Bloody Season by Loren D. Estleman Read Free Book Online Page A

and Frank and Tom McLaury. And then, shortly afterwards, Mr. Behan turned his back and walked up the street and the next thing I saw was Morgan Earp and his two brothers and Doc Holliday. And Marshal Earp said, ‘You sons of bitches, you have been looking for a fight and now you can get it!’ They both said the same thing at the same time, and Marshal Earp said, ‘Throw up your hands!’ which Billy Clanton, Ike Clanton, and Frank McLaury did, and Tom McLaury took hold of the lapels of his coat and threw it open and said, ‘I have not got anything.’
    “And at the same instant the shooting commenced by Doc Holliday and Morgan Earp. The first shot taking Tom McLaury was fired by Doc Holliday, and the next one was fired by Morgan Earp, taking Billy Clanton. And Billy Clanton was shot with his hands in this position.” He sat up, raising his long callused palms level with his eyebrows. “Billy Clanton said, ‘Don’t shoot me, I don’t want to fight!’ And that was the last I seen of Billy alive.”
    Matthews was idly drawing a human rib cage in the right-hand margin of his notes with a pencil. “At what point were weapons drawn?”
    “When the Earp party come up they had their pistols in their hands. I saw Billy Clanton draw his pistol after he was shot down. I saw Frank McLaury draw his pistol after about six shots had been fired by the Earps. Tom McLaury did not have a weapon of any kind.”
    The jury deliberated for two hours and returned to the hearing room murmuring among themselves and trailing cigar fumes. For the first time since the inquest was convened, all of the witnesses who had testified were assembled on the benches. Outside the window the shadows had lengthened to encompass the scene of the killings under examination.
    Conversation sloped off as the jurors took their seats in the box. Matthews waited for complete silence, then turned to address saloonkeeper R. F. Hafford, seated in the corner nearest him.
    “Has the coroner’s jury reached a verdict?”
    Hafford rose, a tall, teamster-shouldered man with a round beard and his fingers curled under the hem of his black frock coat. “We have.”
    “Please state it for the record.”
    Hafford drew a folded sheet from an inside breast pocket and opened it, coughing into a pudgy fist to clear away phlegm. Ike Clanton, watching, stopped chewing.
    “We the jury find that William Clanton, Frank and Thomas McLaury came to their deaths in the town of Tombstone on October twenty-sixth, eighteen eighty-one, from the effects of pistol and gunshot wounds inflicted by Virgil Earp, Morgan Earp, Wyatt Earp, and one Holliday, commonly called Doc Holliday.”
    Ike resumed chewing. He leaned over toward Billy Claiborne, close enough for the latter to smell Levi Garrett’s on his breath. “Well, who in hell never knew that?” he whispered. “What’s it signify?”
    Claiborne said, “I ain’t sure. I think it means the Earps and Doc are as good as hung.”

Chapter Four
    T he undertaking firm of Ritter and Eyan scrubbed down the bodies with lye and drained them of blood, pumped formaldehyde and glycerin in through the carotid and femoral arteries, and sewed shut the mouths with needles drawn between the upper lips and gums and out through the nostrils. They scoured and waxed Billy Clanton’s buck teeth, plugged the hole under Frank McLaury’s ear with flesh-colored wax, and pomaded the hair of all three corpses, finally applying rouge to the faces. From a fund pledged by Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne and contributed to by cowboys still trickling in from San Pedro and Charleston, good suits of clothes were purchased from Myer Brothers at Fifth and Allen and stitched and pinned to fit as snugly as any Vanderbilt’s. At last their hands were folded on their breasts and powdered lightly and their cuffs were buttoned together to prevent the hands from sliding apart.
    The day after the shooting the bodies were inserted in mahogany caskets with glass windows and