Territory (9 page)

“Your patience does you credit. Go on.”

Doc glared at him, but Wyatt showed no sign of noticing. Doc sighed. It took two to make a fight. “I hired the fastest horse I could lay hands on and rode out, but the shooting had already started. So I got the hell back to town and settled in at the Oriental to drink and play cards as if I’d never left. Hired the horse I’d ridden to Charleston and tied it up outside.”

“Why?”

“Because, unlike Morgan, I don’t believe that I generally go unnoticed. There is bound to be someone with a story about where I was when. I didn’t want that story to point at Morgan. I had no way to wipe out my trail, so I laid three more, figuratively speaking.”

Wyatt smiled. Doc wasn’t sure he liked that. “Hell, it sounds like folks’ll think
you
held up the damned stage.”

“That’s what they think about every crime in the county as it is. Why should this one be different?”

Morgan looked at Wyatt and opened his mouth. Wyatt stopped him with, “If you’re not planning to tell me who your pals were, don’t talk.”

Suddenly Doc recalled the boy who’d stolen the stranger Fox’s horse, who’d bled all over one of the Oriental’s tables that morning. “He won’t split on his
compadres.
Any more than I would.” Doc gave Wyatt a sideways look, to say,
Any more than I tattled to you about Morgan.
Wyatt pulled his hat brim down, which Doc took for sullen acknowledgment. “But I’d venture a guess as to who they were.”

Morgan whipped ’round to stare, and the bay balked. “The hell you would!”

Doc paused to let Morgan’s frown reach its full potential. “One of them was a Mexican boy in a brown coat. He is an intimate of Billy Leonard and Harry Head, who are most commonly seen under the unwholesome influence of Jim Crane.” He watched Morgan’s eyes get big (no, neither Virgil nor Wyatt would let their faces tell so much), and grinned. “At least as unwholesome as my influence on them.”

Wyatt was watching him. “Will they keep quiet?”

“Oh, hell, no. But nobody will listen to them anyway.”

Doc heard a shout from the head of the posse, and looked up to see a straggle of ranch buildings and corrals in a hollow of land ahead. Breakenridge wheeled his horse and trotted back to them.

“Two riders at least came this way,” he said to Wyatt. “They’d have to stop to bait the horses somewhere, so there’s a chance Len and Hank Red-field saw ‘em.”

Wyatt nodded at the buildings. “That their spread?”

“Yep.” Breakenridge’s face was redder than usual, and sweat streaked the dust on his cheeks and darkened his big moustache. Doc thought some of the deputy’s certainty came from wanting a rest and a feed himself.

Wyatt turned a last look on Morgan, then spurred his horse. It leaped forward with Wyatt straight in the saddle as ever.

“Thanks, Doc,” Morgan said.

“I’ll feel properly thanked if I never have to do it again.” Doc urged his horse after Wyatt’s.

The Redfield brothers were on the porch by the time the posse rode up. They’d been at their dinner; one of the brothers had forgotten to take off the napkin tucked in his shirt. Behind them in the doorway was a little Mexican woman, her white apron glowing against her dark dress.

“Good evening, Len, Hank,” Behan called. “Sorry to get you up from the table.”

Doc saw the smaller Redfield’s shoulders relax. The larger one answered, “Evening, Sheriff. You fellows’re welcome to sit down with us. There’s plenty.”

“You sure? We’ve got Billy with us.”

Everyone laughed, Billy Breakenridge loudest of all. Behan swung his leg over and dismounted, and the rest of the riders followed suit.

As Doc’s feet hit the ground, a wave of dizziness broke over him. A small one; he clutched his saddle and breathed as deeply as he could, and it passed. A quick look around told him no one had noticed. Cooking smells came from the open door: cornmeal tortillas, chiles, onions, seared meat. His stomach gave an unpleasant lurch, and saliva sprang in his mouth in quite the wrong way. Well, there would be that much more for Breakenridge.

The rest of the posse crowded into the house. Doc heard the rise and fall of voices, a bark of uneasy laughter, and the banging of crockery. He leaned against the wall on the porch, and watched the sunset burn the western sky. The wood at his back was warm from the afternoon sun.

He wondered why he’d come. At the time it had seemed prudent, even clever—as Morgan had said, the act of a good citizen. And sometimes Doc wanted to be one of those. But it was possible that he’d just been bored, or afraid of being bored eventually.

