“That’s him,” exclaimed Spence excitedly in a whispered shout. “That’s him.”
Indian Charlie became instantly transformed. He awoke from his seeming lethargy to tense, tingling interest. It was as if a bronze statue suddenly had come to life. He shot through the door like a bloodhound on a trail. He hurried after Morgan Earp, passed him, stopped, pretended to look in a shop window for a moment, and then faced about. Morgan Earp apparently did not see him. But the keen black eyes of Indian Charlie scrutinized Morgan Earp narrowly from head to foot. On Indian Charlie’s brain was pictured indelibly, as by a flashlight camera, Morgan Earp’s strong young fighter’s face, bold blue-gray eyes, yellow hair, straight, stalwart figure. No danger that the half-breed ever would forget this man. Indian Charlie would know Morgan Earp henceforth anywhere he saw him.
It was perhaps ten o’clock that night that Spence, Stilwell, and Indian Charlie left Spence’s house. Stilwell and the half-breed had six-shooters buckled around them and carried magazine carbines. No arms were visible on Spence, though he had a revolver in his hip pocket. The night was cloudy and very dark. The sinister trio slipped through the streets like phantoms. At the edge of the lighted business section they separated. Stilwell and the half-breed slunk away toward some clandestine destination. Spence mingled with the throngs on Allen Street. He strolled along with a casual air, idled on a corner, lounged in a doorway. But never on bandit raid or Indian campaign did Pete Spence scout more vigilantly than he was scouting this night on Tombstone’s crowded street. Somewhere off in the darkness, in their secret hiding place, Stilwell and Indian Charlie were awaiting his directions.
Morgan Earp was leaning against the bar in Campbell & Hatch’s saloon and billiard hall on Allen Street between Fourth and Fifth when Bob Hatch, one of the proprietors, returned at eleven o’clock from a performance at the Bird Cage Opera House.
“You’ve been making your boasts for a long time, Bob,” said Morgan banteringly, “that you can beat me playing pool. I’ll play you now, and if I beat you, I never want to hear another cheep out of you.”
“All right, Morg,” laughed Hatch, “I’ll go you once, if I lose. Come on.”
The pool table on which they elected to play stood at the end of the long hall close to the rear wall. At the north side of this rear wall and opening into an alley was a door, the upper portion of which was like a window set with four panes. The two lower panes were painted white, the two upper were clear glass. Morgan and Hatch laid aside their coats, and the game began. Sherman McMasters, Dan Tipton, and Pat Holland seated in chairs against the side walls, looked on.
“This is for the championship,” said Morgan jokingly.
“You bet,” returned Hatch.
While the game was in progress, Pete Spence wandered in off Allen Street, took a drink at the bar in the front of the house, sent a momentary lazy glance across the long intervening row of billiard tables at the players in the rear end, and sauntered out again. But as soon as he stepped out on the sidewalk, his seeming listlessness fell from him. Walking rapidly, he turned a corner and faded into darkness.
Morgan’s eighth ball clicked into a pocket. He had won. Laughing uproariously, he gave Hatch a resounding clap on the shoulder.
“Knew I could beat you,” he bumbled jovially.
“Don’t crow yet awhile,” flashed back Hatch. “Wait till I get warmed up.”
Just at that moment, Frank Stilwell and Indian Charlie arrived at the alley door. From the black darkness, they peered silently in through the upper clear-glass panes. Pete Spence’s scouting expedition had worked to climax. From the brightly lighted interior of the hall, the two upper panes in the door had the appearance of dark mirrors glimmering with dim reflections. No one saw the two cold faces looking in out of the night with burning, basilisk eyes upon the merry scene. No one suspected that just beyond the door lurked murder.
The second game had begun. Hatch was bending over the table making a studied shot. Morgan stood chalking his cue a few feet from the door and with his back to it.
Came in the momentary stillness a sudden deafening crash. Then quickly a second.
Morgan spun round toward the door. His cue flew from his hand and clattered against the wall. His arms shot above his head and, lunging in a stumbling fall, he crumpled upon his face among a myriad glittering splinters of broken glass. A gust of wind whisked through two shattered jagged panes in the door. Hatch, McMasters, Tipton, and Holland, stunned for an instant by the quick tragedy, rushed into the alley. Only empty darkness there. A staccato clamour of boots thudding on packed earth came to them out of the black distance.
Morgan Earp, still conscious, was laid upon a lounge in a card-room. Wyatt, Virgil, and Warren Earp gathered round him.
“Bend down to me, Wyatt,” Morgan murmured. “I’m dying.”
Bending over him, Wyatt nodded his head grimly as the mortally wounded men whispered some secret in his ear.
Morgan lingered for a half hour. He smiled faintly as the clock on the wall marked midnight.
“The game’s over,” he said in a clear voice.
The game of life and the game of pool both over. Life for him had been in truth a game, and he had played it with the spirit of a cavalier adventurer, gaily, carelessly, recklessly, bravely—above all, bravely. He had cashed in his chips, shoved back his chair, and gone out with a smile into the eternal silence.
Of the two shots fired by the assassins through the door, one had passed through a lower opaque pane and the other through an upper pane of clear glass. The second bullet bored into the wall above Sherman McMaster’s head. The first struck Morgan Earp in the small of the back, shattered his spine, and
