Fifty-one
The Earp men were armed. Virgil and James with handguns. Wyatt and Warren with handguns and shotguns. Doc Holliday was with them, and Sherman McMasters and Turkey Creek Jack Johnson. A telegraph clerk at Tucson wired reports of men, searching all incoming trains, striding through the cars with sawed-off shotguns under their coats. Armed men gathered and dispersed near the Tucson Railroad Station. Everyone talked of the Earps coming in with Morgan’s body. Frank Stilwell was there, to meet a deputy sheriff, he said.
At 6:45 in the evening everybody that was going aboard was on the California train except the Earp party. Doc Holliday and Turkey Creek Jack Johnson boarded the train, walked in opposite directions through the car where the Earps would sit, and posted themselves in the adjacent cars by the doors on either side of the Earp’s car. Doc carried a 10-gauge. Turkey Creek Jack Johnson had a Winchester. Sherman McMasters got on with them and walked through the entire train with a shotgun. At the back he leaned out and yelled “Clear” to Wyatt, who stood with his family.
James and Bessie, Virgil and Allie climbed up onto the train from whose stack the smoke was already pouring. Wyatt and Warren stood on either side of the train steps with shotguns, then followed them. When the departing Earps were seated, Doc and Turkey Creek Jack stepped down onto the platform on either side of the train and watched in both directions to see that no one else got on.
“Once the doors close and you’re underway, you’re out of it,” Wyatt said.
“Sure thing,” Virgil said. “Besides, I can still shoot.”
“But you can’t reload in anything under an hour,” Warren said.
“Means I can get the first six,” Virgil said. “If there’s more, James will have to clean up.”
James smiled. But it was a thin smile. He was brave enough, Wyatt thought, but whatever happened in the war had taken it out of him. He wasn’t a shooter. Still, he’d do what he had to. Wyatt was sure of that.
“Hell, I’d turn Allie on them,” Wyatt said.
Allie smiled at him.
“We ain’t always got along, Wyatt. And I’ve been ready to tell you when I didn’t like what you done.”
“That’s true,” Wyatt said.
“But you take care of yourself doing what it is you’re going to do.”
“I will, Allie.”
Her eyes were teary.
“I don’t want to lose you too,” Allie said and stood and put her arms around Wyatt. He patted her back.
“You too, Warren. You be very damned careful.”
“It’s the cowboys,” Warren said, “that need to be careful.”
The conductor stopped in front of Wyatt.
“Trains all locked down,” he said. “ ’Cept this car. Time to go.”
Wyatt nodded and looked at his brothers.
“See you in a little while,” Wyatt said.
He looked at Virgil. Virgil nodded. He put the Colt in his lap and put out his working hand. Wyatt took it. Then he and Warren left the train and watched as the conductor bolted the door. The engine whistled and the boiler huffed faster. McMasters jumped off the rear of the last car. Turkey Creek Jack Johnson walked back toward him. Warren followed. Doc began to walk along the train toward Wyatt. Across the next set of tracks, near an empty train at rest on its siding, there was a flurry of movement. Two men disappeared behind the train, but the third man stood there and Wyatt saw him.
“Stilwell,” Wyatt said and began to move toward him. Stilwell ran. Wyatt followed. Suddenly, as he came up against the engine of the silent train, Stilwell stopped and turned. Wyatt was fifteen feet away. He kept coming. Stilwell seemed frozen. At three feet, Wyatt stopped. The shotgun was level with Stilwell’s chest. Both hammers were back.
Stilwell said, “Morg.”
And again, “Morg,” and grabbed at the shotgun. Wyatt pulled the trigger, and the right barrel pounded a near-solid cluster of shotgun pellets into Stilwell’s chest. He was probably dead before the second barrel went off. Doc Holliday came up behind Wyatt at a dead run. Wyatt was already reloading the shotgun. Doc looked down at Stilwell’s body and drew his Colt and fired five shots into it. Then he, too, began to reload.
Behind them, the wheels of the train to California began to turn. The train strained into motion. Wyatt ran alongside it, and as Virgil peered out the now moving window Wyatt held up his right hand with one finger raised. Inside the train Virgil nodded. He understood. Wyatt had gotten one of them. For Morg.
Fifty-two
“Amazing,” Doc said, “how a few gunshots clear everything up.”
The barman brought Wyatt coffee.
