Worlds That Weren't

by Walter Jon Williams

  If this crowd found the Clantons, the Cowboys were dead. Surely Freddie’s friends could now be convinced that they must fight another day.

  Freddie turned and hastened along Allen Street toward the O.K. Corral, but then gunfire cracked out, the sudden bright sounds jolting his nerves, and he felt his heart sink even as he broke into a run. A shotgun boomed, and windows rattled in nearby buildings. He dashed through the long corral, then jumped over the fence, ran past the photography studio, and into the back door of Camillus Fly’s boarding house.

  John Behan crouched beneath a window with his blue-steel revolver in his hand. The window had been shattered by bullets, and its yellow organdy curtain fluttered in the breeze, but there was no scent of smoke or other indication that Behan had ever fired his pistol. Shrieks rang in the air, cries of mortal agony. Freddie ran beside the window and peered out. His heart hammered, and he panted for breath after his run.

  The narrow vacant lot was hazy with gunsmoke. Lying at the far end were the bodies of two men, Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton. Just four or five paces in front of them were the three Earps and John Holliday. Morgan was down with a wound. Virgil knelt on the dry ground, leg bleeding, and he supported himself with a cane. Holliday’s back was to Freddie—he had a short Wells Fargo shotgun broken open over one arm—and there were bright splashes of blood on Holliday’s coat and trousers.

  In Fremont Street, behind the Earps, Frank McLaury lay screaming in the dust. He was covered with blood. Apparently he had run right through the Earps and collapsed. His agonized shrieks raised the hair on the back of Freddie’s neck.

  Of Billy Claiborne and Ike Clanton, Freddie saw no sign. Apparently the unarmed men had run away.

  Wyatt Earp stood over his brother Morgan, unwounded, a long-barreled Colt in his hand. Savage hatred burned in Freddie’s heart. He glared down at Behan.

  “What have you done?” he hissed. “Why didn’t you stop it?”

  “I tried!” Behan said. “You saw that I tried. Oh, this is horrible!”

  “You fool. Why do you bother to carry this?” Freddie reached down and snatched the revolver from Behan’s hand. He looked out the window again and saw Wyatt Earp standing like a bronze statue over his wounded brother. Angels sang a song of glory in Freddie’s blood.

  Make something of it, he thought. Make something of this other than a catastrophe. Make it mean something.

  He cocked Behan’s gun. Earp heard the sound and raised his head, suddenly alert. And then German Freddie put six shots into Earp’s breast from a distance of less than a dozen feet.

  “My God!” Behan bleated. “What are you doing?”

  Freddie looked at him, a savage grin taut on his face. He dropped the revolver at Behan’s feet as return fire began to sing through the window. He ran into the back of the studio, out the back door, and was sprinting down Third Street when he heard Behan’s voice ringing over the sound of barking gunfire. “It wasn’t me! I swear to Mary!” Mad laughter burbled from Freddie’s lips as he heard the crash of a door being kicked down. Behan screamed something else, something that might have been “German Freddie!”—but whatever he was trying to say was cut short by a storm of fire.

  A steam whistle shattered the air as Freddie ran south. Someone was blowing the alarm at the Uzina Mine. And when Freddie reached the corner, he saw the vigilante mob pouring up Allen Street, heading for the front gate of the O.K. Corral. He waited a few seconds for the leaders to swarm through the gate, and then he quietly crossed the street at a normal walking pace. Despite the way he panted for breath, Freddie had a hard time not breaking into a run.

  He had never felt such joy, not even in Josie’s arms.

  By roundabout means he walked to the Grand Hotel. Once he had Zarathustra in his hand he began to breathe more easily. Still, he concluded, it was time to leave town. There were any number of people who could place him near the site of that streetfight, and possibly some of the vigilantes had seen him stroll away.

  And then a thought struck him—he had no horse! He was a bad rider and had come to Tombstone on the Wells Fargo stage. The only way he could get a horse would be to stroll back to the O.K. Corral and hire one, with the lynch mob looking on.

