Epitaph (10 page)

In the beginning, Allie had blamed Wyatt for Mattie's cheerlessness, for his silence seemed cold and mean.

“Why don't Wyatt ever say nothing?” Allie asked Virgil one time.

“Well, now, Pickle, I'll tell you,” Virg had said. “Wyatt's steady in a fight and he's got a real way with horses, but he can't hardly read and he's ignorant. He's afraid if he talks, people will find out.”

Allie wasn't much for books herself. “Lots of folks can't read. Don't stop 'em from talking!”

“Yeah, well, maybe it oughta,” Virg said, laughing when Allie laid into him with small fists and not entirely comic ferocity.

Wyatt was all right, Allie had decided after she got to know him. And Morgan was as sweet as men come. She liked the boys' older brother James, too, but Alvira Sullivan was sure of one thing. She got the pick of the Earp litter.

Virgil was fitting a box of cartridges into his saddlebag.

“Don't mash them sandwiches,” she warned. “How long'll you be?”

“We're pretty sure we know where the mules are. Day or two, if everything goes right.”

He finished buckling the flap and looked up. Allie was bustling around their little house. Clearing dishes off the table, wrestling bolts of tent canvas into neater stacks, wiping cotton fluff off her sewing machine. She always got extra busy when he had to ride out like this.

Pickle, he called her, because that's what she was eating when he first laid eyes on her, up in Iowa. He was driving freight. She was a waitress at a stage stop. Not much bigger than the gherkin she downed in two bites, but damn if she didn't hoist a heavy tray right up onto her shoulder, carrying half her weight in crockery to the kitchen. He caught her eye and he could tell she liked the looks of him, so he struck up a conversation and learned pretty quick that she was an orphan. Father gone. Mother dead. Sisters and brothers scattered. Sharp-tongued and independent, Allie had shifted for herself since she was twelve. He respected her before he loved her, and he loved her before he finished his lunch that first day.

“How'd I get to be so damn lucky?” he asked now, voice low and soft.

She came to him, and he bent almost in half to receive her wiry arms around his neck. When he straightened up, she shrieked a laugh as he lifted her off her feet. “Maybe I'll just stick you in my saddlebag and take you along!” Virg said. “How'd you like that?”

“I'd like to see you try!”

He set her down, planted a kiss on the top of her head, threw his saddlebag over his shoulder, and grabbed his hat off a peg by the door.
Allie followed him outside and stood on the porch, shading her eyes with her hand.

She'd seen two men killed by Virgil Earp in the line of duty, and she knew what every cop's wife knows: The next time shots are fired, it could be her man staring empty-eyed at the sky.

“Be careful!” she hollered.

Virg didn't look back, but he raised his hand in acknowledgment.

THERE WAS A TIME
when Mattie Blaylock looked forward to hearing Wyatt's footsteps on the porch. She'd been walking the streets in Dodge when he took her in, and she was grateful in the beginning. Wyatt seemed glad of her, too, for a while.

He hardly looked at her when he came in now. Mattie didn't say anything either. She just sat there in her chair, rocking in the shadows.

He reached past her and yanked the drapes open. She turned her face from the sunlight.

“Place stinks,” he said, raising the sash to air it out. “It's past four. Why ain't you dressed?”

“Why do you think?” He could be so damn stupid. “Headache.”

“We got a posse,” he told her and went into the bedroom to collect what he needed.

“How's your tooth?” she asked. Making an effort.

“Same.”

“You find Doc?”

“Not yet.”

“Huh,” she said.

Tombstone was the biggest place she'd ever lived in. Not finding a person who'd been in town for a whole day was an idea that took getting used to.

Wyatt came back into the front room, a bedroll under one arm, the rest of his gear in a saddlebag. Hand on the doorknob, he paused to look around the house, making a list of her sins. Dust. Clothes on the floor. Dishes waiting. Chamber pot unemptied.

“Clean this place up,” he said. Then he added, “Clean means clean, Mattie. It don't just mean less dirty. It means
clean.
”

“Go to hell,” she muttered, but she waited until he was gone to say it.

She waited a good deal longer before she got out of the rocking chair. She tried to pick a few things off the floor, but leaning over made the migraine worse. So she poured herself another dose of laudanum, pulled the curtains closed, and went back to bed.

O
F ALL THE WITLESS, OBTUSE QUESTIONS ADDRESSED
to John Henry Holliday in his short, unlucky life, the one he currently despised most was a simple rhetorical pleasantry: How are you? He'd never been to Tombstone before, but he was known to about half the gamblers in town, and every one he met had opened the conversation with “Well, if it ain't Doc Holliday! How the hell are you, Doc?”

“Just fine, thanks,” he always said, but producing that genial reply required iron self-control, for what he wanted to ask in return was “Are you blind or stupid?
Look
at me.” Skin like parchment. Hair half-grayed. So thin, he looked like a beanpole wrapped in cream-colored linen. Not content with destroying his lungs, tuberculosis was now eroding his vertebrae, two of which had collapsed in a stunning explosion of pain one evening when he attempted to pull Kate's chair out for her after dinner. That small act of gallantry had cost him two inches in height, and he'd yet to find a tailor capable of concealing the resulting hump.

