by Mark Warren
Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury wore their pistols in plain sight, each gun holstered on a cartridge belt and angled at the left hip for a cross-draw. The Cow-boys stood diagonally across the lot between Fly’s and the Harwood house, their conversations suspended and their heads turned upon the arrival of the Earps. Two saddled horses took up room in the alleyway. One—Billy’s big bay—partially concealed Tom McLaury, who reached over the horse’s withers to take a grip on the stock of a rifle booted in a saddle sheath.
When Virgil and Wyatt approached the corner of Fly’s building, they stepped over a small ditch recently dug for a water pipe. Just a few paces into the lot, they stopped with Virgil deepest in the alleyway and Wyatt closer to the front corner of the boardinghouse. Morgan took a position near the ditch, and Doc remained in the street, where Tom McLaury now began to sidle toward the boardwalk as if he might bolt. Doc moved quickly toward Tom and pressed the muzzle of the shotgun into McLaury’s belly.
“You don’t want to leave the party early, do you?” Doc said through a tight smile. When Tom retreated back into the lot, Doc backed into the street for a better view of the thoroughfare.
West Fuller broke and ran for the gap in the buildings between the boardinghouse and the photographic studio that connected to it by a short walkway covered by an awning. Seeing Fuller’s retreat, “Kid” Claiborne began to sidestep along the same route.
Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton stiffened as though every muscle in their bodies had tensed. Tom peered over the bay again, only his head and shoulders showing above the bow of the saddle. Beneath his new gauze bandage, Ike Clanton’s eyes widened, showing a lot of white. His attention darted back and forth between each of the dark-suited men before him, until finally he focused on Wyatt. With his tongue flicking around his lips, Ike wiped his palms against his trousers and took two steps forward. Wild-eyed and mouth agape, he repeatedly pushed his palms at the air, as though the motion might somehow appease the lawmen.
“Where’s all your fight now, you little sonovabitch,” Morgan hissed to Ike. “It’s what you been askin’ for, ain’t it? Now you can have it.”
Virgil cut off all conversation by pointing the cane forward, sweeping it from Frank McLaury to Billy Clanton. “I want your guns!” he ordered. “Throw up your hands!” Virgil’s deep voice boomed off the building walls and filled the lot.
Frank reached across his body and gripped the butt of his revolver, and Billy did the same. Both men froze with their elbows cocked, their eyes flashing with nervous glints of light as they tried to keep watch over each of the lawmen spread out before them.
“Hold!” Virgil called out, raising the cane skyward, as if it might somehow take command over the moment. “I don’t mean that!”
Wyatt’s hand was buried in his pocket, his thumb hooked over the hammer of his Colt’s. He raised it enough to clear the hammer spur from the hem of the pocket and waited. Then the hammer on Frank’s holstered gun clicked back. Billy’s followed immediately.
Every man stood motionless, as if the cold day might offer one last chance at sanity. They were like a living photograph. Then one of the horses shifted and nickered, and the wind gusted and kicked up a swirl of dust between the two parties. “Kid” Claiborne had almost reached the safety of Fly’s buildings, leaving four men to face four in the lot, the parties standing not twelve feet apart. The moment hung as though a distant bell had been rung in a dream. All were listening to the plangent tone as it faded into the gray void of the sky—all trying to understand its meaning.
The town around them dissolved into irrelevance. For three heartbeats the small lot comprised the whole of the world. Wyatt’s vision relaxed to take in the scene as a whole, to see any motion that might arise. Frank first, he thought. Then Billy.
Growling some unintelligible grunt of defiance, Billy drew his gun in the instant before Frank pulled his. Both men bore down on Wyatt, their faces contorted with hatred as they aimed their revolvers. In a single smooth motion, Wyatt swung his gun up from his pocket, cocked the hammer, and fired. Two quick explosions shattered the silence in the small lot, and, in some peripheral outpost of consciousness, Wyatt acknowledged the ruin of the tacit shell of order that citizens expected to envelop a community.
Billy’s bullet whined past him, as Wyatt’s echoing shot buckled Frank McLaury at the waist. Frank groaned and clapped his free hand to his midsection, his belligerent face suddenly pale and open with shock.
