Walter Jon Williams - The Last Ride of German Freddie

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The Last Ride of German Freddie

Walter Jon Williams

ECCE homo" said German Freddie with a smile. "That is your man, I believe."

"That's him," Brocius agreed. "That's Virgil Earp, the lawman."

"What do you suppose he wants?" asked Freddie

"He's got a warrant for someone," said Brocius, "or he wouldn't be here."

Freddie gazed without enthusiasm at the lawman walking along the opposite side of Allen Street. His

spurred boots clumped on the wooden sidewalk. He looked as if he had somewhere to go.

"Entities should not be multiplied beyond what is necessary,"

said Freddie, "or so Occam is understood to have said. If he is Here for one of us, then so much the worse

for him. If not, what does it matter to us?"

Curly Bill Brocius looked thoughtful. "I don't know about this. Occam fellow, but as my mamma

would say, those fellers don't chew their own tobacco. Kansas lawmen come at you in packs." "So do

we," said Freddie. "And this is not Kansas." "No," said Brocius. "It's Tombstone." He gave Freddie a

warning look from his lazy eyes. "Remember that, my friend," he said, "and watch your back."

Brocius drifted up Allen Street in the direction of Hafford's Saloon while Freddie contemplated

Deputy U.S. Marshal Earp. The man was dressed like the parson of a particularly gloomy Protestant sect,

with a black flat-crowned hat, black frock coat, black trousers, and immaculate white linen.

German Freddie decided he might as well meet this paradigm.

He walked across the dusty Tombstone street, stepped onto the sidewalk, and raised his gray sombrero.

"Pardon me," he said. "But are you Virgil Earp?"

The man looked at him, light eyes over fair mustache. "No," he said. "I'm his brother."

"Wyatt?" Freddie asked. He knew that the deputy had a lawman brother.

"No," the man said. "I'm their brother, Morgan."

A grin tugged at Freddie's lips. "Ah," he said. "I perceive that entities are multiplied beyond that which

is necessary."

Morgan Earp gave him a puzzled look. Freddie raised his hat again. "I beg your pardon," he said. "I

won't detain you."

It is like a uniform, Freddie wrote in his notebook that night. Black coats, black hats, black boots. Blond

mustaches and long guns in the scabbards, riding in line abreast as they led their posse out of town. As a

picture of purposeful terror they stand like the Schwarzrei-ter of three centuries ago, horsemen whom all

Europe held in fear. They entirely outclassed that Lieutenant Hurst, who was in a real uniform and who

was employing them in the matter of those stolen army mules.

What fear must dwell in the hearts of these Earps to present themselves thus! They must dress and

walk and think alike; they must enforce the rigid letter of the dead, dusty law to the last comma; they

must cling to every rule and range and feature of mediocrity. ... It is fear that drives men to herd together,

to don uniforms, to impose upon others a needless conformity. But what enemy is it they fear? What

enemy is so dreadful as to compel them to wear uniforms and arm themselves so heavily and cling to their

beliefs with such ferocity?

It is their own nature! The weak, who have no power even over themselves, fear always the power that

lies in zfree nature—a nature fantastic, wild, astonishing, arbitrary—they must enslave this spirit first in

themselves before they can enslave it in others.

It is therefore our duty—the duty of those who are free, who are natural, valorous, and unafraid, those

who scorn what is sickly, cowardly, and slavish—we must resist these Earps!

And already we have won a victory—won it without raising a finger, without lifting a gun. The posse of

that terrible figure of justice, that Mr. Virgil Earp, found the mules they were searching for in Frank

McLaury's corral at Baba Comari—but then the complainant Lieutenant Hurst took counsel of his own

fears and refused to press charges.

It is wonderful! Deputy Marshal Earp, the sole voice of the law in this part of Arizona, has been made

ridiculous on his first employment! How his pride must have withered at the joke that fortune played on

him! How he must have cursed the foolish lieutenant and his fate!

