Epitaph

by Mary Doria Russell

  “Your brothers’ blood cries out to me from the ground,” Ringo murmured.

  “Eye for eye!” Ike said. Several times.

  “Goddam Yankees won’t get away with this,” Frank Stilwell vowed.

  A Yankee himself, Will just nodded, and he shook hands with all three of them before he boarded a stagecoach bound for the Benson railway depot.

  The road passed by the Tombstone cemetery. Will couldn’t see his brothers’ grave, for it was just over the hill and out of sight. Although he had by then accepted that there was nothing more he could do, he prayed with all his might to the God in whom his sister still had faith.

  “Damn them,” he whispered. “Damn the Earps. Damn Holliday. Damn all of them to hell.”

  THE GODS WILL DEAL DEATH TO THOSE WHO KILL

  THOSE LEFT ALIVE AFTER HATEFUL CARNAGE

  TOMBSTONE WAS GLAD TO SEE THE END OF 1881. HELL of a year, everyone said, shaking their heads. Fire, flood, famine, blood in the street.

  Nobody felt much like celebrating, but the city did its best. There were church socials, recitals, a masked ball, and a charity auction. The Bird Cage Theatre threw a grand opening party with skits, magic acts, comedians, and a large staff of “dancers” happy to entertain any gentleman’s desire to . . . dance. More genteel entertainment, “suitable for ladies,” was available at Schieffelin Hall. On Christmas Day, Al Schieffelin himself dressed up as Father Christmas to distribute gifts to more than 250 children.

  Many of those kids had been behaving strangely lately. Sucking their thumbs, wetting their beds. Waking up with nightmares. Begging to skip school. No amount of punishment seemed to correct these new transgressions, but a few of the more perceptive parents noted that the trouble had started back in October when the kids had watched three men die in the street. “Honey, that’s all over now,” such parents lied. “Everything is going to be fine.”

  Those who could afford it—Johnny Behan included—decided it was time to send their children to boarding schools back east. Whole families were packing up, and for the first time since Ed and Al Schieffelin stared down at the glorious numbers Richard Gird had calculated for their initial silver assay, the population of Tombstone began to drop.

  The Earp women were among those who hoped to leave that wretched town. Ever since our troubles began, we have had guards around us, Lou wrote to her sister. It has been disagreeable to be so unsettled, but most of the Cow Boys have now drifted out of town. They will go back to stealing stock, no doubt. Virgil is walking though he must use a cane. We believe Morgan is out of danger. His shoulders still give him pain and he is very weak I am afraid. We had to give Higgs up. I could not break him of jumping on Morg.

  And truth be told, neither Lou nor Morgan wanted a constant reminder of Tom McLaury. The dog was Josie’s now.

  “We girls are sewing again and it is a pleasure to be busy,” she continued, though the truth was simpler: The Earps needed money. Virgil didn’t exactly get fired after Judge Spicer cleared him, but City Council had quietly allowed John Flynn’s appointment as chief to remain in force. Allie was pretty bitter about that. Virg was still a federal deputy marshal, but he got paid only if he could transport prisoners. Too lame to mount a horse, he was almost broke. Morgan could hardly move his arms, so he’d lost his job dealing faro at the Alhambra. The doctors couldn’t predict what he’d be able to do when he healed up. Tend bar for James, maybe? Two crippled Earps, selling beer to Chinese laborers.

  Wyatt had been keeping everyone afloat with income from the two gambling concessions he still had. Then Tombstone announced the new tax assessments. All the Earp property had been revalued, even James’s tavern. Suddenly the family owed $6,200 more than the year before. Wyatt had mortgaged the house Mattie lived in and was selling property off to pay the debts, but he was losing ground.

  “There is still good money in making tents for prospectors,” Lou closed, “and we all look forward to better days.”

  She signed the letter and dropped it off at the post office before joining the other girls over at Allie’s. Mattie was long past helping with the sewing, but Kate was there, and she and Bessie were keeping things lively.

  “Allie, d’you ever hear the one we used to tell about Wyatt?” Bessie asked. “Seems he gets to town fresh off the farm and before he’s been there ten minutes, a streetwalker comes over and says, ‘C’mon, big boy. Let’s have a little fun.’”

