Territory (35 page)

“I get chuck, bring here,” Chu assured her, his chin up.

Fox looked down at his hands, and ran a finger over his bandaged knuckles. “Thank you, Mrs. Benjamin.”

It did sound odd, the careful formality in the midst of chaos. But it was the mortar of society. “You’re welcome, Mr. Fox. Master Chu, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Two stiff drinks and the knowledge that Kate was safe had set Doc nearly back on his feet. She’d insisted on going out by herself once he was accounted for. He worried about her until she came back to Fly’s, a bit before sunset.

“Miss Nightingale,” he greeted her.

“Make fun if you want. But there’s streets full of hurt men out there. Least I could do was fetch and carry for ‘em.” She yanked out her hat pin as she stood before the bureau mirror.

The scene was almost a parody of Kate at the mirror. A hundred times he’d seen her stand before it to create a flawless self: hair, clothes, a little rouge for her cheeks and lips. Now her face and gown were dirty, strands of hair stuck to her sweat-damp neck, and her perfume was smoke. Doc wondered if she saw
those things in the mirror, and missed seeing her strong bones, her eyes full of light, the energy that made her every motion arresting.

“That was admiration, not making fun.” There’d been an element of teasing, too, because he liked the way she fired up when he teased her.

“You could have pitched in.”

“I had leave to absent myself.” In fact, Fox had made a command of it. It had weighed with him, the Devil only knew why.

Kate dropped to her knees by his chair. “I’m sorry, Doc. What a damned shrew I am! I wouldn’t have wanted you out there.”

“Why? Did you flirt with all the wounded?”

“Don’t be a fool.” She laid her head on his knee, a thoroughly uncharacteristic gesture. He stroked the loose hair off her neck. “I’m just tired. And hungry.”

“My God, woman, you eat like a draft mule.”

She pinched his thigh. “Only when I work like one. Come on, Doc, let’s see if there’s anything in town to eat that hasn’t been burnt up.”

She pulled herself to her feet. She
was
tired; ordinarily she’d make something like that look effortless. Doc levered himself out of the armchair and checked his own appearance in the mirror. Yes, all clean and respectable again.

“Doc?” Kate said from the window. Her voice was a little too casual. “Did you dream anything last night?”

He turned around. She stood with her chin up, her shoulders squared, but her hands wrung each other as if they belonged to another body. For an instant he was angry, but the sight of her courage and fear holding each other in check softened him.

“No,” he lied. “Let’s find you some dinner.”

Allie stood back and surveyed their work. “Well,” she said, doubt heavy in her voice, “it’s up. Though the Lord knows what’ll happen if the wind blows.”

Mildred looked at the tent they’d erected where her house used to be. They’d used the shovels Allie had brought and cleared rubble to make room for it, and pounded the pegs in with rocks where they could (Allie had forgotten the hammer). Where they couldn’t, they’d piled more rocks to hold the canvas and the guy ropes down. The result clung to its poles looking as if it hadn’t a right angle sewn in it anywhere. Mildred tried to stifle a giggle, but it escaped.

Allie looked at her doubtfully. That made Mildred snort with trying not to laugh.

“What?” Allie said.

Mildred waved at the tent and whooped with laughter. “I swear not to tell anyone who sewed it!”

“Well, if it was put up proper, and not by two crazy women with no tools almost in the dark—” Then Allie, too, started laughing. “If Virge comes by and sees this, he’ll tease me to the end of my days!”

“I’d be sorry for your reputation, but I hope he does come by.”

Allie sobered instantly. “Damn the lot claim, Millie. You come bed down in our house tonight and deal with this after a good night’s sleep.”

“And waste this handsome tent?” Mildred had meant to make Allie laugh again, but it didn’t work. “If I stay on the lot, I won’t have anything to deal with. I’ve got a structure up, and I’m in residence. Anyone who wants to make a grab at a town lot will look for easier pickings.”

Allie sighed. “Sometimes I don’t know why anybody’d want a piece of this place.”

“I felt like that when I saw what was left of the house.” And Mildred had been doing her best, ever since, to avoid making a mental catalog of what she’d lost, what might have been saved if she’d lived in a place with a fire company, and plenty of water for them. “If you can offer me a bed, Hattie must be home with her parents.”

“Lord, I love that girl, but if you hung a big sign that said ‘Trouble,’ she’d run right up ag’in’ it and break her nose.”

Mildred put the shovels back in Allie’s gig. “Tom McLaury still?”

“I warned her.”

“And I warned him. It made me feel like his mother. I wish people would remember that
Romeo and Juliet
doesn’t end well.”

Allie gave her a searching look. “You sweet on him?”

“No.” Allie seemed unconvinced, so Mildred went on, “I might have been, a little, but it wore off. Tom’s a nice boy. But that’s just it—I’m the younger, I think, but I
still
feel like his mother.”

“You seen more of life, and lost somebody. Sweet Jesus, I don’t know what I’d do if I lost Virge. Run crazy, I think.”

“Don’t lose him, then. You’d make an awful madwoman.”

Allie frowned at the gathering dark. Then she rummaged under the seat of the gig and brought something out. “You take this.”

A big kitchen knife flashed in Allie’s hand. “I won’t need it,” Mildred said.

“Then you won’t use it.”

Mildred took it from her.

Allie sighed. “I guess if you holler, someone’ll hear you.”

“I bet I won’t have to.”

