Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  Now, not having ate at all well the evening before, I decided to splurge and get me a good feed at one of the finer restaurants in Tombstone, the Can Can, regardless of expense, so I did so and got the whole business from soup to nuts, which was literal and included amongst its many courses fricassee of chicken, luxurious eating in them days, and custard pie, costing me fifty cents all told.

  When I left the Can Can after the meal, there’s Sheriff Behan talking with Marshal Earp, standing on the opposite corner, out front of Hafford’s saloon, Virgil holding a short-barreled shotgun, and alongside him is his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, as well as Doc Holliday, on whose skinny frame hung a long heavy gray overcoat, which nobody but him would of worn in Tombstone at midday. Doc was also carrying a cane, which I never seen him do before, but somebody later said he was feeling weak from the consumption. If so, shooting people would buck him up, as would shortly be seen.

  I never paid no attention to this bunch, nor them to me, and being inside the Can Can I had no way of knowing that Wyatt had not long before had another run-in with the Clantons and McLaurys outside George Spangenberg’s gun shop, a couple doors down the street, and Johnny Behan, who generally took the cowboy’s side in any difference of opinion, was likely doing so now.

  As usual I had some leftovers from my meal wrapped in a bandanna as a treat for Pard, who by the way was eating so good he had filled out real nice since showing up all tattered skin and bones in Dodge. The only thing I worried about was if he wandered into Hop Town, the Chinese section of Tombstone between Second and Third streets, where, operating hand laundries, they was the hardest-working folks I ever seen. The white saloons might never close, but the people employed there got time off, whereas every Chinaman I ever saw in a laundry seemed to work all twenty-four hours, at least there he was, with his pigtail, amidst clouds of steam every time you passed, night and day, and they done all of this on an occasional bowl of rice—and maybe cooked dog, according to what them drinkers at the Oriental bar said, which ordinarily I took with a grain of salt, but having ate that dish myself while amongst the Cheyenne, I admit to having some concern.

  Well, I was going along Allen Street in the homewards direction, and when I was passing the O.K. Corral I seen, directly across the street at the Dexter stables, a group of fellows including the Clanton brothers, Frank and Tom McLaury, and that Billy Claiborne I mentioned a while back for being one of the many who liked to be called Billy the Kid. This bunch was conferring together in a way that reminded me of the Earps and Behan, back on Hafford’s Corner, but I didn’t have no reason to connect the two groups, especially insofar as these boys seemed to be collecting their horses, ready to leave town for their ranches.

  Seeing the open yard of the O.K. Corral, I decided to cut through there over to Fremont, in the alley between the Papago Cash Store and Bauer’s butcher shop, on account of I preferred the shops there as opposed to the stables of Allen. The only hazard was in passing Fly’s boardinghouse should Kate Elder be in residence, but the time being only early afternoon, she was probably still sleeping it off from last night, and in peace if Doc was where I last seen him.

  Well, I was wrong and here’s what happened. I got past Fly’s all right, but between that house and Harwood’s was the vacant lot, and who’s in it now is not only Kate Elder, but she’s bending down to talk to—Pard!

  If you recall the times she was at my place, Pard left and stayed away till she was gone, but she was paying a lot of attention to him now and using that kind of lingo dogs seem to like when it comes from women, maybe it’s the maternal touch, them animals having a childish streak all their lives.

  Anyway, there’s old Pard, head cocked to the side, listening with every evidence of pleasure to her say stuff like “Oo, ain’t um a real nice doggy.” In fact he was so taken with this that he never paid no attention to me at all for a few seconds, and I was torn between what I admit was jealousy and a temptation to keep going before Kate noticed me. But Pard couldn’t afford to long neglect his main mission in life, to eat as much as possible, for what was only a novelty, so that black nose of his twitched on picking up the aroma of the pieces of chicken I was carrying in the bandanna, and he leaves his new friend and runs to the old one.

  “Say there,” Kate says when she sees me emptying the contents of that bandanna on the ground, “that ain’t chicken, is it? Don’t you know them bones will get stuck in a dog’s throat?”

