Epitaph (63 page)

By the time Doc got there, Stilwell was long past dead, but Wyatt wrenched Virgil's shotgun from Doc's hands, put its barrels close to Stilwell's chest, blew it to pieces, and handed the shotgun back.

Breathless and coughing from the run, Doc watched wide-eyed as Wyatt pulled a pistol out next and began to empty that into Stilwell's body as well.

“Stop now, Wyatt. He's dead,” Doc said. “It's over.”

“No,” Wyatt said, turning grief and rage into shreds of flesh and shards of bone. “No. It's not.”

ALL MEN ARE CAPABLE OF SAVAGERY
. Bob Paul knew that, but he never would have expected it from Wyatt Earp, who had always seemed so steady.

Waving his men back, the sheriff of Pima County pointedly gazed toward the distant mountains, turning a blind eye to what remained of Frank Stilwell.

“I can give you until tomorrow afternoon,” he told Wyatt. “Best you leave now, son.”

THEY CAUGHT A FREIGHT BACK TO BENSON.
With their backs against the wooden slats of an empty cattle car, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday sat alone together, in grief and in guilt.

Should've been me, they were both thinking, though for different reasons. Should've been me, not Morg.

After a time, Wyatt tried to reload the weapons. By then the shuddering reaction had set in and his hands were shaking, so Doc did it for him.

An hour passed before Wyatt spoke. “Stilwell got twenty-two hours.”

It took a while to work it out, but then Doc understood. Frank Stilwell had lived just twenty-two hours longer than Morgan Earp.

D
OGS AND A RAILYARD WORKER FOUND STILWELL
on the morning of March 20. Dead men weren't unusual in Arizona, but nobody had seen one shot up as thoroughly as Frank.

News of the murder was swiftly telegraphed around the country. In Tombstone, the headline in that morning's
Epitaph
was unsubtle:
THIS TIME THE THUNDERBOLT OF DEATH STRIKES THE OTHER SIDE
.

The laconic headline of the
Nugget
would prove useful in the days to come.
MORE BLOODSHED
was all it said.

Inquests were convened that day in both Cochise and Pima Counties.

In Tombstone, Marietta Spence took the stand to testify in the matter of Morgan Earp's slaying. “I am the wife of Peter Spence,” she told the coroner's jury. “On March eighteenth, Pete came home from Charleston, and he had two breeds with him. One was half Mexican, named Florentino Cruz. Sometimes they called him Indian Charlie. The other one was called Apache Hank. His name is really Hank Swilling. Anyways, Morgan Earp walked by, and I heard Pete tell the breeds, ‘That's one of them.' Frank Stilwell came that night, too. They was all armed with pistols and rifles. Around midnight myself and my mother heard the shots that killed Morgan Earp. A few minutes later, Pete and Frank Stilwell and their friends Apache Hank and Florentino Cruz—they come back to the house, and they was all of a tremble. Pete
told me to get up and make them a breakfast, and we had a quarrel, so he struck me and my mother. He said he would shoot us both. He said he was leaving town and he'd leave our bodies behind him if we said a word of what we knew, but I don't care. I hope Wyatt Earp catches Pete and the others, and I hope he makes them pay.”

Murder warrants for Peter Spence, Henry Swilling (a.k.a. Apache Hank), and Florentino Cruz (a.k.a. Indian Charlie) were issued an hour later.

In Tucson, the coroner's jury considered the condition of Frank Stilwell's body and concluded that there must have been a small army involved with his death. Five suspects were named. Wyatt Earp, John Henry Holliday, Sherman McMasters, John Blount (a.k.a. Turkey Creek Jack Johnson, a.k.a. Creek Johnson), and John Oberland Vermillion (a.k.a. Texas Jack Vermillion) were all wanted for murder.

UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES,
the last person anybody expected to show his face in Tombstone was Wyatt Earp, but there he was, along with Doc Holliday, Sherm McMasters, and the two Jacks.

