Epitaph (21 page)

“Well, I read law for a year and I'll by-God decide what my best interests are,” Frank told him. “There are other newspapers in this town, you know. I can take this letter to the
Nugget.
Harry Woods might be very happy to accommodate an honest citizen's protest against governmental tyranny!”

This was not exactly news to John Clum. It was a frustrating fact of life that however well reasoned and factually correct the opinion he published in the
Tombstone Epitaph
, Harry Woods over at the
Daily Nugget
would print the exact opposite with similar confidence in the irrefutable logic of his own editorial.

“Do as you see fit, sir,” Clum replied. “I'll have no part in this.”

Frank loitered in the office for a while, denouncing damnable despotism. He even declared his intention to turn Democrat over the issue, but not even that threat swayed John Clum, whose mind was closed to all reason, as far as Frank could see.

What happened next did not seem important to Virgil Earp at the time. He happened to be walking past the
Epitaph
's office when Frank McLaury came stumping out, so intent on his own righteous indignation that he slammed straight into the federal officer. Frank's hat hit Virgil about chest-high. Virg caught it before it could fall to the ground. Another man might have snapped, “Watch where you're
going!” but Virgil handed it back with a good-natured “Whoa, there!”

Another man might have said, “Sorry,” but Frank McLaury was the kind who often confused
I am short
with
People look down on me.
And that afternoon, he was in no mood to be reminded of his size by someone who was nine inches taller, even if Virgil Earp couldn't exactly help that.

“Were you in on it with that sonofabitch Hurst?” Frank demanded.

“In on what?”

“Don't play innocent with me!” Frank warned, his neck cranked back so he could glare at Virgil. “You ever come out to our ranch again, you'll have a by-God fight on your hands.”

Living with Allie Sullivan should have made Virgil Earp wiser about advising small, excitable, angry people to calm down. Such a suggestion is rarely taken well, but the words were out of his mouth before Virg thought better of them, and that was when Frank McLaury started hollering about “malicious liars” and how “this matter will be ventilated,” adding other memorable phrases that were fresh in his mind from having worked on his essay so much.

While that was going on, somebody went around the corner to the Oriental and told Wyatt Earp that his brother and Frank McLaury were putting on a good show over by the
Epitaph.
Wyatt finished out the deal, shut down the faro table, and went to see what was happening.

“Don't think you can gang up on me!” Frank warned when he saw Wyatt. “I got a brother, too! I got friends who'll stand by me! You sonsabitches come near my ranch again, you'll answer to the Cow Boys!”

“What was that about?” Wyatt asked, watching Frank go.

“Hell if I know,” Virgil replied. Eyes narrow, he turned to Wyatt and asked, “Did that sound like a threat to you?”

CIRCULATION OF THE
DAILY NUGGET
went up almost 15 percent when Harry Woods printed Frank McLaury's essay, for the notion
that Lieutenant Hurst had stolen those army mules himself caused quite a stir in Pima County. Republicans in Tombstone and Tucson considered Frank's charges absurd. Democrats in the countryside thought that was just the sort of thing a damn Yankee might do.

In Sulphur Springs Valley, ranchers who'd been standoffish when the Iowans arrived suddenly found it in their hearts to drop by the McLaury place and express their support. Frank enjoyed the attention, and Tommy hoped his brother would be satisfied now. But no such luck.

Everything Frank's eye fell upon reminded him of the mules, or Lieutenant Hurst, or the Earps, and he'd start in again on injustice and honor impugned. At first, Tommy tried agreeing with him, just to keep the peace. Frank could tell he didn't mean it, though, and kept arguing until Tommy finally said, “Frank, I am done with this. I am not going to listen to another word.” For the next few days, Frank tested Tommy's resolve. Tommy continued to ignore him, which might have been a mistake, looking back on it, for that was when Frank started seeking companionship among the Cow Boys.

