it was growing dark in california gulch. red jack, the barkeeper of the four flush saloon, began to light up one by one the kerosene lamps, so that the four flush might be made resplendent against the advent of its evening customers. just then the customers were at flap-jacks and bacon, for it was supper time in california gulch. having rendered the four flush a blaze of expectant glory, red jack took a rag and mopped the bar, already painfully clean. then he shifted the two six-shooters, which were part of the concealed furniture of the bar, so that vagrant drops from careless glasses might not bespatter them.
commonly, red jack consoled himself by whistling the “mocking bird,” at this hour, when the stones of the four flush were grinding low. on this particular evening he was mute. also his glance, when now and then he cast it upon mr. masterson and mr. holiday, who were engaged in whispered converse over a monte table just across the room, showed full of decorous interest.
not that red jack objected to mr. masterson and mr. holiday holding a conference on the premises. it was plain by the respectful softness of his eye that he dwelt in sympathy therewith, and was only restrained from making a third for the pow-wow by an experience which taught him never to volunteer advice or put a question. patronage and curiosity are crimes in the west, and ones sophisticated will not risk their commissions.
however, red jack might, without violating the canons of his tribe and region, relieve himself with one act of amiable politeness. while he could not have a share in the talk between mr. masterson and mr. holiday, wanting an invitation to join them therein, he was free to provide the inspiration. wherefore red jack brought a bottle and two glasses, and set them between mr. masterson and mr. holiday. having thus made himself one with them in spirit, red jack left the pair to themselves, and made the rounds of the lamps to turn down ones which in a primary exuberance had begun to smoke.
“it’s tough lines, bat,” said mr. holiday, as he poured himself a drink. “i’ve never done anything worse than down a man, always a warrior at that, and now to have to rustle a party, even when it isn’t on the level, comes plenty hard.”
“but it’s the one thing to do, doc,” returned mr. masterson. mr. holiday had been a dentist in his native georgia, and his intimates called him doc. “it’s the only trail,” reiterated mr. masterson. “the message says that they start to-day from tucson. they’ll be in denver day after to-morrow. the only way to beat them is to have you under arrest. our governor won’t give up a man to arizona who’s wanted here at home. those reward-hungry sports from tucson will get turned down, and meanwhile you will be on bail. that arizona outfit can never take you away while a charge is pending against you in colorado. you’ll be safe for life.”
“that wouldn’t be for long,” returned mr. holiday, “at the rate my lungs are losing.”
mr. holiday was in the grasp of consumption, as one might tell by the sunken chest and hollow eye, even without the cough which was never long in coming. it was this malady of the lungs which had brought him west in the beginning.
“on the whole,” objected mr. holiday, following a moment of thought, “why not go back to arizona and be tried? it’s four to one they couldn’t convict; and i’ve gone against worse odds than that every day since i was born.”
“man!” expostulated mr. masterson, “it would never come to trial. you wouldn’t get as far as albuquerque. some of the band would board the train and shoot you in the car-seat—kill you, as one might say, on the nest! it isn’t as though you were to have a square deal. they’d get you on the train: get you with your guns off, too, for you’d be under arrest. doc, you wouldn’t last as long as a pint of whiskey at a barn-raising.”
mr. masterson spoke with earnestness. his brow was wise and wide, his cool eye the home of counsel. it was these traits of a cautious intelligence that had given him station among his fellows as much as any wizard accuracy which belonged with his six-shooters.
“what is your plan, then?” said mr. holiday.
“you see the off wheeler over yonder?” mr. masterson pointed to a drunken innocent who was sunk in slumber in a far corner of the saloon. the off wheeler having no supper to eat, was taking it out in sleep. “you go to the edge of the camp,” continued mr. masterson. “when you’ve had time to place yourself, i’ll wake up the off wheeler and tell him to take my watch to the belle union. you stand him up and get it. then i’ll have him before the alcalde to swear out a warrant. you see, it will be on the square as far as the off wheeler is concerned. at the same time, because we don’t mean it, it won’t be robbery; you can console yourself with that. it’ll be a bar to those reward hunters from tucson, however, with their infernal requisition papers. they ought to be called assassination, not requisition, papers, for that is what it would come to if they took you from here. now, do as i tell you, doc; your friends will understand.”
mr. holiday pulled his sombrero over his forehead and went out. ten minutes later mr. masterson aroused the off wheeler by the genial expedient of holding a glass of whiskey beneath his sleeping nose. the off wheeler, under this treatment, revived, with all his feeble faculties, and drank the same. then he turned a vacant look on mr. masterson.
