Sliphammer (12 page)

Warren grabbed the pick by its head; jerked it out of the miner's fists and thudded the handle into the miner's belly, pushing with all his weight. The miner let out a whooshing wheeze of breath and sat down, hard, on his wife's legs. The woman uttered a groggy howl and squirmed. The miner tried to get up. His face was murderous. Warren slammed him across the side of the face with the handle of the pickax. It knocked the miner over on his side. Warren dropped the pick and jumped over the sluggishly stirring woman and ran out of the shack. He hadn't stopped running till he was all the way back to the Inter Ocean.

He'd tried to sneak up to his room but of course his luck hadn't held. Wyatt had intercepted him on the stairs and he'd had to tell Wyatt the whole thing. Wyatt had surprised him by bursting out in a peal of bull-lunged laughter that had shaken the walls; Wyatt had pounded him uproariously on the back and taken him downstairs to breakfast, and insisted on him telling the whole story over again to Josie. She too thought it was the funniest damn thing she'd ever heard.

All he wanted was to go upstairs, take a bath, put on clean underwear, and sleep off his hangover, but he hadn't had a chance to do that for another hour: first, nothing would do but that Wayde Cardiff, Reese Cooley, and everybody else in the Inter Ocean had to have the whole story of Warren's big adventure. Finally, tasting foul and feeling sick and headachy, he'd managed to break away and go upstairs. He'd cleaned up and slept for a few hours and he'd just now come back downstairs, still feeling hung over but believing he might live.

It was Cooley who caught him at the saloon door, coming through the dining room; Cooley had grabbed him by the arm and hustled him out to the porch.

Wyatt was there, in the rocking chair. A couple of Cooley's thugs wen tout just ahead of them and by the time Warren stepped onto the porch the thugs were standing by the porch rail. Cooley said, “Look over yonder, boy.”

Warren looked downstreet and saw, across the street half a block away, a little group of grim men standing with rifles and shotguns. He recognized Floyd Sparrow and he recognized the miner who'd almost pickaxed him this morning. The other four or five were miners too, one or two being the same ones who had mixed into the fight in the saloon a couple of weeks ago.

Cooley said, “They lookin' for war, they gonna git one.”

Wyatt Earp, without stirring in his chair, said, “I imagine they intend to avenge that woman's honor. Or at least that's what one of them has in mind. Sparrow's just using it for his excuse to get the war going. Warren?”

“Yeah?”

“What do you think, boy?”

“I didn't rape the bastard's wife. I only gave her what she asked me for. Man can't keep his own wife in line, it's his fault, not mine.”

“All right. But what do you think you ought to do about this?”

Sparrow had finished giving instructions to the miners down the street; they fanned out in a line abreast and began to walk forward along the opposite boardwalk, holding their rifles and shotguns ready. Reese Cooley took his boot down from the porch rail and lifted the six-gun out in his fist; Cooley said, “If they aimed to make advantage out of them rifles, they made a mistake comin' inside handgun range.”

Wyatt said to his brother, “Well, boy?”

Warren shook his head. “I've gotno fight with them. I'm not afraid, but I don't want a fight.”

“Good man,” Wyatt breathed. “Cooley, don't use that thing unless you have to.”

Without taking his eyes off the miners, Cooley said, “Fuck that noise. They want their balls shot off, they can have it.”

“You'll hold your fire, by God,” Wyatt Earp murmured in a very soft, grating voice. It was enough to make Cooley hesitate.

Wyatt got out of his chair and walked over to the pillar that supported the veranda roof. With half his body concealed behind it from the miners, Wyatt opened his coat to display the handle of one revolver. With slow motions he lifted the gun into his fist and cocked it. It wasn't pointed at anyone in particular. Across the way, the miners were looking at each other in confusion, all except the enraged husband, whose face was black and blue; one eye was bruised shut. He had a shotgun locked in two fists the knuckles of which were white. The shotgun came around toward the veranda and the miner stopped with both feet braced. Floyd Sparrow's piping thin voice reached harshly across the street: “We want Warren Earp for a miners' court. Turn him over to us.”

It made Reese Cooley laugh with crude wickedness.

Wyatt Earp didn't raise his voice; he didn't have to. He said, “All right, Sparrow, you wanted to test us, you've tested us. You can't have him. Now put down those cannons and get off the street before all of you end up with dirt in your faces.”

