Return of Little Big Man (32 page)

I was even resentful of Bat Masterson for having led me to this town and then soon left himself. Why didn’t I go with him? Because anyplace was much the same as all, insofar as
my
life went. To be fair to Dodge and Tombstone and wherever else I had wandered, including even Deadwood after a while, I’ll bet, they all had or was developing a respectable element with decent ladies, children, schools, churches, and business activity in something other than whiskey, faro, and sporting women. In Tombstone right at the same time as all the mayhem I been telling you about, there was Sunday school picnics, ice-cream socials, private musicales, a wedding dance at the Cosmopolitan Hotel with a quadrille band (of which occasion the
Epitaph
waxed poetic: “Love looked love to eyes that spoke again, and all went merry as a wedding bell”), and even an organization called the Tombstone Literary and Debating Club. But why didn’t I participate in any of that uplifting activity? Because I was coarse and ignorant and half illiterate, as I have said many times before, and would of been ashamed to show up. Then why didn’t I try to improve myself? I tell you, I didn’t know how. You seen how I tried to do so, in my own way, in the case of Amanda Teasdale, and that was quite pathetic when you looked at it. I was sure it would take a woman to make me better than what I was and would likely stay if I associated with men only, and not just a female but a lady, and what specimen of the last-named would put up with me except to carry her luggage?

Well, I finally got Pard back to the shack that had been home to me and him, and put his body down and begun to dig a grave in the rear of the lot, or tried to in the material that passed for earth in that part of the world, but not having no pickaxe I had to use a broken-handled shovel I found someplace and managed to make only a fairly shallow hole in the ground which was sunbaked hard again despite the recent rains, and wrapped old Pard in my best shirt of blue-and-white check, and laid him to rest. Now I have always considered myself a religious person at the core, despite my lifelong avoidance of church (except when forced to go as a kid, and when besotted with Miss Hand), and I said a word or two commending my faithful friend to the Everywhere Spirit who made him and me, and then I apologized to Pard for not being able to bury him in his home ground of the Black Hills, after which I covered him with the dry dust I had scratched up.

But this arrangement didn’t look too secure against such living dogs, rodents, et cetera, as might catch the scent of his remains and make a meal of them, animals having no sentimentality whatever towards the dead, so I went looking for a boulder, hunk of iron, or other weight to batten down that grave, for I didn’t have anything of the sort at hand.

In my search I had gotten as far as Virgil Earp’s house without finding what I needed when who do I encounter but Allie just coming out the door.

“Virge will live,” says she though I hadn’t asked. “The bullet just went through the calf of his leg and didn’t hit no bone.”

“Glad to hear it,” I says. “Say, Allie, you wouldn’t know where I could find some big rocks without going out to the desert?”

“I expect you’re heading the wrong way,” says she. “You ain’t likely to find any from here on. They would of cleared them away when puttin’ up the buildin’s.”

“Yeah. I should of thought of that.”

“Say Jack,” she asked, “what’s wrong with your eyes? Get a faceful of dust? They’re right watery.”

“My dog got killed, Allie,” I says. “He was an awful good fellow.”

She wasn’t wearing her sunbonnet now, though the sun was as bright as ever: I figured being taken for Virgil’s mother was to blame. So when she squinted, I thought it was due to the glare, but in fact it was not. She was staring past me.

“Jack,” she says, “this ain’t the day for jokes.”

I hadn’t no idea of what she meant, and considering the situation I might of made an equally testy reply had I not heard at that moment a familiar whine and spun around in disbelief and saw Pard, his bloody head now caked with dust, trotting along lively as ever and producing that sound which in his case was one of triumph and not complaint.

Well sir, you can imagine what a joyful occasion it was, probably more for me than for Pard, who took everything in his stride including death when it come, but it hadn’t yet, and he seemed to consider being buried, coming to, and digging himself out as an entertaining puzzle I had arranged for him, and he was proud of having solved it.

I explained to Allie what happened, so she wouldn’t think I was trying to make a fool of her, and she says, “Well, I’m glad for you, Jack, for I know what a nice dog can mean to a person, but I still say you ought to get yourself a good woman too. Now I’m going down and fetch some soup meat from Bauer’s to put some strength back in Virge. I’ll save the bones for your pooch.”

