Epitaph Read online

  When did it happen? he wondered. When did I give up?

  It must have been sometime after he left the sanatorium.

  He had done well with rest and decent meals, but the doctors said he needed a year or more of care, not just a few months, and he was running out of cash. “We’ll buy our own place with the money we got left,” Kate decided. She would run the business; he would preside over the tables. They’d build a saloon up and sell it off at a profit. Then Doc could stay in the sanatorium until he had this damned disease beaten.

  That was the plan until Mike Gordon all but demanded to be shot down in the street like a rabid dog.

  It was justifiable homicide. He did not regret doing what he had to, but . . . afterward, simply walking in the front door of the saloon was unnerving.

  Kate couldn’t understand what was wrong. She would argue with him—coax and cajole and rail at him—but he found it increasingly difficult to concentrate and started losing money at the tables. One morning, he went to a lawyer, signed the property over to Kate and got on a train without saying good-bye.

  He had drifted ever since. Just waiting to die, really. But now . . .

  A piano. A library. Morgan and his brothers to keep the wolves at bay. Why not deal faro in Tombstone for a while? Build up a stake. A few big poker games and he’d have enough to spend a year at the sanatorium. Longer, if he had to.

  Hope, long missing from his life, came rushing back. The silence around him shattered, and he stopped a passing stranger to ask, “I wonder if you can tell me where I might find the Oriental Saloon?”

  “Two blocks down,” the stranger said, “at the corner of Allen and Fifth.”

  JOHN HENRY HOLLIDAY would have no recollection of his first step on the twisted road that led him—and the Earps and the Clantons and the McLaurys—to a vacant lot behind a photography studio near the O.K. Corral, thirteen months later.

  He would remember asking for directions to the Oriental. He would recall that he expected to be welcome in a saloon where Wyatt Earp owned 25 percent of the gambling concession. Everything else would remain fragmentary and muddled, apart from a single clear and terrifying memory: regaining consciousness in a room he did not recognize, one eye blinded by blood.

  He would not remember shooting two men, nor did he have the slightest idea why he might have done such a thing, though Fred White tried to explain it several times. Later, he found a receipt in his wallet: He’d paid a $20 fine for disturbing the peace and $11.25 in court costs, but he did not know if his plea was innocent or guilty.

  He would not remember making arrangements to have his belongings shipped from Tucson to Morgan’s house, where he stayed while he recovered, and could only hope that he gave the delivery boy a decent tip when the trunk arrived.

  Slowly, the annihilating headache would recede. Gradually, the mental fog would lift. But by then, it would be far too late to change what was going to happen on October 26, 1881.

  CATTLE CAN BE HAD FOR THE RAIDING

  IN FRANK MCLAURY’S OBSERVATION, MODIFYING A brand on livestock benefited from a certain amount of artistry. A lot of people didn’t understand that. They thought it was simple to turn U.S. into D.8. Connect the ends of the S and you’ve got your 8. Square off the left-hand bottom of the U, close off its top, and you’re done. But Frank wasn’t the kind of man who settled for good enough. An altered brand looked more convincing if he added a little extra curving bit at the top and bottom of the D’s straight line. It wasn’t easy either, not when the artist’s canvas was an unhappy mule who preferred to be elsewhere. Frank had only finished with the third animal when his younger brother Tommy started to pace.

  “C’mon, Frank. Doesn’t have to be perfect!”

  “Don’t rush me. Go make supper, willya?”

  “This’s a federal crime. Billy’s gonna bring the army down on us.”

  Frank shoved the iron back into the fire. “The army can’t come on private property, and they can’t arrest anyone without an act of Congress. That’s Posse Comitatus.”

  Tommy knew Frank was right, too. They’d both read law for a year, and their oldest brother, William, had stuck with it. Will had a practice in Fort Worth and gave them advice whenever Frank asked questions. For a friend, Frank always wrote.

  “Soldiers can’t make an arrest,” Tommy allowed, “but they can shoot people. Billy Clanton’s gonna get us killed.”

  “Tommy,” Frank reminded his brother patiently, “down here, people can get killed just for wearing a new shirt.”

