Promised Land

by Mark Warren

  As McMaster worked the door back into place, Wyatt stared at Valenzuela. Her dark eyes flashed with a message he immediately understood: they were to be strangers.

  “Judge let me go,” McMaster said. “Like I told you, I never done any of the shootin’. Wasn’t even armed. But you already know all that, don’t you?” He remained by the door as though discouraging a protracted visit.

  Valenzuela looked flatly into Wyatt’s face as she spoke. “This is the Tombstone sheriff who arrested you, Sherman? The one who suggested you were with the wrong people?”

  McMaster said nothing, and that seemed to be answer enough. She pointed toward a rough wooden chair covered with a swatch of laced cowhide. Wyatt sat and laid his hat on a low table. She took a seat on a pillow perched on a saw-cut juniper stump. McMaster remained standing. Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned his back against the wall.

  “What’s your business here, Earp?”

  Valenzuela spoke as if she had not heard her man’s challenge. “Perhaps you would like some water?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “I’m all right.” He turned to McMaster and looked the Cow-boy squarely in the eye, until McMaster shifted his gaze to the hearth. “Sheriff Shibell says you rode for the Texas Rangers.”

  McMaster tightened the lock of his arms but offered no reply.

  “Yes, he did,” Valenzuela said.

  Wyatt nodded to her and watched McMaster walk to the mantel, where he fingered a wax-streaked bottle plugged by a candle. Finally, he turned an angry face toward Wyatt.

  “Yeah, I rode with ’em. So what?”

  Wyatt felt the woman’s stare fixed on him, but he kept his eyes on McMaster. “And now you’re riding with this bunch,” he said.

  McMaster lifted down the bottle and adjusted the fit of the candle in the neck. “You end up riding with somebody.”

  Wyatt met the woman’s gaze as he continued. “You know where it is they’re headed?” He looked back at McMaster’s tight-lipped profile. “ ’Cause you need to know. They’ll end up either in prison or dead. Brocius is behind bars right now. Fred White didn’t make it.” Wyatt watched McMaster’s hand go still on the candle. “Did you know it was a put-up job?”

  McMaster half turned and opened his mouth, but he did not speak.

  “Mac?” Valenzuela said.

  “No, I didn’t know about that.” His eyes darted to Wyatt. “Still don’t, for sure.”

  McMaster could not hold Wyatt’s stare for long. He walked to a tiny window stretched with translucent rawhide. Valenzuela searched Wyatt’s face with an intensity that made him feel he should direct all his words to her, but he spoke to McMaster’s back.

  “Look,” Wyatt began, “I don’t know what your loyalties are based on with these men. I respect loyalty. But it’s got to run both ways. So I’ll ask you this: would those men back you all the way?”

  The quiet stretched out as McMaster glared at the dull light dappling the crude window. Valenzuela rose, crossed the room, and put a hand on McMaster’s arm. The illuminated rawhide set her face in sharp profile. Light seemed to lift off her skin the same way that heat rose off the desert.

  “I have a proposition for you,” Wyatt said. “Will you hear me out?”

  Valenzuela turned McMaster gently and guided him to the bench, where she pressed on him until he sat. She remained standing by his side. Wyatt waited until the cautious little man met his eyes, and then he made a small gesture with his hand toward the woman.

  “You got a good thing here. Better’n most, I’d say.” When McMaster started to protest, Wyatt added, “I ain’t talking about money.” Wyatt looked around the confining room. Everything laid out had its own story, he knew. A small, half-finished carving of a wooden horse. A stained tintype in a frame. An oddly shaped stone that lay on a closed Bible.

  “You’re telling me you live in worse’n this?” McMaster challenged.

  Wyatt looked down into one palm and ran his thumb along the life line. He took in a deep breath, let it out, and then remained very still until he had the words just right.

  “I live in a house of mill-sawn lumber, glass windows, and even a rug or two,” he began and then looked up at Mc Master. “But it ain’t what you got here. It ain’t got the promise.”

  When McMaster’s face compressed into a question, Valenzuela squeezed his shoulder and raised grateful eyes to Wyatt. The Cow-boy licked his lips and waited.