“take my watch to the belle union,” observed mr. masterson, giving the off wheeler the timepiece. “give it to dick darnell and tell him to take care of it. i’m going to play poker to-night, and if i keep it with me it’ll work its way into a jack-pot and get lost. i go crazy when i’m playing poker, and will bet the clothes off my back.”
the off wheeler was pleased with this speech; the more since it smacked of a friendly confidence on the part of mr. masterson. to be on even terms with the most eminent personage in camp flattered the off wheeler. he departed on mr. masterson’s errand, mr. masterson having first enlivened his heels with a five-dollar bill.
in twenty minutes the off wheeler was back in the four flush, and as well as he might for the chattering terrors of his teeth telling mr. masterson how mr. holiday had held him up at the street corner with one hand, and confiscated the watch with the other.
“he didn’t even pull a gun!” wailed the off wheeler. “i wouldn’t feel it so much if he had. but to be stood up, an’ no gun-play, makes it look like he was tryin’ to insult me.”
“all right,” returned mr. masterson, preserving a grave face, “you get a drink, and then we’ll have out a warrant for that bandit’s arrest. we’ll show him that he can’t go through the quietest gent in california gulch and get away unpunished.”
“you don’t reckon now,” observed the off wheeler faintly, “that mr. holiday would turn in an’ blow the top off my head, if i swore ag’inst him, do you?”
“i’ll attend to that,” said mr. masterson; “i’ll see that he doesn’t harm you.”
then the off wheeler was brave and comforted; for who did not know the word of mr. masterson?
“it’s all right, judge,” said mr. masterson.
the magistrate, with his sleeves rolled up from a hard day’s work in his shaft, had been brought from supper to make out the affidavit. when he understood for whom it was designed he hesitated in a mystified way.
“it’s all right,” repeated mr. masterson. “let the off wheeler swear to the papers; i’ll take the responsibility. and, by the way, you might better authorise me to execute the warrant.”
thus it befell that mr. holiday was presently brought in by mr. masterson on a charge of robbing, with force and arms, one charles stackhouse alias the off wheeler. the bail was fixed, and half the men in california gulch went on the bond. when these technicalities were complied with, mr. masterson, glancing at the very watch of which the off wheeler had been depleted, said:
“doc, it’s eight o’clock. we’ve got to get back to the four flush. you know we’re to have a game there at eight-thirty.”
mr. holiday, six years before, had left georgia for the west. he brought with him a six-shooter, a dentist’s diploma, a knowledge of cards, and a hacking cough. when story-tellers mean to kill a character off without giving him a chance, they confer upon him a hacking cough. it was true, however, in the case of mr. holiday; a hacking cough he had, and whenever it seized him it was as though one smote against his breastbone with the bit of an axe.
in the west mr. holiday’s diploma would do him little good. there lives no more of western call for a dentist than for one who paints flowers upon silks. wherefore, and because mr. holiday must dine and drink until he died of that consumption, he took to cards.
now, cards make up a commerce wherein the west confesses an interest. mr. holiday became a busy man, and encountered fortune, black and white; but he never complained until one dallas evening, when a gentleman said that he held six cards. the game was draw poker, and a hand consisting of six cards would have been an inexcusable vulgarity.
there was no long-drawn discussion. the gentleman who had mentioned the six cards cut off debate with a colt’s pistol. mr. holiday met the situation half way, and dallas buried a foremost citizen.
dallas blamed no one.
