Epitaph

by Mary Doria Russell

  “If you fail to do so, the consequence will be worse than insurrection.”

  Mariscál paused then, to settle himself, for what he was about to say carried the immense weight of armies, of destruction and disfigurement and death, of widows and of orphans.

  “I must remind you, sir, that when our nations last went to war, the pretext used by President Polk for your invasion of my country was the killing of twelve of your nationals by Mexican soldiers on disputed territory. That, sir, is the legal precedent. Our case for war against the United States now is stronger than the one Polk made then.”

  It was a stunning statement, and both of them knew it. Ceremonial formality fell away. They became, for the moment, merely two old men who had fought on opposite sides, three decades earlier.

  “Ignacio, are you serious?”

  “Philip, my friend, if the United States does not control these border gangs, there are those within my government who are urging an armed invasion of Cochise County to wipe the bandits out. Furthermore, I cannot promise that the rurales of the state of Sonora will be patient much longer. They are policemen, but each is a man like any other. How long do you expect them to maintain discipline when Americans abuse and murder their people with impunity? Without justice, there is only revenge.”

  Ignacio Mariscál stood then and came close enough to grip Philip Morgan’s arm. “You must persuade your government to do whatever is necessary to bring the border under control, whether the means to that end are legal or not.”

  OVER THE NEXT FEW HOURS, urgent messages flew from the office of Philip Morgan to that of Secretary of State James Blaine and from there to the executive mansion, now home to the amiable hack who’d just become the twenty-first president of the United States.

  Chester Alan Arthur was no one’s idea of a great man, not even his own. He’d been placed on the Republican presidential ticket only to appease the New York political machine. As James Garfield slowly died of iatrogenic infection, Vice President Arthur hid in his New York City apartment, refusing to exercise presidential authority while Garfield lived. Told that the president’s long agony was over, Arthur wept with fear before taking the oath of office. In Washington, three days later, he had yet to rise to the occasion.

  “I am inclined to defer to the local authorities,” he said when Secretary Blaine told him of the latest communiqué from Mexico City. “This is a matter for the territorial governor, surely. Let Frémont take care of it.”

  “Mr. President, I’m afraid that Governor Frémont has taken a indefinite leave of absence.” Secretary Blaine cleared his throat before adding with dry diplomacy, “For his health.”

  “Well, there must be somebody in charge out there!”

  “Yes, of course, sir, there is an acting governor, but John Gosper’s position is somewhat analogous to your own, sir. He is new to his office.” And he’s fighting out of his weight class, Blaine thought.

  “Interior!” Arthur cried with sudden inspiration. “This is the Interior Department’s responsibility! Get Kirkwood on it.”

  Save me, he meant. I don’t know what to do.

  ANOTHER ROUND OF COMMUNIQUÉS FOLLOWED, this time between Washington and Prescott. Asked by Interior Secretary Samuel Kirkwood for his assessment of the situation in southern Arizona, Acting Governor Gospers could provide no comfort.

  EFFORTS TO CONTROL BORDER BLOCKED BY DEMOCRATIC LEGISLATURE STOP FUNDS FOR 100 MAN RANGERS FORCE DENIED STOP INFLUENTIAL AMERICAN RANCHERS PROFIT FROM STOLEN MEXICAN STOCK STOP SALOON INTERESTS BENEFIT FROM COW BOY MONEY STOP COCHISE COUNTY SHERIFF BEHAN PAID TO WINK AT CRIME STOP PARTISAN NEWSPAPERS INFLAME OPINION STOP NO PROSPECT OF IMPROVEMENT STOP RECOMMEND AMENDMENT OR REPEAL OF POSSE COMITATUS STOP

  There’s nothing I can do, he meant. For the love of God, send troops.

  DAY BY DAY, the list of Mexican dead grew longer. Outraged and fed up, Governor Luis Torres of the state of Sonora ordered a force of two hundred men to the border and gave their commandant a single order: Keep the Cow Boys out.

  Apprised of this, American Major General Orlando B. Willcox took the precaution of requesting additional troops in order to deal with “the Indian problem” in the Dragoon Mountains, where the cavalry would also be in position to deal with a Mexican invasion.