It was the wronged husband who made it inevitable: the miner uttered a shrill cry of inarticulate desperation and yanked both triggers of the shotgun.

The roar was deafening. The miner clearly knew nothing about weapons; he was eighty feet away from his targets and he hadn't aimed. The buckshot pellets made spouts and creases in the street below the porch of the Inter Ocean; a few stray pellets from the charge rattled against the boards, and one of them stung Cooley in the foot, which made him howl and made him shoot. Cooley's first bullet hit the miner somewhere in the upper body and knocked him back against Floyd Sparrow, who wind-milled his arms and fell down under the wounded man's weight.

All in a split fraction of a few seconds, the street erupted in battle. The miners hunched over their rifles, shooting without knowing how to aim. Cooley and his two thugs answered the fire deliberately. Wyatt Earp, lifting his gun, did not shoot; and Warren took cover behind the second post, his gun ready but unfired. One of the miners, hit in the shoulder, spun all the way around and fell flat; another broke it off and started to run, and Cooley shot him in the leg, spilling him down, skidding, onto the boardwalk.

That was when someone came crashing out of the lunchroom door a few yards down the street from Floyd Sparrow. Reese Cooley wheeled that way, gun turning. Warren's eyes snapped to the newcomer, saw young Rafe Tree come charging out onto the street, gun in holster, mouth open and working. Warren heard Cooley's forty-five thunder and boom.

When Rafe had got near the door, inside the lunchroom, he'd heard the shooting start. Startled and baffled, he'd climbed past two close-crowded tables and rushed the rest of the way to the door, flung it open and run outside to see what was going on. He took two steps, had no time to find out what the shooting was all about; the bullet hit him just below his belt buckle.

It knocked him down, ignominiously on his ass, and sitting there he felt the warm sticky spread of wet blood filling his pants; he felt ashamed. He did not want to look at the wound the bullet had made. He looked at Wyatt Earp, across the street. Earp was-snarling at Reese Cooley. Earp swatted Cooley across the face with the barrel of his gun and Cooley fell back against the wall, amazed. Across the street Rafe dimly heard Floyd Sparrow's voice, piping and panicky: “Christ, let's get the shit outa here!”

Warren Earp stepped into sight beside a porch pillar, his gun lifted but not firing, watching the miners run away down the street. Rafe tried to turn his head to see them but he seemed very tired all of a sudden, too tired to move his head. He felt surprise, not fear; he felt very little pain but the wet discomfort in his pants was embarrassing.

He thought,
I better get this tended to right away. They must have a doctor in this town. Hell, I ain't dead, I'm okay, only if I don't get it tended to I might bleed to death eventually.

A quick cramp, more spasm than agony, made him bend over. It felt like the aftereffect of a big meal spiced with hot chili peppers and coarse tequila—pressure of belly gas, a little pain beginning now, starting to spread through his abdomen, and he thought he would just sit here a moment longer until he felt alittlestronger, and then he would go find a doctor to patch him up so he could help Jeremy arrest those Earp bastards and collect the reward.

Caroline beat a path through the lunchroom, screaming, knocking people aside. She pummeled her way to the door—people were crowding forward to find out what was going on. She elbowed past two men at the door, wrenched it open, and plunged outside.

She took it all in with one glance. The little Knights of Labor agitator—Sparrow—running away down the street with a scuttling, scrambling gait, following the big miners who ran hard, two of them obviously wounded, their clumsy jackboots pounding the boardwalk; big Reese Cooley standing slumped under the veranda against the wall of the Inter Ocean, his face bleeding; Warren Earp and the two thugs with him, watching the miners run away, holding their guns ready but silent; and tall Wyatt Earp stepping down off the Inter Ocean veranda and dogtrotting forward toward the crouching man in the street—Rafe.

An involuntary sound gurgled in Caroline's throat. She started forward with numb steps. Earp crouched down by Rafe just as Rafe tipped over and fell on his shoulder. Caroline's hand rose to her mouth. She saw Earp reach out to feel for a pulse; she said with a little cry, “How bad… how bad is it?”

Earp looked up slowly, his eyes hooded by heavy over-hanging brows. “As bad as he can get.”

