by Mark Warren
When the six men settled in to talk, Wyatt laid out the rotating schedule for guarding their hallway of the hotel. Two men would always takes posts on the Earp floor, while two others covered the front and rear entrances of the ground level.
“Wyatt,” Creek Johnson said, “for what it’s worth, there was a midnight meetin’ the other night out in some canyon near Bisbee. Ringo and Brocius and about ten others. Word is, they made up a list for ever’body they plan to put under the ground. O’ course, ever’body in this room is on it.”
Wyatt nodded. “That’s why we’re here. We need to see ’em coming.” He looked to each man for agreement, and he got it. “Every man here will be paid for his services. There’ll be money coming in from Wells, Fargo soon. And from some of the businessmen in town who back us. I’ll let you know when that comes in. Right now, get out there to your positions and keep your eyes open. Any shot you hear near or in the hotel, assume it’s trouble and get back here to my brothers as quick as you can.”
Wyatt and Doc walked down the stairs together into the hotel lobby, Holliday leaning on his cane with every other step. Tipton and Vermillion followed and then separated, one to the front and one to the rear. Outside the street was darkening, and the clerk moved about the lobby lighting the oil lamps bracketed to the posts and walls.
“How are Virgil and Morgan?” Doc said.
“Startin’ to move around. Mostly feeling cooped up. But the wounds are healing.”
Doc waved the cane around the lobby. “This has got to be expensive, Wyatt.”
“Our houses are too exposed. Easier to keep an eye on ’em here in town.”
Doc offered an expression of regret. “Virgil know about losing his badge?”
“I told him. He don’t like it, but he knows he can’t do any marshalin’ from his bed. Still, it don’t seem to matter to a lot of people that Spicer judged us to be in the right.” Wyatt looked around the lobby and catalogued each face as friend or enemy. When he spoke again, he kept all emotion from his voice. “The Cow-boys finally got whipped in court, but it don’t seem to count for much. We lost something in all this, Doc. It seems like whatever Behan swore to—no matter how much it was disproved—people remember it.”
“That’s the nature of the beast, my friend. All you’ve got to do is plant the seed of doubt, and human beings will provide all the manure to make it grow.”
A woman sat at the piano in the barroom and began touching the first notes of a doleful melody Wyatt had heard somewhere in his past. He watched the woman’s hands float over the keys, and it might have been the first time in his life that he took music to be some sort of conversation—this one between a man’s hopes and his disappointments.
“Wyatt, what about this recent attack on the Benson stage just the other night? Are you going to look into it?”
Wyatt clenched his jaw and stared out the door at the sparse traffic on Allen Street. “I’m not a lawman now, Doc. All I want to do is look out for my family.”
Doc nodded. The hotel clerk put a match to the lamp nearest them, and Wyatt leaned in closer to Doc’s face.
“What the hell happened to you?”
Doc’s mood went frosty. “Kate,” he said simply. The skin grew tight around his mouth. “Can you believe that bitch was with Ringo when you and I were in jail?”
Wyatt looked back to the sway of the piano player’s back. “She still in town?”
“Who knows?” Doc made a sour smile and put on his hat. “Maybe she’s with Ringo right now, spreading my disease. Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”
The December night was bracing, but after the crowded quarters of the hotel, the ring of the boardwalk under their boots and the voices spilling from saloons were liberating. Wyatt chewed off the nub of a cigar and spat it into the street. Doc stopped and struck a match.
“Wyatt, there’s a little more to that Cow-boy pact Creek Johnson mentioned. It appears our illustrious enemies engaged in some theatrics . . . built a fire and performed a little ceremony.” Doc coughed up a sarcastic laugh. “Written in blood supposedly.” When he looked down the walkway, his smile melted into an inanimate shadow. “We’re not the only ones on that list. There’s Spicer, our lawyers, Mayor Clum, Marsh Williams, and a few others.”
“That’s just talk,” Wyatt said.
“Well,” Doc purred, “Mac and Johnson suggest we listen to it.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Clum was traveling on that stage to Benson. He thinks they were after him.”
“Well,” Wyatt replied, “we won’t be getting on any stages any time soon.”