He has left town, I understand, returned to Prescott. His brothers remain, however, stalking the streets in

their dread black uniforms, infecting the town with their stolid presence. It is like an invasion of Luthers.

We must not cease to laugh at them! We must be gay! Laughter has driven Virgil from our midst, and it

will drive the others, too. Our laughter will lodge, burning in their hearts like bullets of flaming lead. There

is nothing that will drive them from our midst as surely as our own joy at their shortcomings.

They are afraid. And we will know they are afraid. And this knowledge will turn our laughter into a

weapon.

Ike Clanton was passed out on the table. The game went on regardless, as Ike had already lost his money.

It was late evening in the Occidental Saloon, and the game might well go on till dawn.

"It's getting to be hard being a Cowboy," said John Ringo. "What with having to pay taxes now." He

removed cards from his hand, tossed them onto the table. "Two cards," he said.

Brocius gave him his cards. "If we pay taxes," he said, "we can vote. And if we vote, we can have our

own sheriff. And if we have our own sheriff, we'll make back those taxes and then some. Dealer folds."

He tossed his cards, onto the table.

Freddie adjusted his spectacles and looked at his hand, jacks and treys. He tossed his odd nine onto the

table. "One card," he said. "I believe it was a mistake."

Brocius gave Freddie a lazy-lidded glance as he dealt Freddie another trey. "You think John Behan won't

behave once we elect him?"

"I think it is unwise to give someone power over you."

"Hell, yes, it was unwise," agreed Ringo. "Behan's promised Wy-att Earp the chief deputy's job. Fifty

dollars." Silver clanged on the tabletop. Ike Clanton, drowsing, gave an uncertain snort.

"That's just to get the votes of the Earps and their friends," Brocius said. He winked at Freddie. "You

don't think he's going to keep his promises, do you?"

"What makes you think he will keep his promises to you?" Freddie asked. He raised another fifty.

"It will pay him to cooperate with us," Brocius said.

Ringo bared his yellow fangs in a grin. "Have you seen Behan's girl? Sadie?"

"Are you going to call or fold?" Freddie asked.

"I'm thinking." Staring at his cards.

"I thought Behan's girl was called Josie," said Brocius.

"She seems to go by a number of names," Ringo said. "But you can see her for yourself, tonight at

Shieffelin Hall. She's Helen of Troy in Doctor Faustus."

"Are you going to call or fold?" Freddie asked.

"Helen, whose beauty summoned Greece to arms," Ringo quoted, "and drew a thousand ships to

Tenedos."

"I would rather be a king," Freddie said, "and ride in triumph through Persepolis. Are you going to fold

or call?"

"I'm going to bump," Ringo said, and threw out a hundred-dollar bill, just as Freddie knew he would if

Freddie only kept on nagging.

"Raise another hundred," Freddie said. Ringo cursed and called. Freddie showed his hand and raked the

money toward him.

"Fortune's a right whore," Ringo said, from somewhere else out of his eccentric education.

"You should not have compromised with the authorities," Freddie said as he stacked his coin. "Once

you were the free rulers of this land. Now you are taxpayers and politicians. Why do you bring this upon

yourselves?"

Curly Bill Brocius scowled. "I'm on top of things, Freddie. Behan will do what he's told."

Freddie looked at him. "But will the Earps?"

"We got two hundred riders, Freddie," Brocius said. "I ain't afraid of no Earps."

. "We were driven out of Texas," Freddie reminded. "This is our last stand."

"Last stand in Tombstone," Ringo said. "That doesn't have a comforting sound."

"I'm on top of it," Brocius insisted.

He and his crowd defiantly called themselves Cowboys. It was a name synonymous with rustler, and

hardly respectable—legitimate ranchers called themselves stockmen. The Cowboys ranged both sides of

the American-Mexican border, acquiring cattle on one side, moving them across the border through

Guadalupe and Skeleton Canyons, and selling them. Most of the local ranchers—even the honest

ones—did not mind owning cattle that did not come with a notarized bill of sale, and the Cowboys'

business was profitable.

