Epitaph

by Mary Doria Russell

  She stopped bustling and looked at him appraisingly. “Do you need help with the chamber pot?” He blinked. She laughed. “Like I said, son: We don’t stand on ceremony here. And I’ve doctored a lot of boys.”

  “I can manage on my own,” he whispered, “but you are very kind to offer.”

  “Well, then, I’ll leave you to it. I’ve got a roast going for Wyatt and the others, but I think you’re better off with something less challenging. How do you like your eggs?”

  “Over easy. Thank you, ma’am. If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all! I’ll be back in a few minutes with your meal.”

  He ate, and slept some more, and woke the next morning to the sound of voices he recognized. Wyatt, Sherm, and the Jacks were down off the mountain. And was that Big Dan Tipton? Yes, and Charlie Smith.

  Allies from Tombstone. Morgan’s friends.

  Listening, he noticed a pile of clothing that had been cleaned, mended, and ironed while he slept. He briefly considered getting up, but the conversation in the next room was staccato and decisive. Far more than he felt ready for. He closed his eyes and did not open them again until the door hinges creaked.

  “WE’RE LEAVING IN TWENTY MINUTES,” Wyatt had just told the others.

  “What about Doc?” Creek Johnson asked.

  “He’s not coming.”

  Before they could argue, Wyatt turned and went down the hall to the room where Mrs. Hooker had Doc. He eased the latch open, trying not to wake the dentist, and was counting off twenties when he heard Doc ask, “What in hell are you doin’?”

  “We’re leaving. It’s five dollars a day for riding with the posse. You’re out of pocket for your expenses, and—”

  Doc sat up, bony chest pale in the daylight, those stick arms propping him up like tent stakes. “You’re goin’ to pay me?”

  “Well, yeah. You lost income taking care of my brothers, and you need a stake to get started again in Denver, so—”

  “So you were goin’ to put cash on the bureau and leave me lyin’ here, like some wretched woman you’re done with.”

  Wyatt frowned and shook his head. Doc could be so strange. His mind just worked different, and you could never figure what was going to crank him up.

  “You’re as broke as I am, Wyatt. Where’d you get all that cash?”

  “That’s none of your—”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Dan Tipton brought it.”

  “Damn you!” the dentist cried. “Where did he get it, then?”

  “Wells Fargo. E. B. Gage. Richard Gird.”

  “And what—precisely—are they payin’ for?”

  Doc was pulling on his trousers now, easing them over the bandages. Wyatt tried not to see the muscles, thin as rope, that ran along the bones.

  “Doc,” he said, explaining as patiently as he could, “not one Cow Boy has ever been convicted of anything. Not even the judges believe any of them will ever go to jail. All the decent people in Cochise County want me to finish this. They want those outlaws wiped out—”

  Doc was sitting still now. Slate-blue eyes in a skull-white face. “So that’s your plan. Deliver us from all evil.”

  “There are still killers out there, Doc!”

  “There are killers right in this room.”

  “I’ve got backing from the governor on down. The president, even. Mr. Gage says there’ll be pardons when it’s over and—”

  “And you believed him,” Doc said, sounding like Mattie when she was amazed by how dumb Wyatt was being. “Wyatt,” he warned, “if you take that money, you’re bought. Take that money, and you’re nothing but a hired killer. There won’t be any pardon at the end. You’ll do what the politicians and the businessmen want, and when you’re finished, they will sell you down the river like a troublesome field hand.”

  He wanted to leave. He wanted to be outside, on his horse. Moving. Not talking, not hearing.

  “Wyatt, I am beggin’ you in Morgan’s memory! Don’t do this. I know what you’ve lost. I loved him, too. I can hardly bear to think of this miserable world without Morgan in it. What you’ve already done, that was vengeance. But this— This is commerce. Wyatt, they are paying for your soul!”

  Too many words. Always. Too many words. And Doc was crying now.

  “I don’t have time for this,” Wyatt muttered, tossing the cash on the bureau.

  “All right then, go!” the dentist cried. “Go, and be damned to you. Go, and take that blood money with you!”

  “MOUNT UP,” Wyatt told the others. “We’re leaving.”

