Tombstone

youth, seem clothed in the strength and freshness of old days. The present fades; the past rises like a picture. There in the street are the lumber trains coming in from the Chiricahuas; the sixteen-mule ore teams with their clanking trace chains, the yells of mule-skinners, the cracking of whips. The arcaded sidewalks are crowded. Swing doors of saloons flail back and forth. Laughter of roistering throngs comes from the brightly lighted bars. You hear the click of faro chips, the rattle of roulette wheels. The scent of spiced drinks and orange peel is in the air. That tall man there with the six-shooters buckled around him is Wyatt Earp. Doc Holliday is lounging in a doorway. Yonder are Virgil and Morgan Earp. Johnny Behan bustles along. And the Clantons and McLowerys and Buckskin Frank and John Ringo in his great buffalo coat, his hands rammed in his pockets on his guns. And Curly Bill and his bold buccaneers, riding in from the San Simon, go clattering past⁠ ⁠… when a coyote lifts a weird song in the mesquite and the moon hangs over the Dragoons.

Tombstone flames no more. Its wild days are a tale that is told. It lives with its memories and its ghosts. Sunshine and peace are its portion. Once it was romance. Now it’s a town.

Colophon

Tombstone
was published in 1927 by
Walter Noble Burns.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
An Anonymous Volunteer,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2022 by
Mardi Desjardins, Al Haines, Pat McCoy, and The Distributed Proofreaders Canada Team
for
Faded Page Canada
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
An Argument with the Sheriff,
a painting completed before 1913 by
William Robinson Leigh.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
January 1, 2023, 8:43 p.m.
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