Epitaph

by Mary Doria Russell

  The A.P. carried news of the attackers’ exoneration as well, and two weeks after the trial, the Nugget’s editor, Harry Woods, received a bizarre letter from England.

  Dear sir, can you obtain for me a good specimen of the genus Homo known as the cow-boy? Send him to me by registered mail. I understand that cow-boys are just too, too awfully utter. Yours sincerely, Oscar Wilde

  O, MY BROTHER! I HAVE BEEN THE DEATH OF YOU!

  THERE COMES A TIME WHEN THE SMART MONEY GETS out. That’s what people were whispering in March of 1882. The Tough Nut’s been seeping for a year, they said. That new shaft at the Grand Central just hit water. The Contention’s bringing in a Cornish engine that can pump out half a million gallons a day, but who else can afford equipment like that?

  Silver’s done. Copper’s the next big thing. Bisbee is booming, and you’re less likely to get hit by a stray bullet down there.

  Did you see what happened last week? Johnny Ringo and Doc Holliday almost had it out with pistols on Allen Street!

  Ringo was drunk. He probably started it.

  Well, I heard Holliday say, “All I want of you is ten paces in the street!”

  The city police stepped in to stop them, but it’s only a matter of time before somebody else gets killed, and I don’t want it to be me.

  It’s time to sell out. It’s time to take what you can get and go.

  “TALK TO WYATT, MORG. He’ll listen to you.” That’s what Lou was saying, and Allie, and James, and Bessie. Even Virgil said, “There’s no future for us here.”

  The family was hemorrhaging money. The doctors’ bills alone were staggering. They were still paying on Morgan’s three surgeries, and Virgil needed constant care. Bessie was sick, and Mattie Blaylock required a steady supply of laudanum to keep her quiet. Al Bilicke was giving them a break on the entire second floor of the Cosmopolitan, but he couldn’t carry the Earps forever. And they didn’t dare go home because the death threats kept coming and it was too difficult to guard three houses.

  One by one, Johannes Fronk’s volunteers had drifted away. Which meant paying the replacements. Turkey Creek Jack Johnson and Texas Jack Vermillion and the others were friends, but they still needed room and board. And now Johnny Behan had persuaded Ike Clanton to refile murder charges against the Earps and Doc Holliday. There wasn’t any new evidence that could overturn the earlier decisions, but this would mean more of lawyers’ fees on top of everything else.

  Meanwhile, their income had all but dried up. Allie had her sewing machine brought from home and the girls were doing what they could to help, but it was a pittance laid against all the bills. Wyatt still got $125 a month as a deputy marshal. James had reopened his tavern in January, but business was way down. Even Chinese laborers knew it was dangerous to associate with an Earp.

  Doc, at least, was making some money, for John Meagher had allowed him to go back to work at the Alhambra. The Cow Boys might well make trouble, but Meagher understood that Doc was trying to cover Morgan and Lou’s expenses as well as his own.

  The dentist was risking a bullet every time he left the hotel, but Morgan envied him. At least Doc got outside for a few minutes a day.

  Wyatt was gone a lot, too. All winter, he rode out with one posse after another. Livestock theft along the border always picked up in the spring. Bisbee payrolls were attracting thieves from all over the country and stagecoaches were getting robbed regularly. Arrests were made, but nothing would stick. Everybody always had an alibi. Each time a Cow Boy left the courtroom unscathed, the insolence and provocation got worse. Without his brothers to back him up, Wyatt was taking the brunt of it all, and when he got back to the hotel, he was beat down to his boots.

  Morgan had begun pacing the hotel hallways—not strong enough to ride with Wyatt, too restless to read, too bored to sit. He hated to complain, but life inside the Cosmopolitan was close to intolerable. The girls could hardly stand the sight of one another. There was a lot of squabbling, and Lou was fed up. “If I wanted sister wives,” she told Morg, “I would have stayed in Utah.” James and Bessie were ready to sell out and leave on their own. Even Virgil said, “This is no way to live.”

  “Talk to Wyatt, Morgan,” they all said. “Wyatt will listen to you.”

