“Look for what?”
“Any damn thing I please. Because I say so, you damn redskin bastid.” The bearded man reached for the rifle at his knee.
No point in further meekness. This wasn’t a man who could be reasoned with. Pacheco fired two quick shots.
The bearded man threw out his arms, howling.
Pacheco tipped the rifle toward the younger man and lifted his eyebrows—waiting, letting the younger man make up his mind which way to play it.
The youth almost fell from his frightened horse. He clutched the saddle horn as the steed wheeled and ran wildly away.
Pacheco fired to hurry him on his way. He aimed high, he thought, but then the fleeing youth seemed to slump in the saddle—either ducking low to make himself a small target, or he’d been hit by the bullet.
Reining in the horse and setting the brake, Pacheco descended from the wagon, still with rifle in hand, and cautiously approached the bearded man.
There was no need for further caution. One of his shots had evidently gone to the heart. He took the cartridge belt and removed the guns from his victim. He felt curiously detached. It was all part of his mission.
He returned to the wagon with the added weapons and continued on his way, leaving the dead man for the buzzards. He wanted to make the stronghold before dark. Nothing else mattered.
The terrain soon became rough. There were stunted trees and rocky outcroppings. The trail became wider and more recognizable to his knowing eyes. Soon he would have to abandon the wagon and either ride the horse bareback or proceed afoot. He stopped to give the horse a breathing spell, wondering if the people in the stronghold maintained a lookout. He took a red kerchief from his pocket and bound it around his head, hoping they would recognize him as an Apache.
As he ascended the rocky trail, his ever active mind rolled back to his last trip over the road with the admonitions of old Cochise ringing in his head.
The Christian Brothers had been strict but kindly. He had learned to read with ease. He had found history. He knew the story of the Apaches in the eyes of the whites.
He had been allowed to stay in the school because he had made himself useful. When the time had come to send him to the San Carlos reservation, they had kept him because he was obedient. How long he would have stayed did not matter—he had met Anna. He had achieved manhood and a dream had come to him, a sharp, memorable dream that told him that it was time to take the pregnant foundling servant and begin his journey toward destiny.
And now destiny was at hand.
A shrill voice echoed among the scattered tall peaks. “Stop. Who goes?”
Pacheco filled his chest with air and roared, “I am Pacheco, grandson of Cochise.”
He did not falter in his advance. He came to where he could see the sentinel, a youth carrying a Winchester.
The boy pointed the rifle at him and asked, “How do I know you are Pacheco, who went away to the school?”
Pacheco held out empty arms and said, “Why should I not be he?”
Another, more mature voice said, “Is it really you, my friend?”
A short, squat, flat-faced young man appeared.
Pacheco said, “Kin-o-tee.”
“It is Pacheco!” It was a cry of recognition.
Pacheco said, “Send the boy and others to my wagon. I have many gifts.”
Kin-o-tee came running down the rocky path. He was clad in the Apache fashion, knee-length leggins, moccasins, buckskin tunic. He struck hands with Pacheco and said, “We thought you were gone forever.”
“I had a vision. The spirits spoke to me.”
The young brave sobered. “Aiee. It is not a good time, old friend.”
“It will be a good time. I bring guns and bullets and food and vegetables to plant. We will follow the words of my grandfather.”
“Many of us have followed his words. But not enough. More have followed Victorio.”
“That is why I am here.”
“There are too few of us.” Kin-o-tee shook his head.
“I have friends among the white people. There must be peace.”
Kin-o-tee spat toward the ground. “How can there be peace when there are men like the Clantons who would kill us all?”
Pacheco put his arm around his friend. “I met two of them today. Only one got away.”
“One got away? That means they will come after us.”
“We have guns. And let them come. The stronghold still remains.”
They went down to the wagon.
Pacheco could see that Kin-o-tee was still of mixed emotions.
There was much work to be done. The spirit of Cochise must be restored to the Chiricahuas.
Bull Baxter was reporting to Old Man Clanton.
“Brocius was drunk, o’ course. Nellie Cashman, she slapped him across the chops. Nothin’ much to do about it—there was Masterson, Short, and Cemetery Jones. You know it’d take a damn army to start up agin them.”