  I couldn’t as yet tell if she had been drinking or not. I said without looking up, “That rule don’t apply with this here animal, who’s a cross between an Indian dog and a coyote. He’ll kill and eat a prairie chicken every part but the feathers.”

  “I been thinkin’ of getting a nice pooch for my own self,” says she, smiling real sweet, and she adds, “For when I’m lonely, which is an awful lot.” She comes closer when I straightened up, and her smile has got warmer. She wasn’t drunk, so she didn’t remember she ever seen me before.

  Pard of course had swallowed the food immediately and, seeing I never had no more, turned and loped off in that stride which could of been mistaken for a coyote by someone not too careful about what he shot, yet that dog had survived in a world full of menaces.

  “Yes, ma’am,” says I, “and now I got to get me to work.”

  “I expect you own one of the richer mines,” Kate tells me, moving near enough so I can smell her scent, though I should say as I had been smelling it since I was twenty foot away, it was now like my nose was in a perfume bottle. “A man important as you makes his own time.”

  At this point along Fremont comes the Clanton boys, Ike and Billy, Billy leading his horse, and they stop in front of the lot where me and Kate was standing. Ike is talking to his brother, all worked up, and don’t pay us no attention, but Billy Claiborne, who had followed along behind, grins at Kate real familiar. I don’t know if he knowed her or not, but Allie Earp had told me he was always after every female he seen.

  Kate sniffed and tossed her head. “Come on,” she says, “let’s move away from these cowboy trash.”

  So her and me step out to the sidewalk, passing Ike and his brother, who walk into the lot, along with the horse. They still don’t pay us no heed. Ike’s doing the talking, and at this minute he mentions Doc Holliday, with obvious hatred.

  Kate hears him too, and self-centered as she was, she interprets his use of the name as referring to herself, and with credit, and she grabs my arm and says confidentially, “It is true that Dr. Holliday is crazy about me, but I claim the right to make my own friends.”

  She’s bigger than me and has a grip on my upper arm that is all but lifting my foot off the ground on that side, and right about the time I’m wondering that if to get free I’m going to have to stamp on her foot or something drastic, she gasps and says, “Oh, my God! Here he comes.”

  And as I’m being pulled into the door of Fly’s house, I look down Fremont and see, a block away, coming in our direction, that bunch of tall Earps last seen at Hafford’s Corner, and alongside them is the slightly shorter figure of Doc Holliday.

  Inside Fly’s I don’t get out of Kate’s clutch till she has slammed the door behind us.

  “Goddammit, woman, will you get off me?” I says, prying off her fingers one by one.

  “Go out there then and get kilt!” she yells. “He’s crazy jealous, I warn you.”

  “I ain’t touched you!” says I with heat, and open the door and look out just as the McLaury brothers arrive at the lot, Frank leading a horse, so now there’s five men and two large animals in what’s a pretty narrow space, and if that’s not enough, added to the collection already present comes Sheriff Behan, a refined-looking person compared to the other principals, balding with his hat off though it was on now, but he always looked more like a merchant to me than an officer of the law, at which at least in appearance the Earps had the edge on everybody, especially when they was walking together, three abreast, wearing black.

  Johnny Behan says something to
the cowboys, which I couldn’t hear but believed was likely to be friendly, and next he walks down to stop the Earp bunch in front of Bauer’s meat shop and either warns them off for their own protection as he later claimed, or in Wyatt’s version, to assure them he had disarmed the cowboys, a damn lie that could of got the Earps killed.

  Anyway, whatever Behan said, the Earp boys and Doc Holliday resumed their stride and would of walked right over him had he not gotten out of their way. As marshal, Virgil had jurisdiction in town, and he claimed later he had deputized his brothers and Doc.