I squatted down and examined Pard’s wound. His skull had been creased, and he had been coldcocked by the impact, but the bullet just tore across the skin of his crown without penetrating the solid bone underneath. “You was saved by your thick head.” I told him, and he twisted his face around and licked the hand I was examining him with and then runs off a little and back, like a puppy at play. Being near-killed seemed to of made him younger!

The events of that day hadn’t done so for me. I felt a deal better than when I buried him, but Pard’s coming back from the dead hadn’t changed my feeling about my way of and place in life, and from that minute on I was studying what I could do to improve it. I didn’t take long to come to the conclusion that to get a clean start I needed to get out of Tombstone, but not just to go to another town of the same sort. And so I probably hung around too long, which is what Allie said about her and Virgil too, and in their case it was worse than mine, as I will relate directly after I quick run through the other notable events of the fall of ’81.

After the big fight the town was more divided than ever between the two factions, that which supported the Earps, and them what favored the cowboys or anyway thought they got a raw deal, and there seemed to be more of the latter than before.

Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers had the biggest funeral Tombstone ever seen. They was laid out in dress suits, in coffins trimmed with silver and fronted with glass, and was so displayed in the window of Ritter’s undertaking establishment. The Tombstone Brass Band led the two hearses along Allen Street to the cemetery while watched by an audience of just about everybody in town.

But a coroner’s inquest failed to find the Earps to blame for the battle, and when Ike Clanton nevertheless brought murder charges against them and Doc Holliday, a justice of the peace named Spicer, a friend of the Earps (as was the mayor, the publisher of the
Epitaph,
and the postmaster, all of which was the same man, John Clum), found them justified in what they did, Virgil being chief of police, and they never went on trial except for these two hearings, in which each side produced eyewitnesses at variance with one another. Probably because I hadn’t been noticed back of that wagon, nobody from either faction called me to testify, and I sure didn’t volunteer. I never cared a whole lot for either side, but if I had told the unvarnished truth like I done here it would of served mostly the cowboys’ argument, so I would be helping thieves who was friends of holdup men and murderers and also offending Allie and Bat Masterson when he heard about it and maybe getting myself gunned down by Doc.

Not everything went the Earps’ way, though. The town council suspended Virgil as chief marshal, and believing their enemies might be plotting to kill them, the brothers and their families moved out of the Fremont Street houses and into the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Virge and Morgan was still recovering from their wounds. I rarely run into Allie after that move.

Speaking of wounds, Pard’s healed up before a week was out, but a new scar was added to his collection, this one like a part in the hair on the head of a person. His ways however had gotten tamer, and he hung around the shack more than before and wanted to be petted by me. Unfortunately that brand-new check shirt I had used as his burial shroud was a dead loss.

One brighter happening during this time in Tombstone was the opening of the Bird Cage Variety Theater, on Allen near Sixth, where only a year before Curly Bill Brocius, himself now not long for the world, killed the then marshal Fred White. Given my earlier ambitions to own a place like this, I would of been right envious, for it was real nice, with a saloon on one side and a theater on the other, the latter lined on both walls with hanging private boxes, to which bar girls delivered drinks, singing while they did so, but the main entertainment was on the stage, with all manner of performers, including in the future even the great Eddie Foy, who like so many of us come there from Dodge City, but I was gone by time he arrived, another violent event having hastened my overdue departure.

One night just after Christmas, Virgil Earp, leg healed now, was crossing Fifth Street right outside the Oriental, when several shotguns was fired at him from out of a building under construction across at the diagonal on Allen Street, the buckshot slugs shattering his elbow, and them that missed went into the walls and windows of the Crystal Palace saloon and some up through the ceiling into Doc Goodfellow’s office above.

Virge wasn’t killed, but his left arm had been made permanently unusable, and he was laid up worse than when he had the leg wound.

Three men, not identified, was seen fleeing the unfinished building on Allen, but had long disappeared by time pursuit was mounted. Wyatt might of been right to blame it on the cowboy element out for revenge, led by Ike Clanton.

I myself saw the incident as a strong suggestion that from now on this sort of thing would be a regular occurrence, with resultant sprays of lead throughout the neighborhoods where I lived and worked. Damn if I wanted to be maimed or killed in somebody else’s quarrel.

So I decided to leave soon as I could, and in a while I’ll tell you where I was heading, but first I’ll wind up my story of Tombstone.