“Cemetery Jones.” The old man spat the words out as if they were insects that had climbed into his mouth.
“Somethin’s gotta be done.”
“That damn chicken-livered Brocius. ”
They were silent for a moment. A horseman came into sight. He seemed to be reeling in the saddle.
Baxter asked, “Ain’t that the Driscoll youngster? Sure is.”
He went down the steps and into the weedy yard.
The rider, his filthy shirt caked with blood, fell off the horse and into Bull’s arms.
“What the hell now?” roared Old Man Clanton.
“Injun,” gasped Driscoll. “He sneaked a shot and got Anson. Then my hoss took off and the bastid shot me in the back.”
“You hadn’t run,” snarled Clanton, “he wouldn’t’ve had a shot at your yellow back. A bastid Apache!”
“He was on the road to the stronghold. I gotta have a doctor. I’m—done—in.” Young Driscoll collapsed.
Clanton bawled. “Samson. Delilah. Get yourselves out of here and take care of this worthlessness.”
Two large black people appeared. Without comment they went to the wounded man, took him from Baxter, and bore him away. A black boy came to take the horse.
Bull Baxter said, “Who the hell are they?”
“Them blacks come in handy. Got some ways of mendin’ people. The whole family come in with that last herd. Didn’t like Mexico. Don’t like Injuns of no kind. Figure to use ’em when we hit the goddamn Apaches.”
“What about Driscoll?”
“Hell, he’ll live or he won’t. Ain’t none of my care. Two white men, one Apache? The hell with him.”
After a moment Baxter said, “Johnny Behan says to tell you he wants his money.”
“Money hell. He let Brocius out. Let him wait for it. The hell with him for now.”
“I can tell you one thing, old man. That Nellie Cashman woman made a laughin’stock of Curly Bill. If she ever gets the miners together with guns there’ll be all hell to pay.”
“Nellie don’t play with guns,” the old man said. “No need worryin’ on that score. Now Cemetery Jones—that’s another matter. He’s gotta be downed. Said to be the fastest man in the damn country.”
“Fast ain’t no good agin a back-shoot.”
“You offerin’ to try it?”
“If I get the chance,” Bull said offhandedly.
“Nemmine. I’m always havin’ to hire new guns. Nobody’s got a lick o’ sense. You tell Ringo to see to Cemetery Jones, hear?”
“What you want me to tell Johnny Behan, then?”
“Tell him when I sell that Messican herd he’ll get his graft.” The old man dismissed it with a sneer that was barely visible behind the thick underbrush of his beard and mustache. “Now find me some strangers. Fast guns.” The more he talked the better he liked his idea. “Fast men who ain’t scared of nobody. You find ’em and I’ll pay ’em good. Pay you good, too.”
“I can try. Get one and he’ll bring in others. Word gets around,
you can get ’em.”
“And find me Frank Stillwell and Indian Charlie Cruz. I need to have a little palaver with those two.”
“What about?”
“If I wanted you to know, I’d tell you. Hear?”
New to the inner circle, Baxter nonetheless knew enough to back off when the old man went narrow-eyed mean like that.
He didn’t mind. He sort of liked the decrepit devil. The old man was a great talker, always with bigger schemes. Clanton had been around the west from the early days, robbing and murdering his way from California through Colorado and down here into Arizona, moving whenever civilization came close enough to scorch his tough hide with its notions of law and order. He’d always taken with him enough stolen spoils to settle with his small-eyed, hard-drinking sons in new country. Always smart, always crooked as a jackrabbit’s hind leg. Fascinating old bird.
“Feed yourself and git goin’,” Old Man Clanton said. “I got plenty to think on. Tell you one thing, I ain’t movin’ on, not again. Too old to pull up stakes another time. We’ll be here when Wyatt Earp’s long gone to his grave.”
As he obeyed, Baxter thought that the old man had a good chance. He seldom left the ranch, and when he did so, there was always a bunch around to protect him. A smart man might survive with him and have a chance to partake in glory and riches. It wouldn’t take a heap of brains to outwit the old man’s three worthless sons. Phin and Billy were half-wits; as for Ike, he was the only one with a brain, but he had no guts at all.
Bull Baxter felt a surge of rising ambition. He could be as smart ... and he sure was a lot younger and tougher than Old Man Clanton.
