The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories (15 page)

"Doc's my friend, Ike," Freddie said.

Ike took a moment to process this declaration. "I forgot," he said, and then he reached out to clumsily pat Freddie's shoulder. "That's all right, then," he said with evident concern. "I regret I must kill your friend. Adiós." He turned and swayed from the room.

Holliday watched Ike's exit without concern. "Why is Ike trying to kick a fight with me?" he said.

"God alone knows."

Holliday dismissed Ike Clanton with a contemptuous downward curl of his lip. He turned to Freddie. "Shall we find a game of cards?"

Freddie rose. "Why not? Let me get my hat."

Holliday took him to Earp country, to the Oriental Saloon. Freddie could not concentrate on the game—Wyatt Earp's faro table was in plain sight, Earp's empty chair all too visible; and visions of Josie and Earp kept burning in his mind, a writhing of white limbs in a hotel bed, scenes from his own private inferno—and Holliday calmly and professionally took Freddie's every penny, leaving him with nothing but his coat, his hat, and his gun.

 

"You don't own me." Freddie wrote in his notebook. She almost spat the words at me. It is her
crie d'esprit,
her defiance to the world, her great maxim.

"I own nothing," I replied calmly. "Nothing at all." Close enough to the truth. I must find someone to loan me a stake so that I can win money and pay the week's lodging.

I argued my points with great precision, and she answered with fury. Her anger left me untouched—she accused me of jealousy, of all ridiculous things! It is easy to remain calm in the face of arrows that fly so wide of the mark. I asked her only to choose a man worthy of her. Behan is nothing, and Earp an earnest fool. Worthy in his own way, no doubt, but not of such as she.

Ah well. Let her go. She is qualified to ruin her life in her own way, no doubt. I will keep my room at the Grand—unless poverty drives me into the street—and she will return when she understands her mistake.

I must remember my pocketbook, and earn some money. And I must certainly stay clear of John Holliday, at least at the card table.

I think I sense a migraine about to begin.

 

"Freddie?" It was Sheriff Behan who stood in the door of the Grand Hotel's parlor, his derby hat in his hand and a worried look on his face. "Freddie, can you come with me and talk to your friends?"

Freddie felt fragile after his migraine. Drugs still slithered their cold way through his veins. He looked at Behan and scowled. "What is it, Johnny?" he said. "Go away. I am not well."

"There's going to be a fight between the Earps and the Clantons and McLaurys. Your friends are going to get killed unless we do something."

"You're the sheriff," Freddie said, unable to resist digging in the spur. "Put the Clantons in jail."

"My God, Freddie!" Behan almost shouted. "I can't arrest the
Clantons!
"

"Not as long as they're letting you have this nice salary, I suppose." Freddie shook his head, then rose from his wing chair. "Very well. Tell me what is going on."

Ike Clanton had been very busy since Freddie had seen him last. He had wandered over Tombstone for two days, uttering threats against Doc Holliday to anyone who would listen. When he appeared in public with a pistol and rifle, Virgil Earp slapped him over the head with a revolver, confiscated his weapons, and tossed him in jail. Ike paid the twenty-five-dollar fine and returned to the streets, where he went boasting of his deadly intentions, now including the Earps in his threats. After Ike's brief trial, Wyatt Earp had encountered Ike's friend Tom McLaury on the street and pistol-whipped him. Now Tom was bent on vengeance as well. They had been seen in Spangenburg's gun shop, and had gathered a number of their friends. The Earps and Holliday were armed and ready. Vigilantes were arming all over Tombstone, ready for blood. Behan had promised to stave off disaster by disarming the Cowboys, and he wanted help.

"This is absurd," Freddie muttered. The clear October light sent daggers into his brain. "They are behaving like fools."

"They're down at the corral," Behan said. "It's legal for them to carry arms there, but if they step outside I'll—" He blanched. "I'll have to do something."

The first tendrils of the euphoria that followed his migraines began to enfold Freddie's brain. "Very well," he said. "I'll come."

The lethargy of the drugs warred within Freddie's mind with growing elation as Behan led Freddie down Allen Street, then through the front entrance of the O.K. Corral, a narrow livery stable that ran like an alley between Allen and Fremont streets. The Clantons were not in the corral, and Behan was almost frantic as he led Freddie out the back entrance onto Fremont, where Freddie saw the Cowboys standing in the vacant lot between Camillus Fly's boarding house, where Holliday lodged with his Kate, and another house owned by a man named Harwood.

