It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. That hour was the dullest of the twenty-four in the gambling-houses, for the evening shift was on its way to work and the day shift had not yet come off. The Earps were dealing faro in the Oriental.
To the onlooker who does not know its hazards faro is a funereal game. The dealer slides one card and then a second from the box. The case-keeper moves a button or two on his rack. The dealer in the meantime is paying 94 winners and collecting chips from losers, all with the utmost listlessness. In his high chair above them, all the lookout leans back with every external sign of world-weary indifference. And the players settle a little lower on their stools. There was about as much animation in the Oriental that afternoon as there is in a country church on a hot Sunday morning; less in fact, for there was no preacher present.
Into this peaceful quiet came the sound of hoofbeats from the street. It stopped abruptly. Two men burst through the front door on a run. The players looked around and the faro-dealers dropped their right hands toward the open drawers where they kept their loaded pistols. Jack McCann and Johnny Behind the Deuce had arrived.
But before the prisoner finished his story, to which he did not devote more than twenty words or so, a man ran into the Oriental with the tidings that the miners who were coming off shift were arming themselves as fast as they left the cages. The rustlers had ridden up the hill and were gathering reinforcements.
Wyatt Earp at once took charge of the affair. He was a medium-sized man with a drooping sandy mustache.
“We’ll close up, boys,” he said.
The show-down had come.
Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, and Jim took counsel. Doc Holliday advised with them. A handful of their supporters stood by awaiting their decision. All others left; the neighborhood was no healthy place for non-combatants.