Epitaph

by Mary Doria Russell

  WHEN DEPUTY SHERIFF WILLIAM MILTON BREAKENRIDGE saw Frank Stilwell lurking in an alley near the corner of Allen and Sixth, he took a few moments to think things through, for this was as unwelcome an encounter as he’d experienced since going to work for Johnny Behan. And that covered a lot of ground.

  Billy B. took a lot of guff for being small and clean-shaven, for wearing specs and having a care for his clothing. The past twelve months had provided ample opportunity for the dapper little deputy to wonder if Sheriff Behan’s orders weren’t sometimes meant to humiliate him. It was, for example, probably some kind of joke when Johnny hired Curly Bill Brocius as an assistant tax collector last spring and then sent Deputy Breakenridge out to work with him. But Billy B. had made the strange partnership work. Together, he and Curly Bill had squeezed a great deal of tax revenue out of the ranchers of southeastern Arizona, and Billy’s own cut of the collections was gratifying. So he got the last laugh that time.

  There was, by contrast, nothing amusing when Johnny hired Frank Stilwell as a deputy. When Billy B. questioned the wisdom of pinning a badge on a sullen, quick-tempered thief who’d put a bullet into a waiter’s face for bringing him tea instead of coffee, Johnny Behan mumbled something about fighting fire with fire. Whose fire are we fighting? Billy wondered at the time, but he was a conscientious man who did his job as best he could. He worked with Frank Stilwell when he had to, same as he worked with the Earps when necessary. A lot of frontier lawmen had played both ends against the middle. You couldn’t afford to be a stickler about such things. And anyway, the arrangement with Stilwell didn’t last. Billy Breakenridge had been in charge of the posse that tracked the Bisbee stage robbers down, back in September. When Frank Stilwell turned out to be one of them, Sheriff Behan decided to consider Frank’s arrest to be a letter of resignation.

  Now Stilwell was out of jail again, and he was the kind to hold a grudge. Billy B. had expected the man to head for Charleston, where he had a saloon and a livery stable and friends, but here he was in Tombstone. Hanging around in an alley at dusk on the day after Christmas. Drunk, and carrying a shotgun.

  Technically, this was a matter for the city police, but Deputy Sheriff Breakenridge had taken an oath to uphold the law, and that’s what he did.

  “Evening, Frank,” he said mildly. “On your way out of town with that gun?”

  “I got no quarrel with you, Billy,” Frank declared. “I want the Earps and I want Holliday. Holliday first, by God! I saw that sonofabitch go into the Bird Cage, and when he comes back out, he’s a dead man.”

  “Frank, haven’t you been in enough trouble lately?”

  “He killed Tommy! I want the bastard dead.”

  Billy Breakenridge understood, for he himself was one of the many men and women who’d been half in love with Tom McLaury. It had broken his heart to see Holliday exonerated after blowing that beautiful boy’s chest to pieces, but that was the decision of the judge. Doc was free to walk the streets, just as Frank Stilwell was after killing an unarmed waiter up in Prescott. Cuts both ways, Billy thought.

  “I want him dead,” Frank was muttering, tears glittering in the gaslight from the saloon across the street. “He killed Tommy, and I want him dead.”

  Billy put a hand on Frank’s arm. “I know how you feel—”

  Stilwell jerked away. “Get away from me! You don’t know a goddam thing about me, nancy boy!”

  Oh, Frank, Billy thought. I know more about you than you do. But when he spoke, a moment later, his voice was neutral. “I know you’re breaking the law right now,” he said. “And if the city police catch you with that shotgun, you’ll be back in jail. So check that weapon or leave town. I’ll give you five minutes to choose.”

  Before Frank could reply, Johnny Ringo came out of the shadows. “I’ll take care of him,” Ringo said, his voice friendly in the darkness. “C’mon, Frank,” Ringo said, pulling the weeping man away from the street. “Now ain’t the time, and this ain’t the place.”

  About ten minutes later, Billy Breakenridge saw Doc Holliday leave the Bird Cage. Silently, the little deputy watched the gambler walk unmolested down Allen Street and go into the Alhambra, where he worked the night shift.

  I just saved your life, Billy B. thought. How’s that for irony?

  IT SOUNDED LIKE THUNDER when Alvira Sullivan heard the noise three nights later. Hope Virg don’t get caught in the rain, she thought, for it would be a pity if he came down with a cold now, just when he was so close to going back to work for Marshal Dake.

