Bloody Season (14 page)

“I lied, Frank. It was worth it to see you unload in your drawers.”

“The trouble with you men after office is you disremember who your friends are.”

“If I did that we would have come in shooting. There may be shooting yet.”

Dodge was standing by the table with his gun handle showing and Marshall Williams was cradling a Winchester in the doorway. Stilwell let out his breath and presented his Colt’s pocket Navy by the barrel with the butt pointed up.

Wyatt made no move to accept it. Lamplight lay flat on his blue eyes. Stilwell smiled again and rotated the pistol so that the butt faced down. Wyatt took it.

“Curly Bill taught me the border roll,” Stilwell said. “He used it on Fred White.”

“I heard it Fred shot himself when he went to disarm Bill.” Wyatt handed the weapon to Dodge, who spun the cylinder with a noise like a snake’s rattle and stuck it in his belt.

“Maybe. I never featured that circus shit to work on a real lawman anyway.”

“I am a businessman.” Wyatt stood, picking up the American. “Let’s go see how Morg and Neagle are coming along with your pard.”

“What about my drink? Dodge spoiled it.”

Wyatt stuck his fingers inside the glass and plucked out the match. “Drink up, Frank.”

Stilwell swept the glass bumping and splashing across the floor.

“You Earps are high now,” he said, rising. “The sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass all day.”

“That’s real original, Frank. I learn something new every time I arrest you.”

Pete Spence, a man nearly as thin as Doe, with animal eyes and no chin, was surprised in his bedroll outside Bisbee by Morgan Earp and Dave Neagle and taken into custody without a shot fired on either side. The two parties backtracked through the Mules with a prisoner to each and Billy Breakenridge riding liaison between them.

“Don’t worry, Billy,” Morgan told him. “If we have to shoot them we will save their assholes for you.”

In Tombstone, Sheriff Behan claimed county jurisdiction over Stilwell and Spence, but Williams swore out federal warrants with Virgil Earp as deputy United States marshal for robbery of the mails. Virgil and Wyatt had the pair manacled and trundled them onto the Tucson stage and rode along to see them bound over for trial.

In Elberon, New Jersey, on September 19, James A. Garfield drew his last breath, a big one. Chester Alan Arthur, a fifty-year-old Vermont native, was sworn in as twenty-first President of the United States. Wyatt saw a sketch of him in the Tucson paper and thought he looked like a buffalo bull he had shot topping a cow in Kansas. Virgil hoped he was a better Republican than his predecessor.

The brothers were still absent from Tombstone on October 11 when Milt Joyce, who in addition to his post as county supervisor had recently bought into the Oriental, bent the arm of a drunken and fevered Doc Holliday and hurled him through the batwings into Allen Street. Doc lay for a time in the dust and manure, then pulled himself up an awning post, jerked down the points of his fouled vest, and swayed back inside with a hand in the side pocket of his coat.

“Whore-liquoring son of a bitch.” The pocket lining tore and his Colt’s Lightning reared up vomiting flame. Bottles burst behind the bar.

Chairs turned over. Joyce, coming around the bar at the opposite end of the oiled floor, clawed a Schofield out of his hip pocket and closed the ten feet that separated them in a lunge. Doc fired again and Parker, Joyce’s partner, fell behind the bar with a curse. Joyce and Doc collided and the barrel of the Schofield opened a gash over Doc’s left ear and they fell in a tangle with Joyce on top. The Colt’s exploded again as they grappled, Doc clawed at Joyce’s face with his free hand, Joyce sank his teeth into the web of flesh between Doc’s thumb and forefinger. The Schofield flashed up again, but a hand caught Joyce’s wrist and wrenched it and a second bystander clubbed Doc with his forearm and jammed the heel of his hand between the Colt’s hammer and the chamber and pried the pistol loose from his grasp. By this time the room was a haze and the air stank of rotten eggs.

A ball had smashed the big toe of Parker’s left foot. Another had torn through Joyce’s right hand while he and Doc were grappling and pierced the embossed tin ceiling over the bar. Justice Wells Spicer heard both sides and fined Doc $20 for assault and battery and costs of $11.25. Morgan Earp, reading of the incident in the Nugget, remarked to his woman Lou that Doc never could hit a board fence when he was drinking.

After settling with the court clerk, Doc packed his valise and boarded the Kinnear & Company stage for Benson. He came back with Kate.

