Tombstone

Here at the old Brunckow mine, Al Sieber riding up with a party of scouts found Schieffelin sitting on a pile of rock on guard with his rifle across his lap.

“What’re you doin’, Ed?” asked Sieber.

“Prospecting, mostly,” Schieffelin drawled.

“Whar?”

“Over yonder.” Schieffelin waved his hand eastward toward the hills.

“Them hills?” scoffed Sieber. “Thar ain’t nothin’ thar.”

“I’ve picked up some mighty nice-looking stones.”

“All you’ll ever find in them hills’ll be your tombstone,” warned the scout. “Geronimo’ll git you ef you don’t watch out, and leave your bones fer the buzzards to pick.”

“I’ll take a chance,” Schieffelin replied.

His life against a million dollars. That was his chance.

A wide, shallow dry wash leading up from the San Pedro Valley, its sloping sides green with gramma grass and flowering weeds. Ocotillos whose tall, curving, graceful wands springing from a central root were like green jets from a fairy fountain. Chollas armed with needle-sharp spines as thick as bristles on a wild boar, brandishing weirdly deformed arms like truculent devils. Green and yellow mescal plants that shot thirty feet in air skyrocket stalks that exploded in starry white blooms. Schieffelin on his mule, rifle across his saddlebow, travelling through the wash at a walk, looking for stones.

From the yellow, shadowy ramparts of the Dragoons nine miles across the mesquite mesa, a tall slender column of smoke, shimmering darkly in the sun, rose straight into the sky. It broke from its base and drawing slowly upward into space melted from view. A quick, ball-like puff of smoke shot upward like a bursting bomb. Again a slim spiral shorter than the first. Another explosive puff. Another. Once more a brief pillar. Dash.⁠ ⁠… Dot.⁠ ⁠… Dash.⁠ ⁠… Two dots.⁠ ⁠… Dash. Up there somewhere on the mountain wall a half-naked Apache, manipulating a deerskin over a brush fire, was telegraphing a code message to some war party in the valley. A queer little smile twisted the corner of Schieffelin’s mouth. What was that fellow saying? Humph! He tightened a bit his grip on his rifle and went on looking for stones. Find his tombstone? Well, maybe.

He turned a corner of the wash. His mule halted abruptly, ears pricked, forelegs stiffly braced. What was that that gleamed so snowy white among the clumps of bear grass? An outcropping of white rock, perhaps.

An ominous confused murmur rose from the direction of the hill, a deep moaning bellow like that of brutes stirring to fury, the note of menace unmistakable. The mob was starting. Here it came in a rushing, crushing mass eastward through Fifth Street. It surrounded the Oriental. A yell went up like a rocket⁠—“He’s in the bowling alley.” With a roar, the mob turned for the rush to the bowling alley. As it changed front, it came face to face with Wyatt Earp at a distance of twenty paces. He stood alone in the middle of Allen Street, a double-barrelled shotgun resting in the crook of his elbow.

“Hold on, boys.” Wyatt Earp raised his hand and for a moment kept it poised in air. “Don’t make any fool play. There ain’t no sense in this.”

The mob halted in its forward sweep.

“Where’ve you got that murdering rat hid?”

“He’s right in there.” Wyatt Earp jerked his thumb at the bowling alley. “And he’s going to stay in there. He’s my prisoner now, and you fellers ain’t goin’ to get him.”

“The hell we ain’t.”

“You boys better disperse.” Wyatt Earp said it as calmly as he might have said “Tut-tut” to naughty urchins in school. “Go on home. Go on back to work. I’m here to take care of this prisoner. And I’m going to take care of him.”

While the smuggler train moved slowly through the canyon, up and down over the rough trail, in and out among trees and giant boulders, around many a corner of towering precipices, a solitary horseman lounged easily in his saddle in the sequestered coolness of the tall cathedral rocks that form the Devil’s Kitchen. He was a burly figure, with bull neck, round swarthy face, and a shock of curly black hair, and from his appearance might have been a wandering cowboy resting for a while in the shade of the deep recess. His hat was pushed back from his brow, and he had a look of carefree good-nature as he gazed with calm indifference across the level grassy floor of the canyon and heard the gurgle of the creek on the far side rippling over sand bars under the green shadows of willow trees. Though one might have wondered at his purpose in this lonely place, one who had ever seen him before would have been in no doubt as to his identity. This was Curly Bill.

From far up the canyon through the golden, sunny stillness came the faint tinkle of a bell.

There was seeming magic in the dim, silvery shiver of sound. Curly Bill was instantly transformed from listlessness into electric animation. He straightened tensely in his saddle. His dark face froze in the rigidity of sculpture.

As an artist at make-believe, why should he worry about death? Death was reality. There was no art in death.

The Bird Cage Theatre was crowded. The evening’s entertainment was of that excellence Tombstone was wont to expect in this home of refined vaudeville. In one of the upper boxes sat Russian Bill in the midst of a bevy of red-light beauties, and waiters were busy hustling bottles of champagne from the downstairs bar. When the Tombstone Nightingale tripped from the wings and stood smiling behind the footlights, the audience greeted this ever-popular queen of song with vociferous cheering and waving beer mugs. The orchestra struck up something soft and plaintive, and the beautiful cantatrice launched into a soulful aria. Her rich soprano was trembling on a top note when a rough, drunken voice roared from the end box directly above the stage.

“Rotten. Who ever told you you could sing?”

The Tombstone Nightingale cut short her melody. Indignation blazed from her eyes. Billy Hutchinson, theatre proprietor, rushed upon the stage, several hard-looking gentlemen known as bouncers at his heels.

“Hey you, up there!” Billy Hutchinson shook his fist menacingly. “What do you mean by this outrage?”

Raucous laughter was his answer. The man hidden from view of the audience behind the box curtains was plainly a tough hombre and doubtless far gone in drink.

“You cut that out,” yelled Billy Hutchinson. “I’ll stand for no more disturbance from you. Interrupt this lady again and you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

The man in the box subsided. The Tombstone Nightingale, taking a step nearer to the footlights, resumed her song. Again the drunken voice:

“Awful. Rats. Take her out. Get the hook.”