Return of Little Big Man (31 page)

Inside Fly’s I don’t get out of Kate’s clutch till she has slammed the door behind us.

“Goddammit, woman, will you get off me?” I says, prying off her fingers one by one.

“Go out there then and get kilt!” she yells. “He’s crazy jealous, I warn you.”

“I ain’t touched you!” says I with heat, and open the door and look out just as the McLaury brothers arrive at the lot, Frank leading a horse, so now there’s five men and two large animals in what’s a pretty narrow space, and if that’s not enough, added to the collection already present comes Sheriff Behan, a refined-looking person compared to the other principals, balding with his hat off though it was on now, but he always looked more like a merchant to me than an officer of the law, at which at least in appearance the Earps had the edge on everybody, especially when they was walking together, three abreast, wearing black.

Johnny Behan says something to the cowboys, which I couldn’t hear but believed was likely to be friendly, and next he walks down to stop the Earp bunch in front of Bauer’s meat shop and either warns them off for their own protection as he later claimed, or in Wyatt’s version, to assure them he had disarmed the cowboys, a damn lie that could of got the Earps killed.

Anyway, whatever Behan said, the Earp boys and Doc Holliday resumed their stride and would of walked right over him had he not gotten out of their way. As marshal, Virgil had jurisdiction in town, and he claimed later he had deputized his brothers and Doc.

At that point Kate hooks her hand into my belt in back and yanks me into the house. “I ain’t gonna let you die for the crime of loving me!” says she. “C’mon, I’ll hide you out in the photo gallery.” Meaning the building behind the rooming house which Camillus Fly used for his camera work. And she tugs mightily, lifting me off my feet for a second. I’ll tell you that woman was a caution, and I might of popped her one had I not remembered that was Doc’s way, so instead I says, “Dearie, I’ll be obliged if you let me walk on my own,” and as soon as she let me go I was through the door and into the street, which you might see as out of the frying pan, but I didn’t want Kate hampering me if there was going to be a gunfight in the near neighborhood. The thin walls of a Tombstone building wouldn’t protect much from flying lead, not to mention I liked to see what was going on when guns were likely to be discharged in my vicinity.

So I trot across the street and get behind a wagon parked there, just past the shop of a dressmaker named Addie Borland, and I watch the Earp delegation approach the lot full of cowboys and horses.

Virgil’s in the lead now, and he’s carrying what looks like the same cane Doc Holliday was using earlier, whereas Doc, walking at the outside, has got that shotgun formerly held by Virge, holding it inside the overcoat with his left hand, which can be seen when the breeze blows back the coat flap. In Doc’s right hand is a nickel-plated six-shooter. Morgan Earp has also drawn a pistol. Wyatt’s hand is within a pocket of his black tailcoat.

There was other uninvolved people on that block of Fremont Street that day, like a fellow name of Bob Hatch, which owned a billiard parlor, and Billy Allen and R. F. Coleman, with some watching from neighboring buildings like Addie Borland and a judge named Lucas who was looking out his office window down the street in a structure known as the Gird Block, and all of them saw a part of the action, and everybody give a different version of it at the coroner’s inquest and the subsequent murder trial, but the only true account of what really happened follows right here, and ain’t never been heard before because I never testified anyplace, which failure will be explained I hope to the satisfaction of all.

When the Earp bunch reached the edge of the lot between Fly’s and Harwood’s—at the outset of the fight miscalled the Battle of the O.K. Corral, whereas them cowboys as I have said only took a shortcut through the O.K. and never even kept their horses there—they stopped, and Wyatt says in a loud voice, “You sons of bitches have been looking for a fight, and now you’ve got it.”

But Virgil, who’s in official charge of the party and is showing only that cane and furthermore holds it in his right or gun hand, says, “You boys throw up your hands. I want your guns.”

Now at this point Doc Holliday lifted his nickel-plated pistol and shot Frank McLaury in the belly at a range of no more than six feet.

Virgil yells, “Hold on,” at somebody though it’s hard to tell who.

A split second after Doc’s first shot, Morgan Earp shoots Billy Clanton in the left side of the chest, from no more than a foot away, Billy being blown back against the side of the Harwood house, and he slid down to the ground, ending up in the position of a Mexican sleeping against a wall. His horse moved calmly away.