Chapter Ten

I
ke Clanton embroidered a wandering pattern between tables at the Alhambra, leaning heavily on chairs and seated patrons and occasionally pausing to take a new sight on his objective, Wyatt Earp sitting in for Doc Holliday behind the cue box at Doc’s faro table. Ike’s face was shot with broken vessels and the knee of his black trousers glistened where he had spat tobacco at the ground and missed. The crown of his hat grazed a Chesterfield lamp, looping shadows up the walls, but he made no notice. He dropped heavily into the chair opposite Wyatt. He smelled of horse and whiskey.

“Feeling lucky today?” Wyatt restacked the chips Ike had spilled and slid the card counters into position. He had his coat off and red silk garters on his sleeves.

“I looked for you in the Oriental.”

“That place is commencing to take on a bad reputation.”

“It has one less skunk in it today.”

Wyatt went on straightening the stack. “You are drunker than you look to say that to me.”

“You been braying all around about our transaction,” Ike said. “I told you if it gets back to Curly Bill and the rest I am buzzard shit.”

“I never told anyone.”

“Marshall Williams knows all about it. He treed me just now.”

“Is he drinking?”

“Some.”

Wyatt struck a match and warmed a General Arthur end to end, turning it. “Marsh is shooting at the moon. He sent the telegram to San Francisco asking after the reward and I suppose he has seen us talking. I guess it is too much to hope you didn’t blow off and give up the whole story.” He lit the cigar.

“He knows anyway. You told him.”

“Yes, I run around telling everyone who will listen about my schemes to make sheriff that don’t pan out.”

“Frank said what we would do if you peached.”

“I am a dead man twice then, because he has already told Morgan he is fixing to kill us all for arresting his friends Stilwell and Spence.”

“Well, you told Doc Holliday. He never sent no telegrams nor saw us talking.”

“Doc and Billy Leonard were friendly. Why would I tell him I was laying for Leonard?”

“He is a talking drunk, and he has been telling everyone.”

Wyatt shuffled the deck. “He has been out of town for ten days. I don’t see how he could have spread much around. But he is coming in on the six o’clock stage. We will hear what he has to say.”

They played until five, when Ike ran out of money. He bought a bottle on credit and sat alone at a table outside the gaming room, where a couple of Charleston acquaintances looking in to see who was in town hovered, then moved on when they saw he was drinking and not talking. After a while he laid his head down on his arms and began snoring. Wyatt shook him awake when it was time and gave him a shoulder on the way to the Wells Fargo office three doors up Allen. It was a day without wind, a breather before the parched gales of autumn; skirts and coattails hung pole-steady and dust lay flat in the street, rising reluctantly when the stagecoach swept down it, then settling like paint.

Doc had on a duster over his gray suit and an apricot-colored shirt. When he helped Kate Fisher down in front of the office in a bonnet and broadcloth cape, Wyatt looked straight through her.

“Doc, did I ever let on to you that Ike Clanton and I were in any deal together?”

Doc glanced at Ike, leaning half-aware inside the office doorway with the front of his trousers damp. “No.”

“Ike says I did.”

“Ike’s a liar.”

“You been braying it all around.” Ike’s eyes moved into focus one at a time.

“Braying what all around?”

Ike opened his mouth, became aware of the crowd gathered on the boardwalk to meet the stage, and closed it. He lurched out of the doorway and weaved off, bumping into people. Doc watched him with eyes fever-bright.

“Watch out for those loud ones. They have a way of finding people who will listen to them.”

“If Curly Bill or Ringo is one of them they will quiet him soon enough. How was Tucson?”

“Better than Globe.”

Wyatt let the challenge ride. “I heard you had a difficulty in the Oriental while I was away.”

“If Joyce has not died of lead poisoning because of that hand I don’t feel like talking about it.” Doc caught Kate’s carpetbag from the driver. The sudden weight staggered him. He was thinner than Wyatt remembered and there was a pepper of blood on his right shirtcuff. Wyatt reached to take the bag but Kate got to it first. He asked Doc if he was all right.

“Just thirsty.”

“He’ll be all right when I get him to bed.” Kate wasn’t looking at Wyatt. “He should not be standing out here in the air.”

“Right, I need smoke and whiskey.”

“Alhambra?” Wyatt suggested.

