Return of Little Big Man (29 page)

When I did, I asks, “
What?
You’re saying
Doc
was one of the gang?”

“Damn right he was, and I turned the bastard in. Trouble is, they didn’t keep him in jail. Wyatt bailed him out, and now he’s gunnin’ for me.”

I didn’t believe much if any of this. I have mentioned the suspicions regarding Doc Holliday’s friendship with Billy Leonard, but it seemed unlikely that he worked as a holdup man himself, and while the Earps was said to often straddle the line between right and wrong in their business practices, especially Wyatt, it was hard to believe they consorted with common criminals, not to mention that Virge was now chief town marshal.

And how reliable could Kate be? She now went on: “So I wantcha to kill him for me, Ringo. Then I’ll be
your
woman.” Having said which, she fell onto my bed like the other time and immediately passed out, her head hanging over the side so far I was afraid her neck would be broke, so I lifted it back onto the bed and while I was doing so I brushed the hair back from her face so she wouldn’t breathe it in or swallow any, and I seen now she had two black eyes and a split lip to boot. I guess Doc had beat her awful, and I was relieved I didn’t own no gun, for I never could stomach the using of fists on a woman no matter how bad she acted, and I might of felt obliged to go looking for him—ending up like his other enemies.

Kate woke up briefly while I was smoothing back her hair, though she never opened her sore eyes, and she moaned as if I was doing something else, and says, “Oh, what a man you are,” in that fake passion harlots sometimes show to please a customer.

But to go back to her earlier calling me Ringo. She could of got me killed while not even knowing my name! There was a real Ringo, first-named Johnny, and he was in and around Tombstone, associating with the cowboy element, and some said he was the deadliest man with a gun west of St. Louie, a claim made at one time or another about everybody, Wild Bill, Wyatt, Bat, Doc, Ben Thompson, John Wesley Hardin, and so on, but so far as I know Ringo never shot anybody in town except Lou Hancock who took a beer when Johnny wanted to buy him a whiskey, so Ringo shot him, which never killed Lou but did make him more wary of his future drinking companions.

Now having been through this before, I expected Kate to wake up next morning in the same mood as the other time, and so as to beat her to it I kept alert for her first stirrings, on hearing which I scrambled to my feet.

“I know you’ll be sober now,” I says, “and I don’t want none of your high-horse stuff about being abducted. You was laying on my doorstep stinking drunk. I took you in and give you a night’s lodging, like I did that other time, and on neither occasion did I try to have my way with you.” I run on for a time, for I was real indignant.

But she wasn’t like before. Once again the night’s sleep had refreshed her considerable, though of course them two black eyes and split lip remained, but as it happened she was real humble now. “Sir,” says she, setting on the edge of my cot, her woebegone face in her hands, “I’m in terrible trouble and am afeard for my life. Let me tell you what I done. I got mad at Doc Holliday and went and told them he was one of the stage robbers, so Johnny Behan arrested him.”

“So that was the truth?”

“It was the truth I turned him in,” says Kate, “but it weren’t the fact that I really know if he helped hold up the Benson stage or not. I just said what I did to pay him back for being so mean to me.”

“I ain’t going to kill him for you,” I told her. “Get that idea out of your head.”

She looked shocked. “Why, I wouldn’t ask you for that. I am real fond of Doc and couldn’t ever want him hurt. What I was thinking was maybe you could say a word to him on my behalf. He thinks the world of you.”

I swear, Doc never even knowed he ever seen me before, and he hadn’t much, except for working on my teeth in Dodge, for dealing faro at the Alhambra he seldom came to the Oriental. I told her she was badly mistaken about me, so she should take her appeal to Wyatt or someone else friendly to him.

“Doc ain’t got no friends but Wyatt!” she wails. “Everybody else hates him, including the other Earps. And Wyatt hates
me!”
Tears begun to trickle out of them blackened eyes and run streaking down her face. “Doc’ll cut my guts out, I know he will. He told me I ain’t worth the cost of a bullet.”

I felt sorry for her, but I was disgusted too. “Why do you love that fellow?”

“It’s just his nature. He can’t help it. His nerves is real bad. He told me once the only time he’s not nervous is when he’s shooting somebody or pulling teeth.” She starts crying real hard, digging her fists into her eyes like a little kid, and I think I have already noted that a weeping female could generally get what she wanted out of me.