“Now it’s all out in the open and aboveboard and right in front,” Doc said. “You against Behan. Earps against cowboys. Republicans against Democrats.
against
“Got a copy of the coroner’s report on Morgan,” Wyatt said.
He was holding the thick, white coffee mug in both hands and staring over the top of it through the saloon doors out at the little stretch of Allen Street that showed under them.
“Says Stilwell, Spence, Hank Swilling, Indian Charlie, and somebody named Fries are the main suspects for shooting Morgan. Gives Indian Charlie’s real name in there, Florentine Cruz. Never knew Charlie’s name was Florentine Cruz.”
“We knew the rest pretty much anyway, didn’t we?” Doc said.
He picked up the whiskey bottle and splashed a little more into his glass.
“I’m putting together a posse,” Wyatt said. “Heard that Spence and Indian Charlie are out at Spence’s wood camp.”
The steam from the coffee whispered up past his face.
“I’ll be in the street on horseback at nine this morning. I’d be pleased if you’d join me.”
“You promise me I can shoot one of ’em?” Doc said.
“ ’Less they shoot you first,” Wyatt said.
Doc drank off the newly poured whiskey. He smiled.
“No, Wyatt, I’ll shoot one of them unless they kill me first.”
“Nine o’clock,” Wyatt said. “Be ready to stay out awhile.”
At nine in the morning Wyatt was there on Allen Street up on the blue roan gelding with the sun at his back. He had a Colt.45 and a.45 Winchester rifle, and a lot of ammunition in the saddlebags. He had a blanket roll tied behind his saddle, and a pack mule on a lead. Warren was up beside him, smaller than Wyatt and dark. Doc was there mounted, as were McMasters and Turkey Creek Jack Johnson, looking too big for the small bay mare he rode. Texas Jack Vermilion had a rifle and a shotgun in saddle scabbards. Vermilion sported a flamboyant mustache.
Wyatt handed the pack mule lead line to McMasters.
“You can ride drag for a while, Sherm,” he said.
As McMasters led the mule to the back of the group, John Behan came up Allen Street. Billy Breakenridge was with him, and Dave Neagle. Wyatt nodded to Neagle.
“Morning, Dave,” Wyatt said.
Neagle nodded back at Wyatt.
“Dave don’t look so comfortable,” Warren murmured. “He scared?”
“Dave’s never scared,” Wyatt said. “Probably embarrassed at being with Johnny.”
“You fellas going someplace?” Behan said.
He was smiling. No one answered him.
“Anyplace special?” Behan said.
Breakenridge and Neagle stood on either side of him a few feet from him. Both wore deputy badges. Both wore Colts. Neagle’s eyes moved steadily as he looked at all five of the horsemen.
“Wyatt, I need to see you,” Behan said.
No one spoke. Wyatt looked at Behan. His gaze was heavy. It was as if Behan could feel the weight of it. He didn’t move, but he looked like he wished to back up. The silence lengthened awkwardly. Finally Wyatt broke it.
“About what?” Wyatt said.
“About killing Frank Stilwell,” Behan said.
“You are going to see me once too many times, Johnny,” he said.
Behind Wyatt his party began to spread out. Doc sidled his horse left, Warren right. The pack mule wouldn’t move sideways, so Vermilion stayed with it where he was. But McMasters and Turkey Creek Jack moved wider still so that the Earp party was now in a wedge-shaped phalanx.
“I will talk with Paul,” Wyatt said. “Next time I’m in Tucson.”
Behan didn’t say anything. Wyatt made a small clicking noise and tapped the roan with his knee. The roan moved forward and the rest of the horses moved after them. The pack mule had no objection to moving forward and joined the rest of the party as the horses walked on past Behan and his deputies. Wyatt lit a cigar carefully, turning it to get it right, then when it was going as he wanted it. He clicked to the roan again and the horses broke into a trot as they turned onto Third Street and out of sight, as Behan, watching them go, could see them no more.
“Who’s Paul?” Warren said.
“Bob Paul. Sheriff in Pima County.”
“Why’ll you talk to him?”
“Well,” Wyatt said, “it’s his jurisdiction…”
Wyatt drew on his cigar and let the smoke out slowly. The horses were eager in the early desert spring, tossing their heads and arching their necks to strain against the reins as the posse moved out of town.
“And,” Wyatt said, “he’s a real lawman.”
“Unlike Mr. Behan,” Doc said.
“He ain’t a real anything,” Warren said.
At the back, holding the pack mule, McMasters raised his voice.
