Epitaph (41 page)

“And you can take your sisters with you, so your old man can't hurt them anymore. You could make a new life, Ike. Start fresh. I had sisters, too,” Wyatt reminded him. “It's important to take care of them when your old man is a mean sonofabitch.”

Ike's face darkened. “He is. He is a mean sonofabitch. I had to protect the kids.”

“Me, too, Ike. That's just how it was for me.”

Ike circled around again. “What about Billy?”

Ike had taken care of Billy, his younger brother, the way Wyatt took care of Morgan. “He can go with you to California if you want,” Wyatt said, “but I think he gets along with your old man.”

“Yeah. Yeah, Billy gets along with the old man,” Ike agreed. “So I just gotta find out where Henry and Jim is.”

“And Bill Leonard, too.”

“Bill Leonard, too. I tell you. I get the reward. You get the votes. And I can take care of my sisters.”

“And Doc Holliday gets clear. You got it now,” Wyatt told him. “Don't tell anybody else, Ike. This has to be our secret.”

“Our secret,” Ike said. “Don't tell anybody else.”

“I won't either,” Wyatt promised.

And he kept his word, but it wouldn't matter in October. Not to Ike. Not to anybody.

W
HEN TOMMY MCLAURY WENT INTO TOMBSTONE
for supplies at the end of April, he didn't go straight to the grocery store. Instead, he rolled past Calisher's and pulled up just beyond First to see how Mrs. Earp's garden was doing and to give her one of his hound pups.

He was hoping Morgan Earp would be out of town and that Lou would be out front tending the garden so he could talk to her a while. But he had it planned out in his mind, in case Mr. Earp was there that afternoon. Maybe sitting out on the front porch reading a book. Or having a cup of coffee and a smoke.

“Morning,” Tom would say. “I don't know if you remember me, sir. I'm Tom McLaury.”

Morgan might not have said anything then. He was the friendly Earp, the good-natured one, but he'd remember about the mules, so Tom planned to explain how Billy Clanton came by and why the McLaurys couldn't return the animals to Lieutenant Hurst though they meant to. Then to get off the mules, Tom would say, “I am happy to see those flowers are doing well.” If Mr. Earp was surprised to learn that Tommy was the neighbor who'd brought them, Tom would say, “Yes, sir, I'm the one,” because his conscience was clear. He might have sinned in his heart—coveting another man's wife—but he hadn't done anything to get himself shot by a jealous husband, either. He'd say, “Mrs. Earp was trying to get lilacs to grow here, and I guessed they
wouldn't do well. So I brought her plants that like to bloom in this kind of country.”

There might have been an uneasy silence then, but ice would surely break when the puppy began to whimper. Tommy would hop down and go around to drop the gate. “My hound bitch had a litter,” he'd say. “I was thinking—since you're gone so much—maybe Mrs. Earp would like one. I thought she might get lonely or scared sometimes, being on her own like that. A dog can be a good companion.” Tommy would open the box in the wagon bed and hand over a fat, squirming pup. “There's seven others, back at the farm,” he'd tell Mr. Earp. “My hounds are good dogs, but I can't keep 'em all. I'd take it kindly if you and Mrs. Earp would take this one, sir.” Then they might talk about the puppy a bit, but in the end Tommy expected Mr. Earp would look him in the eye and say something like “This is neighborly of you, and the flowers were, too. But no more.” And Tom would take that with good grace.

From the start, he had been troubled that Lou was not free to accept his love or the life he wanted to offer her. When he brought the flowers last month and helped her plant them, Lou herself told him not to bring her any more gifts. That was a sorrow to him, but he accepted it. Thing was, he really did have eight pups to dispose of, so he told himself that if Lou took one of them, she'd be doing
him
a favor and that would make them even for the flowers. And from then on, Tommy could touch his hat to her and Lou could smile at him in a nice neighborly way, just like her husband would have wanted.

Except Morgan wasn't home that morning. He was playing pool over at Bob Hatch's Billiard Parlor when Tom McLaury brought that puppy into town.

FOR A LONG TIME,
Morgan Earp couldn't understand the point of playing games. If he had time to pass, he preferred to read. He'd never paid any attention to billiards until he lived in Dodge and started watching Jacob Schaeffer play at Dog Kelly's saloon. These days, Jake
was the world champion of straight-rail billiards, but even three years ago, when Jake was just a skinny young bartender with plenty of time to practice, Morg knew he was something special. Watching Jake nurse balls was like watching Wyatt work a horse or listening to Doc Holliday play piano. You couldn't hardly believe how good he was. That's why Morg didn't even think about learning the game in Dodge. Jake set a fence that was too high for a regular person to clear.

When Bob Hatch opened a billiard parlor in Tombstone, Morgan still wasn't interested. Then Doc Holliday told him about how Bob kept a bunch of live frogs in a jar on the bar and claimed he could tell the weather from them.

“How in hell does he do that?” Morg wanted to know.

“Well, I don't imagine Arizona weather is all that difficult to predict,” Doc said. “Most of the year, your best bet is ‘more of the same.' If it is August and you say, ‘It will be stinkin' hot tomorrow,' I calculate you'll be correct a minimum of thirty times out of thirty-one.”

But Morgan stayed curious about the frogs, so he stopped in at the pool hall to ask Bob Hatch about them. Bob came from Maine, and he was kind of hard to understand until you got used that choppy, sing-songy way he talked and how he skipped his
r
's. When Morg asked about the frogs, Bob said, “These heah ah
toads
,” and “Down east, they sing louda when a stoam's a comin'.” So Bob and Morgan got to talking about the difference between toads and frogs, and the differences between toads from Maine and toads from Arizona. During that discussion, Morg bought a beer. Bob offered to let him try his hand at billiards without charging him a table fee, and Morgan Earp's fate was sealed.