  “WYATT, DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER why we came to Tombstone?” Morgan asked over supper when they were alone and the time seemed right. “We came here to get rich, right? Well, the money is gone. The silver’s underwater. Half the miners have been laid off. Hell, even the Chinamen are leaving town! James says his place is empty most of the time. He’s in a hole, and it’s getting deeper. We all are.”

  “The election’s eight months away,” Wyatt said. “With the Bisbee taxes coming in, it’ll be forty grand a year for the sheriff, and I’ll pay everything off.”

  Lips compressed with the effort to hold back what he was thinking, Morgan looked away. There wasn’t a chance in hell that Wyatt would ever be sheriff of Cochise County. Even here in Tombstone, City Council and the town police force had distanced themselves from anyone who’d been involved with the gunfight. An entirely fresh slate of town officials had been elected in January.

  “Wyatt,” he said carefully, “people don’t want to be reminded of what happened last October. Everybody wants to put it behind them. Voters. Virgil and Allie. Lou hates it here—she always has! James and Bessie want to leave. Doc wants to try Colorado. Let’s just go. Just sell everything off, pack up, and get the hell out of here.”

  “I don’t know, Morg . . .”

  “Wyatt, what kind of life is this? We may as well be in prison! We can’t hide in here forever.”

  “And we can’t just walk away,” Wyatt snapped. “It’ll look like the Cow Boys drove us out. If we run now, we’ll be running the rest of our lives.”

  They finished eating in silence. Morgan went to bed. Wyatt remained at the table. Finishing his coffee. Thinking things through.

  Morgan was right about the money at least. Two years in Tombstone and they were worse off than when they arrived. The gambling concessions, the mines, the houses, the water rights—everything was mortgaged or gone. Morg was finally healing up and Virgil would survive, but neither of them would have full use of both arms again. James was talking about opening a new bar called the Three Cripples Saloon. It was a joke, but nobody laughed.

  And maybe . . . maybe Morg was right about the election, too.

  Wyatt was on his way up to bed when Al Bilicke called him over to the front desk and handed him a piece of paper. The note was printed in block letters: EARPS LEAVE OR WE BURN YOU DOWN.

  “Wyatt, this business is all I have,” Bilicke said. “I have to think about my wife and kids.”

  ALL THAT NIGHT AS WYATT LAY IN BED, the questions circled in his mind. How long before somebody else took another shot at an Earp? How long before somebody got killed? Frank Stilwell was back in Tombstone, free as a bird, and he had a couple of friends with him. A half-Mexican named Florentino Cruz, and a breed named Hank Swilling—Apache Hank, they called that one. They were staying with Pete Spence and his wife, right across the street from Virgil’s place. Torching the Earps’ houses would be easy as pie.

  We can’t stay here, Wyatt thought. We can’t go home. We can’t leave town. What in hell can we do?

  He was wishing Josie was there to help him figure this out when the solution came to him.

  In the morning, he found Doc and asked, “How soon do you figure Virgil could travel?”

  “In another month, perhaps. I still believe amputation would have been better for him, but he’ll go to his grave with two arms. Why do you ask?” Wyatt didn’t answer right away, and Doc must have realized that Morgan had talked to him. “We’re gettin’ out?” he asked.

  When Wyatt nodded, Doc looked relieved. “My guess is, it’ll be safe to move Virg in the middle of April, give or take a few days.”

  Wyatt went to Morgan’s room next and asked Lou to step outside. “We can’t just walk away,” he told Morgan, “but w
e could say Virg needs another operation on his arm. We could say we have to take him to a doctor in San Francisco.”

  Morgan stared at him for a moment, and Wyatt got ready to defend himself. It was all right to say something nice, even if it wasn’t quite true. He used to do that all the time with Mattie. You look nice. This tastes real good. So it couldn’t be sinful if you saved a life by lying. It was honorable, almost.

  Before he could say that, Morgan grinned that big boyish grin of his. “Hot damn,” he said softly. “Hot damn. Thank you, Wyatt. You’re doing the right thing.”