  “What about Doc?” Creek Johnson asked again.

  Wyatt picked up his saddlebags. “I didn’t want him to come in the first place. I told him it would be too hard.”

  Creek frowned. “You mean, leave him here?”

  “Hooker’ll get him to Colorado.”

  “Wyatt,” Jack Vermillion said, “Doc damn near killed himself for you.”

  “Not for me,” Wyatt snapped. “For Morgan.”

  “Well, hell! That’s why we’re all here, isn’t it?” Danny Tipton asked. “For Morgan, right?” It was an innocent question, but no one would meet his eyes or speak to him. Confused, Dan looked from face to face. “We’re all here for Morgan, ain’t we?”

  It was John Henry Holliday who answered. Standing in the doorway. Half-dressed and haggard. His eyes reddened by fresh grief. “Tell them, Wyatt. Tell them why you think we’re here.”

  They listened, and then they argued. Nobody believed in the promised pardons. Nobody was willing to leave Doc behind either, for you could see death in him now, not just illness. They wanted to get him to the Colorado mountains, where he’d have some kind of chance.

  “Let things settle down, Wyatt,” Jack Vermillion said. “You can come back for the rest of them later, if that’s what you need to do. And I’ll come with you. But let’s get out of Arizona and lay low for now.”

  He would remember how it felt: like a fire went out. Like he’d burned so hot for so long, there was nothing left inside him but cold, dead ash.

  Watching his face, Doc murmured something in a foreign language before saying it in English. “Enough. Done is done. No man can rage forever.”

  “All right,” Wyatt said, not caring anymore. “All right. We’ll go.”

  HENRY HOOKER PROVIDED AN ESCORT across his land and a buckboard so Doc didn’t have to ride any farther. When they crossed the New Mexico line, they rested for a time in a border town, then moved on to a railroad depot where Doc could catch a train to Denver.

  Creek Johnson made sure Doc’s fare was paid and settled the dentist into a second-class car. Jack Vermillion arranged for a conductor to keep an eye on the sick man until he got where he was going.

  Wyatt didn’t even offer his hand in farewell.

  He wasn’t sure Doc would take it.

  MY PRIDE AND GLORY DIE, BUT THE LIFE THAT’S LEFT ME WILL BE LONG

  FOR 159 DAYS, NEWSPAPERMEN AROUND THE NATION and around the world had blessed the name of Earp. Opinions about the events in Arizona had divided predictably along political lines. The Earps were stage robbers, thugs, and murderers; Doc Holliday was worse than any of them, a quarrelsome drunk and a killer. Or, the Earps were incorruptible lawmen; Doc Holliday was their loyal friend, a gentleman, and a scholar. There was a reliable market for either version, and editorials were easy to write. Law and order. Crime and punishment. That kind of thing. Interest lagged a bit after Judge Spicer exonerated the Earps, but it picked right up when Virgil Earp was attacked. After Morgan Earp was gunned down, the Wyatt Earp Vendetta Ride riveted readers and sold out multiple editions, until Bob Ford assassinated Jesse James.

  A fickle public’s taste for “frontier justice” abruptly waned. Editors everywhere scrambled for a new topic. It came as a relief when a large contingent of Apaches broke out of the San Carlos reservation. Before the U.S. Army caught up with them, the renegades had killed almost as many men as the Earps and C
ow Boys combined, which made for exciting headlines about red savages and warpaths. Among their victims was Zwing Hunt, one of the Cow Boys who murdered Judge Peel’s son. Zwing had taken a bullet in the chest when the deputies came to arrest him for that, but escaped the noose by fleeing the Tombstone hospital when he was partially healed up. Ironic, then, that ole Zwing had leapt from the judicial pot into an Apache fire.

  Too ironic, for some. Too neat. Zwing wasn’t killed by Indians, they said, but by Wyatt Earp. The vendetta was still on, they said. Wyatt was still out there in the mesquite, avenging the deaths of the righteous.

  Counterrumors were swiftly offered. Earp and his posse were hiding in Colorado. Doc Holliday had died of consumption. Sherm McMasters was killed when the Cow Boys found out he was a snitch. Texas Jack Vermillion and Turkey Creek Jack Johnson were in jail up in Prescott. Wyatt had been dead since March—everybody knew that. He’d been killed back in the Whetstones by Curly Bill, who was hiding out in Mexico.

