Promised Land

by Mark Warren

  Wyatt pushed Ike back onto the bench, and Morgan slammed down Ike’s revolver next to him. “Here’s your chance right here,” Morgan purred. “You damned yellow windbag.”

  Behan’s deputy rose from his chair. “Now wait a minute!” He approached the Earps but stopped as Judge Wallace came through the door with Virgil right behind him, both carrying a fresh dusting of snow on their shoulders. Reading the tension in his courtroom, the judge quickly started proceedings, fining Ike twenty-five dollars for carrying weapons inside the town limits.

  At this announcement Wyatt let his boot drop heavily from the bench, and he walked out the door, his hard face shining like polished stone. Slamming the door, he bumped headlong into a man hurrying to enter. When he recognized Tom McLaury, the fire in his chest fanned into a flame again. The younger McLaury’s face—usually open and friendly—was set with hostility, making the physical similarities to his brother suddenly apparent.

  “What the hell’ve you boys been beating on Ike for?” Tom demanded. With his arms swelling from his sides, he widened his stance and glared at Wyatt.

  “I’ll knock down any man who threatens me or my family,” Wyatt said, his voice like iron. In his peripheral vision Wyatt saw the crowd backing away. They were voters all, he knew, but the heat of his anger trumped reason. “Are you a part of that threat?”

  The fingers of McLaury’s right hand spread and stilled next to his hip. Only then did Wyatt spot the gun butt jutting from the Cow-boy’s deep trouser pocket.

  Tom’s forehead furrowed. “I’m with Frank and Ike,” he blared out. “Whatever they say goes with me, too. We’re damned sick of you Earps always pushin’.” Tom scowled and licked his lips. “You’re all just trespassers, suckin’ this land dry, while us ranchers have been scraping out a livin’ long before you ever got here.” He looked so much like Frank now that Wyatt let the differences between the two brothers dissolve in his mind.

  “I ain’t waitin’ around to get back-shot by the likes of you,” Wyatt snapped. “Jerk your gun!”

  For a moment nothing happened. Tom’s moist eyes darted from Wyatt’s face to the bulge in his coat pocket and then back to Wyatt’s icy eyes.

  “Jerk it!” Wyatt ordered.

  With his left hand Wyatt slapped McLaury across the face, and with his right he pulled the Colt’s. The violent energy that had gathered inside him in the courtroom now funneled into a long slashing arc of gunmetal. Tom dropped backward into the street, a red gash opened on his head. Wyatt looked up when “Kid” Claiborne shouldered through the crowd, but the young Cow-boy’s hostile gaze could not hold on Wyatt’s.

  Virgil stepped out onto the boardwalk, and Wyatt nodded at McLaury. “Here’s another for the court to collect a goddamned twenty-five-dollar fine. Never mind he threatened our lives. That don’t seem to mean a damned thing around here.” Wyatt jammed his gun into his pocket and strode away, mumbling under his breath, “We ought to ’a killed ’em both.”

  At Hafford’s, Wyatt bought a cigar and then stationed himself outside in front of the saloon to keep watch over the main intersection. The heat of anger had passed. He watched “Kid” Claiborne, Ike, and Tom move up Fourth Street and disappear into Dr. Gillingham’s office. Virgil and Morgan came up the street from Wallace’s courtroom and stood beside Wyatt. In their dark coats and hats and starched white shirts, the three Earps stood like businessmen who might be considering some new entrepreneurial proposition. At the same time—looking so much alike with their wheat-straw hair and moustaches—there was a menacing and powerful sense of solidarity.

  “You reckon we knocked the fight out of ’em?” Virgil wondered.

  “Hell,” Morgan said, “they could stand a lot more knockin’ than that.”

  Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and a third man appeared a block down, astride their horses, all moving at a walk down the middle of Allen Street. Each wore a revolver on a hip. Ignoring the Earps, they passed the intersection and dismounted at the Grand Hotel. They didn’t see Doc Holliday approaching from behind, and they stopped at the front door when he spoke to them. Doc carried a walking cane and with his free hand made a cavalier salute. When he offered his hand to Billy Clanton, the surprised boy reacted by rote and shook Doc’s hand.

  “Could be a hell of a day,” Doc said in his sly and jaunty way. Wearing his long, gray overcoat and matching hat, Doc never broke stride as he veered toward Hafford’s. An impish grin twisted his ashen face. Frowning and a little confused, Frank and Billy disappeared into the Grand Hotel’s saloon.

