Epitaph (22 page)

“What's Denmark got to do with anything?” Virgil asked irritably.

“Oh, hell, Virg. Don't ask,” Wyatt said because, a lot of times, if you asked Doc to explain something, you'd just get more confused.

Took about three days before Wyatt was ready to take Behan's advice. This year at least he wouldn't be asking for votes for himself. He'd be asking for Bob Paul. And that got easier after Johnny helped him with the words. “You can say, ‘Bob Paul and Charlie Shibell are both good men. I'm proud to work for Charlie, but Bob Paul means to enforce the law no matter who breaks it. Will he have your vote, sir?'”

Wyatt practiced that until it felt natural and spent a lot of October riding through Pima county, canvassing voters to see how the election for sheriff was likely to go. Which was why he rode past Frank Stillwell's bar that day: He was on his way to Millville to talk to Richard Gird. Then he'd speak to the workmen about how they might vote in November.

Millville was directly across the San Pedro River from Charleston. A bridge connected the two towns, but Dick Naylor wouldn't cross it. Wyatt found the horse's reluctance understandable. The mill noise was fearsome, what with tons of rock and water crashing through heavy timber frameworks, and huge iron lifters dropping eight-hundred-pound heads onto the ore, and gravel sluicing out the other end. What baffled Wyatt was why men chose to work in that hell. A moment of distraction, and you'd pay with a limb or your life.

It was plain prudence to ban alcohol in Millville, for accidents were common enough without adding drunkenness to the mix. Mr. Gird was a temperance man, too, intent on saving souls from Demon Rum and a Republican, of course. So it was no surprise that he intended to vote for Bob Paul.

The surprise was that the millworkers were going to vote for Bob, too. They lived on the Charleston side of the river, where there was a lively local market for whiskey, gambling, and fornication, but they all seemed to agree with their boss. Strict law enforcement was good for the mining industry, and that was good for their jobs.

It was late when Wyatt finished the canvass. He decided to stay in Charleston that night and went to bed feeling pretty good about things. With less than a week until the election, he calculated that Bob Paul would win by more than a hundred votes. And Mr. Gird had encouraged Wyatt to run for sheriff next year when the new county was declared. That was good news, too.

WYATT WAS HAVING BREAKFAST
in the hotel café before starting back to Tombstone when a boy came in and handed him a note in Sherm McMaster's handwriting.
Your horse is taken for a prank
, he read.
Dont get too mad. But watch out for Frank Maclowery he is making threts.

“Hell,” he said. He gave the kid a nickel and told him, “Keep your mouth shut.”

The cook agreed to pack him a lunch, and while that was being done, Wyatt walked down to the telegraph office to send a wire to his brother James:

               
DELAYED STOP SEE TO MB STOP

James would understand that this meant “Keep an eye on Mattie Blaylock,” for Mattie was getting worse all the time, and as much as Wyatt disliked being with her, he didn't like to leave her on her own.

Dont get too mad
, Sherm wrote, but horse theft was no prank. And on top of the crime, and the inconvenience, and worrying about Mattie, he'd have to hire a horse. Which added expense to insult.

The livery owner was nowhere to be seen, having left a stable boy to face Wyatt Earp's displeasure. “I'm sorry, Mr. Earp,” the kid said. “They had guns and they was drunk.”

“Not your fault,” Wyatt said. “Which way'd they go?”

The boy hesitated. “I have to live here, sir.”

Wyatt kept looking at him.

The boy lifted his chin toward the road to Sulphur Springs Valley.

“That's what I thought anyways,” Wyatt told him. “Don't worry. They won't trace it up to you.”

Or to Sherm McMasters, either. Sherm always worried that the Cow Boys would find out he sold information about them, but you didn't have to be an Apache to follow the trail. Dick Naylor had a clubfoot. Years of steady training and patient stretching had leveled it and the horse ran well. Still, his shoe wore a little light on one side of that hoof. The track was distinctive. Easy to find, easy to follow.

There looked to be ten or eleven other horses in the party. One rider was so drunk, he fell out of the saddle about a mile out of Charleston. Two of his friends dismounted to get him back on his horse. One of them fell on his own ass in the attempt. The other must've laughed himself sick at that. There was a fly-covered puddle of puke a little ways off.