Frank McLaury had been holding the reins of his own horse, which was standing behind him, and though wounded bad by Doc, he never let go of the mount but pulled it with him as he staggered out into Fremont Street, coming close to where I was crouched behind that wagon, which had a solid wood bed but its spoked wheels wouldn’t of stopped much lead, and looking down at them who do I see but my dog!

“Jesus, Pard,” I says, “why’d you come back here now?”

He wagged his tail at me, displaying an animal’s lack of foresight for this type of danger: people shooting at one another across the street didn’t mean nothing to him. But I couldn’t pay no further mind to him at the moment.

Meanwhile there had been more gunfire. Doc had emptied his pistol and fetching out the shotgun from his coat, he blasted a double load of buckshot into Tom McLaury’s chest at the usual close range, and that was the meanest weapon of all, its shells packing nine pellets each as big as a .38 slug, so it was a wonder Tom could hold himself together with crossed arms while lurching out of the lot and getting as far as the corner of Third before he fell.

Now all the shooting had happened real quick, and none of the cowboys had yet to pull a trigger, nor had either Wyatt nor Virgil Earp. Billy Claiborne by the way had run out of the lot when the action started and jumped into Fly’s rooming house, which would of put him at close quarters with Kate, if she was still behind the door.

Now Ike Clanton grabs at Wyatt, yelling, “I ain’t heeled, goddammit!”

Wyatt’s got a pistol out, and he might of shot Ike down, for he was outraged that the fellow who more than any other caused this fight would be the one who was unarmed when it came, but Ike kept yelling so that everybody watching could hear, and Wyatt pushed him away, and Ike too runs into Fly’s to join Billy Claiborne and, I guess, Kate Elder.

Though fallen against the Harwood wall, Billy Clanton had drawed a pistol and begun to fire back at the Earp party. In addition to the wound in his chest he had another in his right wrist and was therefore using his left to shoot, but was doing real damage to his enemies, hitting both Virgil and Morgan, each of which fell then got up, Virge joining Wyatt in returning Billy’s fire, while Morg and Doc come after, running out into the street after Frank McLaury, who was desperately trying to get the Winchester out of the scabbard on his horse, but that animal, quiet till now, was veering away and finally panicked as they will under too much urgency without no rider in the saddle, and it reared and broke and galloped away down the street, raising a cloud of that lime dust for which Fremont was noted except when it rained, so Frank drawed his pistol.

With Doc and Morgan advancing on him, he took time to boast to the latter, “I got you now!”

Doc replied with some profane abuse, and Frank sent a shot that would on a better day for the McLaurys have struck the dentist square, but when your number’s up nothing goes right—I seen that with Custer—so the slug hit the several layers of thick leather of the belted holster and hurt Doc only slightly, and having emptied the shotgun he had traded it for another of his pistols, and him and Morgan kept up a fire that drove Frank across the street, right past me, the lead snapping by uncomfortable close, some thudding into the side of the wagon. I could feel Pard finally taking this serious and huddling against my boots.

Frank reached the corner of the adobe building next to Addie Borland’s and was shooting back at his attackers, but he was weak now from that slug he had took at the start, which was not a whole minute earlier but seemed like an hour before, and having to rest his wavering pistol on his good forearm, none of his shots hit their mark, and when he turned and looked down to reload, one of the multitude of bullets sent his way by Doc and Morg went into his head just behind the right ear, and Frank McLaury fell down dead, though Doc wouldn’t believe it and come running gun in hand, cursing the fallen cowboy and would of shot him further when, though unarmed and taking my own life in my hands, I had seen enough, and I walked away from the wagon and says, “Skin it back, Doc. The man has died.”

Doc lowered his gun and still glaring down at Frank’s body and not my way, asks real disgusted, “What took the son of a bitch so long?” And then he made a statement probably only Doc Holliday in all the world would of said, in its mix of indignation and wonderment. “That son of a bitch shot me!”

