Territory (25 page)

“The difference in the depth of the wound from one side to the other.”

He swallowed hard. Details weren’t much help after all. “What else?”

“You were not gone long. Come and help.”

Jesse stiffened his spine and approached the table. The girl’s face and throat were bruised. The ribbon at the neck of her wrapper was still tied, but one end had torn away from the silk. The blood—an unimaginable quantity; how much was there in a human being?—was dry and stiff down the front of her, and kept the gown from completely following the contours of her body. There were smears of dirt on the front and hem, and a long three-cornered tear in the thin fabric. The girl’s feet were caked with orange-brown dirt, and there were cuts on the soles.

“Look,” Lung said, and pointed to the front of the skirt of the wrapper. It had little holes and tears in it, two groups of them on either side of the opening. Under the blood Jesse thought he could see grains of something as well.

Lung untied the lower ties of the gown with gentle fingers and drew it back to reveal the girl’s knees. There was sand embedded in the skin.

Jesse looked at her feet again. Other than the cuts, there was no blood on them.

“Do you have a knife?” Lung asked.

Jesse handed over his pocketknife. Lung used it to cut away the ruined gown. “Bruises on her arms and her wrists. She was bound.” Lung leaned over the girl’s face, examined the corners of her mouth. “But not gagged, I think.”

Jesse looked down at the girl, but what he was trying to see had happened perhaps twenty-four hours earlier. “Her customer’s job was to drug her and open the window. He wouldn’t have dressed her afterward—”

“Possibly she never undressed.”

“Either he didn’t get what he’d paid Mrs. Cray for, or he didn’t insist on viewing the merchandise.”

“Then he left,” Lung said, “and someone else took the girl from her room. She woke at last, which required her to be bound. But by then she was not where anyone would hear her cries.”

“Left-handed,” Jesse said.

“Pardon?”

“She was killed on her knees. Her killer stood behind her.”

“She might only have fallen to her knees as she was taken to the place where she was killed.”

“There’s no blood on her feet. She wasn’t standing when—” He could almost see a man pulling the stumbling girl barefoot down the riverbank, forcing her to her knees, yanking the neck of her wrapper open, tearing the ribbon. She was screaming, pleading in broken English. He stood behind her, gripped her hair, forced her head back. His face was … What face? What did he look like? Jesse tried to step forward, to call out, so the man would look up. But he seemed to be stepping back instead; the man and the girl receded—

“Jesse?” Lung’s voice came from nearby.

He was in the undertaker’s back room, breathing hard, and the girl was dead on the table.

“It is already done,” Lung said.

Jesse rubbed his eyes. “My God, it didn’t feel like it.”

“It was not what is called a crime of passion, was it?”

“You’re asking me?”

“You saw it.”

Jesse shook his head angrily. “I imagined it.”

Lung lowered his head and glared at Jesse from under his eyebrows. “I will explain the nature of your abilities again, if there is the smallest chance it will make you wise.”

“But I did imagine it.” Honesty compelled him to add, “I started by imagining it.”

“Could you see anything of the murderer?”

“No. Not much. I
thought
it was a man, but I might have assumed that.”

Lung turned back to the girl. “She was the victim because she was easily taken, and would not be missed by anyone of consequence. She died because someone required a death.”

“Why?”

“That cannot be answered here. Fetch your horse and meet me at my home.” Lung turned abruptly and went to the door. The latch resisted him, and he wrenched it open with more force than it needed. Then he strode off down the hall.

Jesse hadn’t realized until it was gone how much leashed anger there had been in the room.

Underlying every philosophy was the inevitability of death. The moral and ethical questions, the search for right living, the weighing of the evidence of one’s senses—it all came down to how fast, how far, and which way you could run before you hit the end of the rope.

Of course, it wasn’t until he was diagnosed with consumption that Doc had understood that. A death sentence had a way of focusing one’s thinking. Until then he’d studied other men’s philosophies and believed himself to be partaking of great thoughts. Now Doc had less interest in greatness and more in the length of the rope.

