Epitaph (37 page)

“Well, recently, he's been visiting friends in Charleston. He usually stays overnight. It's a long ride for him. He's not well, you know.”

He was, in fact, Molly Fly's best boarder. Quiet and clean, John Henry Holliday always paid on time, didn't eat much, and was unfailingly courteous. He was also unlikely to want anyone snooping around in his room, and Molly Fly was beginning to think that there was something not quite right about the mayor's visit.

“Would you like a piece of paper, Mr. Clum?”

The mayor turned. “Sorry?”

“You said you wanted to leave Dr. Holliday a note.”

The mayor looked blank for an instant, as though he'd forgotten he'd said anything about a note earlier.

“Thank you, Mrs. Fly, I'll speak to him when he gets back to town. No need to tell him I was here,” Clum said pleasantly. “It was nothing urgent.”

HE HAD NOT EXPECTED
a dangerous, dissipated gambler to be so tidy. It gave him pause—seeing the man's life laid bare in a few surprising possessions—but the pause was brief. Whatever John Holliday might be in private, in public he was an albatross hung round Wyatt Earp's neck and one that Richard Gird wanted removed.

Clum headed back to the newspaper office by a circuitous route, stopping along the way to interview a few chatty citizens about the stage robbery, though no one in Tombstone was an eyewitness. “It is being said that Doc Holliday was involved in the crime,” he would begin, and that was strictly true, for he himself was saying it, at that very moment. “A passenger heard one of the robbers coughing . . .” The trick was to raise the brows and look expectant, holding pencil and paper at the ready. With a serious frown, he would take down the words of people who had no information at all except for what they'd heard, or thought they'd heard, or thought John Clum might like to hear, for people take great satisfaction in seeming more “in the know” than they might really be.

By noon on March 16, Clum had accumulated a useful collection of assertions about the well-read gentleman from Georgia who was holding back Wyatt Earp's political possibilities.

Holliday had engaged a horse at a Tombstone livery stable and told the stable boy he'd likely be gone for seven or eight days.

Holliday was seen departing the city, armed with a Henry rifle and a six-shooter.

Holliday had started south but doubled back and headed for Benson instead.

Holliday got back early and had just returned a rented horse to the livery stable, but the horse was all fagged out and so was Holliday. He must have been riding hard to get away from the posse that was tracking the killers!

Most of this was fiction, and most of the informants knew it. Still, John Clum had been asking questions about Doc Holliday. And where there's smoke, there's fire, right?

BEN SIPPY DIDN'T THINK
the attack on the Kinnear stage would have anything to do with him. He was the Tombstone city marshal, and the crimes had not been committed in town. Then Mayor Clum showed up at the jail and gave him a direct order. “We can't have a man like Holliday walking the streets. Find him and do your duty!”

This was not the first time Ben Sippy had found himself wishing that Virgil Earp had beaten him in the race for city marshal. The pay was less and the job was more than Ben had figured on, and arresting Doc Holliday for murder struck him as an unhealthy way to spend an afternoon.

Ben's first move was to go down to the sheriff's office, hoping to persuade Harry Woods to come along as backup, but Harry declined the invitation.

“After all the shit John Clum has printed about Sheriff Behan? Nobody in
this
office is gonna arrest a registered Democrat on that lying bastard's word.”

Anybody else Ben might have called upon was already in the posse chasing the stagecoach bandits. So Ben was on his own, but he did his duty. He checked Molly Fly's boardinghouse, where Doc ate and slept. He checked the Alhambra, where Doc worked. He checked the library, where Doc read, and the music room at the Cosmopolitan, where he played piano. Came up dry all round.

It wasn't until the night after the stage attack that he finally found Holliday, gambling in a dark little faro joint on the eastern edge of town. That was the first odd thing, because it was the kind of place
favored by two-bit whores hoping to parlay a good night's take into a few days' rest.

Not the kind of place Doc Holliday usually frequented.

“Doc?” Ben said. “I need to talk to you.”

“Marshal Sippy,” Holliday noted, eyes on the layout. “Wait until this game is finished, sir, and you may speak to me at your convenience.”

“C'mon, Doc. It's important—”

Holliday leaned back. “So is this game, and be damned to you if you break my concentration again.”

“Oh,” Ben said, withering under that slate-blue stare. “Sorry.”

Not wanting to rile Doc further, Ben watched quietly. As far as he could see, the deal was square. Course, Doc himself would know if somebody attempted to cheat him at his own game and considering his reputation, few men would try. Two minutes later, Doc collected his winnings, which seemed to be something under fifty dollars. That was peculiar, too. Small-stakes games didn't much interest professionals, who saw no point in risking cash without a fair probability of a substantial payoff.

Another man was waiting for a game, so Doc moved to the edge of his chair and planted his cane, but he had trouble getting up and looked like hell. Sweaty, pasty-faced, tired. Drunk, too, which was a real surprise, no matter what gossips said. Sure, Doc put away a lot of bourbon, but so did many lungers—Ben's own cousin Jack among them. They drank in small doses all day long, to control the coughing and ease the chest pain.

“Now, then,” Holliday said, finally on his feet. “You have something to discuss with me?”

“Yes, sir,” Ben said. “Let's go over to the office.”

“I doubt that is necessary. What is this about?”

“Something you might not want to discuss in public.”

Drink in one hand, cane in the other, Holliday limped to a table at the back of the room. Ben followed, and they both sat down before Holliday asked again, slowly and deliberately, “What. Is this. About?”

Ben looked away for a moment. “The Kinnear Stage holdup.”

“A lamentable affair. What has it to do with me?”

“Probably nothing, but . . .”