There were five of them, Freddie saw. Ike and his brother Billy, Tom and Frank McLaury, and their young friend Billy Claiborne, who like almost every young Billy in the West was known as "Billy the Kid," after another, more famous outlaw who was dead and could not dispute the title. Tom McLaury led a horse by the reins. The group stood in the vacant lot in the midst of a disagreement. When he saw Freddie walking toward him, Billy Claiborne looked relieved.

"Freddie!" he said. "Thank God! You help me talk some sense into these men!"

Ike looked at Freddie with a broad grin. "We're going to kill Doc Holliday!" he said cheerfully. "We're going to wait for him to come home, then blow his head off!"

Freddie glanced up at Fly's boarding house, with its little photographic studio out back, then returned his gaze to Ike. He tried to concentrate against the chorus of euphoric angels that sang in his mind. "Doc won't be coming back till late," he said. "You might as well go home."

Ike shook his head vigorously. "No," he said. "I'm gonna kill Doc Holliday!"

"Ike," Freddie pointed out, "you don't even have a gun."

Ike turned red. "It's only because that son of a bitch Spangenburg wouldn't sell me one!"

"You can't kill Holliday without a gun," Freddie said. "You might as well come back to the hotel with me." He reached out to take Ike's arm.

"Now wait a minute, Freddie," said Ike's brother Billy. "
I've
got a gun." He pulled back his coat to show his revolver. "And I think killing Holliday is a sound enough idea. It'll hurt the Earps. And no one 'round here likes Doc—nobody's going to care if he gets killed."

"Holliday and half the town know you're standing here ready to kill him," Freddie said. "He's heeled and so are the Earps. Your ambush is going to fail."

"That's what I've been trying to tell them!" Billy Claiborne added, and then moaned, "Oh Lord, they'll make a blue fist of it!"

"Hell," said Tom McLaury. The side of his head was swollen where Wyatt Earp had clouted him. "We've got to fight the Earps sooner or later. Might as well do it now."

"I agree you should fight," Freddie said. "But this is not the time or the place."

"This place is good as any other!" Tom said. "That bastard Earp hit me for no reason, and I'm going to put a bullet in him."

"I'm with my brother on this," said Frank McLaury.

"Nobody can stand up to us!" Ike said. "With us five and Freddie here, the Earps had better start praying."

Exasperation overwhelmed the exaltation that sang in Freddie's skull. With the ferocious clarity that was an aspect of his euphoria, he could see exactly what would happen. The Earps were professional lawmen—they did not chew their own tobacco, as Brocius would say—and when they came they would be ready. They might come with a crowd of vigilantes. The Cowboys, half unarmed, would stand wondering what to do, would have no leader, would wait too long to reach a decision, and then they would be cut down.

"I have no gun!" Freddie told Ike. "
You
have no gun. And the Kid here has no gun. Three of you cannot fight a whole town, I think. You should go home and wait for a better time. Wait till Bill Brocius' trial is over, and get John Ringo to join you."

"You only say that 'cause you're a coward!" Ike said. "You're a kraut-eating yellowbelly! You won't stand by your friends!"

Murder sang a song of fury in Freddie's blood. His hand clawed as if it held a gun—and the fact that there was no gun did not matter, the claw could as easily seize Ike's throat. Ike took a step backward at the savage glint in Freddie's eyes. Then Freddie shook his head, and said, "This is folly. I wash my hands of it." He turned and began to walk away.

"Freddie!" Behan yelped. He sprang in front of Freddie, bouncing on his neat polished brown boots. "You can't leave! You've got to help me with this!"

Freddie drew himself up, glared savagely at Behan. Righteous angels sang in his mind. "You are the sheriff, I collect," he said. "Dealing with it is your job!"

Behan froze, his mouth half-open. Freddie stepped around him and marched away, down Fremont to the back entrance to the O.K. Corral, then through the corral to Allen Street. Exaltation thrilled in his blood like wine. He crossed the street to the shadier south side—the sun was still hammering his head—and began the walk to the Grand Hotel. At Fourth Street he looked south and saw a mob—forty or fifty armed citizens, mostly hard-bitten miners—marching toward him up the street.

If this crowd found the Clantons, the Cowboys were dead. Surely Freddie's friends could now be convinced that they must fight another day.

