Epitaph

by Mary Doria Russell

  “It was just me,” Wyatt said. “Doc didn’t fire. The other three were back in Benson.”

  “Well, that’s as may be, but they’re wanted all the same.” The telegrapher looked around and dropped his voice. “Get some rest, sir. I don’t believe my messenger will be able to find Johnny Behan until after eight o’clock this evening.”

  THE COSMOPOLITAN WAS ONLY A BLOCK from the pitheads on Toughnut Street. Until recently you’d have heard the constant noise of steam engines over in the Goodenough, but it was quiet that afternoon.

  Eliphalet Butler Gage found that silence unnerving. It was the sound of businesses closing and capital fleeing.

  You could explain cattle rustling to eastern investors. (“Nothing to do with our operations, although it does make beef cheaper.”) You could justify the gunfight back in October. (“Strict law enforcement! We tolerate no nonsense in Tombstone.”) You could point out that the U.S. Mint was still buying millions of dollars of Tombstone silver. No matter what you said, investors were backing away.

  It wasn’t too late to turn things around. There was plenty of silver ore to be extracted from the Grand Central Mine. He needed bigger pumps, heavier timbers, more cash to pay competitive salaries to the engineers and skilled miners who were leaving for Bisbee’s copper deposits. The capital would come back, if the crime problem could be solved.

  I’m just going to ask Wyatt a question, Gage reminded himself, trying not to be nervous. He was certainly not going to offer the man a bribe. Wyatt had beaten a man to death for trying that up in Dodge. No, he would simply ask a question and wait for the answer. If it seemed wise, he’d offer . . . encouragement, one might say. If Wyatt looked askance, Gage could easily adjust his approach from financial backing to moral support.

  When Wyatt walked through the hotel door, E. B. Gage wasted no time in coming to the point. “What would it take to put an end to this plague of lawlessness, Wyatt?”

  To track the Cow Boys down and kill them all, he meant, and looking into Wyatt Earp’s eyes, Gage knew that his meaning was clear. He could almost see the man doing the computation in his head. More men. More horses. More ammunition. Provisions for weeks in the chaparral. A good tracker. Payments to informers.

  “Call it a grand,” Wyatt said. “Tens and twenties.”

  A bargain, any way you calculated it. “I could get that,” Gage said cautiously.

  “How soon?”

  Awash with relief, Gage almost wept. “Thursday. Friday at the latest. Richard Gird will kick in. Wells Fargo, too. How should we get it to you?”

  “Send it to Henry Hooker’s ranch. I’ll head there when I can.”

  “The whole territory will be grateful. We’ll back whatever you do, Wyatt. The governor wants this problem solved. So does Washington,” Gage added for good measure. “There’ll be pardons when the job is done.”

  HIS TIME WITH JOSIE seemed like a fairy tale now, like some story that started with “Once upon a time.”

  Eyes open, lying in the bed they’d shared, he tried to calculate how long they’d had together. The president died on September nineteenth. The gunfight was October twenty-sixth. The hearing was in November. The attack on Virg was just after Christmas. He sent her back to San Francisco then.

  A hundred days, maybe? Give or take.

  I should sleep, he thought, but he reached for his pocket watch instead and did the count again. Sixty-six hours since Morgan died. Every minute felt like failure. Every breath Morg’s killers took was a rebuke . . .

  He must have dropped off at some point, for he sat up with a cry when Al Bilicke knocked on the door.

  At seven-thirty, everyone was down in the lobby except Doc. Wyatt hoped briefly that the dentist was too exhausted to come along. Then he remembered: If Doc was still in Tombstone when Western Union delivered the telegram to Johnny Behan, he’d be arrested and hanged for sure.

  “Did you wake up Holliday?” he asked Bilicke.

  “Yes, sir. He told me to get him up at six. He’s waiting for you outside.”

  And he’d been busy. The horses were saddled, the canteens filled, bags of food hung over the pommels. While Sherm and the Jacks tied bedrolls and lifted saddlebags onto their animals, Doc sat silently on that rented sorrel, Duchess. Eyes on Wyatt. Just waiting.

  Wyatt nodded, accepting it. Doc inclined his head.