  Kate picked the story up. “So that big dumb hick, he thinks, ‘I guess the rumors was true! City girls can’t keep their hands off a handsome man like me.’ So this girl, she takes him to her crib, but instead of hiking up her skirt, she says, ‘Now before we get started, there’s the little matter of the fee.’”

  Bessie finished, “So Wyatt says, all bashful and humble-like, ‘Ma’am, that’s real nice, but I wouldn’t think of acceptin’ money from you!’”

  When the giggling died down, Lou grew serious. “Bessie, why is Wyatt so different? James is sweet, and Virg is like a big friendly bear, and Morgan—well, you know what I think about Morg! But Wyatt is so . . .”

  “Cold?” Bessie suggested.

  “Stupid,” Kate said flatly.

  “Ignorant,” Allie said. “That’s what Virg says. ‘Wyatt’s ignorant, and he’s afraid if he opens his mouth, people will find out.’”

  “If he opens his mouth,” Kate said, “they’ll see what a good dentist Doc is.”

  “Will Doc start a new practice when you get to Colorado?” Lou asked. “His cough seems better. Maybe he could do fillings and make dentures again.”

  Kate slumped in her chair. “He ain’t coughing so bad right now, but . . . he’s got no joie de vivre. Hell, what’s the English? No snap. He don’t even play poker no more! He just deals faro and gets along from day to day.” She sat up straight, as though to signify that she had enough energy for both of them. “We was doing good in Las Vegas with that saloon. We’re gonna buy a new place in Denver, or maybe go up higher in the mountains.”

  “When y’all leavin’?” Bessie asked.

  “Me? Day after tomorrow. My lawyer found a buyer for the boardinghouse. There’s things to do and papers to sign up in Globe. Doc’s gonna finish out December at the Alhambra. John Meagher’s shorthanded, and Doc owes him a favor for posting bail during the hearing. First of the year, though, we gonna meet up in Prescott. Then we’re gone for good! Arizona’s been nothing but trouble for him.”

  “Arizona’s been nothing but trouble for all of us,” Allie said, pedaling away at her sewing machine. “Virg keeps getting letters from his parents out in California. They want the brothers to settle in Colton with them.”

  Bessie rolled her eyes. “I like Mother Earp. The old man?” She shuddered. “He’s a piece of work, that one is.”

  “Well, Morgan won’t be able to travel for a while yet,” Lou said, “but when that time comes, we can’t leave Tombstone fast enough to suit me.”

  WHICH WERE JOHN CLUM’S SENTIMENTS EXACTLY. He had started receiving anonymous death threats when the gun laws went into effect in June, but the level of menace reached new heights within hours of Judge Spicer’s decision. “The sooner you depart for a healthier clime, the better for yourself,” one read. “If you stay here, you are liable to get a hole in your coat at any moment.”

  The Earps, Doc Holliday, and Tom Fitch were also getting things like that, but Wells Spicer was the main target. Last week the judge insisted that the Epitaph print the entire text of the latest note he’d received, along with Spicer’s own written response: a far-ranging litany of insult and contempt, followed by an open invitation to the yellow sonsabitches to come ahead and try him.

  “Judge, do you think that’s wise?” John had asked warily.

  “If the bastards want me,” the portly, balding, fifty-year-old Spicer replied, “they know right where to find me.”

  “Exactly,” John said, but the judge was adamant, so the Epitaph ran the story. John had even written an editorial about the campaig
n of intimidation that was being waged, trying to match Spicer’s brave words with his own. But it was time to face facts. The Epitaph had lost circulation and advertising since the October gunfight. Once again, Editor Clum was as close to broke as makes no difference. And if Mayor Clum had any illusions about his constituents rallying behind him in his hour of need, those fantasies evaporated during the December meeting of City Council, when boos, catcalls, and rancor made it clear to him that there was no point in running for reelection.

  Reassessing his plans for the future in the quiet solitude of his bedroom on New Year’s Eve, he came to the conclusion that he would prefer not to live in a town where the gravediggers were more prosperous than the newspaper owners. On January 1, 1882, he announced that he would be leaving for a few weeks, ostensibly to visit family back east.