Freddie turned and hastened along Allen Street toward the O.K. Corral, but then gunfire cracked out, the sudden bright sounds jolting his nerves, and he felt his heart sink even as he broke into a run. A shotgun boomed, and windows rattled in nearby buildings. He dashed through the long corral, then jumped over the fence, ran past the photography studio, and into the back door of Camillus Fly's boarding house.

John Behan crouched beneath a window with his blue-steel revolver in his hand. The window had been shattered by bullets, and its yellow organdy curtain fluttered in the breeze, but there was no scent of smoke or other indication that Behan had ever fired his pistol. Shrieks rang in the air, cries of mortal agony. Freddie ran beside the window and peered out. His heart hammered, and he panted for breath after his run.

The narrow vacant lot was hazy with gunsmoke. Lying at the far end were the bodies of two men, Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton. Just four or five paces in front of them were the three Earps and John Holliday. Morgan was down with a wound. Virgil knelt on the dry ground, leg bleeding, and he supported himself with a cane. Holliday's back was to Freddie—he had a short Wells Fargo shotgun broken open over one arm—and there were bright splashes of blood on Holliday's coat and trousers.

In Fremont Street, behind the Earps, Frank McLaury lay screaming in the dust. He was covered with blood. Apparently he had run right through the Earps and collapsed. His agonized shrieks raised the hair on the back of Freddie's neck.

Of Billy Claiborne and Ike Clanton, Freddie saw no sign. Apparently the unarmed men had run away.

Wyatt Earp stood over his brother Morgan, unwounded, a long-barreled Colt in his hand. Savage hatred burned in Freddie's heart. He glared down at Behan.

"What have you done?" he hissed. "Why didn't you stop it?"

"I tried!" Behan said. "You saw that I tried. Oh, this is horrible!"

"You fool. Why do you bother to carry this?" Freddie reached down and snatched the revolver from Behan's hand. He looked out the window again and saw Wyatt Earp standing like a bronze statue over his wounded brother. Angels sang a song of glory in Freddie's blood.

Make something of it, he thought. Make something of this other than a catastrophe. Make it mean something.

He cocked Behan's gun. Earp heard the sound and raised his head, suddenly alert. And then German Freddie put six shots into Earp's breast from a distance of less than a dozen feet.

"My God!" Behan bleated. "What are you doing?"

Freddie looked at him, a savage grin taut on his face. He dropped the revolver at Behan's feet as return fire began to sing through the window. He ran into the back of the studio, out the back door, and was sprinting down Third Street when he heard Behan's voice ringing over the sound of barking gunfire. "It wasn't me! I swear to Mary!" Mad laughter burbled from Freddie's lips as he heard the crash of a door being kicked down. Behan screamed something else, something that might have been "German Freddie!" but whatever he was trying to say was cut short by a storm of fire.

 

A steam whistle shattered the air as Freddie ran south. Someone was blowing the alarm at the Uzina Mine. And when Freddie reached the corner, he saw the vigilante mob pouring up Allen Street, heading for the front gate of the O.K. Corral. He waited a few seconds for the leaders to swarm through the gate, and then he quietly crossed the street at a normal walking pace. Despite the way he panted for breath, Freddie had a hard time not breaking into a run.

He had never felt such joy, not even in Josie's arms.

By roundabout means he made his way to his room at the Grand Hotel. Once he had Zarathustra in his hand he began to breathe more easily. Still, he concluded, it was time to leave town. There were any number of people who could place him near the site of that streetfight, and possibly some of the vigilantes had seen him stroll away.

And then a thought struck him—he had no horse! He was a bad rider and had come to Tombstone on the Wells Fargo stage. The only way he could get a horse would be to stroll back to the O.K. Corral and hire one, with the lynch mob looking on.

He laughed and put Zarathustra in his coat pocket. He was trapped in a town filled with Earps and armed vigilantes.

"It is time to be bold," he said aloud. "It is time to be cunning."

He washed his hands, to remove the reek of gunpowder, and changed his shirt.

It occurred to him that there existed a place where he might hide.

He put his journal in another pocket, and made his way out of the hotel.

 

Oh, she is magnificent! Freddie wrote in his journal a few hours later. She hid me in Behan's house while Behan lay painted in his coffin in the front window of the undertakers—Ritter and Reams are making the most of this opportunity to advertise their art! I rested on Behan's bed while she received callers in the front room. And then, at nightfall, she had Behan's horse saddled and brought to the back door.