The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories (12 page)

"We got two hundred riders, Freddie," Brocius said. "I ain't afraid of no Earps."

"We were driven out of Texas," Freddie reminded. "This is our last stand."

"Last stand in Tombstone," Ringo said. "That's doesn't have a comforting sound."

"I'm on top of it," Brocius insisted.

He and his crowd defiantly called themselves Cowboys. It was a name synonymous with "rustler," and hardly respectable—legitimate ranchers called themselves "stockmen." The Cowboys ranged both sides of the American-Mexican border, acquiring cattle on one side, moving them across the border through Guadalupe and Skeleton Canyons, and selling them. Most of the local ranchers—even the honest ones—did not mind owning cattle that did not come with a notarized bill of sale, and the Cowboys' business was profitable.

In the face of this threat to law from the two hundred outlaws, the United States government had sent to Tombstone exactly one man, Deputy Marshal Virgil Earp, who had been sent right out again. The Mexicans, unfortunately, were more industrious—they had been fortifying the border, and making the Cowboys' raids more difficult. The Clanton brothers' father, who had been the Cowboys' chief, had been killed in an ambush by Mexican
rurales.

Brocius now led the Cowboys, assuming anyone did. Since illegitimate plunder was growing more difficult, Brocius proposed to plunder legitimately, through a political machine and a compliant sheriff. His theory was that the government would let them alone if he lined up enough votes to buy their tolerance.

German Freddie mistrusted the means—he did not trust politicians or their machines or their sheriffs—but then his opinion did not rank near Brocius', as he wasn't, strictly speaking, a Cowboy, just one of their friends. He was a gambler, and had never rustled stock in his life—he just won the money from those who had.

"Everybody ante," said Brocius. Freddie threw a half-eagle into the pot.

"May I sit in?" asked a cultured voice.
Ay,
Freddie thought as he looked up,
the plot thickens very much upon us.

"Well," Freddie said, "if you are here, now we know that Tombstone is on the map." He rose and gestured the newcomer to a chair. "Gentlemen," he said to the others, "may I introduce John Henry Holliday, D.D."

"We've met," said Ringo. He rose and shook Holliday's hand. Freddie introduced Brocius, and pointed out Ike Clanton, still asleep on the table.

Holliday put money on the table and sat. To call him thin as a rail was to do injustice to the rail—Holliday was pale and consumptive and light as a scarecrow. He looked as if the merest breath of wind might blow him right down Skeleton Canyon into Mexico. Only the weight of his boots held him down, that and the weight of his gun.

German Freddie had met Doc Holliday in Texas, and knew that Holliday was dangerous when sober and absurd when drunk. Freddie and Holliday had both killed people in Texas, and for much the same reasons.

"Is Kate with you?" Freddie asked. If Holliday's Hungarian girl was in town, then he was here to stay. If she wasn't, he might drift on.

"We have rooms at Fly's," Holliday said.

Freddie looked at Holliday over the rim of his cards. If Kate was here, then Doc would be here till either his pockets or the mines ran dry of silver.

The calculations were growing complex.

"Twenty dollars," Freddie said.

"Bump you another twenty," said Holliday, and tossed a pair of double eagles onto the table.

Ike Clanton sat up with a sudden snort. "I'll kill him!" he blurted.

"Here's my forty," Ringo said. He looked at Ike. "Kill who, Ike?"

Ike's eyes stared off into nowhere, pupils tiny as peppercorns. "I'm gonna kill him!" he said.

Ringo was patient. "Who are you planning to kill?"

"Gonna kill him!" Ike's chair tumbled to the floor as he rose to his feet. He took a staggering step backward, regained his balance, then began to lurch for the saloon door.

"Dealer folds," said Brocius, and threw in his cards.

Holliday watched Ike's exit with cold precision. "Shouldn't one of you go after your friend? He seems to want to shoot somebody."

"Ike's harmless," Freddie said. "Besides, his gun is at his hotel, and in his current state Ike won't remember where he left it."

"What if someone takes Ike seriously enough to shoot him?" Holliday asked.

"No one will do that for fear of Ike's brother Billy," said Freddie. "He's the dangerous one."

Holliday nodded and returned his hollow eyes to his cards. "Are you going to call, Freddie?" he asked.

