Epitaph (53 page)

Stupefied, he saw it all, everything happening at once, but slowly, too.

Billy Clanton—down, his belly blooming red. Still alive, still firing.

Ike—on his knees in front of Wyatt Earp. Pleading with him, flung aside, scrambling away.

Willie Claiborne—right behind Ike. Both of them running away.

Then Frank went down and he was still alive, but the Earps were still shooting. They mean to kill us, Tommy thought. They mean to kill us all.

The dentist was still out on Fremont. Tommy saw the shotgun in his hands, but Holliday seemed as stunned as Tom himself. Suddenly Tom's mind cleared and he reached over Billy Clanton's saddle for the Winchester in the scabbard.

The horse pivoted away from the pressure on her flank, carrying the rifle out of reach. Arm high, Tommy saw the dentist snapping out of the same kind of horrified immobility.

There was a bright flash then. It felt like Billy's horse had stepped on him somehow, like his chest had been crushed, and the next thing he knew, Tom was sitting on the ground, his back against a wall or a fence or something, and he was watching everything through gun smoke and snowflakes, all the sounds muffled, like he was underwater.

“Tommy!” Frank screamed. Still alive, still firing.

“Ike!” Billy Clanton wailed. Still alive, still firing.

Virgil Earp—down. Still alive, still firing.

Morgan—down. Still alive, still firing.

Wyatt—still standing, taking careful aim, like a man shooting at beer bottles or tin cans. Each shot separate. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Billy Clanton—hit twice more. Dead.

Frank—gut-shot, still alive, dragging himself toward the street, toward the dentist who'd just emptied both barrels of a shotgun into Tommy's chest.

“I've got you now, you sonofabitch,” Frank said.

He fired one last time and had the satisfaction of seeing Holliday go down before someone put a bullet through Frank's own head.

Silence fell.

It's cold, Tommy thought, watching the snow and slipping sideways.

A face appeared in the sky above him. An angel, he thought, gazing at her.

He smiled, and darkness closed over his eyes.

FIRECRACKERS.
That's what the shooting sounded like to Louisa Earp, too: firecrackers going off, right down the street. Misdemeanor, she thought, for fireworks had been outlawed since the fire in June.

A moment later, she realized that it was gunfire and she began to pray. Not Morgan. Please, God, not Morgan.

She would not remember pulling on her coat. Or going out on the porch. Or seeing Morgan on the ground. Or running toward him. She would never forget her blank mind being shocked into awareness when she stumbled, almost, over Tom McLaury.

She stood over him, staring down at the farmer in disbelief. Watching the light fade from his eyes.

She saw the blood next, hot red pools of it melting the snow-frosted dirt. Blood everywhere. Dead men. Blood splashed all around them on the ground.

“Virg!” Allie was yelling, running barefoot down the street, for she hated shoes and never wore them inside and hadn't taken time to put them on. “Virg! Virg! Virg!” Higgs was there, too, whining, and Lou went down on her knees at Morgan's side, and Morg was saying over and over, “I'm all right, I'm fine, honey,” but he wasn't.
He
wasn't!
He was bleeding from both shoulders, his coat and shirt and pants all red and wet. “Clean through,” Virgil was telling Allie as Wyatt pulled him off the ground. “It went clean through the calf, Pickle. I'll be all right.” A few yards away Ike Clanton was kneeling beside his brother's corpse and he was crying, “Billy! Billy! Billy!” Kate was there now, too. A curtain of blood was sheeting down the side of Doc's trousers. “The same hip!” he was saying. “Goddammit! The same one!” But instead of moving toward Molly Fly's house as Kate wanted him to, Doc pointed at Ike and shouted at Wyatt, “Why in hell didn't you kill
him
?” Dazed, Wyatt said, “His hands were empty,” as though that explained everything but he looked stunned and couldn't answer when James got there and asked, “What in hell happened?”

Which is what everyone in town was asking, except for the schoolkids who'd been on their way home when the gunfight broke out, and who were staring at the dead men or pointing at Mattie Blaylock because she was wearing nothing but her nightgown and her hair was all wild and she was laughing, like it was the funniest thing she'd seen in years.

“He's all yours now,” Mattie sneered when Josie came running up First Street. “I hope they hang that coldhearted bastard!”

But Wyatt wasn't hit, and Josie bent at the waist, trying not to faint with relief. “You threw us, Johnny!” Wyatt was shouting. “You told us you disarmed them! You threw us!” When Josie looked up, Virgil was on his feet, and Allie had slipped under his armpit, supporting him as he hopped on one leg, the other one red with blood. Kate was cursing like a cavalry trooper as she helped Doc limp away. Three bodies were being loaded onto a wagon. Morgan was lying on the ground, pale and still, with Lou next to him, weeping.

Oh, my God, Josie thought, Oh, God, no! Morgan's been killed! But Wyatt was calling for a doctor and a stretcher, and he barely glanced at Josie when he told her, “See to Lou,” who was crumpled on
the ground, hysterical now, crying over and over, “He's dead! Why did they kill him?”