John Henry Holliday had recently turned twenty-nine. On a good day, he looked fifteen years older. On a bad one, he felt about three weeks shy of a hundred.

How are you, Doc? I'm miserable, jackass. How are you?

The constant gnawing ache in his chest became briefly worse when he emerged from a quiet restaurant on Third Street. Squinting into the
fierce glare of Arizona's afternoon sunlight, he took shelter under the broad brim of a panama hat, though not before the sudden brilliance set off a violent sneeze. Leaning on his walking stick, he bent at the waist, rendered motionless by the sharp, familiar pain of tearing pulmonary adhesions. Laughter could cause this, or an unusually intense coughing fit. Sneezing was the worst, for it ripped his lungs away from the chest wall with a pang that could only be endured, not countered.

“Jesus, Doc! Damn, you look like hell!”

He turned at the sound of that dear, familiar voice and straightened as much as he could. “Morgan,” he said, offering his hand, “I feel even worse than I look, but it was worth every moment of that wretched journey to see you again.”

Grinning, Morg lifted the lapels of Doc's coat and whistled at a pair of pistols. “You carrying two now? Hell if that hardware don't weigh more'n you!”

“Luke Short tells me Tombstone is about twice as dangerous as Dodge, so I have come prepared.”

“Luke's not lying,” Morgan admitted. “Thanks for coming. Wyatt's gonna be real glad. Where you staying?”

“The Cosmopolitan, of course.”

“Was I right about that piano? Nice one, ain't it!”

“The best I have ever played. I am perishin', Morg. Let me buy you a drink—assuming Wyatt hasn't turned you into a temperance man.”

“Doc, he don't even try anymore. And listen to this! My fine, upstanding, teetotal-Methodist brother has a quarter interest in the Oriental Saloon's gambling concession! He don't drink up the profits, so he's making enough to bank faro games in a few other saloons, too. Him and Mattie own their house. And you ain't gonna believe this: He's wearing a badge again. Deputy sheriff. Working for Charlie Shibell.”

Doc coughed his surprise. “How did he talk himself into that?”

“Long story, and I ain't got time to tell it. Him and Virg and me got a posse going out. Stolen livestock. Wanna come?”

“I believe I will decline the offer, but I appreciate the invitation.”

Morg glanced at the cane. “Hip giving you trouble again?”

“It'll be better after I've had a little more rest.”

“Well, I gotta go,” Morgan said, moving off with a backward skip. “Hot damn! Wyatt's gonna be real happy to see you! Soon as we get back, we'll come by the Cosmopolitan.”

“Take care, y'hear?” Doc called, leaning on his cane as Morgan Earp trotted off, dodging horses and wagons and foot traffic with thoughtless, easy grace.

“You, too,” Morg yelled back. “I mean it, Doc! This place is dangerous.”

AT LEAST EIGHTY PROFESSIONAL GAMBLERS
had converged on Tombstone in its first year: wolves drawn to a herd of highly skilled hard-rock miners who got paid a stunning four dollars a day. Nearly two thousand men were working in a dozen silver mines, and competition was fierce among those who wished to feast on their wages.

John Henry Holliday was still living up in northern Arizona when he ran into the famous gambler Luke Short in a Prescott saloon. Luke had warned him off Tombstone, for the town was being snarled over by two groups of loosely organized sporting men. “There's easterners like us, but then there's a bunch from the California slope, west of the Rockies. Vicious young bullies. It's not like working in Dodge, Doc. I won big one night. Four of the Slopers came after me and took the cash before I could get back to my hotel. I went to the town marshal—Fred White, his name is—but they all had alibis for each other.”

Luke had been on the gambling circuit a long time and he backed down to no one, but he was a small man with no taste for quarreling. “There's a mountain of money in Tombstone,” he told Doc, “but it's not worth the risk. Seems like somebody gets killed damn near every night.”

“Word is,” Doc said quietly, “you were called upon to add to the tally.”

“Charley Storms.” Shaking his head at the memory, the spruce little gambler sat back. “Took a dislike to me after he lost, and got loud about it. Bat Masterson was there, and you know Bat. He always tries to sweet-talk an idiot before things get physical. He settled Storms down and got him to leave, but ten minutes later, Storms comes back with a pistol. He was drunk and he was slow. I was sober and fast enough. Grand jury decided not to indict, but afterward . . .”

“Couldn't stand the sight of the place?”

Luke shrugged. “You and Mike Gordon?”

“What have you heard?”

“The usual dime-novel horseshit. Insults, a showdown, and another notch on the deadly dentist's gun!”

Doc closed his eyes and pulled in as deep a breath as he could—always a mistake. When the coughing passed, he drank off the last swallow of bourbon in his glass and waited a moment for the warmth to help. “You know Miss Kate and I had a saloon over in New Mexico?”