Epitaph (54 page)

He didn't tell Doc how hard it was, trying to be a better man. He didn't say what it was like, pouring your soul into just . . . not being murderous. He never told anyone what it felt like when his grip on anger loosened.

It felt like honesty.

The shame came later.

The sun was rising by then, its first rays hitting Josie's face. She stirred and rolled toward him—away from the light—and realized he was awake. “Did you sleep at all?” she asked.

“First thing I can remember,” he told her, “is Morgan holding my finger, the day he was born.”

“He'll be all right,” Josie said. “Virgil, too. And Doc.”

“What happened . . . It was my fault. I want you to know that.”

She sat up and looked at him in dawn's pale light, her belief in him and in his decency as fierce as it was uninformed and unquestioning.

“You always do what you think is right,” she said. “That's the best anyone can do.”

W
HO SAID IT FIRST? JOHN CLUM WONDERED.
Shakespeare? Cicero? Caesar?
A year in politics is an eternity.

A year, he thought with his hairless head in his ink-stained hands. Hah! One day was enough to change everything in this godforsaken town.

In the first minutes after the gunfight, public opinion was all on the side of the law. An early rumor spread that Deputy Morgan Earp had died in the performance of his duty and there was great sympathy for the Earps on their loss, for Morgan was well liked. Then Ike Clanton was seen leaving the Western Union office and somebody said he had summoned more Cow Boys. Soon it was all over town: They were coming to Tombstone to lynch the Earps and Holliday.

A reasonable person might have expected citizens to rally behind their police force, but Tombstone was about to be invaded by a gang of vengeful outlaws. Suddenly Johnny Behan's policy of “Live and let live” appeared to be the better part of valor, and folks began to grumble that the Earps had stirred up a hornets' nest.

Then the doctors reported that Morgan was hurt bad but likely to live. Virgil Earp and Doc Holliday's wounds were far less serious. An inch of difference in the bullets' trajectories could have severed Morgan's spinal cord, or cost Virgil his leg, or left Doc Holliday gut-shot
and screaming. Even so, it began to seem as though the police had gotten off easy.

Talk shifted to the argument Holliday and Ike Clanton had the night before the fight. Nobody knew what it was about, but somebody who'd been eating in the Alhambra's restaurant insisted that Ike Clanton had started it. Then somebody reminded everyone about when Milt Joyce coldcocked Holliday last year and how Wyatt said anyone who laid a hand on Doc would answer to him. When Ike Clanton turned himself in to Sheriff Behan because he was afraid Wyatt Earp would find him and finish the job, the notion did not strike anyone as impossible, or even unlikely.

Virgil was steady, folks said. Morgan was affable. But Wyatt? Hell, he beat a man to death up in Dodge City! Who knew what he was capable of when his friend and two of his brothers had been shot?

Word began to filter out of the inquest: Tom McLaury might have been unarmed. A counterrumor claimed that somebody had picked Tom's pistol up after the fight and was keeping it as a souvenir. Nobody seemed to know who “somebody” was and no one came forward to show the gun.

Even Earp partisans admitted that Tom wasn't near as bad as his brother Frank, so why had Wyatt hit Tom a couple of hours before the gunfight? Nobody had a good explanation for that.

Everyone had expected Willie Claiborne and Ike Clanton to blame the Earps, but Johnny Behan's testimony at the coroner's inquest was a surprise, and he wasn't shy about repeating it in public later on. “Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton were the only ones carrying weapons, and they had agreed to disarm,” he testified. “When I saw the Earps come around the corner, I went to them and told them not to fight because those parties had agreed to give me their weapons. The Earps ignored me and began firing without preamble. I heard Billy Clanton say, ‘Don't shoot me! I don't want to fight!' Tom McLaury threw open his coat and said, ‘I have got nothing!' But Holliday cut him down. That gunfight was little more than murder.”

Hour after hour, the coroner had listened to witness after witness, letting conflicting and ambiguous testimony stand without asking for clarification. By midnight, facts that had seemed clear-cut were in doubt. Those who'd initially supported the Earps lapsed into uneasy silence, leaving only the voices of those who condemned the officers and who now turned on John Clum himself during an emergency meeting of the City Council.

“I lay what happened at the mayor's feet,” Councilman Milt Joyce declared in what was the opening move of a run for the city's top office. “He knew what everyone in this town knows: Doc Holliday will shoot without provocation!” Milt held up his own scarred and deformed hand. “And wasn't it Mayor Clum who told the Earps to disarm those boys? Why not let well enough alone? I'll tell you why,” Milt offered. “Sheriff Behan was already on his way to the O.K. Corral. Johnny Behan could have settled matters in his own quiet, professional way, but Mayor Clum wanted Wyatt Earp to look good to the voters for next year's election!”

Which was uncomfortably close to the truth and put the mayor on the defensive. “I said to disarm those men,” he cried, “not to slaughter them!” And while he regretted the phrasing the moment the words were out of his mouth, there was no taking them back.

So there it was. On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, the Earps were incorruptible, intrepid lawmen bravely marching off to protect the city from gun-toting outlaws. The next morning, they were cold-blooded killers who'd murdered three men on a public street because of some kind of personal feud between Doc Holliday and Ike Clanton. And Johnny Behan had become the odds-on favorite to win the sheriff's office in the '82 election.

As editor of the
Epitaph
, John Clum was free to interpret the events as persuasively as possible; his newspaper was on the A.P. wire, so his version of the story would be read by Eastern investors and Washington politicians. As mayor of Tombstone, he had to be seen as impartial. So he put Virgil Earp on medical leave and appointed Deputy James
Flynn as acting police chief. Flynn could serve until the Earps were cleared of wrong-doing. As head of the Citizens Safety Committee, however, John Clum was within his rights to authorize a doubling of the guard around the Earps and Holliday, hoping to shield them from retaliation by the cattle thieves, drifters, and thugs who were converging on Tombstone by the hundreds: drinking heavily and talking big about lynch parties and settling scores.