“Feel sure enough to put four bits on it?”

“You’d better have the egg money to back that up tomorrow morning,” Mildred said sternly.

Allie grinned. “You want the egg money, or the eggs? I’ll make you breakfast.”

“The eggs, oh, please.” Mildred bent over and hugged Allie hard, and was surprised when Allie hugged back. “Thank you so much. I don’t know what I would have done.”

“Fiddle. You take care, now.” Allie climbed up to the seat of the gig and clucked to the horse, reining it around debris in the street. Mildred waved after her, and listened until the squeak of the wheels faded away.

She clutched her arms around herself and looked out over the ravaged block. The walls of three adobe buildings still stood, but they were shells, the roofs and windows gone. Everything else was desolation—black, broken timbers, twisted pipe and railings, bent strips of stamped tin. The smell of smoke closed out all other smells. Here and there coals glowed red under the rubble, but there was little left to feed them.

She saw other lights around her, across the block. Someone else’s tent, glowing with a lamp inside. A campfire that blinked in and out of sight when someone passed between her and the light. The flickering of a candle lamp at another neighbor’s lot. Allie was right; she could shout, and someone would hear.

Mildred looked again at the little drunken tent. She and David had spent nights in less certain shelter. She even had the luxury of an army cot that Allie had unearthed, and a blanket. The cot filled the tent almost from edge to edge.

She refused to be afraid. She was in the middle of the city of Tombstone, with neighbors and peace officers around. She was hardly less safe than she would be in a wooden house with a bolt on the door.

Mildred crawled into the tent, turned so her head was to the flap, and lay staring up into darkness, the knife at her side.

She dozed a few times, her mind drifting just to the border of dreaming. But when she did, her own disjointed thoughts were enough to wake her. So when she heard several pairs of feet crunching in the rubble outside, she was off the end of the cot and outside in a flash. She kept the knife hidden in a fold of her skirt.

There were three men with a lantern. It was half shuttered so that it shone on her, not them. She couldn’t see their faces.

“You’re squattin’, missy,” one said.

“I own this lot.” Good, her voice didn’t shake.

“Let’s see the paper, then.”

No point in answering that; they knew she wouldn’t have it with her. “Who do you work for?”

That stopped them for a second. Hadn’t they ever been talked back to? Mildred glanced past the men. The lights she’d seen elsewhere on the block were out.

Finally one of them, not the first man who’d spoke, said, “None of your damn business. You run off or we’ll make you run.”

The man with the lantern moved toward the side of the tent, and the light fell on a shard of kindling in his hand.

Rage crested in her. “Just what we need, fire. Get the hell off my lot!”

Before she could dodge, one of them had the collar of her dress twisted in his fist. She raised the knife and brought it down as hard as she could. It struck something, caught there. The man grunted and grabbed her wrist. She smelled drink on him as he growled, “I don’t think you can make us.”

Behind her, Jesse Fox said, “But I can.”

The man let go and stepped back. “Stay out of this. We got law on our side.”

Fox laughed—not the free laugh that had rung out over Boot Hill, but a soft, private sound. He stood beside her now. “Sure you do. I can see your badges from here.”

The night was warm—Mildred was certain of it—but she was shivering uncontrollably. She had never been so cold.

The man with the lantern swung it up, so the light fell on Fox. He didn’t squint. “There’s three of us,” said the man with the lantern. “I only count one of you.”

“And my five little friends,” Fox said, and raised his right hand. There was a revolver in it.

The three men moved back a pace. The one with the lantern shuttered it. There was no moon, but the smoke made a kind of ceiling that reflected the lights of town. The men were silhouetted against it.

Out of the darkness beside her came an oiled clicking as the pistol’s cylinder rotated.

“We’re going,” said the first man.

Fox said nothing. Mildred couldn’t, past her clenched teeth. She saw the shapes of the three men slide away across the ruined block.

Mildred’s knees wobbled. She sat down where she was, with no care for rocks or anything else.

“Mrs. Benjamin! Are you all right?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, go ahead and call me Mildred.”

She heard him uncock his pistol, and felt him crouch beside her. A match caught and flared, and she blinked. She saw him on the other side of the flame. He still wore the filthy shirt he’d fought the fire in, but most of the soot was off his face and hair. Under and above the stubble of his beard his skin was freckled with little burns and cuts. The hand that held the match was wrapped in her bandage, dingy now.

“You’re not hurt?” he asked.

“I’m offended. There were
two
of us, plus your little friends.” Her voice shook so, she didn’t expect him to understand a word.

He smiled and blew out the match. “If they could count, they’d find other work.” His voice came from a few feet away. “Do you have a lantern?”

Mildred shook her head, then remembered that he probably couldn’t see it. “No.”

“Just as well, maybe. No sense lighting the way for unwelcome guests.” Her blanket settled over her shoulders; he drew it snug around her arms and throat, and she felt bandage brush her chin. “Always stab upward.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“With the knife. Stab upward from below. Overhand only works for stage villains.”

She had hit something, but it might only have been a sleeve button. Her stomach gave a lurch. And was he laughing at her? He’d better not.

“I’m not complaining, mind you,” she said as sharply as she could with her teeth chattering, “but what are you doing here?”

Silence from beside her. She couldn’t see him even silhouetted; crouched, they were both below the artificial horizon of ruined and half-ruined buildings. But something about that silence suggested irritation.