Bloody Season (5 page)

“Did you see a shotgun?”

“There was a shotgun in the Earp party. Holliday had it. He was putting it under his coat, so as to get it more effectively concealed. That was when they were coming down the street.”

“Did you see it fired?”

“I cannot say that I saw the shotgun go off. There was a scramble. I don’t know whether the shotgun was fired or not. I think it was; I did not see it.”

“Did you see the deceased fall?”

“I saw Billy Clanton fall first and then I saw Frank McLaury fall, on the north side of Fremont Street, almost exactly opposite Fly’s place, after the fight commenced.”

“Did you see Tom McLaury fall?”

“No, I did not see him until the fight was over. Then I saw him on the ground.”

“You are satisfied that he was unarmed?”

“I am satisfied that two of the parties were not armed—I mean Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury.”

“State again your reasons for attempting to disarm the party.”

“When I went to disarm them I understood that there was likely to be a row between the Earp brothers and Holliday and the Clanton crowd.”

“Did they refuse to give up their arms?”

“No one refused except Frank McLaury. He said that he came on business and did not want any row. He never refused to go to my office.”

“When you met the Earp party before the fight, did you tell them that you had disarmed the other party?”

“I did not. I did tell them that there would be trouble if they went down. I told them I did not want any trouble, and would not allow it if I could help it, and not to go down.”

“Did Frank McLaury have his pistol drawn when Marshal Earp told him to throw up his hands?”

“He did not.”

“Did you consider the Clantons and McLaurys under arrest at the time?”

Behan touched the knot of his bow tie. “At the time I left the McLaurys and Clantons and met the Earps, I considered the Clanton party under arrest, but I doubt whether they considered themselves under arrest or not.”

A sound came from among the jury that might have been another cough. Matthews winked irritably and shot the men in the box a withering look. Then he folded his hands under his chin. His fingers still smelled of methyl alcohol.

“I ask you to remember if anything was said to you by either party before the fight that would indicate the Earp party was not acting in an official capacity when they went to meet the Clantons and McLaurys.”

“Nothing was said to me to make me believe they were acting in an official capacity. After the fight was over, Wyatt Earp said, ‘We went there to disarm that party.’ I think I heard Virgil say the same thing. The horses were saddled, but Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton had just come into town. During my conversation with them, Ike Clanton said, ‘We are going out of town.’ But Frank McLaury said, ‘I am not. I am here on business.’”

“Thank you, Sheriff. I have no further questions.”

“My name is Joseph Isaac Clanton. I live on the San Pedro near Charleston. I deal in cattle.”

Ike’s head was sunk between his shoulders, minimizing his almost nonexistent neck and lending him the hunkered look of a bear cornered in its lair. His big horned black-nailed hands lay palms up between his knees with his forearms resting on his thighs and his hooded yellow eyes quartered the room as if calculating the distance of a charge. In reality he was looking for a place to get rid of the tobacco bulging his right cheek. He had on a black suit with worn velvet facings and a gold double eagle for a fob.

“Were you present on Fremont Street on October twenty-sixth, eighteen eighty-one, at the time of the deaths of William Clanton, Robert Finley McLaury, and Thomas Clark McLaury?” Matthews asked.

“I was present. I am the brother of William Clanton who was killed that day. I saw the whole transaction.”

“Please state what happened.”

He swallowed the bitter juice and shifted the plug to his other cheek. “The night before the shooting, I went into the Alhambra lunchroom for a lunch, and while there, Doc Holliday come in and commenced to abuse me. He had his hand on his pistol and called me a damned son of a bitch and told me to get my gun out. I told him I did not have any gun. I looked around and I seen Morg sitting at the bar behind me with his hand on his gun. Doc Holliday kept on abusing me. I then went out the door.

“Virgil Earp, Wyatt, and Morg were all out there. Morg Earp told me if I wanted a fight to turn myself loose. They all had their hands on their pistols while they were talking to me. I told them again I was not armed. Doc Holliday said, ‘You son of a bitch, go arm yourself then!’ I did go off and heel myself. I came back and played poker with Virge Earp, Tom McLaury, and other parties until daylight. Virge Earp played poker with his pistol in his lap the whole time. At daylight he got up and quit the game. We were playing in the Occidental. I followed Virge Earp out when he quit. I told him that I was abused the night before and I was in town. Then he told me he was going to bed.”

