The Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  “So that was the truth?”

  “It was the truth I turned him in,” says Kate, “but it weren’t the fact that I really know if he helped hold up the Benson stage or not. I just said what I did to pay him back for being so mean to me.”

  “I ain’t going to kill him for you,” I told her. “Get that idea out of your head.”

  She looked shocked. “Why, I wouldn’t ask you for that. I am real fond of Doc and couldn’t ever want him hurt. What I was thinking was maybe you could say a word to him on my behalf. He thinks the world of you.”

  I swear, Doc never even knowed he ever seen me before, and he hadn’t much, except for working on my teeth in Dodge, for dealing faro at the Alhambra he seldom came to the Oriental. I told her she was badly mistaken about me, so she should take her appeal to Wyatt or someone else friendly to him.

  “Doc ain’t got no friends but Wyatt!” she wails. “Everybody else hates him, including the other Earps. And Wyatt hates me!” Tears begun to trickle out of them blackened eyes and run streaking down her face. “Doc’ll cut my guts out, I know he will. He told me I ain’t worth the cost of a bullet.”

  I felt sorry for her, but I was disgusted too. “Why do you love that fellow?”

  “It’s just his nature. He can’t help it. His nerves is real bad. He told me once the only time he’s not nervous is when he’s shooting somebody or pulling teeth.” She starts crying real hard, digging her fists into her eyes like a little kid, and I think I have already noted that a weeping female could generally get what she wanted out of me.

  So I says, “All right, settle down. I’ll speak a word to Doc, but don’t blame me if it don’t work.”

  Kate advised me to wait till he woke up naturally, not before noon, for having gambled all night he needed his sleep and might come to life shooting at anyone who disturbed him before time, which meant I’d be working, so I said I’d do it as soon as I could, and I guess I would of, for when I give my word I mean it.

  But as it happened, lucky for me, before nightfall Kate was drunk again, creating a public disturbance, and Virgil Earp threw her in the hoose-gow. Meantime the charges against Doc was dropped for lack of evidence. What I was grateful for was that Kate lost no time in getting out of town again. Reason I never told her I wasn’t Ringo should be obvious, and my good sense was confirmed a few days later when I run into Allie at Bauer’s butcher shop, where she was buying steak for Virge and I was after a bone for Pard.

  On the way home she tells me Doc Holliday found out it was Johnny Ringo who plied Kate with liquor and got her to charge Doc with the stage holdup.

  “How’d he know that?”

  “Kate told him,” says Allie. “She said Ringo took her in before when Doc give her a beating. You know what Doc told her? ‘You stupid bitch,’ he says, ‘didn’t it never occur to you Ringo wouldn’t have no use for an ugly whore like yourself except to damage me?’ That’s what really hurt her feelings, even more than beating her up again, which he proceeded to do.”

  I figured Allie included that last observation for my benefit, to teach me something more about females. Ever since I admitted not understanding them, she would give me such tips.

  “Thing is, though,” I says, “ain’t she been connected with Doc for a long time? So how does it make sense for him to knock her so much?”

  “Why, the consumption’s gonna kill him soon, so what’s he care?”

  I thought this a peculiar sort of answer but dropped the subject, as did Allie, who had more than one woman confiding in her. She started in next on Wyatt and his girlfriend, who was an actress with a theatrical troupe come to Tombstone, where before long she had moved in with that sheriff the Earps considered their enemy, Johnny Behan.

  “So he took her away from Johnny,” I says. “That must make Wyatt feel good.”

  “I’ll tell you what makes him feel even better,” says Allie. “Sadie’s Pa is a rich merchant up in San Francisco.” She squints at me. “But if that’s so, then why’s she such a loose female?” We had reached her house by then, with Wyatt and Mattie’s place next door, so she spoke in a lower tone. “Too many of the wrong kind has got too many women, whereas a nice fellow like yourself is all alone. I’d sure like to find a girl for you, Jack, ’cause I know you’d treat her right.”

  I joshed her a bit. “How’d you know that? I might be civil to you only because your man is chief of police.”