“they broke even as to guns,” said dallas, “and joe lost.”
from dallas mr. holiday travelled into the panhandle. perhaps his broken health made him irritable, or possibly he was over-sensitive. whatever the argument, when a rude spirit, a rider for the frying pan ranch, whom he met in tascosa, spoke of mr. holiday as one who ought to have been clerking in a store, he promptly hived him with a bullet through his heart. this was when mr. willingham flourished as sheriff for the panhandle; but as that officer was over towards goodnight’s at the time, no fault should attach to him. panhandle sentiment, as had that of dallas, justified mr. holiday; his critic had his guns on when he perished, and that is, or should be, sufficient wherever justice holds the scales.
from the panhandle mr. holiday migrated to denver. no one packs a gun in denver, at least no gun big enough to win the respect of mr. holiday. yielding to the jealousy of denver touching pistols, our dying one from georgia put his irons aside. he felt lonesome without them, a feeling that grew into disgust when a rough, having advantage of his weak condition, heaped contumely on his head, mr. holiday sighed as he drew a knife—it was carried somewhere between his shoulders—and altered the appearance of the insolent one to such a degree that he was as a stranger to his friends.
it was six months later when mr. holiday next claimed attention by listlessly emptying his pistol into the head of a gentleman who had laid unlawful claim to a stack of his chips. they were reposing, coppered, in what faro gamesters term the big square.
this homicide, which occurred in las vegas, also found popular endorsement. the illicit action of departed had placed him beyond the pale. there is no love in the west for rash or wicked ones who illegally covet their neighbour’s chips. the episode bore somewhat upon mr. holiday, however, who had an imagination edged by books. he was heard to mourn a trifle.
“i don’t see what’s the matter with my luck,” said mr. holiday, as he arranged with an undertaker on the plaza for the obsequies. mr. holiday was too well bred to leave a burden upon the community, and even his enemies admitted that he never failed to make a proper clean-up and always buried his dead. “i don’t see what’s the matter with my luck,” repeated mr. holiday, “but it looks as though i had more of this sort of thing sawed off on me than any invalid in the territory.”
“that’s what!” replied the undertaker, sympathetically. his sympathy in no wise dimmed the brilliancy of his bill, which document did him proud.
following that las vegas difference, mr. holiday withdrew to tombstone. it is best for a gentleman, when he has filled a grave with one other than himself, to seek new theatres of effort. in tombstone, foremost in the social and business swirl of the camp, mr. holiday became acquainted with the brothers earp. said brothers, being respectively virgil, wyatt and morgan, were all splendid shots and sterling folk of standing, character and force. the brothers earp and mr. holiday became friends at sight. it was as though a fourth had been born into the earp family.
the east, supercilious and white of shirt, should avoid a narrow view of western men and manners. the east should not measure up the west by eastern standards. while the west pays its faithful interest, and does not borrow more than one-fifth of the security, the east should rest content. the one is a banker, the other a warrior; one employs interest, the other uses a gun; both kill.
virgil earp was marshal of tombstone. it was a post not wanting in vicissitudes, and virgil earp’s arm had been crippled and made as naught by a shotgun in the hands of an illwisher. but it was his left arm; his right, with the hand that appertained, was all that one might ask. what more should a western marshal require than a perfect pistol hand and eye to match?
wyatt and morgan earp were in the service of the express company. they went often as guards—“riding shotgun,” it was called—when the stage bore unusual treasure.
over in the san simon valley lived a covey of cattle people, with curly bill at its head. the cow business is a lazy trade. it leaves plenty of idle time in the hands of ones who follow it. those of the san simon were by nature bubbling springs of industry. since the cattle trade did not employ their whole energy, they oft repaired to a nearby trail and stopped the tombstone stage.
there came an occasion when curly bill could not go with the expedition, and that was unfortunate. he was obliged to entrust the enterprise to subordinates, who bungled the affair. they shot the stage driver when they should have shot a wheeler. the reins fell from the driver’s dead hands; the fear-maddened team ran away and carried one hundred thousand dollars in gold from beneath the larcenous palms of the hold-ups. in their wrath the road agents sent a volley after the rocking, reeling, disappearing coach. it snuffed out a tourist who was riding outside.
four days went by, and a quartette of the san simon people, being the mclowrie brothers, frank and john, and the clanton brothers, billy and ike, came into tombstone to spy out how much was known or guessed of those desperately poor workmen who had so let the stage job fall through. the investigators discovered that more was known than stood best for their health. they lost no time in deciding to ride back to the san simon.
