Three miles outside of Tombstone stood an adobe building wherein a venturesome saloon-keeper had installed himself, a barrel of that remarkable whisky known as "Kill Me Quick," and sufficient arms to maintain possession against road-agents. The sign on this establishment"s front wall said:
_LAST CHANCE_
It was a lucky chance for Johnny Behind the Deuce. For Jack McCann, who owned a fast mare, was exercising her out here this afternoon preparatory for a race against some cow-ponies over on the San Pedro next week. He had trotted her down the road and was about to head her back toward the saloon for her burst of speed when he saw the buckboard coming over a rise.
The mules were f.a.gged. The constable was lashing them with might and main. The lynching party were within a hundred yards.
As Jack McCann surveyed this spectacle which was so rapidly approaching him the constable waved his hand. The situation was too tight to permit wasting time. McCann ranged his mare alongside the buckboard as soon as it drew up; and before the breathless driver had begun to explain, he cried.
"Jump on, kid."
Johnny Behind the Deuce leaped on the mare"s back. The constable pulled off the road as the lynching party came thundering by with a whoop and halloo. He peered through the dust which the ponies" hoofs had stirred up and saw the mare fading away in the direction of Tombstone with her two riders.
It was nearly four o"clock in the afternoon. That hour was the dullest of the twenty-four in the gambling-houses, for the evening shift was on its way to work and the day shift had not yet come off. The Earps were dealing faro in the Oriental.
To the onlooker who does not know its hazards faro is a funereal game.
The dealer slides one card and then a second from the box. The case-keeper moves a b.u.t.ton or two on his rack. The dealer in the meantime is paying winners and collecting chips from losers, all with the utmost listlessness. In his high chair above them, all the lookout leans back with every external sign of world-weary indifference. And the players settle a little lower on their stools. There was about as much animation in the Oriental that afternoon as there is in a country church on a hot Sunday morning; less in fact, for there was no preacher present.
Into this peaceful quiet came the sound of hoofbeats from the street.
It stopped abruptly. Two men burst through the front door on a run.
The players looked around and the faro-dealers dropped their right hands toward the open drawers where they kept their loaded pistols.
Jack McCann and Johnny Behind the Deuce had arrived.
But before the prisoner finished his story, to which he did not devote more than twenty words or so, a man ran into the Oriental with the tidings that the miners who were coming off shift were arming themselves as fast as they left the cages. The rustlers had ridden up the hill and were gathering reinforcements.
Wyatt Earp at once took charge of the affair. He was a medium-sized man with a drooping sandy mustache.
"We"ll close up, boys," he said.
The show-down had come.
Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, and Jim took counsel. Doc Holliday advised with them. A handful of their supporters stood by awaiting their decision. All others left; the neighborhood was no healthy place for non-combatants.
The Oriental gambling-house stood on Tombstone"s main street at the intersection of a cross street. Because of its size it would be a hard place to defend against so formidable a mob as this which was now moving down the hill. Several doors north on the main street and on the opposite side, there was a bowling-alley. Its narrowness gave that building a strategic value. They took Johnny Behind the Deuce there and set guards at both ends.
Wyatt Earp remained alone out in the middle of the main street just below the corner. He held a double-barreled shotgun over the crook of his arm.
The ugly sound which rises from a mob came into the deserted thoroughfare; the swift tramp of many feet, the growl of many voices.
More than three hundred miners, the majority of whom were armed with rifles from the company"s a.r.s.enal, and the fifty-odd members of the Charleston lynching party swept into Toughnut Street, turned the corner, and rushed down the cross street toward the Oriental.
They reached the intersection of the main street, and as they faced the closed doors of the Oriental their left flank was toward Wyatt Earp. They filled the roadway and the front ranks surged upon the sidewalk toward the portals of the gambling-house.
Then some one who had seen the prisoner taken to the bowling-alley shouted the tidings. The throng changed front in the instant and faced the solitary man who stood there a few yards before them.
Wyatt Earp shifted his shotgun into his two hands and held it as a trap-shooter who is waiting for the clay pigeons to rise.
In the moment of discovery the mob had checked itself, confronting him as one man confronts another when the two are bitter enemies and the meeting is entirely unexpected. There followed a brief, sharp surge forward; it emanated from the rear ranks and moved in a wave toward the front. There it stopped. And there pa.s.sed a flash of time during which the man and the mob eyed each other.
That was no ordinary lynching party such as some communities see in these days. Its numbers included men who had outfought Apaches, highwaymen, and posses; men who were accustomed to killing their fellow beings and inured to facing death. And the hatred of the Earp brothers, which had been brewing during all these months, was white-hot now within them.
"Come on," called Wyatt Earp, and added an epithet.