Holliday offered a fraternal smile. “Wyatt, you don’t have to leave Tombstone to find trouble with these boys.” He raised his cane to the hotel across the street. “The clerk at the Grand passed on some interesting information to Vermillion. Some o’ the Cow-boys are checked into rooms right now—Ringo, Hill, Stilwell . . . several other scum.”
Wyatt’s face hardened as he surveyed the windows of the Grand Hotel directly across the street from the Cosmopolitan. “Maybe I should get back,” Wyatt said, “keep an eye on things.”
Doc put a hand on Wyatt’s arm. “I’ll do that. You’ve got another appointment.” He turned and pointed with the cane through the stagecoach office into the dining room of Brown’s Hotel. “Someone’s waiting for you.” Doc’s voice was uncommonly gentle, his head bowed to hide his eyes. “I’ll be with your brothers.” He gave Wyatt’s shoulder a pat and limped away.
As Wyatt passed by the stage line’s ticket counter in the hotel lobby, the agent laid down his newspaper. “Hotel kitchen is closed, Mr. Earp. But you’re welcome to sit a spell.”
Wyatt nodded and stepped into the semi-darkness of the dining room. The tables were empty save for one figure sitting motionless in the back corner. Wyatt removed his hat and moved across the carpet, weaving through the tables, his eyes fixed on the woman’s silhouette. He stopped a few feet away and breathed in a scent he remembered.
“Wyatt,” she said quietly.
He laid his hat on a nearby table and sat before her. The stillness in the twilit room was like a balm to his problems. This restaurant seemed far removed, a place where no one knew them . . . or of them. The sounds from the street arrived muted and irrelevant, while the clean white linen on the table became a pristine altar upon which he might sacrifice all his misdeeds to the past and, with this woman, lay out what was left of his future.
“I’m sorry about your brothers,” Sadie said. “I’m thankful, though, that you weren’t hurt.”
He stroked the linen with his fingertips. “My brothers’ll be all right.”
She reached across the table and stilled his hand with her own, her touch at once both firm and gentle. “Wyatt, when I was with Johnny, I met some of these men who are against you.” Her face drew up with worry. “They’re not like Johnny. He’s all talk, you know. But these men, Wyatt. They’re vicious.” Her eyes narrowed, and she shook her head. “They have nothing inside them . . . no conscience, no sense of honor . . . nothing. They seem to enjoy the evil that rises up from inside them.”
Studying the dark outline of her face and hair, Wyatt considered what it had taken for her to come here . . . to set up this meeting. “I’ve known men like them all my life, Sadie.”
“I know,” she said, and she meant it. “Only there are so many of them.”
Wyatt looked down at the shape of their combined hands. “All I ever wanted to do was make a good name for myself . . . and, you know, make some money . . . for me and my brothers.”
She squeezed his hand, and he looked up at her. “I just need you to be careful, Wyatt. Don’t underestimate Johnny.”
“It ain’t people like Johnny I need to worry about.”
She leaned toward him. “Yes, it is, Wyatt!” she whispered, pushing the words at him. “It’s not just the men who do the killing who are dangerous. In fact, in some ways, they’re the least of the problem.”
Wyatt looked toward the street beyond the closed
sheer curtains, thinking of his brothers lying bandaged in their hotel rooms. For a moment, he could hardly feel her grip on his hand.
“Johnny can’t do the hard things, Sadie,” he said, turning to her, making a conscious effort to take the edge from his voice. “And, right now, that’s mostly what I’m thinkin’ about.”
She sniffed wetly and wiped at her cheek. “I need you to be safe, Wyatt.”
He ran her words through his mind, knowing he would hold on to them when he had to leave her. “I will,” he promised. She pulled his hand a few inches closer. The soft sound of their skin on the linen was as intimate as a declaration of her feelings. Her grip tightened.
“I just had to see for myself you were all right,” Sadie said and pulled her hand away.
He waited, knowing that she had more to say.
“I’m going back to San Francisco, Wyatt.”
He listened to the sound of her breathing and tried to fix her image in his mind. In the dark of the restaurant, the lines of her face were elusive, but he held to what the dim light offered.
