Territory (46 page)

It was a terrible burden to be a man of principle. If Wyatt Earp had killed Lung, Jesse could bring him to justice, and maybe the voice of his conscience, which suggested that Lung had died because Jesse was too slow to believe what Lung had told him, would shut the hell up. But he had to prove Earp’s guilt first, and his standards of proof were high.

Sam seemed resigned to plodding through the rain. It dripped steadily from Jesse’s hat brim and darkened Sam’s golden hide. The sound of his hoofbeats changed every few steps: stone, wet earth, slurried mud, the splash of water. The storm seemed to have snagged on the ragged tops of the Swisshelm Mountains behind him; lightning lashed the peaks as if the clouds were beating their fists against them, trying to break free. It ought to be possible to ride out of reach of the rain eventually. The other side of Yuma, maybe.

So, Earp was one of Lung’s “knowledgeable men.” He might have killed Luther King and left Jesse the silver token warning. Jesse tried to recall Earp’s reaction on seeing the thing lying on the poker table. Recognition? Then he’d studied the players—of course. The token was supposed to tell its maker who had magicked King out of town, but the poker game had spoiled that.

Earp could have killed the Chinese girl by the San Pedro and made that knot in the binding-strings of the earth. He could have felt it when his work was undone—but how could he have known who’d done it? And why murder Lung instead of Jesse, if he wanted revenge?

Ahead the land sloped up to Goose Flats, with the block-shapes of Tombstone’s buildings all over the top like a pile of parcels on a table. He’d be back in town in under half an hour, if the road hadn’t washed out.

In town there was food made by someone else, and hot water, and a dry place to sleep. He’d had those things intermittently in the last week, as he’d ridden up the San Pedro from Charleston to Contention City, then as far east as the Chiricahuas and Galeyville. Between the towns he’d stopped at ranches
and prospectors’ camps. Always, he’d brought the conversation around to the night Lung died, each time figuring out new ways to get people to answer the questions he couldn’t directly ask. He didn’t want to be known as the man who was prying into Wyatt Earp’s affairs.

A teamster in Millville said he’d been in Tombstone that night and seen Earp at the faro table in the Eagle Brewery. A bookkeeper for the Gird Mill said Earp had been in Charleston that evening, searching out a man he had a summons for. A hand at Chandler’s ranch said he’d seen a man who looked like Earp, on what was for sure Earp’s racehorse, riding hell-for-leather toward Tombstone that afternoon. But a Mexican camped in the Chiricahua foothills said he’d been with a pack train smuggling silver out of Sonora, and come across Earp in the San Simon Valley that night.

Jesse had asked around Hoptown. Some residents swore they’d heard a shot. Others swore there was none. One man had seen a tall barbarian with a blond moustache and light eyes in the neighborhood, laughing at a man with a dancing dog. His friend rattled a dice box irritably and insisted the barbarian had been ugly and red and not so tall. An old man said he’d seen such a barbarian on a large black horse. A stout woman with gray in her hair said she’d seen such a one, but his horse was brown, and perhaps his hair had not been any lighter than Jesse’s. He’d improved his conversational Chinese, but not much else.

Anyone who said he’d seen Wyatt Earp might have actually seen one of his brothers. Unless they stood side by side, they could be hard to distinguish. And of course, there was that trick Earp had done in the foyer of Schieffelin Hall. What were the limits on his ability to make people see what he wanted them to see, where he wanted them to see it?

Jesse would have cursed the undependability of eyewitnesses if he weren’t more than a little undependable himself at present. The wearier he got, the harder it was to stay in the real, concrete world he rode through. Time became an icy slope that he found himself halfway down with no warning. Sometimes he was sure Lung was behind him on his black mule, and they were headed toward the San Pedro. Sometimes he was headed for Mexico, and Tombstone was only a name he’d heard. And sometimes he knew where and when he was, and it didn’t help. “You said there were no such things as ghosts,” he complained to Lung in one instance, and Lung looked offended at being associated with a peasant superstition. He didn’t speak. Jesse almost wished he had.

After two nights of sleeping on the ground and bolting awake, sweating, from a dream of lying under the earth, Jesse had gone to unusual lengths to
sleep in a bed, any bed, or at least on a floor under a roof. It hadn’t always been possible.