  Tommy knew that was true, too. A few days ago, they’d heard how a man by the name of Waters went into a bar wearing a new shirt his sister had sent him. The shirt had blue and black checks, the likes of which nobody’d ever seen before. Any sort of novelty was liable to get noticed, and everyone in the bar started ribbing Waters about his fancy shirt. Waters got mad, and then he got drunk, and then he swore he’d beat the hell out of the next sonofabitch who said anything about his damn shirt. Which he did. The matter seemed settled until the fella he beat up came back with a gun and shot Waters four times. Killed him stone-cold dead. Spoiled the shirt for further use, as well.

  In a world like that, why worry? That’s how Frank saw it. You could never think up all the ways a bullet might find you. No point trying.

  He finished the lower serif and let the mule go. “Anyways, we’re no worse than anybody else in this valley.”

  “No better either,” Tom muttered before he trudged off to the house.

  FOLKS HAD A HARD TIME telling the McLaury brothers apart, but they had their differences if you paid attention. They were both good-looking, blue-eyed brunets, but Frank had six years on Tommy, who’d just turned twenty-seven. When Frank took his hat off, you could see that his hair was beginning to go. And Tom McLaury wasn’t just good-looking. Tommy was so pretty, he attracted more attention than he liked, from women and men. It embarrassed him and always had, ever since he was a little kid.

  Both brothers were slender and short, but Frank held his head high to put every inch on display. Tommy did what he could to avoid notice, keeping his eyes on the ground and sort of hunching over as he hurried along, especially when they went into town. Of the two, Frank had more ambition. He wanted to build up to a big cattle spread and get rich and hire men to do the work. Tommy liked farming. Plowing and planting and harvesting suited him fine. He didn’t see the need of a place bigger than they could manage on their own.

  Frank enjoyed having a little excitement to spark up the workday now and then. Tom wasn’t timid exactly, but he didn’t like trouble. “Where’s your sense of adventure?” Frank would ask him, but Tommy was a worrier.

  The funny thing was, moving down here was Tom’s idea in the first place because Arizona acreage was a lot cheaper than farmland back in Iowa. They’d invested everything they had in this spread before they found out what kept Arizona property values low: Geronimo’s Apaches were still up in the Chiricahua Mountains, a few miles away, and the Indians were none too happy about seeing their hunting grounds plowed up. Tommy was already concerned about the potential for mutilation and murder when Old Man Clanton came by on his first visit. Frank himself was not inclined to give his little brother’s fear a great deal of consideration. It only encouraged Tommy to fret. Besides, everybody in Sulphur Springs Valley was pasturing Old Man Clanton’s stolen Mexican stock.

  “Greasers let their cattle roam free instead of husbanding them,” Mr. Clanton explained. “Damn beaners don’t deserve to keep stock they don’t care for, so there’s no harm in a quick trip to Mexico for a few strays. That’s how Americans see it.”

  And it seemed like pure patriotism to agree.

  The problem was, Mexican beeves were long-legged and the meat was stringy. “Used to be, you could only sell ’em to Indian reservations,” Mr. Clanton said, “but now we got a couple thousand miners who like meat, and plenty of it. There’s a big market right there in Tombstone, not to mention all the mill towns and lumber camps. Y
ou can get army contracts for beef at Camp Rucker and Fort Huachuca, too, but civilian stockyards give you the best price, and they want the cattle fattened some.”

  So Mr. Clanton had the rustling trade all organized. His operation wasn’t just amateurs sneaking across the border for a couple of strays. No, sir! Clanton’s Cow Boys would dash into Sonora, round up a few hundred head, and run them over the border. “That’s where most rancheros give up the chase, lazy bastards, but if they come after us,” Mr. Clanton said, “we just drive the stock deeper into the mountains and wait ’em out.”

  Soon as it was safe, the Cow Boys pushed the herds into grassy valleys like Sulphur Springs, where small ranchers like the McLaurys were perfectly positioned to act as middlemen. “Turn a steer into a steak, nobody asks where it came from,” Old Man Clanton said, by way of summary. “You graze the cattle till they put on some weight. Then you drive ’em into Tombstone or sell ’em to the army. We split the cash. You get twenty percent.”

