Sliphammer (15 page)

Tree said, “Your game would be a lot easier if Wyatt Earp was out of your way.”

“So would yours, I imagine,” Sparrow said with his crooked smile. “You and I have a few interests in common, Tree.”

“Is that an offer of help?”

“You could use some, couldn't you?”

Tree wondered if it was part of Sparrow's technique always to answer questions with questions. He said, “Offer it and see.”

“I can't. I'm afraid. Even if I wanted to.…The miners are scared green of the Earp crowd, especially after what happened yesterday. I've got my hands full just keeping the fires lighted.”

“Your miners scare easy.”

“They're not gunslingers,” Sparrow said harshly. “Neither am I. I can fight a mob with clubs by using my own mob with clubs, but we haven't got the kind of money it takes to import hired gunmen. I've got a tough enough fight on my hands without taking on Wyatt Earp. All I want is to see him out of town.”

“And you expect me to do that?”

“I don't expect anything,” Sparrow answered. “Your sister-in-law came to me last night to find out what really happened out on that street. I told her. If you want to hear it, I'll tell you. Otherwise you can go—I'm busy.”

Tree shrugged, turned, and reached for the door latch. Caroline's voice grabbed him as if by the elbow and turned him around again: “You're so damn sure Wyatt Earp told you the truth that you're not even willing to listen to the other side of the story, is that it?”

He made a face. “What other side of the story?”

“Mine,” said Sparrow. “Like I said—I was there.”

“All right, go ahead, for whatever good you think it will do you.”

Sparrow glanced bleakly at Caroline and said, “I saw all of it when your brother came out on the street. Cooley spotted him first and Cooley turned his gun on your brother. He cocked it and waited for your brother to stop moving so's he'd have a clear shot. It was cold-blooded and deliberate, he didn't just shoot in blind reaction. Wyatt Earp watched the whole thing. I can't prove it but I believe if Earp had cared about seeing an innocent man shot, he'd have had plenty of time to shoot Cooley before Cooley shot your brother. At least he could have told Cooley not to do it. He had time.”

Caroline said in a low tone, “He just didn't care.”

“Oh, he cared all right,' Sparrow said. “He cared about Cooley.”

Tree said, “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Politics,” said Sparrow. “Earp's using the mining barons for his own political ends and he can't afford to alienate them. Cooley was brought in here with his gang as a strikebreaker—Cooley works for the mining barons. Cardiff and the rest of those bastards need Cooley, and Earp's too shrewd to turn against Cooley for the sake of any piddling abstraction like justice. Besides, you made a mistake going over to the Inter Ocean and expecting Earp to turn Cooley over to you just like that. That ain't the way you operate with a fellow like Earp. You rubbed him the wrong way because he resents having his authority questioned. No, I say Earp could have stopped it, but you don't have to believe that. What you do have to believe is that Earp saw it happen just like I did, he knew Cooley had a choice. Cooley didn't have to shoot your brother—your brother didn't have a gun in his hand. There was time. So when Earp lets Cooley hide behind his skirts, he's not doing it to protect a man who did the right thing—he's just proving what a big shot he is by forcing you to back away empty-handed, and he's cementing his own position with the mining barons. You may think it's too late for that but I've got news for you, that telegram of yours may yet turn out to be worthless, because the Governor may get back from Kansas and get worked over by Earp's friends and decide to rescind the Lieutenant Governor's extradition order.”

Tree regarded him unblinkingly. “You're a shrewd little hairpin, I'll give you that.”

“Why? Don't you believe me? Why don't you ask Earp?”

Caroline said, “There you have it, Jerr. If Earp had cared at all, he could have prevented Rafe's dying. There's your big hero for you.”

Sparrow murmured, in his abrasive, insinuating twang, “It changes the picture a little for you, doesn't it? Before, it was a disagreeable job somebody told you to do, you didn't think it was just, you had trouble making up your mind whether to do it or not. But this has got to change things for you, Tree. Now you've got a personal stake. Earp the same as pulled the trigger that killed your brother.”

“If I believe you.”