"I call," Freddie said.

It was a mistake. Holliday cleaned them all out by midnight. "Thank you, gentlemen," he said politely as he headed toward the door with his winnings jingling in his pockets. "I'm sure we'll meet again."

John Ringo looked at the others. "Silver and gold have I none," he quoted, "but such as I have I'll share with thee." He pulled out bits of pasteboard from his pockets. "Tickets to
Doctor Faustus,
good for the midnight performance. Wilt come with me to hell, gentlemen?"

Brocius was just drunk enough to say yes. Ringo looked at Freddie. Freddie shrugged. "Might as well," he said. "That was the back end of bad luck."

"Luck?" Ringo handed him a ticket. "It looked to me like you couldn't resist whenever Doc raised the stakes."

"I was waiting for him to get drunk. Then he'd start losing."

"What was in your mind, raising on a pair of jacks?"

"I thought he was bluffing."

Ringo shook his head. "And you the only one of us sober."

"I don't see that you did any better."

"No," Ringo said sadly, "I didn't."

They made their way out of the Occidental, then turned down Allen Street in the direction of Shieffelin Hall. The packed dust of the street was hard as rock. The night was full of people—most nights Tombstone didn't close down till dawn.

Brocius struck a match on his thumb as he walked, and lit a cigar. "I plan to go shooting tomorrow," he said. "I've changed my gun—filed down the sear so I can fan it."

"Oh Lord," Ringo sighed. "Why'd you go and ruin a good gun?"

"Fanning is for fools," Freddie said. "You should just take
aim . . . "

"I ain't such a good shot as you two," Brocius said. He puffed his cigar. "My talents are more
organizational
and
political.
I figure if I got to jerk my gun, I'll just fan it and make up for aim with
volume.
"

"You'd better hope you never have to shoot it," Freddie said.

"If we win the election," Brocius said cheerfully. "I probably won't."

 

Even the drinking water must be carried to us on wagons, Freddie wrote in his notebook a few hours later. The alkali desert is unforgiving and unsuitable for anything but the lizards and vultures who were here before us. Even the Indians avoided this country. The ranchers cannot keep enough cattle on this wretched land to make a profit—thus they are dependent on the rustlers and smugglers for their livelihood. The population came because of greed or ambition, and if the silver ever runs out, Tombstone will fly away with the dust.

So why, when I perceive these Cowboys in their huge sombreros, their gaudy kerchiefs and doeskin trousers, do I see instead the old Romans in their ringing bronze?

From such as these did Romulus spring! For who was Romulus?—a tyrant, a bandit, a man who harbored runaways and stole the cattle—and the daughters—of his neighbors. Yet he was noble, yet a hero, yet he spawned a great Empire. History trembles before his memory.

And now the Romans have come again! Riding into Tombstone with their rifles in the scabbards!

All the old Roman virtues I see among them. They are frank, truthful, loyal, and above all
healthy
. They hold the lives of men—their own included—in contempt. Nothing is more refreshing and wholesome than this lack of pity, this disdain for the so-called civilized virtues. They are from the American South, of course, that defeated country now sunk in ruin and oppression. They are too young to have fought in the Civil War, but not so young they did not see its horrors. This exposure to life's cruelties, when they were still at a tender age, must have hardened them against pieties and hypocrisies of the world. Not for them the mad egotism of the ascetic, the persistent morbidity—the
sickness
—of the civilized man. These heroes abandoned their defeated country and came west—west, where the new Rome will be born!

If only they can be brought to treasure their virtues as I do. But they treat themselves as carelessly as they treat everything. They possess all virtues but one: the will to power. They have it in themselves to dominate, to rule—not through these petty maneuverings at the polls with which Brocius is so unwisely intoxicated, but through themselves, their desires, their guns . . . They can create an empire here, and must, if their virtues are to survive. It is not enough to avoid the law, avoid civilization—they must wish to
destroy
the inverted virtues that oppose them.

Who shall win? Tottering, hypnotized, sunken Civilization, or this new Rome? Ridiculous, when we consider numbers, when we consider mere guns and iron. Yet what was Romulus?—a bandit, crouched on his Palatine Hill. Yet nothing could stand in his way. His will was greater than that of the whole rotten world.

