Territory (52 page)

“And Pontius Pilate didn’t hammer no nails, neither.”

“Why’d you keep working for him?”

Crane frowned and tucked his chin. “I never worked for Earp. You think I walked bang up to him and said, ‘What can I do for you, Mr. Wyatt?’ He’d’a said, ‘Why, Jim, I’d take it kindly if you’d just lay right down and die.’ ”

“Then who ordered the murders?” But he knew.

“I went to John Ringo to save my skin from Earp. And he agreed, oh, yes. All I got to do is any goddamn thing he tells me. Killin’ the Chinee gal damn near made me puke my guts up.”

Crane was kneading the leather bag, over and over, as if he’d forgotten what it was. The pistol no longer pointed quite at Jesse.

Another voice, muted, rose from the camp behind them. Jesse thought he caught the word “bear.” He heard more men stirring, the clink of a bridle. The cattle stirred, too, and grumbled nervously. “Take it and go,” Jesse said. “Get to South America.”

“No. I made my mind up. I’m goin’ back to Tombstone.”

“You’ll hang.”

“I know. But before I do”—Crane showed his teeth, a badger-grin of anger—”I’ll talk on both of ‘em.” Crane lifted the bag. “You want this?”

Jesse shook his head.

“It can stay here then.” Crane flung it down.

The contents spilled across the dirt: the shining coach wheels of new-minted Mexican silver. On one, like a shadow on the moon, lay a single gold dollar.

Jesse’s heart slammed in his ribs. “Get out of here,” he said to Crane. The gold coin winked and winked, like a sly, cruel face. How could he not have felt it until now? He’d carried it—

And as he had, it had called. Whatever it was meant to call was on its way,
and had been, probably, since morning, when Clanton had given him the bag. It was still calling now.

“What—”

“Go!” Jesse shoved him toward the camp, ignoring the pistol. “Get your horse and go. Hurry!”

As Crane stepped into the circle of firelight, a shot cracked from above, and another. The old man, Ike Clanton’s father, grunted and fell forward in the dirt. The bluff lit up with gunfire. The roar of it echoed off the rocks. Bullets stitched the earth, the buckboard, the shapes of the bedrolls.

Crane turned back toward him, his eyes wide and blind. His chest was torn open. He dropped at Jesse’s feet.

Jesse’s pistol lay wherever Crane had tossed it. Crane’s had fallen from his hand somewhere near the fire. Jesse dived for the edge of the camp, rolled, came up running. He had to get to the rifle.

He came down hard in a jumble of rocks. The pain in his side didn’t feel like a cramp—no, it felt wet. A shining dark trickle crept like an insect past his face across the dirt.

Funny. It started with this. This time I won’t happen on Lung.
Unless, of course, he did.

I never did make it to Mexico.

 21 

Doc hated riding the stage in the rain. With the canvas curtains down on all the windows, it was like being shut in a wardrobe with three strangers.

He’d caught enough of the casual chat to know that the short, red-faced man with the heavy moustache was an engineer at the Gird Mill; that the thin, sallow, sour-looking man who ought to have been a preacher claimed to be a first-class mixologist seeking employment; and that the quadroonish fellow in need of a haircut was a Hooker Ranch drover. They’d been in the coach since Tucson, and once they’d exhausted the president’s health and the washed-out rail line, they hadn’t much common ground to sustain the conversation.

That was fine with Doc. There’d be damned little opportunity for peaceful reflection once the stage arrived in Tombstone. Not that his present reflections were peaceful, though resignation to an unpleasant reality could bring a degree of peace with it.

Suddenly he hated the idea of arriving back in Tombstone without a little warning. He unbuckled the curtain at his elbow and rolled it up.

Gray light broke the gloom in the coach, and sage-scented moist air fought the fug of damp wool and sweat. He felt the frowns of his fellow passengers. But the howling thunderstorm that had held them up in Benson had turned into a slow, dreary rain, more like February than August. It seemed to be blowing from the south and west, which kept it out of his window. So long as the other three men weren’t getting wet, they wouldn’t complain. Or maybe it was Doc’s face that kept them quiet.

He was on the wrong side of the coach to see the Tombstone Hills, but he had landmarks enough to know how far they were from town. All for the best. It was one sort of evil to come on trouble unaware, and another to watch it loom, like a condemned man watching his gallows building.

Beside and before the coach lay the Dragoon Mountains, blue through the drizzle. He remembered his picnic in the foothills with Kate. A man ought not
to have a taste of that kind of happiness; it would make him believe he was entitled to more of it.

He took a certain bitter satisfaction in breathing the wet air. It wouldn’t kill him. Wyatt wouldn’t let it.

By the time the stage bumped and splattered to a stop on Allen Street, Doc felt he’d mustered sufficient fortitude and resignation. But the sight of Wyatt under the sidewalk overhang, clearly waiting for the stage, made him shiver. He pretended to stretch while his fellow passengers climbed down, and took his time getting out the door and onto the sidewalk.

“Thought you might need help with your bags,” Wyatt said by way of greeting.

“Oh, no, I traveled light. For reasons of health, I couldn’t afford to make a long stay.” Doc smiled as sweetly as he knew how. “I’d think you’d be too busy to meet the stage. Hasn’t Virgil put you on the police force yet?”

A knot of muscle stood out in Wyatt’s jaw. “He will when he needs to.”

Doc had known he hadn’t. He smiled again, and Wyatt flushed.

The driver tossed down Doc’s leather portmanteau. Wyatt caught it before Doc could. “How was Tucson?”

“Oh, grand, grand. A fine place for a man’s tether to end.”

That shut Wyatt up for the length of a few storefronts. Finally he said, “Kate left town.”