“That’s where I’ll be, Wyatt . . . in San Francisco.” She took a folded piece of paper from her purse and pushed it into his hand. Then she stood and pressed her handbag to her stomach. “You’ll know when it’s time to leave, too,” she said. “And now you know where I’ll be.” With that she turned and walked soundlessly from the room.
He listened to the front door of the hotel open then close. Then he listened to her shoes tap on the boardwalk outside the window, until there was nothing left to hear.
CHAPTER 17
Winter 1881–82: Tombstone and Cochise County, A. T.
Three nights after Christmas, Virgil—recently returned to his role as chief of police—left Wyatt’s game at the Oriental and limped across the street as he headed for his room at the Cosmopolitan. Wyatt was gathering cards from his faro layout when three thunderous explosions from outside stilled the gaming room. By the time Wyatt reached the barroom, Virgil was staggering through the doorway, the left sleeve of his black overcoat shredded at the elbow. The dark fabric was darker still with blood soaking through from his wounds.
“Wyatt,” Virgil gasped, his voice bottomless and wavering. The bystanders looked on in shock and came forward only after Wyatt grabbed his brother. “Shotguns,” Virge managed in a raspy whisper, “from the building goin’ up ’cross the street.”
Several men acquired guns from the bartender and rushed outside to investigate, but Wyatt sent for a doctor and a wagon and stayed with his brother. After Virgil was stripped of his coats and laid out on one of the tables in the front room, Wyatt turned his head to see who stood beside him. It was Dan Tipton.
“Before he left, Virge told me to stay here with you, Wyatt,” Tipton said. His voice was all-business, unapologetic, but regret was working into his eyes. “He wouldn’ let me walk with him. Said it was only half a block to the damned hotel.” Tipton shook his head and frowned at Virgil’s bullet-riddled arm and back. “Goddamnit!” he hissed. “I should’a gone with ’im.”
“Tip, get some help and then get back here to watch the doors and windows. This might not be over.”
Doc Goodfellow had Virgil transferred to his room at the Cosmopolitan, where he dug shattered bone from his arm and shotgun pellets from his back. Finally Goodfellow dropped his forceps into the porcelain bowl, shook his head, and sat down on the edge of the bed. He stared at Allie. She had been wiping Virge’s face with a damp rag, but now the motion of her hand stopped, and her teary gaze fixed on the doctor.
“The arm has got to come off,” Goodfellow reported in his no-nonsense voice. “It will be useless after this. There’s no bone left in the elbow to connect upper and lower arm.”
“Nobody’s takin’ my arm,” Virgil growled. He reached to Allie and laid his good hand in her lap. “Don’t you worry, Alliegirl. I still got one good arm for huggin’ you.”
Wyatt left Virgil’s room and moved into the hallway, where Doc Holliday stood guard with McMaster. Both men carried holstered pistols. McMaster held his carbine in one hand. When they turned to Wyatt, their faces carried the same questioning expression.
“How is he?” Holliday asked in his gentlest Southern drawl.
Wyatt was too angry to respond. When he walked to the end of the corridor and stood before the window, Doc followed quietly and stood beside him.
“Wyatt, we found a hat in the construction site where the shots came from. Ike Clanton’s name is inked into the sweatband.”
Reining in his feelings, Wyatt stared across the street at the windows of the Grand Hotel. “I’ll telegraph the U.S. marshal in Prescott. Ask for an appointment and the power to deputize.” He turned to let Doc see the hardness in his eyes. “Ride with me?”
Doc straightened, all the customary humor drained from his face. “Hell, yes, I’ll ride with you.”
Morgan’s voice turned them in unison. “When do we go?” He stood two doors down with his shirt puffed out at the shoulders where the bandaging was packed on his wounds.
Wyatt considered him a moment, then worked the buttons of his coat. “We won’t leave till I see how it’s gonna go with Virge. I’ll let you know.”
Morgan made a fist and circled his elbow in a rolling motion, testing his shoulder. “James sent word to Ma and Pa. Got a wire back tonight. Warren’s comin’ into town.” His mouth tightened to a vindictive smile. “God help the men that see us comin’.”
Doc chuckled and glared out the window. “God won’t have a damned thing to do with it,” he whispered, his words matching the raw cold of the night.