  “Why,” Allie says seriously, “I can tell from the way you look after your dog. You can always tell about people how they treat their animals. I used to have a spotted dog I named for my little brother Frank. An Indian give him to me.”

  “Is that right? I think Pard might of been an Indian dog.”

  “This boy brought him around to our cabin, and Frank he just run in and jumped on the bed and wouldn’t come down, so the boy left him there. Best dog I ever owned. He always wanted to sleep on the bed with Virge and myself, but he wouldn’t touch a piece of fallen meat till you told him he could have it.”

  Pard was just the opposite. He didn’t have no interest in my cot, but anything eatable that fell near him he would catch before it hit the ground.

  Now, I have mentioned that fire in Tombstone. Hardly had it burned out for lack of water and was rebuilt than the rain begun to fall, as it rarely done in that region, and in such quantities that the resulting floods made the roads into town impassable, stopping goods deliveries and the mails, and undermined some buildings. Tombstone was a place of extremes, including its two newspapers, one, the Nugget, favoring the so-called cowboys and the second, the Epitaph, on the side of the tinhorn gamblers also sometimes called the Earp Gang by the other side. Law enforcement showed the same split. Whereas at Dodge City there had been cooperation between the county sheriff and the marshal of the town, both being members of the Masterson family or their pals during the time I was there, in Tombstone them two officials was totally opposed, and each was supported by a faction with a reputation for violence. Let me say I never belonged to either, not being much attracted to the Earps even when Bat was in town, and I had never in my life had a lot of regard for cowboys even when they wasn’t outlaws. I’ll admit to a prejudice, having no doubt seen only their worst side in saloons and whorehouses, when it is a rare man who would make a good impression and then only if he come to sell Bibles. I realize now when they was working, on the three months of the cattle drive, they was doing more for the betterment of the country than almost anything I personally had accomplished, in effect feeding lots of people including me. So looking back I expect I ought to apologize for my narrow-mindedness.

  However them they called cowboys in Tombstone was up to no good so far as I could see then or now, and if I speak more about the Earps, much of it critical, it’s due to my associations and not because I was ever inclined towards their adversaries, which now included fellows named Frank Stilwell and Pete Spence, who robbed the stage to Bisbee and was caught by a posse of Earps but was immediately bailed out by the Clantons. And the McLaurys was mad that Stilwell and Spence had even been arrested, and talked of getting revenge.

  The enmity between the two crowds got worse than ever when Ike Clanton accused Wyatt of violating a confidence, which Wyatt probably done, but the fact was the secret that Ike wanted kept quiet probably wouldn’t have become known to many people had he not made such a fuss about it.

  Back some months earlier, Wyatt Earp had gotten the bright idea that though the Clantons and McLaurys was friends with the outlaws that had attacked the Benson stage, they would gladly lure the three back to be captured if he saw that Ike and Company got the reward money, while Wyatt himself took the glory, which might get him voted in to replace Sheriff Johnny Behan next election. You might say Wyatt understood the criminal mind so well because it was as cynical as his own.

  But of course the deal was off once them outlaws was dead by others’ hands, so the Clantons and McLaurys not only didn’t profit, but if it come to be known to their other lowlife pals
, they wouldn’t be trusted by nobody—if allowed to continue to live.

  There I was one evening in the fall of the year, eating supper at the Occidental lunchroom, when through the front door comes Doc Holliday, which was never good news, and behind him there’s Kate Elder, which might be worse. She was all spiffied up, I’ll say that for her, hair piled high and fancy clothes, and she’s got that superior look a person of her kind alternates with the woebegone expression appropriate to laying in a gutter.

  Whenever Kate was in the rare condition of being both sober and not showing evidence of recent beatings, she considered herself an aristocrat who had strayed by accident amongst the peasants. Allie told me Kate claimed to have been born in the land of Hungary, where everybody belongs to the nobility, but maybe she just said she was hungry.

