by Mark Warren
“Johnny Behan,” Wyatt mumbled in the quiet of the parlor. “I’ll be lookin’ for him.”
Virge stood for a moment, staring at his brother’s back. “Mattie all right?”
Wyatt turned, surprised at the question. “A little sick, I think.”
Virgil stared down into the cup he’d been holding. “How ’bout you?”
“What about me?” Wyatt said.
Virgil shrugged. “Just checkin’ on my family,” he said and flashed an awkward smile.
Wyatt continued to stare out the window. “We’ll be movin’ into the other house next week. Give you and Allie some room here. Morg and Louisa can stay with us. Mattie seems to like Lou, so . . .”
Virge pursed his lips and looked around the room. “Might go better if they stay with me and Allie. Lou’s a might easier on me than she is you. Thinks you run the show just because you got ideas.”
Wyatt turned, but his face showed no reaction. “I’m just tryin’ to help us all get ahead, Virge.”
“Hell, I know that. You just keep right on tryin’.”
Wyatt turned his attention back to the window. “There’s money in that sheriff’s post, Virge. A lot of money.”
“Hell, yeah,” Virgil said and crossed the room. He cupped Wyatt’s upper arm with his hand and nodded in earnest. “Hell, yeah.”
By that night Fred White, the Earps, and John Vermillion became known as “the merchants’ saviors,” lassoing the tents of lot-jumpers and exposing the bullies who had been hired by the Townsite Company. Most of these dispossessed toughs dissolved into the night only to pop up on another lot the night following. Even after four nights of this, not a shot had been fired.
On the fifth night, Wyatt ate a late meal in Billy Owens’s saloon as he waited for a meeting with a Mexican who operated a sawmill at the foot of the Chiricahuas. When the man arrived earlier than expected, Wyatt stood and invited him to sit.
The dark, sun-browned sawyer removed his tattered straw hat, set it in an empty side chair, and sat across from Wyatt. His dress and posture represented a man who was more at home in the elements than inside a town, let alone a saloon full of Americanos. The tang of pine pitch wafted from him like a natural scent.
“Buy you some dinner?” Wyatt offered.
“No, señor. I eat already. Besides, I need to return to the mountains before dawn.” He raised his chin at Wyatt. “You need more of the smooth planks for the inside of your house?”
Wyatt pushed his plate aside and finished his coffee. “I need the kind o’ wood my carpenter can make some shakes for my roof. What do you recommend for that?”
“For that I can haul to you the gambel oak or juniper,” he answered without hesitation. “The oak is more money.”
Wyatt nodded. “One better than—”
A sound like the popping of firecrackers turned Wyatt’s head toward the door. The current of conversation in the room did not subside, but Wyatt was better than half sure he had heard the report of gunfire.
He looked back at the woodcutter. “I’ll need to go see about that.”
“Si,” the Mexican said, pointing east. “When I come into town, I see men with pistols down the street.”
Wyatt stood and weaved his way through the tables to the front door. He had stood there for only a moment when three dull explosions of gunfire signaled something amiss at the end of the block east of him. He spotted Fred White’s back as the marshal hurried down the boardwalk. Drawn to whatever misadventure was under way, men poured out of the saloons on Allen Street, among them Morgan and Fred Dodge hurrying out of the Oriental across the intersection. More shots erupted, and the crowd funneled toward an alley on the south side.
Wyatt walked out onto the street toward his brother. “Morg, are you heeled?”
As an answer Morg spread the lapels of his coat, but Fred Dodge offered his Colt’s from under his coat. Wyatt secured it in his waistband and hurried down the block, turning into an alley, where a gray stratum of smoke hovered above White, Curly Bill Brocius, and a knot of Cow-boys. Beyond them shots were still being fired from an arroyo, some of the bullets whanging off the rock chimney of the little shack where Morgan had lived before Louisa had joined him in Tombstone.
“Wasn’t me doing the shootin’,” complained Brocius, slurring his words and unsteady on his feet. He smiled and shrugged, raising his hands palms-up on either side of him. “I’m just in town for a drink or two.”
“Then let me smell that gun on your hip,” Marshal White challenged.
As Brocius slipped the gun free, Wyatt stepped through the crowd, walked up behind the Cow-boy, and attempted to sweep the gun to one side, but Brocius, clearly not so drunk as he pretended, twisted free. Wyatt bear-hugged the Cow-boy, and White reached for the pistol, grabbing it by the barrel.
