torrential rainstorm left them with no trail to follow. On October 25, they returned to Tombstone, frustrated and beat.

  Before leaving on that goose chase, Virg had deputized Wyatt as a town policeman so that Officers Flynn and Bronk had backup during the chief’s absence. A few hours after he went to bed, Wyatt was called out when a brawl erupted between the day-shift miners of the Goodenough and the Tough Nut. Near as anybody could make out, a disputed call in the eighth inning of a baseball game played the previous Sunday had inspired a lingering sense of injustice that flared up in the middle of the night.

  Morgan and Doc were weary as well, having just completed the rushed trip from Tucson at Wyatt’s request. Doc got Kate settled in at Molly Fly’s a little after midnight on October 26, but he and Morg decided they’d best find out what Wyatt was so nerved up about. Morgan went looking for Wyatt, and Doc went over to the Alhambra to wait for them.

  Always randy, Little Willie Claiborne and his best friend Billy Clanton had ridden into Tombstone for some fun. They spent the final hours of Billy’s life drinking, gambling, and whoring. Which he might not have regretted, even if he’d known what was going to happen.

  And Ike? Ike was hitting the bars and drinking to drown the dread. He was scared again, and muttering to himself, and went looking for Wyatt, hoping for reassurance. Instead, he found Doc Holliday.

  WHO WAS, BY THEN, sitting in the Alhambra’s restaurant, letting his split pea soup cool while he waited for Wyatt to show up and explain the abrupt summons to Tombstone. Doc had, in fact, just begun to eat when a shadow fell over his table and a man who looked vaguely familiar said, “If you told him, I’ll kill you before he gets me.”

  Blinking, Doc put his spoon down to free his hand. “Pardon?”

  “If you told him, I’ll kill you!”

  Still trying to place the man, Doc frowned for a moment and then sighed. Elephant boogers, he thought, recognizing Ike Clanton, who stank of horse and sweat and liquor and fear.

  Feeling very tired, Doc asked, “Told what to whom?”

  “You know who, and you know what!”

  “I assure you, sir, that I do not.”

  “Don’t you ‘sir’ me! Don’t you try to get around me! I know what you told him, and I’ll by-god kill you for it! You hear me, Holliday?”

  “People in El Paso can hear you,” Doc said, beginning to lose patience, “but I suspect they don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, any more’n I do. Why not shout it at them, so we’ll all know?”

  It was about then that John Meagher sent a busboy to find an Earp or two, for while Doc Holliday was skinny and sickly, he did not take much crap. Ike could get on anyone’s nerves, and now he was yelling about how Doc had killed somebody. Though the rest of the diners seemed entertained by the farce, Meagher knew it was only a matter of time before dishes or a window got broken, so he went over to Doc’s table to see if he could settle things down on his own.

  “Anything wrong?” he asked Holliday.

  Halfway between bewilderment and annoyance, Doc began, “Mr. Clanton here seems to have some notion about me—”

  “I got a notion!” Ike echoed. “Damn right I got a notion!”

  “—but I cannot seem to make this impenetrable block of drunken Arizona imbecility understand that I have no idea what he is shoutin’ about.”

  “Ike,” Meagher said, “if you’re not going to play cards or get something to eat, move on.”

  But Ike wasn’t having that. “I know my rights!” he declared, with Frank McLaury in his head. “It’s a free country! I’ll go where I please!” And then it was Ringo inside him, making him yell, “Gimping around, bragging about it. Eye for eye! Tooth for tooth!” And then the old man took over and Ike sneered, “Our secret. Hah! Our secret. You can’t fool me. I don’t trust nobody! I never woulda turned on them boys if Wyatt hadn’t made me that deal. And you!” Ike cried in summation, pointing at Doc. “You are a killer and a goddam liar!”

  “Oh, Jesus,” John Meagher sighed, for while Doc would not have disputed the first assertion, he took violent exception to the second and would have caned Ike to the floor if John hadn’t got between the two men, pushing Ike backward, meaning to dump him outside on the boardwalk.

  “Take your hands off me!” Ike was hollering. “I know my rights! Take your goddam hands off me! I’ll get you, Holliday!” he yelled over Meagher’s shoulder. “I’ll get you before he gets me!”

  Which is where things stood when Virgil Earp arrived and coldcocked Ike without so much as a howdy-do.

  A sudden silence fell. Fascinated diners around the room sat back to take in whatever happened next.

  “Goddammit, Doc,” Virg cried, “what in hell was that about?”

  Wide-eyed, Doc looked up from Ike’s inert body. “Virgil, it beats me hollow. I have only been in town for half an hour—”

  “And you’re in trouble already?”

  “I swear, Virgil! I was just eatin’ my supper when that tragic example of nature’s cruelty started accusin’ me of tellin’ somebody something, and I have not the slightest idea what he meant by any of it! I only came back to Tombstone because Wyatt said he needed me, and Morgan— Wait! There they are! Wyatt, what in hell is goin’ on?”

  Before either Wyatt or Morgan could say anything, Virg held up his hands for silence and then pressed his fingers against tired eyes. “Morg, take this idiot to the jail,” he said, nodding at Ike, who was beginning to come around. “No charges. Just let him sleep it off there. Wyatt, do you know what this is about?”

  “Yeah,” Wyatt said. “Go to bed, Virg. I’ll take care of this.”

 
NOBODY IN THE RESTAURANT was near enough to hear what was being said at the table in the far back corner. What they could see was Wyatt Earp leaning over his elbows, making his case with sober earnestness as Doc Holliday’s face registered first confusion, then disbelief, and finally what appeared to be a retreat into prayer, for it was then that John Henry Holliday put his head in his hands.

  “‘Laughter of children. Discretion of slaves. Austerity of virgins,’ he chanted softly. ‘It begins in loutishness and ends among angels of flame and ice . . . ’” He fell silent, rubbing his forehead rhythmically with fingers that were still so powerful with a pianist’s musculature he could have closed them around Wyatt Earp’s throat and crushed the man’s windpipe flat. “I have despaired of many things,” he told Wyatt. “Health. Home. Honor. Myself. There remains just one thing I rely on, one thing I can put my faith in. Human folly never disappoints.”

  “Doc, I know you’re mad, but try to understand! I thought if I could bring in Leonard and Head and Crane, I could clear you. I was trying to protect you—”

  “From what? There was nothin’ but Kate’s drunken petulance linkin’ me to that stagecoach attack. The charges were dismissed for an utter lack of evidence. I am no more a suspect than Molly Fly!”

  “But, see, when I made the deal, you were still—”

  “A grown man, damn you! Compos mentis, and someone who should have been consulted, at least, before bein’ dragged into the middle of whatever ill-conceived scheme you’ve cooked up with an ignorant, drunken, cracker cattle thief who is—and I will try to be perfectly fair to Mr. Clanton—a contemptible traitor to his own kind. Now that wretch is mortally afraid that I will expose his eagerness to sell his friends out, and that they will kill him for it. As well they might! Which places me directly between Ike Clanton and whatever peace his dim, blinkered, unlettered mind can yearn for! And you—” He stopped, trying and failing to control the cough. Pale when the fit was over, he continued: “And you expect thanks?”

  “Well, not thanks, but something, I guess,” Wyatt admitted. “I didn’t think—”