“Doc Holliday,” Sam said. “I might have known.” He had another taste of the Cosmopolitan’s brandy. The afternoon had come and gone; they sprawled in the hotel’s sumptuous parlor amid bookcases and oil lamps. Bat and Luke were smoking cheroots. The ladies, Renee and Nellie, had just returned from a visit to wherever it was that women went when the men lit up their smokes.
Bat Masterson made a face and returned his attention to the topic that had irked him most of the day. “Doc Holliday.” He was echoing Sam’s words, but when Bat pronounced the name it was with the tone that Grant must have used when he heard the name of Robert E. Lee. “Says he came just to make some money, but you know Doc—how he favors shooting up from under the card table. Killed a cowboy named Ben Conly in a card game, which didn’t set well with Clanton’s gang. And that started the ball.”
Luke Short said, “Lord knows how many men he’s killed. Doc himself says he was down across the border and had a fight with a roomful of Mexicans—and had to start a graveyard there. A whole graveyard.”
Sam said, “Doc always did have a disagreeable sense of humor.”
“That ain’t the only thing disagreeable about him,” Luke observed.
Bat said, “I’ve never had any use for him at all. But I always seem to find myself getting him out of scrapes.”
Nellie Cashman asked, “Why on earth should you do that?”
“Because Wyatt asks me to. Anyway—last fall things heated up pretty good and Doc was right in the middle of it.
Started when Billy Clanton stole a horse from Wyatt. Billy’s the youngest son and he hasn’t got a lick of sense. I think he stole the horse on a bet. Wyatt and Doc rode over to Charleston—”
Renee interrupted: “What’s Charleston?”
“Outlaw camp in the mountains,” Luke Short explained. “Not quite a town—it’s more tents than buildings—the rustlers use it for a hideout and headquarters, off and on.”
Bat said, “Wyatt and Doc rode in there bold as brass, in the middle of a few dozen outlaws, and it’s a wonder they survived to tell about it.”
“They even got Wyatt’s horse back,” Luke said, amused.
Sam glanced toward the front door, through which he had seen Wyatt depart an hour earlier. “How?”
Bat Masterson said, “They haven’t talked a lot about it, but I get the idea Doc put that nickel-plated .45 right in Billy Clanton’s ribs and persuaded the little fool to give the horse back. I don’t believe it came to any actual shooting.”
Luke said, “Old Man Clanton heard about that—he and Ringo didn’t find it too amusin’ that two men had braced the whole town of Charleston and got their horse back without a shot bein’ fired.”
Sam asked, “Where was that marshal Fred White during all those shenanigans?”
“Trying to keep the peace as best he could. He was a good man,” Bat adjudged, “but there was only one of him. Old Man Clanton went into a towering rage right after that. Sent Curly Bill Brocius into town with a crowd of cowboys. You met Curly Bill this afternoon? Big oaf. Too stupid not to do what Old Man Clanton tells him to do. He brought a pack of cowboys in here on horseback, hoorawed the town, shot holes in the air, sounded like a full-tilt battle going on. It was a raid, supposed to intimidate the opposition.”
“They had elections coming up, for mayor,” Luke Short interjected.
Bat nodded. “Marshal Fred White stepped out and stopped the whole mob—and stood face-to-face with Curly Bill. Asked for his gun. Fred White had guts, I’m telling you. Curly Bill grinned at him and handed his gun toward Fred, butt first. Fred reached out to take it and Curly Bill pulled a road-agent’s spin, flipped the gun over, and killed poor Fred before he knew what was happening.”
“Shameful,” said Nellie Cashman. “Shameful.”
Renee asked, “He killed the marshal in broad daylight? Why isn’t he locked up?”
Bat made a wry face. “Well, there were witnesses to that killing, all over the place, and one of them happened to be Doc Holliday. Doc threw down on Curly Bill and God knows why he didn’t kill the man right there. Maybe he was afraid of the size of Curly Bill’s mob of cowboys. Anyhow, all he did, he took Curly Bill in citizen’s custody and put him in jail.”
Luke Short said disgustedly, “You can’t count on Doc to be consistent, that’s for sure. The one time he should have blown a hole in somebody, he didn’t do it.”