“Let go of that damned gun, you son of a bitch,” the marshal ordered.
When Curly Bill did not comply, White jerked the weapon, and it exploded with a bloom of light that flashed brightly between them. Still holding the gun, the marshal groaned and fell, as Wyatt slammed his borrowed revolver into Brocius’s head. Without uttering a sound, the Cow-boy slumped to the ground, unconscious, hitting the dirt like a sack of grain.
The shooting from the arroyo ceased, but a group of Cowboys formed a loose circle around the fallen men. Fred White lay unmoving with a smoldering ring of red flame spewing smoke from his trouser material just below the cartridge belt. Wyatt swung his gun toward the onlookers and ordered them back. Morgan and Fred Dodge shouldered through the crowd and knelt next to White.
“Morg,” Wyatt said, “put out that fire in his clothes.” Then he spoke to Dodge, his voice as steady as if they were talking over a hand of poker. “Go fetch a doctor, Fred. Looks like he’s gut shot.”
When Wyatt faced the crowd, his voice filled the alleyway. “Who else was doin’ the shootin’?”
No one answered; but, though many citizens had gathered to gawk at the shooting of the marshal, Wyatt could recognize the revelers by their sullen faces: Pony Diehl, a suspect tied to several horse thefts and stage robberies; next to him, the short rifleman from McLaury’s ranch; the foreman named Patterson; and a tall one with a long, brooding face—Wyatt had seen him drunk at the Oriental—John Ringo. A fifth Cow-boy—a thick-chested man in a loose buckskin jacket—carried an ivory-handled Colt’s stuffed into the waistband of his trousers. Pinned in his hatband at a jaunty angle he sported the long speckled wing feather of a turkey. Wyatt braced each suspect by checking for a gun. Anyone with freshly spent cartridges or a warm barrel was herded to the mouth of the alley, where Virgil had arrived to take violators into custody.
Within minutes Dr. Goodfellow pushed his way through the spectators and examined White. The doctor began snapping orders, and a trio of men lifted the marshal and carried him toward Allen Street. Wyatt pulled Brocius to his feet and jerked him, stumbling, out of the alley toward the city jail, while Virgil and Morgan followed with a loose assortment of grumbling prisoners.
With several Cow-boys locked up, the three Earp brothers gathered in the front office. Closing the cellblock door, Virgil shook his head and frowned at Wyatt.
“If Fred dies,” Virge said, “there’ll be a mob down here to get Brocius, sure as hell.”
Wyatt nodded absently, but his attention was fixed on the short wrangler staring back at him through the open door to the street. “You!” Wyatt said moving to the doorway. “Get in here with your friends.”
“I didn’ do any o’ the shootin’,” the man shot back, his voice clear yet surly. He wore no gun.
Wyatt filled the door frame. “You can walk in or get carried in. Your choice.”
The bowlegged Cow-boy stared coldly at Wyatt for a time, then finally he stepped up onto the boardwalk. When Wyatt moved aside from the open doorway, the Cow-boy scuffed into the room in stiff, angry strides. He stopped, hooked his hands over his hips, and stared down at the floor, ignoring Virgil. Wyatt closed the door and walked around
the contrary man to stand before him.
“What’s your name?”
At first it looked as though he would not answer. His ruddy face seemed set in a mask of obstinacy. But then his head jerked up unexpectedly, his eyes burning like hot coals fanned by a breeze.
“I already tol’ you I wasn’t doin’ any shootin’,” he repeated, this time louder. “I ain’t even carryin’.”
“That ain’t what I asked you,” Wyatt said, his voice even but brooking no insolence.
The Cow-boy sucked in his cheeks and glared at each of the Earp brothers. “Name’s McMaster,” he said at last.
“From Texas,” Wyatt added, nodding. “I did a little checking. No warrants on you. But you don’t seem to be on such good terms with this crowd.” Wyatt cocked his head toward the cell-block. “Last I saw, you put it over on Patterson for beatin’ on a horse.”
“I beat on him same’s he beat on the horse,” McMaster argued. Then, with his dander up, he added, “I come here to collect money owed me by Brocius.” He nodded toward the street. “I got nothin’ to do with what happened out there.”