In the face of this threat to law from the two hundred outlaws, the United States government had sent to

Tombstone exactly one man, Deputy Marshal Virgil Earp, who had been sent right out again. The

Mexicans, unfortunately, were more industrious—they had been fortifying the border, and making the

Cowboys' raids more difficult. The Clantons' father, who had been the Cowboys' chief, had been killed in

an ambush by Mexican rurales.

Brocius now led the Cowboys, assuming anyone did. Since illegitimate plunder was growing more

difficult, Brocius proposed to plunder legitimately, through a political machine and a compliant-sheriff.

His theory was that the government would let them alone if he lined up enough votes to buy their

tolerance.

German Freddie mistrusted the means—he did Hot trust politicians or their machines or their

sheriffs—but then his opinion did not rank near Brocius's, as he wasn't, strictly speaking, a Cowboy, just

one of their friends. He was a gambler, and had never rustled stock in his life—he just won the money

from those who had.

"Everybody ante," said Brocius. Freddie threw a half-eagle into the pot.

"May I sit in?" asked a cultured voice. Ay, Freddie thought as he looked up, the plot thickens very much

upon us.

"Well," Freddie said, "if you are here, now we know that Tombstone is on the map." He rose and

gestured the newcomer to a chair. "Gentlemen," he said to the others, "may I introduce John Henry

Holliday, D.D."

"We've met," said Ringo. He rose and shook Holliday's hand. Freddie introduced Brocius and pointed

out Ike Clanton, still asleep on the table.

Holliday put money on the table and sat. To call him thin as a rail was to do an injustice to the

rail—Holliday was pale and consumptive and light as a scarecrow. He looked as if the merest breath of

wind might blow him right down Skeleton Canyon into Mexico. Only the weight of his boots held him

down—that and the weight of his gun.

German Freddie had met Doc Holliday in Texas, and knew that Holliday was dangerous when sober

and absurd when drunk. Freddie and Holliday had both killed people in Texas, and for much the same

reasons.

"Is Kate with you?" Freddie asked. If Holliday's Hungarian girl was in town, then he was here to stay. If

she wasn't, he might drift on.

"We have rooms at Fly's," Holliday said.

Freddie looked at Holliday over the rim of his cards. If Kate was here, then Doc would remain till either

his pockets or the mines ran dry of silver.

The calculations were growing complex.

"Twenty dollars," Freddie said.

"Bump you another twenty," said Holliday, and tossed a pair of double eagles onto the table.

Ike Clanton sat up with a sudden snort. "I'll kill him!" he blurted.

"Here's my forty," Ringo said. He looked at Ike. "Kill who, Ike?"

Ike's eyes stared off into nowhere, pupils tiny as peppercorns. "I'm gonna kill him!" he said.

Ringo was patient. "Who are you planning to kill?"

"Gonna kill him!" Ike's chair tumbled to the floor as he rose to his feet. He took a staggering step

backwards, regained his balance, then began to lurch for the saloon door.

"Dealer folds," said Brocius, and threw in his cards.

Holliday watched Ike's exit with cold precision. "Shouldn't one of you go after your friend? He seems

to want to shoot somebody."

"Ike's harmless," Freddie said. "Besides, his gun is at his hotel, and in his current state Ike won't

remember where he left it."

"What if someone takes Ike seriously enough to shoot himV Holliday asked.

"No one will do that for fear of Ike's brother Billy," said Freddie. "He's the dangerous one."

Holliday nodded and returned his hollow eyes to his cards. "Are you going to call, Freddie?" he asked.

"I call," Freddie said.

It was a mistake. Holliday cleaned them all out by midnight. "Thank you, gentlemen," he said politely

as he headed toward the door with his winnings jingling in his pockets. "I'm sure we'll meet again."

