by Mark Warren
The group of Cow-boys began a slow retreat from the line of fire, their boots making a quiet scuffle in the cold street. Other pedestrians on the sidewalk went about their business, unaware of the violent potential building beneath the seemingly civil confrontation.
“Must be hard on you, Holliday,” Ringo taunted and canted his head toward Wyatt on the boardwalk. “Your daddy over there making all the rules for you.” Ringo’s smile widened. “And your mama . . . Kate . . . signing affidavits to have you locked up.”
Doc was unfazed. “If you will be so kind as to initiate this transaction, suh,” he purred and glanced down briefly to indicate Ringo’s pocketed hand. Then Doc smiled with one corner of his mouth. “That’s for the sake of the judicial charade that is sure to follow after I put a bullet into your black heart. So please, pull that shooter whenever you feel lucky.”
Wyatt walked into the street. “Doc?”
Big Jim Flynn, a current deputy marshal who had worked under Virgil, came out of the county recorder’s building rolling a cigarette. Spotting the trouble brewing between Ringo and Holliday, he stuffed the cigarette into a pocket and called out from the boardwalk.
“Hold on there!” he commanded, his deep voice freezing the other Cow-boys in place but having no effect on the two antagonists.
Flynn hurried into the street in his lumbering gait, came up behind Ringo, and locked him in a bear hug with his long arms. At the same time, Wyatt pulled Holliday away.
“Why are you boys carryin’ guns?” the deputy demanded. He loosened his hold on Ringo enough to extract a Colt’s revolver from the man’s pocket. Flynn stuffed the gun behind the buckle of his cartridge belt. Then, out of deference to Wyatt, he held out his flattened hand to Holliday. Doc handed over his weapon.
“Let’s the four of us walk down to the city jail and sort this out,” Flynn suggested.
After paying fines for carrying firearms against city ordinance, Ringo and Holliday were given staggered releases, with a strong encouragement to go their separate ways. At the request of Deputy Flynn, Wyatt stayed behind to parley.
Flynn sat at the desk and motioned Wyatt toward the visitor’s chair. “How’s Virgil comin’ along?”
Wyatt remained standing and shook his head. “His lawing days are likely behind him. The arm is no good to him.”
Flynn frowned at the papers on the desk and nodded. “Listen, Wyatt,” he began and brought up a sober face, “Behan and his crowd o’ politicians have got their fingers in a lot o’ the pie. I ain’t just talkin’ about Cochise County. They got connections in the territorial government. These men know how to stir up a lot of talk about a fellow.”
“I know that,” Wyatt said.
Flynn took in a lot of air, inflated his cheeks, and exhaled so quietly it might have been a sigh. “Yeah, well, what you might not know is they’re pushin’ the federal marshal in Prescott to cut you loose . . . both you and Virgil.”
“Dake wouldn’t do that,” Wyatt said.
The deputy raised an eyebrow like an apology. “He might not have a choice.” Flynn nodded to the gun strapped to Wyatt’s waist. “Only reason you can carry that is your badge. I can’t extend that right to your temporary deputies.” He nodded toward the street. “Like Holliday. Not unless he’s on official assignment with you.” He leaned his forearms on the desk and shook his head with a show of regret. “If you lose that badge, Wyatt, you’re going to be an easy target for the Cow-boy crowd.”
“I’ll be all right,” Wyatt said and waited to see if there was more.
Seeming reluctant to let the conversation end there, Flynn nodded and stood, and the two men shook hands. “Watch your back, Wyatt,” he said, “and give my best to Virgil.”
By the time Wyatt returned to Virgil’s room to check on his brother, Flynn’s warning had planted doubts in his head. He knew that the machinations of politics were too abstract for him, and, as a result, he had always relied on physical action to speak for him in the public eye. Now, as he relayed Flynn’s words to his brother, he began to realize the full potential of the threat to his aspirations.
“You still plan to run for sheriff against Behan?” Virge asked.
Wyatt dropped his hat on the foot of Virgil’s bed and took the chair by the window. “It’s about all I got,” Wyatt said, his voice atypically soft in the privacy of the room.