  Allie didn’t like him going out by himself, but Virg wouldn’t be babied. He took a walk around town every evening before bed to keep his bad leg limber and ward off night cramps in the damaged calf. He’d stop in wherever Wyatt had a faro table going and smoke a cigar, or drop by James’s tavern for a beer. Usually he’d be back by now.

  She went to the window, pulled the curtain aside, and frowned at a cloudless sky brilliant with stars. Maybe the storm’s coming in from the south, she thought, but already an uneasiness was setting in.

  Pulling a shawl around her shoulders, she went out on the porch, expecting to see Virg on his way home. Instead, she saw the police chief, Jimmy Flynn, running toward her on Fremont.

  No, she thought. No, no, no, no.

  “Allie!” Flynn called, “I’m sorry! It’s Virg—”

  “No!” she wailed. “No, no, no!”

  “C’mon. He’s still alive,” Flynn told her, “but we have to hurry.”

  FOLKS DRESSED FOR DINNER were standing around on the boardwalk in front of the Cosmopolitan’s restaurant, talking excitedly to hotel guests wrapped in robes and blankets.

  I thought it was dynamite down in one of the mines—

  I was sitting on the bed, taking my stockings off—

  First they attack Clum’s stage, and now this! Right here in the city!

  Some of the buckshot went right through my window.

  They were over there by the brewery. I saw two men running—

  Three! I saw three!

  He was still standing. He was still on his feet when I got to him.

  Jimmy Flynn pushed through the crowd ahead of Allie, opening a path. “Outta the way,” he kept saying. “I’ve got his wife.”

  Inside, the gaslights were turned up high. Virg was lying on one of the tables. He grinned when he saw her and said, “There’s my tough little mick! Don’t worry, Pickle. I’ve still got one good arm to hug you with.” But his voice was so weak! She’d never heard his voice like that. Dr. Goodfellow was cutting Virgil’s shirt off, and she could see it now: his back and side, peppered with buckshot. His left arm with a huge bloody hole in the middle of it.

  “Virg, did you get a look at him?” Wyatt was asking.

  “That sonofabitch Stilwell. I saw him just before . . .”

  Her vision went white. The room seemed far away, and she closed her eyes hard, refusing to faint. She could still hear Virg, and he was weeping now. “Don’t let them take my arm! Don’t let them do it.”

  “Virg, if it’ll save your life,” Wyatt began, but Virgil kept saying, “Don’t let them do it! If I have to be buried, I want both arms on me!”

  Doc Holliday was there now, too, getting ether ready like he did for Morg. “Watch my eyes, Virg,” he was saying. “Try to be calm. Breathe in—”

  “Promise me, Doc!” Virg cried. “Don’t let them take it while I’m under.”

  “You have my word,” Doc said. “Breathe in.”

  There were dozens of big lead pellets to dig out, and so much bone! Chunks of it. Long sharp shards, like pieces of a broken bud vase. The whole elbow was shattered, and at some point Allie’s knees hit the ground.

  When she came to, Bessie was beside her, on the carpet. “Don’t you give up on him, honey,” Bess said fiercely, and Allie knew why, for Bessie had told her about how James’s shoulder had been shot to kindling during the war, and how it took months and months for him to get better but he made it.

  Then James
himself knelt next to Allie and lifted her up—still strong on one side—and got her into a chair. “I won’t tell you not to worry,” he said, “but I will tell you this, Allie: It is very damn hard to kill an Earp.”

  Afterward, they carried Virg upstairs to a hotel guest room and laid him on one of those new box mattresses that were eight inches thick. People came and went. Doc, Josie, Wyatt, Lou. They told her to rest, but she would not leave Virgil’s side. All night long, she sat in the chair, watching each breath, willing him to take the next one.

  Sometime during the night, she heard a strange soft sound. Pat . . . pat . . . pat . . . That’s how it sounded. Pat . . . pat . . . pat . . .

  It wasn’t until morning that she knew what it was. The mattress was soaked through with Virgil’s blood. Drop by drop, it was falling onto the carpet beneath the bed. Pat. Pat. Pat.

  AT DAWN THAT DAY, Federal Marshal Crawley Dake was awakened by a messenger from Western Union. He began cursing after reading the first four words of the telegram and continued to curse for a long time after finishing it.