“Lou, it's all right,” Josie soothed. “He's still breathing! He'll be all right.”

“He's dead! I
saw
him die! Why did they kill him? Why is
Tom
dead?”

“Tom?” Josie asked, bewildered. “Tom who?”

And none of it made sense. None of it. None of it. None of it . . .

A
N INQUEST WAS CONVENED. WYATT EARP DID
not attend. He considered it a legal formality. The fight happened in broad daylight with hundreds of witnesses. How could there be any dispute about what happened?

Wyatt had a tin ear for the
vox populi
at his best, and he was not at his best in the days that followed the shootout. And while a drinking man might have taken time to belt a few back under the circumstances, Wyatt was teetotal, so he was unaware of the arguments taking place in Tombstone's smoky saloons.

Doc Holliday started it. No, it was Morgan Earp!

Well, I was there and
all
of the Earps had drawn their guns before they even turned onto Fremont.

Of course they did! All night long, Ike was going around saying he'd shoot them on sight.

Johnny Behan had already disarmed those boys, I tell you! The Earps shot them down like dogs.

If Johnny Behan already took their guns, who in hell shot Virgil and Morgan and Doc Holliday? Answer me that!

All right, I will! Wyatt shot them himself. They got in the way when he was shooting at Billy and the McLaurys. I saw it with my own two eyes!

Even if he'd known what people were saying, Wyatt would not have cared. He had women and wounded men to protect.

The bullet that passed through the meat of Virgil's calf hadn't hit the bone, Virg just needed bandaging and rest, but Morgan was in trouble. A bullet had gone in one shoulder and out the other: a long, terrible tunnel of a wound, sideways across his back. The slug had dragged pieces of Morg's shirt along with it and Dr. Goodfellow had to open up the track of the wound and dig the fabric out. Nobody said it out loud, but everybody knew if infection set in, there was no way to amputate a man's shoulders. Doc Holliday's hip was creased but he was following Goodfellow from bed to bed, making sure the bandages were boiled clean and the instruments were rinsed in carbolic.

“Wyatt, there's nothing more you can do,” Josie told him some time long past midnight. “Mr. Fronk has guards around everyone. You need rest.”

So did she. He could see it in her face, her dark eyes shadowed with fatigue. That was when his own exhaustion hit him.

“All right,” he said. “All right.”

Josie fell asleep the moment she put her head on the pillow, but tired as he was, Wyatt lay awake hour after hour, going over and over it in his mind.

Nothing like the gunfight had ever happened before, and yet . . . It felt familiar somehow. He tried and tried to place that feeling of being there and doing it before and finally realized that he couldn't remember a time when he
didn't
have that trick of folding up into himself.

Going deaf and mute and watchful. Seeing nothing but the hands.

He must have been five or six the first time. Morgan was real little. Who set the old man off? Virgil, probably. Or James. Didn't matter. Nicholas Earp would beat the daylights out of anybody he could get a grip on. Mother. The girls. Anybody. You had to step back into silence while the old man roared. Let the words go by, empty as a breeze. Watch the hands. Pay attention to what the hands might do next.

In that state of mind, everything slowed down and it felt like he had all the time in the world to make a decision. Step in to protect Morgan and the girls, or let his older brothers—Virgil and James and Newton—deal with the threat to themselves or Mother.

In the dark before dawn on October 27, it came to him that he'd been practicing his whole life for what happened yesterday. The ability to make haste slowly had allowed him to aim and fire without panic, to place each shot carefully—each bullet meant to protect someone he cared for. He had saved Virgil and Morgan. He'd saved Doc.

He'd taken lives to do it.

He was a Methodist. He went to church twice a week. He knew that killing is as bad as sin gets, but he was not sorry. He could not find a way to be sorry.

He was three when Morgan was born. It was thirty years ago, but he could clearly recall standing at his mother's bedside. “This is your baby brother, Wyatt,” she said. “You have to love Morgan and protect him.”

Later, when Warren was born, Wyatt found out that newborn babies will hold onto whatever touches their palms, but the way Morgan had held Wyatt's own small finger still seemed special to him. It was like shaking hands. Like making a deal.
I'm your baby brother. You'll take care of me.
And Wyatt did. Morgan, so chatty in manhood, had hardly bothered to talk at all when he was little. Wyatt always knew what he wanted.
He's hungry. He needs a change. Pick him up, Ma, he wants to see.

Funny how things turned out, Wyatt growing more silent as Morgan got older. Course, Morg wanted to speak for himself—that was part of it, but only part. Every year, Wyatt had more to keep silent about, more to keep a grip on, more to control so the old man wouldn't beat the tar out of somebody.

“When a man beats his boy, he wants a son who won't buck him.” That's what Wyatt told Doc Holliday once, back in Dodge. “He's trying to make a coward. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it works.”

“And the hundredth boy?” Doc asked.

“We can go either way. Kill the old man, or try to become a better one.”