The Earps were acquitted. Judge Spicer reviewed the evidence in a long written opinion and justified the battle, holding that the Earps and Holliday had acted in performance of official duty as officers of the law.
XIV
The Red Road of Vengeance
Play was slow that night at the Oriental. Too soon after Christmas, perhaps. Holiday gifts had told on purses. Only thin groups were at the faro and roulette tables, and only stragglers at the bar. Wyatt and Virgil Earp and Doc Holliday sat against the wall in desultory talk.
“Among the Christmas gifts from my many friends in Tombstone,” remarked Doc Holliday with a whimsical smile, “was a neat little box wrapped in tissue paper and tied with pink ribbon. ‘Ah-ha,’ thinks I, ‘here’s a present from my sweetheart.’ ”
“Big Nose Kate probably,” laughed Wyatt.
“All bundled up in soft white cotton,” continued the doctor, “was a forty-five calibre bullet. A little card enclosed was signed ‘Well Wisher’ and said, ‘I’ve got another one just like this that I’m going to give you some day—in the neck.’ ”
“All old Santa Claus dropped in my Christmas socks,” observed Wyatt, “was some threats. From Ike Clanton’s gang, I suppose. Those fellows are not through with us. I hear our friend, Mayor Clum, is being threatened. And Judge Wells Spicer for deciding in our favour. And Marshall Williams. The Lord knows what they’re threatening Williams for.”
“For being our friend,” cut in Virgil. “Ain’t that crime enough?”
“Johnny Behan probably thinks so,” said Wyatt. “Except for Ike Clanton, the sheriff was the strongest witness the prosecution had. It wasn’t Johnny’s fault we weren’t sent over the road.”
“Harmless cuss,” commented Holliday.
“Not so harmless as you think,” returned Wyatt. “If it hadn’t been for a bodyguard of citizens, we’d never have lived to get to Contention after our second arrest.”
The Earps and Holliday had been rearrested on warrants after their discharge by Judge Wells Spicer at the preliminary hearing and taken by Sheriff Behan and a posse to Contention for trial. Fifty friends of the Earps accompanied them. The prisoners were released on writs of habeas corpus, and the trial never took place because the grand jury refused to return indictments.
“I think myself we’d have been assassinated on the road by Ike Clanton, Frank Stilwell, Pete Spence, and their friends,” said Virgil. “But I don’t think Johnny Behan knew anything about it. I’ll give him credit for that.”
“Maybe not,” replied Wyatt. “But we’d have been killed just the same, if it hadn’t been for our friends who went along.”
“That certainly was a funny yarn Ike Clanton told on the stand,” declared Virgil, “about meeting Leonard, Head, and Crane at Hereford after the Benson stage holdup, and how Leonard told him Doc murdered Philpot. Those three fellows at that time were streaking through the mesquite two good jackrabbit jumps ahead of the posse, and they must have had to talk pretty fast to drop that piece of information into Ike’s ear.”
“Ike,” replied Holliday, “overplayed his hand on the stand. Judge Spicer thought his testimony too good to be true.”
“I’ve heard,” said Virgil, “that Johnny Behan contributed money to help prosecute us.”
“Yes, that story’s been going around,” responded Wyatt, “but Johnny denied the charge on the witness stand.”
“I’ll never forgive you for not killing Ike Clanton when he grabbed you, Wyatt,” said Holliday. “I wish he’d grabbed me instead of you. I’d have cooked his goose so quick he’d never have known what hit him. I did the best I could as it was, but he was running too fast, and I had to shoot too quick. Ike ought to turn professional sprinter. He’d make money as a footrunner at county fairs.”
“There’s been talk,” remarked Virgil, “that Ike had a gun on him but was too big a coward to use it. While he was on the witness stand, you remember, one of the lawyers said to him, ‘Is it not the truth, Mr. Clanton, that as you were running from the fight, you threw away a large-calibre pistol?’ There was a hunt made for that gun but none was found.”
“I heard a story,” said Wyatt, “that Ike, Finn, and Billy Clanton, a few weeks before the fight, pretended to have killed Curly Bill and tried to collect a reward from Old Man Hooker of the Sierra Bonita ranch. They say Hooker got tired of Curly’s stealing his cattle and his monthly pay rolls and offered a reward of $1,000 for Curly’s head. For his head, mind you. The Clantons took a dead man’s head in a burlap sack to the Sierra Bonita, so the story goes, and said it was Curly Bill’s and they had killed him at Monkey Springs. And Hooker, they say, paid the Clantons the $1,000. Hooker, however, denied emphatically that he paid them a cent. But I wonder whose head that was?”
“Some Mexican’s the Clantons had murdered in the San Pedro, probably,” suggested Holliday. “They say they killed half a dozen greasers over there right after Mexicans got their daddy in Guadalupe Canyon.”
The latest stage robbery came up for discussion. When the stage, on its way from Tombstone to Bisbee, passed Lewis Springs near the Clanton ranch, W. S. Waite, driver,