  VIRGIL EARP WAS SHOT BY CONCEALED ASSASSINS LAST NIGHT STOP HIS WOUNDS ARE FATAL STOP TELEGRAPH ME APPOINTMENT WITH POWER TO APPOINT DEPUTIES STOP LOCAL AUTHORITIES ARE DOING NOTHING STOP THE LIVES OF OTHER CITIZENS ARE THREATENED STOP WYATT EARP

  “Is there a reply, sir?” the messenger asked when the marshal paused for breath.

  “You’re goddam right there’s a reply,” Dake said. “God damn them! God damn them all to hell!”

  PROTECT THE FAMILY. Make sure nobody else gets hurt. That was the first step.

  Even while the doctors were pulling bone and lead out of Virgil, Wyatt went upstairs and told Josie to stay in their room and not to come out for any reason. Then he insisted that everyone else move into the Cosmopolitan. James and Bessie. Morgan and Lou. Doc Holliday. Even Mattie Blaylock. Al Bilicke gave them the whole of the second floor. Johannes Fronk, head of the Citizens Safety Committee since John Clum left town, posted guards at every door, inside and out.

  Crawley Dake’s telegram arrived a little past seven. Wyatt Earp took the oath as a deputy U.S. marshal and promptly deputized Doc Holliday, Charlie Smith, Daniel Tipton, Sherman McMasters, Turkey Creek Jack Johnson, and Texas Jack Vermillion. Morgan was still laid up, but with Virgil bled white and all but dead, Wyatt swore Morgan in, too, and made sure he had a gun close to hand, in case somebody got past Fronk’s guards.

  Warrants next.

  Billy Breakenridge came forward to say that Frank Stilwell had made threats against Doc Holliday and the Earps a few nights earlier and that Johnny Ringo might be involved as well. Ike Clanton’s hat had been found behind the brewery used as cover by the men who shot Virg. The idiot had actually written his name inside the hatband. When Wyatt appeared before the court that afternoon, he requested warrants for those three and for Peter Spence and William Brocius as well, all on suspicion of assault with intent to murder. He meant to find and arrest everyone and anyone with a grudge now. A judge could sort the evidence out later.

  Behan’s house next.

  Rousting the sheriff out of bed, he told Johnny what had happened to Virgil and cut off Behan’s murmurs of shock and sympathy. “I’m sending Josie home,” Wyatt said. “She’ll be on the Benson stage in the morning. I want a safe conduct for her.”

  “Wyatt, what makes you think I can guarantee—?”

  “Just get the word out, Behan. Do what you have to. If she gets hurt, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

  Returning to the hotel, he checked again on Virgil, who was still alive but only barely. Ignoring Allie’s red-eyed glare, he went down the hall to his own room.

  “Pack,” he told Josie. “You’re going back to San Francisco.”

  “I’m not scared,” she lied, wet-eyed. “I won’t leave you, Wyatt.”

  “Take Higgs and go home,” he said, pulling her valise out of the wardrobe. “I can’t think about you now.”

  My brother is dying, he meant. I need you to be safe.

  Of course, she didn’t hear it that way. It was all on her face—what she thought, what she felt. There was never any guessing with Josie, no trying to figure her out. Shocked, hurt, angry, she stood up and began to stuff clothing into her bag.

  Just as well, he thought, for she was willing to leave him now.

  IN THE HOURS FOLLOWING THE ATTACK on Virgil Earp, Marshal Crawley Dake sent one telegram after another to Washington. He might as well have been howling at the moon for all the good it did. Despairing of support from his superiors, Dake took out a $300 personal loan from Wells Fargo and telegraphed word to the bank in Tombstone: Let Deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp draw on the funds to field a posse and seek those responsible for shooting Virgil.

  Ordering Doc Holliday and Texas Jack Vermillion to remain in Tombstone to look after his brothers, Wyatt Earp and the rest of his deputies saddled up and left for Charleston, warrants in hand.

  Johnny Behan watched them thunder out of town. An assault on a federal marshal, inside city limits, was out of his jurisdiction. Even if the posse brought their men in, he knew it would be impossible to hold anyone for the shooting. Billy B.’s testimony would be dismissed as hearsay. Ike’s hat wasn’t proof of anything but carelessness. Nevertheless, Sheriff Behan sent identical telegrams to Frank Stilwell, Curly Bill Brocius, and Ike Clanton, whom he knew were in Charleston.

  V EARP NEAR DEATH STOP US MARSHAL W EARP REQUESTS SAFE CONDUCT FOR J MARCUS TRAVELING DECEMBER 30 ON BENSON STAGE STOP GET WORD TO SPENCE AND RINGO STOP

  This would, of course, warn all the suspects that Wyatt was now a federal officer on his way to arrest them, but hell . . . Johnny Behan was only doing what the marshal had requested.