  Two months after Morgan Earp died, a second great fire broke out in Tombstone. Among the businesses destroyed were the O.K. Corral, Molly Fly’s boardinghouse and her husband’s photography studio. The site of the town’s most notorious event was now indistinguishable in a field of embers and rubble, which prompted a brief flare of optimism. “The lawless past is behind us,” people said. “We’ll rebuild, better than ever!” But flooding in the mines was getting worse, and it was even harder to keep capital and labor in town.

  Everyone pretty much forgot about Wyatt Earp, until Johnny Ringo’s body was found.

  THE MEN HE’D BEEN TRAVELING WITH simply left him in the desert. Waited until he was asleep. Took his horse, took the water, and took off. They were tired of the ugly cough. They were tired of the insults, the sneering. They were tired of him.

  A small part of Johnny Ringo still remembered that it was wrong to degrade another person, but that had always been the thrill of it. Saying and doing whatever he pleased. For years, he had waited for someone—anyone—to have the guts to call him on it. It never occurred to him that they might just walk away.

  What did he say last night . . . ? “You idiots are the kind of Irishmen who make a man wish Cromwell had done a better job.” He didn’t even think those two thick micks got the joke.

  Evidently they had.

  So they left in the dark. Cowards.

  From the start, the headache was awful, and it got worse as the sun rose higher. Just a hangover, he told himself, but it was a bad one. His tongue felt like flannel, and his mouth tasted of sand. Squinting into the sun, he started up a slope, hoping higher ground would provide a glimpse of green that would signal a stream or a spring somewhere nearby. He had to use his hands to pull himself up the steeper parts. Halfway up, he stopped, open-mouthed, laboring for breath in the mid-July heat.

  Lunger. Pathetic lunger.

  “A gun is your life out here.” That’s what Martin Ringo had said moments before he provided his fourteen-year-old son with a memorable lesson in absurdity. They were on their way to California. Martin was sitting next to the Conestoga, cleaning his shotgun. “A gun is food. A gun is protection. Take care of your gun, Johnny, and it will take care of you.”

  What Martin Ringo didn’t say was “Always check to see if the weapon is loaded.” Especially if you’ve got a decaying chest and an uncontrollable cough.

  One moment, he was talking to his son, and the next, that son was watching the top of his father’s head fly into the air. Blood and brains and bone came down like rain and hail, all over the boy’s upturned face.

  Martin Ringo. Dead. Just like that. Buried at the side of the trail in the middle of nowhere. Left behind to rot alone, like he’d never existed.

  So much for California. So much for the curative sunshine of the Southwest.

  Why did the family keep going? Why didn’t they go back to Missouri?

  He could hear his mother saying, Your brother’s sick, too. You have to take care of him and me and your sisters now. I’m not a mule, he told her in his mind. Don’t hitch me up to pull your wagon. “None of my affair,” he muttered, but his voice was almost gone.

  He was climbing again. Struggling upward, grabbing at bigger rocks. Look for green, he told himself. Green means water.

  Jesus, how long can it take to get to the top of this goddam slope?

  Hours. Forever. He was losing track of time. The world was nothing more than the gravel beneath his eyeballs and the pounding headache behind them. It was branches clawing at him, ripping his clothes, his skin. It was cactus, blocking his way, making him backtrack and circle. Chollas—vicious things, their spikes jumping out to jam themselves into your hands and face.

  Crown of thorns, his mother whispered.

  “Go to hell!” he screamed, weeping now, dry-eyed. Dry dry dry.

  Just a swallow of water. He’d praise Jesus for a swallow of water.

  Goddam boots. New. Meant for riding. Bad enough to be on foot without new boots rubbing blisters. He sat and pulled them off. Grunting with the effort. Hurling them away.

  His mother stared at the bloody sock. Well, now, that’s ruined. After all the work I put into it.

  “Go to hell,” he croaked. “Nobody asked you for the goddam sock.”