  In Prescott, U.S. Marshal Crawley Dake informed his superiors that he’d need five to ten thousand dollars to cover the expense of sending a posse after Cow Boy raiders who’d just killed four more men in Sonora. He was informed that no treaty covered cross-border law enforcement. Furthermore, since the crime was committed in another county, the Marshals Service could not arrest the perpetrators, if indeed they could be caught.

  In Tombstone, Allie asked Virgil, “Do you think there’ll be a war?”

  “Well, now, Pickle,” Virg said, “everybody’s trying to avoid that.”

  Yes, he meant.

  Meanwhile, the Arizona Territorial Legislature passed a bill outlawing gambling by minors.

  IF IGNACIO MARISCÁL or President Arthur or Virgil Earp had asked Newman Haynes Clanton what he thought about borders, the old man would have laughed in their faces. “Some educated goddam fool takes a ruler and a pencil to a map? Why, that boy thinks he done something! But borders don’t mean nothin’ out here.”

  Old Man Clanton had, in fact, just peeled off sixty head of cattle from a herd that mooed with a Spanish accent, but pushing the animals across the imaginary line wasn’t the important part. It wasn’t until you had them in a high-sided gorge called Skeleton Canyon that you could make a fire and have a drink and bed down for the night.

  Last job of the season, he thought, easing his bones onto the stony ground. This’ll set us up until spring. It was a gamble, pulling off a raid this late, but the summer rains had made for perfect pasturage that fall, and the old man reckoned they could fatten one last herd of scrawny Mexican stock before the snows.

  Now, lying in his bedroll, listening to cattle lowing and to men snoring, with a few quiet months stretching out before him, he had begun to think about the future.

  He’d just turned sixty-five, still tough enough to ride for days when there was a profit to be made, still young enough to take a certain rowdy pleasure in a dash into Mexico for a little shopping trip. Even so, it was time to consider a different angle on the business.

  Why keep supplying the big bugs? he was asking himself. Why not hold on to this herd? He had three big spreads in three broad valleys. Far from any town, each ranch was ringed by mountains like castle walls. You could see for miles in any direction, and nobody could get near you without their dust giving them away a day before they arrived. Why not buy some decent breeding stock, like Henry Hooker or John Slaughter, and become a big bug himself? Or maybe work both ends . . . send Billy down to run the raids. Keep the best stock, sell the rest on.

  Course, Billy was nineteen and thought he knew it all. But I’ll teach him different, the old man was thinking. I’ll train him up right, and then—

  “EL VIEJO ES MÍO,” a thick-bodied, dark-skinned man of middle years said softly.

  He was lying belly-down along the rim of Skeleton Canyon when he said it, and his companions didn’t argue. They were used to taking orders from the one who had just claimed the old man as his own, though they wore no uniform that could identify them as policemen or soldiers. They might have been . . . silver traders, perhaps. Or tequila merchants. Tobacco smugglers, maybe, who’d crossed the border to do business.

  Or relatives of a boy who’d died defending his family’s cattle.

  Whoever he was, the middle-aged man breathed out to steady his aim, and with that sighing exhalation, he murmured, “Vaya al diablo, pendejo.”

  The old man’s head jerked and lolled. An instant later, the men on the canyon rim fired down on the sleeping figures below.

  Within moments, Charley Snow, Dixie Lee Gray, Billy Lang, and Jim Crane joined Old Man Clanton in hell. Billy Byers—shot in the stomach—lurched away into the desert darkness to die.
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br />   Harry Ernshaw fled as well. His nose was permanently shortened by a passing bullet, but he lived to tell the tale.

  “GOOD RIDDANCE.” That was the reaction to the Skeleton Canyon murders among mining executives, investment bankers, and the Arizona politicians who owed their appointments to Washington. Whoever cleaned out that nest of vipers had the gratitude of the entire Republican Party, the legitimate Arizona business community, and most of the editorial writers around the territory.

  “Goddam greasers never woulda had the nerve to come so far north.” That was the conventional wisdom in the rougher bars of southeastern Arizona. But if not the beaners, then who had killed Old Man Clanton and his men?

  No one speculating on this topic had anything to go on, apart from a reflexive contempt for Mexicans. Having rejected the most likely identity of the Skeleton Canyon killers, however, many men spent many hours working their way through many bottles, discussing potential suspects.