  At that point Kate hooks her hand into my belt in back and yanks me into the house. “I ain’t gonna let you die for the crime of loving me!” says she. “C’mon, I’ll hide you out in the photo gallery.” Meaning the building behind the rooming house which Camillus Fly used for his camera work. And she tugs mightily, lifting me off my feet for a second. I’ll tell you that woman was a caution, and I might of popped her one had I not remembered that was Doc’s way, so instead I says, “Dearie, I’ll be obliged if you let me walk on my own,” and as soon as she let me go I was through the door and into the street, which you might see as out of the frying pan, but I didn’t want Kate hampering me if there was going to be a gunfight in the near neighborhood. The thin walls of a Tombstone building wouldn’t protect much from flying lead, not to mention I liked to see what was going on when guns were likely to be discharged in my vicinity.

  So I trot across the street and get behind a wagon parked there, just past the shop of a dressmaker named Addie Borland, and I watch the Earp delegation approach the lot full of cowboys and horses.

  Virgil’s in the lead now, and he’s carrying what looks like the same cane Doc Holliday was using earlier, whereas Doc, walking at the outside, has got that shotgun formerly held by Virge, holding it inside the overcoat with his left hand, which can be seen when the breeze blows back the coat flap. In Doc’s right hand is a nickel-plated six-shooter. Morgan Earp has also drawn a pistol. Wyatt’s hand is within a pocket of his black tailcoat.

  There was other uninvolved people on that block of Fremont Street that day, like a fellow name of Bob Hatch, which owned a billiard parlor, and Billy Allen and R. F. Coleman, with some watching from neighboring buildings like Addie Borland and a judge named Lucas who was looking out his office window down the street in a structure known as the Gird Block, and all of them saw a part of the action, and everybody give a different version of it at the coroner’s inquest and the subsequent murder trial, but the only true account of what really happened follows right here, and ain’t never been heard before because I never testified anyplace, which failure will be explained I hope to the satisfaction of all.

  When the Earp bunch reached the edge of the lot between Fly’s and Harwood’s—at the outset of the fight miscalled the Battle of the O.K. Corral, whereas them cowboys as I have said only took a shortcut through the O.K. and never even kept their horses there—they stopped, and Wyatt says in a loud voice, “You sons of bitches have been looking for a fight, and now you’ve got it.”

  But Virgil, who’s in official charge of the party and is showing only that cane and furthermore holds it in his right or gun hand, says, “You boys throw up your hands. I want your guns.”

  Now at this point Doc Holliday lifted his nickel-plated pistol and shot Frank McLaury in the belly at a range of no more than six feet.

  Virgil yells, “Hold on,” at somebody though it’s hard to tell who.

  A split second after Doc’s first shot, Morgan Earp shoots Billy Clanton in the left side of the chest, from no more than a foot away, Billy being blown back against the side of the Harwood house, and he slid down to the ground, ending up in the position of a Mexican sleeping against a wall. His horse moved calmly away.

  Frank McLaury had been holding the reins of his own horse, which was standing behind him, and though wounded bad by Doc, he never let go of the mount but pulled it with him as he staggered out into Fremont Street, coming close to where I was crouched behind that wagon, which had a solid wood bed but its spoked wheels wouldn’t of stopped much lead, and looking down at them who do I see but my dog!

  “Jesus, Pard,” I says, “why’d you come back here now?”

  He wagged his tail at me, displaying an animal’s lack of foresight for this type of danger: people shooting at one another across the street didn’t mean nothing to him. But I couldn’t pay no further mind to him at the moment.

  Meanwhile there had been more gunfire. Doc had emptied his pistol and fetching out the shotgun from his coat, he blasted a double load of buckshot into Tom McLaury’s chest at the usual close range, and that was the meanest weapon of all, its shells packing nine pellets each as big as a .38 slug, so it was a wonder Tom could hold himself together with crossed arms while lurching out of the lot and getting as far as the corner of Third before he fell.

  Now all the shooting had happened real quick, and none of the cowboys had yet to pull a trigger, nor had either Wyatt nor Virgil Earp. Billy Claiborne by the way had run out of the lot when the action started and jumped into Fly’s rooming house, which would of put him at close quarters with Kate, if she was still behind the door.

  Now Ike Clanton grabs at Wyatt, yelling, “I ain’t heeled, goddammit!”

