Tombstone quotes

“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.

His face was half-hidden by a heavy curly brown beard and a mass of dark, tangled, unkempt hair fell upon his shoulders.

But, oddly enough, no one laughed at this weird figure that would have frightened crows from a cornfield

; no sly, snickering comment accompanied the sidelong glances. There was something in the bearing of the stranger that touched his rags with a certain nobility;

The very name of Tombstone, with all it implies of history, drama, romance, and achievement, is itself an intangible but enduring monument to the pioneer who, with steadfast faith and courage, followed his dream into the deserts. Schieffelin rests in the glamour of it.

He sleeps forever in the shadow of a name.

A mining town in the heart of a cattle country, it had the picturesqueness of a boom silver camp and the colour of a trail-end, cowboy capital.

It was a town of lawlessness and law, saloons and schools, gambling halls and churches, lurid melodrama and business routine, red lights and altar candles.

It was Hangtown of the gold-rush days of ’Forty-nine. It was San Francisco of the Stranglers. It was Virginia City, Alder Gulch, Poker Flat, and Deadwood.

Courts sat in session while stage drivers threw out their treasure boxes to road agents at the edge of town. Pinafore sung by town amateurs drew patronage from the bacchanalian allurements of the Bird Cage Opera House.

Tombstone was Bret Harte brought up to date.

News of Schieffelin’s discovery flew far and fast, and from the four corners of the West came the stampede of fortune hunters. From the ends of railroad steel at Deming on the east and Yuma on the west, they poured into the Arizona valleys.

these drivers, it was said, could flick a fly from a mule’s ear at twenty paces with their long whips. One sees the ruts of these ponderous wains today, cut three and four inches deep in solid limestone in the old trails.

Night was distinguished from day in Tombstone only by darkness and stars.

Saloons and gambling houses were never closed. Day and night, the long bars were crowded. Night and day, the gambling tables girdling the saloon walls were surrounded by tense throngs. Gamblers dealt or sat lookout with their sombreros on and their six-shooters buckled around them.

“But,” replied Mr. Clum dubiously, “epitaphs are usually mere chiselled lies.”

“Well,” declared Schieffelin philosophically, “they tell the truth about as often as newspapers.”

Pat Hamilton, Sam Purdy, Harry Brook, John O. Dunbar, Harry Wood, Dick Rule, William O’Neill, and O’Brien Moore were the editorial thunderers of the Tombstone press, later achieving some celebrity in politics and journalism in other parts of the country.

He was, after a kind, a cynical philosopher, and his passing observations were spiced with a dry, acrid humour.

Life seemed a bitter joke to him.

He was reconciled to tuberculosis, he said, because it had left him so thin that it took mighty good shooting to hit him. He was still ready to bet, however, that in the homestretch drive, a bullet would nose out consumption at the wire.

No scruples of any kind handicapped the doctor in his busy life. Though square with his friends, who would have trusted him with their last dollar, his honesty had various shades and nuances.

If honesty was convenient, he was honest; otherwise, he used a cold deck.

His courage was his one outstanding virtue. He was afraid of nothing. Despite his delicate appearance and his physical weakness, there was something in the calm, cold look of him which warned of danger.

In a happier environment, he would have been considered a splendid character. He was sunny, companionable, kindly, honest, generous, loyal.

But in Tombstone he was a twenty-two calibre man in a forty-five calibre town.

Tombstone thirsted for strong waters; John Behan had only sarsaparilla and lemon pop on tap.

It was as if a truculent pygmy with twanging bow were shooting pins at some drowsy old saga giant. But when Johnny Behan fell back upon the ingratiating tactics of a politician, the advantage was all on his side.

Johnny Behan was friendly, Wyatt Earp was grim; Johnny Behan smiled, Wyatt Earp shot from the hip; Johnny Behan was the personification of the glad hand, Wyatt Earp the personification of the trigger finger.