  His gun belt kept snagging on things. Your gun is your life. But it was so goddam heavy. And he couldn’t breathe. It was too hot to breathe.

  Lunger. Pathetic lunger. Die and be done with it, why don’t you?

  Sunshine won’t help. Rest won’t help. Nothing’s gonna help you, lunger. The pain’ll get worse, and worse, and worse. Until you die. Pull the trigger, you coward. Do it.

  Pull the trigger, he told himself, and this’ll be over.

  Just like . . . that.

  JOHN YOST SAW THE BUZZARDS the next day and went to investigate. He found the corpse near a clump of oak trees, maybe twenty yards from the ranch track. There was a pistol next to one hand. The feet were wrapped in a torn-up shirt. One of the cartridge belts was buckled on upside down. That was odd, but thirst will do strange things to a man. Crows had finished with the eyes and were tearing the scalp around the bloody hole in the top of the head, but Yost knew who it was. He buried the body where it lay and reported the death next time he went to town.

  Yet another Cochise County inquest was convened to take Mr. Yost’s statement in the matter of the death of John Ringo. The dead man’s effects were listed. A small amount of tobacco and a pipe; a silver pocket watch, silver chain attached; a comb; matches; two dollars and sixty cents in cash; two cartridge belts, one each for pistol and rifle ammunition. A .45-caliber Colt revolver, Model 1876, containing five cartridges, one of them spent.

  “Suicide, most likely,” the coroner’s jurors decided. “Ringo always was a crazy sonofabitch.”

  NOBODY WHO REALLY KNEW RINGO disputed that conclusion, but in the saloons of Arizona, common wisdom begged to differ. Wyatt Earp came back and got him, that’s what people said. Ole Wyatt shot Ringo in the head. Then he put the pistol in Ringo’s hand to make it look like Ringo did the deed his own self.

  For years afterward, whenever a Cow Boy died, the rumors about Wyatt would start up again. Of course, rustlers lived dangerous professional lives, and their leisure hours often involved drunkenness and discord. As John Henry Holliday had once observed, such men were rarely inclined to express dismay or disagreement with a well-turned phrase. They didn’t need Wyatt Earp to hurl them into eternity. They generally managed that on their own.

  Even so, for the rest of his long life, the questions remained the same. What really happened down there in Tombstone? Did you get Curly Bill? What about Johnny Ringo? Why did you let Ike Clanton live? You’re the one who got him down in Mexico, aren’t you! What was Doc Holliday really like? I heard he called you a Jew boy. Is that why you two parted on bad terms? How many men did you shoot? Nine? Thirteen? Thirty? The truth was never good enough. He might say something like “Doc was a real good dentist,” but the newspaper would print foolish
ness: “Doc Holliday was the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, fastest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever saw.”

  Once, he got so tired of a reporter’s badgering, he said, “Yeah. I killed Curly Bill and Ringo and Ike. I killed ’em all, and two dozen more.” He was being sarcastic, but that was the only time a newspaperman took him at his word.

  VIRGIL AND JAMES STAYED IN COLTON with their parents after Morgan was buried. Wyatt knew his mother worried about him and wanted him to come home, too.

  He could not bear the thought of her grief. He could not face his father’s scorn. Worthless pile of shit. Thirty-four years old, and not a damn thing to show for it. I knew you’d never amount to anything.

  So he moved, and kept on moving. Gunnison. Silver City. Albuquerque. Back to Dodge for a while. Assassination was a constant threat. Some idiot wanting to avenge Curly Bill. Some stupid kid wanting to get famous for shooting a man whose name had been in the papers.

  He got so he hated to be approached by strangers, even polite ones, and that hatred never left him. When he was an old man, they’d say, “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Earp,” or something ordinary like that. Then they’d back away from the hard blue eyes that told them exactly what the elderly Mr. Earp was thinking.

  You just want to shake the hand of a killer.

  You want to use me to make yourself feel brave.

  FOR A LONG TIME, the smallest thing could set him off. He’d catch sight of himself in a window, think it was Morgan, and grief would tear his chest open. He’d notice a shirt the color of Ike Clanton’s or hear laughter that reminded him of Curly Bill’s. The rage would explode again, all but impossible to control.