Wyatt looked into the man’s hostile eyes. “Maybe your problem is you hang out with the wrong crowd. Lock him up, Virge.”
McMaster’s anger gathered into a deadly stillness, and Wyatt knew that if the man had been heeled, he probably would have jerked his gun, regardless the odds. “I can’t be gettin’ arrested tonight, goddammit. I got to be somewhere tomorrow.” He fanned open his coat. “Look, goddammit, how many times I gotta tell you? I ain’t even carried a gun tonight.” He glared at Wyatt and let go the coat to stiffen splayed hands in the air. “I got . . . to be . . . somewhere . . . tomorrow!” he said, chopping his hands at the air with the rhythm of his words.
Wyatt’s face showed nothing. “Your plans just changed.”
McMaster was quiet as Virgil led him to the cellblock. Wyatt took down a shotgun from the wall case, broke the breach, and opened a box of shells. Morgan walked into the office as Wyatt loaded the double barrels.
“Morg, I need you to round up some boys to help discourage a mob till we can haul Brocius to Tucson.”
Morgan’s face took on a rare scowl. “Why’n’t we just let ’em have the sonovabitch?”
Wyatt snapped shut the breach of the shotgun and gave Morgan a look. “We’re either the law or we ain’t.” He opened the front door and eyed the crowd of citizens gathering down the street. Morgan eased past him and walked toward the Oriental.
“This might’a been a put-up job,” Virgil said coming back into the room. “Get Fred White out of the way, and a lot of men stand to make some money on the new Townsite claims.”
Wyatt kept watch at the door. “You think the mayor’d have his own chief of police shot?”
“New elections coming up,” Virgil said and shrugged. “Ever’body likes Fred.” He tried to hand Wyatt a folded paper. “Here. McMaster scribbled this. Said it needs to get to Tucson.”
Wyatt ignored the paper. “I ain’t too worried about notes tonight, Virge. He can post a letter. Let’s see if we can keep Brocius alive tonight, then maybe we can get him hung legal.”
Virgil dropped the note on the desk and joined Wyatt at the doorway. “That could’ve been one of us catching that bullet tonight,” Virgil said, his voice sounding detached from its usual no-nonsense tone. “That’s the way it happens, you know. Right when you ain’t expectin’ it.”
Wyatt breathed in the night air of the desert, its coolness like a potion that, in the simplest of terms, defined life from death. Above the town, the stars took on that vast display of indifference that always followed a senseless act of violence.
“Then we’ll always expect it,” Wyatt said.
Together they moved out onto the boardwalk where they could better keep watch down both directions of the street. Neither brother spoke for a time. Inappropriate to the occasion, a string of lively piano music spilled onto the street from the Grand Hotel saloon. The mob down the street showed no signs of organizing.
“If White pulls through, maybe this will settle down,” Virgil said.
“He was gut shot, Virge,” Wyatt reminded.
Virgil inhaled deeply. “Yeah,” he said, the word sounding like a sigh as he let his breath ease out. “Reckon I’ll go and check on him.”
When Virgil walked off, Wyatt spotted the Mexican woodcutter standing patiently in the shadow of the awning across the street. When Wyatt started walking toward him, the sawyer stepped down into the street to meet him at the middle of the thoroughfare.
“The marshal . . . he dead?” the sawyer asked.
“Probably,” Wyatt said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” By way of explanation, he pulled back his coat lapel to show the sheriff’s deputy badge pinned to his vest.
“Si,” the man said, nodding at the shield of authority. “I know you the sheriff.”
Wyatt stared down at his boots for a moment, then into the Mexican’s eyes. “Which one of those wood shingles will take longer to rot out?”
“I bring juniper, señor. It last you a lifetime.”
A bitter smile pulled at a corner of Wyatt’s mouth. “Well, let’s hope it don’t come to that.”
The woodcutter nodded and moved off toward the alleyway beside Hatch’s Billiard Parlor. For half a minute Wyatt watched the movement of the crowd down the street. Seeing no immediate threat brewing, he returned to Fred White’s office.
Passing the desk, he glanced down at McMaster’s note, neatly folded twice with a cursive script centered along the front. Wyatt felt the skin on the back of his neck tingle, as though a feather had lightly brushed his skin just below the hairline.