So I says, “All right, settle down. I’ll speak a word to Doc, but don’t blame me if it don’t work.”

Kate advised me to wait till he woke up naturally, not before noon, for having gambled all night he needed his sleep and might come to life shooting at anyone who disturbed him before time, which meant I’d be working, so I said I’d do it as soon as I could, and I guess I would of, for when I give my word I mean it.

But as it happened, lucky for me, before nightfall Kate was drunk again, creating a public disturbance, and Virgil Earp threw her in the hoose-gow. Meantime the charges against Doc was dropped for lack of evidence. What I was grateful for was that Kate lost no time in getting out of town again. Reason I never told her I wasn’t Ringo should be obvious, and my good sense was confirmed a few days later when I run into Allie at Bauer’s butcher shop, where she was buying steak for Virge and I was after a bone for Pard.

On the way home she tells me Doc Holliday found out it was Johnny Ringo who plied Kate with liquor and got her to charge Doc with the stage holdup.

“How’d he know that?”

“Kate told him,” says Allie. “She said Ringo took her in before when Doc give her a beating. You know what Doc told her? ‘You stupid bitch,’ he says, ‘didn’t it never occur to you Ringo wouldn’t have no use for an ugly whore like yourself except to damage
me?’
That’s what really hurt her feelings, even more than beating her up again, which he proceeded to do.”

I figured Allie included that last observation for my benefit, to teach me something more about females. Ever since I admitted not understanding them, she would give me such tips.

“Thing is, though,” I says, “ain’t she been connected with Doc for a long time? So how does it make sense for him to knock her so much?”

“Why, the consumption’s gonna kill him soon, so what’s he care?”

I thought this a peculiar sort of answer but dropped the subject, as did Allie, who had more than one woman confiding in her. She started in next on Wyatt and his girlfriend, who was an actress with a theatrical troupe come to Tombstone, where before long she had moved in with that sheriff the Earps considered their enemy, Johnny Behan.

“So he took her away from Johnny,” I says. “That must make Wyatt feel good.”

“I’ll tell you what makes him feel even better,” says Allie. “Sadie’s Pa is a rich merchant up in San Francisco.” She squints at me. “But if that’s so, then why’s she such a loose female?” We had reached her house by then, with Wyatt and Mattie’s place next door, so she spoke in a lower tone. “Too many of the wrong kind has got too many women, whereas a nice fellow like yourself is all alone. I’d sure like to find a girl for you, Jack, ’cause I know you’d treat her right.”

I joshed her a bit. “How’d you know that? I might be civil to you only because your man is chief of police.”

“Why,” Allie says seriously, “I can tell from the way you look after your dog. You can always tell about people how they treat their animals. I used to have a spotted dog I named for my little brother Frank. An Indian give him to me.”

“Is that right? I think Pard might of been an Indian dog.”

“This boy brought him around to our cabin, and Frank he just run in and jumped on the bed and wouldn’t come down, so the boy left him there. Best dog I ever owned. He always wanted to sleep on the bed with Virge and myself, but he wouldn’t touch a piece of fallen meat till you told him he could have it.”

Pard was just the opposite. He didn’t have no interest in my cot, but anything eatable that fell near him he would catch before it hit the ground.

Now, I have mentioned that fire in Tombstone. Hardly had it burned out for lack of water and was rebuilt than the rain begun to fall, as it rarely done in that region, and in such quantities that the resulting floods made the roads into town impassable, stopping goods deliveries and the mails, and undermined some buildings. Tombstone was a place of extremes, including its two newspapers, one, the
Nugget,
favoring the so-called cowboys and the second, the
Epitaph,
on the side of the tinhorn gamblers also sometimes called the Earp Gang by the other side. Law enforcement showed the same split. Whereas at Dodge City there had been cooperation between the county sheriff and the marshal of the town, both being members of the Masterson family or their pals during the time I was there, in Tombstone them two officials was totally opposed, and each was supported by a faction with a reputation for violence. Let me say I never belonged to either, not being much attracted to the Earps even when Bat was in town, and I had never in my life had a lot of regard for cowboys even when they wasn’t outlaws. I’ll admit to a prejudice, having no doubt seen only their worst side in saloons and whorehouses, when it is a rare man who would make a good impression and then only if he come to sell Bibles. I realize now when they was working, on the three months of the cattle drive, they was doing more for the betterment of the country than almost anything I personally had accomplished, in effect feeding lots of people including me. So looking back I expect I ought to apologize for my narrow-mindedness.

