The Sunset Trail

by Alfred Henry Lewis

This homicide, which occurred in Las Vegas, also found popular endorsement. The illicit action of departed had placed him beyond the pale. There is no love in the West for rash or wicked ones who illegally covet their neighbour’s chips. The episode bore somewhat upon Mr. Holiday, however, who had an imagination edged by books. He was heard to mourn a trifle.

“I don’t see what’s the matter with my luck,” said Mr. Holiday, as he arranged with an undertaker on the Plaza for the obsequies. Mr. Holiday was too well bred to leave a burden upon the community, and even his enemies admitted that he never failed to make a proper clean-up and always buried his dead. “I don’t see what’s the matter with my luck,” repeated Mr. Holiday, “but it looks as though I had more of this sort of thing sawed off on me than any invalid in the Territory.”

“That’s what!” replied the undertaker, sympathetically. His sympathy in no wise dimmed the brilliancy of his bill, which document did him proud.

Following that Las Vegas difference, Mr. Holiday withdrew to Tombstone. It is best for a gentleman, when he has filled a grave with one other than himself, to seek new theatres of effort. In Tombstone, foremost in the social and business swirl of the camp, Mr. Holiday became acquainted with the brothers Earp. Said brothers, being respectively Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan, were all splendid shots and sterling folk of standing, character and force. The brothers Earp and Mr. Holiday became friends at sight. It was as though a fourth had been born into the Earp family.

The East, supercilious and white of shirt, should avoid a narrow view of Western men and manners. The East should not measure up the West by Eastern standards. While the West pays its faithful interest, and does not borrow more than one-fifth of the security, the East should rest content. The one is a banker, the other a warrior; one employs interest, the other uses a gun; both kill.

Virgil Earp was marshal of Tombstone. It was a post not wanting in vicissitudes, and Virgil Earp’s arm had been crippled and made as naught by a shotgun in the hands of an illwisher. But it was his left arm; his right, with the hand that appertained, was all that one might ask. What more should a Western marshal require than a perfect pistol hand and eye to match?

Wyatt and Morgan Earp were in the service of the Express Company. They went often as guards—“riding shotgun,” it was called—when the stage bore unusual treasure.

Over in the San Simon Valley lived a covey of cattle people, with Curly Bill at its head. The cow business is a lazy trade. It leaves plenty of idle time in the hands of ones who follow it. Those of the San Simon were by nature bubbling springs of industry. Since the cattle trade did not employ their whole energy, they oft repaired to a nearby trail and stopped the Tombstone stage.

There came an occasion when Curly Bill could not go with the expedition, and that was unfortunate. He was obliged to entrust the enterprise to subordinates, who bungled the affair. They shot the stage driver when they should have shot a wheeler. The reins fell from the driver’s dead hands; the fear-maddened team ran away and carried one hundred thousand dollars in gold from beneath the larcenous palms of the hold-ups. In their wrath the road agents sent a volley after the rocking, reeling, disappearing coach. It snuffed out a tourist who was riding outside.

Four days went by, and a quartette of the San Simon people, being the McLowrie brothers, Frank and John, and the Clanton brothers, Billy and Ike, came into Tombstone to spy out how much was known or guessed of those desperately poor workmen who had so let the stage job fall through. The investigators discovered that more was known than stood best for their health. They lost no time in deciding to ride back to the San Simon.