  “I’m going to talk to you straight,” Wyatt said quietly. “Then I’ll leave. What you do with what I tell you . . . that’s your decision.” He nodded toward the woman. “Yours and hers, I reckon.”

  McMaster’s breathing went shallow, as though he wanted to hear every nuance of Wyatt’s voice. Valenzuela knelt and pressed one cheek against her man’s arm.

  “I need a man who can tell me things I need to know,” Wyatt continued. “I’ll pay that man for this information. He would be an acquaintance of the Cow-boys . . . but not an accomplice.”

  “What you want is a backstabber,” McMaster said.

  “I want a man on the side of the law. A man like that ain’t backstabbing a man who breaks the law. You were part of the law at one time. I figure you’ve seen both sides now. So I reckon you can make up your own mind about which side to stand on.”

  “I rode with them boys from Texas.”

  Wyatt nodded. “Keep on, and you’ll ride right into hell. I can promise you that.”

  McMaster knotted his mouth into a pout. “I don’t even know you, Earp.”

  “Goes both ways, don’t it?” Wyatt countered. “Still, I figure I see something in you.” Wyatt nodded toward the arroyo, where he had seen McMaster’s horse tethered. “Prob’ly got to do with that skittish paint Patterson was beatin’ on.” He gestured with a hand toward the room. “And maybe a little of what I see here.” Wyatt kept his eyes from the woman, but he knew that she understood his meaning, even if McMaster did not.

  Valenzuela tightened her grip on her man but kept her eyes on Wyatt. “I think you can trust this man, Sherman.” McMaster looked at her, and that turned her face to his. She smiled at him, but he turned away. “Mac?” she said.

  He began to nod. “I’ll think on it,” he offered grudgingly.

  The woman looked at Wyatt, but her face gave away nothing.

  Wyatt picked up his hat, stood, and studied the blanket on the wall. “That’s all I got to say.” Turning from the wall, he nodded to them and fitted his hat to his head. Then he walked out the door, leaving them in a silence that was, though fragile, not without hope.

  When Wyatt mounted his horse, he looked back at the house to see Valenzuela standing in the doorway. She smiled at him for the first time since he had arrived; not enough to acknowledge a past, but enough to show gratitude. Her eyes lowered as she closed the door, and Wyatt sat his horse staring at the sun-grayed sticks and dry ocotillo lashed into an awning over the door, wondering if he had done a good thing or a foolish one.

  Starting to leave, he spotted the can of peaches hiding like a child’s surprise among her potted plants. He hesitated for a moment but then thought better of returning to the door. Touching his heels to the mare’s flanks, he spoke to the horse and started the long ride back to Tombstone. There would be plenty of time to think about a new wooden house filled with a different kind of silence altogether.

  In three weeks Wyatt was back in Tucson delivering another prisoner to the county jail. Sheriff Shibell had taken a stage southwest to Palo Alto to campaign for the coming election, so Wyatt waited two days, using the layover to make some money in the gambling houses. On the day of Shibell’s return, Wyatt walked into the county offices unannounced and stood before the sheriff’s desk. Shibell sat frowning at a paper on which he scratched a long line through a sentence. Then he leaned forward and carefully wrote in the margins.

  “Charlie,” Wyatt said.

  Shibell looked up, his eyes wide with surprise. “Wyatt!” he said and broke into a smile. He glanced back at t
he paper and snorted an embarrassed laugh. “I was just working on my speech. This campaigning is getting to be a full-time job.” He propped his pen in the ink well and sat back in his chair. “How’re things in Tombstone?”

  Wyatt began to nod. “Stable. I reckon you know my brother Virgil got appointed temporary marshal after Fred White died. We’re keepin’ a lid on the town.”

  “That’s good . . . that’s real good,” the sheriff said, sitting erect now, his mood bolstered by this news. “Will Virgil run for the permanent post in the elections?”

  “Says he will.”

  “Well,” Shibell said, smiling and spreading his hands with the obvious, “the more Earps wearin’ badges in Tombstone, the better.”

  Wyatt looked down at his vest and unpinned his badge. “Came by to tell you I’m supportin’ Bob Paul in the election.” He laid the deputy’s badge on the desk. “Don’t reckon I can do that and serve you at the same time.”

