WHY THAT MOMENT? WHY NOT WHEN MORGAN died? Perhaps because the shock was too great, the loss too sudden and profound. But there was this as well: a lifetime of denying his own nature.
Wyatt Earp had been born, and born again, and now there would be a third life, for the iron fist that had seized his soul in childhood had lost its grip at last. The long struggle for control was over, and in its place, he found a wordless acceptance of a truth he’d always known. He was bred to this anger. It had been in him since the cradle. He’d never bullied neighbors or beaten a horse. He’d never punched the front teeth out of a six-year-old’s mouth or hit a woman until she begged. But he was no better than his father, and never had been. He was far, far worse.
Gazing out the window of the train that was about to pull away, John Henry Holliday saw the moment when a pure, cold rage transfigured a man he thought he knew: a man who nodded to the messenger, who dismounted, who pulled his shotgun from its scabbard, who tossed Dick Naylor’s reins to Sherm McMasters and hopped aboard the train, yelling, “Wait here!” to the rest of the posse as the locomotive jerked forward and the train began to pick up speed.
“Bob Paul sent word,” that man told him, swaying slightly in the aisle. “Ike Clanton is in Tucson with Frank Stilwell and Hank Swilling, They’re laying for Virgil at the depot. They think they’re gonna kill a cripple.”
The words were factual. The tone was unemotional and cool, but what John Henry Holliday thought was Rubicon.
Wyatt moved up the aisle to warn Virgil and James, and to make plans with them for what came next.
He passed Mattie Blaylock on his way. “It’s all your fault,” she muttered again. Then she, too, saw what Doc Holliday had seen, for Wyatt rounded on her and clamped one big hand around her throat, and it was all there, in those cold, unblinking eyes. How many times he could have snapped her neck like a twig. How many times he had left the house instead and let her live. How that was over now because there was no mercy left in him. None.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s all my fault. And I’ll have more to answer for, when this is done.”
“SHIT,” FRANK STILWELL WHISPERED. “See that great big sonofabitch? That’s gotta be Bob Paul. This place is lousy with law.”
Hank said, “I count eight . . . No, ten. Two more, over by the restaurant.”
Stilwell swore under his breath. “Somebody musta talked.”
Hours ago, he and Ike Clanton and Apache Hank Swilling had climbed on top of a sidelined boxcar. Lying on their bellies, staying out of sight, they’d kept watch on the Southern Pacific. It was leaving for California at dusk. The Earps would show themselves sooner or later.
“Somebody musta talked,” Ike said.
Florentino Cruz, Frank was thinking. That half-Mexican bastard probably figured he’d get off easy if he sold the rest of us out.
“There’s the coffin,” Apache Hank murmured.
A little gaggle of women appeared, along with a pair of tall blond men who had just two good arms between them. Wyatt was behind them, carrying a scattergun.
“Somebody talked,” Ike was saying. “Somebody musta talked.”
“Shut up, Ike!” Stilwell whispered.
He tried to line up a shot, but Wyatt was hustling everybody along, and the Earps were quickly lost to sight. Porters loaded the casket into the mail car. For a few moments, you could see that lunger Holliday helping a woman dressed in black climb in beside it. She turned back and reached out a hand to him. Holliday kissed it, and Stilwell was about to say, “Now ain’t that sweet!” when the depot gaslights came on, up and down the platform.
Hank scrambled backward, out of the glare. It must’ve been the movement that caught Holliday’s eye, for he looked up, and pointed, and yelled. That’s all it took to send Ike running. Apache Hank was right behind him.
Which left Frank Stilwell all by his lonesome. Staring into Wyatt Earp’s eyes.
Long afterward, men would ask, “Why didn’t Stilwell kill Wyatt then and there? He had the high ground, up on that boxcar.” But those men had never looked into eyes that told you, plain as speech, There is no place you can go that I will not follow. I will find you, and I will pull your heart from your chest, and I will eat it raw.
That’s what Frank Stilwell saw, and that’s why he clambered down off the far side of that boxcar, and then he by-God ran, and wished that he’d run sooner. Mexico, he was thinking at first, but soon there was nothing in his mind at all, except for Run. Run. Run.
He was maybe two hundred yards down the tracks when the buckshot hit his thighs. He tumbled over and rolled down the shallow embankment and came to rest on his back in the weeds. There were stars at first, and then there was Wyatt Earp, looking down at him.
“Please,” Frank said. “Please, don’t kill me. Please.”
Wyatt blew out a little snort of air, white in the mountain cold, and let the second charge go.
By the time Doc got there, Stilwell was long past dead, but Wyatt wrenched Virgil’s shotgun from Doc’s hands, put its barrels close to Stilwell’s chest, blew it to pieces, and handed the shotgun back.
Breathless and coughing from the run, Doc watched wide-eyed as Wyatt pulled a pistol out next and began to empty that into Stilwell’s body as well.
“Stop now, Wyatt. He’s dead,” Doc said. “It’s over.”
“No,” Wyatt said, turning grief and rage into shreds of flesh and shards of bone. “No. It’s not.”
ALL MEN ARE CAPABLE OF SAVAGERY. Bob Paul knew that, but he never would have expected it from Wyatt Earp, who had always seemed so steady.
Waving his men back, the sheriff of Pima County pointedly gazed toward the distant mountains, turning a blind eye to what remained of Frank Stilwell.
“I can give you until tomorrow afternoon,” he told Wyatt. “Best you leave now, son.”
THEY CAUGHT A FREIGHT BACK TO BENSON. With their backs against the wooden slats of an empty cattle car, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday sat alone together, in grief and in guilt.
Should’ve been me, they were both thinking, though for different reasons. Should’ve been me, not Morg.
After a time, Wyatt tried to reload the weapons. By then the shuddering reaction had set in and his hands were shaking, so Doc did it for him.
An hour passed before Wyatt spoke. “Stilwell got twenty-two hours.”
It took a while to work it out, but then Doc understood. Frank Stilwell had lived just twenty-two hours longer than Morgan Earp.