However them they called cowboys in Tombstone was up to no good so far as I could see then or now, and if I speak more about the Earps, much of it critical, it’s due to my associations and not because I was ever inclined towards their adversaries, which now included fellows named Frank Stilwell and Pete Spence, who robbed the stage to Bisbee and was caught by a posse of Earps but was immediately bailed out by the Clantons. And the McLaurys was mad that Stilwell and Spence had even been arrested, and talked of getting revenge.

The enmity between the two crowds got worse than ever when Ike Clanton accused Wyatt of violating a confidence, which Wyatt probably done, but the fact was the secret that Ike wanted kept quiet probably wouldn’t have become known to many people had he not made such a fuss about it.

Back some months earlier, Wyatt Earp had gotten the bright idea that though the Clantons and McLaurys was friends with the outlaws that had attacked the Benson stage, they would gladly lure the three back to be captured if he saw that Ike and Company got the reward money, while Wyatt himself took the glory, which might get him voted in to replace Sheriff Johnny Behan next election. You might say Wyatt understood the criminal mind so well because it was as cynical as his own.

But of course the deal was off once them outlaws was dead by others’ hands, so the Clantons and McLaurys not only didn’t profit, but if it come to be known to their other lowlife pals, they wouldn’t be trusted by nobody—if allowed to continue to live.

There I was one evening in the fall of the year, eating supper at the Occidental lunchroom, when through the front door comes Doc Holliday, which was never good news, and behind him there’s Kate Elder, which might be worse. She was all spiffied up, I’ll say that for her, hair piled high and fancy clothes, and she’s got that superior look a person of her kind alternates with the woebegone expression appropriate to laying in a gutter.

Whenever Kate was in the rare condition of being both sober and not showing evidence of recent beatings, she considered herself an aristocrat who had strayed by accident amongst the peasants. Allie told me Kate claimed to have been born in the land of Hungary, where everybody belongs to the nobility, but maybe she just said she was hungry.

Which I sure was, chewing my steak, but I lost my appetite when I seen that pair, though being down the counter a good ways from her, Kate didn’t sight me as yet. But the situation proceeded to worsen, for I have neglected to mention that another person eating at the Occidental that night was Ike Clanton, who I barely knew by sight and hadn’t even yet recognized now till Doc Holliday, spotting him, calls out his name accompanied by “son of a bitch,” Doc meanwhile reaching into his coat for the shoulder-holstered pistol, the nearest of several weapons he usually carried.

There being no place for me to hide, and I didn’t dare make a sudden move that might spook Doc into action, I just froze, along with the others not involved on both sides of the counter.

Doc hadn’t drawn yet. He first wanted to explain to Ike why he was going to kill him, which you might see as a sort of courtesy though expressed with a deal of foul language, for it was my belief that Doc generally shot first and left the palaver for later. He was also being unselfish, his complaint against Ike not concerning himself personally but rather what Ike had supposedly said about Wyatt.

Ike managed to save his life by yelling, “I ain’t heeled!”

Then, as if the place ain’t already crowded enough with troublemakers, while honest folk was just trying to fill their bellies, in come Wyatt and Morgan Earp.

I ain’t said much about Morg, the youngest of the Earp brothers then in town (as there was the oldest, named Jim, a gambler and businessman who didn’t involve himself in the others’ fights), but he was a younger version of Wyatt who looked a lot like him and was a bit more agreeable though more hotheaded.

Now seeing Doc taking on Ike, Morg also goes inside his own coat, and Ike gets called a son of a bitch once again, and again he had to repeat, even more anxious, his little beady eyes blinking and goatee twitching,
“Goddammit, I ain’t heeled!”

At this point Kate, cold sober, had enough sense of self-preservation to leave by the front door, which I tell you relieved me of an even greater worry than of being hit by a stray bullet, and in fact Wyatt now stopped his people from going further and shooting down an unarmed man in front of so many witnesses, and he told Ike to get out of the place.