It was said that Newton Earp also loved the little whore, but little was known about Newton Earp, the shiest of the Earp boys, probably.
The joker in the local deck, so Wyatt believed, was the lanky pistolero who called himself Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce, who was said to be the best in the West—or anywhere—at throwing rocks.
“They say he can knock quails out of the air with a rock—I doubt that, myself,” Doc said.
Wyatt, who had been gloomy, perked up suddenly at the thought of a rock-throwing competition. He promptly marched right into the saloon and introduced himself to the rock thrower.
“You don’t have to say my whole name,” Johnny said. “I worked a medecine show once and they gave me this long name and it stuck.”
“So which part of it are we supposed to use?” Wyatt asked.
“Just call me Deuce,” the stranger said. “I despise a long-winded name.”
When asked if he could knock quail out of the air with rocks, the newcomer looked surprised that anyone would care.
“Where I come from, which is Scotland, it’s a common skill,” he explained.
“Mister, this ain’t Scotland,” Wyatt said, and proceeded to lay bets on the outcome. Fortunately quail were plentiful in the outskirts of Tombstone. The Mexican cook at the Last Kind Words Saloon kept a pen full for customers who grew tired of beefsteak.
The stranger who allowed himself to be called Deuce warmed up by knocking over a few bottles Wyatt had sat on a wall. Wyatt was openly scornful of the proceedings. Johnny Deuce, as Doc preferred to call him, asked Wyatt to release the bobwhites one at a time, whereas the pretty Gambrils quail preferred to run between the chaparral bushes.
To Wyatt’s astonishment, Doc’s, and the the local spectators, the lanky Scot coolly knocked over his first ten quail, six flying and four on the ground.
“No fair, you didn’t turn them loose high enough,” Wyatt said to Doc, who had been releasing the quail.
“Wyatt, there ain’t no right way to start up a dang quail,” Doc said.
“Hell, I never supposed he’d be this good,” Wyatt said.
“Hell yourself, I never even heard of throwing rocks at quail,” Doc admitted.
The Scotsman kept throwing and quail kept falling. Wyatt, who was notoriously hard to impress about anything, was openmouthed with astonishment at what he was seeing.
“Dern, it’s worth losing a hundred dollars to witness skill like that,” he said,
Johnny Deuce just shrugged.
“My pa once hit one hundred and two,” he said. “The only reason he had to quit then was because he ran out of rocks.”
“Well, there’s no danger of that here,” Wyatt said, looking around at the rocky hills. “No danger at all.”
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55
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Wyatt and Doc were
taking their ease on the porch of the Last Kind Words Saloon when a little procession rode by, trying to look dangerous. There was Ike and Billy Clanton, two McLaurys, several cowboys, and a few vaqueros. It was a quiet day in Tombstone. Johnny Ringo had left town on business, and the rock-throwing Scot had loped off toward Tucson.
“I thought those Clantons ran a cattle ranch,” Wyatt said. “Why don’t they work a little instead of cluttering the streets and making damn nuisances of themselves.”
“It’s mainly Ike that’s the nuisance,” Doc said. “The others will probably just get drunk and play cards.”
“I might be of a different opinion,” Wyatt said.
But he seemed inclined to let the matter drop, and probably would have had not Ike Clanton, the principal nuisance, come swaggering down the street with a gun in his hand, though it wasn’t pointed at anyone.
“Get out of that chair and face me,” Ike, who was short, said. “You son of a bitch,” he added, as a kind of flourish.
Wyatt and Doc looked at one another.
“Which son of a bitch did you want to fight, Ike?” Doc inquired politely.
“Hell, I don’t know,” Ike admitted. “You’ve both got a licking coming, though I could save time and shoot you.”
Wyatt stood up and lazily walked over to Ike, who was clearly drunk.
“I’m afraid your eyes have got bigger than your stomach, Ike,” Wyatt said. “You could no more whip me than you can fly.”
“Nor could you whip me, you young fool,” Doc said.
It was then that the confusion began for Ike Clanton, who had not yet bothered to cock his weapon. Wyatt Earp, who had just been sitting on the porch paring his nails, suddenly got behind him with a rifle, that he used to whack Ike in the head. Ike suddenly saw the ground come up and meet his head, hard.
“I’ll take your weapon, it’s for your own good,” Wyatt told him. He waved at his brother Morgan, who was a block away, awaiting developments.