“Oriental.”

Kate said something and walked away from them carrying her bag.

Doc looked grim. “She has commenced to go temperance.”

“You have Jim’s salt to thank for that,” Wyatt said. “Doc—”

“What’s this transaction with Ike?” Doc asked.

After a moment Wyatt picked up Doc’s valise and went with him to the Oriental and didn’t bring up the subject of Kate.

Some hours later Wyatt let himself into the house he shared with Sadie and undressed in the dark. His nightshirt rustled as he climbed into bed beside her. She smelled beer.

“You’re awake,” he said.

“I have not slept. Marietta Spence was here tonight.”

“I don’t want you talking with anyone connected to that stage-robbing crowd. The Nugget has made enough hay of me and Doc and that Benson thing as it stands.”

“I came to Tombstone with Marietta. She is a friend.” She sat up. In the dark she smelled of lemon verbena and soap. “She heard Pete talking with Frank McLaury. Frank and Ike are going to call you and Virgil and Morgan out and then Pete and the rest are going to kill you from ambush.”

For a moment he breathed and said nothing.

“When is this fixed to take place?”

“She did not know.” Sadie paused. “I believe her.”

“It is big-hearted of Pete to take her in.”

“Women hear things. You men forget we are around. Marietta says Pete has not been fit to be with since he got out on bond. She has a black eye.”

“Ike is mostly blow.”

“Frank McLaury is not.”

He breathed. “Ike has been squawking to all who will sit still for it about how he has no transaction with me. It is like Curly Bill to crowd him and Frank into proving they are not back-stickers by calling us out. Curly Bill will turn most any situation to his profit.”

“What has he against you and your brothers?”

“Nothing personal. You cannot help but like Curly Bill. It is just business. Hold Tombstone, hold the county. And we hold Tombstone.”

“What are you going to do?”

He groped in the darkness and found the tie to her nightdress. “Crowd Ike into doing something stupid.”

The autumn winds came, slowing the work on roofs burned away in June and hammocking brown dust in door frames and window casings. Mornings they carried a chill off the snow mountains, frosting windows and coaxing steam like smoke from the corrals where horses huddled.

At one o’clock on the morning of October 26, 1881, a greatcoated Doc Holliday followed Ike Clanton into the lunchroom off the main room of the Alhambra and stood over him at the counter grinning. Doc’s ears stuck out and his skin was shrunken over bone like a comic mask of jolly Death.

“What will you have, you son of a bitch of a cattle-stealing cowboy?”

The room was anything but deserted at that late hour. At sundown the underground life of Tombstone opened its eyes and crawled out of a hundred burrows, and when the storekeepers snuffed out their lamps and candles the bartenders started the pilots burning on the gas-powered ceiling fans and the dealers broke open fresh decks for the miners coming down from the mountains on ore wagons and the cowboys riding up from the valley on roping horses and buckboards to see the elephant. The pace was as brisk as nine A.M. and the hours were the same only reversed, so that at midnight the lunch trade rivaled that of noon. Crockery rattled, and stopped rattling at Doc’s high-pitched drawl.

Ike finished tucking his checked napkin inside his collar. “I am not after trouble.”

“You have been using my name.”

“I have not.”

“You are a damned liar.”

Morgan, drinking on the saloon side, set down his glass. “Give me that scattergun,” he said.

The balding bartender glanced down at the sawed-off twelve-gauge in its rack under the bar and shook his head. Morgan took out his Colt’s, checked the load, and swung himself over the counter that separated the saloon from the lunchroom.

Ike used a corner of his napkin to wipe tobacco spittle out of his beard. He was almost sober, although his face was still puffy and the color of cardboard. Behind Doc he spotted Morgan Earp sitting on top of the lunch counter, his cravat undone and a liverish flush on his face. Ike said nothing.

“I hear you are going to kill the Earps,” Doc said. “Get out your pistol and commence with me.” His white hand rested between the lapels of his coat.

“I never said I would kill no one. Fetch whoever says I did and I will prove him a liar.”

“Are you going to jerk your gun, you whore-walloping little lickspittle?”

“I have no gun.”

“You cowboy sons of bitches go heeled wherever you go. Jerk yours and go to fighting if there is any grit in you.”

Ike stood, catching his balance on the counter. Doc backed up a step. His hand was inside his coat now. Ike started past him toward the street door.