For the next couple of miles, the road was bordered by vegetable gardens that belonged to the Chinese farmers who supplied the restaurants in Tombstone. Some people objected to Chinks owning American soil. Wyatt didn't see anything wrong with it. They bought their land and paid their property taxes like anybody else. He wasn't sure what he thought about Chinamen in general. A lot of white men thought they drove wages down, and there were rumors about Chinese gangs kidnapping white women and making them prostitutes. Johnny Behan kept pushing Wyatt to join the Non-Partisan Anti-Chinese League, but then Doc Holliday reminded him about China Joe back in Dodge.

“Jau Dong-Sing was an honorable man,” Doc said, “and he was very kind to me when I was ill, Wyatt.”

Which was true enough. But China Joe was just one man. And he had a laundry business. That was different from what went on in Tombstone.

Mattie had been using laudanum for headaches for as long as Wyatt had known her. It was opium dissolved in alcohol. He got it for her from the pharmacy and she called it “my medicine.” Wyatt
would say, “Medicine shouldn't make you sicker.” She'd just look at him like he was so stupid, it wasn't worth trying to explain. Lately, she'd been sneaking off to Chinatown to smoke opium whenever he was out of town. Maybe she was better off using a pipe—at least there was no liquor involved—but one of these days, she was going to get into real trouble.

He could just see the headlines in the
Nugget:
DEPUTY SHERIFF
'
S WIFE FOUND DEAD IN OPIUM DEN
. Or maybe:
MRS
.
WYATT EARP ARRESTED FOR PROSTITUTION IN CHINATOWN
. Assuming the
Nugget
did him the courtesy of calling Mattie his wife.

How in hell did I get myself into this? That's what Wyatt had asked himself a thousand times. But if he was honest—which he tried to be—what he really wanted to know was, How can I get myself out of this?

Once he'd asked the pharmacist, “Can you die from drinking too much laudanum?” When the answer was yes, he was tempted to ask, “How much would it take?” He even thought about buying twice as much as usual and leaving the bottles where Mattie could find them.

He wasn't proud of himself for thinking that, but there was no denying that the idea had crossed his mind.

BY MIDDAY, IT WAS PRETTY CLEAR
that the men he was following were headed for the Clanton spread, not the McLaurys'. An hour later, he paused to study the ground with a grim little smile, for the sign was easier to read than a book.

Dick Naylor had checked up and jerked loose.

Two of the drunks went after him . . .

Another drunk followed them . . . That one was good with a rope.

Dick had always hated being led, and for the first time since getting McMasters's note, Wyatt could feel the potential for anger coming on. He'd bought Dick Naylor off a Texan back in Dodge when the animal was a skinny, frightened, mistreated three-year-old. It had taken a long time and a lot of work to earn Dick's trust. The
idea of drunken idiots undoing everything he'd accomplished with that horse was intolerable.

Don't hit him, Wyatt warned the thieves in his thoughts. You hit that horse, there will be hell to pay.

JOHNNY BEHAN'S CAREFUL CIVIC TUTELAGE
had borne some fruit. Wyatt was willing to keep in mind that Old Man Clanton was respected in Pima County and had a lot of influential friends. He understood as well that the ranchers of Sulphur Springs Valley were citizens and voters, but that didn't change the facts as Wyatt saw them.

Theft is theft, he thought. That's what Behan forgets. Moving stolen goods across a border don't make possession legal. The Cow Boys are thieves.

And that was why Wyatt was backing Bob Paul over Charlie Shibell. Charlie had done him a good turn by appointing him deputy, and Wyatt was grateful, but Charlie made allowances. Bob Paul was determined to enforce the law, no matter who he had to arrest. You don't want trouble with the law? Don't break it. That's what it always came down to for Wyatt, though even his brothers argued with him.

“There's room for some discretion, Wyatt,” Morg would say, and Virgil would add, “Use some common sense, kid!”

All right, then, Wyatt thought. If Dick Naylor is returned unharmed, I won't press charges. That's discretion. As for the common sense part . . . Well, it probably wasn't real smart to ride alone into the Clanton stronghold, where there were perhaps two dozen rustlers, several of whom were known killers.