  “I don’t know,” Tommy said doubtfully. “Can we think about it?”

  Mr. Clanton’s eyes went small, and he had his big horny hand around Tom’s windpipe, fast as a rattlesnake strike. “I wasn’t askin’ you a question,” he pointed out. “I was tellin’ you how this works, peckerhead.”

  Tommy was ready to pack up and head back to Iowa the moment Clanton left. Frank was shook, too, but couldn’t see turning and running. Besides, they’d put every penny they had into this land—you couldn’t just walk away from an investment like that.

  So Frank asked around to see how their other neighbors handled Clanton. If you cooperate, folks told him, you can be sure your own livestock won’t disappear in the night. And sometimes the Cow Boys would let you keep a few head of cattle for yourself—like a tip, sort of. Or let’s say you needed help building a barn or something. The Cow Boys might lend a hand if they were nearby. The money was good, too.

  “I look at it this way,” one man told Frank. “Break the law, and you might have trouble. Cross Old Man Clanton, and he will come down on you. The sheriff’s office is way up in Tucson, son. The Clantons live next door.”

  That settled it for Frank, and he had no regrets. Old Man Clanton’s Cow Boys didn’t stay at the McLaury spread long, but they always seemed nice enough, and Frank admired their style. They wore doeskin trousers tucked into tall boots with fancy designs on the shanks, and he liked the look of their big Mexican sombreros, which were sensible because the sun was so fierce down here. They wore fancy silk neckerchiefs and brightly colored shirts, and nobody joshed them, by God. The Cow Boys got respect.

  Tommy being Tommy, he tried not to have much to do with any of them, but even he liked Curly Bill Brocius. Curly Bill was personable and lively and always seemed to have a joke going in his eyes. He could generally keep the rest of the boys in line and when they went on a spree, he made sure they just shot up little places like Galeyville or Charleston.

  Course, Johnny Ringo was different.

  But he was only trouble when he drank.

  KNOW WHEN SPEECH IS PROPER AND WHEN SILENCE

  IT WAS CLOSE TO SUNSET AND SUPPER WAS NEARLY ready when Tom McLaury looked out the window over the stove and saw eight armed men approaching on horseback.

  An army officer. Four troopers. Three civilians.

  “Oh, Lord,” he whispered. “I knew this would be trouble.”

  He moved the stewpot off to the edge of the stove top, wiped his hands on his shirt, and went outside to warn Frank with a shrill whistle that they had visitors. Frank straightened and put a hand to his forehead to shade his eyes. When he saw who was coming, he tossed the straight iron behind a shed, let the last mule up, and started toward the house, mad as hell.

  “Goddammit! I know our rights!” he hollered. “They can’t come on our property—”

  “Let me handle it!” Tommy yelled back.

  Frank planted his feet and glared but did as he was told for once. Tommy was better at keeping his temper, and this might get ticklish.

  A FEW HUNDRED YARDS AWAY, Virgil Earp watched a figure dog-trotting down a line of wagon ruts toward the fenceless gate that sketched the McLaury property line. Short. Slight. Head down, shoulders slumped. “Which one’s that?” he asked Morgan.

  “That’s Tommy. He’s harmless. Frank’s the one working the iron. He can be a handful.”

  “Your call, Lieutenant,” Virgil said.

  Lieutenant Hurst swung off his horse and tossed the reins to one of his men. “Stay back,” he told the Earps. “I’ll handle this.”

  Though Joe Hurst was a good soldier, he—like Tom McLaury—preferred diplomacy to conflict, and that was exactly why his superior had chosen him to recover the mules.

  Just two years earlier, a dispute over who could sell dry goods in Lincoln County, New Mexico, had blown up into a shooting war. When cavalry troops were dispatched to restore order, one gang holed up in a store and refused to surrender, so the soldiers set fire to the building, expecting to smoke the civilians out and end the standoff. Instead, there was a fair-sized battle that ended with a lot of dead, burnt civilians.

  The whole bungled mess stirred up a hornets’ nest of ex-Confederates who hated the federal government in general and anyone wearing a blue uniform in particular. An outraged Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act, forbidding the army to have anything to do with law enforcement, and from the nation’s capital to the remotest frontier fort, standing orders came down to this: For the love of Christ, don’t make anything worse.

