Worlds That Weren't

Brocius was just drunk enough to say yes. Ringo looked at Freddie. Freddie shrugged. “Might as well,” he said. “That was the back end of bad luck.”

“Luck?” Ringo handed him a ticket. “It looked to me like you couldn’t resist whenever Doc raised the stakes.”

“I was waiting for him to get drunk. Then he’d start losing.”

“What was in your mind, raising on a pair of jacks?”

“I thought he was bluffing.”

Ringo shook his head. “And you the only one of us sober.”

“I don’t see that you did any better.”

“No,” Ringo said sadly, “I didn’t.”

They made their way out of the Occidental, then turned down Allen Street in the direction of Shieffelin Hall. The packed dust of the street was hard as rock. The night was full of people-most nights Tombstone didn’t close down till dawn.

Brocius struck a match on his thumb as he walked, and lit a cigar. “I plan to go shooting tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve changed my gun-filed down the sear so I can fan it.”

“Oh, Lord,” Ringo sighed. “Why’d you go and ruin a good gun?”

“Fanning is for fools,” Freddie said. “You should just take aim- ”

“I ain’t such a good shot as you two,” Brocius said. He puffed his cigar. “My talents are more organizational and political. I figure if I got to jerk my gun, I’ll just fan it and make up for aim with volume.”

“You’d better hope you never have to shoot it,” Freddie said.

“If we win the election,” Brocius said cheerfully. “I probably won’t.”

Even the drinking water must be carried to us on wagons, Freddie wrote in his notebook a few hours later. The alkali desert is unforgiving and unsuitable for anything but the lizards and vultures who were here before us. Even the Indians avoided this country. The ranchers cannot keep enough cattle on this wretched land to make a profit-thus they are dependent on the rustlers and smugglers for their livelihood. The population came because of greed or ambition, and if the silver ever runs out, Tombstone will fly away with the dust.

So why, when I perceive these Cowboys in their huge sombreros, their gaudy kerchiefs and doeskin trousers, do I see instead the old Romans in their ringing bronze?

From such as these did Romulus spring! For who was Romulus? A tyrant, a bandit, a man who harbored runaways and stole the cattle-and the daughters-of his neighbors. Yet he was noble, yet a hero, yet he spawned a great Empire. History trembles before his memory.

And now the Romans have come again! Riding into Tombstone with their rifles in the scabbards!

All the old Roman virtues I see among them. They are frank, truthful, loyal, and above all healthy. They hold the lives of men-their own included-in contempt. Nothing is more refreshing and wholesome than this lack of pity, this disdain for the so-called civilized virtues. They are from the American South, of course, that defeated country now sunk in ruin and oppression. They are too young to have fought in the Civil War, but not so young they did not see its horrors. This exposure to life’s cruelties, when they were still at a tender age, must have hardened them against pieties and hypocrisies of the world. Not for them the mad egotism of the ascetic, the persistent morbidity-the sickness — of the civilized man. These heroes abandoned their defeated country and came West-West, where the new Rome will be born!

If only they can be brought to treasure their virtues as I do. But they treat themselves as carelessly as they treat everything. They possess all virtues but one: the will to power. They have it in themselves to dominate, to rule-not through these petty maneuverings at the polls with which Brocius is so unwisely intoxicated, but through themselves, their desires, their guns… They can create an empire here, and must, if their virtues are to survive. It is not enough to avoid the law, avoid civilization-they must wish to destroy the inverted virtues that oppose them.

Who shall win? Tottering, hypnotized, sunken Civilization, or this new Rome? Ridiculous, when we consider numbers, when we consider mere guns and iron. Yet what was Romulus? A bandit, crouched on his Palatine Hill. Yet nothing could stand in his way. His will was greater than that of the whole rotten world.

And-as these classical allusions now seem irresistible-what are we to make of the appearance of Helen of Troy? Who better to signal the end of an empire? Familiar with Goethe’s superior work, I forgot that Helen does not speak in Marlowe’s Faustus. She simply parades along and inspires poetry. But when she looked at our good German metaphysician, that eye of hers spoke mischief that had nothing to do with verse-and the actor knew it, for he stammered. Such a sexual being as this Helen was not envisioned by the good British Marlowe, whom we are led to believe did not with women.

I do not see such a girl cleaving to Behan for long-his blood is too thin for the likes of her.

And when she tires of him-beware, Behan! Beware, Faustus! Beware, Troy!