Worlds That Weren't

Brocius narrowed his eyes and looked at Freddie. “Are you going to solve this problem for me, Freddie?”

“Yes. I think you should fold.”

Brocius pushed out a double eagle. “Call. I meant the other problem.”

Freddie dealt the next round of cards. “I think I have solved enough problems for you,” he said slowly. “I am becoming far too prominent a member of your company for my health. I think you should arrange the solution on your own, and I will make a point of being in another place, in front of twenty unimpeachable witnesses.”

Brocius looked at the table and scratched his chin. “You just dealt yourself an ace.”

“And that makes a pair. And the pair of aces bets fifty.” Freddie pushed the money out to the middle of the table.

Brocius looked at his hole card, then threw it down.

“I reckon I fold,” he said.

“Oh, they have bungled it!” Freddie stormed. “They have shot the wrong Earp!”

He paced madly in Behan’s parlor, while Josie watched from her chair. “The assassin was to shoot Virgil!” Freddie said. “He mistook his man and shot Morgan instead-and he didn’t even kill him!”

“Who did the shooting?” Josie said.

“I don’t know. Some fool.” Freddie paused in his pacing to furiously polish his spectacles. “And I will be blamed. This was supposed to occur when I was in the saloon, playing cards in front of witnesses. Instead it occurred when I was in bed with you.”

She looked at him in surprise. “Ain’t I a witness, Freddie?” she said in her mocking New York voice.

Freddie laughed bitterly. “They might calculate that you are prejudiced in my favor.”

“They would be right.” She rose, took Freddie’s hands. “Perhaps you should leave Tombstone.”

“And go where?” He put his arms around her. The scent of her French perfume drifted delicately through his senses.

“There are plenty of mining towns in the West,” she said. “Plenty of places to play poker. And almost all have theaters, and will need someone to play the ingenue.”

He looked at her. “My friends are here, Josie. And it is here that you are queen.”

“Amor fati,” she murmured. He felt her shoulders fall slightly in acknowledgment of the defeat, and then she straightened. “I had better learn to shoot, then,” she said. “Will you teach me?”

“I will. But I’m not a very good shot-my eyesight, you know.”

“But you’re a-” She hesitated.

“A killer? A gunman?” He smiled. “Certainly. But all my fights took place at a range of less than five meters-one was in a small room, three meters square. But still-yes-why not? It can do us no harm to be seen practicing.”

“What is the best way to become a gunman?” Josie said.

“Not to care if you die,” Freddie said promptly. “You must not fear death. I was deadly because I knew I was dying. John Holliday is dangerous for the same reason-he knows he must in any case die soon, so why not now? And John Ringo-he does not value his own life, clearly.”

She tilted her head, looked at him carefully. “But you weren’t dying at all. You may live as long as any of us. Does that make a fight more dangerous for you?”

Freddie considered this notion in some surprise. He wondered if he now truly had reasons to live, and whether the chief one was now in his arms.

“I am at least experienced in a fight,” he said. “I’ll keep my head, and kill or die as a man. It is important, in any case, to die at the right time.”

Small comfort: he felt her tremble. Treasure this while you may, he thought; and know that you have treasured it before, and will again.

In the event it was not Freddie who died first. Three days after James Earp was appointed sheriff, Curly Bill Brocius was found dead on the road between Tombstone and Charleston. Two friends lay with him, all riddled with bullets. The only Earp not a suspect was Morgan, with a near-mortal wound in his spine, who had been carried into the county jail, where he was guarded by a half-dozen of the Earps’ newly deputized supporters.

The other three Earp brothers, and a number of their friends, were not to be found in town. For several days the sound of volleys boomed off the blue Dragoon Mountains, echoed over the dry hills. Apparently they were not all fired in anger: most were signals from the Earps to their friends, who were bringing them supplies. But still three Cowboys were found dead, shot near their homes; and the Clanton spread was burned. A day later John Ringo rode into town on a lathered horse, claiming he’d been chased by a half-dozen gunmen.

“And Holliday’s with them,” Ringo said. “I saw the bastard, big as life.”

Freddie’s heart sank. “I was afraid of that.”

“His hip’s still bothering him, and Virgil’s leg. Otherwise they would have caught me.” He blew dust from his mustache and looked at Freddie. “We need a posse of our own, friend.”

“So we do.”

They called out their friends, but a surprising number had made themselves scarce. Freddie and Ringo assembled a dozen riders, all that remained of Brocius’s mighty outlaw army, and hoped to pick up more as they rode.