Marietta Spence was the first to see them as they passed her house on the way into town. She was hanging out laundry, but one eye was black, and from way she moved, you knew there were bruises hidden beneath her dress. “I'm sorry about your brother,” she told Wyatt. “Pete's probably up in the Dragoons at his woodcutting camp. I hope you get him.”

Wyatt nodded his thanks and the posse continued into town, where they returned the rented wagons and stabled the horses before checking into the Cosmopolitan.

“Wake us up at seven tonight,” he told Al Bilicke. “We'll leave after dark,” he told his men, but he himself went to William Herring's law office next.

When Wyatt appeared in the doorway, the lawyer assumed it was to give himself up and stand trial. Bill Herring had been drafting a defense ever since he'd heard about Frank Stilwell. “Wyatt,” he
said, “we can beat this. We've got Marietta Spence's testimony and I've lined up witnesses who'll swear to the threats Stilwell made—”

Wyatt brushed that off. “I need to change my will. If there's anything left when my debts are paid, I want half to go to my sister Adelia. This's her address,” he said, handing the lawyer an old envelope. “The other half should go to Josephine Marcus. I don't know exactly where she lives, but her father's a banker up in San Francisco. Shouldn't be hard to find.”

“Wyatt, I promise, the murder charge against you won't amount to anything—”

“A trial will take a month,” Wyatt said. “Even if I'm not lynched while I'm in custody, the men who killed Morgan will get away.”

So Herring drew up the codicil. Wyatt signed it, but before he left the office, Judge William H. Stilwell—no relation to the recently deceased individual of the same last name—arrived with warrants for Morgan's killers.

“Wyatt,” the judge said, “if I were you, I'd leave my prisoners out in the mesquite, where alibis don't count.”

That certainly sounded like permission, but it wouldn't have made any difference—what the judge said or didn't say. Wyatt only took the warrants out of habit. He knew, even then, he wasn't going to bring anyone in. He wasn't going to sit in court and listen to their smirking friends lie under oath. Oh, he was with me in Contention that night. We was playing cards, Your Honor, so he couldn't have shot Morgan Earp. Morgan was a nice fella, and it's too bad he got killed, sir.

To hell with that. To hell with them.

He was on his way back to the hotel when he heard someone call his name and turned to see the Western Union telegrapher hurrying across the street.

“Mr. Earp, I just got a wire from Bob Paul to Johnny Behan. There are warrants out for you, Doc Holliday, Sherm McMasters, and both of the Jacks.”

“It was just me,” Wyatt said. “Doc didn't fire. The other three were back in Benson.”

“Well, that's as may be, but they're wanted all the same.” The telegrapher looked around and dropped his voice. “Get some rest, sir. I don't believe my messenger will be able to find Johnny Behan until after eight o'clock this evening.”

THE COSMOPOLITAN WAS ONLY A BLOCK
from the pitheads on Toughnut Street. Until recently you'd have heard the constant noise of steam engines over in the Goodenough, but it was quiet that afternoon.

Eliphalet Butler Gage found that silence unnerving. It was the sound of businesses closing and capital fleeing.

You could explain cattle rustling to eastern investors. (“Nothing to do with our operations, although it does make beef cheaper.”) You could justify the gunfight back in October. (“Strict law enforcement! We tolerate no nonsense in Tombstone.”) You could point out that the U.S. Mint was still buying millions of dollars of Tombstone silver. No matter what you said, investors were backing away.

It wasn't too late to turn things around. There was plenty of silver ore to be extracted from the Grand Central Mine. He needed bigger pumps, heavier timbers, more cash to pay competitive salaries to the engineers and skilled miners who were leaving for Bisbee's copper deposits. The capital would come back, if the crime problem could be solved.

I'm just going to ask Wyatt a question, Gage reminded himself, trying not to be nervous. He was certainly not going to offer the man a bribe. Wyatt had beaten a man to death for trying that up in Dodge. No, he would simply ask a question and wait for the answer. If it seemed wise, he'd offer . . . encouragement, one might say. If Wyatt looked askance, Gage could easily adjust his approach from financial backing to moral support.