virgil earp had made a different plan. the san simon, as a region, would not suffer in its respectability were it never again to see a clanton or a mclowrie. with a purpose to detain the san simon delegation, virgil earp assembled his kinsmen, wyatt and morgan. to be polite, virgil invited mr. holiday, then but a week in tombstone, to have his smoky part in the coming war. he might act with the earp household in that proposed round-up of the road agents.
virgil earp did this in a spirit of politeness. it is western manners when you have a fight to make—one that is commodious and in which there is room for their honourable accommodation—to invite your friends. this you may do to a point that brings your party even with the enemy. you must not, however, overtop the foe in numbers. that would be the worst of form, and fix you as coarse and low and ignorant in every refined mind. with only a trio of the earps, there existed in the pending engagement a reputable vacancy, and virgil asked mr. holiday to fill it. mr. holiday accepted. to decline such a courtesy would want a precedent and destroy one’s good repute. such action on mr. holiday’s part would have shocked the tombstone taste, which is as silken as a spaniel’s ear.
the brothers earp and mr. holiday met the san simon outfit as the latter, mounted for the long ride, came spurring forth of the corral. there was no time frittered in speech. the san simon contingent jumped from their saddles, each using his horse as a breastwork. the brothers earp and mr. holiday had no horses to cover them. a horse makes a good breastwork, but a bad gun-rest.
the gods fought on the side of the law, the stage company, the brothers earp, and mr. holiday. there was a rattle of six-shooters. two mclowries and one clanton fell with bullets where their thoughts should be. the smoke lifted, and there stood ike clanton begging his life.
“run for it, then, you coyote!” cried wyatt earp, and the suppliant heaved himself into the saddle and sped with the flying wind.
“that was a mistake, wyatt,” quoth mr. holiday; “you should have collected his hair.” mr. holiday was far of sight; before a week went by events arose to justify his comment.
after the battle the brothers earp and mr. holiday repaired to the nearest saloon and refreshed themselves. then the stage company’s surgeon came and stopped up the bullet holes, whereof the four owned seven among them. tombstone meanwhile issued forth in a body and joyfully planted the dead.
six days later, having advantage of the darkness, ike clanton, with mr. spence, mr. stillwell, and one florentine, a mexican, crept to the rear window of the eureka saloon, and shot dead morgan earp, engaged at seven-up.
virgil and wyatt placed the body of the dead morgan in a coffin and, with mr. holiday to be of the mourners, carried it to colton. at colton the body would take the train for california, the home of the earps. virgil would go as company for the dead.
wyatt earp and mr. holiday rode as far as tucson. they would have gone to california with the dead morgan, but they did not have the time. it was now their duty to get the scalps of the san simon four who had worked the destruction of morgan. also, to save their reputations and secure their prey, they must move at once before the trail grew cold.
fortune and luck were theirs. as the train, bearing the dead morgan, drew into tucson, the hawk-like gray eyes of mr. holiday showed him messrs. stillwell and clanton on the station platform. he pointed out the red-hand ones to wyatt earp.
the two swung from the train.
the quarry separated, mr. clanton running craftily in and out among the crowd, while mr. stillwell, with an utter dearth of war-wisdom, fled along the lonely track. wyatt and mr. holiday pursued mr. stillwell, and brought him to bay near the water tank. filling him full of lead, they returned, and rapped on the car-window to attract the attention of virgil.
“one!” cried wyatt, holding up a finger.
virgil looked up; the funeral sadness of his face for a moment gave way to a smile. he nodded, and then the train pulled out.
that night wyatt earp and mr. holiday turned tucson upside down hunting for the evanscent mr. clanton. he had fled and left no sign.