An eerie pause held the fight in check. Even Virgil hesitated, the cane still held high in his right hand. Wyatt cocked his gun and held it steady on Billy, who had half turned, distracted by Frank’s guttural cry. Then rage flooded through the youngest Clanton, and he crouched down, aiming wildly, and fired.
Wyatt put a bullet in Billy’s chest, this followed immediately by a shot from Morgan into the stout boy’s gun arm. Billy fell heavily against the wall of the Harwood house, but he did not go down. Suddenly, the alley came alive with the explosions of gunpowder—Virgil on Wyatt’s left, Morgan on his right and, across from them, Frank and Billy, both staggering, managing to get off more shots. The air seemed to tear apart with the rending sounds of ripped cloth as clouds of smoke began to coalesce between the two parties. Dreamlike and disjointed, every movement seemed unnaturally slow and yet almost too quick to follow.
With empty hands raised before him, Ike rushed at Wyatt and grabbed his arm and shoulders. “I ain’t heeled, Wyatt,” Ike pleaded. “Don’t shoot me! I don’t wanna fight!”
“It’s commenced!” Wyatt growled. “Go to fightin’ or get away!” He slung Ike against the clapboard wall of the boardinghouse and turned back to the fight. Behind him he heard Ike claw his way up to Fly’s front porch.
Gunshots popped in erratic bursts. Billy and Frank would not quit. Then Virgil was down, cursing, then up again, firing his gun. Frank stumbled into the street, keeping himself upright with a white-fisted grip on the cheek strap of his panicked horse’s bridle. He gawked at the ground, his mouth open, drooling a string of spit.
Tom McLaury fired from beneath the other horse’s neck, but Wyatt took aim at Billy again and fired. Billy Clanton, who had kept up a left-handed fight, jerked and began a slow slide down the window of the Harwood building. He screamed something that was lost in the gunfire, and then he let go a wild shot, the bullet whining off the cold ground near Wyatt’s feet. Then Billy’s arm lowered as though the weight of the gun was too much for him.
“I’m hit!” Morgan yelled.
Wyatt glanced toward his younger brother and saw Morg getting back on his feet, aiming in the direction of the horse still in the lot. Then Morgan backed into the water ditch and fell again. Wyatt shot high into the haunch of the horse. When it bolted, the deep roar of Doc’s shotgun filled the street, and Tom McLaury staggered back, lost to view as he stumbled down the sidewalk toward Third Street.
As Billy struggled to cock his revolver again, Wyatt moved toward Morgan, who had pushed up on one arm to take aim at Frank McLaury in the street. Behind him he heard Virgil yelling at Billy Clanton to lay down his gun. Just then a gun report spun Wyatt to the alleyway between Fly’s house and photographic studio. He leveled his gun, but no one was there—only a cloud of smoke suspended at the corner of the building. Turning back to the fight, he found Billy Clanton sitting in the dirt, legs stretched out before him, his arms limp at his sides. Frank McLaury was weaving across the street, struggling to keep his balance, teeth bared as he snarled at his enemies.
Doc turned sideways to Frank, arm outstretched like a duelist, his small nickel-plated pistol gathering unnaturally bright light from the gray of the day. Releasing his horse, Frank McLaury raised his gun, using his left forearm as a rest.
“I got you now!” Frank growled at Doc, his raspy voice scraping from his throat like a strained cough.
“You’re a daisy if you do!” Doc taunted. “Blaze away!”
Doc fired, and, simultaneously, Morgan, half-sprawled on the ground, fired, too. McLa
ury’s gun went off as he crumpled headlong to the street. Immediately, Doc recoiled and lost his balance. In a flash he was up, hurrying toward the felled Cowboy, Doc’s nickel-plated revolver outstretched before him as though the gun were pulling him forward. But it was over.
Acrid smoke hung in the air and drifted in a ghostlike curtain across the alley, the memory of the gunfire still lingering between the buildings like a sustained echo.
Carrying a Henry rifle, Buck Fly ran out of his house in his shirtsleeves and entered the lot. Cautiously, he approached Billy Clanton and wrested away the boy’s gun.
“Gimme some goddamn bullets,” Billy begged, but he hadn’t even the strength to raise his hand.
