Epitaph (14 page)

THE HOTEL ROOM WAS DARKENED.
The curtains were closed. He had pulled a pillow over his head, but the persistent banging on the door was shattering.

“Kate?” he called. “Please! The door!”

There was no answer. He lifted his head to look for her. The nausea got worse. Heart pounding, he recognized an impulse to get a gun. He was scared, but
why
stayed just beyond his reach. After a few moments, he'd forgotten what he wanted to find.

“Doc? It's Morgan! Open up! Wyatt's here, and Virgil, too. Doc?
Doc
!”

He drew back the bed linens and sat up, trying not to cough. Or vomit. Morgan hollered again, which reminded him that he meant to
go to the door. “I must look a sight,” he said when opened it and saw the Earps' shock. “I fear I am not properly dressed for visitors.”

Questions, then. Too loud. Too fast. Too many.

“My apologies,” he said. “I do not seem to have my wits about me. I believe this must be the worst headache I have ever had.”

Wyatt left. Virgil went after him. Morgan seemed torn between staying there and following his brothers.

What's that all about? Doc wondered briefly. Then the fog rolled back in and his curiosity dissipated. He wanted to lie down and go back to sleep, but he could hear his mother's voice.
Now, sugar, it is very kind of the gentleman to come and visit you.
With a mighty effort, he concentrated on his guest's face and attempted to make conversation.

“Well, now, Morgan,” he said. “What brings you to Tucson?”

“SOME MEN NEVER LOOK ANGRY,
but they never forget a slight.”

That's what Mayor Dog Kelley once told Wyatt Earp back in Dodge City, but the warning did not stick, for Wyatt Earp was a man without guile and could not imagine it in others. He did not anger easily or often. When he did, there was no subterfuge, no nurturing of grudges, no waiting for the right moment to strike back.

Within fifteen minutes of leaving Doc Holliday's room, Wyatt had located Johnny Tyler, flung him against a wall, and uttered a single short sentence making it plain to Tyler and the rest of the Slopers that they would be unwise to venture back inside the Oriental Saloon. Ever again.

As intended, word got around: Anyone who laid a hand on Doc Holliday would answer to Wyatt Earp. Among those to whom Wyatt gave notice of this directly was the owner of the Oriental, Milton Edward Joyce.

Milt was back in his saloon by then, wearing a fresh white apron. His old one had been discarded, so badly stained with blood that
it was no longer fit for use, not even as a rag. Some of that blood had splashed off Doc Holliday's head. A little of it came from the bartender's toe, though his bleeding mostly leaked into his shoe and onto the floor as he hopped around the room, yelling. By far, the greatest portion of the blood that soaked the apron was Milt's own.

His torn and broken hand now throbbed beneath yards of bandaging. A constant ache reached high into his arm. He was still light-headed. Dr. Henry Matthews had strongly urged bed rest, but Milt preferred the distraction of activity and with his bartender laid up, he couldn't afford to take time off from the business. He had overhead to support and demanding customers to keep. The Oriental stayed open day and night, no matter what.

The days when you could thump a mug of beer on a bar and call it done were long gone. Modern drinkers expected ornate mirrors, sparkling crystal, gleaming mahogany, and polished brass. They wanted a free lunch, too, or billiards, or music. Or all three. A free lunch wasn't just food. It was a kitchen and a cook and a waiter; it was dishes that got broken and cutlery that was stolen. Billiards meant an expensive table and cue sticks that idiots broke over one another's heads. Music meant a fiddler, or a piano and somebody who could play it, and if your man was any good at all, other saloons would try to hire him away, so you had to pay the bastard well.

All that added red ink to the ledgers, but when Milt Joyce sold his San Francisco place in '79 and traveled down to Tombstone, he was determined to build a saloon so elegant it would attract and hold the classiest clientele in a boomtown that was supplying the New Orleans Mint with all the silver it could use. He commissioned a beautifully carved, white-gilt bar and twenty-eight gas-burning chandeliers to light his place like a palace. He purchased a heavy walnut billiard table, ivory balls, and walnut cues with a matching rack. He paid top dollar for a corner lot at Fifth and Allen because it had the best view in town. He freighted in plate glass for the windows so his customers could look southward over their drinks and rest their eyes on wave
after wave of rolling silver-stuffed hills or gaze at the lumber-rich Huachuca Mountains, lovely and lucrative in the distance.

There was no beer on tap at the Oriental, for Milt Joyce did not cater to filthy miners from Cornwall or Pennsylvania, no matter how well-paid they were. The Oriental served imported whiskeys, brandies, and cordials in cut glass. He didn't just plunk a jar of pickled eggs on the bar and call it lunch, either. The Oriental had oysters, crabs, and shrimp, packed in ice and delivered daily, with hours to spare before the seafood went off. The overhead was staggering, and there was only one way to get ahead of the game, so he brought in another source of steady income: gambling. To set the tone high, he walled off a club room at the back of his building and covered its floor with a Brussels carpet so beautiful that even a drunken lawyer would hesitate to spit on it. There were poker tables, a faro layout, and a roulette wheel, but Milt added upholstered chairs to each corner, and sold fine cigars, and provided newspapers and magazines as well, so his customers might tarry an hour or two longer, sipping an expensive cognac as they read.