Virge pursed his lips and stared out the doorway, where Allie prepared a meal on a table she had converted to a sideboard. “Maybe we oughta make the first move on this, Wyatt. Turn in our resignations. That way, if Dake really does plan to fire us, we come out better by pulling out first.” Virge turned to check Wyatt’s expression. “Better on your record that way.”
Wyatt frowned. “How’s that going to look good for me . . . quittin’? I can’t see people wantin’ to vote for a man who does that.”
“You quit on Shibell, didn’t you?”
Wyatt’s jaw clenched, and his eyes hardened with the memory. “That was about loyalty to Bob Paul.”
Virge pursed his lips again and nodded. “All right, then we make this about loyalty, too.”
“To what?” Wyatt said.
“To the citizens,” Virgil replied, his voice more animated now. “If the people are saying the Earps are too powerful or ambitious or whatever it is they’re thinkin’, we’ll show ’em we ain’t.” Virge adjusted himself higher in the bed. “Look, we’ll get our lawyer, Fitch, to write a letter to Dake, and we’ll post it in the Epitaph.”
Wyatt looked away for a time and fixed his attention on Virgil’s revolver lying on the bed covers. Shaking his head once, Wyatt cleared his throat.
“Don’t feel right to me, Virge. Seems too private to print in a newspaper.” He let Virgil see the distaste on his face. “It’s like somethin’ Frank McLaury would do.”
Virgil smiled with his eyes. “This’ll work for us, Wyatt. Hell, I wouldn’ bet on Dake acceptin’ our resignations anyway. We’re the only real law he’s got down here.”
Wyatt scowled. “So, we’re puttin’ this in the paper just for show?”
Virgil’s smile worked its way over the rest of his face. “Hell, yes. We’ll let the damned newspaper work in our favor for a change. I’ll take care of the whole thing. Fitch is coming to talk to me tomorrow.”
Wyatt studied his brother for a time, seeing the contrast of optimism in Virgil’s face compared to the ruination of his arm. He stood and picked up his hat. When he looked at Virgil again, Wyatt opened the lapel of his coat and tapped the badge pinned there.
“Be a shame to lose this right now. We might have as many enemies as we’ve got friends.”
Virgil stared for several seconds at the bright metal shield that he, himself, had worn. “This could help you get that sheriff’s badge, Wyatt.”
Wyatt narrowed his eyes. “You really believe that?”
Virgil flattened his good hand in the air before him and tottered it back and forth, like a spun coin coming to rest on a tabletop. “Might,” he said and then smiled. “Regardless, I can tell you Dake ain’t gonna let us go.”
Two weeks later, the Earps’ lawyer, Tom Fitch, drafted and published the resignation letter in the Epitaph, but it was the card he ran in the Nugget that got the most attention. This article was an open letter to Ike Clanton. In it the writer proposed a conciliatory meeting to settle all the acrimony between the Earps and the Clantons. The announcement was offered as an invitation to end hostilities. The bottom of the card bore one name: Wyatt S. Earp.
When Wyatt read the Nugget article in Virgil’s room at the Cosmopolitan, he felt his skin flash with a prickly heat. Then right away he went cold, as though a damp fog had penetrated his clothing. He tossed the paper on his brother’s bed and walked to the window, where he looked out over the alleyway between the hotel and the bakery.
“That ain’t what I had in mind,” Wyatt said, watching his breath condense on the glass. “Why would Tom Fitch think Ike Clanton would agree to such a meeting with me
?”
“He don’t, Wyatt,” Virgil said. “He wants the people of Cochise to see what you’re willing to do . . . and what Ike ain’t.”
Wyatt turned and let concern show through his deadpan expression. “I would never ask any Clanton for such a parley.” Wyatt raised the hat he was holding and fanned it at Virgil’s maimed arm. “I know Ike was part of the ambush that did that. He wanted you dead, same as he wants me and Morg and Doc. McMaster overheard Ike in Charleston . . . said when Ike found out you were still alive, he said he’d have to come back and finish the job.”
“Well,” Virgil growled and slapped his good hand down on the pistol lying on the sheets beside him, “if he does, he’ll have to come up here to this damned hotel room to do it.” In an effort to lighten both their moods, Virgil forced a chuckle. “Look, Wyatt, Tom Fitch knows what he’s doin’.” He picked up the folded newspaper and held the article facing Wyatt like a piece of evidence. “He’s just wantin’ people to see a side of you they might not know. It’ll get you some votes.”
