Sliphammer (18 page)

Macklin got up without being told, went to Warren Earp and tied him to a pine trunk. Taking the hint, Moradecai Gant lumbered toward Wyatt and Josie, who lay on their sides with their heads together, murmuring. Gant uncoiled a rope and said something in a crude, harsh-laughing voice which made Wyatt Earp look up at him and spit deliberately on the ground at Gant's feet. Gant began to growl in his throat. Tree levered himself upright and said, “All right, Gant,” and went across the camp, taking the rope away from Gant and kneeling to pass it around a tree and snug it to Earp.

Wyatt Earp's jut-jawed face was clamped tight; his big shoulders bulged. In the dimness his eyes were colorless. Tree heard his breathing; there was no talk. He tested the lashings and then got to his feet and said to Josie, “Come over here with me.”

“Nothing doing,” she said.

Tree shook his head. “Don't argue, girl. Nobody wants to hurt you but if you make it tough—”

“You touch me,” she retorted, “and I'll kick the shit out of you.”

In the darkness he heard Wyatt Earp's chuckle. Earp said, “She'll try it, too. Watch out for your balls.”

Gant said, “Shut you mouth, Arp, or I'll knock your teeth rat thew your backbone.”

“Gentle down,” Tree said over his shoulder. He took Josie by the bound wrists and dragged her ten feet away. It was easy pulling, across the slick pine needles. She kicked and argued but he finally got her trussed to a pine. He had to have them separated, though it gave him no pleasure; together they could untie each other.

Gant came up and was standing right there when Tree finished the job and stood up. Gant yawned in his face; Gant's breath made him turn away. Leering down at Josie, Gant said, “You don't get no chanst to shove him between your tits tonight, little plum, but how bout me? My hands ain't tied.”

From ten feet away, Obie Macklin said, “Forget it, Mordecai. Ain't nobody else could make her happy after that big stud Earp got through with. her. He knows how to bang them.” Macklin's nervous laugh was overlaid by nasty spite; there was something sadistic in the way he liked to bait Gant.

“That'll be about enough,” Tree said mildly. “Both of you bed down. I'll take first watch.”

He waited until Gant and Macklin had rolled up in their blankets, made one more tour of the three prisoners to check their lashings, and walked uphill to post himself with his back to a pine trunk and a rifle across his lap. Starlight filtered down faintly through the trees; it was a chill night, stillness disturbed only by the easy rustle of occasional breezes and the crackle of dead pine needles whenever someone stirred on the ground. Caroline was a soft, dark mound on the earth twenty feet below him. To take his mind off her, he watched the others and thought about the events that had brought him here. Now that it was done, he had contempt for the hesitation that had made him walk so gingerly around Wyatt Earp. That restraint had not been a fear of Earp; it had been a fear of discovering his own limits—a caution that masked the fear of failure. He had seen Indian foot races in which there were always a few runners who held themselves back, didn't commit themselves fully to the race, because they preferred to lose than to risk going all out. If you knewyou had held back, then you had an excuse for failure. He hadn't recognized that in himself until now; it made him feel both regret and freedom. He had made his share of mistakes but it was to his credit that he learned something from every one of them.

He wondered what mistake he had made with Rafe and with Caroline; something to be learned there, too. He remembered the things she had told him and he wondered if it could be true that she had accepted Rafe as a substitute for himself. In his own straightforward world that didn't make sense, but perhaps in hers it did; women were woven of subtle complexities beyond the understanding of men. He thought of getting up and going down to her and saying, flat out,
All right, let's talk about how you used to be in love with me.
For that was what she had implied. But of course he didn't do it. It might open up a wound he had tried to ignore for so long he didn't think he could break the habit.

As if reading his thoughts, she stirred in the shadows and came up the slope and sat down beside him. At first she didn't talk. Her toe described small circles in the earth. She looked up; her face hovered before him. There was a telltale thread of moisture on her upper lip and her eyes were very wide open. She murmured, “Damn it, Jerr, I feel shy with you.”

He thought, right here and right now in this moment he loved her.

She said, “You've got hooks.”

“In you?”

“I know you never meant to,” she said. “Maybe it's just that I need somebody—feeling this way about you, maybe it's just something to ease the loneliness.”