Kate waited for him back in Tombstone—as much as Kate waited for anyone
or anything. She loved him, with the same conditions applied. Doc tried to imagine her as the wife of a good citizen, with doctors’ and lawyers’ and merchants’ wives nodding and smiling at her on the street, or up to her chin in taffeta at a concert or a play. The vision was overlaid with another, this one real: Kate in Dodge City, folding her ruffled sleeves back to her elbow and shooting him a sly glance under her lashes before she spilled the dice across the table. They’d come up threes. She’d shrugged and knocked back her gin fix, then held up the empty glass and smiled such a smile at the bartender that Doc thought he ought to have fainted dead away.

Kate Elder was not the stuff dentists’ wives were made of. And no amount of wanting would make Doc an upstanding member of the community. He was a fine dentist—he just wasn’t a fine person. And he was so good at being bad that it seemed like a genuine gift. One ought not to waste one’s gifts.

Wyatt stepped out onto the porch and came toward him. Morgan followed close behind.

“Redfield says a couple of boys passed through earlier, heading for New Mexico. Johnny Behan’s in there playing Pinkerton, trying to find out who they were.”

“And since you already know …”

“Hell with that. I think Redfield’s lying. I think they’re still here. If that’s true, we’d better be the first to find ‘em.”

Doc looked past Wyatt to Morgan, and saw fear in his face.
He might hang yet.

Doc’s thoughts were suddenly clear as cold air, sharp as a dagger point. It was as close as he ever came to a state of grace. “Let’s go,” he said, and headed for the stable.

It was more shed than stable, but at least the hinges didn’t shriek when he swung the door wide. The failing light picked out six narrow board stalls. There were only three horses tied in them. They all threw their heads up and whickered when the door opened, inquiring about dinner. Obviously the Red-fields’ nags.

Behind him, Wyatt said, “Where else—”

“Shush,” Doc said. He heard it again: the muffled boom of a horse’s hoof against wood. None of these horses had made the sound. He peered into the gloom. The far wall seemed closer than the end of the building. He took a few steps into the stable and let his eyes adjust.

The other end of the shed was walled off to make a room, for tack or feed, perhaps. Its door was shut, the latch slid home. “Right here,” Doc murmured, and moved quietly to the door.

It occurred to him, as he pulled the latch and kicked the door wide, that anyone inside would be likely to shoot if surprised. But surprised men had uncertain aim.

Besides, the inhabitants were unarmed. Two sweat-stained horses were crowded into the space. They were too weary even to start at the opening of the door.

Wyatt frowned and shook his head when he saw them. “Put away wet. One’s lame, too.”

“They’re not your horses. What do you care?”

Wyatt turned to Morgan, urged him forward with a jerk of his head. “Recognize ‘em?”

Morgan looked, and nodded.

Doc struck a match for light and studied the rest of the stalls. “Floors are dry. No other horses in here for days.” He turned back to Wyatt as he shook out the match. “So either the fellows who rode these two got their remounts out of the corral—”

“Or they’re still here,” Wyatt finished softly. “Come on.” He pushed back through the stable doors, and Doc and Morgan followed.

The sky was the clear dark blue of twilight. The land around them was flattened by the shadowless light, and seemed almost as impossible to walk into as a painting. Wyatt appeared to have no trouble, though. He looked toward the house, then the corral, then at the outhouse and the open-sided barn. Beyond the stable was open land, ending in a line of scrub and young cottonwoods that marked the bottom of the hollow, and probably a creek.

Wyatt knelt in the dust beside the stable wall.

“You all right?” Doc asked.

Wyatt waved him to silence. He pressed both his hands to the ground, fingers splayed.

Even in the half-light, Doc could see the tension in Wyatt’s arms and shoulders. Then he heard Wyatt draw breath, saw his back swell with it. His head came up, toward the barn.

“Morgan,” Wyatt said softly. “Head for the south end of that barn, and when you get near, make it known who you are. Quietly, as if you didn’t want ’em to hear in the house.”

“How do you—” Morgan started.

“Do as I say.”

Morgan moved toward the barn as Wyatt got to his feet.

“If I tried to finish Morgan’s question, would I get much further than he did?” Doc said.

Wyatt gave him a look, but Doc couldn’t see it, since Wyatt’s hat brim cast his eyes into darkness. It probably meant “no.”

Wyatt turned back to the barn. “Once he knows Morgan’s not alone, he’ll try to make a break. Be ready to go after him.”