  “You reckon somebody wired to them in Charleston?” Morgan said.

  Virgil opened his pocket watch. “Maybe,” he said. “Might be more comin’ in.”

  “Hell, bring ’em all in,” Morgan said. “Let’s shoot the lot of ’em.”

  When Doc stepped up onto the boardwalk at Hafford’s, he pulled down briefly on the brim of his hat as he checked the faces of the Earp brothers. “Morning, gentlemen,” he said and turned to stand beside Wyatt. “You boys look rather serious today.”

  Wyatt made no reply. Across the street Frank and Billy emerged from the Grand, untied their horses, and walked them west on Allen. This time as they passed by, they glared at the Earp party with eyes that seemed molten with hostility. Moving down the next block, they passed Doling’s saloon and turned into the Dexter Corral.

  “My, my,” Doc said with a lilting melody. “Are we grooming bad relations with the local cattle thieves?”

  “They didn’t check their guns at the Grand,” Morgan said.

  “Let’s not push it,” Virgil advised. “They can check ’em at Dexter’s.”

  Snow fell in sparse swirls of dull white flakes. “I’m having a drink,” Doc said and coughed once into his fist. He turned at the door. “Don’t start the party without me.”

  Virgil blew into his hands, rubbed them briskly, and then followed Doc inside.

  Morgan started to join them but hesitated. “Ain’t you cold?” he said to Wyatt’s back.

  Wyatt shook his head. “Go on in and get warm. I wanna keep an eye on things.”

  Alone, Wyatt stood in front of Hafford’s. Within minutes both set of brothers—Clantons and McLaurys—came back up Allen Street toward him. Ike walked in front, his hat in his hand, a bright white bandage crowning his head. Tom’s dressing was a simple narrow strip of gauze tied around his forehead. Glaring at Wyatt, Tom peeled off the bandage and eased his hat onto his head. Still armed, Frank and Billy led their horses.

  Wyatt turned to face them, clamped his cigar in his teeth, and let his right hand hang at his side, where the Colt’s weighted down his overcoat pocket. At the corner Tom McLaury peeled off from his friends and continued down Allen Street. The other three Cow-boys turned down Fourth, and, as they did, Frank leaned and spat into the street, never taking his eyes off Wyatt.

  When they moved out of his view, Wyatt walked to the corner and watched them file into Spangenberg’s Gun Shop. Frank McLaury’s untied dun mare clopped up onto the boardwalk and pushed its head into the shop’s open doorway. Wyatt threw his cigar into the street and started along the walkway toward Spangenberg’s.

  Through the windowglass he saw them gathered at the counter, Ike arguing with the owner as Billy and Frank pushed cartridges into their belt loops. Wyatt took the horse’s loose reins and backed it away, its high steps awkward and percussive on the boards. At the sound, Frank turned around, and his face colored. He came on quickly, lunging out the door, grabbing for the reins.

  “Get your fuckin’ hands off my horse!” he shouted, his words like fat popping from a hot skillet. Now Billy Clanton’s broad shoulders filled the door frame, his hand clenched firmly to the butt of his holstered gun.

  “Keep your horse off the sidewalk,” Wyatt ordered. “City ordinance.”

  The moment drew out like a fine thread stretched to its limit. The Cow-boys glared at Wyatt, their faces boiling with resentment, as he considered in which order he would shoot them if someone jerked
a gun. Frank tied the reins to the awning post and, stepping back up on the boardwalk, spun around to face Wyatt.

  “I’ve seen enough of you damn Earps to last me a lifetime,” he snarled.

  Virgil’s boots rang on the boards, and the Cow-boys turned as one to see the marshal’s double-fisted grip on a ten-gauge shotgun. The twin barrels of the scattergun angled downward, but Virgil’s presence shut down all conversation. Ike, who had pushed his way outside to join in the taunting, backed into the shop. Frank and Billy followed, scuffing their boots, making a show of it, mixing indignation with insult.

  Wyatt walked past Virgil back to Hafford’s corner and lighted a new cigar. Joining him, Virgil propped the shotgun, muzzle down, on the boards. Their eyes met for only a moment, but in that glance was the understanding of what it meant to be brothers who backed one another, no matter the occasion. Morgan came out of the saloon to stand with them in time to see the Cow-boys retrace their steps, marching around the corner to head west on Allen. Again they disappeared into the Dexter Corral.