Wyatt stared at his brother until Virgil looked away. The room grew so quiet, they could hear Allie turn the pages of her Bible in the front room.
“That ain’t a side of me, Virgil.”
Virgil made a dismissive gesture with his hand, waving away his brother’s concerns. “Clum came up to see me earlier. Told me Dake has already publically refused our resignations. And Ike Clanton has spread the word all over town that he won’t see us . . . said he’d rather shoot an Earp than talk to one.” Virgil paused to let that news sink in, but Wyatt would not be appeased.
Letting his impatience show, Virgil dropped his head back onto the pillow. Staring at the ceiling, he took in a lot of air that wheezed through his nose. When he expelled it, his breath came out in a rush.
“Don’t hurt to do a little politickin’ sometimes, Wyatt.” Virgil rolled his head on the pillow and offered an apologetic smile.
“That what this is?” Wyatt said.
Virgil put on his no-nonsense face. “Just let it go. It’s all a sharper’s play, but it’ll accomplish exactly what Fitch wants. Besides, he didn’t charge us. Said he had a stake in all this, too . . . with his name bein’ on that blood list.” Virge cracked a grin and pointed at the badge on Wyatt’s vest. “You’re still a federal marshal, ain’t you? Now you got to win that sheriff’s post and send Behan packing with his tail between his legs.”
Wyatt returned to the window and looked out over the rooftops of the business establishments lined up on Allen Street. Most were saloons that never closed, to accommodate all the shifts of the workers in the silver mines.
“Virge, you remember our plans when we first come down here?”
When Virgil did not answer, Wyatt turned at the waist to see his brother pursing his lips and staring at Morgan, who stood in the doorway. Virgil’s dog stood behind Morg, looking into the bedroom. When no one spoke for a time, the dog turned and paced back to Allie.
“Seems like a long time ago, don’t it?” Morg said quietly. “I guess things didn’t go quite like we expected down here in Tombstone.”
Wyatt returned to staring out the window and relaxed his eyes to see the whole of the town. Tombstone no longer resembled a low constellation of stars as it had the night he had walked with Sadie Marcus. Now the scattered lights were like the dying embers of a fire, still trying desperately to burst into a flame from any combustible material it could conjure.
“A man can’t always count on his plans runnin’ like he wants ’em to,” Virgil said.
For the time it took a Chinaman to pull his hand cart the length of the block on Allen Street, Wyatt gazed out the cool glass pane and tried to see the town as the repository of some good fortune he might still squeeze out of it. Neither of his brothers spoke. In the other room they heard Morgan’s wife, Louisa, speaking in low tones to Allie.
“Well, Lou-Honey,” Allie blurted out, “there ain’t none of us can fault you for that.”
Wyatt turned at the waist again and waited for his younger brother to answer the unasked question. Morg tried to smile, but his eyes dulled and turned away.
“Lou’s wantin’ to pull out,” Morg said.
Wyatt thought about the prospect for several seconds, and then slowly he began to nod. Glancing at the pink-stained seepage on the gauze wrapped around Virgil’s arm and side, Wyatt turned back to Morgan and considered the bullet that had torn through his younger brother’s shoulders from one side to the other. As much as Morg tried to hide it, there was a new and fragile tilt in his posture, as though he were constantly seeking a position that lessened his pain. With a steady look of support in his face, Wyatt nodded again . . . this time with resolve.
“Might not be a bad idea,” Wyatt said plainly. “Where will you go?”
Morgan’s face twisted with a scowl. “I’ll send her out to Ma and Pa in California. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.” He pulled his shoulders back and tried to stand a little straighter, but his expression turned apologetic. “She just ain’t cut out for all this. She’ll do better in a more civilized place.”
Virgil grunted and lifted his head enough to look Morgan in the eye. “Maybe you ought to think about goin’ with her, Morg. Hell, out there in California she might find somebody prettier’n you.”
Not taking the bait, Morg kept his face as sober as a mortician’s. Then a steely blue glint hardened his eyes, reminding Wyatt of the moment he had seen his little brother finish off Frank McLaury on Fremont Street.