  The rest of the posse was mounting up when the Jewish druggist hurried over with the two canteens that Dr. Holliday had asked him to prepare. “Coffee, very strong,” he said, handing one to the dentist. Then, with a look of warning, he gave Doc the other. “Laudanum,” he said. “Very dilute, but . . . use it sparingly.”

  SHERIFF JOHN BEHAN was on his way to the Can Can Café for supper when he saw Wyatt and the others getting ready to leave town. Starting across the street, he called, “Wyatt, I want to see you . . .” But his words trailed off and his steps slowed when he got close enough to look into Wyatt Earp’s eyes.

  It was, he’d think later, like bending down to pick up a belt you’d dropped on the floor the night before, only to realize that what you were reaching for wasn’t your belt. It was a rattlesnake, waking after a long hibernation.

  “Well, Johnny, you’re seeing me now,” Wyatt said. “May come a time when you see me once too often.”

  Behan took a little step back, and Wyatt smiled at that: a small, unmirthful smile, full of the snobbery of evil. We’re all rotten, that smile said, and I am the worst of all. Johnny had seen that smile on someone else, though it would take a few days to remember who. Meanwhile, his own mouth worked briefly; in the end, he found nothing to say, and Wyatt gave a little snort of contempt.

  “Run along now,” he told Johnny. “I have work to do.”

  Deputy Breakenridge arrived at his boss’s side in time to hear that remark and saw Sheriff Behan flush crimson as he watched the Earp posse ride down Allen on their way out of town.

  “Aren’t we going to arrest them?” Billy asked.

  “Not yet,” Johnny said, moving smoothly toward legal high ground. “We don’t have warrants yet.”

  It was only a quarter of eight.

  THE NEXT MORNING, the foreman of Pete Spence’s woodcutting operation noticed five horsemen approaching the camp. He kept an eye on them as they started up the mountain and when they got close, he recognized Wyatt Earp and realized it was a posse. Sherm McMasters was with them. That was a surprise. Sherm didn’t usually have much to do with lawmen.

  “Where’s Pete Spence?” Earp asked.

  “Last I saw him, he was down in Tombstone.”

  “When was that?”

  The foreman scratched his beard. “Last week, must be. Why? Is Pete in trouble?”

  “When do you expect to see him next?”

  “Hell if I know. He don’t come up here much. Usually it’s just me and the greasers. They take the trees down, I freight ’em back to town. Hey, Sherm.”

  McMasters nodded, but he was talking to the Mexican woodcutters, asking them the same kinds of questions in Spanish. They all looked blank and shrugged, except for the new man—a half-breed nobody knew well, who hung back and wiped his palms on his vest and edged toward the woods.

  And suddenly took off running.

  “That’s Cruz,” Sherm yelled.

  Wyatt spurred his horse and disappeared into the trees. The rest of the posse followed, spreading out to keep Cruz from doubling back.

  They caught up to him when he tripped and fell, a hundred yards into the woods. Cruz scrambled upright, but Sherm was good with a rope and hauled him down like a yearling calf.

  “You know who I am?” Wyatt asked.

  Cruz nodded, arms pinned by the lariat. “Sí, señor.”

  “Then you know why I’m here.”

  “Sí, señor, but I—I was just the lookout! I didn’t know they was gonna shoot su hermano.”

  “Who? I want names.”

  Florentino glanced at Sherm McMasters. Hoping for sympathy, finding none. A moment later,
the names poured out. Frank Stilwell. Pete Spence and Apache Hank came to mind first, of course, but Earp kept staring at him with those hard eyes, so Florentino kept going. Ike Clanton. Pony Diehl. Curly Bill Brocius. Johnny Ringo. Willie Claiborne. Johnny Barnes. Everybody. Anybody he could think of.

  “Where are they now?” Earp asked.

  “Stilwell and Hank and Ike, they went to Tucson. The others are up in the Whetstones, señor.” Cruz lifted his chin toward the mountain range across the valley. “They was headed for Iron Springs. That’s what I heard them say, quizás. I don’t know.”

  Earp seemed satisfied and Florentino relaxed a little, but he was already thinking that spring was nice in Sonora and how it might be a good time to visit his cousins in Mexico, as far away from Johnny Ringo as he could get.

  “What’d my brother ever do to you?” Earp asked then.