… A lion stalks with measured stride through the dewy shadows. Back of him is the darkness of the donga. The moon is a sickle of silver in a glowing green sky against which a tall palm leans blackly.

Wyatt Earp’s jaws set. His eyes blazed. His face in that tense moment was so marble-white that his tawny moustache looked black against it. Again he swept the crowd with his levelled gun, and death lurked in the black depths of those twin muzzles.

“Kill me.” His voice had a conversational steadiness.

“I’m ready. Ought to be easy; there are enough of you. But I’ll do a little killing myself. You can get me; but I’ll take a few of you to hell with me.”

They dressed old Dick in a brand-new suit of black clothes with white shirt, white collar, and black bow tie, Curly Bill contributing the money and insisting on such mortuary regalia.

“Them old duds of Dick’s,” he said, “wuz good enough fer ridin’ range, but now he’s dead, he oughter look stylish like a regular corpse.”

The spring wagon hearse went at a gallop out of town, the outlaws clattering behind and firing at every jump. At the grave in the cactus on the hill, Curly Bill tucked a pint of whisky beneath the dead man’s folded hands.

Jerry Barton, a saloon man noted for his strength, was said to have killed seventeen men, three in handkerchief duels and two with his fist. When Jim Wolf inquired how many men Jerry had in his private graveyard, the giant pursed his brows reflectively.

“Do Mexicans count?” he asked.

Justice of the Peace Jim Burnett, erratic czar of the town, having trouble with the Board of Supervisors over his fees, announced that in the future “this court will take care of itself,” and thereafter remained in rebellion against the county authorities and put all …

Little things like that were always happening in Galeyville. Every five minutes or so, day and night, somebody was firing off a gun.

Galeyville was one of the most healthful spots in Arizona, but three doctors did a fine practice patching people together.

… While showing what an expert he was at whirling a six-shooter, Jim Johnson shot himself in the leg. Blood poisoning set in, and the doctor said amputation was necessary. But Jim wouldn’t have it.

John Ringo stalks through the stories of old Tombstone days like a Hamlet among outlaws, an introspective, tragic figure, darkly handsome, splendidly brave, a man born for better things, who, having thrown his life recklessly away, drowned his memories in cards and drink and drifted without definite purpose or destination.

As Curly Bill’s right-hand man, he took part in the raids of his outlaw associates, drank and gambled with them, was one of them in crime and dissipation, but he remained a man apart.

He evidently had fallen far, but even in the tragic ruin of his life he retained something of the dignity and commanding qualities of his former estate.

He was, if ever there was such a thing in the world, an honourable outlaw.

His word once given was kept inviolately. Those to whom he made a promise could be sure he would fulfill it to the last letter, or die trying. Old-timers still tell of his quixotic ideals regarding women.

When he had folded the missive and put it back in its envelope, he fell into momentary silent reverie. He shook his head sadly as he held out the envelope to Breakenridge.

“Seems strange,” he said, “for a tough, no-good fellow like me to get a letter like this.”

“Sweetheart?” queried Breakenridge, noting the superscription was in a woman’s hand.

Holliday took a quick step toward him.

“I’m your huckleberry, Ringo,” replied the cheerful doctor. “That’s just my game.”

Holliday put out a hand and grasped the handkerchief. Both men reached for their six-shooters.

They held counsel together as they went to the corral after their ponies. A fellow named Webb was spreading down four aces on the table as Ringo and Estes reentered at the front door.

“If I know anything about poker,” remarked Ringo, covering the players with his gun, “a six-shooter beats four aces.”

Having pocketed $500, the two outlaws rode off across the mountains. Ringo had perpetrated such little pleasantries before, and the gentlemen who had been robbed had always laughed heartily, feeling it a little unsafe to do anything else.

“So those fellows couldn’t take a joke, eh?” said Ringo, greatly astonished.

“The damned blacklegs have no sense of humour.”