  “What happened?” Morg asked.

  “Those sonzabitches are gettin’ right on the edge of it,” Virgil grumbled. “I’m just about mad enough to give ’em the fight they want.”

  “They’re just struttin’,” Wyatt said. “Let ’em. They don’t know what else to do.”

  Virgil picked up the shotgun but grew still again when the Cow-boys and their horses crossed Allen Street from Dexter’s into the O.K. Corral. “Maybe that’s it,” Virgil said. “Maybe they’re leaving town.”

  Just then a man dressed in coveralls fast-walked up the street and looked from Wyatt to Virgil and then down at Virgil’s badge. “Them men back yonder at Dexter’s . . . they’re armed and talking trouble. Your name come up, Marshal. They say they’ll shoot you on sight.”

  From across the street at the barber shop, Behan called out, “Virgil! What’s the trouble?” Behan’s face was plum red in the cold. Clinging to one of his ears was a streak of shaving lather. A crowd had begun to gather and moved in closer to hear the sheriff and the marshal confer.

  “Clantons and McLaurys are makin’ threats and carrying guns,” Virgil said, letting his anger show. Behan’s eyes flicked uncertainly toward the shotgun.

  “Well, what are you planning to do, Virgil?”

  “Long as they’re in the corral or leaving,” Virgil said, “we’ll let it sit. But if they push this, we’ll give ’em the fight they want.”

  “You can’t do that, Virgil. It’s your job to disarm them.”

  Virgil gave Behan a cold stare. “What about you walking down there with us, and we’ll do just that?”

  Behan touched his cravat as if checking to see that it was centered on his neck. Frowning, he stretched his neck upward through his shirt collar.

  “Look, I know those boys,” he said. “Let me go talk to them alone.”

  The Earps watched Behan hurry down the street. A few of the onlookers fell in behind the sheriff, but most remained at Hafford’s Corner, their curiosity fixed on the Earps. A heavyset man in a business suit and bowler sidled up to Virgil and clasped his upper arm.

  “Marshal, I’m with Clum’s vigilance committee. You say the word, and I can have two dozen men to back you.”

  Virgil shook his head and eased his arm from the man’s grip. “I don’t want any more guns on the street. Long as those boys stay in the corral—that or they get out of town—I’ll let ’em be.”

  “Marshal? Dos men are not in da corral!” Virgil turned to see the stout German who ran the furniture store on Fremont Street. “Dey’re standing out on Fremont right now . . . saying how dey kill you and your brodders.”

  Virgil’s jaw clenched as he looked down the street. Wyatt slipped his Colt’s from his pocket, set the hammer at half-cock, and opened the loading gate. He rotated the cylinder a click, took a cartridge from his pocket, and slipped it into the empty chamber that the hammer had rested on. Virgil tested the fit of his own pistol in his waistband and took a step forward so that he stood in profile right before Wyatt.

  “I don’t like dodgin’ threats,” he said quietly. He pivoted his head to look at Wyatt.

  “It’s past due,” Wyatt said. “Either we’re the law, or we ain’t.”

  Tapping his cane on the tread boards, Doc shuffled out of Hafford’s smiling and smelling of whiskey. “What’s the plan?” he drawled.

  Morgan nodded toward Fremont. “We’re goin’ down the street to make a fight, Doc.”

  Holliday cleared his throat and looked at Wyatt. “Well, hell . . . let’s get to it.”

  “This is our problem, Doc,” Wyatt said, thinking of his bid to become sheriff of the county. “No need you gettin’ mixed up in it.”

  The mirth in Doc’s face closed down—his mood as changed as the raw weather. “That’s a hell of a thing for you to say to me,” he snapped. But it was hurt, not anger, filling his eyes.

  Another citizen stepped sheepishly into the conversation. “Marshal Earp?” he said, looking questionably back and forth between Virgil and Wyatt. “Those Cow-boys are next to Fly’s in that little lot where Harwood sometimes stacks lumber. They’re talking up a fight.”

  “That’s right outside my room,” Doc said.

  Virgil nodded and took the shotgun by its forestock. “All right, Doc, come along with us.” He held out the scattergun to Holliday. “Here, hide this under your coat and give me that.” He nodded toward Doc’s cane.