  Shibell’s face reddened as if he had been slapped. “Well, Wyatt . . . goddamn . . . doesn’t mean you have to quit on me. Hell, you’re the best I’ve got.” He frowned at the badge and slumped back in his chair. “Can I ask why you’re going with Paul instead of me? Is it that both of you have a Wells, Fargo connection?”

  Wyatt shook his head and looked at Shibell the same way he faced a man across a poker table. He was putting all his money on Bob Paul. It would not serve him to explain his ambitions to be a deputy under Paul, which would better position Wyatt for the job of sheriff of the new county that would be sectioned out of Pima. Furthermore, he saw no reason to insult Shibell just because the man was better suited for working in a bank or the territorial legislature rather than a sheriff’s office.

  “Best if I stay with Republican, Charlie. Wells, Fargo’s got nothing to do with this.”

  Shibell took in a deep breath, flattened his hands on the desk, and exhaled as he stood. “Well, you’ve made my job a lot easier down in Tombstone. You’ve been a good officer, Wyatt.” He flung one hand at the air. “Hell, you’ve been better’n good.” He offered his hand across the desk, and Wyatt took it. The man’s grip had not improved since their first meeting. “Good luck to you, Wyatt,” Shibell said and produced a wry smile, “except for helping Paul, that is.”

  When Wyatt turned to leave, Shibell blurted out, “Say, can you recommend someone in Tombstone to take your place? Maybe a Democrat?”

  Wyatt rotated his hat through his fingers and thought about the Democratic Cow-boy element spread all over the hinterlands of the county. He would be damned if he would help that crowd with a sympathetic deputy.

  “Can’t help you there, Charlie.”

  On the night of the election, with the temperature bottomed out well below freezing, Wyatt sat with Fred Dodge over a poker game in Vogan’s saloon. With the bar almost empty, James took off his apron and joined them for a hand, taking the pot with three queens. He was ribbing the boys about his luck with women, royal or otherwise, when Virgil came through the door wearing the stoic face that always presaged unwanted news.

  “Shibell was re-elected,” Virgil announced. No one spoke, as they could see there was more. “And I lost by fifty damned votes.”

  Dodge, now indifferent to the game, lowered his cards to the table. “Lost to who?”

  Virgil pulled out a chair, sat heavily, and held Wyatt’s gaze as though his little brother might have something to say on the matter. “Ben Sippy, that’s who.”

  “Well, shit!” James declared with no small amount of indignation. “How the hell did that happen? Sippy’s just a miner. He don’t know shit about police work.”

  With his face hard and angular, Wyatt closed his hand of cards and tossed them on the table.

  “That’s some bad luck, Virge,” Dodge said. “I reckon he just shook more hands, that’s all.”

  “Or maybe greased some,” James added.

  “Speaking of that,” Virgil went on, all his attention directed now to Wyatt, “remember Johnny Behan? That glad-hand, slick-tongued Irishman from Prescott I told you about? Well, Shibell gave him your old post. He’s the deputy sheriff here now.”

  Staring at the reflections in the windowglass, Wyatt picked up the deck and tapped the edges by rote. Soon he began shaking his head, then he turned back to Virgil.

  “Something about all this doesn’t square. I reckon Sippy could’a charmed votes out o’ the citizens, even without any background in the law, but Shibell can’t stand up against Bob Paul’s reputation as a lawman and a Wells, Fargo agent.”

  James got up, poured a drink at the bar, and carried it to the table for Virgil.

  “Looks like the Earps are out o’ the lawin’ business,” Virge said and threw back the whiskey. He slapped the empty glass on the table with a sharp rap, and the tendons in his jaw knotted.

  Dodge gestured with his beer mug toward Virgil. “But you still got your federal badge.” Then he turned confident eyes on Wyatt. “And Wells, Fargo will always back you, Wyatt.”

  Wyatt stood and slipped on his coat.

  “Where’re you going?” James asked.

  “To wake up the clerk at the telegraph office. I want to send a message to Paul. We got to look into these election precincts one by one. Something ain’t right.”

  “I’ll go with you, Wyatt,” Dodge said. “I’m expecting a telegram myself.”