Doc refused to ask who “he” was. “You go after him. I am an invalid.”

That got him one of Wyatt’s bared-teeth smiles. “If he gets past you, I can shoot him before he makes the creek. Without hitting you by mistake. Can you say the same?”

“Why don’t you just shoot him anyway?”

“Now how the hell would that look?”

At the corner of the barn, a new silhouette joined Morgan’s. Doc could read the scene without sound. The unknown man frightened, hesitating; Morgan swaggering a little too much for someone who was supposed to be afraid of getting caught. Then one of the posse’s horses, tied on the other side of the house, let out a whinny over something. The unknown man started, backed away from Morgan—

“Damn,” Wyatt muttered, and drew his pistol.

Doc moved to cut the man off before he remembered he’d refused to do it. But Morgan was closer, and quicker. By the time Doc reached them, Morgan had knocked the fellow down.

Doc couldn’t tell who he was, or exactly what he was saying, since his face was pressed into the dirt. It sounded like begging. “Care to introduce your new friend?” Doc suggested.

Morgan pulled the man to his feet. He was younger than Doc expected, and terrified. He certainly wasn’t Billy Leonard, or Head or Crane. “This is Luther King, Doc. He may not look like much, but he’s an awful desperado. According to him, anyway.”

“Shut up,” said Wyatt. He’d come up behind Doc through the gathering dark, his gun out. The boy, King, rolled his eyes to look at Wyatt, and Doc thought for a moment that King might faint. “Where’s the rest of your gang?”

King’s gaze went to Morgan. Morgan grinned at him. But Wyatt grabbed a fistful of King’s hair and jerked his head up and around, and jammed the barrel of his gun under King’s chin. “You don’t look like a fool,” Wyatt said, his voice almost gentle. “So I think it’s worth my time to say this. I wager your friends are nearly to New Mexico. I, on the other hand, am right here, and nothing you can do will change that. So you think good and hard about who you want to keep happy: them, or me.”

King’s Adam’s apple bobbed. Wyatt seemed to take that for assent, since he let go of the boy and lowered his gun. “We got split up,” King told him, a squeak in his voice. “Arthur—Arthur Ortega—and me just held the horses—”

“Whose horses?” Wyatt said.

“Billy Leonard’s, Harry Head’s, Jim Crane’s …” King trailed off, staring hard at Wyatt as if afraid to shift his eyes in Morgan’s direction.

“And that was all?”

“Yes, sir,” King whispered at last. “But I don’t know where they are. When it went bust, Arthur and I lost ’em in the dark. Then Arthur’s horse stepped in a hole and threw him, and …”

Doc couldn’t help but smile. “And you bolted with his horse, instead of sharing yours, leaving him on foot in open country. Good to have that cleared up.”

Wyatt frowned at him. “I’m sure the Redfield brothers’ll be surprised to learn they were hiding a criminal,” Wyatt said. “Let’s go up to the house.”

The Redfields were profoundly surprised. The enthusiasm with which they expressed their amazement nearly deafened the rest of the men in the Red-fields’ parlor.

“Good work, Wyatt,” Johnny Behan said, his smile brittle.

“I’d have lost him in the brush along the creek if it weren’t for Morgan,” Wyatt replied.

And that established Morgan’s upstanding-citizen bona fides once and for all. Pity no one else in the room would get the joke. A few more years in the company of the Earp family, Doc thought, and he’d be nearly amused to death.

Doc looked around the crowded room for a chair, or even a moderately out-of-the-way corner to lean in, and found them all occupied. He didn’t much care to hang around, anyway. Wyatt would make sure King told his story as rehearsed. Behan and company would react as appropriate. He could have stayed to watch Marshall Williams sweat, but it wasn’t as much fun when he was expecting it. He shrugged and turned toward the kitchen.

The little Mexican woman was cleaning up after the impromptu dinner party, scraping and stacking plates. She eyed Doc suspiciously when he came in. She was older than he’d first thought; he’d missed the gray at her temples and the frown lines on her forehead.

“Excuse me,
señora,”
he said. “But there isn’t room out there to stand with your coat unbuttoned. I hope I’m not in your way.”

She studied him for long enough that he wondered if she spoke English. Then she said, “You were not here with the others.”

“No, ma’am. Crowds make me nervous.”

She raised a heavy black eyebrow at that. “You look hungry.”

“I do?”

She nodded. “I will fix you something.”

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble—”