The Sunset Trail Part 33

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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Let Charlie Swear to the Papers."]

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 endors.e.m.e.nt. 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 doc.u.ment 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 a.s.sembled 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 coa.r.s.e 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 G.o.ds 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 l.u.s.ting 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.