Promised Land

by Mark Warren

  Woodsmoke rose above the grasses below and streamed away into the willows and cottonwood saplings covering the embankment beyond the spring. Wyatt started to call out to his men, when someone at the spring yelled an alarm. Immediately, the full torso of a man holding a fry pan bobbed up above the grasses. Four others scrambled up the bank into the trees. Wyatt heard the pan fall on the rocks as the lone man lunged toward a gnarled mesquite tree and snatched up a shotgun. One of the tree’s branches toppled the man’s wide-brimmed hat, and sunlight reflected off Curly Bill Brocius’s unmistakable wavy, black hair, as dark and shining in the hard light as if it had been slathered with lard.

  The shallow draw exploded with gunfire, guns popping from the grass, from behind the spring, and from the trees on the higher ground. Amid the fusillade, Wyatt steeled himself against sure death and willed himself to survive long enough to exact his revenge on Brocius for Morgan’s murder.

  In this state of mind, Wyatt heard the tattered volleys of gunfire become a muted series of reports, as if from a battle too distant to harm him. A surreal calm gathered inside him. Immersed in a cocoon of semi-quiet, he felt an ineffable sense of protection surround him, like a silken web suspended in the air, shielding him from anything the Cow-boys could throw at him. Morgan’s voice whispered in his ear, as clearly as if the two brothers were conferring over coffee during the midnight hours in Wyatt’s kitchen.

  They can’t touch you, Wyatt, Morg said. They’re hollow . . . empty inside . . . without a soul.

  In a smooth, steady arc of motion, Wyatt raised the shotgun, thumbed back both hammers, and seated the stock to his shoulder. But his horse—still a part of the other world—shied from the gunfire, and the reins in Wyatt’s hand pulled and jerked, interrupting his aim. Bullets from the willows tore through his hat and coattails and whined off the rocks behind him. Then Curly Bill’s gun roared. Scattershot scoured the grass and tugged at Wyatt’s coattails. Brocius was cocking the second hammer when Wyatt leveled his eye over the twin barrels of his gun and pulled both triggers. The outlaw leader screamed and disappeared behind a pale cloud of smoke, but not before Wyatt saw the Cow-boy’s striped shirt burst into a pattern of crimson flowers.

  In front of Wyatt, bullets whanged off stone, showering pieces of rock and dust into the air. His horse reared, tugging at the reins still wrapped around his hand. Tossing down the shotgun, he reached inside his coat for the pistol at his hip, but his hand slid across the bare cloth of his trousers. Looking down he discovered the loosened gun belts had slipped to his thighs, the pistol scabbards having worked their way around behind him. He tugged up on one belt, found the gun, and, turning his body sideways to the fusillade pouring out of the trees, he fired five times at three silhouettes, two of those shots rewarding him with high-pitched cries. Switching to the other Colt’s, he sent five more rounds into the willows.

  Struggling with his horse, he tried to grab the Winchester from the saddle boot. A glimpse back down the slope showed that no one was backing him. Only Vermillion was on the mesa, hatless and trapped beneath his prostrate horse, pushing with a boot in the bow of his saddle to free himself.

  Bullets continued to pluck at Wyatt’s clothing as he hopped on one leg, trying to get his boot into the stirrup. The walleyed mare danced in a wide arc, and Wyatt could do nothing but swing with it. In a dreamlike lethargy, he tried to mount, but the cartridge belts still shackled his thighs. Losing his grip on the saddle horn he grasped a handful of the horse’s mane and hung on. Inches from his nose, a bullet hit the pommel and tore it from its metal post with a rank, sulfurous smell. Leaning into the saddle, he yanked up on the gun belt and finally managed to straddle the horse.

  He saw Vermillion pull out of his trapped boot and yell to the men behind him as he limped a retreat on one bare stocking. Perched atop his horse, utterly exposed, Wyatt snapped awake from the trance that had dulled his sense of hearing. The sound of gunfire was now thundering and chaotic. He did not know how he had survived the hail of bullets for so long. He knew he was still alive by the acrid smell of spent gunpowder that burned his throat. Now it was only a matter of seconds, he knew, before one of the Cow-boy’s bullets would find him.