  He laughed and put Zarathustra in his coat pocket. He was trapped in a town filled with Earps and armed vigilantes.

  “It is time to be bold,” he said aloud. “It is time to be cunning.”

  He washed his hands, to remove the reek of gunpowder, and changed his shirt.

  It occurred to him that there existed a place where he might hide.

  He put his journal in another pocket, and made his way out of the hotel.

  Oh, she is magnificent! Freddie wrote in his journal a few hours later. She hid me in Behan’s house while Behan lay painted in his coffin in the front window of the undertakers—Ritter and Reams are making the most of this opportunity to advertise their art! I rested on Behan’s bed while she received callers in the front room. And then, at nightfall, she had Behan’s horse saddled and brought to the back door.

  “Will I see you again?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “Destiny will not permit us to part for long.”

  “Do you have money?”

  I confessed that I did not. She went into the house and came back with an envelope of bills which she put in my pocket. Later I counted them and found they amounted to five thousand dollars. The office of sheriff pays surprisingly well!

  I took her hand. “Troy is afire, my Helen. Do you have what you desire?”

  “I did not want this,” she said. Her fingers clutched at mine.

  “Of course you did,” I said. “What else did you expect?”

  I rode to Charleston with her kiss burning on my lips. Charleston is a town ruled by the Cowboys, and so I knew I could find shelter there, but it is also the first place a posse will come.

  It will be a war now—my bullets have decreed it. I welcome that war, I welcome the trumpet that will awaken the new Romulus. Battles there shall be, and victories. And both those who die and those who live shall be awarded a Tombstone—what an irony!

  I am curiously satisfied with the day’s business. It is a man’s life that I’m leading. Were I to live these same events a thousand times, I would find no reason to alter the outcome.

  “There are more Earps than before,” John Ringo observed from over the rim of his beer glass. “James and Warren have come to town. You’re creatin’ more Earps than you’re killin’, Freddie.”

  “Two hundred rifles,” Freddie urged. “Raise them! Make Tombstone yours!”

  Curly Bill Brocius shook his head. “No more shootings. The town’s riled enough as it is. I don’t want my parole revoked, and besides, I’ve got to make certain that our man gets in as sheriff.”

  “Let us purge this choler without letting blood,” Ringo said, and wiped foam from his mustache.

  “Still these politics!” Freddie scorned. “Who is our man this time?”

  “Fellehy.”

  “The laundryman? What kind of sheriff will he make?”

  Brocius gave his easy grin. “No kind,” he said. “Which is our kind.”

  “He will be worse than Behan. And it was Behan’s bungling that killed three of our friends.”

  Brocius’s grin faded. “I don’t reckon,” he said.

  Freddie had made good his escape and met Ringo and Brocius in the Golden Saloon in Tucson. He was not quite far enough from Tombstone—Freddie kept his back to a wall and his eye on the door, just in case a crowd of men in frock coats barged in.

  “So when may we start killing Earps?” Freddie asked.

  “We’re going to do it legal-like,” Brocius said. “Ike Clanton’s going to file in court against the Earps and Holliday for murder. They’ll hang, and we won’t have to pull a trigger.”

  Disgust filled Freddie’s heart. “You are making yourself ridiculous,” he said. “These men have killed your friends!”

  “No more shooting,” said
Brocius. “We’ll use the law’s own weapons against the law, and we’ll be back in charge quick as a dog can lick a dish.”

  Freddie looked at Brocius in fury, and then he laughed. “Very well, then,” he said. “We shall see what joys the law brings us!”

  You could play the law game any number of ways, Freddie thought. And he thought he knew how he wanted to bid his hand.

  “Ike Clanton said he was going to kill Doc Holliday,” Freddie testified. “His brother supported him, and so did the McLaurys. Claiborne and I were trying to talk sense into their stupid heads, but Ike was abusive, so I left in disgust.”

  There was stunned silence in the courtroom. Freddie was a witness for the prosecution, but was handing the defense its case on a plate.

  The prosecution witnesses had agreed on a story ahead of time, how the Cowboys had been unarmed, and the Earps the aggressors. Now Freddie was blowing the case to smithereens.