  So when Tom McLaury arrived at the gate and shook hands with Joe Hurst in the pink-and-orange light of an Arizona sunset, the pair of them were quite possibly the two most reasonable men in Arizona, and they were united in their hope of working things out sensibly.

  The facts were not in dispute. The mules were stolen; Frank McLaury had been seen tampering with their brands.

  “I am barred by law from going onto your land,” Hurst admitted, “but Virgil Earp is a deputy federal marshal, and he has the legal authority to recover federal property. His brother Wyatt is a deputy sheriff who can arrest you and your brother, if I decide to press charges.”

  “Please, don’t do that, sir,” Tom said. “Me and Frank just moved down from Iowa. Two of our brothers fought for the Union and one of them died, but we’re just about the only ranchers in this valley who weren’t rebels. We’re kinda caught in the middle here. We want to obey the law, but we gotta keep peace with our neighbors, and that’s not easy, sir. They are not peaceable men.”

  After some discussion, an acceptable compromise was reached. The troopers and the Earps would withdraw. No one would be arrested, but Tom McLaury would see to it that the mules were returned to Camp Rucker in a few days. The matter would then be closed. No questions asked, none answered.

  “LIEUTENANT, WITH ALL DUE RESPECT,” Virgil said when Hurst informed him of the terms he’d agreed to, “that might be the stupidest thing I’ve heard since Christmas. There is no way in hell that Tom McLaury can make good on that promise, and we’ll look like idiots for believing him.”

  “We should go in there right now and enforce the law” was Wyatt’s opinion, but Morgan held up a hand. “Lieutenant, if we arrest the McLaurys now,” he said, “they can tell Old Man Clanton we caught them dead to rights, so they had to give the mules up. You can drop the charges later. Everybody wins. You get your mules back, and Tom and Frank’ll be off the hook with Clanton.”

  You could see it on everyone’s face. Damn. That’s a good solution. Even Lieutenant Hurst thought so, but it was too late now.

  “I gave my word,” he said, “and that’s the end of it.”

  THEY MADE CAMP IN THE DUSK and split up in the morning, the troopers heading back to Rucker, the civilians returning to Tombstone.

  Virgil was polite enough when Hurst offered his hand and thanked the Earps for their time and aid, but as soon as the lieutenant was out of earshot, he muttered, “Pigs’ll fly before he sees them mules again.”

>   Morgan and Virgil finished the last of Allie’s sandwiches as they rode. Wyatt didn’t eat. “What’s going on with Behan?” Virgil asked, to take Wyatt’s mind off his tooth. “Why’s he sticking his nose into your business?”

  “Offered me undersheriff if he gets sheriff.”

  Virg snorted. “What makes Behan think Frémont is going to appoint a Democrat?”

  “Not in the mood, Virg.”

  Even if a crumbling molar weren’t sending lightning bolts of pain through his jaw, and even if he’d been allowed to arrest the McLaurys for a crime that anybody with a single working eye could see they were guilty of, Wyatt couldn’t have told his brother exactly what Johnny Behan was proposing, though it had mostly made sense to him while Johnny was talking. “Only about half of a sheriff’s job is law enforcement, Wyatt. That’s where your experience is,” Johnny had said. “The other half is administrative.” That half involved a lot of political horseshit. Going to parties, being chummy, making small talk. Which is what Behan was good at. “But, see, if we divide the work up,” Johnny told him, “we’ll each be playing to our strengths. I take care of the political end of things, you take over enforcement, and the sheriff’s office as a whole does a better job for the citizens. Make sense?”

  “So far,” Wyatt admitted.

  “Now, in my experience,” Johnny had told him, “the worst part of a sheriff’s responsibility is visiting every property in the county once a year and coming up with a valuation for taxes. Everybody wants county services, Wyatt, but nobody wants to pay for them. And since the sheriff keeps a percentage of what he collects, everybody figures you’re jacking up their taxes for your own gain. Mining companies have lawyers to fight every penny of their assessments. And when you show up on a man’s ranch, he hates you on sight! That part of the job means soft-soaping people—seeing their side of things. It takes finesse and patience.”