John Ringo looked at the others. "Silver and gold have I none," he quoted, "but such as I have I'll share

with thee." He pulled out bits of pasteboard from his pockets. "Tickets to Doctor Faustus, good for the

midnight performance. Wilt come with me to hell, gentlemen?"

Brocius was just drunk enough to say yes. Ringo looked at Freddie. Freddie shrugged. "Might as well,"

he said. "That was the back end of bad luck."

"Luck?" Ringo handed him a ticket. "It looked to me like you couldn't resist whenever Docraised the

stakes."

"I was waiting for him to get drunk. Then he'd start losing."

"What was in your mind, raising on a pair of jacks?"

"I thought he was bluffing."

Ringo shook his head. "And you the only one of us sober."

"I don't see that you did any better."

"No," Ringo said sadly, "I didn't."

They made their way out of the Occidental, then turned down Allen Street in the direction of Shieffelin

Hall. The packed dust of the street was hard as rock. The night was full of people—most

nights Tombstone didn't close down till dawn.

Brocius struck a match on his thumb as he walked, and lit a cigar.

"I plan to go shooting tomorrow," he said. "I've changed my gun—

filed down the sear so I can fan it."

"Oh, Lord," Ringo sighed. "Why'd you go and ruin a good gun?" "Fanning is for fools," Freddie said.

"You should just take aim—" "I ain't such a good shot as you two," Brocius said. He puffed his

cigar. "My talents are more organizational and political. I figure if I

got to jerk my gun, I'll just fan it and make up for aim with volume? "You'd better hope you never have to

shoot it," Freddie said. "If we win the election," Brocius said cheerfully. "I probably

won't."

Even the drinking water must be carried to us on wagons, Freddie wrote in his notebook a few hours later.

The alkali desert is unforgiving and unsuitable for anything but the lizards and vultures who were here

before us. Even the Indians avoided this country. The ranchers cannot keep enough cattle on this

wretched land to make a profit—thus they are dependent on the rustlers and smugglers for their livelihood.

The population came because of greed or ambition, and if the silver ever runs out, Tombstone will fly away

with the dust.

So why, when I perceive these Cowboys in their huge sombreros, their gaudy kerchiefs and doeskin

trousers, do I see instead the old Romans in their ringing bronze?

From such as these did Romulus spring! For who was Romulus? A tyrant, a bandit, a man who harbored

runaways and stole the cattle— and the daughters—of his neighbors. Yet he was noble, yet a hero, yet he

spawned a great Empire. History trembles before his memory.

And now the Romans have come again! Riding into Tombstone with their rifles in the scabbards!

All the old Roman virtues I see among them. They are frank, truthful, loyal, and above all healthy. They

hold the lives of men— their own included—in contempt/Nothing is more refreshing and wholesome

than this lack of pity, this disdain for the so-called civilized virtues. They are from the American South, of

course, that defeated country now sunk in ruin and oppression. They are too young to have fought in

the Civil War, but not so young they did not see its horrors. This exposure to life's cruelties, when they were

still at a tender age, must have hardened them against pieties and hypocrisies of the world. Not for them

the mad egotism of the ascetic, the persistent morbidity—the sickness—of the civilized man. These heroes

abandoned their defeated country and came West— West, where the new Rome will be born!

If only they can be brought to treasure their virtues as I do. But they treat themselves as carelessly as

they treat everything. They possess all virtues but one: the will to power. They have it in themselves to

dominate, to rule—not through these petty maneuverings at the polls with which Brocius is so unwisely

intoxicated, but through themselves, their desires, their guns. . . . They can create an empire here, and

must, if their virtues are to survive. It is not enough to avoid the law, avoid civilization—they must wish to

destroy the inverted virtues that oppose them.

Who shall win? Tottering, hypnotized, sunken Civilization, or this new Rome? Ridiculous, when we

consider numbers, when we consider mere guns and iron. Yet what was Romulus? A bandit, crouched on

his Palatine Hill. Yet nothing could stand in his way. His will was greater than that of the whole rotten

world.