  In Tombstone’s Dragoon Saloon, someone pointed out that Skeleton Canyon was over in New Mexico and only a federal marshal could cross that border to make an arrest. Well, Virgil Earp was Tombstone’s chief of police, somebody else said, but he was a U.S. marshal, too. Virg himself had been plenty visible since the fire, but his brothers Morgan and Wyatt hadn’t been seen much recently. Neither had their friend Holliday.

  It was about then that Johnny Ringo went outside to take a piss against the wall. He was buttoning up when he saw Doc Holliday gimping down Toughnut, leaning on his cane.

  Alert to the possibility of getting jumped during his therapeutic walks around Tombstone’s streets, Doc Holliday took note of Ringo’s unblinking interest. His first thought was, He can see how sick I’ve been.

  Ringo, he believed, was taking malicious satisfaction in a lunger’s misery, for whatever reason that might be significant to the strange, hostile, vicious drunk.

  Glassy-eyed with drink, Ringo simply stared from across the street at first. Then—and this was the unnerving part—malevolence was replaced by a gleeful, open-mouthed, nearly joyous smile. With the loose, unsteady gait of the very drunk, Ringo returned to the saloon, chuckling to himself and full of purpose.

  It was, Doc thought, as though Eden’s serpent had just thought of something wondrously amusing to lie about.

  DRUNKARD! DOG-FACED, QUIVERING, DEER-HEARTED COWARD!

  THE BALANCE OF THE SPINNING WORLD SHIFTS when a beloved and benevolent father dies. The weight of a constant presence is lifted away. Unanswerable questions are asked in the middle of the night. Could I have done more? Said more? What should I have asked while there was still time? What did he mean by those last words? Beyond the questions, there are practicalities. Have his taxes been paid? What about all these bills? Is this claim on the estate legitimate? What should I do next? And next, and next, and after that? Even a devoted and competent son may falter, overwhelmed and at a loss.

  But what if the father was a mean-spirited, violent, contemptuous old bastard? What if the son’s education was sketchy and his brains regularly rattled in childhood? What if he often woke to the sting of a knife blade held against his throat and the smell of whiskey on the old man’s breath. I made you. You’re mine. I can do anything I want to you and nobody can stop me. Nobody. What if the son himself drank far too much whenever he escaped the old man’s notice?

  Daddy’s dead, Ike would think. He’s gone. He ain’t coming back, and I’m glad.

  Then he’d worry about ghosts and wonder if his father could hear his thoughts and return to harm him in some way. A dozen times a day, Ike would glance over his shoulder, cringing in anticipation of a blow, a threat, a sneer. He would see himself with his father’s missing eyes and hear that absent tongue wag all day long. You’re an idiot and everybody knows it. You’re soft, like your mother. You should be wearing a dress, you worthless, sniveling little girl.

  “Ike, you look like you could use a drink,” Ringo would say, and he was always right. It took a lot of whiskey to make the old man’s voice shut up.

  People kept showing up at the ranch. They wanted Ike to make decisions, to answer questions, to pay money the old man owed or deliver goods he’d promised to provide. But the old man had always treated Ike like a half-wit hired hand and never told him one thing about the business. So Ike would just stand there, not knowing what to say.

  Ike’s little brother, Billy, would laugh at him for looking so confused, but Ringo was kind. Ringo stuck up for Ike.

  “They got no right to look at you like you’re stupid,” he’d say. “Nobody has that right, Ike. You want respect, Ike? You have to take it. You have to fight for it.”

  “Fight for it,” Ike said.

  “Leave Ike alone,” Curly Bill would tell Ringo. “He’s funning you, Ike.”

  Used to be, Ike liked Curly Bill more. Now Ringo was his friend.

  “I’m just helping Ike think,” Ringo would say. “He likes it when I help him think, don’t you, Ike? You need help thinking.”

  “I need help,” Ike would agree. Then he’d have another drink with Ringo.

  IT TOOK SOME TIME for Ike to put all the pieces together in his mind. The first thing to come clear was that he didn’t have to go to California after all. I can take care of the girls here, he thought. Or they can get married. They don’t have to ask permission. The old man’s dead, and he ain’t coming back.