  Wyatt’s got a pistol out, and he might of shot Ike down, for he was outraged that the fellow who more than any other caused this fight would be the one who was unarmed when it came, but Ike kept yelling so that everybody watching could hear, and Wyatt pushed him away, and Ike too runs into Fly’s to join Billy Claiborne and, I guess, Kate Elder.

  Though fallen against the Harwood wall, Billy Clanton had drawed a pistol and begun to fire back at the Earp party. In addition to the wound in his chest he had another in his right wrist and was therefore using his left to shoot, but was doing real damage to his enemies, hitting both Virgil and Morgan, each of which fell then got up, Virge joining Wyatt in returning Billy’s fire, while Morg and Doc come after, running out into the street after Frank McLaury, who was desperately trying to get the Winchester out of the scabbard on his horse, but that animal, quiet till now, was veering away and finally panicked as they will under too much urgency without no rider in the saddle, and it reared and broke and galloped away down the street, raising a cloud of that lime dust for which Fremont was noted except when it rained, so Frank drawed his pistol.

  With Doc and Morgan advancing on him, he took time to boast to the latter, “I got you now!”

  Doc replied with some profane abuse, and Frank sent a shot that would on a better day for the McLaurys have struck the dentist square, but when your number’s up nothing goes right—I seen that with Custer—so the slug hit the several layers of thick leather of the belted holster and hurt Doc only slightly, and having emptied the shotgun he had traded it for another of his pistols, and him and Morgan kept up a fire that drove Frank across the street, right past me, the lead snapping by uncomfortable close, some thudding into the side of the wagon. I could feel Pard finally taking this serious and huddling against my boots.

  Frank reached the corner of the adobe building next to Addie Borland’s and was shooting back at his attackers, but he was weak now from that slug he had took at the start, which was not a whole minute earlier but seemed like an hour before, and having to rest his wavering pistol on his good forearm, none of his shots hit their mark, and when he turned and looked down to reload, one of the multitude of bullets sent his way by Doc and Morg went into his head just behind the right ear, and Frank McLaury fell down dead, though Doc wouldn’t believe it and come running gun in hand, cursing the fallen cowboy and would of shot him further when, though unarmed and taking my own life in my hands, I had seen enough, and I walked away from the wagon and says, “Skin it back, Doc. The man has died.”

  Doc lowered his gun and still glaring down at Frank’s body and not my way, asks real disgusted, “What took the son of a bitch so long?” And then he made a statement probably only Doc Holliday in all the world would of sai
d, in its mix of indignation and wonderment. “That son of a bitch shot me!”

  Well sir, that was the so-called O.K. fight from start to finish so far as the shooting went, though across the street Billy Clanton, who had taken one hit after another and now laid flat on the ground but was trying to lift his head, was also still trying with dying fingers to cock his single-action Colt’s and keep fighting. He might of been a good-for-nothing, but it had been him who after taking a slug in the chest at close range and having his gun hand disabled by another, had used his left to wound both Virgil and Morgan Earp. Not to mention that his big brother had run away.

  I went over there once the shooting had stopped, along with a number of the other onlookers, and we was joined by Camillus Fly, the photographer, who come out of his house now, toting a rifle and yelling at everybody else to take Billy Clanton’s gun away, but not wanting to get plugged nobody paid him any mind, so Fly finally done it himself, at which time Billy says, in a voice that was weak but clear, “Get me some more cartridges.”

  Somebody decided to carry him inside the house on the other side of Harwood’s, and I volunteered to help but three or four bigger fellows did it, Billy between howls of pain asking them to pull off his boots, for he had promised his old Ma not to die with them on. I had heard that expression before, but never did figure out what it meant.

  Tom McLaury was still laying where he fell, and they carried him into the house too. Of them on the field of battle, he alone had displayed no weapon whatever, to my observation, and none was found on the street, so if he had a gun it was presumably on his dead person, but in fact when the coroner got there not long after, he didn’t find no weapon on Tom either. There were them who, excusing the Earps, claimed though Tom had left his regular pistol at the Capitol saloon earlier in the day, he was carrying a hideout gun, but if so, he never showed it in the fight and it disappeared thereafter.