Deputy Breakenridge was in a hurry to get back to Tombstone. Ringo had some business matters to settle.

This was a question that did not concern him. 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.

The bell had rung for the curtain. Russian Bill’s drama was ending.

He had learned how an outlaw should swagger and pose but he had neglected to learn how an outlaw should die.

His histrionic art had prescribed no rules for the proper gesture, the correct attitude, at the final tragedy. The big third-act climax had caught him unprepared. The artist in make-believe at last had come face to face with the grim, lonely reality of death.

After all, Russian Bill had needed no art to teach him how to die. He knew.

He had lived like an actor. But he met death like a man.

After the bodies had been cut down and the tables and chairs set back in their places, the hotel landlord, still hot under the collar at this unwarranted interruption of his customary routine, hustled in the steaming supper dishes, and his patrons, chafing at the …

Tombstone was amazed that a fellow with such a tragic record could take the world with such lighthearted gaiety.

Geniality and deadliness seemed his most distinctive characteristics; his heart apparently was overflowing with fun and murder.

Buckskin Frank became in time one of Tombstone’s six-shooter personages. He was unquestionably one of the quickest men with a Colt’s in the country. He shot with the same accuracy at a tin can as at a man who happened to be firing at him.

Leslie was at liberty to step out of her bullet silhouette. Then, as finishing detail, the Michelangelo of the six-shooter would touch in eyes, nose, and mouth with a few final shots.

“Ah, magnificent,” he would say, cocking his head at his masterpiece with immense satisfaction. “Your friends will admire this portrait. It looks exactly like you.”

All Tombstone, in fact, marvelled at the artistry of these mural portraits, which remained on the parlour walls for years and were shown with great pride by the citizens to visitors to town, the Leslie cottage serving in lieu of a municipal art gallery.

Beyond Drew’s ranch, six miles out of Contention, the stage crossed a dry wash.

The wash was broad and deep, and on the far side, the road angled at a sharp grade up a hill.

Up this incline the horses went at a walk. It was growing late; the sun was dipping toward the Huachucas; long, cool shadows lay across the landscape.

“You are the man I want,” cried McLowery. “I’ve got you now.”

“Got me to get,” flung back Holliday with a poisonous smile.

McLowery rested his six-shooter across his left arm and drew a careful bead. Just as he pulled the trigger Holliday suddenly turned sideways to him.

A bullet fired, it was believed, by Virgil Earp, struck him full in the breast, and he toppled over upon his back. But the fearless youth was still not ready to die or give up the battle.

“Just one more shot,” he murmured as if in prayer. “God! Just one more shot.”

He was too weak to roll over, too weak to raise himself to shooting position. He managed to prop his head against the foundation stones of the house at his rear.

Citizens carried Billy Clanton across the street into Dr. George Goodfellow’s upstairs office.

“Pull off my boots,” whispered the dying boy. “I promised my mother I’d never die with my boots on.”

As he breathed his last, the promise to his dead mother was fulfilled. The bullet that had killed him passed through a letter from his sweetheart which he had carried in his pocket.

Morgan lingered for a half hour. He smiled faintly as the clock on the wall marked midnight.

“The game’s over,” he said in a clear voice.

The game of life and the game of pool both over. Life for him had been in truth a game, and he had played it with the spirit of a cavalier adventurer, gaily, carelessly, recklessly, bravely—above all, bravely.

… Virgil and Morgan Earp, two of the fighting Earp triumvirate, one dead, the other broken in health and disabled by wounds, both victims of assassins who had tracked them relentlessly in skulking secrecy and whose cowardly vengeance had blazed out of the darkness of night.

Of the three warrior brothers, Wyatt Earp alone was left⁠—one, but a lion.

Stilwell, Spence, and Indian Charlie arrived at the Spence home while Morgan Earp was dying. Spence was white and trembling, according to his wife, and his teeth were chattering. Stilwell left almost immediately, and Indian Charlie an hour or so later.

