Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

The Cheyenne Road
Once in town, he continued to the stagecoach station. The coach was already there. It had started to
snow again, and a chill wind moaned through Deadwood Gulch. Johnson was glad to be leaving, and
methodically hoisted the crates onto the coach. Despite the assurances of the agent, the bones could
not all ride up top with the enormously fat driver, Tiny Tim Edwards. Johnson was obliged to
purchase an extra passenger seat and place some of them inside. Fortunately, the only passengers
were Miss Emily and himself.
Then they had to wait for Wyatt Earp, who was nowhere to be found. Johnson stood in the snow
with Miss Emily, looking up and down the bleak street of Deadwood.
“Maybe he’s not coming after all,” Johnson said.
“I think he will come,” Miss Emily said.
While they waited, a redheaded boy ran up to Johnson. “Mr. Johnson?”
“That’s right.”
The boy gave Johnson a note, and scampered away. Johnson opened it, read it quickly, and
crumpled it.
“What is it?” Miss Emily asked.
“Just a good-bye from Judge Harlan.”
Around nine they saw the Earp brothers coming down the street toward them. They both appeared
heavily burdened. “When they were closer,” Johnson wrote, “I saw that the Earps had obtained a
collection of firearms. I had never seen Wyatt Earp wearing a gun before—he seldom went armed in
public—but now he carried a veritable arsenal.”
Earp was late because he had to wait for Sutter’s Dry Goods to open, to obtain guns. He carried
two sawed-off shotguns, three Pierce repeating rifles, four Colt revolvers, and a dozen boxes of
ammunition.
Johnson said, “It appears you are expecting some warm work.”
Earp told Miss Emily to climb into the stage; then he said, “I don’t want to alarm her any.” And
then he told Johnson that he thought they faced “a deal of trouble, and no point in pretending it won’t
come.”
Johnson showed Earp the note, which read:
I PROMIS YOU ARE A DED MAN TO-DAY OR MY NAME IS NOT DICK CURRY.
“That’s fine,” Earp said. “We’re ready for him.”
Wyatt’s brother Morgan had made a lucrative deal to haul firewood and was planning to stay in