Epitaph (60 page)

“Wyatt, what makes you think I can guarantee—?”

“Just get the word out, Behan. Do what you have to. If she gets hurt, you'll wish you'd never been born.”

Returning to the hotel, he checked again on Virgil, who was still alive but only barely. Ignoring Allie's red-eyed glare, he went down the hall to his own room.

“Pack,” he told Josie. “You're going back to San Francisco.”

“I'm not scared,” she lied, wet-eyed. “I won't leave you, Wyatt.”

“Take Higgs and go home,” he said, pulling her valise out of the wardrobe. “I can't think about you now.”

My brother is dying, he meant. I need you to be safe.

Of course, she didn't hear it that way. It was all on her face—what she thought, what she felt. There was never any guessing with Josie, no trying to figure her out. Shocked, hurt, angry, she stood up and began to stuff clothing into her bag.

Just as well, he thought, for she was willing to leave him now.

IN THE HOURS FOLLOWING
THE ATTACK
on Virgil Earp, Marshal Crawley Dake sent one telegram after another to Washington. He
might as well have been howling at the moon for all the good it did. Despairing of support from his superiors, Dake took out a $300 personal loan from Wells Fargo and telegraphed word to the bank in Tombstone: Let Deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp draw on the funds to field a posse and seek those responsible for shooting Virgil.

Ordering Doc Holliday and Texas Jack Vermillion to remain in Tombstone to look after his brothers, Wyatt Earp and the rest of his deputies saddled up and left for Charleston, warrants in hand.

Johnny Behan watched them thunder out of town. An assault on a federal marshal, inside city limits, was out of his jurisdiction. Even if the posse brought their men in, he knew it would be impossible to hold anyone for the shooting. Billy B.'s testimony would be dismissed as hearsay. Ike's hat wasn't proof of anything but carelessness. Nevertheless, Sheriff Behan sent identical telegrams to Frank Stilwell, Curly Bill Brocius, and Ike Clanton, whom he knew were in Charleston.

                      
V EARP NEAR DEATH STOP US MARSHAL W EARP REQUESTS SAFE CONDUCT FOR J MARCUS TRAVELING DECEMBER 30 ON BENSON STAGE STOP GET WORD TO SPENCE AND RINGO STOP

This would, of course, warn all the suspects that Wyatt was now a federal officer on his way to arrest them, but hell . . . Johnny Behan was only doing what the marshal had requested.

ALMOST THREE HUNDRED MILES
NORTH,
waiting for Doc to meet her in Prescott, Kate Harony awoke after a long night spent drinking with old friends. She was only moderately hungover and found no reason to moan until she went downstairs for coffee and saw Virgil Earp's name in the headline of a newspaper somebody had left in the hotel café.

                             
The vendetta has opened in dead earnest in Tombstone with the attempted assassination of
Virgil Earp, who was dangerously wounded on December 29th. Until now some believed the threats of the Cow Boys to be idle boasts, but the shooting of Marshal Earp shows that the Cow Boys will have their revenge. Who will be next? Attorney Tom Fitch has been repeatedly threatened, as have Marshal Earp's brothers and associates. The turmoil in Tombstone is giving the entire Arizona Territory an unsavory reputation abroad, deterring the immigration of capital and respectable labor.

A brief note from Doc arrived the next day.

You will know by now what has happened in Tombstone. If I leave the city alone, I will be attacked on the road as John Clum was. Wyatt's posse has gone after those responsible. When they are under arrest, I will try to get to you. In the meantime, I am doing my best to be useful. Morgan is stronger, but Virgil's wounds are terrible. I do not see how he can survive. You were right. I never should have come back to Tombstone, but there is nothing for it now. Best you go on to Denver. I will come to you as soon as I can. JHH

“YOUR BROTHER'S BLOOD
cries out to me from the ground.” That's what Johnny Ringo had whispered over and over while they waited to ambush Virgil Earp.

