Worlds That Weren't

In the morning he learned that it had been Curly Bill Brocius who was shooting, drunkenly fanning his revolver into the heavens; and that when the town marshal, Fred White, had tried to disarm him, Brocius’s finger had slipped on the hammer and let it fall. White was dead, killed by Brocius’s modified gun that would not hold the hammer at safety. A small battle had developed between Brocius’s friends and various citizens, and Brocius had been slapped on the head by Wyatt Earp’s long-barreled Colt and arrested for murder.

The next bit of news was that Marshal White’s replacement had been chosen, and that Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp was now in charge of enforcing the law in the town of Tombstone.

It is like Texas again! Freddie wrote in his journal. It is not so much the killing, but the mad aimlessness of it all. Would that Brocius had been more discriminating with those bullets of his! Would that he had shot another lawman altogether!

The good citizens of Tombstone are overstimulated, and to avoid the possibility of a lynching the trial will be held at Tucson. I believe that law in Tucson is no less amenable to reason than was the law in Texas, and I have no fear that Brocius will meet a noose.

But while Brocius enjoys his parole, Tombstone must endure the Earps, in their black uniforms, marching about the streets like so many carrion crows. It is their slave souls they hide beneath those frock coats!

But I stay above them. I look down at them from my new rooms in the Grand Hotel. My landlady on Toughnut Street did not approve of what she called my “immortality.” Though she was willing to accept as rent the gambling winnings of a known killer, she will not tolerate love in her back room. The manager of the Grand Hotel is more flexible in regard to morals-he gives me a front room, and he tips his hat when Josie walks past.

But I must train his cook, or indigestion will kill me.

How long has it been since a woman held me in her arms? Three years? Four? And she was not a desirable woman, and did not desire anything from me other than the silver in my pocket.

Ach! It was a mad time. Life was cheap, but the price of love was two dollars in advance. I shot three men, and killed two, and the killing caused far less inconvenience than a few short minutes with a dance-hall girl.

Nor is Helen of Troy a dance-hall girl. She cares nothing for money and everything for power. The sexual impulse and conquest are one, and both are aspects perhaps of Jewish revenge. It is power that she seeks. But most atypically, her will to power is not based on an attempt to weaken others-she does not seek to castrate her men. She challenges them, rather, to match her power with their own. Those who cannot-like Behan-will suffer.

Those who act wisely, perhaps, will live. But I cannot be persuaded that this, ultimately, will matter to her.

“I don’t understand,” Freddie said, “how it is that Virgil Earp can be Town Marshal and Deputy U.S. Marshal at the same time. Shouldn’t he be compelled to resign one post or another?”

“Marshal Dake in Prescott don’t mind if his deputy has a job on the side,” said John Holliday.

“I should complain. I should write a letter to the newspaper. Or perhaps to the appropriate cabinet secretary.”

“If you think it would do any good. But I think the U.S. government likes Virge right where he is.”

Holliday sat with Freddie in the plush drawing room of the Grand Hotel, where Holliday had come for a visit. Their wing chairs were pulled up to the broad front window. Freddie turned his gaze from the bright October sunshine to look at Holliday. “I do not understand you,” he said. “I do not understand why you are friends with these Earps.”

“They’re good men,” Holliday said simply.

“But you are not, John,” Freddie said.

A smile crinkled the corners of Holliday’s gaunt eyes. “True,” he said.

“You are a Southerner, and a gentleman, and a Democrat,” Freddie said. “The Earps are Yankees, not gentle, and Republicans. I fail to understand your sympathy for them.”

Holliday shrugged, reached into his pocket for a cigar. “I saved Wyatt from a mob of Texans once, in Dodge City,” he said. “Since then I’ve taken an interest in him.”

“But why?” Freddie asked. “Why did you save his life?”

Holliday struck a match and puffed his cigar into life, then drew the smoke into his ravaged lungs. He coughed once, sharply, then said, “It seemed a life worth saving.”

Freddie gave a snort of derision.

“What I don’t understand,” said Holliday, “is why you dislike him. He’s an extraordinary man. And your two greatest friends admire him.”

“You and who else?”

“Your Sadie,” John Holliday said. “She is with Wyatt Earp this moment, across the street in the Cosmopolitan Hotel.”

Freddie stared at him, and then his gaze jerked involuntarily to the window again, to the bare facade of the Cosmopolitan, built swiftly and of naked lumber, devoid of paint. “But,” he said, “but-Earp is married-” He was aware of how ridiculous he sounded even as he stammered out the words.