“Probably,” Doc repeated. “Implying . . . what, exactly?”

“Where was you last night, Doc?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Goddammit, Doc! I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here! I could arrest you right now—”

“On what grounds?” Holliday cried, exasperated. He stared at Ben for a moment. “Wait! Are you suggestin' that I had something to do with a holdup?”

“Well, see, people are saying you planned the robbery—”

Startled into a laugh, Holliday pulled out a handkerchief and coughed for a time, gasping, “Now,
that
is perfect irony,” before he settled into the fit. When it passed and he got his breath back, he drained his shot glass, looking half-amused. “Well, sir, people may say whatever they please. It is a free country. Any amount of absurdity and nonsense may be spoken.” He paused to cough again before asking, “Out of curiosity, do you have a warrant?”

“Not really, but Mayor Clum says I have to take you in.”

The slate-blue eyes turned cold. “No, sir, you do not have to do any such thing. If you do not have a warrant, then what you have is gossip, which is evidently being purveyed by a Republican politician whose newspaper profits from the sale of rumor, innuendo, and character assassination. And you may tell Mr. Clum for me that if my name is dragged into his newspaper over this affair, I shall sue him for libel.”

Ben could see that he was expected to say something, but nothing came to mind because Holliday had begun to tremble, as some men do when they are very angry or very scared, and since Ben didn't imagine that anybody could be scared of him, it seemed pretty likely that he was about to get killed. Which made what Doc said next a considerable surprise.

“Marshal Sippy, I have a friendship of long standing with several
lawmen and I have seen many arrests. Permit me to guide you on this matter. Take whatever suspicions you or anyone else may have and lay them before a judge. If there is the slightest shred of evidence to connect me with anything remotely illegal, then you may do your best to have a warrant issued and I will engage an attorney to defend my good name. Until that time, good evenin' to you, sir.”

With that, the skinny, gimpy gambler rose and hobbled out of the saloon, leaving Ben Sippy to take a long-delayed breath while considering whether $112 a month was enough to make this damn job worth its risks.

He went back to the city jail that night and got some sleep in an empty cell. First thing the next morning, he walked over to the
Epitaph
office and since he couldn't exactly remember even half of what the dentist actually said, he conveyed to Mayor Clum what he took to be the essence of John Henry Holliday's message: “Doc says he'll make a sieve out of the next sonofabitch who repeats gossip about him.”

AFTER THAT, “THINGS QUIETED DOWN,”
John Clum would recall in a memoir he wrote many years later, “and tale-bearing became a lost art.”

But seeds had been sown, and John Harris Behan would harvest them.

F
OR THE MEMBERS OF THE BEHAN POSSE, IT WAS A
relief to get away from Tombstone on the morning of March 16. As soon as they cleared the crowds, they kicked into a cavalry trot, putting the town's hysterical, shouting civilians behind them. For the next four hours, there was no noise but hoofbeats, the huffing of the horses, the creak of leather, and the wind singing past their ears.

For the lawmen at least, the facts of the crimes were settled when Bob Paul's telegram arrived, an hour after the attack. Three robbers were waiting for the stage at the crest of a draw near Drew's Station. They opened fire, killing Budd Philpot outright and wounding a passenger who'd been traveling on the stage roof. The passenger's name was Peter Roring. Possibly Roarig or Rohrig. He was from Wisconsin. Bob had returned fire. He didn't think he'd hit anyone but couldn't be sure. It was dark and he was driving the team and trying to keep the wounded man from falling off the stage. Bob had delivered the strongbox and mail pouch in Benson, but the passenger had died en route. So: two murders and two counts of attempted robbery.

There was one other detail in Bob's telegram that didn't seem significant at first. Budd had complained of stomach cramps after leaving Watervale and had become too sick to handle the team. Just
before the ambush took place, Budd Philpot and Bob Paul had switched sides on the driver's bench.

BOB PAUL WAS BACK AT DREW'S STATION,
waiting for the posse when it arrived. “C'mon,” he said, leaning into the hill like a Belgian draft horse. “I'll show you where the bastards were laying for us—”

Frank Leslie shook his head. “I work alone. Stay away from the tracks.”

Dismissed, the others eased past the canvas-wrapped body lying on the front porch and went inside Bill Drew's house. Bill poured coffees all round but not entirely graciously. Didn't offer lunch, either.

“What am I supposed to do with Budd?” he asked.

“He's got a family in Calistoga,” Morgan Earp said. “Wife and kids.”

“Jesus,” Virgil said with a sigh. “Well . . . they're gonna want the body.”

“Where's Calistoga?” Bill asked.

“California, someplace,” Morgan said.

“It's up near San Francisco,” Johnny Behan told them.

“Take the body into Benson,” Bob Paul said. “Ship it from there.”

“That canvas ain't free, nor the use of my buckboard, nor my time neither,” Bill said, for he'd had twelve hours to think all this through, and he was still pretty sore about how Kinnear had taken the stage-stop contract away from him a few months back and given it to some bastard in Contention City. “Then there's the undertaker in Benson and the freight charges on the train. Who's paying for all that?”

Everyone looked at the Wells Fargo agent.

“He worked for Kinnear, not us,” Williams said.

“Budd Philpot died because he was sitting in my place on that stage,” Bob Paul said. “They meant to shoot the guard, not the driver.”

Bob was flanked by Morgan and Wyatt Earp, who had also served as strongbox guards. All they did was stare at Williams, but the combined effect of that massive wall of male silence was persuasive.

“All right,” said Williams. “Mr. Drew can invoice me for the canvas
and for use of his wagon. Tell the agent in Benson I said the company will pay for the embalming and for the transport back to his family. Fair enough?”