  On Allen Street, Wyatt had started down the alleyway that led to the telegrapher’s cottage when Dodge quietly called his name. When Wyatt stopped and turned he saw Dodge standing in the mouth of the alley with his elbows cocked out to his sides, his hands resting on his hips.

  “Cross the street with me, will you, Wyatt?” Fred said, and hitched a thumb over his shoulder at the north side of Allen. “I need to show you something.” Without waiting for an answer, Fred Dodge spun around and started across the thoroughfare.

  By the time they reached the other boardwalk, Dodge had jangled through a collection of keys. Slipping one into Marsh Williams’s lock, he opened the door of the Wells, Fargo office.

  “Get on in here, and let’s close the door,” he advised.

  Inside, amid the thick aroma of tobacco from the stock of cigars Williams sold, Wyatt stood by the residual heat of the wood stove and watched Dodge secure the door. After tripping the lock, Fred parted the shade and peered out the crack.

  “How is it you’ve got a key to the Wells, Fargo office, Fred?”

  Dodge started for the back of the room where the agent’s desk stood against the wall in near darkness. He motioned Wyatt to follow. After lighting a lamp, he turned down the flame as low as it would go without extinguishing it.

  “I ain’t told a livin’ soul in Arizona what I’m about to tell you, Wyatt. If I’m wrong in tellin’ it to you, then I was wrong in what I told the Wells, Fargo boys in San Francisco, and my word would be shot all to hell anyway.”

  Fred Dodge cocked his head toward the sound of boots outside on the boards. Both men waited and listened until the pedestrian had passed out of earshot. Then Dodge leaned on the desk, his forearms flat on the varnished wood, his head hanging down between his shoulders. When his face came up, it was as solemn as Wyatt had ever seen it.

  “I know you’re still consulting with Wells, Fargo. As a kind of off-the-books operative.”

  Wyatt’s face remained expressionless. “What makes you say that?”

  Dodge looked down at the desktop again and arched his eyebrows once, as though he were making a pact with the polished wood. When his head came up, his eyes blazed with the fire of a man confessing his soul.

  “I been workin’ undercover for Wells, Fargo ever since I come here to Tombstone. One o’ the reasons they know to trust you is . . . well . . . on account o’ me.”

  Wyatt stared at Dodge’s stony face for a long five seconds. “Well, that explains one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You told me your profession was gamblin’, but I don’t reckon I’ve seen you win a hand more’n
once or twice.”

  Fred chuckled. “One thing I learned, Wyatt: a man will confide a hellava lot more to a gambler who loses his money to ’im.”

  Wyatt dropped his hat on the desktop, took a seat in the client chair, and looked at Dodge from a new angle. “Morg or Marsh Williams know about this?”

  Fred shook his head. “Just you. And I want to keep it that way . . . ’specially with Williams. The company wants me to keep a close eye on that jaybird. Some funds have come up missing.”

  Wyatt frowned at that news. “What made you tell me?”

  Dodge grunted and allowed a smile. “Seemed to make sense. Now maybe I can win a few hands o’ poker off you.” He grew instantly serious again and threaded together his thick fingers on the desk. “Besides that, the company has got an interest in this election, too. Wells, Fargo is behind Bob Paul all the way.”

  “Do they know one of the Clantons oversaw the polls in the San Simon precinct?”

  “That was Ike,” Dodge said. “Hell, yes, they know. I’m the one told ’em.” He huffed with a deep growl. “Ike Clanton! Hell, I wouldn’ trust that windbag with a boot full of hot sand in the summer desert. Only ones to ever take Ike seriously are the ranchers he’s stolen from.” He shook his head. “For someone dumb as a stick, Ike’s a shifty sonovabitch. All those Clantons are.”

  Fred began to straighten the papers on the desk. His fingers stopped their motion when he uncovered a folder bearing Wyatt’s name. Opening it he found a Western Union telegram.

  “Looks like Williams picked up a message for you, Wyatt. You seen this yet?”

  Wyatt shook his head, took the telegram, and read the two lines typed on the paper. He took in a lot of air, and, as he exhaled slowly, he returned the paper and reached into his breast pocket for a cigar and matches.