He drew her close, feeling her spine beneath his fingers, and put his mouth on hers, hard, until she gasped for breath. It was a staggering sensation: it rocked him down to his toes. He pulled away from her and muttered, “Better cut this out.”

“Jerr—”

He said, “Let's end up liking each other, all right?” He was cross with himself.

Caroline said, “Are you thinking about Rafe?”

“I don't know what I'm thinking about.”

“Rafe's gone—as if he never was. I know that sounds—”

“I know,” he said, more harshly than he intended. “I was thinking about something else, though. Goes back a long time. All the way back when I first met you.”

“I didn't think you'd remember.”

“Why,” he said, “I spent a long time trying to forget it.”

“Whatever for?”

“Caroline,” he said, “I was a scraggy Government scout with a drunk Indian wife someplace back in the hills, her gone to fat and me consigned to squaw-man cantinas on the wrong side of town. No reason for you to look twice at me.”

“There was plenty of reason. Don't you know what kind of man you are?” She touched his cheek. “I thought you never noticed me.”

“If I said I stayed away for Rafe's sake it'd be a lie. Maybe I was afraid you'd turn me down. You got pretty deep in my guts and I fought that.” When he looked at her, her lips were parted. Abruptly, wordless, he took her by the hand, swept the camp with quick inspection, and took her up through the trees. Her head moved before him; she swayed forward and gave her lips for his kiss, making a kitteny little sound in her throat and suddenly pressing against him with tugging urgency. They twisted down, opening and sliding clothes, their breath coming quick; she touched him gently and hot sensation raced through him. His hand cupped her buttock; he moved down, grinding his hardness against her. She was mouthing words: “Oh, yes; please, please, now!” His hands stroked her, caressed the melon breasts that came springing free of the open shirt. They rolled on the ground of soft needles, kicking off pants; with ruthless quickness he plunged himself into her, a great stab of his shaft rodding into her feminine softness, a hot, throbbing velvety snugness. Her fingernails scraped and dug his back and he was thinking,
This is crazy, it's the wrong goddamn place for this,
and then there was no more thinking, there was only heat and flame, her nails raking his back, their bodies lunging on the silent, soft bed of pine floor.

She sighed warmly and wriggled and gave him a serene, unhurried kiss; he wanted to He with her, her breasts in his hands, but he said, “We are goddamn loco,” and got his pants on and went down through the trees with his rifle. In camp nothing stirred; the prisoners lay asleep. He put on his hat and laid the rifle across his crook'd elbow, still tasting the flavor of her skin on his tongue. She came out of the trees tucking in her shirt and he saw the happiness glowing in her face and felt an overwhelming warmth course through him, an unreasoning reaching out of his heart. He felt absurdly pleased with himself, and grinned at her idiotically.

She came close and brushed him with her lips; she said, “It's all right, isn't it? I was so afraid it would come between us—remembering Rafe, I mean.” Her face changed; she was looking toward the sky, not meeting his eyes, and she said slowly, “I do feel guilty about it. I can't help it. And so do you. But it wouldn't be any good if we didn't feel like that.”

“Maybe it'll take a while to sort it all out.”

She said, “Is your back bleeding?”

“I don't know—I don't mind.”

“I never did that with—” she began, and stopped. He took her hand in both of his. She smiled briefly and said, “Fm sorry, I won't do that again. I love you, Jerr, I always did.”

Thirteen

The high passes were cold, wind-raked. On tired horses they struggled slowly upward. Tree rode ahead early in the afternoon to seek out a way across; his exhilaration had crumbled, he felt sour and weary. He had begun to smell himself. That afternoon they wasted four hours doubling back from a blind cliff and he knew it was time they couldn't afford to lose: he had seen the first signs of pursuit, a rising of flocked birds from a mountain behind them.

Taking the chance it would work, he spent an hour planting another false trail and led the way up a narrow granite gorge. Hoofbeat sound swelled and echoed between the rocky walls. For two hours Gant and Macklin had been filling the air with threats—what they'd do if Cooley caught up. Gant said, “I'd sooner kill you, Arp, than turn you over to them alive.”

Macklin said, “After all, that Arizona ree-ward's dead or alive.”

