Epitaph (19 page)

“You got some kinda history with him?” Bessie asked.

“Never saw him before in my life.”

“Well, something set him off,” Allie said.

“The coughing, I think,” Lou said.

Presently a team of waiters returned to the table: one with a whisk broom to clean up the shards of crystal on the floor; another bringing a replacement drink to Doc; a third carrying a large silver tray laden with sweets, which were distributed and shared. The girls
concentrated on their pie, but Doc didn't touch a thing. Not even his peach.

It was Lou who brought him around. “That man is wandering in the wilderness,” she said quietly. “He is angry because he is lost. And . . . he's afraid.”

Doc's eyes came to rest on Lou's. “Well, now . . . ain't you somethin'.”

For a time, he was thoughtful, simply gazing at each of his companions. Apart from Allie—wary but fearless, he judged her—these women had seen him at his lowest, back in Dodge: all but naked, trying not to drown in the blood rising in his eroded lungs. Terrified, and so near to death that he himself did not expect to see the morning. He had no secrets from Mattie and Bessie and Lou.

Back in control, he squeezed Lou's hand briefly before addressing them more generally. “Perhaps it would be best if we do not mention any of this to your menfolk.”

“No argument from me,” Allie said.

One by one, her co-conspirators nodded their agreement.

C
URLY BILL BROCIUS WAS FEELING PRETTY
satisfied with the day's accomplishments as he shepherded Ike Clanton and Johnny Ringo out of Tombstone that evening. True enough, Juanito had gotten a little out of hand at the end, but Fred White was a good old boy. As long as you didn't make
too
much trouble right inside town limits, the city marshal was willing to turn a blind eye. Course, Fred understood that Bill Brocius couldn't really order anyone to stay out of Tombstone, Johnny Ringo least of all. All Bill could do was encourage the boys to seek their entertainment in Charleston, about eight miles south, where no federal, territorial, county, or town officials were around to spoil the fun. That was logic even liquored-up youngsters could understand.

Curly Bill himself rarely dealt directly with customers, so he was surprised when Old Man Clanton sent him into the city.

“I'm buying a place in New Mexico,” Mr. Clanton had told Curly Bill last night. “Go into Tombstone in the morning and sell off that new herd. I want better'n five dollars a head and I want cash. Take Ike and Ringo with you.”

One by one, Old Man Clanton was buying up a string of ranches from the Mexican border to the mining towns of southeastern Arizona. The idea was to turn the entire length of the transport route into private property.
Posse Comitatus
would take the army out of the
calculation. Then all you had to do was buy off the Pima County sheriff and your business was secure.

Curly Bill admired the old man's thinking and was determined to bring equal acumen to his own task. Riding from the Clanton ranch to Tombstone, he'd spent hours in careful consideration of which buyer he ought to approach and how. By the time the city came into view, he had settled on the mining district's second-biggest meat supplier, for the top man would be satisfied with his status and not inclined to try anything new, whereas the next man down might aspire to improve upon his position and would be more open to strategy.

“Now, Mr. Clanton says I can offer you a real good price on a herd that's just come in, direct from Mexico,” Curly Bill told Number Two that morning, “but you gotta make up your mind right now. He's in a hurry to make this deal, and there's others I can take it to.”

You could see the man thinking. The cattle on offer would not enjoy their customary stay in Sulphur Springs Valley for fattening. Their meat would be stringy and tough. “I don't know,” he said cautiously. “If the customers complain about quality, it could cost me a contract.”

“Just work the cheap meat into the mix,” Bill suggested. “The miners might grouse about a meal or two—or maybe one man's stew is fine and his friend's is chewy. They won't be able to tell what's going on.”

“They won't be able to tell!” Ike said cheerfully.

Ike tended to repeat things that way. It made him sound stupid, but Ike had his reasons, which were good and sufficient, in Curly Bill's estimation.

“Since you're getting the herd so cheap,” Bill went on, “you could maybe drop your price to the chow houses a little. They get a sweet deal now, and maybe you get a bigger slice of their business next year. In the meantime, you pocket the difference.”

“Pocket the difference,” Ike said.

Bill waited patiently, watching the decision come closer. “Everybody wins,” he said with an amiable grin, “except the miners!”

“Except the miners!” Ike said.

You could see Number Two wondering if Ike had been born dumb or if his old man made him that way. Then his eyes fell upon Johnny Ringo, who was standing over at the shop window like he wasn't paying any attention, and Curly Bill's smile widened. Old Man Clanton was a shrewd one, all right. Ike's face almost always sported the kind of yellowing bruises that reminded you how it was ill-advised to make the old man unhappy. And Ringo? All he had to do was stand there and a sensible person would take a herd that still spoke Spanish.

“Four dollars a head,” Number Two tried. Half the going price.

“Five twenty-five,” Bill countered.

“Four fifty.”

Over at the window, Ringo blew a little noise of annoyance.