  ALMOST THREE HUNDRED MILES NORTH, waiting for Doc to meet her in Prescott, Kate Harony awoke after a long night spent drinking with old friends. She was only moderately hungover and found no reason to moan until she went downstairs for coffee and saw Virgil Earp’s name in the headline of a newspaper somebody had left in the hotel café.

  The vendetta has opened in dead earnest in Tombstone with the attempted assassination of Virgil Earp, who was dangerously wounded on December 29th. Until now some believed the threats of the Cow Boys to be idle boasts, but the shooting of Marshal Earp shows that the Cow Boys will have their revenge. Who will be next? Attorney Tom Fitch has been repeatedly threatened, as have Marshal Earp’s brothers and associates. The turmoil in Tombstone is giving the entire Arizona Territory an unsavory reputation abroad, deterring the immigration of capital and respectable labor.

  A brief note from Doc arrived the next day.

  You will know by now what has happened in Tombstone. If I leave the city alone, I will be attacked on the road as John Clum was. Wyatt’s posse has gone after those responsible. When they are under arrest, I will try to get to you. In the meantime, I am doing my best to be useful. Morgan is stronger, but Virgil’s wounds are terrible. I do not see how he can survive. You were right. I never should have come back to Tombstone, but there is nothing for it now. Best you go on to Denver. I will come to you as soon as I can. JHH

  “YOUR BROTHER’S BLOOD cries out to me from the ground.” That’s what Johnny Ringo had whispered over and over while they waited to ambush Virgil Earp.

  “Eye for eye,” Ike said. “Brother for brother.”

  “They won’t get away with it,” Frank Stilwell muttered when Virgil Earp turned onto Allen Street. “Biggety goddam Yankees.”

  It was Ringo who’d made sure the double-barreled shotguns were loaded for buck, and he kept everyone liquored up while they waited for the marshal to stroll around that corner. When Virgil pulled even, they by-God let him have it and took off running afterward, which was when Ike lost his hat.

  The horses were waiting in front of a saloon down on Toughnut Street. They hit those saddles and raced out of town, laughing like schoolboys. It felt good, like a dash for the border after a cattle raid, your heart beating and your horse’s breath like a train engine: ch
uff, chuff, chuff.

  A mile out of Tombstone, they slowed some, for there was no sign of pursuit, but they kept up a good pace until they got to Frank Stilwell’s saloon down in Charleston. There they bragged, and drank deep, and celebrated until dawn. Then they staggered off to Stilwell’s back room and slept the sleep of the drunken righteous, and did not stir until Curly Bill Brocius kicked them awake.

  “What in hell have you fools done now?” he asked, waving Johnny Behan’s telegram at them. When they told him, he cursed them for boneheaded, cracker jackasses. “Virgil Earp was a federal marshal!” he cried. “This’s going to bring the whole goddam government down on us!”

  Slow on his best day, still half-drunk from the night before, Ike looked stupider than usual. “What should we do?” he asked Curly Bill. “What are we gonna do now?”

  “Why, turn ourselves in,” Ringo said with that strange-eyed, dreamy smile of his. The others howled but Ringo’s serenity never wavered, for he had thought this matter through. “We’re going to ask Johnny Behan for protective custody.”

  “But they’ll put us on trial,” Stilwell protested.

  “Of course they will.” Ringo looked at Curly Bill. “And we’ll have plenty of witnesses to testify that we were here in Charleston the night Virgil Earp got shot. Won’t we, Bill.”

  Frank and Ike waited, anxious eyes on Curly Bill, who was silent for a while but nodded in the end. Even Curly Bill was scared of Ringo.

  ON FEBRUARY 2, 1882, five suspects came before the Cochise County Court in connection with the shooting of Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp. The charge against them remained attempted murder; thirty-four days after being hit with four charges of buckshot, the marshal was still fighting for his life. Eight men and three whores swore that each of the defendants were in Charleston on the night of the attack on Marshal Virgil Earp. The case was dismissed for lack of evidence. The accused were released.

  For five weeks, the Associated Press had provided the world with lurid coverage of the attack on Virgil Earp, which was labeled Cow Boy revenge for what was being called “the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” because it took too long to set the type for “Gunfight in the Vacant Lot behind Camillus Fly’s Photography Studio Near Fremont Street.”