Presiding over the Oriental’s faro table, he was reminded of his own philosophy. He’d left Georgia choosing glory over length of days. Did glory consist of sitting all night in rooms stinking of cigars and stale beer, listening to bad music badly played and rough voices shouting nothing worth hearing, drinking one watery julep after another and taking fools’ money?

Perhaps not. But all that would certainly work against length of days. He was half true to his ideals, at least.

Doc studied the faces of the men crowded up to the faro table. Desperate, eager, predatory, sullen, happy-drunk; whatever their attitude, whatever system they played or what fabulous run of luck they thought they were on, their immediate destinies were the same. They were here to lose their money to him.

More precisely, to lose to the dealer as the representative of the bank, that faceless concept on which losers could vent their spleen. The bank itself, of course, was a polite fiction. The bank was Wyatt Earp, who owned the gambling in the Oriental, and Doc was his surrogate.

“Place your bets, gentlemen,” Doc ordered. Markers hit the felt like hailstones. He noted their placement with detached interest. George Parsons, that old woman, bet king, queen, and ace to win. He’d once tried to explain to Doc why that was the perfect bet, but Doc hadn’t gotten much out of it except that Parsons was pretty much on the go but could still add. John Dunbar bet the deuce and the trey to lose. Dunbar always said he played for fun. Well, he had it to throw away, but that wasn’t Doc’s idea of a good time. The young miner, Pinkham, laid one chip down for the six and the nine, and stared intently at the painted cards on the board. Cleaned out, Doc was sure. He could go to the Devil or not as he pleased; it was none of Doc’s business.

He was aware of Whitey Martin at the casekeeper, ready to tally the cards as they came out of the dealing box, and Frank Leslie on his left working look-out.
Doc could keep track of the betting himself—if he’d stay sober. But that wasn’t the way the game was played, thank God.

He dealt the soda out of the box and onto its spot on the table beside him. A murmur rose from the players at the sight of the seven of hearts under it. “Seven to lose, and …” He dealt the seven onto the soda card. Ten of clubs underneath. “… ten to win.” Someone had bet the ten to lose, he saw; there was a coppered marker on the ten card painted on the table. And someone had bet lucky seven to win. Not so lucky, after all. No winners on those cards.

The three of clubs came off the deck next, so Dunbar won some money and left his marker where it was. A red five after it, and another payout, since someone had bet odd to win.

He continued to deal the cards. Martin moved beads on the casekeeper, and Leslie droned out the bets, win or lose. He’d been here for four hours, and it seemed like weeks. Unless he passed out drunk (not likely) or someone got mad and shot him (possible), he’d be here ’til dawn.

Kate had stood at his elbow for a while, earlier in the night. He liked knowing she was there; he imagined he could feel her warmth on whichever side she stood, could smell her jasmine scent over the saloon reek. She’d been restless, though, and had wandered away after an hour. He wondered where she’d found to go, and resolved not to ask.

“Gentlemen, time to call the turn,” he said, to remind the hard drinkers that he was about to show the last two bettable cards in the deck. There was a flurry of markers on the board.

Into them spun a gold dollar, like a goldfinch in a flock of sparrows. It fell just shy of the high card spot. Doc frowned and looked up to see where it had come from.

“You might want to use a marker like the common folk do,” he said to John Ringo.

“Just wanted to get your attention,” Ringo replied, with a smile that involved only his mouth. “Money usually works.” He wore town clothes—coat, waistcoat, and silk tie—and his hair and moustache were fresh-trimmed.

Doc laughed. He wondered what Ringo would say if he knew Doc was glad to see him. Hatred drove away boredom. “Wait until I’ve finished with these gentlemen, and I am at your service.” He turned back to the dealing box and, in quick succession, revealed the last cards. “King to lose, trey to win, and ace hock.”