I didn’t have no more possessions than I had brought with me a year earlier, but I had accumulated another nest egg of several hundred dollars, most of which I sewed into the tails of the new coat I bought me at the Summerfield Bros. Dry Goods rather than stuff it in my boots like some did, only to have to take them off and shake them upside down for a holdup man who stopped the stage, and I considered getting some armament for the journey, particularly for getting out of Arizona Territory, which had gotten so wild as to even upset President Chester Arthur, who wanted to police it with the Army, but hadn’t fired a gun for so long now I doubted my proficiency up against practiced outlaws, and the Apaches had quieted down, so maybe if held up I would pretend to be a preacher.

I went to the Cosmopolitan to say goodbye to Allie, who was looking after her husband in their room there. Virgil was sleeping at the time, so she stepped out in the hall for our conversation. He was going to recover, she thought, but had lost a lot of blood and would not ever again be able to do much with his left arm.

She then looks up and down the hallway, for the other brothers had rooms there too, and she lowers her voice and says, “This is the second time Virge got hurt lately. He got shot in the War too. But ain’t it funny Wyatt allus goes untouched?”

“I sure hope the marshal gets well soon,” I says. “I come to say that and also to tell you so long and thanks for being my friend while I been in Tombstone.”

“Well, Jack,” says she, “I don’t know what I done for you, but I’m proud you’re happy about it. And I’ll say this, I just wish Virge was strong enough so we could leave too. We should of got out when the gettin’ was good. Now I don’t know if we’ll ever get away.”

She looked more worried than I ever seen her, so I says, “Oh, sure you will.”

“I just have this feelin’ it’s going to get worse.”

“You’re a superstitious Irishman,” I says to cheer her up.

“God bless you, Jack,” says she with a grin, “and don’t forget what ole Allie told you: git yourself a good woman. Then if you are ever shot, you’ll have yourself a nurse.” Her grin was fading into a weepy look, so wishing her and hers all the best, I left.

Now before dropping the subject of Tombstone, to which I won’t be returning, let me tie up the loose ends, though everything from here on is hearsay.

Allie was right in her foreboding, though nothing further happened to Virgil in the way of physical damage. In March of that year, Morgan Earp was playing pool at Hatch’s billiard parlor when two shots come through the glass-paned door behind him, the first cutting through his spine and killing him, the second hitting near, but naturally just missing, his brother Wyatt.

Wyatt subsequently collected a gang including of course Doc Holliday and still another brother, Warren, and in the ensuing months pursued and shot down, sometimes in cold blood, a number of men he rightly or wrongly believed responsible for the back-shootings of his brothers, and Sheriff Behan again tried to arrest him for murder but as usual got nowhere, for now the Earp gang left the Territory. Meanwhile Allie and Virgil moved to California, where I believe Virge despite his impairment once more become a town marshal someplace.

A few years later Doc Holliday coughed himself to death from consumption up in Colorado. As to Kate Elder, I had the good fortune never to encounter her again, and I never heard what become of her except for a somewhat indecent account of her death which I never believed and won’t repeat, for you know my principles regarding the fair sex, except to say she was supposed to of been shot to death by a chance bullet that left no unnatural opening on her body.

Now given my occupation in both towns, I haven’t talked no more about silver mining at Tombstone than I did about longhorn cattle at Dodge, though these was respectively the main reasons them places existed, but I’m ashamed to say I never knowed much about such professions and won’t pretend I did, just so long as you don’t forget that my account of shooting and drinking, poker, faro, and calico queens doesn’t represent the whole of or even most of life in the Old West: it’s just the part that people seem to enjoy hearing about. In fact, before long it become all that Tombstone was remembered for by the rest of the world, for a few years after my time there, water, scarce on the surface of the earth in that region, got so abundant underground that them silver mines flooded and the veins of ore could no longer be reached, and pumping the water out cost more than the mined metal would fetch, silver being so expensive to extract and prepare. So the mines and assorted operations closed down, and the town was about to make the familiar change from boom to ghost when somebody come up with the bright idea to market what Tombstone had in abundance, and could never be taken away, namely, the history of a lot of bloodshed, and I hear still today the tourists come to watch regular reenactments of the killings around the corner and down the street from the O.K. Corral.