“I thought that was the purpose of charging her with threats against life.”

“She was threatening your life, wasn’t she? Stage robbery and double murder is a hanging offense.”

“If that didn’t bother me, I fail to see how it was any concern of yours.”

Wyatt stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “God damn it, Doc. I’m your friend. If I see someone doing you dirt, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Punish them for usurping your prerogative?”

Whatever Wyatt had expected Doc to say, it had not, apparently, been that. He stood glaring at Doc. Doc’s sudden mean-spirited thought was that Wyatt was trying to remember what “usurping” and “prerogative” meant.

“If you can say that about me,” Wyatt replied, “you’re not the man I thought you were.”

“If we’re to have this discussion, we should have it with a little more privacy.”

Wyatt involved his head and one shoulder in an irritable shrug. “Nobody’s noticing.”

It was true. Doc suppressed a shudder. He was wrapped in Wyatt’s manipulations again, without warning or consent. “I take it that does not strike you as high-handed?”

“I’m doing no one harm, and you and me some good.”

“And all that’s left is for me to thank you for your consideration.”

“Doc—” Wyatt took a long breath and continued in a milder tone, “I’m looking out for your interests.”

“A subject I have no say in, it seems. Now take the hoodoo off us and come along to someplace quiet. Or give me my bag and go your way—it’s all one to me.”

He met Wyatt’s eyes, watched his cold and angry face. Then the stiffness went out of it. “I owe you an apology, don’t I?”

“Yes, you do.” Doc felt his own anger seeping away. Wyatt was always like this: high-handed, single-minded, convinced what he did was right and the way he did it was the only possible way. It was one of the things Doc liked about him, most of the time. But expecting consideration from Wyatt was like expecting tact from the occupants of a beehive. And like the bees, Wyatt was only obeying his nature—however unnatural it might seem.

Wyatt smiled, one of his rare real ones. “Let’s go to the Can-Can. If I’m going to have to eat crow, I’d rather it was cooked decent.”

John Dunbar and another man, walking toward them from Hafford’s Corner, nodded to Wyatt, then to Doc. They had become noticeable again.

It was pleasant to come from the rain into the Can-Can Restaurant, that steamed with wet coats and cooking, and smelled of peppers and roasting coffee and bread. The little Chinaman who managed the place hurried up smiling.

“Got good table for you, Mr. Earp, up front where you like.”

Wyatt grinned and shook his head. “No thanks, Qwong, you old heathen. The doctor and I want a little peace and quiet. You find us one out of the way.”

The Chinaman led them to a table toward the back, out of the path from the kitchen, and waved a waiter over. Wyatt ordered breakfast; Doc ordered coffee.

Wyatt frowned at him over the menu. “When’d you last eat?”

“I believe it was when I was last hungry. Funny how that works.”

Wyatt turned back to the waiter. “The same again for Dr. Holliday.”

The waiter stole a nervous glance at Doc, nodded, and hurried away.

“I’m buying,” Wyatt assured Doc.

“Damned ungrateful of me, but I’m still not hungry. Did it occur to you that the rest of the world would like to arrange things for itself on occasion?”

“Is that what this is about?”

Doc laughed; he couldn’t help himself. “Blessed saints and angels, Wyatt, this is about such a passel of things I don’t believe I could pick one if you put a gun to my head. Yes, it is about free will. Also conjuration, blackmail, and threats against life. That should do to start.”

Wyatt sat with his hands flat on the table, his eyes on them as if a good explanation might appear printed on his knuckles. “I never meant to do anything but right by you, Doc.”

“Ah, but was that just the best way to do right by you?”

Wyatt looked up, cold-eyed. Doc found it had very little effect on him for once.

“You’re using me, aren’t you?” Doc continued. “I will be damned if I know how, but you’re using me, and your brothers, and if this were the Middle Ages, even Judge Spicer would call it the Black Arts and burn you at the Goddamned stake.”

“Used to be, if you approved of the ends, you weren’t too nice about the means.”

“Just when were the ends presented for my approval in this case?”

The waiter brought Doc’s coffee, wary as a horse led up to a bonfire. Doc wondered if he and Wyatt looked like a quarrel; he’d swear they didn’t sound like one. They could both say the most dreadful things in a voice that would barely cross the table.

Wyatt waited until Doc swallowed some coffee. Then he replied, “I told you once. I’m making us all rich.” The waiter hurried back with two platters of beefsteak and eggs, which hit the table with an impressive clunk. Wyatt tucked his napkin into his shirtfront and picked up his knife and fork. “I’m also,” he added, his attention on his meat, “keeping you alive.”

To hear Wyatt say it like that, offhand and unconcerned, struck at Doc’s heart and stilled his breath. The odor of the beef, sickly sweet, reached him anyway. “How?” he asked. There was a break in his voice that shamed him.

Wyatt raised his eyebrows. “Conjuration,” he drawled.

“What do I owe my life to? Do you sacrifice pigeons and boil black cats alive?”

“Would that trouble you?”

“Does keeping me alive require you to kill something else?”

Wyatt frowned, baffled. “If a man threw down on you, you’d jerk your pistol, wouldn’t you? You’d kill to stay alive.”

“God damn you, Wyatt—” Doc clenched his teeth on what was better left unsaid. “You don’t see a difference, do you? A man chooses to play his life against mine. I choose to take him up on it. We take our chances, man to man. In your game, where did I have a choice?”

Wyatt stared down at his plate. “It
is
my game. I couldn’t gamble on you choosing to back me. I’m sorry, Doc, but you’re my ace. I couldn’t risk letting go of you.”

By God, he actually was sorry. Doc saw it in his averted eyes, heard it in his voice. “Then let go now.”