My business in Tombstone brought me before a lawman and a dead man. The former wished to know what I had seen. The latter, regrettably, had seen considerably more. Neither of us believed the dead man belonged in the ground just yet. The Marshal had his reasons. I had mine.
The deceased had been found shortly before dawn in an alley behind one of Tombstone's less reputable establishments. This fact alone distinguished neither the man nor the morning. He was unknown to the Marshal, carried no papers, and possessed little of value beyond a revolver, three cartridges, a silver dollar, and a small leather pouch tied tightly beneath his shirt.
It was the pouch that interested me. Inside was a fragment of stone no larger than a man's thumb. One face had been worked smooth and bore three shallow marks cut deliberately into its surface. I had seen those marks before. The Marshal noticed my recognition. “What do they mean?” “I do not know.” He regarded me for some time. “You looked like a man who knew.” “There is a considerable difference.” This answer did little to improve our acquaintance.
The dead man, meanwhile, remained seated between us in his coffin. The undertaker had propped him upright at the Marshal's insistence, owing to a peculiar wound at the back of the skull which neither man wished disturbed until the matter could be properly examined. It gave our discussion the appearance of a negotiation involving three parties. Only two of us were being entirely forthcoming.
The Marshal told me the man had arrived in Tombstone two nights earlier asking after a prospector who had passed through town some months before. The description he provided was unremarkable save for one detail. The prospector had been missing two fingers from his left hand. That detail I knew as well.
I had encountered such a man north of Florence the previous winter. He had shared my fire without invitation, eaten considerably more of my supper than courtesy permitted, and departed before sunrise. He left behind a page torn from a surveyor's notebook. Upon it were the same three marks. I had carried the page ever since. I did not tell the Marshal this. He did not tell me why one of those same marks had been drawn in chalk beneath the dead man's boot when the body was discovered.
So there we sat. A lawman with a question. A traveler with an answer he preferred not to give. And between us, a dead man who had somehow managed to make both our positions considerably more difficult.
At length, the Marshal closed the lid of his notebook. “You intend to leave Tombstone?” “I had.” “And now?” I looked again at the stone. There are moments when a sensible man recognizes that curiosity has already cost another man his life and chooses, quite reasonably, to walk in the opposite direction. I have always admired such men.
“I believe,” I said, “we should discover where he came from.” The Marshal looked toward our silent companion. “And him?” “He comes with us.” For the first time that morning, the Marshal smiled. It was not a comforting expression.
Thus we came to an understanding.
And shortly thereafter, to a mutual undertaking.
— H.V.B.