  Price, the district attorney, was so stunned by Freddie’s testimony that he blurted out what had to be absolutely the wrong question. “You say that Ike was intending to kill Mr. Holliday?”

  Freddie looked at Ike from his witness chair. The man stared back at him, disbelief plain on his face, and out of the slant of his eye he saw Holliday look at him thoughtfully.

  “Oh, yes,” Freddie said. “But Ike is too much the drunken coward to actually carry out his threats. He ran away from the streetfight and left his brother to die in the dust.”

  Bullets or nothing, Freddie thought. We shall honor valor or honor shall lie dishonored.

  “You son of a bitch,” Ike Clanton said in the Grand Hotel’s parlor, after the trial had adjourned for the day. “What did you say those things for?”

  “Because they’re true,” Freddie said. “Do you think I would lie to protect a worthless dog like you?”

  Ike turned red. “You skin that back, you bastard! Skin that back, or I’ll settle with you!”

  Freddie wiped Ike’s spittle from his chin with his handkerchief. “It’s Doc Holliday you hate, is it not?” he said. “Why don’t you settle with him first?”

  “I’m gonna get him! And you, too!”

  “Do it now,” Freddie advised, “while you’re almost sober. You know where Holliday lives. Perhaps if you work up all your courage you can shoot him in the back.” Freddie reached into his pocket, took hold of Zarathustra, and thumbed back the hammer. Ike’s eyes widened at the sound. He made a little whining noise in his throat.

  “Don’t shoot me!” he blurted.

  “You can kill Holliday now,” Freddie said, “or I will shoot you like a dog where you stand. And who will take me to court for such a thing?”

  “I’ll do it!” Ike said quickly. “I’ll kill him! See if I don’t!”

  “I believe you checked your gun with the desk clerk,” Freddie reminded him.

  Freddie followed him to the front desk and kept his hand on the pistol. Ike cast him frantic glances over his shoulder as he was given his gun belt. He made certain his hand was nowhere near the butt of the weapon as he strapped it on—he did not want to give a man with Freddie’s murderous reputation a chance to shoot.

  Freddie followed Ike out into the street and glared at him when it looked as if he would step into a saloon for some liquid courage. Ike saw the glare, then began to walk faster down the street. Freddie pursued, boots thumping on the wooden walk. At the end of the long walk, when Fly’s boarding house came into sight, Ike was almost running.

  Freddie paused then, and began a leisurely stroll to the hotel. Gunfire erupted behind him, but he didn’t break stride. He knew Ike Clanton, and he knew John Holliday, and he knew which of the two now lay dead.

  “The legal case will collapse without a plaintiff,” Freddie said that evening. “The district attorney may file a criminal case, but why would he? He knows the defense would call me as a witness.” He laughed. “And now, after this second killing, Holliday will have to leave town. That is another problem solved.”

  Josie stretched luxuriously in Behan’s bed. She was wearing a little transparent silken thing that Behan had bought her from out of a French catalogue, and Freddie, lying next to her, let his eyes feast gratefully on the ripeness of her body. She seemed well pleased with his eyes’ amorous intentions, and rolled a little in the bed, to and fro, to show herself from different angles.

  “You seem very pleased with yourself,” she said.

  “I have nothing against Holliday. I like the man. I’m glad he will be out of it.”

  “You’re the only man alive who likes him. Now that Johnny’s killed Wyatt.” A silence hung for a moment in the air, and then Josie rolled over and put her chin on her crossed arms. Her dark eyes regarded him solemnly.

  “Yes?” Freddie said, knowing the question that would come.

  “There are people who say it was you who shot Wyatt,” she said.

  Freddie looked at her. “One of your lovers shot him,” he said. “Does it matter which?”

  “Did you kill for me, Freddie?” There was a strange thrill in her voice. “Did you kill Wyatt?”

  “If I killed Wyatt,” Freddie said coldly, “it was not for you. I did not do it to make you the heroine of a melodrama.”