“I think you do,” Sparrow said. “You know damned well I've got my own ax to grind but you still know I'm not lying. I don't have to.” He flicked imaginary moisture from the corners of his mouth with thumb and forefinger, and added, “There was one thing I didn't strictly tell the truth -about. I said none of the miners would help you arrest Earp. That was true, but I do know a couple of men who might give you a hand—hot miners. One's a foundry worker from the smelter on Bald Hill; he was one of us on the street yesterday, damn near'got killed in the gunfight. He's mad enough to want to get even, not too bright, but he'll do. The other man I've got in mind is an ex-convict who used to be a cattle thief, ran with the old Clanton gang. He's a liltle gone to seed but he hates the Earps on principle and he'd go along with you for a cut of the reward money. You asked for help. I can get you those two—not much but better than nothing. I wish I could do more but I've got big problems of my own. Morale stinks in my organization after that fiasco yesterday—Warren Earp upset my applecart when he got those miners fired up; the timing was all wrong but I had to go along with them or they'd have lost all respect for me. It's going to take a while for me to get things built up again. If I told a bunch of miners to go with you right now and face Wyatt Earp, they'd ride me out of town on a rail. But I told you before, I want the Earps out of this town, and if you're the man who can do it, I'll do my best to help.”

“I'll give it some thought,” Tree said, and turned once again to open the door. Caroline got up and followed him out, not speaking. He went downstairs and outside. She trailed along, almost demure, until he stopped on the corner and said to her, “You'd better start back for Arizona.”

“I'm staying.” Her face was set. “What are you going to do?”

“The day after tomorrow,” he said, “is Saturday night That's when I'll make my move.”

“Are you going to use those two men he offered?”

“I haven't got much choice. McKesson's out of it.”

“I'll help too,” she said.

“Caroline,” he breathed, “you've got a beautiful face and a beautiful body and plenty of guts but you're short on sense. It'll be tough enough without having to keep one eye out for your safety.”

“He was
my
husband,” she snapped, and strode away fast, leaving the words hanging behind in the still air.

Eleven

He didn't like either one of them. Obie Macklin was small, a quick-moving man, all sharp angles. His eyes never stopped moving restlessly. His biceps were thick, his hands calloused and scarred from foundry work, but he looked unsteady, undependable. The other one, Mordecai Gant, was even worse: a burly ex-convict down on his luck, Gant was a used-up tough, with no skill but thievery and fighting, and no future in sight. He had been reduced to cleaning out stables for a living and he smelled like it. Gant protested to Floyd Sparrow in a pained whine: “Look, it may be a half-assed pissante job but it's the first one I ever had where I didn't have to rob somebody or kill somebody to get paid. I made myself a nice quiet nest here and I don't want nobody shake the limb.”

They stood in the dark maw of the stable; it was past midnight. Floyd Sparrow said to Tree, “He'll work for you. He just likes to whine.”

Gant clamped his mouth shut. He was squat and greasy, his features fleshy, his cheeks folded and jowled; he
looked
like a thief.

“He'll come,” said Obie Macklin. Mackjin ended every sentence with a nervous, meaningless laugh. “He'll think about his share of that ree-ward money and he'll come.”

Gant glared at him. “Obie, I'll do my own thanking. You about four seconds short of losing your front teeth.”

“You wouldn't hit me—I'm littler'n you are!”

Gant said, “Nobody that wears a gun is little. If you got the guts to pull that on me.”

“Listen,” Floyd Sparrow said, “try saving the violencing for the Earps.”

Gant turned and gave Sparrow what passed for a shrewd squint. “Buddy, less I get paid in advance, I ain't about to go fool with the Arp brothers.”

“Sure you are,” Sparrow breathed. “You made a deal, remember?” Then, without warning, he slugged his little fist into Gant's unsuspecting face.

It hardly budged Gant but his nose immediately began to bleed. He touched it, looked at the blood on his finger, and held his hand cupped under his nose to catch the blood as if he had some compelling reason „ to avoid staining his filthy shirt or the manure-fouled stable floor. He said in a slow-grappling, awkward way, “Whud you do that for, Floyd?”