Over the next weeks, Virgil gained strength—except for his left arm, which continued to hang useless at his side. When Warren arrived in Tombstone, he was assigned full time to Virgil and Morgan, while the rest of the coterie of gunmen rotated through their posts around the hotel. No incidents with the Cow-boys developed in town, but out in the hinterlands of Cochise County the story was different. Two stages were held up, one near Contention and the other near Hereford. It seemed the outlaws were taking advantage of a time when the Earps were staying close to town.
As soon as Virgil’s voice regained enough strength to declare the certainty of his recovery, Wyatt rode out with his posse to find the men who had back-shot his brother. Under the mantle of both a deputy U.S. marshal and a Wells, Fargo operative, he and his hand-picked gunmen combed the territory. They were looking for any one of nine men named on a list supplied by McMaster. Ringo headed that list. Following him were Ike Clanton, Curly Bill, Frank Stilwell, and Pete Spence. It mattered little to Wyatt what part a man had played in any crime. To him they were all a part of the same spreading disease. Any Cowboy, by Wyatt’s definition, was vermin.
After four days the posse returned empty handed, and Wyatt learned that Ike Clanton had come into Tombstone and surrendered to Sheriff Behan. Based on the evidence of the hat, Clanton stood trial for the ambush on Virgil, but a parade of witnesses swore that Ike was in Charleston on the night of the attack. After the trial, as jubilant Cow-boys shuffled out of the courtroom, the judge, lingering at his bench, summoned Wyatt with the curl of a finger. After Wyatt approached, the judge held an expectant look on his face as he waited for the last spectator to leave his courtroom.
“Wyatt,” he finally said, leaning closer to compensate for his whispered message, “it appears the judicial system is not working too well in Cochise County.”
Wyatt narrowed his eyes at the man’s conspiratorial tone. “What would you have me do?”
The judge looked pointedly into Wyatt’s eyes. “Why don’t you just leave your prisoners out in the brush and let the coyotes deliberate over them?” He stared at Wyatt for several heartbeats, the whites of his fiery eyes bright as molten metal. Then he rose from his bench and marched in a long angry stride to his private quarters at the back of the room.
When Wyatt left the courtroom, he found Doc and Dan Tipton waiting for him just outside the door. Beyond the boardwalk, a
knot of Cow-boys stood talking and laughing in the street. Ike Clanton pointed at Wyatt, and the others turned, each man holding the same sneering smile on his face.
“Wanna thank you boys for findin’ my hat, Earp,” Ike called out.
Holliday started for Clanton, but Wyatt clasped a hand to Doc’s bony elbow. “He’s all wind, Doc. Don’t let him goad you.”
The Cow-boys in the street huddled together again to mumble and gloat, only Stilwell and Spence continuing to glance over their shoulders at Wyatt. Joe Hill, Pony Diehl, and the others laughed at Ike’s nonstop monologue. Ringo stood alone on the other side of the street, his hang-dog expression like a mask of apathy. Leaning against an awning post he seemed content to watch from the shadows. Then something changed in his eyes. With his gaze fixed on Holliday, he stepped midway into the street, stopped, and squared his boots to face the Earp party.
“What’s the matter, Holliday? Daddy won’t let you come out and play?”
When Doc stiffened, Wyatt reached for his arm again, but Doc jerked away before he could be restrained. “Doc,” Wyatt whispered. “We don’t need more trouble.”
Keeping his eyes on Ringo, Doc pivoted his head slightly. “Maybe I do,” he replied pleasantly.
Stepping into the street, Doc seemed as relaxed as a man about to greet an old friend. Stopping little more than an arm’s reach from Ringo, he adjusted his stance enough to put his right shoulder ahead of the left.
“On the contrary, I’ll be your daisy. I even brought my toys.” Smiling, he slowly raised his right hand to pat the bulge in his coat at his left breast.
Ringo’s sullen face became oddly animated, as though he were remembering a forgotten joke from his past. His eyes became jittery and took on a new light. Following Doc’s example, he carefully raised a hand, but his fingers slipped into the side pocket of his coat. Doc slid his hand inside his coat, and both men stood in that pose, their attention locked on one another with a resolve so fierce that passersby in the street began to give the two a wide berth and look back over their shoulders lest they miss the town’s latest eruption of violence.