“i must sleep, wyatt,” said mr. holiday, at last.
one is not to forget that mr. holiday was an invalid, with days not only numbered, but few. his fatigue was excusable. that he was wearied to a standstill his yellow moustache, a-tremble with the nervous twitching of his lip, made proof.
speaking of mr. holiday’s moustache—the colour of corn: is it not the thing strange how those gentlemen of guns and perils should have been every one of the gray-eyed strain? or was it that the desperate drop in the veins of each came from some old forgotten viking ancestor of that yellow-haired, battle-axe breed which once foraged and fought along the coasts of northern europe?
mr. holiday was vastly repaired by a long night’s sleep. the morning found mr. holiday and wyatt earp in the saddle, their belts heavy with cartridges, war-bags bulging with provant. they rode out of tucson, and their desperate campaign of revenge commenced. they invaded the san simon and blotted out the mexican florentine. this was slight work, like the killing of a jack-rabbit. there should be braver game in the san simon.
the san simon ranks, however, were growing thin. mr. spence, fear-winged, had fled into mexico. the surviving mr. clanton had made good his flight begun that tucson evening, and was never traced.
curly bill, the san simon chief, owned a better courage, and wyatt earp and mr. holiday found him at the whetstone springs. there was a battle royal; wyatt earp and mr. holiday on the one side, with curly bill and a couple of his adherents on the other. curly bill was rubbed out, while wyatt earp, shaving eternity, had the cantle of his saddle torn away with a double handful of buckshot. the two adherents of curly bill, while somewhat shattered, escaped.
“with pete spence in mexico,” said wyatt earp to mr. holiday, as he changed his shattered saddle for the saddle of curly bill, “and ike clanton nowhere to be found, i take it we might as well quit and call it a day.”
“there’s nothing else,” said mr. holiday.
mr. holiday and wyatt earp rode back to tombstone. they were in their rooms when a word of warning reached them. that recent blazing work in tucson and in the san simon had invoked the invidious admiration of a sheriff who was lusting for fame. he was even then below with a posse brought from afar, equipped of warrants and weapons and ready to apprehend them.
“what do you say, doc?” asked wyatt earp.
“for myself,” said mr. holiday, smothering a cough, “i think i shall shoot my way out. considering the state of my lungs, it would endanger my health to be locked up.”
they sent down quiet word, and had their horses saddled and brought around. then mr. holiday and wyatt earp walked into the centre of that aspiring posse. there was a giving way; no one stretched his hand to stay their going. only the ambitious sheriff spoke.
“mr. earp,” said he, sweetly, “i want to see you.”
“my friend,” said wyatt earp, turning on the other a glance of warning, “you may see me once too often.”
mr. holiday and wyatt earp, at a road-gait, took the trail for tucson. in the blistering heat and whiteness of the summer dust, they disappeared; that was the last of their story in tombstone. they didn’t see tucson; at a fork in the trail they halted.
“well, adios, doc,” said wyatt earp, extending his hand. “write me in ’frisco how the world goes with you.”
“i will,” returned mr. holiday. “i shall try colorado. i must consider my health, and i prefer the climate there. adios!”
it was a year later when the arizona sheriff, who stood aside that tombstone day, broke into california gulch, and the wisdom of mr. masterson became for mr. holiday a shield of thickness.
“your papers,” observed the governor to him of arizona, “are in proper form, and set clearly forth the death of one stillwell at the hands of mr. holiday. but mr. holiday is under charges here for robbery on the highway. you cannot expect me to cheat justice of its due in colorado, in order to send you a man whom you should never have let escape. the requisition must be refused.”
mr. holiday lived on in california gulch, sheltered by the charge of the off wheeler. it protected him to the end, which was not far away. when his sands were running low, mr. masterson was by his couch.
“you must have used up a ton of lead, doc,” observed mr. masterson one afternoon, being in a mood of fine philosophy; “and, considering your years in the west, it beats the marvellous. it would look as though you simply shot your way out of one battle into another. how did you come to do it?”
“it used to worry me,” gasped mr. holiday, “to think that i must die, and, to take my mind off my troubles, i mixed up with everything that came along. it was the only way in which i could forget myself.”
california gulch was present at the funeral. they buried mr. holiday beneath a clump of cedars high up on the mountain side, and red jack draped the four flush bar in mourning.
“we’re going to miss him,” he remarked, with a lugubrious sigh, to mr. masterson, when, after the services, the latter came in for his evening drink. “we’ll shorely miss him from our midst! an’ when i think on his c’reer, sort o’ run over it hittin’ the lofty places, i’m here to observe that he was the vividest invalid, an’ the busiest, with which i ever crossed up. he certainly was an in-dee-fat-ig-a-ble sick man; an’ that goes!”