Valenzuela Cos, it read. Pantano Store, Benson Road, Tucson.
CHAPTER 6
Fall 1880:Tombstone and Tucson, A. T.
Fred White lived two more days. His funeral was the biggest event in the young camp’s history. By delivering Curly Bill to Tucson, Wyatt missed the ceremony, and now he was on his way back to help Virgil, who—as acting city marshal—was doing his best to hold the lot-jumpers at bay.
Just outside the old pueblo of Tucson, Wyatt reined up at the Pantano Store and dismounted. Inside the quiet of the adobe building a hazy stratum of blue smoke hovered just below the ceiling. He looked around at the few shelves of sparse merchandise. Above a crude wooden counter and mounted on the wall was the stretched, dried skin of a six-foot-long rattlesnake nailed to a sun-bleached board.
A white-haired man lay on a cot in the back of the smoky room, where a small fire burned in a brazier. Wyatt took off his hat and walked the rough pine floor. At the sound of his boots, the old Mexican sat up and focused on the badge pinned to Wyatt’s vest.
“I’m looking for somebody who gets mail here.” Again the man glanced at Wyatt’s badge and waited for more. “Valenzuela Cos. You know where I can find her?”
The old man raised a frail arm and pointed north. “Go past el saguaro grande, near el arroyo. Con la estatuilla in front.” He leveled his hand two feet off the ground. “De la Virgen Maria pequeña,” he explained. “Es azul . . . blue.”
Wyatt looked around the shelves of the store. “Can I buy a can of peaches here?”
“Si,” the man said and pushed up from the cot.
Wyatt found the adobe hut with a blue statuette out front, a Virgin Mary tilting atop a cairn of white stones. Out back of the adobe, a paint mare was hobbled, nosing at dry grass that tufted between the rocks shelving one side of a wash. Wyatt recognized it as the paint from McLaury’s paddock. The triangle brand confirmed it. Outside the front door a collection of clay pots were lined up against the wall of the abode—each containing a withered vine spiraling up a stick with a few red peppers or small orange tomatoes clinging to the stem.
At Wyatt’s knock a man’s voice called out in Spanish. Wyatt waited for the door to open, but the voice called out again—this time much closer.
“¿Quien es?”
Wyatt frowned at the can of peach
es in his hand and set it down between two of the tomato pots. The voice behind the door grew rough.
“¡Dime quien eres o márchate!”
“I’m lookin’ for someone,” Wyatt announced through the closed door. “Anybody in there speak American?”
“State your name or move on,” said the same voice.
Wyatt propped his hands on his hips and looked down at a coarsely woven mat that served as a boot wipe. “I’m a deputy sheriff,” he said in an even voice.
“That ain’t a name!”
Wyatt hesitated for only a moment. “Earp.”
After a time of dead silence, the lock slid with a metallic scrape, and the door dragged open on its sagging hinges. McMaster peered out, his mouth forming an unspoken word. The smell of mesquite woodsmoke was sharp inside. From a back room of the house a woman’s voice asked a question, but McMaster ignored it.
“What the hell’re you doin’ here?” McMaster demanded.
Wyatt put two fingers in his breast pocket and scissored the note McMaster had given to Virgil. “Thought you’d still be in jail,” he said, holding the paper before him. “Came to deliver this.”
A head appeared over McMaster’s shoulder. Her hair was not as black as he remembered, and a few rebellious strands on her forehead had drawn into a curl. Her mouth showed lines near the corners, and her cheekbones protruded. Her skin was the same—darkly luminescent and seemingly as smooth as the underbelly of a fawn.
“¿Quien es, Mac?”
She narrowed her eyes at Wyatt’s badge, and when she looked back at his face, something changed in her eyes. Her lips tightened, and the lines at her mouth deepened. Wyatt heard the air escape her nose like so much regret.
“Ask the sheriff to come in, Sherman.”
Only when Valenzuela Cos opened the door wider did McMaster step aside to allow Wyatt to enter. Wyatt took off his hat and stooped to clear the entrance. The dark room held its smoky scent like a permanent fixture. The dirt floor was almost completely covered by mats of woven grass or reed. Gray ash lay in the fireplace, but the room was comfortably warm. On the wall he faced hung a colorful blanket fixed into the adobe by wooden pegs. Next to it a Winchester carbine was propped in one corner.