  Which I sure was, chewing my steak, but I lost my appetite when I seen that pair, though being down the counter a good ways from her, Kate didn’t sight me as yet. But the situation proceeded to worsen, for I have neglected to mention that another person eating at the Occidental that night was Ike Clanton, who I barely knew by sight and hadn’t even yet recognized now till Doc Holliday, spotting him, calls out his name accompanied by “son of a bitch,” Doc meanwhile reaching into his coat for the shoulder-holstered pistol, the nearest of several weapons he usually carried.

  There being no place for me to hide, and I didn’t dare make a sudden move that might spook Doc into action, I just froze, along with the others not involved on both sides of the counter.

  Doc hadn’t drawn yet. He first wanted to explain to Ike why he was going to kill him, which you might see as a sort of courtesy though expressed with a deal of foul language, for it was my belief that Doc generally shot first and left the palaver for later. He was also being unselfish, his complaint against Ike not concerning himself personally but rather what Ike had supposedly said about Wyatt.

  Ike managed to save his life by yelling, “I ain’t heeled!”

  Then, as if the place ain’t already crowded enough with troublemakers, while honest folk was just trying to fill their bellies, in come Wyatt and Morgan Earp.

  I ain’t said much about Morg, the youngest of the Earp brothers then in town (as there was the oldest, named Jim, a gambler and businessman who didn’t involve himself in the others’ fights), but he was a younger version of Wyatt who looked a lot like him and was a bit more agreeable though more hotheaded.

  Now seeing Doc taking on Ike, Morg also goes inside his own coat, and Ike gets called a son of a bitch once again, and again he had to repeat, even more anxious, his little beady eyes blinking and goatee twitching, “Goddammit, I ain’t heeled!”

  At this point Kate, cold sober, had enough sense of self-preservation to leave by the front door, which I tell you relieved me of an even greater worry than of being hit by a stray bullet, and in fact Wyatt now stopped his people from going further and shooting down an unarmed man in front of so many witnesses, and he told Ike to get out of the place.

  Which Ike proceeded hastily to do, though at the door he turned and said, “I’ll thank you not to shoot me in the back.” And then he run out, followed by Doc’s and Morgan’s renewed curses and strong suggestions he arm himself for their next meeting.

  I had lost my appetite for food but badly needed a drink, and headed for the next-door Alhambra saloon, which you could enter off the Occidental. But first thing I saw up front inside the Alhambra when I got there was Kate’s high-piled hair and hat on top of that, so I quick reverse-marched and went out through the lunchroom, on the sidewalk in front of which Wyatt and Morgan and Doc had been joined by Virgil, who was friendly enough to me on account of Allie.

  So now when Virge bids hello to me in a genial fashion and steps away from the group, I says, thinking I might hear from him more about this feud between his family and the Clanton bunch, “We’re heading the same way, Marshal.”

  “Oh, I’m not going home yet,” Virgil says. “I’m going to play some poker.” The only complaint I ever heard Allie make about him had to do with these all-night card games. “Say, Jack,” he goes on, “you want to play? So far there’s only Tom McLaury, Johnny Behan, and me.”

  The full significance of that table never hit me till afterwards, but even at the time I thought I’m damned if I ever understand what makes the Earps tick: they considered the McLaurys their bitter enemies and despised Sheriff Behan, yet Virge would stay up all night playing cards with the same people.

  Thinking back, I have sometimes regretted not playing a fourth hand that night, just for historical purposes, but I never did, not wanting to lose any of the nest egg I was building up again, and besides I had been superstitious about poker games ever since seeing Wild Bill get shot in the back while in one.

  Sol begged off, telling Virge I was all-in after a long day at the bar, and went along Allen Street in the direction of home and was just across the street from the Grand Hotel when out of it come Ike Clanton, a pistol in his hand.

  He glares over at me, and remember it’s night and easy to misidentify a person, so though I don’t know him personally, I quick crossed the street, hands away from my body, and come closer so he can see I’m unarmed.

  He don’t shoot me, but he ain’t too friendly either. “You seen Doc Holliday? I aim to kill him.”

  “I expect he went to bed,” says I. “You might want to sleep on it yourself.”