He'd begun to turn a decent profit when the California Slopers showed up. They favored the Oriental because Milt was from San Francisco, and he appreciated their business at first, but it wasn't long before the Slopers were more trouble than they were worth. Foul-mouthed and loud, they were poor losers who chased out all the high-class play. Within weeks, he was losing business to the Crystal Palace, across the street.

To keep the troublemakers in check, Milt brought in a minority partner with a reputation for keeping the peace in such establishments: Wyatt Earp, late of Dodge City, Kansas.

Wyatt Earp, who got 25 percent of the club room's take for his services.

Wyatt Earp, who had
not
been in the Oriental last night and who was therefore unavailable to prevent or defuse an altercation between Johnny Tyler and Doc Holliday.

Wyatt Earp, who nevertheless had the unmitigated gall to dress down Milton Edward Joyce in
his own saloon
for cold-cocking an obnoxious, belligerent, consumptive sonofabitch who happened to be a friend of Wyatt's.

Already today, Milt had put up with being joshed about how lucky he was to have escaped slaughter by the notorious Doc Holliday, who was said to be a lightning-fast and deadly accurate gunman.

“Musta been an off day for Doc!” the wags cried. “He just winged you!”

Milt accepted the gibes with a smile, though he would not know for weeks if his hand could be saved. If Wyatt Earp was not the kind of man who angered easily or often, Milt Joyce could go him one better. Milt was not the kind of man who got angry at all. He would, quite simply, get even—with Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, both.

No matter how long it took.

C
OME ON, JOSIE!” JOHNNY URGED. “TRY AGAIN.
You're not hurt—”

“How do
you
know? I might've broken something!”

“The best thing to do when a horse throws you is to get right back on.”

“No!”

Head down, Johnny Behan planted fists on hip bones and stared at the soft sand of the raked corral, trying to get a grip on his reaction. Josie hadn't really been thrown. To be thrown, you have to be mounted and get tossed off. Josie had her boot in the stirrup and was on her way into the saddle when the pony pivoted away from her. She hit the ground, but it was just plain falling, and not very far at that. She might have been a little shaken up, but Josie could make Greek tragedy out of burnt toast.

“You said you wanted to learn to ride, honey,” he reminded her. Admittedly, an edge might have come into his voice then because she hadn't just
said
she wanted to learn to ride. She announced it. She declared it. She proclaimed it.

First she told him, weeping, that she had “lost the baby.” He was properly sympathetic but knew they'd been careful and reckoned it was more likely that she was just a few days late. She mooned around for a week before informing him that learning to ride would console
her and cure her melancholy. Soon “the baby”—if indeed there had ever been such a thing—was forgotten and all conversation in the Behan household began to focus on Josie's sudden need for a horse. A pretty little bay pony had come up for sale at the Dexter Stable. Josie wanted it. She would need a handsome tailored riding habit, as well. And the charming veiled hat that went with it. And boots and a sidesaddle.

She wheedled. She begged. She stormed and sulked. He had not enjoyed a moment's peace—or a single toss in bed—until she had it all. And now it was “Well, I changed my mind!”

Why, John Harris Behan asked himself,
why
does this kind of argument always happen in front of Wyatt Earp?

Face expressionless, eyes on the horse he was cantering on a line in the next pen over, Wyatt was doing his best to make it seem that he was unaware of the Behans' argument, but Josie had briefly understudied for a speaking role in the Markham troupe and she could make her voice carry.

“Come on, Josie,” Johnny said. “Try again.”

“
No
! I don't
want
to,” she insisted, brushing sand off her skirt, “and you can't
make
me!”

“Listen to yourself!” he whispered fiercely. “You sound like a child!”

“And you,” Josie replied, loud enough for the back row of a theater in Chicago to hear, “
you
sound like a
mean old man!
”

Wyatt smothered a laugh.

“You want the little brat, Wyatt?” Johnny called. “She's all yours!”

It was more a threat than an offer. He didn't mean it, but Josie went off like a mine charge, and then it was “Lincoln freed the slaves,” and “I don't belong to you, John Behan,” and “You can't give me away.” He shot back, “That's right—because nobody would take you!” Finally, rather than listen to more of her nonsense or hit her in public, Johnny dropped the pony's reins and walked away.

Stamping her foot, Josie yelled, “Stand and fight, you coward!” But Johny didn't even glance over his shoulder, and she snarled in exasperation,
“Oh!
That
man!
”

“It's a bad match,” she heard Mr. Earp call.

She turned, glowering at him. “I'm sure that's what my mother would say!”