Above the ma.s.s of tossing heads the muzzles of rifles were bobbing up and down. The trampling of feet and the shuffling of packed bodies made a dull under-note. Shouts arose from many quarters.
"Go on!" "Get him!" "Now, boys!"
Wyatt Earp threw back his head and repeated his challenge.
"Come on!" He flung an oath at them. "Sure you can get me. But"--he gave them the supreme insult of that wild period"s profanity--"the first one makes a move, I"ll get him. Who"s the man?"
Those who saw him that afternoon say that his face was white; so white that his drooping mustache seemed dark in contrast. His eyes gleamed like ice when the sun is shining on it. He had the look of a man who has put his life behind him; a man who is waiting for just one thing before he dies--to select the ones whom he will take with him.
The cries behind redoubled, and the crowding increased in the rear.
Some leaped on the backs of those before them. But the men in the front ranks--some of them were bold men and deadly--withstood the pressure. They held their eyes on that grim, white face, or watched the two muzzles of that shotgun which he swept back and forth across their gaze with hypnotic effect.
It was a fine, large moment. Any one of them could have got him at the first shot. There was no chance of missing. And scores yearned to get him. Undoubtedly he had attained that pitch where he yearned for them to do it. And being thus to all intents a dead man,--save only that he retained the faculty of killing,--he was mightier than all of them.
Those in the front ranks were beginning to slip back; and as these escaped his presence the others, who had become exposed to it, struggled against the pressure of their fellows who would keep them in that position. Some of the cooler spirits were stealing away. The contagion of indifference spread. The mob was melting.
In the meantime one or two members of the Earp faction had procured a team and wagon. As soon as the lynchers had dispersed they stowed the prisoner in the vehicle, and set out for Tucson with a heavy guard.
But there was no pursuit. The reaction which follows perfervid enthusiasm of this sort had settled down upon the miners and cow-boys.
Johnny Behind the Deuce was tried before the district court, and--as was to be expected--he was acquitted.
Time went on and dissensions came among the followers of the Earp brothers. Curly Bill and John Ringo were among the first to fall out with the leaders, and they took the path of previous exiles to Charleston. But the country by the San Pedro was being settled up, and not long afterward they emigrated to Galeyville over in the San Simon valley. Thenceforth this little smelter town became the metropolis of the outlaws. Ringo spent most of his time here with occasional trips to Tombstone, where, on more than one occasion, he dared the Earps to try to take him. They did not accept his challenges. Finally he died by his own hand and his friend Curly Bill left the country.
In the meantime new secessions were taking place in the Earp following. The county of Cochise had been established. Tombstone was made the county seat. Johnny Behan, an old-timer and an Indian fighter, was the first sheriff. He was hostile to the city administration from the beginning. Nor was that all. Lawyers came into the town and henceforth--provided a dead man"s friends had money--killing an opponent no longer settled a dispute. There remained such complications as indictment, sworn testimony, and the jury. The good old days were pa.s.sing.
Sheriff Johnny Behan charged the Earps with partic.i.p.ation in robberies and wilful cognizance of murders.
It was about as far as he did go as a public official. The brothers issued profane and pointed defiance and went on dealing faro.
About this time Frank Stilwell quarreled with the Earps and hastily departed from Tombstone And henceforth, until the wind-up of the ugly affairs that followed, he remained at large, awaiting his opportunity for revenge.
Sheriff Behan was trying to get some good charge to bring against the brothers, and various lawyers--some of them widely known throughout the Southwest--were anxiously awaiting opportunity to appear as special prosecutors when the Benson stage was held up.
The Benson stage had been robbed often enough before, but this time the crime brought far-reaching consequences. Bud Philpots was driver and Bob Paul, afterward United States marshal, was shotgun messenger.
There was a large currency shipment--some eighty thousand dollars--in the express-box. The stage was full inside and one pa.s.senger, a Mexican, was riding on top. For some reason or other Bob Paul had taken the reins and Philpots was sitting in his place. As the vehicle came to the top of a hill the robbers showed themselves.
The old-timers speak of the conduct of the highwaymen with profane contempt for instead of shooting a horse or two, they opened fire on Bud Philpots, whom they believed from his position to be the messenger. They killed him and the Mexican pa.s.senger who was seated behind him. But the team took fright at the noise and ran away and the eighty thousand dollars went on up the road in a cloud of dust.
Johnny Behan, the sheriff, said that the Earp brothers sent Doc Holliday out with the Clanton brothers to commit the crime.
Ike Clanton said that he was rustling cattle at the time down in Mexico, and accused the Earps of sole responsibility.
The Earps in turn stated that the Clanton boys were the bandits.