Tombstone, 1881

White stood in the backyard of a little cabin, not thirty feet away, confronting a tall, lanky Cowboy with a big sombrero pushed back on top of his head and a heavy cartridge belt slung around his hips.

Wyatt’s first thought was that White must have been fortifying himself with courage from a bottle. That or he knew the Cowboy, and had absolute faith that the drunk was a coward. Damn it if he didn’t walk right up to Sombrero and put out his hand, like to pat him down.

“I am an officer,” Wyatt heard Marshal White tell the drunk. “Give me your pistol.”

Wyatt wasn’t nearly so trusting of the Cowboys, men who wore big hats, their boots outside their trousers and cartridge belts advertising how much ammunition they thought they had to haul around. Three more steps brought him up behind the cow poke where the U.S. deputy marshal could put his arms around the trouble-maker and help out a fellow officer of the law.

Fred White met Wyatt’s eye as soon as the latter got a good grip on the perpetrator of all the noise, and barked out a repeat of his command, emphasizing it with a curse. “Now you God damned son of a bitch, you give up that pistol.”

Wyatt was sure that would be the end of it. He hadn’t worked much with Fred before, but the man seemed a natural, and what could go wrong?

The cowboy reached for his revolver, brought it out barrel-first, and, instead of flipping it around to hand to the city policeman, abruptly discharged it into White’s groin.

Without hardly thinking, Wyatt brought his borrowed Colt up alongside the head of the Cowboy with the sound of a butcher spiking a hogshead.

Something about a situation like this cleared Wyatt Earp’s head faster than the strongest cup of coffee his brother James had ever managed to brew up. Glancing at the fallen chief of police, he noticed the man’s pants flamed in the crotch where the bullet had entered.

“Morg, put out the fire in Fred’s clothes,” he stated, barely raising his voice. “Dodge, find Virg. Oh, there you are.”

For Virgil had appeared, as if out of nowhere.

“I’ll take care of the other Cowboys,” the oldest brother promised, and vanished back into the crowd.

“Dodge, help Morg with White, here,” Wyatt commanded, backing up and checking out the downed shooter, who had started to moan.

“What have I done?” the culprit growled, as the deputy marshal pulled him to his feet. “I haven’t done anything to be arrested for.”

Wyatt said nothing in return. He simply stuck his borrowed Colt in the Cowboy’s back and pointed him towards the city jail, all the time silently thanking the committee that had put the jail together just a few weeks back.

“How’s Fred?” Virgil asked as he strode into the light given off by a lamp hung on a pole near the new jailhouse.

“Alive, barely. If he dies, we have a lynching on our hands,” Wyatt warned, stepping out of the nearby shadows, now feeling a bit more secure with both six-shooters strapped to his hips and his Wells-Fargo shotgun in his hands.

“That’s Curly Bill Brocius we have locked up, you know that, don’t you?” Virgil pointed out.

Wyatt shook his head. “Now don’t that beat all. What’s he doing in town?”

It was only the start...the start of a war between the Earps and the Cowboys. A war that wouldn't end until one Earp was dead, one maimed for life and one had become the murderer he had always carefully avoided becoming. And Curly Bill Brocius lay dead with more than 30 No. 2 buckshot in his chest.

Based on a true story, even now playing itself out  in the Whetstone Mountains.

If you are a publisher or an agent interested in

The Reckoning

please contact

Catherine Holder Spude
at

montdawn@msn.com