On top of everything else, there was the Mildred Benjamin question. He thought of it that way because he had no idea what he ought to do about it. He hadn’t seen her since the night of July Fourth, though he’d stopped in at the
Nugget
office and passed her house when he could. Should he seek her out? But if he did, what could he say? He couldn’t very well apologize for telling the truth. Should he avoid her? What excuse did he have for that? Besides, he didn’t want to.

As the days he spent away from Tombstone piled up, she ought to have dwindled in his thoughts. Instead, the most unlikely things reminded him of her. At Kendall Station, a man’s bandaged hand brought to mind the gauze she’d wrapped around Jesse’s knuckles. A dentist’s signboard in Charleston made him think, not of Holliday, but of the way Mildred Benjamin had stepped forward to make order out of chaos that night at Schieffelin Hall. Every newspaper was a memento of her. Even the sight of the Dragoons brought back to him that morning on Boot Hill, when he’d shared a little of his grief over Chow Lung. She trailed him, rode with him, rose ahead of him whatever direction he traveled.

He heard hoofbeats behind him on the road, and reined Sam to one side. He could make out four riders through the rain. There was a rifle in his saddle scabbard, and his revolver was at his hip beneath his slicker. If the riders intended him harm, he’d be dead from a rifle bullet already. Unless they wanted to get close enough to be sure of him?

The first figure was quite close before Jesse could identify him: John Ringo. With him were two men he didn’t recognize, and Curly Bill Brocius bringing up the rear.

“Afternoon, Mr. Fox,” Ringo said. When he nodded at Jesse, rain ran off his hat brim in a little stream. He pulled his horse up, and the men behind him stopped, too.

“I guess ‘good afternoon’ would be stretching it,” Jesse said.

“Good if you’re a damned fish. Can’t even keep a cigarette lit,” Ringo grumbled. “Soaker like this is more like winter than summer. Good for the grazing, though.”

It occurred to Jesse that grazing meant as much to the man who stole cattle as to the man who raised them. Ringo grinned as if he guessed Jesse’s train of thought.

Brocius rode up on a nervous gray roan. “Is that Fox? Well met.” He stuck
out his hand, but the gray shied sideways, and Brocius barely stayed in the saddle. “Stand still, you whore,” he said, but not as if he expected the mare to pay attention.

Jesse eyed the partly healed wound in Brocius’s cheek. It reduced the size of his grin by half, and he looked worn and pale. “Looks like you had a run-in with something.”

Brocius shrugged. “Something named Wallace. Damned fool shot out a tooth. I’ll be all right, though.”

Ringo frowned in a general way at the weather. “How’s the road into town?”

“I’m about to find out.”

“Whatever it’s like, I’m crossin’,” growled one of Ringo’s men. “I ain’t campin’ here ’til the goddamn water goes down.”

Ringo nodded at the man. “Mr. Fox, I don’t believe you’ve met Pete Spencer. You can probably tell he’s got a woman in town.” Spencer frowned and spat into the road. “This other fellow here is Frank Stilwell. He’s a sheriff’s deputy, now and then.” Ringo beamed as he said it, and Stilwell, a round-faced young man, laughed as if it were an old joke.

“We goin’ into town or not?” Spencer said.

“I guess we’ll see. If you don’t mind a little company, Mr. Fox?”

“Not at all.”

Walnut Gulch, when they reached it, looked as if it meant to grow up to be the Colorado. It was creamy brown and churning, and Jesse saw branches and a good-sized rock tumble past in the flood. The roadbed was probably still under there, somewhere, but finding out for certain would be an adventure.

Jesse looked up to where the road emerged from the water. “If we sight on the center of the road between the wagon tracks, that’ll be the highest line through. Barring anyplace where it’s washed away.”

Ringo nodded. “Single file, then.”

“Mind the debris coming down with the water.”

Ringo raised his voice to carry to the others. “Follow straight as string, boys. And don’t press your horses. There’ll be plenty of holes for ’em to step in.” He touched his heels to his big bay and urged him into the water.

Jesse reined Sam in behind him. The bay didn’t go as quietly as Sam did, but Ringo seemed to drive him forward by sheer force of personality. Wherever the horse would rather have headed, forward was where he stepped.

The water was nearly up to Sam’s belly. Once he put a hoof in a washed-out place and went in up to the cinch buckles, snorting and tossing his head. Jesse brought him back into line, and they went on, slower.

Then the water was down to Sam’s knees, then his fetlocks, and finally they stood on the other side next to Ringo.