Whenever they came by with livestock after a raid, Frank would work himself up enough to throw down his tools or walk away from a half-milked cow. He'd pick a fight with Tommy and end by hollering, “I already got the reputation of a rustler, so maybe I oughta get the good of it, too!” Then he'd ride off with Curly Bill and the boys to have a few drinks at Frank Stilwell's saloon down in Charleston.

Leaving Tommy to finish the chores.

EVEN BEFORE THE MULE INCIDENT,
Frank McLaury had been hinting around that he'd like to go along on a raid into Mexico, but Curly Bill had always discouraged the notion.

“I am due for some excitement!” Frank would declare, casually mentioning four or five times that he'd like to investigate that side of the cattle business himself.

“Frank,” Curly Bill would say, “you are overestimating the romance of the profession.”

Sure, cattle raids could be fun, especially if the
federales
gave chase on the way out of Mexico, but once you were north of the border? Rustling was just chasing half-wild beasts through cactus in sun glare and heat. Sleeping on stony ground under thin blankets in the desert cold. Eating dust by day and beans by night. “You only see the end of the trail,” Curly Bill would tell Frank, “when the boys are finishing up and ready for a good time.” He was trying to be nice about it, but the truth was, Curly Bill had enough trouble keeping his crew sweet without adding a bantam rooster like Frank McLaury to the mix. So Bill did his best to change the subject whenever Frank asked about joining the gang and in the autumn of 1880, that was easy.

All you had to do was pour a couple of whiskeys into Frank McLaury and say, “Mules!” It was like touching a match to a fuse. Frank would spark and sputter, telling everyone about how “I read law for a year!” and “I know my rights!” And then he'd holler about how his brother Tommy might be content to trudge along behind a plow horse, letting himself be slandered and abused by the likes of a lying Yankee thief like Lieutenant Joseph Hurst, but Frank himself would not let such things slide, by God.

This was always a good show, and Curly Bill would pretend to share Frank's outrage and indignation, just to see how excited the little man could get. Which was plenty. And it was interesting to Bill how the target for Frank's outrage began to shift. Joe Hurst was stationed way over at Camp Rucker, whereas there were four Earp brothers right there in Tombstone. And though Frank had crossed words with Virgil in front of the
Epitaph
office, his animosity seemed to settle on Wyatt, for Morgan was always pleasant and James Earp just sold beer to Chinks, but Wyatt! Hell if he'd ever said a single
word
to Frank McLaury!

“Last time I was in town to buy supplies, he passed me without
so much as a nod!” Frank cried one night. “It's about time I show that arrogant, stuck-up sonofabitch a thing or two!”

“You're gonna have to climb a ladder to do it,” Sherm McMasters pointed out. Everybody laughed, which made Frank hot up worse.

“Well, then, I'll get myself an equalizer!” he declared. “Wyatt Earp ain't too tall to shoot!”

EVEN FRANK GOT TIRED
of the mules after a time, but as the 1880 Pima County elections approached, he found a new hobbyhorse to ride, for hadn't Wyatt Earp been appointed deputy sheriff by Charlie Shibell, who was a Democrat? And wasn't Wyatt now supporting Shibell's Republican opponent, Bob Paul? What kind of perfidious, back-stabbing Yankee ingrate would do such a thing?

“And what kind of name is Bob Paul anyways?” Frank wanted to know. “Why doesn't he have a last name?”

Ever since the
Nugget
printed his letter, Frank had been practicing up on being a Democrat. To hear him talk now, you'd have thought he was from South Carolina, not Iowa, what with all his “damn Yankees” and “no-good carpetbaggers.” Curly Bill always found that funny as hell.

“Frank's right! It is a crying shame!” Bill said one afternoon in Frank Stilwell's bar. “These Republicans move into Tombstone because of the silver, and now they want to take over Arizona. Why, it's just like after the war, when those sonsabitches took over the South!”

