Territory (8 page)

After Eli died, she found she couldn’t speak at all when she kindled the first light of evening. She wanted to think,
All days are God’s, even the dark ones.
But no prayer would come out of her mouth. The God she’d lit the candle for would not have taken her brother. So that God did not exist.

Still, she yearned toward that first light. Eventually she found herself saying, “Thank you” over the flame. But she still wasn’t sure there was anyone to thank.

Then she’d married David and run away west. Mother and Father thought that God turned His face away from an undutiful daughter. So it didn’t matter that her candle wasn’t for her parents’ God; He wasn’t looking.

She lived as if she, too, no longer believed in God—except for this daily ritual. And sometimes, when the wick caught, she felt as if she’d been heard, and kindly answered. Sometimes she thought the universe might be a thinking, breathing thing, that for an instant had chosen to think about her.

The flame licked up and sent up a thread of black smoke. It shook her out of her reflections.
There,
she thought,
I’ve run out of delays.
She turned back to the kitchen before she could find another.

The envelope was addressed to “M. E. Benjamin.” There was no sender’s name in the return address; only the steel-engraved stationer’s printing. Mildred squared her shoulders and tore it open.

A folded quarter-sheet fell out, with another rectangle of paper in the crease. A rectangle with an ornate border.

Mildred snatched it up. It was a draft on a New York bank for twenty-five dollars, made out to M. E. Benjamin.

She grabbed the quarter sheet and unfolded it. Under the printed Gallagher’s logo, in a thick, black, looping hand, was:

Dear Mr. Benjamin,

I am pleased to tell you that we accept your story, “Stampede at Midnight,” for inclusion in serial form in our publication. Payment at our regular starting rate is enclosed.

If you have anything else of this sort, I would be interested in seeing it.

Very sincerely,

Wilson H. Fraine, ed.

Mildred stared at the handwriting, waiting for it to disappear. It didn’t.

Then it struck her: this was the answer to Harry’s question. This was what she was fixing to be.

She felt laughter jumping in her chest. Imagine telling Father, “I’m going to write sensation stories, Papa,” and watching his face change! What would Eli have said? Or David?

She had no one to share the news with. But for now, the news was enough.

Mildred clutched the letter to her breast and waltzed a few steps around the table.
Harry,
she thought,
if I’ve been living like a prospector, at least I’ve found color in the rock.
She laid the note and the bank draft on the table where she could see them, and turned to take the frying pan down from its hook. Suddenly she felt as if she could eat one of Mr. McLaury’s goats all by herself.

 5 

Doc rode north, keeping the Rincons close on his left, until he saw the plume of dust ahead that meant he’d caught up to the posse. He nudged the hired gelding into a canter.

Soon he could pick out individual riders: Billy Breakenridge atop his big sorrel; Bat Masterson looking small as a jockey next to him on a hired horse; Morgan on his restless dark bay ranging off beside the trail, followed by— well, if it wasn’t Marshall Williams, the hypocritical son of a bitch. But no fool: if the Wells Fargo agent didn’t ride to avenge the honor of the Wells Fargo strongbox, it would look mighty odd.

Of course, the three men out front would be Johnny Behan, Virgil, and Wyatt. Behan, because as Cochise County sheriff this was his posse. Virgil Earp, because he was deputy U.S. marshal. And Wyatt, upright as a post on his long-tailed black horse, because Wyatt didn’t trail behind anybody, least of all Johnny Behan.

Billy Breakenridge spotted Doc first. Doc heard him call out to the others, and they stopped to wait. By the time Doc rode up he’d had a chance to decide who to look at.

He smiled widely at Virgil. “I take it there’s still a trail to follow.”

Virgil squinted against the glare of sun above the peaks. Then a corner of his moustache twitched upward, and Doc thought, not for the first time, that Virgil knew exactly what Doc was up to. “Enough,” he answered.

“Glad to see you, Holliday,” Behan said. “We can use another man.”

“Is that so?” Doc pretended surprise. “I would have thought you’d be wishing me in hell right now.”

“Or someplace farther away,” Masterson agreed, grinning as he reined his horse around.

“I’ve got no quarrel with you, Doc.” Behan tipped his hat back and gave Doc a long, steady look. “Nor with anyone else who stays out of trouble.”

Doc laughed and shook his head. “I swear, I am half inclined to vote for you next election.”

Wyatt snorted. It was the first sound he’d made since Doc rode up. Doc felt it through his bones like the jolt of missing a step on the stairs.

“We’re following three, maybe four men,” Virgil said. “Tracks were confused at the holdup point, but it looks like they left together.”

Doc met Virgil’s eyes and tried to look stupid and good-natured. Virgil might believe what he’d just said, or he might not. Either way, it wouldn’t do to seem too wise.

Behan wheeled his horse. “Let’s go. Mountains’ll cut off the light soon.”

Doc waited until the group was moving before falling in at its edge. Marshall Williams seemed to want to join Doc on the posse’s flank. But Doc gave him a cold stare, and Williams spurred his horse on.

It took Doc a minute to drift back naturally, until he was next to Morgan. The bay shied, and Doc waited as Morgan got him back in hand.

“Morning, Doc. Feeling better?”

“I would feel better if I knew Wyatt had cut your ears off.”

Morgan put up a gloved hand to feel one. “Nope. Right where I left ‘em.”

“And how about the gentlemen we’re tracking? Are they right where you left them?”