Spencer and Stilwell were nearly across, but Brocius’s gray was having none of it, even with the other horses to follow. She reared and balked at the water’s edge. Finally Brocius smacked her over the tail with his quirt, and the mare leaped into the flood. The splash startled Stilwell’s horse, which bolted the last yard to dry land.

It frightened the gray even more. Brocius grabbed for the saddle horn as the mare shied sideways, crow-hopped—and with a scream that put ice in Jesse’s veins, toppled sideways. Brocius went headfirst into the flood behind her. The water grabbed them both.

“Rope!” Jesse yelled. He yanked off his slicker and his gunbelt and threw them up the bank. Someone must have handed him a rope, because he found himself taking a hitch with it around the saddle horn. He knotted the other end around his waist and looped up the middle in his right hand. “Stand!” he ordered Sam, and jumped from the saddle into the water.

It dragged at him like angry hands, and flung him as far as the free length of rope would allow. It battered him with sand, stones, debris, and its own hurtling weight. He could feel it trying to wash him away—not just his body, but his identity, his past, his will, the very possibility of him.

Magic had overwhelmed him in the earth, that day with Lung. This was the same power transmuted, in water that had no proper place or destination. There was anger in the flood, looking for an object.

He concentrated on the feel of the loops of rope in his hand. The rope was real. As long as he had it, he was connected to air and life. He kicked, paddled with his free arm, and pushed his face up to the surface. A little more effort got his head out of the water. Then he looked for Brocius.

The gray mare was gone, swept down the gulch. She had likely broken a leg in the fall. But Brocius … There, by a torn-up sycamore stump, was what might be a wet head, and a hand. Jesse let go of the extra length of rope and let the water hurl him down the gulch.

He stopped with a jerk two yards short. It was Brocius; he peered groggily through wet hair and tree roots. Jesse looked back toward the road. The other three men were sliding off their horses. How long had it been since he jumped? Sam stood like the statue of a horse, stiff-legged. A good cow pony knew how to keep the rope taut.

Jesse whistled three notes, as loud as he could, and choked on a mouthful of muddy water. Sam’s ears flicked. He stepped forward, and forward again. And Jesse, at the end of the rope, was swept nearer to Brocius, foot by foot.

When he came abreast of the uprooted tree Jesse bellowed, “Stand.” Sam planted his feet.

Brocius was half-conscious, blood running down in front of one ear. Jesse fought the current to get behind him.

The fallen stump blocked some of the force of the flood. He ducked below the water and butted Brocius in the stomach with his shoulder, shaking the man’s grip loose. Jesse pushed to the surface with Brocius draped half over his shoulder, and both hands hard on the rope.

When Jesse moved back into the rushing water, his weight and Brocius’s on the line pulled Sam forward a step. Sam snorted and threw up his head, but he stood.

They had to get out of the gulch; one good-sized boulder rolling downstream could smash them both flat. But Brocius was a big man, and the force of the water was like pressing into a wall. Jesse looked down the length of the rope, wringing out water where it pulled taut over the bank. He had enough strength left to hang on, but no more. Soon he wouldn’t have that. The water was grinding it away.

But he and Brocius were moving toward the bank. Jesse raised his head and saw Ringo, Stilwell, and Spencer on the rope, hauling them in. Soon his knees fetched up against the rock and mud under the water.

As soon as they were both clear, Jesse sat down hard in the mud. His legs felt like vines.

“So much for treeing the town,” Brocius croaked, wearing his half grin.

“You weren’t in shape to tree a mouse when we left Galeyville,” Ringo grumbled. “I shouldn’t have brought you.”

“You can leave him at one of the houses on the edge of town and bring the doctor back to him,” Jesse suggested.

Ringo looked at him as if he’d forgotten Jesse could talk. “Hell, you come with him and I’ll bring the doc back for both of you.”

Jesse shook his head. “I’m just wet and tired. And not much more of either than I was a mile back.” It wasn’t true, but it sounded good. He shoved himself to his feet and only staggered once. “I’m going to see if I can find his horse.”

Spencer and Stilwell got Brocius onto Stilwell’s mount, and Stilwell up behind. Jesse untied the rope from his waist and coiled it, and Ringo took it from him. Then Jesse buckled on his gunbelt. The slicker would be an exercise in futility; better to let the clean rain rinse the muddy water off him. He stroked Sam’s neck and swung up into the saddle.