Bloody Season by Loren D. Estleman Read Free Book Online

the horse—he was in the act of leading his horse—turned to the other man who was talking to him and looked up to the man and said ‘If you wish to find us, you will find us just below here.’ That is all I saw at this time. The tall man who was talking to the man with the horse went down the street. Then I stepped back into the shop again.”
    She twisted the handkerchief. “The butcher was in the act of cutting the meat when someone at the door said, ‘There they come!’ and I stepped to the door and looked up the sidewalk and I saw four men coming down the sidewalk. I only knew one of the party and that was Mr. Holliday. And there were three other gentlemen, who someone told me were the Earps. Mr. Holliday was next to the buildings, on the inside. He had a gun under his coat. The way I noticed the gun was his coat would blow open and he tried to keep it covered.
    “I stood in the door until these gentlemen passed and until they got to the second door. And what frightened me and made me run back, I heard him say, ‘Let them have it!’ and Doc Holiday said, ‘All right.’ Then I thought I would run, and ran towards the back of the shop, but before I reached the middle of the shop, I heard shots; I don’t know how many. I don’t know who said, ‘Let them have it.’ I cannot describe the party. It was one of them that was with Holliday.”
    C. H. Light. I reside in the City of Tombstone. I’m a minin’ man.”
    The young miner wore a stiff brown suit with shelf creases in the trousers and a clean gray workshirt buttoned at the throat without a cravat. He had a pink, girlish mouth and his fair hair was parted to the right of center and swept down over his right eyebrow. His Cornish accent was so thick that Matthews had to ask him several times to repeat himself more slowly. He sat on the edge of the chair with his elbows on his knees and his palms sliding against each other with a rasping sound, his body twitching with nervous energy.
    “There seemed to be six parties firm’, four in the middle of the street and one on the south side of the street, and the one with the horse. Afterwards, I recognized the man with the gray clothes to be Doc Holliday. I think there were about twenty-five or thirty shots fired altogether. I did not see any of the parties have a shotgun. The fight occurred about one hundred and thirty or forty feet away from where I was. I think, from the reports, that the first two were pistol shots. I think that there was one report from a shotgun. I do not think the whole of it occupied over ten or fifteen seconds.”
    “Your name is William F. Claiborne and you reside in the City of Tombstone, County of Cochise, Arizona Territory, and you are a driver in the employ of the Neptune Mining Company?”
    “That’s right.”
    Claiborne, who had gotten some people to start calling him Billy the Kid once William Bonney had relinquished both the nickname and his life in New Mexico the previous summer, slouched on his spine in the chair, his long bony legs thrust out in front of him with his spurs marking the floor. He had sandy hair cropped close, exaggerating his long jaw and sail-like ears and the puppy hairs on his lip that vanished when sunlight struck them. He was just twenty-one and wore striped pants and a new shirt buttoned all the way up.
    “The day this thing happened,” he said, “I went down with Ike Clanton to Dr. Gillingham’s office to assist him in getting his head dressed, and then I walked up Fourth Street and met Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury, and Billy axed me where was Ike. He said, ‘I want to get him to go home.’ He said he did not come here to fight anyone ‘and no one didn’t want to fight me.’ Then he axed me to go down to Johnny Behan’s stable with him, and we went down there and through the O.K. Corral.
    “Then Mr. Behan come up and was talking to the boys. I did not hear what he said to them. I was talking to Billy, and Behan was talking to Ike Clanton