THE NEXT MORNING'S FUNERAL CORTEGE
was far larger than the one that accompanied Fred White to his grave. Two thousand people stood in respectful silence along the route to the cemetery, which passed right by the Earp brothers' homes.

The procession was led by Curly Bill Brocius and Johnny Ringo, who held aloft a large banner made from a bedsheet and bearing a hand-lettered declaration:
MURDERED IN THE STREETS OF TOMBSTONE
. Behind them were wagons that bore the dead, their pale cheeks brightened by mortician's rouge. Chief mourner Isaac Clanton came next, eyes reddened, face ravaged. Ike was followed by more than a hundred men, on foot and on horseback, their pace set by a brass band playing a drinking song called “Where Was Moses When the Lights Went Out?”

“Odd choice for a dirge,” Doc Holliday remarked, looking out Morgan Earp's bedroom window. “Wash your hands, George.”

“John, they are perfectly clean.”

“You can argue with him for half an hour,” Kate Harony told Dr. George Goodfellow, “or you can save us all time and do like he says.”

“C'mon,” Morgan muttered. “Let's get this over with.”

The physician sighed and washed up. Again. Like it or not, a D.D.S. had trumped an M.D. ever since the president died. For the past six weeks, the American Dental Association had been frightening everyone out of their wits, claiming that Garfield had needlessly succumbed to infection introduced to his body by the unclean hands of his own doctors. Now all around the country, the
ignorant and superstitious were convinced that tiny invisible animals caused infection.

At the Earp family's insistence, any physician tending to Virgil and Morgan's wounds was shadowed by Dr. J. H. Holliday. All George Goodfellow wanted to do this morning was inspect the incision and change the dressings, but the dentist still insisted on this senseless rigmarole about “antisepsis procedure.”

Mrs. Earp and the Harony woman sat behind the patient to support his back while he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress, face rigid against the pain.

“There are too many people in here,” Goodfellow said, trying to reestablish professional authority. “I need space to work.”

The women left the bedroom. Holliday merely moved into a corner, vigilant as Goodfellow unwound the bandages.

“The itch is driving me crazy,” Morgan complained.

“Itching means the wound is healing,” Goodfellow murmured. “Apart from that, how do you feel?”

“Tired.”

“You lost a great deal of blood. Fatigue is normal.”

“I can't find a good way to sleep! I like to sleep on my back or my side, but everything hurts.”

Holliday went to the door. “Kate? Miss Louisa? Go over to Mrs. Fly's and ask for pillows. Three—no, four at least. Tell her I'll pay for replacements, but we need them right away.”

Ignoring the dentist, Goodfellow continued his examination.

“Entry and exit are mostly scabbed over . . . Swelling is somewhat reduced across the whole of your back . . .”

Holliday came forward to inspect the incision and met the physician's eyes. A portion of the tunnel looked angry. In a rare moment of agreement, both doctors made a silent decision not to say anything to Morgan about another surgery until they were certain it was necessary.

“And your own wound, John?” the physician asked.

“Granulation is well along. Kind of you to ask, George.”

The next ten minutes passed in silence while Morgan's dressings were replaced with fresh bandages—boiled, sun-dried, minutely examined and accepted by Holliday as sufficiently clean. Bidding his patient good day, Dr. Goodfellow left the room, promising he'd return that evening.

MORGAN HAD ANOTHER BAD TEN MINUTES
as Kate and Lou got him settled again, but when they were done, he was half-sitting in bed: his arms, lower back, head, and neck supported by pillows with a narrow gap across his shoulders so pressure on the wound was relieved.

“Better?” Doc asked.

“Hell, yeah,” Morg said. “Damn.
Yes
.”

“I am very sorry, Morgan,” Doc murmured. “I should have thought of that sooner.”

“Will you be able to sleep now?” Lou asked anxiously.

Morgan's eyes were already closed. “Mmm.”

“Miss Louisa, Kate and I will sit with him now. Please, honey, go on over to our room at Mrs. Fly's and get some rest yourself, y'hear?”

“Doc . . . are you sure?” Lou asked.

He contrived to sound hurt. “Why, Miss Louisa! After all you and Morgan have done for me! How
can
you ask such a thing?”

“Turnabout is fair play,” Kate added, for she and Lou had spent long hours together back in Dodge when Doc was so sick. “I'll go with you and get a few things from the room.”

The women left again and for a little while, there was no sound in the room but Morgan's soft snoring. Easing himself into the corner chair, John Henry Holliday took stock of everyone's condition three days after the shootings. His own wound was painful but could have been much worse. Virgil might be left with a limp, but he already felt well enough to be impatient with keeping his leg up. Morgan likely had more surgery ahead of him and a long recuperation, but he was young and in good health otherwise.

The crisis was nearly over. All they had to do was wait for the inquest jury to find that the McLaurys and Billy Clanton had been killed without malice aforethought by four police officers doing their duty. Then he and Kate would leave Tombstone for good.

She returned from Mrs. Fly's and handed him the new Zola novel he'd been reading before he left for Tucson. He opened the book and stared at the print for a time but couldn't concentrate and set it aside.

Kate was staring at him, her own eyes shadowed by fatigue. “You don't fool me none,” she said.

For as long as Kate had known him, John Henry Holliday had been haunted by nightmares of his mother's death. Now there was a new dream that made his sleep fearsome and broke her own. Tom McLaury, reaching for that rifle. Tom McLaury, blood pouring from the crater in his chest.

“Dammit, Doc, we coulda been in Denver by now!” she whispered. “We never shoulda come back here.”