  Two days later, having “temporarily,” handed the Epitaph over to his assistant, he climbed aboard the evening stage to Benson. As the gaslights of Tombstone receded into the darkness, he felt the tension in his shoulders ease.

  One hour out of Tombstone, masked gunmen opened fire on the stage.

  The horses panicked and ran until the wounded left-lead animal staggered to a halt and died in harness, a couple of miles on. When the stage jolted to a stop, John Clum clambered out and walked into the night without a word to the other passengers. For hours he struggled alone across treacherous, broken ground. Toward dawn, battered and cactus-torn, he heard the distant rumble of the Grand Central Quartz Mill. At the superintendent’s home, he borrowed a horse, rode to the Benson depot, and caught an eastbound train.

  Certain that he had just survived an assassination attempt, he did not stop traveling until he arrived in the nation’s capital. There he begged for reappointment as Indian agent on a nice, peaceful reservation, for two years among the civilized white men of Cochise County had rendered John Philip Clum profoundly nostalgic for the humor, dignity, and steadfast friendship of savages.

  There were those who called his flight to safety an act of cowardice. John Clum himself was inclined to consider it realism. Either way, he never looked back. And he lived to tell the tale.

  DISPATCHES FROM ARIZONA to Washington had increased in frequency and urgency as the end of 1881 approached. There were few responses. President Chester Alan Arthur had been kept informed of the situation along the Mexican border, but most of President Garfield’s cabinet had resigned rather than work for his successor. Many departments were still in transition and, naturally, offices were closed during the holidays, so no one was around to read the letter Federal Marshal Crawley Dake sent to the Justice Department in December, demanding to know why funds had not been appropriated to fight the outlaws in Arizona. Dake was enraged as well by the way Virgil Earp had been treated for doing his duty, and infuriated by Sheriff John Behan’s collusion with the criminal elements of Cochise County.

  I have some of the bravest and best men in the Territory in my employ, he wrote in December. I will no longer tolerate efforts by the Sheriff’s office to deter my deputies from hunting down stage robbers, mail robbers, train robbers, cattle thieves, and all that class of murdering border banditti.

  By the time his letter was delivered, however, the attorney general had resigned and was headed home to Pennsylvania.

  Secretary of State James Blaine had left Washington as well. He wasn’t coming back and the Senate was on Christmas recess, so his replacement hadn’t been confirmed, which is why there was no one around to be alarmed by Arizona Governor Gosper’s frantic letter predicting war with Mexico if the Cow Boys were not reined in.

  Furthermore, Gosper wrote, in the absence of swift and decisive federal action, the law-abiding citizens of Cochise County are likely to form vigilance committees to protect their persons and property.

  Gosper’s letter was filed by a clerk, who then forgot all about it, but the message proved prophetic as the people of one Arizona community after another gave up on their government and took the law into their own ungentle hands.

  Galeyville declared itself off-limits to any stranger who came into town bearing arms. When a Cow Boy named Prairie Jack yelled that it was a free country and dared anybody to come and take his gun, he was promptly beaten to death by the assembled citizenry. A perfunctory inquest ruled this death justifiable homicide.

  Less than a week later, the town of Shakespeare hanged five men without benefit of due process. All of the deceased were said to have ridden with Curly Bill, although one of them might just have looked like somebody someone once saw with Curly Bill. “They served our community a good purpose,” crowed an editorial in the local paper, “for they have started our cemetery.”

  Shortly thereafter, out in the chaparral nearby, a man named Joe was discovered riding what was said to be a stolen horse. He was lynched; the horse wound up in his accuser’s possession.

  And if the Mexican border stopped lawmen from pursuing bandits, Arizona’s vigilantes were not so particular. The bullet-ridden body of a kid named Wercher was discovered by the rurales on the Sonora side. He, too, was said to have stolen a horse, but there were rumors that he might simply have stolen the heart of the wrong man’s girlfriend.

  In Tombstone, anonymous death threats were now arriving at the homes of Sheriff John Behan, Nugget editor Harry Woods, and Councilman Milt Joyce. “We know which side you’re on,” the notes usually said.