  THERE WAS MUTED JUBILATION on the second floor of the Cosmopolitan Hotel that afternoon. They would have to keep quiet about their plans, so as not to alert the Cow Boys and invite a last-minute attack, but when Virg was well enough, they’d buy up all the seats on the night coach out of Tombstone. Wyatt’s deputies would act as an armed guard until they got to Benson. Then they’d take the local to Tucson and transfer to the Southern Pacific. Virg could continue his convalescence in California. Maybe all the brothers would stay with their parents for a time. Doc Holliday would come with them as far as Tucson, then continue north to Denver, where Kate was waiting for him.

  Even Wyatt looked happy, but when Allie showed him a flyer about the St. Patrick’s Day Ball at Schieffelin Hall, he shook his head. “I don’t know, Allie,” he began.

  “Well, I do,” Allie said. “We’ve been cooped up long enough! Virg can sit and watch, but the rest of us are going to dance tonight—even Bessie, if she feels good.”

  He thought it over. It was only a few blocks to Schieffelin Hall. There were a dozen men in town who could be trusted to keep an eye out for trouble. “All right,” he said. “All right.”

  ON THE DAY OF THE DANCE, the ladies spent hours in Lou’s room, primping and dressing up, giggling like girls behind the closed door. A barber came across the street, and the gentlemen got shaves and haircuts and put on their best suits. Meanwhile, Texas Jack Vermillion rounded up a substantial bodyguard.

  The weather on the evening of March 17, 1882, was raw and blustery with an icy, spitting rain that made the warmth and light of Schieffelin Hall all the more splendid. Miles of Kelly green bunting festooned the windows. Gold paper shamrocks and silver punch bowls gleamed in the gaslight. Satins and silks shimmered. Crystal glittered. It was like stepping into Aladdin’s cave. Town politics remained bitter and both sides were in attendance, but for a few hours, hard feelings and rivalries and suspicions were set aside.

  Well-rested after a quiet winter, Doc asked each of the Earp ladies for a waltz. Wyatt danced a polka with Lou. Then the band played something slow, and everyone cheered when Virgil—gaunt and frail—took Allie for a single turn around the dance floor, holding her close with his good arm, but what everyone would remember later was how happy Lou and Morg were that night, and what a handsome couple they made: Lou in a sweet pink frock that set off the pretty flush of her cheeks as she danced and Morgan in a blue worsted suit he’d worn just once before, last summer.

  “Why, it looks like their wedding party,” someone remarked at the punch bowl as Lou and Morgan swept past.

  “It does indeed,” Doc Holliday murmured. “It does indeed.”

  IT WAS SEDUCTIVE, that little taste of ordinary life. Remember when we lived in houses and had kitchens and beds of our own? Remember when we could walk around town without armed guards? That’s how life is supposed to be!

  The next evening they all went out again, this time to see the Tombstone premiere of a comedy called Stolen Kisses—hours of silly entertainment and heedless laughter. It was just what they all needed.

  Afterward, everybody returned to the hotel except for Morgan.

  Bob Hatch’s Billiard Parlor was right across the street from the Cosmopolitan. All winter long, Morgan had played games in his mind, imagining angles, thinking through the shots. After months in bed and then more months of what felt like captivity, he was dying to play for real.

  Later, Wyatt would try to work out what made him go back to the billiard parlor. He was already up in his hotel room. He had his coat off and was starting to unbutton his shirt when an uneasiness rose in him. He just couldn’t shake that feeling, though he knew Morgan had five good men guarding him at Hatch’s.

  “Hell,” he sighed. Morg would rag him about being a mother hen, but he put his coat back on. It was almost his birthday. He was turning thirty-four at midnight and told himself it’d be nice to celebrate with Morgan.

  Allen Street was all but empty, for it was raining again and still windy, with the cutting nighttime cold of March in the desert. The lights were blazing through the fancy painted windows of the billiard parlor. Wyatt hurried inside only to be greeted by Bob Hatch’s irritable cry, “Shut that gawddam doe-ah!”

  “What’s the matter, Wyatt?” Morgan asked. “Couldn’t sleep?”

  “Just thought I’d come back and watch you play.”

  Which was sort of the truth, for Bob Hatch was an expert and Morgan was very good, and it was a marvel to see them compete. There were tall chairs along the wall, so you could sit and watch the games. Shaking the rain off his coat and hat, Wyatt hung them up and went over to sit by a fella named George Berry, who nodded hello and murmured, “Five bucks says your brother loses two out of three.”