  She made as if to say something, but she turned her head away, laying her cheek on her hand. Freddie reached out to caress her rich dark hair. “Troy burns for you, my Helen,” he said. “Is it not your triumph?”

  “I don’t understand you,” she said.

  “I am in love with Fate,” Freddie said. “I regret nothing, and neither should you. Everything you do, let it be as if you would—as if you must—do it again ten thousand times.”

  She was silent. He reached beneath her masses of hair, took her chin in his fingers, raised her face to his. “Come, my queen,” he said. “Give me ten thousand kisses. And let us not regret a one of them.”

  Ten thousand kisses! Freddie wrote in his journal. She does not yet understand her power—that she can change the universe, and all the universes yet to be born.

  How many times have I killed Earp, in worlds long dead? And how many times must I kill him again? The thought is joy to me. I crave nothing more. Ten thousand bullets, ten thousand kisses. Forever.

  Amor fati. Love is all.

  “Sir.” Holliday bowed. Not yet healed, he stood stiffly, and supported his wounded hip with a cane. “The district attorney is of the opinion that Arizona and I must part. I thought I would take my adieu.”

  Freddie rose from his wing-backed chair and offered his hand. “I’m sure we’ll meet again,” he said.

  “Maybe so.” He shook the hand, then stood, a frown on his gaunt face. “Freddie—,” he began.

  “Yes?”

  “Get out of this,” Holliday said. “Take Josie away. Go to California, Nevada, anywhere.”

  Freddie laughed. “There’s still silver in Tombstone, John.”

  “Yes.” He seemed saddened. He hesitated again. “I wanted to thank you, for your words at the trial.”

  Freddie made a dismissive gesture. “Ike Clanton wasn’t worth the bullets it took to kill him,” he said.

  Holliday looked at Freddie gravely. “People might say that of the two of us,” he said.

  “I’m sure they would.”

  There was another hesitation, another silence. “Freddie,” Holliday said.

  “John.” Smiling.

  “There is a story that it was you who killed my friend.”

  Freddie laughed, though there was a part of his soul that writhed beneath Holliday’s gaze. “If I believed all the stories about you—,” he began.

  “I do not know what to believe,” Holliday said. “And whatever the truth, I am glad I killed that cur Behan. But it is your own friends—your Cowboys—who are spreading this story. They are boasting of it. And if I ever come to believe it is true—or if anything happens to Wyatt’s brothers—then God help you.” The words, forced from the consumptive lungs, were surprisingly forceful. “God help all
you people.”

  Sudden fury flashed through Freddie’s veins. “Why do you all place such a value on this Earp! I do not understand you!”

  Cold steel glinted in Holliday’s eyes. His pale face flushed. “He was worth fifty of you!” he cried. “And a hundred of me!”

  “But why?” Freddie demanded.

  Holliday began to speak, but something caught in his throat—he shook his head, bowed again, and hastened from the room as blood erupted from his ruined lungs.

  Why was I so upset? Freddie wrote in his journal. It is not as if I do not understand how the world works. Homer wrote of Achilles and Hector battling over Troy, not about philosophers dueling with epigrams. It is people like the Earps whom the storytellers love, and whom they make immortal.

  It is only philosophers who love other philosophers—unless of course they hate them.

  If I wish to be remembered, I must do as the Earps do. I must be brave, and unimaginative, and die in a foolish way, over nothing.

  “Why do I smell a dead cat on the line?” Brocius asked. “Freddie, why do I see you at the bottom of all my troubles?”

  “Be joyful, Bill,” Freddie said. “You’ve been found innocent of murder and you have your bond money back—at least for the next hour or two.” He dealt a card faceup to Ringo. “Possible straight,” he observed.

  John Ringo contemplated this eventuality without joy. “These words hereafter thy tormentors be,” he said, and poured himself another shot of whiskey from the bottle by his elbow.

  “I have been solving your problems, not adding to them,” Freddie told Brocius. “I have solved your Wyatt Earp problem. And thanks to me, Doc Holliday has left town.”

  Brocius looked at him sharply. “What did you have to do with that?”