When Wyatt walked through the hotel door, E. B. Gage wasted no time in coming to the point. “What would it take to put an end to this plague of lawlessness, Wyatt?”

To track the Cow Boys down and kill them all, he meant, and looking into Wyatt Earp's eyes, Gage knew that his meaning was clear. He could almost see the man doing the computation in his head. More men. More horses. More ammunition. Provisions for weeks in the chaparral. A good tracker. Payments to informers.

“Call it a grand,” Wyatt said. “Tens and twenties.”

A bargain, any way you calculated it. “I could get that,” Gage said cautiously.

“How soon?”

Awash with relief, Gage almost wept. “Thursday. Friday at the latest. Richard Gird will kick in. Wells Fargo, too. How should we get it to you?”

“Send it to Henry Hooker's ranch. I'll head there when I can.”

“The whole territory will be grateful. We'll back whatever you do, Wyatt. The governor wants this problem solved. So does Washington,” Gage added for good measure. “There'll be pardons when the job is done.”

HIS TIME WITH JOSIE
seemed like a fairy tale now, like some story that started with “Once upon a time.”

Eyes open, lying in the bed they'd shared, he tried to calculate how long they'd had together. The president died on September nineteenth. The gunfight was October twenty-sixth. The hearing was in November. The attack on Virg was just after Christmas. He sent her back to San Francisco then.

A hundred days, maybe? Give or take.

I should sleep, he thought, but he reached for his pocket watch instead and did the count again. Sixty-six hours since Morgan died. Every minute felt like failure. Every breath Morg's killers took was a rebuke . . .

He must have dropped off at some point, for he sat up with a cry when Al Bilicke knocked on the door.

At seven-thirty, everyone was down in the lobby except Doc.
Wyatt hoped briefly that the dentist was too exhausted to come along. Then he remembered: If Doc was still in Tombstone when Western Union delivered the telegram to Johnny Behan, he'd be arrested and hanged for sure.

“Did you wake up Holliday?” he asked Bilicke.

“Yes, sir. He told me to get him up at six. He's waiting for you outside.”

And he'd been busy. The horses were saddled, the canteens filled, bags of food hung over the pommels. While Sherm and the Jacks tied bedrolls and lifted saddlebags onto their animals, Doc sat silently on that rented sorrel, Duchess. Eyes on Wyatt. Just waiting.

Wyatt nodded, accepting it. Doc inclined his head.

The rest of the posse was mounting up when the Jewish druggist hurried over with the two canteens that Dr. Holliday had asked him to prepare. “Coffee, very strong,” he said, handing one to the dentist. Then, with a look of warning, he gave Doc the other. “Laudanum,” he said. “Very dilute, but . . . use it sparingly.”

SHERIFF JOHN BEHAN
was on his way to the Can Can Café for supper when he saw Wyatt and the others getting ready to leave town. Starting across the street, he called, “Wyatt, I want to see you . . .” But his words trailed off and his steps slowed when he got close enough to look into Wyatt Earp's eyes.

It was, he'd think later, like bending down to pick up a belt you'd dropped on the floor the night before, only to realize that what you were reaching for wasn't your belt. It was a rattlesnake, waking after a long hibernation.

“Well, Johnny, you're seeing me now,” Wyatt said. “May come a time when you see me once too often.”

Behan took a little step back, and Wyatt smiled at that: a small, unmirthful smile, full of the snobbery of evil.
We're all rotten
, that smile said,
and I am the worst of all.
Johnny had seen that smile on someone else, though it would take a few days to remember who. Meanwhile,
his own mouth worked briefly; in the end, he found nothing to say, and Wyatt gave a little snort of contempt.

“Run along now,” he told Johnny. “I have work to do.”

Deputy Breakenridge arrived at his boss's side in time to hear that remark and saw Sheriff Behan flush crimson as he watched the Earp posse ride down Allen on their way out of town.

“Aren't we going to arrest them?” Billy asked.

“Not yet,” Johnny said, moving smoothly toward legal high ground. “We don't have warrants yet.”