“I figure there’s more we got to do here,” Morg replied. After leaning back to check on the proximity of the women in the other room, Morg eased a few steps closer to Virgil’s bed and lowered his voice. “We got a goddamn score to settle, boys.” He looked from one brother to the other and then let his gaze settle on Wyatt. “There’s too much vermin down here in this territory, and I figure nobody else is gonna do a goddamn thing about it long as this pissant sheriff rules the roost. Am I right?”
Wyatt pivoted back to the window. In his mind he watched a parade of faces flash before him like half-formed portraits etched into the glass: Ike Clanton, Brocius, Frank Stilwell, Joe Hill, Pete Spence, John Ringo . . . and Behan.
“Right,” Wyatt said so quietly, the echo of his voice off the window barely reached his own ears.
CHAPTER 18
March 18, 1882: Tombstone and Cochise County, A. T.
Just after mid-March, on the night before Wyatt’s birthday, rain streaked the windows of Virgil’s hotel room where the five Earp brothers had gathered to commemorate the event. Morgan stopped pacing long enough to stare down at the lighted saloons on Allen Street.
“Let’s go celebrate,” he said to the room behind him. “Hell, it’s Saturday. They’re puttin’ on that play, Stolen Kisses, again. And it’s a damn good one.” When he turned to convince his brothers they needed a night on the town, he passed over Wyatt and instead channeled his enthusiasm on James and Warren. “Let’s go to Shieffelin Hall, boys . . . b’fore we start shootin’ each other.”
“Not a good idea, Morg,” Wyatt said. “Not tonight.”
Virgil heard the tone in Wyatt’s reply. “You hear something we oughta know?”
Wyatt tilted his head at the irony. “From Ike Clanton’s lawyer—Goodrich.”
Warren blew a stream of air. “To hell with Clanton’s lawyer. Let ’em come.”
“Listen to Wyatt, Morg,” James said. “B’sides, you already seen that show once.”
“That’s how I know it’s a damned good one,” Morgan laughed and tried to establish some momentum by working his arms into his coat. The pain in his shoulders showed in his face. “Come on, boys, have some pity on a man without his woman.” He gestured toward Virgil’s dog, who lay sleeping at James’s feet. “Lou’s been gone so long, that damned dog is startin’ to look a little appealin’ to me.”
“Frank’s a boy,” James reminded.
Morg opened his hands palms up at either side and froze in that position. �
�See? See what I’m goin’ through?”
James laughed. “What you mean is, we should have some pity on a man dumb enough to let his woman take off like that. Is that what you’re sayin’?”
Morg kicked at James’s boot, but James dodged it and in the process awoke the dog. Frank jumped up and trotted from the room.
James widened his smile until the skin around his eyes creased into a fan of lines. “Now you got the dog worryin’ about your intentions, Morg.”
Morgan started to kick again, but James pointed a finger at him and raised an eyebrow.
“I may be a one-armed bartender, but I can still whip your ass.” James held his smile in place, but there was a steely tone to his voice.
“Well, I’m goin’ to see the show!” Morg announced. “With or without you sourpuss preachers.”
Wyatt knew better than to challenge his little brother’s stubbornness. “If you’re goin’, take some of the boys with you—Doc or McMaster.”
“Hell, I’ll go with ’im,” Warren announced, grabbing his own coat. “I’m sick o’ being cooped up.”
Wyatt gave his youngest brother a sharp look. “I’d guess Virge is pretty sick of it, too. But he ain’t got much choice. Your job is here with him, understand?”
Warren sulked and threw his coat in an empty chair, but he didn’t argue.
“Why don’t you come, Wyatt?” Morgan prodded. “Hell, it’s your birthday, big brother.”
Wyatt shook his head. “I’m tired. I’m turnin’ in.”
“Goddamn, Wyatt.” Morg laughed. “Would you listen to yourself? You are gettin’ old.”
Wyatt watched Morgan try not to show the discomfort of his wounds as he buttoned his coat. “Just keep your eyes open, you hear me?”
Morgan clowned it up, leaving the room with his eyes pinched shut and his arms outstretched before him, feeling his way along the wall. In the hallway John Vermillion and McMaster frowned at Wyatt and Warren as Morgan tried to identify Vermillion’s face with his hands. The ex-carpenter slapped at him, and Morgan headed down the stairwell, laughing.