  Then Morgan’s image in the pool room filled his mind—shot in the back, collapsing in a shower of glass and emptying his lifeblood onto the dirty floor. Under his breath, Wyatt growled something unintelligible and, when he finally inhaled, a preternatural strength surged through him. Again he felt invincible, but this time he experienced the power coming not from somewhere outside of him . . . but from the core of his being.

  He pulled the Winchester free and leveled it at the willows, firing and cocking the gun repeatedly from the saddle in a sustained and deafening roar that filled the air with smoke. And then, a bullet struck him, numbing his leg from toes to knee. The bones of his lower leg seemed to hum, as if a swarm of bees had been stirred up inside his marrow.

  His guns were empty. Before the breeze could disassemble the gray haze of smoke hanging like a protective curtain around him, he reined his horse around, kicked its flank with his good leg, and made for the boulders, picking up the hobbling Vermillion on the way.

  As Wyatt dismounted behind the palisade of rocks where his posse had gathered, Doc reached out to him, his hands tentative, his face slack with shock. “Good God, Wyatt!” Doc’s inspecting gaze moved up and down the bullet-riddled coat. “You must be shot all to pieces.”

  Sitting in the grass behind one of the boulders Wyatt pulled up a trouser leg to examine his lifeless leg. He could find no blood, no mark anywhere.

  “Bullet’s in the heel of your boot, Wyatt,” Vermillion said, his voice filled with awe.

  Wyatt stared at the gouge in the leather and thought about how many pieces of flying lead had tried to find him out in the open space on the mesa. He realized then how tightly the muscles of his body had cinched around his torso. It was as though he had physically constructed himself a suit of armor.

  “What do you want to do, Wyatt?” Creek Johnson said.

  Wyatt removed his hat, closed his eyes, and let his head settle back against the rock. The posse men were as still as the boulders around them as they waited for his answer.

  Doc leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “Wyatt? What do you—”

  “I reckon I already done it,” Wyatt snapped and opened his eyes, letting a flash of anger show on his face. Doc eased back and sat on his heels as he stared at the hard veneer of his friend’s face.

  “Is it Brocius?” McMaster asked.

  Wyatt settled the back of his head against the rock again. “Not no more, it ain’t.”

  Creek Johnson poked a finger at the air, silently counting the holes in Wyatt’s long coat. Giving up the calculation, he shook his head in wonderment.

  “How in hell’d you not get shot, Wyatt?”

  When Wyatt said nothing, Vermillion peered out over the rock. “Well, they sure as hell shot my goddamn horse dead enough.” He spun back around. “You boys want to make a charge on the rest o’ them bastards?”

  Wyatt cocked his head and half raised a hand to hush them, his eyes fixed on the middle distance as he listened. When the others grew still, they heard horses scrambling up the slope beyond the spring. Each man in the posse looked to Wyatt.

  “What about it, Wyatt?” Doc said. “Want to make a run in there?”

  Wyatt opened the gate on one of his revolvers and snicked out the empty cartridges. “I’ve already been there.” He pushed fresh loads into the chambers and gave Doc a stony look. “You go ahead, if you want to.”

  Standing, Wyatt holstered the gun and repeated the loading process with his other pistol. Then he stamped his boot in an attempt to bring life back into his numbed leg. When he could walk, he limped to his chestnut mare and began to examine the animal for wounds. Slowly he ran his hands down the legs and across the flanks, cupping the thick muscle in the chest, patting the haunches. Like himself, the horse was untouched. He scratched the wiry coat
around the base of the mare’s ears, and the horse nickered and nuzzled him, pouring warm breath over his cheek and ear, and it was as if Morgan were there with him again, whispering something about immortality.

  Wyatt looked past the spine of the Whetstones into the valley of the San Pedro. The final colors of the day were starting to gather in the sky. Minutes before, he had not expected to witness such a thing again. He looked down at his bullet-riddled coat and felt the heel of his boot give where the bullet had gored a trench into the leather. He had bucked the odds, and he wondered if, somehow, Morgan had played a hand in that. How else could it be explained? he thought.

  Doc picked his way carefully through the rocky scrub and stood beside Wyatt. For a time neither man spoke. Holliday’s unnatural stillness was a sound unto itself.