“Why don’t we just plug him, Wyatt.”
“We won’t plug him,” Wyatt said.
Fifty-three
“Got the coroner’s report,” Wyatt said to no one in particular. “Says that most likely the people who killed Morgan are Frank Stilwell…”
“The late Frank Stilwell,” Doc said softly.
“… Peter Spence, Fries, Swilling and Florentine Cruz.”
“Cruz?” McMasters said.
“Indian Charlie,” Johnson said.
“That’s all,” Doc said.
“That’s all they named as suspects,” Wyatt said.
“You know Curley Bill was in it, and Ringo,” Doc said. “And you know that goddamned weasel Behan was behind it.”
“Don’t know that for sure,” Wyatt said. “But we’ll ride over to Spence’s lumber camp tomorrow. See if somebody there will tell us.”
“Should we take turns on guard?” Vermilion said.
“No need,” Wyatt said. “Doc sleeps so light he can hear a rattlesnake yawn.”
“Can’t tell I’m asleep,” Doc said, “ ’less I dream.”
He took a pull on a whiskey bottle he had taken from his saddlebag.
“That help you to stay awake, Doc?” Turkey Creek said.
“That helps me stay alive,” Doc said and handed the bottle to Johnson, who took a pull and passed it to Vermilion.
The bottle went around the campfire for a while, skipping Wyatt each time, until one by one, wrapped in their blankets under the infinite sky, close to the fire, they went to sleep and Doc alone sat awake, alone with the bottle.
In the morning they ate bacon and biscuits, drank coffee-Doc added whiskey to his-and rode east toward the Dragoon Mountains, with their hats tilted forward to keep the sun out of their eyes. The horses picked their way carefully through the low, harsh brush. A hawk cruised soundlessly in the high sky. Doc sipped whiskey from a bottle in his saddlebags. Wyatt knew that Doc hated quiet. He’d start talking soon. Doc talking was something to hear. He talked about guns and dental tools and Catholic theology, and whores, and people he’d shot, and meals he had eaten, and cards he had held, and the nature of man, and why it was best to steam Prairie Chicken before you roasted it.
As they started up the long gradual rise toward Spence’s wood-cutting operation, Doc said, “Where’s your ladies, Wyatt?”
“Josie’s in San Francisco,” Wyatt said. “With her father.”
“How ’bout Mattie?”
“Gone to my mother’s place in California.”
“Funny thing,” Doc said, “you hadn’t taken up with Josie Marcus, we wouldn’t be out here riding down the people killed Morgan.”
The horses were blowing as they shuffled up the long grade. There was only the sound of the horses’ hooves, the jangle of harness metal, the creak of saddle leather.
“Talk about something else, Doc,” Wyatt said.
Fifty-four
“We’ll circle,” Wyatt said, “so we don’t come at them with the sun in our eyes.”
The horses strung out single file as they moved down the valley side and away from the wood choppers. When they were on the other side Wyatt turned them toward the camp, straight west, so that the sun would be at his back and straight into the eyes of the people in the wood camp. McMasters took his Winchester from the saddle boot and rested it across the pommel. Doc had a shotgun across his saddle.
There was a Mexican cutting and stacking wood.
“You speak English?” Wyatt said.
The Mexican shook his head. He was frightened. Wyatt turned to McMasters.
“Ask him where Cruz is, and Spence.”
McMasters spoke to the Mexican man. He answered, pointing toward the northern slope of the valley.
“Says Spence is in Tombstone with Behan. Says Indian Charlie’s over that hill rounding up some strays.”
Wyatt turned the aging roan horse and rode toward the hill without a word. The rest of the men followed, catching up to him, and spreading out on either side of him. They went up the hillside and over it. There were other hills beyond it. A teamster named Judah was driving stock across their path. With him was a Mexican named Acosta.
“You know where Pete Spence is?” Wyatt said.
His voice was flat and easy, as if he didn’t really care where Spence was.
“I thought he was in Tombstone.”
“You a friend of his?” Wyatt said.
Judah showed no sign that he thought the question a dangerous one to answer.
“Known Spence a long time,” Judah said.
“You seen Indian Charlie around?”
“Cruz? Over there someplace,” Judah said. “Looking for a couple mules that went roaming.”
Wyatt nodded, clucked softly to the roan and rode toward the next hill. The other riders stayed with him, spread out on either side. Judah and Acosta both watched them as they went.