vigilantes.
“It is time to be bold,” he said aloud. “It is time to be cunning.”
He washed his hands, to remove the reek of gunpowder, and changed his shirt.
It occurred to him that there existed a place where he might hide.
He put his journal in another pocket, and made his way out of the hotel.
Oh, she is magnificent! Freddie wrote in his journal a few hours later. She hid me in Behan’s house while Behan lay painted in his coffin in the front window of the undertakers-Ritter and Reams are making the most of this opportunity to advertise their art! I rested on Behan’s bed while she received callers in the front room. And then, at nightfall, she had Behan’s horse saddled and brought to the back door.
“Will I see you again?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Destiny will not permit us to part for long.”
“Do you have money?”
I confessed that I did not. She went into the house and came back with an envelope of bills which she put in my pocket. Later I counted them and found they amounted to five thousand dollars. The office of sheriff pays surprisingly well!
I took her hand. “Troy is afire, my Helen. Do you have what you desire?”
“I did not want this,” she said. Her fingers clutched at mine.
“Of course you did,” I said. “What else did you expect?”
I rode to Charleston with her kiss burning on my lips. Charleston is a town ruled by the Cowboys, and so I knew I could find shelter there, but it is also the first place a posse will come.
It will be a war now-my bullets have decreed it. I welcome that war, I welcome the trumpet that will awaken the new Romulus. Battles there shall be, and victories. And both those who die and those who live shall be awarded a Tombstone-what an irony!
I am curiously satisfied with the day’s business. It is a man’s life that I’m leading. Were I to live these same events a thousand times, I would find no reason to alter the outcome.
“There are more Earps than before,” John Ringo observed from over the rim of his beer glass. “James and Warren have come to town. You’re creatin’ more Earps than you’re killin’, Freddie.”
“Two hundred rifles,” Freddie urged. “Raise them! Make Tombstone yours!”
Curly Bill Brocius shook his head. “No more shootings. The town’s riled enough as it is. I don’t want my parole revoked, and besides, I’ve got to make certain that our man gets in as sheriff.”
“Let us purge this choler without letting blood,” Ringo said, and wiped foam from his mustache.
“Still these politics!” Freddie scorned. “Who is our man this time?”
“Fellehy.”
“The laundryman? What kind of sheriff will he make?”
Brocius gave his easy grin. “No kind,” he said. “Which is our kind.”
“He will be worse than Behan. And it was Behan’s bungling that killed three of our friends.”
Brocius’s grin faded. “I don’t reckon,” he said.
Freddie had made good his escape and met Ringo and Brocius in the Golden Saloon in Tucson. He was not quite far enough from Tombstone-Freddie kept his back to a wall and his eye on the door, just in case a crowd of men in frock coats barged in.
“So when may we start killing Earps?” Freddie asked.
“We’re going to do it legal-like,” Brocius said. “Ike Clanton’s going to file in court against the Earps and Holliday for murder. They’ll hang, and we won’t have to pull a trigger.”
Disgust filled Freddie’s heart. “You are making yourself ridiculous,” he said. “These men have killed your friends!”
“No more shooting,” said Brocius. “We’ll use the law’s own weapons against the law, and we’ll be back in charge quick as a dog can lick a dish.”
Freddie looked at Brocius in fury, and then he laughed. “Very well, then,” he said. “We shall see what joys the law brings us!”
You could play the law game any number of ways, Freddie thought. And he thought he knew how he wanted to bid his hand.
“Ike Clanton said he was going to kill Doc Holliday,” Freddie testified. “His brother supported him, and so did the McLaurys. Claiborne and I were trying to talk sense into their stupid heads, but Ike was abusive, so I left in disgust.”
There was stunned silence in the courtroom. Freddie was a witness for the prosecution, but was handing the defense its case on a plate.
The prosecution witnesses had agreed on a story ahead of time, how the Cowboys had been unarmed, and the Earps the aggressors. Now Freddie was blowing the case to smithereens.
Price, the district attorney, was so stunned by Freddie’s testimony that he blurted out what had to be absolutely the wrong question. “You say that Ike was intending to kill Mr. Holliday?”
Freddie looked at Ike from his witness chair. The man stared back at him, disbelief plain on his face, and out of the slant of his eye he saw Holliday look at him thoughtfully.
“Oh, yes,” Freddie said. “But Ike is too much the drunken coward to actually carry out his threats. He ran away from the streetfight and left his brother to die in the dust.”
Bullets or nothing, Freddie thought. We shall honor valor or honor shall lie dishonored.
“You son of a bitch,” Ike Clanton said in the Grand Hotel’s parlor, after the trial had adjourned for the day. “What did you say those things for?”
“Because they’re true,” Freddie said. “Do you think I would lie to protect a worthless dog like you?”
Ike turned red. “You skin that back, you bastard! Skin that back, or I’ll settle with you!”
Freddie wiped Ike’s spittle from his chin with his handkerchief. “It’s Doc Holliday you hate, is it not?” he said. “Why don’t you settle with him first?”
“I’m gonna get him! And you, too!”
“Do it now,” Freddie advised, “while you’re almost sober. You know where Holliday lives. Perhaps if you work up all your courage you can shoot him in the back.” Freddie reached into his pocket, took hold of Zarathustra, and thumbed back the hammer. Ike’s eyes widened at the sound. He made a little whining noise in his throat.
“Don’t shoot me!” he blurted.
“You can kill Holliday now,” Freddie said, “or I will shoot you like a dog where you stand. And who will take me to court for such a thing?”
“I’ll do it!” Ike said quickly. “I’ll kill him! See if I don’t!”
“I believe you checked your gun with the desk clerk,” Freddie reminded him.
Freddie followed him to the front desk and kept his hand on the pistol. Ike cast him frantic glances over his shoulder as he was given his gun belt. He made certain his hand was nowhere near the butt of the weapon as he strapped it on-he did not want to give a man with Freddie’s murderous reputation a chance to shoot.
Freddie followed Ike out into the street and glared at him when it looked as if he would step into a saloon for some liquid courage. Ike saw the glare, then began to walk faster down the street. Freddie pursued, boots thumping on the wooden walk. At the end of the long walk, when Fly’s boarding house came into sight, Ike was almost running.
Freddie paused then, and began a leisurely stroll to the hotel. Gunfire erupted behind him, but he didn’t break stride. He knew Ike Clanton, and he knew John Holliday, and he knew which of the two now lay dead.
“The legal case will collapse without a plaintiff,” Freddie said that evening. “The district attorney may file a criminal case, but why would he? He knows the defense would call me as a witness.” He laughed. “And now, after this second killing, Holliday will have to leave town. That is another problem solved.”
Josie stretched luxuriously in Behan’s bed. She was wearing a little transparent silken thing that Behan had bought her from out of a French catalogue, and Freddie, lying next to her, let his eyes feast gratefully on the