  “Is she hit, Wyatt?” he asked quietly and nodded toward the mare.

  Wyatt’s anger had subsided. Now a cool breeze moved across his skin like a post-battle ritual of ablution. He ran his gaze over the unscathed horse once again.

  “She’s all right,” he said.

  Doc fingered the bare metal post jutting up from the front of Wyatt’s saddle. Staring hard at the place where the pommel had been, Holliday started to say something, but then he closed his mouth and breathed out a long and heavy sigh. It took half a minute before Doc could get his words out.

  “We thought you’d ride back for cover with us, Wyatt.”

  Wyatt said nothing. He stroked the long muscles running the length of the mare’s neck.

  Doc coughed once lightly and pressed the fist of his left hand to his lips. When the usual spate of coughing did not develop, he lowered his hand.

  “When Vermillion’s horse went down, hell, we just figured it was every man for himself,” Doc said, his voice full of contrition.

  The wind soughed, making a soft, whistling sound around the boulders. Off to the north a hawk called a raspy scree, scree somewhere high in the sky, scratching its whispery notes against the quiet susurrus of the wind.

  “I couldn’t get mounted,” Wyatt said, letting the hardness fall away from his voice.

  Furrowing his brow, Doc looked at him quickly as though he had not understood.

  “I’d loosened up my gun belts, and they slipped down my legs.”

  Doc held an incredulous look on his friend. “Shit, Wyatt,” he whispered.

  Wyatt looked back toward the colors stacked in layers on the horizon. The sky was turning to fire.

  “I’d’a prob’ly got out o’ there, too,” he said, “but I had Brocius right there in front of me, not twenty-five paces away.”

  After a long stretch of quiet, Doc clapped a hand to Wyatt’s shoulder. “God himself must have been with you out there, my friend. I don’t know how else you could have walked out of that hornets’ nest untouched.”

  Wyatt thought of Morgan . . . and that serene mantle of otherworldly protection that had wrapped around him in the open grassy space above the spring. Inside that suit of immortality, every sound had been muffled by the impervious nature of the shield itself. And then, just as unexpectedly, the sensation had reversed. He had been privy to every tap of grass blade, every crunch of sand and grit, and every click of hammer and cylinder as the fusillade rained down on him from the willows.

  And it was that way now . . . every utterance of the hard, dry land finding its way to his ears in crystalline detail. He could hear the coursing of his own blood in his ears and out his extremities to his fingertips and toes.

  “Morg,” he said so quietly that Doc leaned closer.

  “What?” Doc probed gently.

  Wyatt turned to look at Doc squarely in the eye. “It was Morg.”

  Gradually, the lines in Doc’s face relaxed, and—slowly—he began to nod. He tightened his grip on Wyatt’s shoulder.

  “All right, Wyatt,” Doc allowed, but a question remained in his eyes.

  When Wyatt reached to the mare to loosen the cinch, Doc’s hand slid from Wyatt’s shoulder. “We’ll water the horses here,” Wyatt instructed. “Then we need to find Tipton. We’re out of supplies and out of money, Doc.”

  “Where do you want to go, Wyatt?”

  “We’ll look for Tip in Tombstone. After we get those funds, we’ll see if we can find Ike Clanton, Ringo, and a few others.”

  Doc looked east toward town and pressed his lips into a thin line. His nostrils flared, and then he nodded once.

  “We’re with you, Wyatt.”

  When Wyatt said no more, Doc moved quietly back toward the others waiting in the rocks. Wyatt slid saddle and blanket from the mare, dropping the rig in the grass. He watched Doc wend his way through the yucca scattered among the rocks, returning to the other posse members to deliver his message and, as he studied the faces of the men who rode with him, a sudden fatigue washed through his body in a wave. Leaning into the boulder, he waited for the sensation to pass.

  After a moment, Vermillion walked purposefully toward Wyatt and took the mare’s reins. “I’ll take your horse to the spring. You ought to get some rest.”

  Still anchored by the rock, Wyatt removed his hat and let the breeze touch his scalp like a preacher’s hand at the river. “My shotgun is out there. Would you get it for me?”