Renee was listening to all this with obvious fascination. Sam felt the touch of her eyes, met her glance, and smiled.
Bat said, “Along about that time—this is six, seven months ago, back in the spring—Clanton and the McLowery boys and the rest of the outlaws got the ear of Governor Fremont, who is a drunk and a fool, and they managed to persuade the old pathfinder to carve out a new county down here. Cochise County. About that time John Clum won the mayor’s election fair and square, but the cowboys got around that—got the governor to put their pet man, Johnny Behan, in charge as sheriff of this new county.”
Sam said, “Then Old Man Clanton’s not a complete fool, if he can manipulate politics that way.”
“He’s shrewd enough, when he’s not foaming at the mouth,” Luke Short conceded. “It wouldn’t be smart to underestimate the old devil.”
Bat went on: “Well, the first thing Johnny Behan did, as our new sheriff, was to turn Curly Bill loose and drop the charges. And the second thing he did was to hire himself a deputy by the name of Frank Stillwell, a local horse thief who everybody knows is the ace stagecoach robber around here.”
Luke drawled, “The Wells Fargo horses have heard Stillwell’s voice so often they recognize it along the road. Every time they hear it, they stop without bein’ reined in.”
Renee laughed, and then covered her mouth as if ashamed of her amusement. But Nellie Cashman was smiling, too. So was Sam. You couldn’t help it.
Bat said, “You see the situation. There’s the town and there’s the county, and one’s at war with the other. Virgil Earp stands for the law here in town, backed by Mayor Clum. Virgil’s the marshal—technically he’s called chief of police. Outside the town limits, John Behan stands for what passes for law in the county, and he pretends that gives him jurisdiction in town as well. He’s got the backing of the Clantons and the McLowerys and the fool Governor and ...”
Bat’s voice trailed off; he spread his hands, p
alms up, and showed his brash quick grin.
Sam said, “Now tell me about these McLowerys.”
“Frank and Tom McLowery. Brothers. They run a ranch not far from Clanton’s place. That was Frank you met this afternoon out there with Ike Clanton. The McLowery boys keep to themselves mostly, but they’re mean, don’t mistake it. Call themselves ranchers, but they mainly sell other men’s beef. They steal it in Mexico, drive it up here, change the brands, and call it theirs. Like Ringo, they’d as soon kill a man as eat with him. Frank McLowery tried to kill Doc Holliday a few months back, which caused Wyatt to have a few words with him.”
Everybody knew about the friendship and loyalty between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Everybody knew about it; nobody could explain it.
Wyatt might be a rough customer, hard as nails and tight with every penny, but he was a fair man and, to all intents and purposes, an honest one. Somewhere along his checkered trail he had acquired good manners.
In contrast, Dr. John Henry Holliday was a saturnine, nasty killer. Born in Atlanta, educated in good Eastern schools, he had given up the practice of dentistry to travel west and devote his sorry life to gambling, whoring, drinking, and killing. Sam himself had seen Doc slit Budd Ryan’s throat at a card game in Babbitt’s House in Denver. Consumptive, alcoholic, Doc was a fatalistic, terrible-tempered walking skeleton who was altogether peculiar and unpleasant. He had a nihilistic contempt for everything, including himself. He valued nobody’s life, not even his own. He would kill at the slightest provocation with knife or rifle or his favorite, the hide-out pocket pistol; it was reliably understood that he had dispatched at least a score of men. His only apparent virtue was fearlessness.
Wyatt and Doc. The friendship between the two men had lasted for many years. It was one of the most widely discussed mysteries of the frontier.
Luke Short said, “Might as well tell the rest of it, Bat.”
Masterson nodded and continued:
“Last March things came to a head. The Benson stage was held up and Bud Philpot, the driver, was shot to death. So was one of the passengers. Now these weren’t low saloon types; these were respectable citizens, shot dead on a public road. Something had to be done. Behan just yawned. So Wyatt got himself a badge from Wells Fargo—nobody knew how valid it was, but we all liked Bud Philpot and something had to get done. So the Earps organized a posse and they caught up with one of the killers. A cowboy called Luther King, a Clanton man who told them the other three robbers were Clanton cowboys, too.”
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