Well sir, that was the so-called O.K. fight from start to finish so far as the shooting went, though across the street Billy Clanton, who had taken one hit after another and now laid flat on the ground but was trying to lift his head, was also still trying with dying fingers to cock his single-action Colt’s and keep fighting. He might of been a good-for-nothing, but it had been him who after taking a slug in the chest at close range and having his gun hand disabled by another, had used his left to wound both Virgil and Morgan Earp. Not to mention that his big brother had run away.

I went over there once the shooting had stopped, along with a number of the other onlookers, and we was joined by Camillus Fly, the photographer, who come out of his house now, toting a rifle and yelling at everybody else to take Billy Clanton’s gun away, but not wanting to get plugged nobody paid him any mind, so Fly finally done it himself, at which time Billy says, in a voice that was weak but clear, “Get me some more cartridges.”

Somebody decided to carry him inside the house on the other side of Harwood’s, and I volunteered to help but three or four bigger fellows did it, Billy between howls of pain asking them to pull off his boots, for he had promised his old Ma not to die with them on. I had heard that expression before, but never did figure out what it meant.

Tom McLaury was still laying where he fell, and they carried him into the house too. Of them on the field of battle, he alone had displayed no weapon whatever, to my observation, and none was found on the street, so if he had a gun it was presumably on his dead person, but in fact when the coroner got there not long after, he didn’t find no weapon on Tom either. There were them who, excusing the Earps, claimed though Tom had left his regular pistol at the Capitol saloon earlier in the day, he was carrying a hideout gun, but if so, he never showed it in the fight and it disappeared thereafter.

The truth is that Doc Holliday and Morgan Earp shot Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton before either of them had reached for a weapon, and then Doc emptied his shotgun into Tom McLaury, an unarmed man.

In the gathering crowd, there come Allie Earp, in her sunbonnet, asking anxiously what had happened to Virge. She had heard the shooting, their house being but two blocks away on the same street. I took her to the hack what had been quickly brought, where a doctor was probing Virgil’s leg for the bullet that struck him.

The people gathered around didn’t want to let her through, but some big fellow pushed a passage through, saying, “Stand back, boys. Let his old mother get in.” I tell you for me that provided a light moment, but Allie, four or five years younger than her husband, was right irritated and but for worry about Virge would have got after that man, I’m sure.

Back of that carriage was another hack holding Morgan Earp with his wounded shoulder. Of all that participated in the fight, only Wyatt had went untouched. I imagine that with his high idea of himself he believed that was only as it should be.

Now Sheriff Johnny Behan comes up to him on the sidewalk and says, “Wyatt, I am going to have to arrest you.”

But Behan couldn’t never again get the edge on Wyatt since tricking him that time into withdrawing from the sheriff’s election.

“Johnny,” says Wyatt, with his cold stare, “you said you had disarmed those boys: you lied to us. I’m not leaving town, but you or your kind won’t arrest me.”

Somebody was asking what become of the cowboys’ horses, and that reminded me to look for Pard. I knowed he could take care of himself and never liked crowds so probably had went off, but I was somewhat bothered by recalling how he had unaccountably showed up right while the shooting was heaviest.

Responding now to the question about the horses, somebody else says Frank’s had run up Fremont but he didn’t know about Billy Clanton’s, which maybe had wandered back of Fly’s photo gallery, and then he added the words that chilled my blood.

“Lead was flying all over the neighborhood. A couple shots hit that wagon parked up in front of Bauer’s, and a stray dog got killed under the one across the street.”

T
HERE PARD WAS LAYING,
eyes closed and snoot flat in the dust. He had been hit in the head, which was one big smear of blood. I gathered him up in my arms, where as a limp weight he was quite a burden to carry the couple blocks home. I hadn’t ever lifted him before. At least he hadn’t turned cold yet. I thought about how he had traveled so far to find me after I left him behind at Cheyenne. I never had no human friend would of done that, and I didn’t blame humanity: I might be just the kind of person whose best friend naturally was an animal, on account of my shiftless ways, but the fact was I did have a dog who had been a fine pal, and now he was dead.

To relieve my sadness I developed quite a hatred for the Earps, the cowboys, the gambling, drinking, robbery, and killing that Tombstone consisted of for me, not remarkably different from Dodge in that respect, and now this goddam foolish fight, which was more like a slaughter, in which three young men had been gunned down mainly because Ike Clanton had shot his mouth off and couldn’t back it up.