  He was frowning, but it looked like he was just puzzled and curious. So Florentino made his voice as suave as he could. “Nothing, señor. Your brother, he was a nice, good man—that’s what I heard. But the others, they paid me twenty-five dollars to watch. Me, I needed el dinero, señor.”

  “Twenty-five dollars,” Earp repeated.

  “Dead for a ducat,” the skinny man at his side murmured.

  “I just watched,” Cruz reminded them, getting nervous again, looking from one hard face to the other. “I’m sorry for your brother, señor. He never did nothing bad to me—”

  EVERYBODY BACK IN THE WOOD CAMP heard the fusillade, but they had work to do. At the end of the day, the foreman went out to look around. When he found the body, he had the boys wrap it in canvas and heave it on top of a load of logs, to be hauled into the city with the rest of a delivery.

  “Another day, another inquest,” people said in Tombstone.

  “I examined the body of the Mexican named Florentino Cruz,” Dr. George Goodfellow testified. “One shot entered the right temple, penetrating the brain. The second hit the right shoulder. A third hit the liver and made its exit to the right of the spine. A fourth struck the left thigh . . .”

  When the enumeration was complete, the physician stated his opinion that the firing might have begun while Cruz was standing or running but had continued for some time after Cruz was on the ground.

  “There was an absence of blood around some of the wounds,” he said, “indicating that they were received after death.”

  TWO FOR MORGAN, Wyatt thought, leading the way toward Iron Springs. Eighty-one hours for Florentino Cruz.

  STIR UP STRENGTH TO BATTLE ON!

  JOHN HENRY HOLLIDAY WAS COUNTING AS WELL. Eighty-two hours. Eighty-three. Eighty-four.

  He had been ill his entire adult life. He had always worked indoors. Dental offices at first, then saloons. Gambling was a desk job, really. He had no more need to ride than an accountant or the clerk in a hardware store. There had been horses in his youth, of course, but he’d rarely had occasion to stay in the saddle more than a morning, say, or a long summer afternoon. He had never done anything like this.

  Nothing, ever, like this.

  They were moving now through a landscape as slovenly as a three-day beard, its unlovely face covered with prickly stubble. The Whetstones were failed sandstone: an ancient seabed that hadn’t been under pressure long enough to compact into something harder. Uplifted, weathered over eons, broken now into immense piles of rubble. It was evil terrain. Difficult for the horse: like climbing over a mountain of loose bricks. Difficult for the rider: constant adjustments, lying back against the cantle as the animal slid down the gullies, leaning over the horn as she scrambled over the next heap of stone. One slip, and there’d be cactus or a boulder to break the fall.

  His legs were finished. He had no strength left to take up the shock of a trot, and the skin on the inside of his thighs was breaking down. But he was alive to feel the pain and the fatigue. With his cheesy lungs and broomstick legs, he had outlived Morgan Earp by almost four days.

  He was working at the Alhambra when he heard the shots, but if you left the table every time you noticed gunfire, you’d never make a living. So he kept his eyes on the layout and continued to deal until John Meagher came over and said, “Morgan Earp’s been killed.” He stood and the whole world tilted. When his vision cleared, he was on his hands and knees, so close to the carpet of the gaming room that he could see individual grains of sand embedded in the filthy fibers, and he could hear someone howling.

  Eighty-five. Eighty-six.

  He leaned back in the saddle, trusting Duchess to pick her way down a gully and clamber up the other side. The two Jacks took turns watching out for him, which was kind, but he was careful not to fall behind and rehearsed what he’d say if Wyatt turned around and told him to quit.

  Have I slowed you down?

  Have I asked for help?

  Have I uttered one word of complaint?

  I will bear witness, he thought over and over. Morgan Earp was my friend, and I will see this through.

  They made camp high in the mountains and got a few hours’ rest. It wasn’t enough. Grief, fever, sun, exhaustion. Despite himself, he was nearly asleep in the saddle when the shooting broke out.

  Duchess shied and pivoted. He almost fell out of the saddle. Gripping the horn, he righted himself, frantically trying to work out where he was, where the others were, where the gunfire was coming from. Jack Johnson took hold of the big sorrel’s reins, trying to control her.