  I can open a new restaurant, he thought, and that’s when he remembered promising to tell Wyatt Earp about where those men were. Because that was the plan, before the old man got killed. Ike was supposed to find where Bill Leonard, Henry Head, and Jim Crane were and tell Wyatt Earp. Wyatt was going to arrest them. Ike would get $3,600 from Wells Fargo, and Wyatt would get votes when he ran for sheriff next year.

  Except before Ike could do that, Bill Leonard and Henry Head got killed by the Hazlett brothers out in Ánimas Valley. The Hazletts could have collected $2,400 from Wells Fargo for doing that because the reward was twelve hundred apiece, dead or alive. But then Johnny Ringo killed the Hazlett boys because they killed Bill and Henry. And then Jim Crane got killed in Skeleton Canyon with the old man.

  Now nobody would get the Wells Fargo reward. Not Ike, nor the Hazletts, nor Ringo. Ike thought that was a pity. It was a lot of money and would have been nice to have, even though he didn’t have to move to California now.

  AT FIRST IKE DIDN’T REMEMBER anything about Doc Holliday being in on the deal. Then one night when all the boys were sitting around drinking, Frank McLaury started in about how crooked the Earps were and how they were all pimps and their women were all whores, and how they held up that stagecoach themselves. Frank could prove it, too: The Earps blamed Bill Leonard and Henry Head and Jim Crane for the crime.

  “It’s just like when that goddam army lieutenant blamed Tommy and me for stealing those mules, when Hurst really stole the animals his own self!”

  Billy Clanton usually got a laugh out of that because he stole those mules. It always tickled him how Frank was so convinced of his story that he’d tell it to Billy’s face and expect to be believed. But Billy Clanton wasn’t with Ike that night. He was off in Charleston, whoring with Little Willie Claiborne, who was celebrating his release on bail after shooting Jim Hickey in the face.

  Curly Bill was there, and he used to find Frank’s notions funny, too, but Bill didn’t laugh much anymore, and that evening, he got all broody about how Wyatt Earp had bent a pistol over his head after that accident with Fred White.

  “I bet you any amount of money nobody hit Doc Holliday’s head when he got arrested for that holdup,” Curly Bill said. “Two men dead, but Holliday can get away with anything ’cause the Earps are always there to protect his bony carcass.”

  “Yep,” Ringo agreed, “and now all four of ’em are gonna get away with killing Old Man Clanton.”

  Which made everybody stop talking and look at Ringo.

  So he told them about how Holliday and the Earps were the ones who killed the old man in Skeleton Ca
nyon. “I saw Holliday gimping around Tombstone myself,” Ringo said. “I asked him, ‘What happened to your leg, Holliday?’ And that skinny goddam lunger started bragging! He said, ‘Me and the Earps ran down Old Man Clanton and his boys, and we killed them sonsabitches in Skeleton Canyon.’ But, Ike, your daddy pulled out that little pocket gun he carried in his boot. He shot Holliday in the leg. So your old man got a little of his own back before Holliday killed him.”

  “Holliday killed him,” Ike said, dazed.

  “Yep. And bragged about it.”

  “Bragged about it.”

  “The Earps’ll protect him,” Curly Bill said bitterly.

  “They’re all in on it,” Frank said.

  “They’re all in on it,” Ike said.

  “They’ll never get convicted!” Frank went on. “Earps always have an alibi. Oh, I was with Wyatt. Oh, I was with Doc. Oh, I never did nothing wrong in my whole life . . . And then the goddam liars’ll turn around and pin the blame on somebody else.”

  “Pin the blame . . .” Ike said.

  “Somebody’s got to pay,” Ringo said softly. “When one of ours is killed, we gotta make the bastards pay.”

  “Make the bastards pay,” Ike said, but even then, he was still thinking, The old man’s dead. He ain’t never coming back. And I’m glad.

  SOMETIMES CURLY BILL WOULD WARN, “Ringo’s playing with you, Ike.”

  “I’m just teaching a parrot to talk,” Ringo would say.

  “C’mon, Juanito,” Bill would say. “Leave Ike alone.”

  Ringo would just wait until Curly Bill wasn’t around, and then he’d start in again about that goddam lunger Holliday killing Old Man Clanton.

  “I can’t think straight,” Ike would protest.

  “Well, try thinking crooked then,” Ringo would tell him, with that angel smile of his. “It’s in the Bible, Ike. Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth. Life for life.”