Half drowned in the thunderous rumble of the train, a sudden explosive report boomed upon the fireman’s ears as he leaned out the window of the engine pilot house. Then another. Four more in quick succession. Six in all.

“Sounded like shots,” yelled the fireman across the cab to the engineer sitting at the throttle.

“Some drunk celebratin’, I guess,” the engineer shouted back.

Old-timers, hostile, of course, will sometimes tell today in careless phrase how the Earps were “run out of Tombstone.” This is how they were run out. In such deliberate manner did they take their “flight.”

They fled at a walk.

So Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday turned their backs upon the past with its drama and romance and tragedy, and riding on over the deserts and the purple mountains, disappeared from Tombstone forever.

As the curtain rolled down upon the drama of his stormy career, Holliday looked death in the face, as he had looked life in the face, with his old calm courage and humorous cynicism.

“I used to offer odds of eight to five,” he said, “that in spite of consumption, I’d cash out some day at the end of a six-shooter when I happened to run foul of a man an eighth of a second quicker on the draw. It seems almost like tough luck to lose that bet.”

Holliday’s last words were, “This is funny.” The friends watching at his bedside thought his mind wandering.

It seems almost like tough luck to lose that bet.”

Holliday’s last words were, “This is funny.”

The friends watching at his bedside thought his mind wandering.

It seems ridiculous to imagine the tragedy occurred in this way. But before dismissing such a possible explanation as utterly absurd, it may be well to wait a while. Crimes are not always to be solved by logical deduction.

Impossibilities have a queer way of changing into facts.

“The Widow Patterson,” said Henry Smith, “was convinced that John Ringo’s ghost haunted her home at Myers Cienega. She got so she wouldn’t go in a dark room alone for fear of seeing Ringo.

Far across the shimmering, sunny reaches of Sulphur Springs Valley the Dragoons are like a ribbon of amethyst in the west. Against the eastern sky loom the blue and shadowy Chiricahuas.

The wide mouth of West Turkey Creek Canyon is like a wooded grass-green park.

The air holds the sweetness of juniper and pine. A woodpecker tapping on a dead sycamore by the creek makes a hollow, booming sound in the deep silence. Lonely and still and peaceful is the spot where the outlaw lies.

The first thing he did was to get drunk. Foolish fellow. If ever he needed a clear brain and steady nerves he needed them now. A loaded man is hopeless against a loaded six-shooter.

When Nemesis staggers, it is safe to copper vengeance and play the bet to lose.

Frank Leslie was standing on the outside of the bar in the Oriental saloon talking with a group of men when in reeled Billy Claibourne. Fingering their glasses idly, the men at the bar looked at him without interest. They did not know him.

Leslie went back into the Oriental, tied on his white bartender’s apron, and again took his place behind the bar.

“What’ll be yours?” he asked a customer cheerfully. “A dry Martini?”

He mixed the cocktail deftly, strained it off into a glass, and dropped an olive in.

An eleventh-hour witness declaring with his dying breath he saw him murdered. One, of course, may suspect, if one cares to, that Claibourne’s statement was a last desperate, revengeful effort to injure the man he had failed to kill.

But one must remember also that men, consciously dying, rarely lie.

So the matter awaits the verdict. How did John Ringo die? Suicide or murder—which?

“The old superstition that thirteen is an unlucky number hasn’t worked out in my case,” Leslie remarked to Macia.

“I killed thirteen men and never once saw the inside of a prison. It was my fourteenth that caused all my trouble. But,” he added with a whimsical shrug, “my fourteenth was a woman.”

Tombstone saw Buckskin Frank for the last time when, soon after his release from prison, he passed through town accompanied by Professor Dumble, geologist of the Southern Pacific Railroad, on the way to coal mines being developed by the railroad company in Mexico.

The big adventure over, everybody laughed—even the bride. From the other side, the Rio Grande had seemed a stream of turgid ugliness. From this side, it had a certain majestic beauty.