He dismounted before he crested a rise that gave out onto the Clanton ranch house and hobbled the hired horse off by a patch of grass in the shade of a good-sized cottonwood. Hunched over, he climbed the hill and bellied down at the top, hoping Dick Naylor was in plain sight, the way the mules had been.

He couldn't see Dick, but the wind brought Old Man Clanton's voice to him in broken snatches. “God damn” was being used liberally,
and “fools,” and something else that must have been “drunken idiots.”

Johnny Ringo was sitting in a beat-up wicker chair on the veranda, rocking it onto its back legs and smiling, but the rest of the Cow Boys were hanging their heads—just taking it from the old man, like they knew they deserved what they were getting. Even Curly Bill Brocius looked ashamed when Clanton pointed toward Charleston and yelled, “Take that goddam horse straight—” Back to Charleston, he must have said. One of his sons—the youngest one, Billy, his name was—Billy must have answered back. The old man swung around, head lowered like a bull, horse whip in hand, and . . .

Everything slowed down.

The old peculiar deafness settled in, the way it always had when Nicholas Earp rounded on one of the kids. Suddenly, Wyatt was seven years old again, with his vision narrowing until all he saw were hands.

A big hand, rising and falling, black leather snaking away from it. Small hands raised to parry the blows. His own hands, reaching out to grasp the lash as he stepped between his old man and his little brother and took the beating meant for Morgan—

Except it wasn't Morg. It was Billy Clanton, and the one taking the beating for his brother was Ike Clanton, but that didn't seem to matter.

Stop him, Wyatt was thinking. I have to make him stop.

Time snapped back to its accustomed pace.

He was on his feet, and it was five long steps downhill to the hired horse. Jerk the hobble off. Swing into the saddle. Kick toward the crest. Pull the rifle from its scabbard. Fire into the air.

Old Man Clanton's arm went down. He turned to see Wyatt Earp on the rise. Coiling the horse whip, the old man pointed it at Frank McLaury, who bobbed his head
yessir
and ran for the barn, with Billy Clanton right behind.

A MINUTE LATER,
they brought Dick out. Frank led the animal, glancing over his shoulder repeatedly, trying not to let the horse get too close.

Billy was already puffing up, putting on that “I don't care” toughness that frightened boys will fake, but Frank was hungover and Old Man Clanton had taken him down a peg, and now he could see Wyatt Earp at the top of the hill. Just waiting.

Which was when Frank remembered two important things: Wyatt was a deputy sheriff, and horse theft was a hanging offense.

Frank faltered, trying to think what he could say that would get him out of trouble. When he came up with a serviceable lie, he started toward the lawman again, pulling the black horse along behind him.

“We found him,” Frank ventured, drawing near. “Horse musta got loose.”

Wyatt stared. Frank's eyes dropped, but Billy Clanton was willing to work with the story.

“You oughta be more careful with your property,” Billy said, “cause we ain't gonna catch him for you next time. Sonofabitch bites!”

“He get you?” Wyatt asked.

Billy nodded. So did Frank, rubbing his arm where the shirt was torn.

“Serves you right,” Wyatt told them.

He dismounted and looked Dick over. When he was sure the horse was unhurt, he shifted his saddle off the hired animal, for he meant to ride Dick home. Cinching up, he jerked his head toward the rental. “Take that gelding back to the Charleston stable. I will know if you don't.”

They mumbled agreement. Wyatt swung up. Dick wheeled twice, feeling his rider's intention to ride away, but Wyatt reined him around instead and looked toward the Clanton ranch house.

Everyone was standing on the veranda, watching the show, but Ike Clanton was watching hardest of all, ready to move if Billy needed him.

Wyatt raised a hand. Ike returned the gesture, though you could see he was uncertain about it.

Wyatt's gaze shifted downward.

Billy Clanton wasn't even in his twenties yet. Frank McLaury was old enough to be balding, but he seemed like such a child . . . Maybe it was because he was so short. Maybe it was because he was so foolish.

“You two keep running with the Cow Boys,” Wyatt warned, “you're gonna get yourselves killed.”

Frank and Billy watched him ride away. He was over the rise when Billy Clanton asked, “Did that sound like a threat to you?”