“Eye for eye,” Ike said. “Brother for brother.”

“They won't get away with it,” Frank Stilwell muttered when Virgil Earp turned onto Allen Street. “Biggety goddam Yankees.”

It was Ringo who'd made sure the double-barreled shotguns were loaded for buck, and he kept everyone liquored up while they waited
for the marshal to stroll around that corner. When Virgil pulled even, they by-God let him have it and took off running afterward, which was when Ike lost his hat.

The horses were waiting in front of a saloon down on Toughnut Street. They hit those saddles and raced out of town, laughing like schoolboys. It felt good, like a dash for the border after a cattle raid, your heart beating and your horse's breath like a train engine:
chuff, chuff, chuff.

A mile out of Tombstone, they slowed some, for there was no sign of pursuit, but they kept up a good pace until they got to Frank Stilwell's saloon down in Charleston. There they bragged, and drank deep, and celebrated until dawn. Then they staggered off to Stilwell's back room and slept the sleep of the drunken righteous, and did not stir until Curly Bill Brocius kicked them awake.

“What in hell have you fools done now?” he asked, waving Johnny Behan's telegram at them. When they told him, he cursed them for boneheaded, cracker jackasses. “Virgil Earp was a federal marshal!” he cried. “This's going to bring the whole goddam government down on us!”

Slow on his best day, still half-drunk from the night before, Ike looked stupider than usual. “What should we do?” he asked Curly Bill. “What are we gonna do now?”

“Why, turn ourselves in,” Ringo said with that strange-eyed, dreamy smile of his. The others howled but Ringo's serenity never wavered, for he had thought this matter through. “We're going to ask Johnny Behan for protective custody.”

“But they'll put us on trial,” Stilwell protested.

“Of course they will.” Ringo looked at Curly Bill. “And we'll have plenty of witnesses to testify that we were here in Charleston the night Virgil Earp got shot. Won't we, Bill.”

Frank and Ike waited, anxious eyes on Curly Bill, who was silent for a while but nodded in the end. Even Curly Bill was scared of Ringo.

ON FEBRUARY 2, 1882,
five suspects came before the Cochise County Court in connection with the shooting of Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp. The charge against them remained attempted murder; thirty-four days after being hit with four charges of buckshot, the marshal was still fighting for his life. Eight men and three whores swore that each of the defendants were in Charleston on the night of the attack on Marshal Virgil Earp. The case was dismissed for lack of evidence. The accused were released.

For five weeks, the Associated Press had provided the world with lurid coverage of the attack on Virgil Earp, which was labeled Cow Boy revenge for what was being called “the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” because it took too long to set the type for “Gunfight in the Vacant Lot behind Camillus Fly's Photography Studio Near Fremont Street.”

The A.P. carried news of the attackers' exoneration as well, and two weeks after the trial, the
Nugget'
s editor, Harry Woods, received a bizarre letter from England.

Dear sir, can you obtain for me a good specimen of the genus Homo known as the cow-boy? Send him to me by registered mail. I understand that cow-boys are just too, too awfully utter. Yours sincerely, Oscar Wilde

T
HERE COMES A TIME WHEN THE SMART MONEY GETS
out. That's what people were whispering in March of 1882. The Tough Nut's been seeping for a year, they said. That new shaft at the Grand Central just hit water. The Contention's bringing in a Cornish engine that can pump out half a million gallons a day, but who else can afford equipment like that?

Silver's done. Copper's the next big thing. Bisbee is booming, and you're less likely to get hit by a stray bullet down there.

Did you see what happened last week? Johnny Ringo and Doc Holliday almost had it out with pistols on Allen Street!

Ringo was drunk. He probably started it.

Well, I heard Holliday say, “All I want of
you
is ten paces in the street!”

The city police stepped in to stop them, but it's only a matter of time before somebody else gets killed, and I don't want it to be me.