And—as these classical allusions seem irresistible—what are we to make of the appearance of Helen of Troy? Who better to signal the end of an empire? Familiar with Goethe's superior work, I forgot that Helen does not speak in Marlowe's
Faustus,
she simply parades along and inspires poetry. But when she looked at our good German metaphysician, that eye of hers spoke mischief that had nothing to do with verse—and the actor knew it, for he stammered. Such a sexual being as this Helen was not envisioned by the good British Marlowe, whom we are led to believe did not with women.

I do not see such a girl cleaving to Behan for long—his blood is too thin for the likes of her.

And when she tires of him—beware, Behan! Beware, Faustus! Beware, Troy!

 

Freddie met Sheriff Behan's girl at the victory party following the election. Brocius' election strategy had borne fruit, of a sort—but Johnny Behan was rotten fruit, Freddie thought, and would fall to the ground ere long.

The Occidental Saloon with filled with celebration and a hundred drunken Cowboys. Even Wyatt Earp turned up, glooming in his black coat and drooping mustaches, still secure in the illusion that Behan would hire him as a deputy; but at the sight of the company his face wrinkled as if he'd just bit on a lemon, and he did not stay long.

Amid all this roistering inebriation, Freddie saw Behan's girl perched on the long bar, surrounded by a crowd of men and kicking her heels in the air in a white froth of petticoats. Freddie was surprised—he had rarely in his life met a woman who would enter a saloon, let alone behave so freely in one, and among a crowd of rowdy drunks. Behan—a natty Irishman in a derby—stood nearby and accepted congratulations and bumper after bumper of the finest French champagne.

Freddie offered Behan his perfunctory congratulations, then made his way to the bar where he saw John Ringo crouched protectively around a half-empty bottle of whisky. "I have drunk deep of the Pierian," Ringo said, "and drunk disgustingly. Will you join me?"

"No," said Freddie, and ordered soda water. The noise of the room battered at his nerves. He would not stay long—he would go to another saloon, perhaps, and find a game of cards.

Ringo's melancholy eyes roamed the room. "Freddie, you do not look overjoyed," he said.

Freddie looked at his drink. "Men selling their freedom to become
citizens,
" he snarled. "And they call it a victory." He looked toward Behan, felt his lips curl. "Victory makes stupid," he said. "I learned that in Germany, in 1870."

"Why so gloomy, boys?" cried a woman's voice in a surprising New York accent. "Don't you know it's a party?" Behan's girl leaned toward them, half-lying across the polished mahogany bar. She was younger than Freddie had expected—not yet twenty, he thought.

Ringo brightened a little—he liked the ladies. "Have you met German Freddie, Josie?" he said. "Freddie here doesn't like elections."

Josie laughed and waved her glass of champagne. "I don't know that we had a
real election,
Freddie," she called. "Think of it as being more like a
great big felony.
"

Cowboy voices roared with laughter. Freddie found himself smiling behind his bushy mustache. Ringo, suddenly merry, grabbed Freddie's arm and hauled him toward Josie.

"Freddie here used to be a Professor of Philosophy back in Germany," Ringo said. "He was told to come West for his health." Ringo looked at Freddie in a kind of amazement. "Can you picture that?"

Freddie—who had come West to die—said merely, "Philology. Switzerland," and sipped his soda water.

"You should have him tell you about how we're all Supermen," Ringo said.

Freddie stiffened. "You are
not
Supermen," he said.

"
You're
the Superman, then," Ringo said, swaying. The drunken raillery smoothed the sad lines of his eyes.

"I am the Superman's prophet," Freddie said with careful dignity. "And the Superman will be among your children, I think—he will come from America."

"I suppose I'd better get busy and have some children, then," Ringo said.

Josie watched this byplay with interest. Her hair was raven black, Freddie saw, and worn long, streaming down her shoulders. Her nose was proudly arched. Her eyes were large and brown and heavy-lidded—the heavy lids gave her a sultry look. She leaned toward Freddie.

"Tell me some philology," she said.

He looked up at her. "You are the first American I have met who knows the word."

"I know a lot of words." With a laugh she pressed his wrist—it was all Freddie could do not to jump a foot at the unexpected touch. Instead he looked at her sternly.

"Do you know the Latin word
bonus?
" he demanded.