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“You can't leave! You've got to help me with this!”
    Freddie drew himself up, glared savagely at Behan. Righteous angels sang in his mind. “You are the sheriff, I collect,” he said. “Dealing with it is your job!”
    Behan froze, his mouth half-open. Freddie stepped around him and marched away, down Fremont to the back entrance to the O.K. Corral, then through the corral to Allen Street. Exaltation thrilled in his blood like wine. He crossed the street to the shadier south side—the sun was still hammering his head—and began the walk to the Grand Hotel. At Fourth Street he looked south and saw a mob—forty or fifty armed citizens, mostly hard-bitten miners—marching toward him up the street.
    If this crowd found the Clantons, the Cowboys were dead. Surely Freddie's friends could now be convinced that they must fight another day.
    Freddie turned and hastened along Allen Street toward the O.K. Corral, but then gunfire cracked out, the sudden bright sounds jolting his nerves, and he felt his heart sink even as he broke into a run. A shotgun boomed, and windows rattled in nearby buildings. He dashed through the long corral, then jumped over the fence, ran past the photography studio, and into the back door of Camillus Fly's boarding house.
    John Behan crouched beneath a window with his blue-steel revolver in his hand. The window had been shattered by bullets, and its yellow organdy curtain fluttered in the breeze, but there was no scent of smoke or other indication that Behan had ever fired his pistol. Shrieks rang in the air, cries of mortal agony. Freddie ran beside the window and peered out. His heart hammered, and he panted for breath after his run.
    The narrow vacant lot was hazy with gunsmoke. Lying at the far end were the bodies of two men, Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton. Just four or five paces in front of them were the three Earps and John Holliday. Morgan was down with a wound. Virgil knelt on the dry ground, leg bleeding, and he supported himself with a cane. Holliday's back was to Freddie—he had a short Wells Fargo shotgun broken open over one arm—and there were bright splashes of blood on Holliday's coat and trousers.
    In Fremont Street, behind the Earps, Frank McLaury lay screaming in the dust. He was covered with blood. Apparently he had run right through the Earps and collapsed. His agonized shrieks raised the hair on the back of Freddie's neck.
    Of Billy Claiborne and Ike Clanton, Freddie saw no sign. Apparently the two unarmed men had run away.
    Wyatt Earp stood over his brother Morgan, unwounded, a long-barreled Colt in his hand. Savage hatred burned in Freddie's heart. He glared down at Behan.
    “What have you done?” he hissed. “Why didn't you stop it?”
    “I tried!” Behan said. “You saw that I tried. Oh, this is horrible!”
    “You fool. Why do you bother to carry this?” Freddie reached down and snatched the revolver from Behan's hand. He looked out the window again and saw Wyatt Earp standing like a bronze statue over his wounded brother. Angels sang a song of glory in Freddie's blood.
    Make something of it, he thought. Make something of this other than a catastrophe. Make it mean something.
    He cocked Behan's gun. Earp heard the sound and raised his head, suddenly alert. And then German Freddie put six shots into Earp's breast from a distance of less than a dozen feet.
    “My God!” Behan bleated. “What are you doing?”
    Freddie looked at him, a savage grin taut on his face. He dropped the revolver at Behan's feet as return fire began to sing through the window. He ran into the back of the studio, out the back door, and was sprinting down Third Street when he heard Behan's voice ringing over the sound of barking gunfire. “It wasn't me! I swear to Mary!” Mad laughter burbled from Freddie's lips as he heard the crash of a door being kicked down. Behan screamed something else, something that might have been “German Freddie!” but whatever he was trying to say was cut