Virgil hobbled backward and leaned against Fly’s building as he pulled up his trouser leg to examine his wound. Morgan sat in the street, blood soaking through his coat at either shoulder. Doc, with a hand clapped to his hip, hovered over Frank McLaury and screamed something that Wyatt could not hear for the blurred memory of muted gunfire still trapped inside his head.
Working on rote, Wyatt tapped the empty shells from his gun, let them drop into the lot, and then he reloaded. When Virgil nodded, Wyatt moved to Morgan to inspect his wounds.
“Wyatt?” Morg said, his face a mix of anger and regret.
“Quiet, Morg. You rest easy. We’ll get a doctor.”
“Wyatt, I’ve got a wagon ready.” It was Fred Dodge, who seemed to materialize out of nowhere. “The doctor’s on his way.”
Cradling the back of Morgan’s head in his hand, Wyatt looked toward the crowd gathered at the corner of Third Street. Through the copse of legs he glimpsed Tom McLaury’s dark vest and blue shirt, all of it now glistening with red.
“Take my brothers to Virgil’s house, Fred,” Wyatt said. “We need to get ’em off the street.”
“Wyatt!” called a strident voice, loud enough to be heard by the crowd gathering in the street.
Wyatt turned to see Johnny Behan marching out from Fly’s covered walkway, ordering people back from the alley. His face was set with unnatural determination. The sheriff slowed at the ditch and then stopped six feet away from Wyatt. Clasping his coat lapels Behan took in a deep breath. His pistol hung at his hip, more ornament than tool.
“Wyatt,” Behan announced, “I’m going to have to arrest you.”
The words were forced, as if rehearsed in front of a mirror. When Wyatt turned squarely to face him, Behan lost the erect carriage of his shoulders and seemed to be at a loss for more words. The onlookers edging past the two lawmen looked back to see Wyatt’s face.
“I’ll see any decent officer, but you won’t be arresting me today, Behan.”
“I am sheriff of Cochise County and—”
Behan closed his mouth when Wyatt took two steps toward him. The sheriff still smelled like a flower garden from his visit with the barber. His body leaned back as if a stiff wind had caught him unawares, but his boots remained fixed to the ground. Wyatt’s Colt’s was still in his hand, hanging down at arm’s length. Tightening his grip on the gun, he held cold eyes on Behan and watched the man’s attempt at bravado yield to a pallid fear. Wyatt despised everything about the man, but it would do him no good in the polls to knock the county sheriff senseless.
“You threw us, Johnny!” Wyatt said, his voice contained and private, yet carrying the ring of a blacksmith’s sledge. “You told us you’d disarmed them.”
Behan licked his lips and stared at three men in the vacant lot who were picking up Billy Clanton. With a visible effort the sheriff covered the sheepish frown on his face with a veneer of indignation.
“No. I did not say that!”
At the absurdity of the reply, Wyatt felt the flame of rage roaring in his chest now unexpectedly subside. Behan was no better than the men who lay dead in the lot . . . or the scourge of saddlers spread throughout the county who lived off the spoils of cattle rustling and stagecoach robberies. They all covered their tracks with lies, every Cow-boy willing to perjure himself for the sake of any other. Allowing the ice in his eyes to melt, Wyatt pushed his revolver snug into his waistband and turned away from Behan the same as he would ignore a whimpering dog.
Morgan gritted his teeth as several men lifted him into the wagon. Virgil sat next to him, his bloodied leg stretched out on the wagon bed. When the wagon lurched forward, Virgil winced and grabbed for the side panel. Then Allie was there, her head bare in the raw weather. Breathing hard from running she walked alongside the wagon, her tiny hand clamped over Virgil’s big fist.
In front of Fly’s, Doc Holliday stood away from the crowd, fishing a handkerchief from his coat pocket. After carefully folding it, he worked the linen under his waistband to his hip. When he looked up, he saw Wyatt staring at him above the heads of the citizens milling about on the street. Doc made the same little salute he had given Billy Clanton earlier in the day. Wyatt gave the barest of nods.
The young boy who did odd jobs for Fly was picking up the spent cartridges where Wyatt had stood when he had reloaded. Beyond the Harwood house two teams of men carried Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton around the corner on Third Street. Tom was limp, his mouth moving but making no sound. Billy screamed to be left alone so he could die in peace. In the middle of Fremont, Frank’s lifeless body could wait for the coroner’s wagon.