“To remind you you gave your word on this little thing.”

“They ain't enough of us. You didn't say they'd only be three of us.” Gant tugged a shirttail out of his pants and bent his head to wipe his nose.

Sparrow said, “You've got a choice, Mordecai. You can go up against the Earps, which gives you a chance, or you can go up against me, which gives you no chance. You've seen me work on a man. Now which is it to be?”

Sparrow's voice had been more gentle than Tree had ever heard it before, but something in Sparrow's manner carried absolute conviction. It struck Tree for the first time that Sparrow's carping, nervous personality was a ruse, that the man behind it was as ruthless and hard as any man alive. Sparrow was a dangerous man.

Now, with a guilelessly dour glance at Tree, Sparrow said, “There they are—not much, I'll admit. Can you use them?”

“I'll have to.”

Sparrow said, “You heard the man, boys. Pay attention to what he says and follow his orders to the letter. I'll bid you all good night.” With a sardonic salute, Sparrow walked out of the stable.

Mordecai Gant wiped his nose and looked at Tree with baleful reluctance. Obie Mack-lin put a chaw of tobacco in his mouth; it bulged in his cheek, squirrel-like. He gave a nervous bray of laughter that trailed off into silence.

Tree gave them both his unhappy scrutiny and began to speak.

He got back to his room late that night. He didn't have to check the tenpenny nail because the door was wide open, the lamp alight; Caroline was inside, gnawing on a hunk of cheese.

He pushed the door shut and said, “I want you to go home to your daddy, Caroline.”

With her mouth full she said, muffled, “You set it up for tomorrow night like you planned?”

“Uh-hunh. I don't give much for our chances now I've seen Sparrow's two prize boys.”

She swallowed, wiped her mouth, and said matter-of-factly, “I've been thinking on it. Suppose you get the Earps out of the hotel. You can't use the railroad because the Earps' mining boss friends could have the train held down the line, intercept you. So you've got to go out horseback.”

He made a patient grimace.

She grinned. “I know—I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. But you're going to need somebody to hold the horses ready for you, and more than that, you're going to need a goddamn chaper-one.”

“A
what?
”

“Chaperone, you know—
duenna
”

“I know what the damned word means,” he growled.

“Well, then?”

“Well what?”

“You can't get Earp out of his hotel room without her knowing—Josie, his wife. You leave her behind, and she'll raise a hue and cry they'll hear from here to Leadville. You've got to keep her quiet, and you can't very well shoot her. So you've got to take her with you. Besides, Earp might be easier to handle if she was along—he wouldn't want to risk getting her caught in the middle of a shooting war.”

Tree glared at her. She was smiling innocently; she said triumphantly, “So you need a chaperone to look after the lady prisoner. Me.”

“No. Absolutely no.”

She sighed. “Look, Jerr, forget that I'm Rafe's widow, which gives me a stake in this too. Forget that if you want to, but think of this: you need all the help you can get, and I'm not just a frilly petticoat schoolmarm all aflutter with my-goodnesses. I'm a ranch girl born and bred. I'm full of fight and vinegar. Maybe I don't shoot so good but I don't intend to shoot anybody. I can handle horses almost as well as Rafe could. Horse for horse I can probably outride you because I weigh fifty pounds less than you. I'm not dead weight, Jerr. I can help. I mean it.”

She picked up the hunk of cheese and bit off a corner, watching him out of the side of her vision. “You need every pair of eyes you can get to keep watch on those Earps. And one more thing: you don't know how far you can trust those two bully boys of Floyd Sparrow's, if you can trust them at all. You do know you can trust me,” she finished, and added after a moment, “all the way.”

He said sourly, “Thought it all out, have you?”

“It's a couple of hundred miles from here to Denver and you'll have to horseback across some of the ruggedest mountains this side of Hell. It'll take a week to get there and you can't stay awake the whole way. You'll want somebody on your side that you can trust.”

He said, “Your daddy was right about you.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Damn it,” she said, “I only want you to have the best possible chance of coming out of this alive—I want you to make it, Jerr.”