It's time to sell out. It's time to take what you can get and go.

“TALK TO WYATT, MORG.
He'll listen to you.” That's what Lou was saying, and Allie, and James, and Bessie. Even Virgil said, “There's no future for us here.”

The family was hemorrhaging money. The doctors' bills alone were staggering. They were still paying on Morgan's three surgeries,
and Virgil needed constant care. Bessie was sick, and Mattie Blaylock required a steady supply of laudanum to keep her quiet. Al Bilicke was giving them a break on the entire second floor of the Cosmopolitan, but he couldn't carry the Earps forever. And they didn't dare go home because the death threats kept coming and it was too difficult to guard three houses.

One by one, Johannes Fronk's volunteers had drifted away. Which meant paying the replacements. Turkey Creek Jack Johnson and Texas Jack Vermillion and the others were friends, but they still needed room and board. And now Johnny Behan had persuaded Ike Clanton to refile murder charges against the Earps and Doc Holliday. There wasn't any new evidence that could overturn the earlier decisions, but this would mean more of lawyers' fees on top of everything else.

Meanwhile, their income had all but dried up. Allie had her sewing machine brought from home and the girls were doing what they could to help, but it was a pittance laid against all the bills. Wyatt still got $125 a month as a deputy marshal. James had reopened his tavern in January, but business was way down. Even Chinese laborers knew it was dangerous to associate with an Earp.

Doc, at least, was making some money, for John Meagher had allowed him to go back to work at the Alhambra. The Cow Boys might well make trouble, but Meagher understood that Doc was trying to cover Morgan and Lou's expenses as well as his own.

The dentist was risking a bullet every time he left the hotel, but Morgan envied him. At least Doc got outside for a few minutes a day.

Wyatt was gone a lot, too. All winter, he rode out with one posse after another. Livestock theft along the border always picked up in the spring. Bisbee payrolls were attracting thieves from all over the country and stagecoaches were getting robbed regularly. Arrests were made, but nothing would stick. Everybody always had an alibi. Each time a Cow Boy left the courtroom unscathed, the insolence and provocation got worse. Without his brothers to back him up, Wyatt was taking the
brunt of it all, and when he got back to the hotel, he was beat down to his boots.

Morgan had begun pacing the hotel hallways—not strong enough to ride with Wyatt, too restless to read, too bored to sit. He hated to complain, but life inside the Cosmopolitan was close to intolerable. The girls could hardly stand the sight of one another. There was a lot of squabbling, and Lou was fed up. “If I wanted sister wives,” she told Morg, “I would have stayed in Utah.” James and Bessie were ready to sell out and leave on their own. Even Virgil said, “This is no way to live.”

“Talk to Wyatt, Morgan,” they all said. “Wyatt will listen to you.”

“WYATT, DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER
why we came to Tombstone?” Morgan asked over supper when they were alone and the time seemed right. “We came here to get rich, right? Well, the money is gone. The silver's underwater. Half the miners have been laid off. Hell, even the Chinamen are leaving town! James says his place is empty most of the time. He's in a hole, and it's getting deeper. We all are.”

“The election's eight months away,” Wyatt said. “With the Bisbee taxes coming in, it'll be forty grand a year for the sheriff, and I'll pay everything off.”

Lips compressed with the effort to hold back what he was thinking, Morgan looked away. There wasn't a chance in hell that Wyatt would ever be sheriff of Cochise County. Even here in Tombstone, City Council and the town police force had distanced themselves from anyone who'd been involved with the gunfight. An entirely fresh slate of town officials had been elected in January.

“Wyatt,” he said carefully, “people don't want to be reminded of what happened last October. Everybody wants to put it behind them. Voters. Virgil and Allie. Lou
hates
it here—she always has! James and Bessie want to leave. Doc wants to try Colorado. Let's just go. Just sell everything off, pack up, and get the hell out of here.”

“I don't know, Morg . . .”