  Vermillion nodded, walked away a few steps, and stopped. “We’re with you, Wyatt . . . as far as you wanna take it.” Without waiting for a response, the ex-carpenter led the mare up the slope to the mesa and past the dead horse. The rest of the men filed one behind the other and followed him to the spring.

  Wyatt untied the bedroll from behind the cantle of his saddle and rolled the blanket out on a grassy strip of sand. There he lay down with his head on his saddle and his eyes taking in the scorched dome of the sky arching over the mountains. The vibration in his left foot was slowly receding just as the smoldering colors of the heavens began to fade to gray.

  CHAPTER 21

  March 26, 1882: Cochise and Graham Counties, Arizona Territory

  At the outskirts of Tombstone, Wyatt and his men met a lone rider coming out of town at an easy lope. As they approached one another in the dark, both parties slowed. Each man in Wyatt’s posse quietly slid his revolver from a holster at the ready.

  “Marshal Earp?” the man called out from thirty yards.

  Wyatt reined up, and his deputies fanned out into a flank on either side of him.

  “Who is it?” McMaster demanded.

  “O. C. Smith,” the man replied. “I’m a friend of your brother James . . . and Fred Dodge, too. You remember me, don’cha, Wyatt?”

  When the interloper stopped in front of them, Wyatt recognized the short, compact man from his time gambling at the Oriental. His cleft lip was partially hidden behind bushy moustaches that spread from under his nose like an unkempt nest. Smith looked from one posse man to the other and finally let his questioning gaze settle on Wyatt.

  Creek Johnson leaned to Wyatt. “I know ’im, Wyatt. That’s Harelip Charlie.”

  “I remember you,” Wyatt said to Smith.

  Charlie nodded encouragingly. “I was just on my way out to try an’ find you.”

  Wyatt sat his horse quietly and watched the man’s tongue dart around his lips. The posse horses shifted their weights and snorted, adjusting to this sudden respite on the dark road.

  “You found me,” Wyatt said.

  Charlie pushed his hat to the back of his head. He appeared relieved to be recognized, crossed his hands on his pommel, and leaned his weight on his arms.

  “Did them two boys find you with the money?”

  “What two boys?” Wyatt said.

  “Some o’ the mine operators and businessmen chipped in a thousand dollars for your expenses. They sent two riders to fetch it to you . . . up to Iron Springs.”

  “We’re expecting money from Dake in Prescott,” Wyatt said.

  Smith was shaking his head before Wyatt finished the statement. “It ain’t come.”

  “How the hell did they know to go to Iron Springs?�
� Doc tested.

  At the tone in Doc’s voice, Smith pushed himself erect in the saddle. His forehead creased with three deep lines as he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward Tombstone.

  “Well, that’s where Dan Tipton said to take it.”

  “Why didn’t Tip bring it himself?” Warren said brusquely. “I waited the whole damned morning for ’im and missed out on killing Curly Bill.”

  Smith narrowed his eyes at the youngest Earp and then again fixed his gaze on Wyatt. “You kilt Brocius?”

  “Sonovabitch was cut into two pieces,” Warren crowed.

  Smith hitched his head once in regret. “Damn, I’d liked to ’a seen that.” Then he checked Wyatt’s face and smiled. “Did you know that Curly Bill and his men was sworn in as a posse to find you?”

  McMaster laughed. “Curly Bill . . . deputized? Well, he sure as hell found us.”

  “Why didn’t Tip bring the money himself?” Wyatt asked. “That’s why he went into Tombstone.”

  “Well, he couldn’t. He was in jail with me. Still is, in fact . . . but not with me, o’ course. Behan arrested ’im soon’s he come into town. Trumped up some charge about resisting an officer and conspiracy.”

  Doc laughed. “That’s Behan trying not to look like a neutered pussy cat after you brushed him off in front of the hotel, Wyatt.”

  “Why’d he arrest you?” McMaster asked Smith.

  “For bein’ with Tip,” Charlie said and shrugged.

  No one spoke for a time as the news sank in. The horses’ breathing had settled to a quiet, steady rhythm. The cool night air lay heavily on the land, and out in the scrub brush and mesquite, there was only the sound of a dry muted wind sleaving through the bare branches. Doc cleared his throat roughly, leaned from his saddle, and spat in the road.