  With one such letter in hand, an armed and drunken Milt Joyce went after Virgil Earp in public, shouting abuse, making accusations. Virg dropped his cane and slapped Milt across the face. Sheriff John Behan dragged Milt away before anything worse could happen and brought him before a judge for disturbing the peace. This act of political neutrality earned him no thanks from Milt Joyce or the Earps.

  “Please, Virg,” Allie begged that night. “Please. Let’s just go.”

  But Morgan was still too hurt to travel, and his brothers wouldn’t leave Tombstone without him.

  THE BRAVEST IS HIT. THE BEST WILL DIE.

  FRANK STILWELL NEVER FIGURED ON BEING IN JAIL so long on a goddam robbery charge. Hell, he got off scot-free after killing a Mexican waiter up in Prescott.

  Even so, he’d been sitting in jail—off and on—since back in September when him and Pete Spence got arrested robbing the Copper Queen Mine payroll off the Bisbee stage. Bail was set at seven grand. Curly Bill collected it and sent a couple of boys to get Frank and Pete released, but the judge had some horseshit rule about how people on bail couldn’t post bail for other people.

  So Frank and Pete sat there stewing until somebody explained a few things to the judge, who came to see the unwisdom of his previous attitude. Yes, the judge noted, the Earp brothers and Billy Breakenridge had found a broken-heel bootprint where one of the robbers mounted a horse and rode away. And yes, the posse had tracked that horse to a town where a big-mouth cobbler told them he’d fixed a boot heel for Frank Stilwell, but that cobbler might’ve been lying. And anyways, he was no longer available to provide testimony. Besides which, Frank Stilwell wasn’t the only man in the world with a broken heel on his boot. Could’ve been anyone.

  So Frank and Pete finally got out of jail. Pete took off, but Frank Stilwell had a saloon in Charleston to run, which is where Virgil Earp showed up a week later with a federal warrant for attempted robbery of the U.S. Mail. And that was horseshit because Frank didn’t even know the Bisbee stage was carrying a goddam mailbag! He just wanted the strongbox and whatever pretties him and Pete could take off the passengers.

  So Frank went back to jail, and without Pete for company this time. He still wasn’t worried, understand. A mail-robbery charge didn’t scare Frank Stilwell, by God. He just hated all that sitting.

  Before long he took to pacing the cell, and with so much time on his hands, he began to meditate on injustice and oppression. He saw patterns that had been obscure to him before and looked for explanations as to why some people had it so easy while others were sitting in jail for no good reason. Which is why Virgil Earp came to o
ccupy Frank Stilwell’s thoughts to a larger extent than all the other sonsabitches who always came along to spoil things. Because that goddam mail robbery charge was purest malice. Harassment and persecution, that’s what it was, same as when Virgil’s brother Wyatt kept riding by the saloon back in Charleston—all biggety and full of himself, like he was daring the Cow Boys to come out and try something.

  Frank didn’t have anything against Morgan Earp yet, but he was probably a biggety sonofabitch, too. Goddam Yankee sonsabitches, Frank thought as he paced his cell. Coming down here, where they weren’t never wanted. Throwing their weight around. Somebody oughta take those bastards down a peg.

  Then one day in late October, the jailer brought him a copy of the Daily Nugget and said, “Hey, Frank, looks like some friends of yours made the paper.” And there it was, in black and white, as if Lord Jesus his own self had descended on a cloud to confirm all Frank Stilwell’s darkest suspicions about the Earps.

  Billy Clanton, dead. Little Billy! He was just a kid. And the McLaurys, both of them dead, too! Frank McLaury . . . all right, there’d been times when Frank Stilwell had wanted to shoot that mouthy little gamecock himself. But Tommy? What in hell had Tom McLaury ever done, except be pretty to look at? And who’d done it? Why, none other than the Earps! and that skinny lunger sonofabitch friend of theirs, Doc Holliday. First he kills Old Man Clanton, and now that bastard went and killed poor Tommy McLaury!

  Those sonsabitches, Frank thought over and over. Those lousy goddam Yankee bastards. They’ve been gunning for us from the start! Well, they won’t get away with this. I swear to God—they won’t get away with this! Soon as I get out of here, the Earps are dead men. Them and that sonofabitch Holliday, too.

  That’s what Frank Stilwell was thinking when he finally got out of jail in late December. And that’s what he kept thinking, all the way to Tombstone.