When it comes to rivers, the bank you stand on sometimes makes all the difference in the world.

“See that range ahead?” Slaughter said to his bride one morning after the drive had left Silver City and Shakespeare behind and had come into the northern reaches of the Animas. “Arizona is on the other side of those mountains.”

As they rode at dusk through a narrow passage where the precipitous cliffs almost came together three rifles blazed from the shadows darkening the gorge. As the bullets whizzed among them, the Mexicans halted for one amazed moment and then fled for their lives.

“And that,” Slaughter used to say, “is the only time I remember ever having been murdered.”

All this while, Slaughter was achieving a reputation as an Indian fighter. Adept in all the wiles and stratagems of the cunning war craft of the Apaches, he outfought them on their own ground and in their own way.

“What did you mean by saying they couldn’t kill you?” asked Mrs. Slaughter.

“Just that,” answered her husband. “No man can kill me. I wasn’t born to be killed. How I know that, I cannot explain. But I know it. When my time comes, I’ll die in bed.”

Slaughter met Lyle a few days later in Herrera’s store in Charleston and drew his six-shooter.

The shell of a metropolis housed the population of a village. The busiest, gayest, wildest, toughest little city in the Southwest faded into a ghost town.

Tombstone, dying in the desert, was left to its tragedy.

This decadent period was notable for a lax administration of law and the absence of strong men at the helm of public affairs. Crime flourished as never before.

From fifteen thousand to three thousand, the number of inhabitants dwindled so quickly the change seemed like black magic. Stores, saloons, and gambling places closed their doors. Allen Street, once noisy with traffic, showed only a dull spark of animation.

Plate-glass windows of vacant business establishments stared blankly, like the eyeless sockets of death’s heads, out into the empty thoroughfare.

Grass grew in outlying streets lined, block on block, with tenantless dwellings. Spiders spun their webs in the cribs and dens and haunts of revelry of the old red-light district. All the old picturesque life vanished; yesterday it was here, today it was gone.

No genius for words, almost inarticulate, but a man of quick judgments and decisive action. A cold exterior belied a fiery, restless, relentless personality.

His spirit was like a flame burning in a casing of ice.

An upright, honourable man, direct, businesslike. To his friends, friendly. To his enemies and the enemies of law embodied in himself, coldly, tragically, remorselessly merciless.

I should think it would, have been difficult to lie to Slaughter. When he looked at me, his eyes seemed to be burning a hole into my brain. I used to fancy he was taking an inventory of all my secrets.

If someone had held a newspaper at the back of my head, it wouldn’t have surprised me if Slaughter, looking straight through my skull, had read the want ads.

”

He rarely raised his voice, but everyone within sound of it listened. Those to whom he gave an order jumped to obey it. He did not stammer, but he had a way of beginning a remark with “I say, I say.”

One of his quaint maxims was: “I say, I say, always shoot first and holler ‘Throw up your hands’ afterwards.”

Though not a dandy, he was fussy about his clothes, which were always of expensive material, tailored, and immaculate.

They were half-boots, after the cowboy fashion, high-heeled, with a touch of colour and fancy stitching at the tops, and of the finest, softest leather. His trousers were always tucked in them, and his heavy-rowelled spurs were never removed.

Anyone who failed to see Slaughter’s face could identify him by his feet.

A black Mexican cigar clenched between his even white teeth seemed a part of him, and associated with him as indelibly in Tombstone’s memory as his gray horse were a diamond ring on the little finger of his left hand and a pearl-handled six-shooter worn …

But, knowing what he did about Soto’s clandestine affairs, Slaughter looked upon the verdict as an outrageous miscarriage of justice. Soto’s guilt had not been proved to the satisfaction of the jury. Slaughter knew he was guilty.

The jury of twelve men had brought in a verdict of innocence; the jury of one man returned a verdict of guilt.