“He’s a rowdy one,” he said, handing his rifle and Ike’s pistol to Doc. Then he took Ike by his pants leg and began to drag him over to Morgan, who was acting as the jailer.
“Why didn’t you just shoot him?” Morgan asked.
“No, no . . . it’s too early in the day for gunplay,” Wyatt said. “Jail him until he sobers up and then insist that he leave town and take his damn friends with him. And keep the pistol.”
Ike Clanton had his eyes open, but did not immediately have anything to say.
“It’s fine for you to be whacking people with your Winchester, Wyatt, but there are practical aspects to jailing people, one being that the jail’s full. Some of those gamblers we arrested last night ain’t woke up yet.”
Wyatt smiled. Morgan often got himself into practical difficulties. He had been a studious child too.
“It could be that you need a bigger jail, too,” Wyatt said. “If you don’t have a cell free, just chain Ike to an anvil or something. Don’t let him go until he’s full sober.”
With that he walked off. Ike was just beginning to stir. His head had a sizable lump on it.
At the last minute Wyatt decided to keep Ike’s pistol himself, though it was a poor weapon, of dubious accuracy.
“I venture to guess that you’ve made an enemy,” Doc said.
“No, he was already my enemy,” Wyatt said. “I thought best to disarm him.”
Doc stood up and assessed the situation. Billy Clanton came down the street and was trying to talk Morgan Earp out of his prisoner. Perhaps because of the overcrowded jail; or because Morgan often refused to do what Wyatt said, Billy was soon leading an unstable Ike back up the street toward the O.K. Corral, where the Clantons and the McLaurys had their horses stabled.
“I guess Morgan can’t tolerate a messy jail,” Doc said, to Wyatt, who shrugged. “He should have picked somebody besides Ike to turn loose. Ike’s a hothead.”
Wyatt looked up the street and saw that the McLaurys and a few of their hired hands had taken an interest in the proceedings.
“If Ike goes home I’ll let him be, but if he makes trouble I’ll give him a lick he won’t forget,” Wyatt said.
“Unless he shoots you,” Doc said.
“He won’t, I took his gun.”
“Wyatt, wake up,” Doc said. “There’s more guns in this town than there are birds in the sky. It won’t take Ike more than ten minutes to rearm.”
Wyatt knew that was true. But he didn’t feel worried. Ike Clanton was a fool and a loudmouth, but not a killer. In his view Ike would avoid conflict, though that didn’t mean the McLaurys would.
“Wyatt, are you a damn marshal now?” Doc asked. “If you’re not, what business do you have arresting people?”
“Oh, I didn’t actually
arrest
Ike,” Wyatt said. “I left the arresting to Morgan and Virg.”
Doc let it drop, though he had an uneasy feeling. If Wyatt was already in an arresting mood, who could say what might happen later in the day.
He himself was unarmed at the time, but Wells Fargo was only a block away, and they always had a gun or two that they were willing to lend to sober citizens like himself. A shotgun might be best; it would only be prudent. Wyatt had a kind of crazy look in his eye—it might be well to be armed.
When he stood up to go inquire about the shotgun, Wyatt Earp was standing in the street; he was still watching the small crowd gathered at the O.K. Corral.
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56
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Jessie happened to be
looking out her window when Wyatt walked out to deal with Ike Clanton—she was brushing her teeth and getting ready to comb her hair. Wyatt was moving slow, smiling at Ike in a friendly way; but then suddenly he stepped to his right and whacked Ike with the barrel of the rifle he was carrying.
Ike fell face forward into the dusty street and didn’t move for a while. Wyatt took Ike’s pistol away from him and gave it to Morgan, who slipped it into his coat pocket.
Wyatt and Morgan chatted a minute, and then Wyatt walked back over to where Doc Holliday waited. Doc appeared to be unarmed.
Jessie had slept badly, and Wyatt too. Now and then through the night, he put his hand on her, but that was as far as matters went. Jessie hoped it would go farther; after all, she was awake and there they were. But Wyatt didn’t do much and she didn’t dare make an overture herself; he would just go icy, and it might be days before he was friendly again.
“You married one of the most difficult men on the planet, Jessie,” Doc told her once. “You should have married an old pussycat like me.”
“Oh yeah,” Jessie said. “Then why did Katie Elder tell me you’ve broken her nose twice?”