Deputy Billy Breakenridge set a cuspidor at Ike’s feet and he used it, splattering brown juice into the polished brass interior. He drew the back of a hand across his lips and resumed chewing. A neglected streak glistened in his chin whiskers.

“I came back and cashed in my chips and stood around town until about eight o’clock. I then went and got my Winchester, expecting to meet Doc Holliday on the street, but never saw him until after Virge and Morgan slipped up behind me and knocked me down with a six-shooter. Shortly afterwards I met my brother Billy. He asked me to go out of town. I just about that time met the corral man where my team was and asked him to harness up the team. We then went to the O.K. Corral in company with the McLaury brothers. We met the sheriff there. He told us that he would have to arrest us and take our arms off. I told him that we were just going to leave town and that I had no arms on. He then searched my waist. He told my brother and Frank McLaury to take their arms up to his office.

“Tom opened his coat and showed him and said, ‘Johnny, I have no arms on.’ Frank McLaury said he would keep his arms unless the sheriff disarmed the Earps. He said that if he would disarm them, he would lay off his, as he had business to attend to in town before he left.

“Just at that time I seen Doc Holliday and three of the Earps coming down the sidewalk. The sheriff stepped forward to meet them and told them that he had these parties in charge, and to stop, that he did not want any trouble. They walked right by him.

“I stepped two or three steps from the crowd and met Wyatt Earp right at the corner of the building. He stuck his six-shooter at me and said, ‘Throw up your hands!’ The marshal also told the other boys to throw their hands up. Tom McLaury opened his coat and said that he had no arms. They said, ‘You sons of bitches, you ought to make a fight!’ At the same instant, Doc Holliday and Morg shot. Morgan shot my brother and I don’t know which of the other boys that Doc Holliday shot. I saw Virge shooting at the same time. I grabbed Wyatt Earp and pushed him around the corner of the house and jumped into the gallery. As I jumped, I saw Billy falling. I ran through the gallery and got away.”

He spat. The cuspidor bonged. “Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and myself threw up our hands at the order from the Earp party, and Tom McLaury threw his coat open and said, ‘I have got no arms.’”

Matthews rubbed his left eye, the one with the tic. “Did you have any trouble with the Earps previous to the day in question?”

“Doc Holliday came into the Alhambra Saloon and said I had been using his name. I said, ‘I have not.’ I never had any previous trouble with the Earps. They don’t like me. We had a transaction—I mean, myself and the Earps—but it had nothing to do with the killing of these three men. There was no threats made by the McLaury boys and Billy Clanton against the Earp boys that day, not that I know of. They had ordered me to heel myself, and I told them I would be there.”

Matthews asked some more questions, which Clanton answered with his chin on his chest and his hands folded loosely between his spread knees, turning his head occasionally to use the cuspidor.

“I did not expect any trouble from Wyatt Earp but from Virge and Morg Earp and Doc Holliday. The boys expected no attack until somebody told them just before they were leaving town, and they never left.. . . I did not have any arms on when the Earp party came down and ordered us to throw up our hands. Virge Earp had my arms, a Winchester and a six-shooter. . . . I had not seen Frank McLaury or my brother for two days before the shooting. I never had a conversation with the McLaury boys and Billy as to making a fight in my life. . . . When the firing commenced, Virge and Doc Holliday were about six feet from the McLaury boys and Morg Earp’s pistol was about three or four feet from Billy when he commenced firing. I did not see my brother or either of the McLaurys fire a shot.”

Matthews thanked him.

“...Martha J. King. I live in the City of Tombstone. I am a housekeeper.”

In her late thirties, the woman looked a few years older, with most of her dark hair pinned back and the rest falling in sausage curls behind her ears, a style too young for her that accentuated the lines in her neck and from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth. She wore a black dress still gleaming from the brush, with a white lace collar secured at the throat by an ivory brooch. Her hands were red and peeling and clutched a rose embroidered handkerchief in her lap. She nodded when Matthews, his tone low and funereally solicitous so that the recorder had to strain to hear him, asked her if she was present on Fremont Street at the time of the trouble, then said yes so that her answer could be taken down.