When, a few days later, Soto rode to his home in Contention at dawn after one of his nocturnal adventures, Slaughter stepped from a doorway with his pearl-handled six-shooter at a level.

A bullet cut through his heart. He lay there in the dark for an hour or more, his lantern on the ground beside him shining on his dead face. The express messenger was closing the sliding side door of his car when he was killed.

Every phase of heroism received the accolade of a bullet this wild night.

Now at their leisure, the bandits rifled safe and mail sacks. Then they rode off. The hoofs of their horses in the darkness made fine, dashing music to which fifteen thousand dollars marched away.

The express messenger was closing the sliding side door of his car when he was killed. Every phase of heroism received the accolade of a bullet this wild night. Now at their leisure, the bandits rifled safe and mail sacks. Then they rode off.

The hoofs of their horses in the darkness made fine, dashing music to which fifteen thousand dollars marched away.

But Jack Taylor, leader of the band, had lost his hat during the excitement. This bold fellow must have a hat. He stepped into a store in Nogales. He clapped a new hat on his head. Price?

He shines out as a type of competent, splendidly equipped frontiersman. Daniel Boone was not better fitted for pioneer Kentucky than he for pioneer Arizona. His mission was to clean up Tombstone, and he did a thorough job.

He brought peace at the blazing end of a gun. He shot the town full of law and order.

He is not classed as a bad man in the traditions of the Southwest, but no desperado was ever more feared than this inscrutable man who stood uncompromisingly for law and shot from the hip with amazing dexterity.

He woke one night and found her gone. He heard a rustle off in the darkness. The little Apache girl was crawling away silently through the grass. The starlit mountains had whispered, “Come back.” She was going home.

Her wild little heart had heard the call of the wild.

So the Apache baby took her place as one of the family at the San Bernardino ranch. Mrs. Slaughter, having regard to the month, named her Apache May. But this was too big a name for such a mite. It was changed to Patchy.

The international line is within a stone’s throw of the front porch. Back of the barn lies Mexico.

You may see a mule cropping grass in the United States while its tail is busy switching flies in a foreign land.

John Slaughter built a home here at San Bernardino worthy of a cattle king. About his long, one-story adobe house with its deep, cool verandas, giant cottonwoods formed an oasis in the treeless valley.

San Bernardino ranch, intact today, is a domain of baronial extent.

Its boundary fences are mountain ranges, its corner posts sun-kissed peaks.

Watered by Guadalupe Creek and the Rio San Bernardino, it occupies the width of San Bernardino Valley and extends from the Guadalupe Mountains on the east to the Silver Creek range on the west and from the San Simon Valley watershed on the north to …

A business man going home to lunch journeys straight up by a series of ladderlike steps that bear street names. If you enjoy mountain climbing, Bisbee will appeal to you as an ideal place of residence.

If you happen to be fat, you will fall into a panic at mere sight of the town.

Under the main street is a giant subway to drain off the water when it rains.

A moment afterward, the street, as you might say, was empty. Shoppers on the sidewalk ran into the stores. Shoppers in the stores, though curious, stayed there. Dan Dowd kept on firing up the street, and Red Sample kept on firing down.

As their bullets were singing Christmas carols on the sidewalk, three friends and business associates, Tex Howard, Bill Delaney, and Dan Kelly, were inside the store doing their Christmas shopping with six-shooters.

While proprietors, clerks, and customers stood lined along the walls with hands in the air, the trio rifled the cash drawers, ransacked the safe, looted the show cases of watches and jewellery, and scooping everything into a sack, rejoined their companions in the street.

Heath was arrested and placed in jail at Tombstone. It was established later that he had planned the robbery.

Just a shade too much of enthusiasm had landed Heath in the shadow of the gallows.

Deputy Sheriff Daniels traced Dan Dowd into Chihuahua. The two men met one day on the street of Corralitos, a little mining town in the Sierra Madre Mountains.