  With the exchange made, Virgil leveled his gaze on Wyatt, but both knew that the time for words was past. The four men turned and started down Fourth Street, and the crowd opened to give them passage. Their pace was unhurried but deliberate—their strides naturally coalescing into a common rhythm as they walked four abreast. Along the way citizens paused in conversation or stilled in their daily tasks to watch them pass. Some followed behind in a belated procession of the curious, intent on seeing what drama might unfold. Wyatt was aware of this growing presence of spectators only peripherally, and he gave them no more attention than the diminishing spit of snow angling on the wind.

  Wyatt’s mind was clear. The boil of anger had settled to a simmer. His momentum was set with one purpose only—the one that burned at the center of what it meant to be an Earp: a sense of duty. Despite his show of rage with Ike Clanton in Judge Wallace’s courtroom—and his manhandling of Tom McLaury—Wyatt believed he had shown restraint. He and Virgil had given them plenty of room, but some men did not recognize salvation when it slapped them in the face. The time had come to educate these Cow-boys in the error of their ways. The townspeople would see the way that the Earps could put men like these in their places and, in so doing, restore order to the village.

  Wyatt doubted the Cow-boys would fight, due in part to the unequivocal certainty that the Earps would fight. And that threat only intensified with Doc along. He was the wild card. If the Clantons and McLaurys believed the Earps would show restraint as lawmen, they would not make the same mistake with Holliday.

  When they turned west on Fremont, Wyatt spotted Frank McLaury in the street conversing with Behan partway down the block. The sheriff made broad gestures with his hands, but his posture appeared retiring and his manner uncertain. When Frank looked over Behan’s shoulder and narrowed his eyes at the Earps, the sheriff turned and stood paralyzed. Even as Frank backed into the vacant lot beyond Fly’s, Behan stared at the Earps like the odd man out on a dance floor.

  As the four lawmen walked toward the sheriff, Doc whistled quietly, a thin melody weaving into the push of the cold wind—like a distant, playful tune insinuating itself into a funeral dirge. Keeping his attention on the corner of the boardinghouse, Wyatt slipped his revolver from his coat pocket and pressed it into the folds of the mackinaw. Morgan saw his movement and did the same.

  Virgil carried only the cane, but his gun butt protruded from the front of his waistband, where it offered quick access. When the wind whipped up the tails of their coats, Doc reached across himself with
his left hand to hold his overcoat over the shotgun.

  When Virgil veered for the boardwalk, the Earp party formed a double rank—Virge and Wyatt in front, Doc and Morg in back. As they stepped down from the tread boards at the Papago Store to pass the rear entrance to the O.K. Corral, Behan finally hurried toward them, his eyes glazed and unfocused, all poise abandoned.

  Virge turned his head to speak to his deputies. “There might be others on their way into town,” he said quietly. “Doc, you stay on the street and keep your eyes open. If anybody shows up and tries to box us in, use the scattergun.”

  “I don’t care to get back-shot today, Doc,” Morg said. “So let ’em have it.”

  “All right,” Doc replied and then laughed quietly at the panic on Johnny Behan’s face as the sheriff stopped before them and began to walk backward in a moving parley.

  “Now wait a minute!” Behan said, trying to inject some authority into his whining, tenor voice. “There’s no need for you to go down there!” Behan announced this breathlessly, his voice cracking twice. “I won’t have any trouble, Virgil.”

  When he got no reply from the Earps, Behan abandoned all attempts at presenting any kind of official persona. “Virgil!” he yelled. “For God’s sake, don’t go down there! I’m the sheriff, and I won’t have any trouble!”

  Without turning his head to acknowledge the sheriff, Virgil spoke in a quiet, firm voice. “We’re just going to collect their guns, Johnny.”

  “I’ve already disarmed them!” Behan shot back, frantically back-stepping to stay ahead of the Earps.

  At this announcement, Virgil slid his pistol far to the left side of his waistband under his coat. He then took the cane in his right hand. Wyatt thrust his Colt’s back into his coat pocket.

  At Fly’s boardinghouse Behan stopped abruptly, as if only now realizing the importance of distancing himself from what was coming. As the Earps brushed past him, Wyatt studied the vacant lot, noting the position of each man. Besides the Clantons and McLaurys, there was “Kid” Claiborne standing deeper in the lot. And West Fuller, a friend to Ike Clanton. Fuller was approaching the Cow-boys from the rear of the alleyway, but, seeing the Earps, he began backing away, stumbling and catching himself when his boot heel caught a piece of scrap lumber lying in the dust.