Epitaph by Mary Doria Russell Page B

down, shoulders slumped. “Which one’s that?” he asked Morgan.
    â€œThat’s Tommy. He’s harmless. Frank’s the one working the iron. He can be a handful.”
    â€œYour call, Lieutenant,” Virgil said.
    Lieutenant Hurst swung off his horse and tossed the reins to one of his men. “Stay back,” he told the Earps. “I’ll handle this.”
    Though Joe Hurst was a good soldier, he—like Tom McLaury—preferred diplomacy to conflict, and that was exactly why his superior had chosen him to recover the mules.
    Just two years earlier, a dispute over who could sell dry goods in Lincoln County, New Mexico, had blown up into a shooting war. When cavalry troops were dispatched to restore order, one gang holed up in a store and refused to surrender, so the soldiers set fire to the building, expecting to smoke the civilians out and end the standoff. Instead, there was a fair-sized battle that ended with a lot of dead, burnt civilians.
    The whole bungled mess stirred up a hornets’ nest of ex-Confederates who hated the federal government in general and anyone wearing a blue uniform in particular. An outraged Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act, forbidding the army to have anything to do with law enforcement, and from the nation’s capital to the remotest frontier fort, standing orders came down to this: For the love of Christ, don’t make anything worse.
    So when Tom McLaury arrived at the gate and shook hands with Joe Hurst in the pink-and-orange light of an Arizona sunset, the pair of them were quite possibly the two most reasonable men in Arizona, and they were united in their hope of working things out sensibly.
    The facts were not in dispute. The mules were stolen; Frank McLaury had been seen tampering with their brands.
    â€œI am barred by law from going onto your land,” Hurst admitted, “but Virgil Earp is a deputy federal marshal, and he has the legal authority to recover federal property. His brother Wyatt is a deputy sheriff who can arrest you and your brother, if I decide to press charges.”
    â€œPlease, don’t do that, sir,” Tom said. “Me and Frank just moved down from Iowa. Two of our brothers fought for the Union and one of them died, but we’re just about the only ranchers in this valley who weren’t rebels. We’re kinda caught in the middle here. We want to obey the law, but we gotta keep peace with our neighbors, and that’s not easy, sir. They are not peaceable men.”
    After some discussion, an acceptable compromise was reached. The troopers and the Earps would withdraw. No one would be arrested, but Tom McLaury would see to it that the mules were returned to Camp Rucker in a few days. The matter would then be closed. No questions asked, none answered.
    â€œLIEUTENANT, WITH ALL DUE RESPECT,” Virgil said when Hurst informed him of the terms he’d agreed to, “that might be the stupidest thing I’ve heard since Christmas. There is no way in hell that Tom McLaury can make good on that promise, and we’ll look like idiots for believing him.”
    â€œWe should go in there right now and enforce the law” was Wyatt’s opinion, but Morgan held up a hand. “Lieutenant, if we arrest the McLaurys now,” he said, “they can tell Old Man Clanton we caught them dead to rights, so they had to give the mules up. You can drop the charges later. Everybody wins. You get your mules back, and Tom and Frank’ll be off the hook with Clanton.”
    You could see it on everyone’s face. Damn. That’s a good solution. Even Lieutenant Hurst thought so, but it was too late now.
    â€œI gave my word,” he said, “and that’s the end of it.”
    THEY MADE CAMP IN THE DUSK and split up in the morning, the troopers heading back to Rucker, the civilians returning to Tombstone.
    Virgil was polite enough when Hurst offered his hand and thanked the Earps for