He was aiming at Frank McLaury, but it was Johnny Ringo that Curly Bill hit, for Ringo read newspapers and took a lively interest in politics. He'd even won an election once when voters in a Texas township made John Peters Ringo a constable, figuring an outlaw might be just the man to deal with others of his kind. The job didn't last, but Juanito knew his way around a ballot box.

“We have to do something about this,” he said, and there was no fun in his voice. “I am damned if I will be run out of Arizona! By God,
there'll be no Brownsville here! Bob Paul will not become the McNelly of Arizona!”

That was when the mood changed, for all the freelance cattle importers in the Southwest knew that Captain Leander McNelly's Texas Rangers had killed a dozen rustlers down near Brownsville and stacked their bodies like cordwood in the town square to show that cattle thieves were no longer welcome in the Lone Star State. Word was, Bob Paul planned to clean the Cow Boys out of Pima County if he got elected, and if Bob Paul was sheriff, Wyatt Earp would likely be his undersheriff, with all the inflexible, humorless intolerance that implied.

“How many of you are registered to vote?” Ringo asked the boys, and he did not hide his disgust when it turned out that Ike Clanton and Ringo himself were the only ones. “That is a damn disgrace,” he told them. “No damn Republican is going to be sheriff of Pima County,” he declared, banging his shot glass on the table. “Ike, you and me are going to get ourselves appointed poll watchers, and we are going to see to it that the votes of our precinct's citizens are recorded, even if they have not observed all technicalities.”

“What kinda name is Bob Paul anyways?” Ike asked. Sometimes it took him a while to catch up. “Why don't he have a last name?”

“God damn him,” Frank Stilwell muttered then. “Don't matter how far you go. Don't matter what miserable shit hole you live in. The goddam Yankees are right behind you, looking to take over.” But Stilwell wasn't talking about Bob Paul. He was looking out the window of his saloon, glaring at a tall man riding by on a black horse.

“Hell if that ain't Wyatt Earp!” somebody said, and the boys started ragging Stilwell about how he better watch out because there were a couple of warrants out for him and Wyatt Earp might arrest him.

Frank McLaury said, “We'll make short work of him if he comes in here.”

“We?” the boys yelled. “Waddya mean
we
, Frank?”

Ringo got that queer look in his eyes then, the one that always
appeared when he was about to slug a new kid. “Well, now, Frank, if you're gonna be a rustler, I guess it's about time you cut your teeth on something. I hear Wyatt Earp sets great store on that horse of his.”

Frank frowned. “You mean steal it?”

“Nah, he ain't got the sand,” Billy Clanton scoffed.

“Hell if I don't!” Frank declared. “Why, I'll steal that horse right now!”

“I like Frank,” Ringo told the others then, like he was defending the little man. “Frank's got all the sand he needs.”

F
RANK STILWELL WASN'T THE ONLY WANTED MAN
in Charleston, but Wyatt Earp wasn't in town to arrest anyone. He was on his way to talk to Mr. Richard Gird at Johnny Behan's urging.

“Wyatt, if you're gonna run for sheriff in '82, you would do well to get Richard Gird on your side,” Behan told him. “Gird's a partner in the Tombstone Mill and Mining Company and might well be the most important man in the new county.” Wyatt hesitated. Johnny pushed harder. “You've got to get used to asking for votes, Wyatt. Go out there and introduce yourself. Shake hands. Look men in the eye. Find out what the voters are thinking!”

When Wyatt told his brothers and Doc Holliday about Behan's advice, Virgil snorted. “Find out how much you'll hate running for office, he means. He thinks you'll take your name off the governor's desk now and settle for undersheriff in '82.”

“Maybe so,” Wyatt admitted.

Morgan said, “I think Behan's deal makes sense for you, Wyatt. He'll be the politician and you'll be the lawman. What do you think, Doc?”

Doc was playing something nice on the piano. “Mr. Behan has unusually fine teeth,” he said, his hands still moving. “Of course, ‘one may smile and be a villain, at least in Denmark.'”