She closed her eyes tight. Slowly her shoulders slumped. She dropped her face into her hands. After a moment she felt a hand on her arm and she looked up to see Wyatt Earp beside her.

She said in a very small voice, “If you don't take your hand off me right now I swear to God I'll kill you with my bare hands.”

Wyatt Earp dropped his hands to his sides and turned away and walked over to the Inter Ocean. Caroline watched him until he disappeared inside. Then, strength gone, she fell to her knees beside Rafe. A man was running forward, summoned somehow, carrying a black? ctor's bag. It was too late for that. Caroline's eyes misted and she began to speak with numb monotonous repetition: “Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God….”

Nine

The angry sun stood straight overhead; the undertaker's wagon creaked past and Jeremiah Tree stepped off the walk to cross the street to the Inter Ocean. His face was a twisted, ugly mask of fury.

McKesson came out onto the veranda when Tree was halfway to the place. The sheriff opened his mouth to speak but Tree didn't even-look at him, just went straight for the door, and so McKesson planted himself in front of the door and stiff-armed him to a halt.

Tree's lips peeled back from his teeth. “Stick it up your ass, Sheriff.”

“Walk through that door the way you are now and you're dead,” McKesson said flatly, staring him in the eye. “Just stand still and wait for your brain to start functioning, Deputy. Right now you're no good to anybody—least of all yourself.”

“I'm going to do your job for you,” Tree snarled.

“What job is that? Arresting Reese Cooley? I already did that. The Judge turned him loose on his own recognizance after Cardiff's lawyer got a writ.”

“Pretty damn fast work,” Tree said icily.

“Yes, well, it happens like that when you've got powerful friends. Cooley will face a preliminary hearing and if he's bound over he'll go to trial.”

“A trial, Sheriff—or a farce?”

Tree was facing McKesson, his eyes at the level of McKesson's white thatch of hair; he was still feeling the shortness of breath, the debilitating massive rage that flooded through all the tissues of his body. His hands were formed into tight fists and he lifted one of them to the level of his waist. He was about to tell McKesson to get out of the way when a new voice slapped at him from just inside the door: “All right, Ollie, thanks. I'll take over.”

It was Wyatt Earp. In his rage Tree had lost all alertness; Earp had come within six feet of him without his even knowing.

Earp was in his shirt sleeves, probably to eliminate any flowing coat cloth that might get between hand and gun. His shoulder-holstered guns hung heavy under his arms and his hands were held in front of his chest as if he were holding poker cards, only there were no cards; he was two inches from drawing his guns.

Earp said, “Now don't say anything and don't get stupid notions until you've heard me out. You're in no shape to try me with a gun. Are you listening?”

With stubborn muteness Tree looked straight at him. Earp's sleeves were rolled up; his golden-haired forearms were powerful and sleek. Tree hadn't seen him angry before; now it was strong enough to reach through his own rage: it chilled him, a bleak coldness that came off Wyatt Earp like death.

“Now hear me,” Earp said. “You see men all the time who go around begging to get killed. They take a swing at you if you even brush by their sleeve without meaning to. They pick a fight over nothing, they accuse you of cheating at cards—anything. They go out of their way to make enemies of dangerous men when they know they haven't got a chance of winning a fight with them. They beg to get hurt. And sooner or later they always find somebody to oblige them.”

“If you're talking about Rafe—”

“I am.” Earp cut him off roughly and went on: “Your brother was begging for it. Making brags he knew he couldn't keep. Talking it up in saloons, telling everybody in earshot what he'd do to me and my so-called gang if he ever got an excuse. I heard him and Cooley heard him. Maybe you heard him too.”

“It was just talk. Kid talk. Cooley's going to pay—”

“Cooley will pay,” Earp grunted, “sooner or later, but not here, not now, and not for this. Listen to me,
amigo.
Your brother came boiling out that door over there at a time when guns were going off on this street. He didn't just stick his head out for a look. He came running. When you're in the middle of a gun battle and you see a man running at you and it's a man who's made threats against your life, you don't stop to ask the bastard if his intentions are peaceable. I told you before, I wouldn't wait to find out if he was bluffing. I told you to hpbble him. You didn't, and he's dead, and now you want to blame your own mistake on Cooley. Cooley had no choice.”