Groans around the table: no one had called it correctly. Doc collected the bets, picked up Ringo’s dollar, and dropped it in with the rest. Then he rose and smiled at his flock, and waved Frank Leslie into the dealer’s chair.

“My time is usually worth more,” Doc said to Ringo as they moved away from the table, “but I’ll let you have it at the friends and kin rate.”

Ringo’s lips twitched. Doc thought that meant he might be genuinely amused. “I may be a better friend to you than you think.”

“Quite likely; you couldn’t be a worse one.” Doc picked up one of the fresh decks from the bar and snapped the paper off. He might want something to do with his hands if the conversation went on long.

Ringo flicked a speck of lint off one of his grosgrain lapels. A damned nice coat, Doc observed, and new; and a pearl-and-garnet pin glowed in the folds of Ringo’s tie.

“Why, how respectable you look, Mr. Ringo. People do say your … business is thriving.”

“They’ll say what they please, won’t they?” Ringo looked around the room, narrow-eyed. “I don’t see the Earp brothers in the house.”

“Were you looking for a particular one?”

“It’s safe to say I never have a use for any of the Earps.”

“They would speak just as highly of you, I’m sure. They’re all elsewhere at the moment.”

“Good. They’re what I want to talk to you about.” Ringo pulled out a chair at a little table in the back meant for customers bent on two-handed games.

And so this was. “You understand there are things you can say about the Earps that I will not listen to politely.”

Ringo nodded. “I don’t come to pick a quarrel. Let’s call this a truce, for as long as we’re sitting here.”

Doc took the other chair. “Truce it is. Send in your herald.” He shuffled the cards without taking his eyes off Ringo.

Ringo flagged the bartender, and a minute later drinks arrived: another julep for Doc, and Old Overholt for Ringo.

Doc eyed the prearranged refreshments. “You were pretty sure I’d say yes.”

Ringo shrugged. “Just because I don’t like you don’t mean I don’t know you. I’d even say I can’t afford not to.”

“Then you know I am not susceptible to flattery.” He was, though. He liked to be considered a worthy opponent.

Ringo drank off half the contents of his glass and set it down with a click. “I came to warn you.”

Doc answered that by raising his eyebrows.

“Whatever else you and I are, we’re honest men by our lights. If we’re going to do a man down, we’ll do it to his face in daylight.”

“I suppose that’s something to congratulate ourselves on.”

“Not everyone in town can say the same.”

Doc laughed and fanned the cards. “I am shocked. Shocked, I say. This is mighty entertaining, but you might want to come to some point or other.”

“I’m offering you a chance to throw in with me.”

That stilled Doc’s hands in sheer surprise. “Well. Why would I do a thing like that?”

“Because the … the people you travel with now are dirty. And worse.”

“Worse than dirty.”

Ringo looked down at his glass, and suddenly tossed the rest down his throat. “There’re unnatural things being done in this town. You wouldn’t believe half what I know.”

Doc squared the cards and leaned back in his chair. “Oh, I am wonderfully gullible.” He remembered Wyatt on all fours behind the Redfields’ barn, the cold power he’d felt from him when he’d confronted him later. And his own troubled dreams. But how would Ringo know any of that?

“It’s a poison, what they’re doing. And you’re part of it, however hard you try to keep your hands clean. They’ll use you, and leave you to take the blame and burn in hell for it.”

With an effort, Doc began to lay out cards. “And I would be better off if I joined you in stealing other men’s cattle?”

Ringo flushed, and a muscle stood out in his jaw. “By God, you’re bound up in worse than that. I’d treat you fair, at least, and not like a dog.”

“And what would be the advantage to you? Other than the fact that Wyatt would have one friend the less.”

“I’d have one friend more. A sharp one. The only people in town who ain’t afraid of you are the Earps, and that’s because they think they run you.” Ringo leaned across the table. “Stand with me, and you’ll be a partner and your own man.”