“Four seventy-five,” Two said firmly. “Best I can do.”

Ringo turned and stared with those dead-snake eyes of his. It was about then that Number Two started to sweat. Granted, the day was warming up.

“All right,” he said. “Five fifteen.”

“Toss in an extra twenty for me and the boys,” Curly Bill suggested, upping the ante, “and you got yourself a deal.”

“You got yourself a deal!” Ike said happily.

“Ike,” Ringo said, “the devil himself is going to recommend you to God, just to keep you out of hell.”

Ike's mouth worked a bit. You could see he was trying to decide if that was good or bad, but he shut up while he figured it out.

“I'm going to the library,” Ringo said on his way out the door.

“Always reading,” Bill said, shaking his head. “Juanito's a strange one.” Smiling brightly, he returned to the business at hand. “Mr. Clanton requires cash, sir. That won't be a problem, will it?”

It was, but Number Two came around on that as well. Afterward, Bill and Ike met up with Ringo again and they had themselves a time in the bars and brothels out past Sixth Street before heading over for a real good meal at the Maison Doree.

It was too bad Fred White got drawn into that little standoff with Doc Holliday—what in hell was
that
all about?—but Ringo didn't shoot anybody and only broke a glass. Ike's belly would stop hurting in a few days, and Bill himself was pleased to have something cheerful to report to Ike's old man.

Yep, he thought as the Clanton ranch house came into view in the moonlight. It was a damn fine day, all around.

IF OLD MAN CLANTON HAD A FIRST NAME,
nobody living used it. As far as anyone in Arizona knew, he'd been born with a week-old beard and iron-gray hair. Mean, straight out of his mamma's womb.

His wife called him “sir.” Once, just after Ike was born, she tried to run away, but the old man tracked her down and brought her back bleeding. “Try that again,” he told her, “I'll nail your feet to a four-foot plank. That'll stop you running.”

It was about that time the old man quit shaving himself and started making his wife do it. Once a week, in honor of the Sabbath, he'd lie back and let her take a straight razor to him. He smiled once a week, too, when she scraped that razor's edge over his neck. It amused him to know that she was that close to killing him but didn't have the sand to do it.

She was weak. That was the old man's opinion. She came of weak stock, and she was a bad breeder. Most of her brats lived, but they were worthless, all of them. Except maybe the youngest—Billy was the best of the lot. Alonzo, though . . . There was something wrong with that one, right from the start. The night that ugly little toad was born, the old man took him to a horse trough, meaning to drown him, but Ike came running up, sniveling and promising to take care of the brat.

“Take him then,” the old man said. “Cryin' little babies, the pair of you.”

Alonzo was feeble-minded and seemed happiest with dogs. Cows liked him, too. They'd walk right up to him, let him pat their noses.
He had cow eyes—calm, quiet, stupid eyes—but sometimes he'd panic, the way cattle panic. He'd run in big circles, screaming and screaming with those cow eyes open wide, flapping his hands like chicken wings.

Ike was the only one who cried when Alonzo died.

“Figures,” the old man said. “That just figures.”

WHEN THE WAR BROKE OUT,
Old Man Clanton took his three oldest boys—Joe, Phin, and Ike—traveling across the South to enlist in one regiment after another. They'd stay in camp just long enough to get the signing bonus, take off in the middle of the night, and then do it again in the next state over.

The old man didn't give a damn about abolitionists or the Cause. “Not our fight,” he told his sons. “Fight for niggers or fight for planters and either way, you're a damn fool. Damn fools deserve what happens to 'em.”

The old man's drinking got worse when his wife died. Ike was nineteen by then. He might have gone off on his own like his older brothers had, but Ike stayed and that was his misfortune.

True to his watered-down nature, he took his mother's place, trying to keep the littler kids fed and out of trouble. Billy was only four and he was a handful, but Ike took special care of him.

“Do as you're told, and don't never talk back,” Ike always warned Billy. “Just say whatever the old man says, and you'll be all right.” But Billy never listened to Ike. Billy never much listened to anybody. And what puzzled Ike was, the old man seemed to admire Billy for that.

After the war, the old man took the family to California for a while but he couldn't make a go of it there, so they doubled back in 1877 and settled in a portion of nowhere called the Arizona Territory. The old man staked out a townsite, called the place Clantonville, and prepared to become rich. He put ads in newspapers, expecting to draw settlers who'd buy parcels of empty land off him and make him mayor. Nothing much came of the scheme, but he didn't blame
himself. His failures weren't for want of trying, and that's what infuriated the old man about his son Ike.

“No gumption,” he'd mutter. “No
try
.”

Course, all of Ike's
try
went into keeping the old man happy, but there's no pleasing some people. Ike opened a little restaurant for miners in Millville, and he did pretty well, but then it was “Getting ideas now? Getting above your old man, are you? I'll teach you to act high and mighty! I brought you into this world, and I'll send you to hell whenever I please.”