  “What in hell happened to that wrist of yo-ah’s?” Bob Hatch asked Morgan.

  “Oh, this was years ago,” Morg said. “Remember, Wyatt?”

  “He musta been about five,” Wyatt said, though he suspected Bob was only asking about this to distract Morgan from the game. He leaned toward George and said, “I’ll take that bet.”

  “Ma always called me Angel,” Morg began, “and the Bible says angels can fly, right? So one day I climbed up this big old cottonwood, and you know how brittle they are—”

  Morg paused to move around the table for his next shot.

  “He fell about twenty feet,” Wyatt said. “Broke the wrist.”

  “And then Pa beat the hell out of me for being so stupid!” Morgan said cheerfully, like it was a good joke on him and it made perfect sense to wallop a child who was already hurt. Wyatt was going to say something about that, except he noticed that Morg was standing between the gaslight and a window. That could make you a target. “Morg,” he was going to say, “move away from the window.”

  He would see what happened next for the rest of his life.

  The glass exploding. The sledgehammer impact. The bloom of blood.

  The first slug caught Morgan square in the back, smashing his spine and ripping out through his gut with enough residual power to slam into George Berry’s thigh, four feet beyond. Before Morgan had time to hit the floor, a second bullet passed inches from Wyatt’s own head, splintering the wooden wall behind him.

  The rest was a blur. Men taking off into the night, guns drawn, looking for the shooters. Lifting Morgan with Bob Hatch, getting him onto a chaise longue in the card room next door. Gamblers running for the police and the family and the doctor, who hurried—again—to the side of a shattered and bleeding Earp. George Goodfellow’s bleak eyes meeting Wyatt’s as he shook his head with silent regret. Lou, screaming. Doc, holding her.

  “Lay me straight, Wyatt,” Morgan asked quietly.

  “You are straight,” Wyatt told him. Weeping. Soaked to the skin in his brother’s blood. “You’re just as straight as you can be.”

  “Well, then, I guess my back is broken.”

  In the minutes Morgan Earp had left, he joked lamely, “I have played my last game of pool” and tried to comfort those around him. “Won’t be long,” he promised. Mostly though, he gripped his brother’s hand. “They’re picking us off,” he whispered. “Don’t let them get you, Wyatt.”

  IT WASN’T A SCENE IN A SENTIMENTAL STORY. It wasn’t a dime novel. There were no howled oaths, no fist-shaking vows of revenge. In the end, there were no words at all. There was just the feel of Morgan’s grip loosening around his hand.

  And . . . a pa
in drilling through his own chest. It was so deep, so physical that he unbuttoned his shirt later, looking for a bullet hole. Nothing, he thought, mystified by his own unmarred flesh. How can nothing hurt so much?

  I shoulda known, he thought over and over. Frank Stilwell and Pete Spence. Apache Hank and Florentino Cruz. They’re picking us off, just like Morgan said.

  “Wyatt?” James said. “What’s the plan?”

  He turned and stared at James for a moment. I’m always wrong, he thought. Why do they ask me what to do?

  “You take Virg and Morgan home to Mother,” he said finally. “I’ll go, as far as Benson. Then I’ll track the killers down.”

  WRETCHED MORTALS! THEY LIVE IN GRIEF.

  THERE WAS NO CHANCE NOW OF MAKING A QUIET RETREAT. Stilwell, Spence, Swilling, and Cruz were seen leaving Tombstone, but the Cow Boys had eyes all over town. There was every reason to believe there’d be another attack on the road to Benson.

  As word of Morgan’s death spread, men who’d served Wyatt and Virgil as deputies showed up, armed and red-eyed, to escort the Earps to safety. It fell to James to prepare what was left of the family for the journey.

  “What about Mattie?” he asked Wyatt.

  “Yeah, her, too. I don’t want her in the house if they burn it down.”

  “We’ll need money for the trip. You got any?”

  “Some. Sell the horses, I guess. Except for Dick.”

  While the women packed, James stopped by the lawyer’s office and arranged to have the last of the Earp properties disposed of. “If there’s anything left after you settle the debts, send it to Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Earp in Colton, California,” he told Bill Herring.