  Up ahead, Jack Vermillion’s horse went down, pinning him to the ground. Dick Naylor was dancing and spinning as well, with Wyatt struggling for balance while Sherm McMasters—hat flying off, face stretched, eyes wide—raced toward them yelling, “Ambush! Take cover! Curly Bill is up ahead!”

  IT WAS A FLUKE, REALLY. Not an ambush. The Whetstones were high desert. If you had stock to water, there were only a few places to do it. At the south end of the range, Cottonwood Springs was your best bet, so that’s where Curly Bill Brocius had led seven men and nineteen freshly stolen head of cattle.

  It was a meager return for the risk they’d run. These days the big ranchers were hiring gunmen to guard their herds. Rustling from the small operations was hardly worth the effort. Just that morning, Curly Bill had decided he was better off on Johnny Behan’s payroll, collecting county taxes and getting a cut of the take. It wasn’t as exciting as more conventional forms of theft, but Billy Breakenridge was congenial company and Curly Bill found it amusing to be a deputy.

  “Somebody’s coming,” Johnny Barnes reported. “Five of ’em, maybe.”

  Ranch hands, hoping to get the cattle back, Bill thought, and he wasn’t real concerned. In his experience, employees getting a dollar a day were rarely willing to die for a steer. “Move the stock,” he told the three new boys, and they took off.

  Bill himself and Johnny Barnes stayed low behind an embankment with Pink Truly and Al Arnold, watching the riders approach. “When they get close, blaze away,” Bill said. “Make as much noise as you can. They’ll run.”

  It wasn’t until after the first barrage of gunfire that they realized who they were shooting at. Bill still wasn’t worried. He’d heard that Wyatt Earp was on the warpath since his brother got killed. Bill’s conscience was clear on that score, though he couldn’t tell a lawman, “I was stealing stock the night your brother died.”

  The way Bill figured it, he’d just josh Wyatt some and then both sides would back off and go their separate ways.

  “Well, hello, Wyatt!” he called. “Now, look at all of us! There’s badges on every chest! I hear they’re the latest thing in Paris this season.”

  “I’m not here to arrest you,” Wyatt called.

  “No? Well, maybe I’ll arrest you! I hear there’s warrants out for you boys, and I am a duly constituted deputy of the Cochise County sheriff’s office. You come to surrender?”

  Wyatt Earp was off his horse by then and advancing on them with a shotgun, not hurrying, just coming toward them, eyes steady.

  Curly Bill heard Pink an
d Al splashing across the creek. He glanced back to see them scrambling up the other side of the bank and heading for their horses. Which left Bill all alone, except for Johnny Barnes. Barnes was gamer than most, but maybe he was just too scared to move.

  Time slows down at moments like that, and Bill found himself remembering a tiger he’d seen when a circus came through Houston one time. The tiger was inside a barred wagon that was all painted up with jungle pictures on the outside. It was a little cage for such a big animal, but the tiger never stopped pacing. Two steps, turn. Two steps, turn. Two steps, turn. His head stayed steady as he moved, looking at you all the while, his animal thoughts plain in those yellow eyes. These bars are all that stand between your belly and my rage.

  Except this time there were no bars.

  WORD FILTERED BACK TO TOWN. And soon there were half a dozen versions of what happened up in the Whetstones.

  It was at Burleigh Springs. No, it was Iron Springs. Crystal Springs, I heard. Two men were killed. No, four. Curly Bill is dead. So are Johnny Barnes, Pink Truly, and Al Arnold.

  No, it was four of Earp’s men killed. Curly Bill shot Wyatt himself, square in the chest. No, it was Wyatt who shot Curly Bill. Damn near blew Bill in half with a shotgun blast.

  Oh, hell, Curly Bill ain’t even in the country. He’s been living down in Mexico for months! Well, I heard ole Wyatt cut off Bill’s head and brought it in to claim that thousand-dollar reward from the Cattleman’s Association. Jesus! He cut off Bill’s head? God’s honest truth! I know a man who saw the body with his own eyes.

  It would be months before the facts were known. Curly Bill was buried on Frank Patterson’s ranch later that day, his head still attached, along with Al and Pink. Johnny Barnes was seriously wounded and no one expected him to live. His name was added to Wyatt Earp’s tally, but he survived to kill Butcher Bill Childs about a year later. He got caught and did a twenty-one-year stretch in the Missouri State Penitentiary for the deed.