“Yuh,” said Gant. “Yuh, and it's easier handlin' a corpse than a live, squirmin' sumbitch like Arp here.”

Finally, having enough, Tree shut them up. He, wanted the Earps lathered; he didn't want them so infuriated they would take stupid chances.

Wyatt Earp had maintained an air of disinterested righteousness; Caroline kept hammering him about Rafe's death, about Cooley, and Earp only replied, “I'm not responsible for your opinions—he was your husband and you're mad, all right. For myself, I regret nothing. Badgering me will get you nowhere.”

They threaded the edge of a deep forest and stayed within it all afternoon. There was no further chance to survey the trail behind them—the trees closed off the view; Tree saw no further sign of pursuit that day but it didn't mean pursuit wasn't there. After dark he had to call a halt. They camped beneath the solid mass of a mountain saddle he planned to cross in the morning. It turned bitter cold. Tree took down his rifle but Caroline spoke low to him: “You have got to sleep, Jerr. Those two can watch the Earps, and I'll watch them. I'll wake you up if I have to.”

He didn't protest: he had gone too long without sleep. He felt drunk, in that stage where nothing seemed quite real; everything seemed slightly farther away than it was, and the things he said and heard no longer quite made sense. When he sat down he felt needles in his legs. He rolled up in coat and blankets and lay on his back, belly rising and falling with his breath, closed his eyes, and in five seconds was unconscious.

Obie Macklin watched Tree go to sleep, then picked up his rifle and walked past the three trussed prisoners to where Mordecai Gant stood bulky against the sky. Macklin spoke in a low voice: “I hope to God this works.”

“You thank Floyd'U catch us up tomorrow?”

“Maybe. I ain't worried about Floyd. It's Cooley I'm thinking about.”

“If Floyd don't get here first, Obie, we got to do it ourselves and get the hell out of here before Cooley shows up with that fucking army of his.” Gant glanced across the camp at Caroline, lowered his voice still more, and said, “Cooley ain't gonna find them messages you left for Floyd, is he?”

Macklin said, “Cooley wouldn't know where to look—I hope.” He followed Gant's glance and saw Caroline watching them. That lit Je blonde catamount didn't trust nobody at all. He made a note to watch out for her—she had a gun and it wouldn't be smart to assume she wouldn't use it.

Gant said, “Maybe we ought to do it now.”

“You that hungry for somebody's blood?”

“I don't mind,” Gant said. “We ought to do it and git shet of it and git the hell out of here.”

“Go ahead and try if you want to. Me, I keep remembering the way he handles that sliphammer gun of his. I'd just as soon wait for help. Hell, that was the whole object of setting this thing up.”

“How hard you think Tree'd fight to save Wyatt Arp's hide?”

“Why don't you ask him?”

“You funny, Obie, real funny. Sometime you gonna laugh yoseff to death.”

“Screw you, Mordecai.”

Gant scowled. “Some reason you don't want to go on living, Obie?” he asked with soft, bloodthirsty insinuation.

Macklin laughed bitterly. “Living? Hell, I never even wanted to be born.” He turned and moved away.

The third day was the heartbreaker. They got all the way up the mountain saddle only to find that the far side was a sheer cliff. Nothing to do but retrace and go around: it took hours. When Tree finally found a pass that crossed over, he halted his horse to the crest to look back, and saw two armies of horsemen doggedly descending the slopes five or six miles back. The two groups were a mile apart, separated by a hogback ridge. Tree's pinched mouth formed a slash across his face like a surgeon's wound.

Caroline said, puzzled, “They look like they're hiding from each other.”

Wyatt Earp said, “I recognize that white horse—Floyd Sparrow's. Trying to beat Cooley to us.”

Mordecai Gant laughed coarsely. “Lookin' to skin your hide, Arp.”

Earp looked at Tree with venom. “This game's rigged, isn't it.”

“Not by me,” Tree answered shortly, and led them through the pass; He had been spotted; the pursuers lifted their pace.

The far side was a long, sweeping downslope. They crossed at a canter. Up above was a sawtooth tangle of peaks, the highest in this range—Continental Divide. Beyond that, it would be mostly downhill; but it was still three days to Denver.