“I was coming from my house to Bauer’s meat market to get some meat for dinner,” she said. “I saw quite a number of men standing in a group together on the sidewalk by the door of the market, and I passed on into the shop to get what I went for, and the parties in the shop were excited and did not seem to want to wait upon me. I inquired what was the matter, and they said there was about to be a fuss between the Earp boys and the cowboys. I was standing back at the time they said it. I stepped to the door of the market and I heard someone talking but did not understand at first what they said.

“Then the party seemed to separate, and this man who was standing with the horse—he was in the act of leading his horse—turned to the other man who was talking to him and looked up to the man and said ‘If you wish to find us, you will find us just below here.’ That is all I saw at this time. The tall man who was talking to the man with the horse went down the street. Then I stepped back into the shop again.”

She twisted the handkerchief. “The butcher was in the act of cutting the meat when someone at the door said, ‘There they come!’ and I stepped to the door and looked up the sidewalk and I saw four men coming down the sidewalk. I only knew one of the party and that was Mr. Holliday. And there were three other gentlemen, who someone told me were the Earps. Mr. Holliday was next to the buildings, on the inside. He had a gun under his coat. The way I noticed the gun was his coat would blow open and he tried to keep it covered.

“I stood in the door until these gentlemen passed and until they got to the second door. And what frightened me and made me run back, I heard him say, ‘Let them have it!’ and Doc Holiday said, ‘All right.’ Then I thought I would run, and ran towards the back of the shop, but before I reached the middle of the shop, I heard shots; I don’t know how many. I don’t know who said, ‘Let them have it.’ I cannot describe the party. It was one of them that was with Holliday.”

C. H. Light. I reside in the City of Tombstone. I’m a minin’ man.”

The young miner wore a stiff brown suit with shelf creases in the trousers and a clean gray workshirt buttoned at the throat without a cravat. He had a pink, girlish mouth and his fair hair was parted to the right of center and swept down over his right eyebrow. His Cornish accent was so thick that Matthews had to ask him several times to repeat himself more slowly. He sat on the edge of the chair with his elbows on his knees and his palms sliding against each other with a rasping sound, his body twitching with nervous energy.

“There seemed to be six parties firm’, four in the middle of the street and one on the south side of the street, and the one with the horse. Afterwards, I recognized the man with the gray clothes to be Doc Holliday. I think there were about twenty-five or thirty shots fired altogether. I did not see any of the parties have a shotgun. The fight occurred about one hundred and thirty or forty feet away from where I was. I think, from the reports, that the first two were pistol shots. I think that there was one report from a shotgun. I do not think the whole of it occupied over ten or fifteen seconds.”

“Your name is William F. Claiborne and you reside in the City of Tombstone, County of Cochise, Arizona Territory, and you are a driver in the employ of the Neptune Mining Company?”

“That’s right.”

Claiborne, who had gotten some people to start calling him Billy the Kid once William Bonney had relinquished both the nickname and his life in New Mexico the previous summer, slouched on his spine in the chair, his long bony legs thrust out in front of him with his spurs marking the floor. He had sandy hair cropped close, exaggerating his long jaw and sail-like ears and the puppy hairs on his lip that vanished when sunlight struck them. He was just twenty-one and wore striped pants and a new shirt buttoned all the way up.

“The day this thing happened,” he said, “I went down with Ike Clanton to Dr. Gillingham’s office to assist him in getting his head dressed, and then I walked up Fourth Street and met Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury, and Billy axed me where was Ike. He said, ‘I want to get him to go home.’ He said he did not come here to fight anyone ‘and no one didn’t want to fight me.’ Then he axed me to go down to Johnny Behan’s stable with him, and we went down there and through the O.K. Corral.

“Then Mr. Behan come up and was talking to the boys. I did not hear what he said to them. I was talking to Billy, and Behan was talking to Ike Clanton and Frank and Tom McLaury. And then, shortly afterwards, Mr. Behan turned his back and walked up the street and the next thing I saw was Morgan Earp and his two brothers and Doc Holliday. And Marshal Earp said, ‘You sons of bitches, you have been looking for a fight and now you can get it!’ They both said the same thing at the same time, and Marshal Earp said, ‘Throw up your hands!’ which Billy Clanton, Ike Clanton, and Frank McLaury did, and Tom McLaury took hold of the lapels of his coat and threw it open and said, ‘I have not got anything.’