  “I can’t sleep till I kill at least one of them sons of bitches,” Ike tells me. “They all ganged up on me while I was trying to eat my supper, and I wasn’t heeled.” He pushes past me and goes down the street with a stride that is both determined and none too steady, not the best condition in which to head towards trouble.

  But in fact what Ike Clanton ended up doing that night was, if you can believe it, making a fourth in the poker game with Tom McLaury, Johnny Behan, and Virgil Earp!

  Well, there wasn’t nothing I could do about it except to steer clear of all who was armed with blood in their eye: one of my bedrock principles and maybe the best reason why I have lived as long as I have. So when Ike started off down the street in one direction, I continued hastily in the other, with only that worry that Kate Elder might find my shack again. But she didn’t.

  That trouble at the lunchroom was worked to Pard’s advantage: due to the interruption, a large hunk of the steak remained, and I brung it home for him.

  I had now lived in the world of saloons and gambling halls so long it seemed normal to stay up most of the night and sleep through the morning, so next day I got up not far before noon, by which time Pard, who kept his usual normal hours, had gone about his business, such as it was, hours earlier, and I went downtown to get me a bath and a shave, and would you believe it the first person I run into, on Fourth Street, was Ike Clanton, and he had a wilder look in his eye than ever, and now had added a rifle to the revolver he carried previously.

  I never knowed then he had played poker all night in that game with Virgil Earp, but he looked like he hadn’t gotten no sleep, with his squinty red eyes and drawn pale face.

  He glares at me. “You seen Doc Holliday?”

  “No, I have not,” I says.

  “Well, I aim to kill that son of a bitch,” says he, brandishing his Winchester.

  Now who should come around the corner right then and start towards us but Virgil and Morgan Earp, but Ike’s back is turned that way and he don’t detect them. I didn’t see no personal advantage in telling him. I just looked for a route of exit. Anyway, he goes on about how he has took his last insult from the Earps and their friends and how he ain’t scared of them bastards, bring ’em on one at a time or all together, and he is so deaf to anything but his own bluster that the brothers are able to walk right up unnoticed behind him, where Virge slams a Colt’s against his head, knocking Ike to the ground, and the Earps take his weapons away, arrest him for carrying them without a permit, and pulling him up, drag him into the recorder’s court, situated conveniently nearby.

  Now th
ere was at least two versions of what went on inside the court, according to what side you favored, and I wasn’t there so have had to figure out what was likely, and I believe Ike and Wyatt exchanged more threats of mayhem. But Virgil was town marshal and Ike broke the law, so the judge fined him and the marshal carried Ike’s rifle and pistol over to the Grand Hotel and put them into the custody of the barkeep. It was illegal for Ike to have firearms on his person in public without a permit, but they remained his possessions and he had a right to reclaim them when leaving town, which he was urged to do now.

  I went on to the barber’s, and when I left there after my bath and shave, I should mention I wasn’t alone on the street that famous day. Plenty of other people seen what happened too.

  Anyway, I turn the corner onto Fourth Street and just after exchanging good-days with Bauer, that butcher, who had stopped to talk with another fellow, I spot Wyatt Earp crossing the street on a diagonal from one side to meet Tom McLaury coming from the other, and no sooner do they meet than right away Wyatt punches young Tom in the face with his left hand and with his right draws the Colt’s and; does what he done so often to so many, including me, that it ought to be called not buffaloing but rather Wyattizing: hits him over the head with the barrel.

  Tom falls in the dust in the middle of the street, and Wyatt continues on to the sidewalk, right near me. He still has got his pistol out, holding it down against his leg, and he gives me a cold, grim stare like maybe if I wanted to object it wouldn’t be wise.

  One thing about buffaloing, it didn’t kill nobody. After a little while, probably waiting for Wyatt to get out of sight, Tom McLaury got up from the street, found his hat where it had rolled, dusted himself off, and begun to walk in a pretty groggy fashion, in the other direction to Wyatt’s. He had not been carrying any visible armament. I assure you from experience, him and Ike had bad headaches, which in Ike’s case lasted all day. Tom never had that long left to live.