And—as these classical allusions now seem irresistible—what are we to make of the appearance of Helen

of Troy? Who better to signal the end of an empire? Familiar with Goethe's superior work, I forgot that

Helen does not speak in Marlowe's Faustus. She simply parades along and inspires poetry. But when she

looked at our good German metaphysician, that eye of hers spoke mischief that had nothing to do with

verse—and the actor knew it, for he stammered. Such a sexual being as this Helen was not envisioned by

the good British Marlowe, whom we are led to believe did not with women.

I do not see such a girl cleaving to Behan for long—his blood is too thin for the likes of her.

And when she tires of him—beware, Behan! Beware, Faustus! Beware, Troy!

Freddie met Sheriff Behan's girl at the victory party following the election. Brocius's election strategy

had borne fruit, of a sort—but Johnny Behan was rotten fruit, Freddie thought, and would fall to the

ground ere long.

The Occidental Saloon was filled with celebration and a hundred drunken Cowboys. Even Wyatt Earp

turned up, glooming in his black coat and drooping mustaches, still secure in the illusion that Behan

would hire him as a deputy; but at the sight of the company his face wrinkled as if he'd just bit on a lemon,

and he did not stay long.

Amid all this roistering inebriation, Freddie saw Behan's girl perched on the long bar, surrounded by a

crowd of men and kicking her heels in the air in a white froth of petticoats. Freddie was surprised—he had

rarely in his life met a woman who would enter a saloon, let alone behave so freely in one, and among a

crowd of rowdy drunks. Behan—a natty Irishman in a derby—stood nearby and accepted congratulations

and bumper after bumper of the finest French champagne.

Freddie offered Behan his perfunctory congratulations, then shouldered his way to the bar where he

saw John Ringo crouched protectively around a half-empty bottle of whiskey. "Ihave drunk deep of the

Pierian," Ringo said, "and drunk disgustingly. Will you join me?"

"No," said Freddie, and ordered soda, water. The noise of the room battered at his nerves. He would

not stay long—he would go to another saloon, perhaps, and find a game of cards.

Ringo's melancholy eyes roamed the room. "Freddie, you do not look overjoyed," he said.

Freddie looked at his drink. "Men selling their freedom to become citizens" he snarled. "And they call

it a victory." He looked toward Behan, felt his lips curl. "Victory makes stupid," he said. "I learned that in

Germany, in 1870."

"Why so gloomy, boys?" cried a woman's voice in a surprising New York accent. "Don't you know it's a

party?" Behan's girl leaned toward them, half-lying across the polished mahogany bar. She was younger

than Freddie had expected—not yet twenty, he thought.

Ringo brightened a little—he liked the ladies. "Have you met German Freddie, Josie?" he said.

"Freddie here doesn't like elections."

Josie laughed and waved her glass of champagne. "I don't know that we had a real election, Freddie,"

she called. "Think of it as being more like a greatbig felony'."

Cowboy voices roared with laughter. Freddie found himself smiling behind his bushy mustache. Ringo,

suddenly merry, grabbed Freddie's arm and hauled him toward Josie.

"Freddie here used to be a Professor of Philosophy back in Germany," Ringo said. "He was told to

come West for his health." Ringo looked at Freddie in a kind of amazement. "Can you picture that?"

Freddie—who had come West to die—said merely, "Philology. Switzerland," and sipped his soda

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TheLastRideofGermanFreddieWalterJonWilliamsECCEhomo"saidGermanFreddiewithasmile."Thatisyourman,Ibelieve.""That'shim,"Brociusagreed."That'sVirgilEarp,thelawman.""Whatdoyousupposehewants?"askedFreddie"He'sgotawarrantforsomeone,"saidBrocius,"orhewouldn'tbehere."Freddiegazedwithoutenthusiasmatthelawmanw...

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