She said it mainly just to keep a conversation going. Katie Elder, though a friend, was not always to be believed.
“Ha, that liar,” Doc said. “She’s got the biggest nose in the Territory anyway.”
“If I was to hit her I imagine I’d break my hand,” he said a little later.
For her part Jessie considered Doc to be the biggest liar in the Territory, but at least he was friendly and her husband wasn’t.
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57
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Frank McLaury was for
going home. It was certainly rude of the Earps to act as if they owned the town of Tombstone. True, the town had made Virgil Earp sheriff and his brother Morgan deputy, but, so far as Frank knew, they hadn’t made Wyatt anything and Wyatt was the one causing all the trouble. There he was, fifty yards down the street, looking at them as if they were the worst outlaws in the Territory, when in fact they were just harmless cattlemen, come to town for a little gambling and a visit to the bank.
“Look at him,” Frank said. “You’d think he was the governor or something.”
“Besides that he killed Pa. I’d bet a hundred dollars it was him,” Ike said. He was still groggy and so far had failed to obtain a new gun. He had lost most of his cash earlier in the day, in a poker game, and would have to borrow from his little brother Billy, or else from one of the McLaurys; but they were known to be a frugal pair, not likely to be sympathetic to his plight.
A photographer had set up a little studio next door to the O.K. Corral, but the man was a newcomer and could not be expected to lend a weapon on such short notice.
He wondered what the odds were that Wyatt would have mellowed to the point where he would simply give him his gun back; he decided the odds were slim.
“I say we just go home—there’ll be a better day,” Frank McLaury repeated. “The Earps have got their dander up, for some damn reason,” he continued. “What do you think, Billy?”
Billy Clanton, the youngest person there, had no firm opinion.
“Don’t care,” Billy said. “I’m too young to be let in the saloons, and there ain’t much for me to do.”
“I guess you could play mumbly-peg with Indian Charlie, if you can find him,” Frank McLaury suggested.
“No thanks, I don’t think I’ve sunk that low.”
In fact Billy had his eye on the whore named Sally Whistle, but Sally worked for money and he didn’t have any. All avenues of enjoyment at the moment seemed out of reach.
Tom McLaury was the most combative member of his family, and he was up for a fight.
“No Earp, nor party of Earps, is going to run me out of Tombstone,” he declared.
“Okay then, let’s take a walk and maybe the Earps will just forget about us,” Ike suggested.
“Walk? Where in hell would you want to walk, in Tombstone?” Tom asked.
“Just around,” Ike said. He didn’t expect his idea to be welcomed. His brothers were so unused to walking that they would mount a horse just to walk across a pen or corral.
To his surprise the McLaurys and his brother Billy suddenly ambled off toward the photographer’s shop, smoking cheroots as they went.
“Hey, we could get our pictures taken,” he said.
“No, I’ve not got time for such frivolity,” Frank McLaury said. “I’ll saunter over to the depot and back, and hope the Earps will break a leg, or do something, by the time we get back.”
“And I still say we ought to be sensible and just go home,” he added. It might be a long wait before the quarrelsome Earps got in a better mood.
“Heck no, I’m in a fine mood myself,” Tom said. “If the Earps know what’s good for them they’ll leave me be.”
At that point Ike gave up.
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58
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“There’s laws against mobs
assembling in this town,” Wyatt insisted. “And if there ain’t I’ll make one up myself.”
“You’re afflicted with the means today, Wyatt,” Doc informed him.
Just then two ore wagons went blazing through town, covering the whole area with dust—for a moment it was difficult to see even as far as the O.K. Corral.
“Ike and Billy and Frank and Tom,” Doc counted. “Four ignorant cowboys don’t make a mob. And anyway Billy Clanton is too young to count.”
“What about Indian Charlie—he’s lurking around,” Wyatt said.
“I have no quarrel with Indian Charlie,” Virgil mentioned.
“I guess you boys are forgiving of sinners,” Wyatt said. “I say we go run a bluff on them and chase them out of town, so the sight of them won’t be so damn aggravating.”
“Hold on, I’ll just go borrow that shotgun from Wells Fargo,” Doc said. “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. That’s a sentiment I wouldn’t mind having on my gravestone, if I’m lucky enough to have a gravestone.”
“Do you really want to do this, Wyatt?” he asked. “I don’t see the necessity, myself.”