“ ‘I’m working double-shift in the smelter,’ he answered, ‘to get enough money to go to Tombstone and kill Frank Leslie.’
“We were dumbfounded at this statement. We asked him what Leslie had ever done to him and why he intended killing him.
“ ‘Never done nothin’ to me personal,’ Claibourne responded. ‘But I aim to kill him for murderin’ John Ringo.’
“The story that Leslie had killed Ringo was not news to us. We had all heard it. But we felt a little like laughing at Claibourne’s seriousness. He was a pretty tough young fellow, but the job he had picked out for himself struck us as a pretty big one for him to tackle. As bad men, Claibourne and Leslie were not in the same class. Leslie was a professional, Claibourne an amateur. We knew that, in a fair fight, Claibourne would have no more show against Leslie than a puppy dog pitted against a gray wolf.
“ ‘Look here, Billy,’ one of my companions said, ‘you just quietly forget that little plan and keep on working in the smelter. Leslie’s killed about a dozen men. He’s a sure-enough desperado, a dead shot, and the quickest man with a gun in Tombstone. You leave him alone. If you go fooling around Leslie, you’ll only get yourself killed.’
“But Claibourne wouldn’t listen to us. He was bound he was going to kill Leslie, and that’s all there was to it. He and Leslie had been drunk so often together that I suppose this familiarity had bred in Claibourne a contempt for Leslie. Claibourne evidently thought that, as a killer, Buckskin Frank was overrated.”
Claibourne arrived in Tombstone on his mission of vengeance on . The first thing he did was to get drunk. Foolish fellow. If ever he needed a clear brain and steady nerves he needed them now. A loaded man is hopeless against a loaded six-shooter. When Nemesis staggers, it is safe to copper vengeance and play the bet to lose.
Frank Leslie was standing on the outside of the bar in the Oriental saloon talking with a group of men when in reeled Billy Claibourne. Fingering their glasses idly, the men at the bar looked at him without interest. They did not know him. But Claibourne shouldered in among them and, with much profanity, began to spout blatant incoherencies. Leslie caught him by the arm and led him aside.
“Here, Billy, this won’t do,” said Leslie in friendly wise. “These people are friends among themselves and are having a quiet drink. You are a stranger to them, and you’ve got no business butting in like this. You go on down the street. You’re drunk.”
Claibourne went out but soon came wandering back.
“You insulted me a while ago, Frank Leslie,” he shouted. “You can’t treat me like that.”
Leslie took him by the coat collar and hustled him into the street. In a little while, Claibourne, armed with a Winchester, was standing at the corner of Fifth and Allen streets, just outside the front door of the Oriental. A little crowd gathered. With drunken, noisy bluster, Claibourne was proclaiming that he would have Frank Leslie’s life.
Leslie had gone on watch as bartender. He was drawing beer and mixing drinks. A friend rushed in excitedly and told him Claibourne was outside threatening to kill him. Leslie went on quietly serving customers. Another friend dashed in with the same information.
“Ho-hum,” said Leslie in a tired sort of way. “Billy and I’ve always been good friends. I guess I’ll have to go out and see what’s the matter with the boy.”
Leslie took a six-shooter from a drawer and stepped into Fifth Street through a side door. Claibourne stood swaying beside Nick Noble’s fruit stand on the corner, his rifle across his arm. Leslie walked to within ten paces of him before Claibourne saw him.
“I don’t want to kill you, Billy,” said Leslie, his gun cocked in his hand.
Claibourne threw his rifle to his shoulder without a word. Both men fired at almost the same instant. Claibourne’s bullet tore a hole in the board sidewalk at Leslie’s feet. Leslie’s struck Claibourne in the breast near the heart.
Leslie cocked his six-shooter again. But he did not fire a second time.
“Don’t shoot any more,” Claibourne called out as he fell across the fruit stand. “I’m killed.”
Leslie went back into the Oriental, tied on his white bartender’s apron, and again took his place behind the bar.
“What’ll be yours?” he asked a customer cheerfully. “A dry Martini?”
He mixed the cocktail deftly, strained it off into a glass, and dropped an olive in.
Claibourne, mortally wounded, was removed to a hospital. Poor Billy Claibourne had made a mess of the tragedy he had so carefully planned, and had blundered stupidly from first to last. If he had had a sense of good theatre, he would have told Leslie why he purposed to kill him. Unless the victim knows why he is about to die, vengeance is robbed of its sweetness. By all rules of the stage, Claibourne should have thundered, “Frank Leslie, you murdered my friend, John Ringo, and I have come to avenge his death in your blood.” Or something like that. But Leslie knew nothing of Claibourne’s true motive afterward, and Tombstone was left to suppose the shooting was merely the result of a drunken row. Certainly, Billy Claibourne had no flair for playacting. As an avenger, he was an unheroic and undramatic fiasco.
Some of his cowboy friends gathered about Claibourne’s hospital cot to watch his last moments. For a half hour he screamed curses on Leslie. Exhausted, finally, he sank back upon the pillow and calmly awaited the end.
“Frank Leslie,” he said quietly with his dying breath, “murdered John Ringo. I helped him carry Ringo in there and seen him do it.”
Those were Claibourne’s last words, according to his cowboy friends, who repeated them to Henry Smith. Their meaning was not entirely clear, but they threw a new light on the mystery