Following the wagon carrying his brothers, Wyatt walked through the crowd, his back erect, the Colt’s in his waistband pressing its weight against his belly. He passed under the shadow of the big cottonwood and turned into Virgil’s yard. Virge’s dog sat on the porch staring attentively at the door, listening to the voices inside, giving Wyatt only a glance before keeping watch on the door again.
Before going inside, Wyatt stopped and looked back at the distant crowd still gathered in the street. It seemed everyone in town had turned out. With the reverberation of gunshots still clouding his ears, he used the distance to examine a broader picture of what had just happened. This day would affect a lot of things, he knew, including his chances in the elections, but it was too soon to know if he had done a constructive thing or a damaging one. He only knew that he hadn’t really been given a choice. It simply had to be done.
Looking across the street, he saw Mattie standing in the doorway of their house. How long had she been there? he wondered. They stared at one another across the cold and dusty road, one as silent and unmoving as the other, until finally she backed slowly into the house and closed the door. The more Wyatt took the simple dwelling’s measure, the more it began to take on the appearance of a squat casket, its contents as lifeless as that of any pine box lowered into the ground.
The doctor’s voice carried through the house behind him, asking for Allie to bring clean rags. Wyatt turned and went through the door to check on his brothers.
CHAPTER 16
After the street fight, 1881: Tombstone, A. T.
At dusk Wyatt walked to Fly’s boardinghouse, where Kate was tending to Doc’s wound. Wyatt entered the room, set his hat on a table, and sat in the cushioned chair across the room. From there he watched Kate saturate a folded cloth with antiseptic. When she pressed it to Doc’s hip, he jolted as if the bed had bucked. Doc craned his head around to sneer at her, but Kate would not look at him.
“Why don’t you just shoot me?” Doc hissed.
Kate capped the bottle. “You not haff enough shootingk for one day?”
Wyatt felt the comment directed as much to him as to Doc.
Doc gave her a spiteful smile. “I might shoot you before we’re done here.”
With bloodied rags and a porcelain bowl in tow, Kate left the room. Wyatt stood and approached the bed. Doc’s scrawny buttocks and thin legs were as pale as the bed linens. Pulling the sheet over himself, Doc rolled to his side, his wry smile dropping away as his eyes fixed on Wyatt’s.
“Why in hell didn’t you shoot Ike? This was his party, you know.”
“He wasn’t heeled,” Wyatt said and nodded toward the wound. “How bad is it?”
Wyatt shook his head. “Morg got the worst of it. Bullet went through both shoulders and clipped his backbone. Virge was shot clean through in the lower leg. Didn’t touch the bone.”
Doc tilted his head toward the door. “What’s the consensus out there?”
“Town’s behind us, seems like . . . but Behan’s already changed his story . . . twice.”
Doc coughed up a caustic laugh. “I wish he’d been out there with his friends when the ball opened. We could have freed up that sheriff’s post for you right quick, Wyatt.”
Wyatt looked around the room. Doc’s gray coat was streaked with dust and draped over the beveled top of a trunk. Wyatt remembered seeing Doc fall in Fremont Street when Frank McLaury had fired his last shot.
“Wyatt,” Doc said, “did you see West Fuller out there? He’s a friend of Ike’s, you know. He got to Tom McLaury pretty damned quick after it was over. I heard him tellin’ folks that Tom was unarmed.” Doc produced his ironic smile. “It was Tom who shot Morgan.”
Wyatt nodded. “Fred Dodge said they didn’t find Tom’s gun. Fuller must’ve picked it up.”
“Him or Behan,” Doc said through a sneering smile.
The two friends stared at one another, weighing the consequences to come. Wyatt picked up the bottle of antiseptic, read the label, and set it back on the night table.
“You gonna be all right?” Wyatt asked.
Doc frowned. “Oh, hell yeah. Go see about your brothers.”
Wyatt hesitated. “I wanted to see about you.”
Doc grimaced as he repositioned himself in the bed. “All right, well . . . you’ve done that. Now go on and see to Virgil and Morgan.”