Morgan looked like all the Earp brothers: tall, sandy-haired, and moustached, with narrow, bright blue eyes. Some people mistook them for each other. But you’d never do it if you knew them well. Virgil was stolid; Wyatt was cold as ice water. Neither would have so much as blinked at Doc’s question.

Morgan turned red and darted his eyes away. “What are you talking about?”

“Your dear friend Williams, there, told me how concerned the two of you were about the safety of that silver. Isn’t that just the hell of working for Wells Fargo?”

Morgan stared stiffly ahead. “Damnation. How’d you get it out of him?”

“Had I needed to pry, I wouldn’t be so lathered up about it. He’s as discreet as a fifty-cent whore. You might want to be more selective about your friends in these matters. Unless the territory has lost its charm.”

Morgan took that in, his jaw working. At last he broke out a grin. “You
are
a piece of work, ain’t you? Wyatt’s going to comb my hair for doing it at all, and you’re saying I should do a better job of it next time.”

“That is because Wyatt is a wise and cautious man. You find someone who says that about me, and I’ll have the pleasure of introducing you to my mother.”

“You mad because I didn’t let you in on it?”

“Not in my line,” Doc assured him. “Certainly not with your idea of desperate
banditos.”

Morgan scowled. He might be a damned idiot, but Doc had to admit he was a loyal one. “What’s wrong with ‘em?”

“They didn’t get the silver, did they?”

Morgan roared with laughter, and the whole posse turned to look.

Doc smiled, because it would look odd if he didn’t. “Try not to get every one of these bastards over here until we figure out where you were last night.”

“I was with a girl,” Morgan said promptly.

“Will she say so? If she won’t, then don’t be a fool. Where were your brothers?”

“Playing cards at the Eagle.”

“In front of God and all His creation. Hell. And if you said you were home with your wife, nobody would believe you.”

“Why wasn’t I with you?” Morgan suggested.

Doc felt a surge of anger.
Because you are not my damned brother, and I don’t know why I am going to as much trouble as I have over you. Serve you right if I left you to Wyatt. Or the law.
But Morgan was as much of a little brother as Doc had ever had. Sometimes the boy was stupid as a rooster, but it was the sort of stupidity that Doc understood. If he was honest, which he didn’t care to make a habit of, Morgan reminded him powerfully of himself.

“You were not with me,” he said at last, “because at the time, I was riding hotfoot to catch you before you did it. I was too late. So I rode back to town and did what I could to make it seem as if I’d never left and hadn’t a care in the world. I wish I was sure it worked.”

Morgan looked at Doc as if Doc had grown a second head. “Why’d you ride after me in the first place?”

“Now why
did
I do such a thing? To keep you from hanging? To keep Wyatt from—” Then he saw the black horse’s nose out of the corner of his eye.

“To keep me from what?” Wyatt said.

Doc saw the color go out of Morgan’s face. He turned to Wyatt and said irritably, “To keep Wyatt from knowing every damned thing that happens to anybody. A lost cause before I started.”

“I reckon,” Wyatt agreed. He was smiling, but Doc knew how much that was worth. “Morg, you look as if you ate something that didn’t set well.”

Doc thought about answering that. No, it would only delay the inevitable. He sighed and drew rein, and let Wyatt come up beside Morgan. Wyatt would have the whole thing out of him in five minutes. He’d also find out that
Doc had known Morgan was out helping rob the damned stage and hadn’t told him.

Fine day for a ride, at least. He sat back in his saddle and surveyed the wilderness of grass that lapped the feet of the Rincons, high enough in places to brush his horse’s belly. It was interrupted occasionally by islands of rock, and places where, for no reason Doc could see, the grass thinned to nothing, leaving mesquite, creosote bush, catclaw, and sand.

Behan was right about losing the daylight: the single shadows of rocks and scrub and stunted trees had already stretched out to meet and coalesce. He had a sudden fancy in which evening spread like spilled ink, not in the sky, but across the land, and the sky soaked up the darkness like blotting paper until it was full of it. He enjoyed the cooling breeze on his face until Wyatt looked over his shoulder and said, “You must be mighty tired, busy as you’ve been.”

Doc touched the gelding with his heels and rode up beside Wyatt. “Oh, not at all. I had a lovely nap before I set out.” Morgan, on Wyatt’s other side, rode with his eyes fixed ahead and his lips closed tight. Doc nodded at Wyatt. “Kind of you to ask, though.”

“This was my business,” Wyatt said. “What made you think I wouldn’t want to deal with it myself?”

“Morgan is free, white, and full-grown. I would have said it was his business.” Doc smiled at the mountains. “If anyone had had the gall to ask me, that is.”

Wyatt’s crack of laughter startled him. “Damn you, Doc, one of you’s as bad as the other. How’re we going to put this fire out?”

Doc shrugged. “Nothing to put out. Best I can tell, the only ones who saw Morg on the Benson road last night were the fellows he was with. And they won’t be quick to say they were there.”

Wyatt stared blindly at the horizon. Doc recognized his figuring-the-odds look. At last Wyatt said, “Morgan. Who saw you after that?”

“I got back a mite after the news did. Center of town was a hornets’ nest. You could’ve led an elephant ’round my back door and not raised a soul.” Morgan grinned for the first time since Wyatt had ridden up. “So I changed horses and joined the posse like a good citizen.”

“In other words, you’re not sure if you were seen. Doc, how’d you spend the evening?”

“After I got back from Charleston and got a fine earful from Marshall Williams?”

“Williams isn’t your problem.”

“None of this is my problem,” Doc said sharply. “I involved myself out of charity, and I am still waiting to hear a word of gratitude.”