“There's no such thing as a free sample,” Hattie Marcus would have told him, and she'd have been right, for once he got started, Morgan Earp could not get enough of playing billiards.

He liked the crack of the ivory balls on a well-hit break, and their hushed roll across the felt. He liked the feel of the cue in his hand, the smell of tobacco and chalk. He liked the sound of the beer mugs
clinking and Bob's toads chirping. Soon, playing billiards for Morgan was like practicing piano for Doc. “It will yield to persistence,” Doc always muttered when he was having trouble with a new piece, and that was the way Morgan felt about all the little puzzles in billiards. You had to see the lay of the balls after the break and find a series of moves in them. You had to vary the cue speed and shape your shots so you'd be in position for the next hit or make your opponent scratch. It was a hard game to play well, and he understood now why Doc got so cranky if you talked while he was practicing. Morgan, too, liked the way everything around him sort of faded while he was at the table.

Which is why he wasn't aware that somebody on Allen Street was hollering for him until Bob Hatch called, “Moe-gan! Lady outside. Wants you!”

Morg went to see what the trouble was, and there was Allie, fists on her hips, glaring at him from under that big slat-brim bonnet of hers.

“I knew it was going to come to this,” she informed him, like he had any idea what she was talking about. “I told Virg, and he was supposed to say something, but nobody does
anything
around here except me! So now I'm telling you to get home and look after your affairs, Morgan Earp.”

With that, she stalked off, her little feet going about twice the speed of Morg's and her mouth going faster than that.

“Look at you! What kind of grown man spends all his time playing with sticks and balls? When are you going to stop drifting and do something with your life? That's what she's asking herself, Morgan! Either marry her or let her go!”

It went on like that, down Allen Street and up First Street, with Morgan amused, then bemused, then confused, and sort of insulted. When they turned onto Fremont, Allie came to a sudden halt and waited for Morgan to see what she saw: Lou, standing in the front yard, surrounded by the flowers that “a neighbor” brought her.

Holding something in her arms like it was a baby.

Smiling at Tom McLaury.

“Prettiest man I ever saw,” Allie declared, “and one to give you Earp boys a run for your money. He's gonna be somebody someday. He's already got two hundred acres under alfalfa! Well? Don't just stand there gawping. Do something!”

It was all body, what he felt. A punch in his chest like his heart made a fist. A great cold wave of emotion that was probably fear but which he named anger.

“McLaury!”
he bellowed. “Get the hell away from her!”

Alarmed, Tommy touched his hat to Lou, climbed onto his buckboard, and slapped the reins on his team's back. He was out of reach by the time Morgan came stomping up to the house, but if Morg expected Lou to be embarrassed or ashamed, he had another thing coming.

“You had no call to shout at him like that,” she started, a fat spotted puppy squirming in her arms. “He was just being nice. I
told
you I wanted a dog, Morgan. You never did anything about it and Mr. McLaury did, and I am
grateful
!”

“And you don't think he wants something in return?”

“And you think I'd
give
him something in return? Is that what you're saying, Morgan Earp? You're gone six days out of seven, doing I-don't-know-what up in Benson and Tucson, and you have the nerve to ask me if I'd cheat on you? I'm here all by myself, and just last week, a drunk tried to get into the house—”

“Did you call for Virgil?” he asked, shocked.

“Yes, but Virg was gone, too! Allie came over with a shotgun, but what if she hadn't heard me? This neighborhood is getting worse and worse, and it's just not right to leave me alone so much! Why can't you find a job in town? You're thirty years old, Morgan! What have you got to show for it? When are you going to make something of yourself?”

“I'm making three-fifty a day with Wells Fargo. And Wyatt's got a lot of irons in the fire—”

“Oh,
Morgan
!” Exasperated, Lou put the wriggling puppy down. “Wyatt's a dreamer! First
it was going to be a stagecoach line. Then it was going to be a race track. Then it was going to be water rights. Now it's the sheriff's office. His big plans never
amount
to anything. You just drift along, waiting for his nothing to turn into something, and it never does!”

Suddenly she was in tears, and it wasn't Tom McLaury, or Wyatt's big plans, or Morgan's job anymore. It turned into “What
am
I to you, Morgan?” and “Are we
ever
going to get married?” And “I want a baby, Morgan! Why don't
any
of us have any
children
?” She was sobbing by then, and Morgan was so stunned, he just stood there, gawping, until he finally said, “Damn, Lou. I didn't know you was so unhappy!”

“Well, how
would
you know?” she cried, stamping her foot. “You're never home! You just expect me to wait until you get back from Benson or billiards or the Cosmopolitan, and I
hate
it! I hate Tombstone, and I hate Arizona, and I
miss
you! Even when you're in town, I miss you, Morgan.”

It went on like that for a while. Her telling him how they'd been together almost four years and she was still waiting for something to happen—and she didn't even know what she was hoping for! Just
something
that would lead to something else. Progress. Movement! Not just drifting from day to day. Him saying he was sorry and promising things would get better and swearing off billiards. He'd quit Wells Fargo and look for work in town. He told her they could go find a preacher right now, right this minute, if that's what she wanted, but she only cried harder and said that would make Allie feel bad because Virgil couldn't marry her.

By that time, the puppy was yapping for attention and making fierce little growly sounds and flinging himself about. It was comical, and when she was calmer, Lou wiped her eyes and picked him up again. “I'm keeping him,” she warned.

“He got a name?” Morg asked cautiously.

“Higgs,” she decided.

Why Higgs? Morg wanted to ask, but he didn't want to risk getting her started again. “Higgs,” he said. “Higgs is good. Higgs it is.”

“DOC,” HE ASKED A FEW DAYS LATER,
“you ever think about kids?”