“You speak English?” Wyatt said.
The Mexican shook his head. He was frightened. Wyatt turned to McMasters.
“Ask him where Cruz is, and Spence.”
McMasters spoke to the Mexican man. He answered, pointing toward the northern slope of the valley.
“Says Spence is in Tombstone with Behan. Says Indian Charlie’s over that hill rounding up some strays.”
Wyatt turned the aging roan horse and rode toward the hill without a word. The rest of the men followed, catching up to him, and spreading out on either side of him. They went up the hillside and over it. There were other hills beyond it. A teamster named Judah was driving stock across their path. With him was a Mexican named Acosta.
“You know where Pete Spence is?” Wyatt said.
His voice was flat and easy, as if he didn’t really care where Spence was.
“I thought he was in Tombstone.”
“You a friend of his?” Wyatt said.
Judah showed no sign that he thought the question a dangerous one to answer.
“Known Spence a long time,” Judah said.
“You seen Indian Charlie around?”
“Cruz? Over there someplace,” Judah said. “Looking for a couple mules that went roaming.”
Wyatt nodded, clucked softly to the roan and rode toward the next hill. The other riders stayed with him, spread out on either side. Judah and Acosta both watched them as they went.
“Trouble,” Judah said.
Acosta nodded.
As Wyatt and the other riders topped the next hill, Indian Charlie was on the downslope hazing two mules ahead of him. When he saw Wyatt he turned and ran.
“Knock him down, Sherm,” Wyatt said. “Don’t kill him.”
McMasters reined the horse still, levered a round up in the Winchester, aimed carefully and shot Cruz in the right leg. The sound made the two mules scatter, one of them kicking his back heels. The impact of the bullet sent Cruz sprawling face forward, and when they came up to him he was lying on his back with the blood slowly staining his trouser leg.
“Talk to him, Sherm. Tell him we know he killed Morgan. Ask him who else done it.”
McMasters slid the Winchester back into the saddle scabbard and spoke to Cruz. Cruz answered at length, moving his hands, his dark eyes wide and eager, and full of fear. The rest of the posse sat silently, letting their horses crop the grass. They weren’t up very high, but the air in the mountains seemed cooler to Wyatt, fresher, as if it had more movement behind it than the air around Tombstone, like the difference between standing water and running water. Wyatt sat motionless in the saddle, while Cruz talked to McMasters.
“He never killed anybody,” McMasters said. “That’s what he says. Says he just went along to make sure they got the right man. Spence didn’t know you. This guy says he knew both you and Morgan. Says him, Spence and Stilwell, and somebody named Swilling, met Curley Bill, and Ringo, back of the courthouse; they heard that you’d gone to bed, and Morg was at Hatch’s. So they decided to kill Morg and they went up there. Then some guy named Fries comes up and says that you hadn’t gone to bed, that you were in Hatch’s too. But Curley Bill, and Stilwell, and Swilling went into the alley back of Hatch’s, and he says he heard shooting and everybody come running out.”
McMasters paused, as if he had forgotten. He spoke to Cruz in Spanish. Cruz replied.
“They all went to Frank Patterson’s ranch to fix up an alibi, and Stilwell says he shot Morgan, Curley Bill and Swilling say they shot too, but missed, and Stilwell says that made two Earps he’d shot.”
“Virgil,” Wyatt said with no inflection.
Cruz spoke again. When he was through, McMasters didn’t speak.
“What’d he say?” Wyatt asked.
“Says he got nothing against you or your brothers. He didn’t want to do you no harm.”
“So why did he?” Wyatt said.
Again McMasters didn’t say anything.
“Ask him that,” Wyatt said.
His voice was as hard and flat and brittle as a piece of slate.
McMasters shrugged, and spoke again to Cruz. Cruz answered. When he translated, McMasters’s face was blank and his voice was without inflection.
“Says they give him a twenty-five-dollar watch.”
“Twenty-five dollars,” Wyatt said.
McMasters nodded. The other riders didn’t speak or move. They could hear the wind moving softly among the trees into the timber stand. Doc’s horse, snuffling in the grass, inhaled something and snorted it out. Otherwise, the silence seemed impenetrable.
“For Morgan Earp,” Wyatt said.
“Wyatt,” Doc said.
The gun was in Wyatt’s hand almost as if it had always been there. Cruz saw the movement and put his arm up as if it could protect him. Wyatt shot Cruz in the head, and as Cruz fell backward, he shot him twice more. Cruz lay on his back, his arm thrown across his face. The horses had heard gunfire before. They stood stolidly as the explosions echoed across the empty mountain valley, rolling past Judah and Acosta a half mile away, looking down from the next hilltop.
Fifty-five
“Dick Wright says Behan’s got a posse out for us. Says there’s a warrant out of Tombstone for you killing Stilwell.”
“Dick bring the money?” Wyatt said.
“Yes,” Warren said. “Right when he said he would.”
“Crawley Dake’s money?” Doc asked.
“Didn’t say,” Warren answered.
“It’d be Crawley ’s,” Wyatt said. “Federal funds.”
“Well, you’re in it now,” Doc said as they made camp near the water hole at Iron Springs, twelve miles north of Tombstone. The night was clear and the stars were high and uninterested in the velvety blackness. The silence was vast, though, Wyatt thought, in fact, when people talk about silence they really mean human sound. They don’t notice the sounds that were there before they came. That will be there after they’re gone. Night birds. Coyotes. The scurry of small animals in the brush. A breeze stirring the scrub growth. The crackle of the fire seemed to drown all that out unless you listened. Texas Jack was cooking salt pork in a heavy black-iron fry pan. Doc had the bottle out, and it moved from man to man, skipping Wyatt.
“Go easy on that stuff, Warren,” Wyatt said as his brother took the bottle. Warren drank some whiskey and passed the bottle to Turkey Creek Jack.
“Not easy,” Warren said, “your brother being a parson.”
“Not easy being your brother,” Wyatt said and smiled.
Doc was drunk. He was probably always a little drunk. But when he was more than a little drunk, Wyatt knew it because his stubbornness increased.
“You done it to yourself, Wyatt,” Doc said. “You come over to my side, you can’t go back.”
He took out the Colt.45 he had used to shoot Florentine Cruz, and flipped the cylinder open.
“I’m going where I got to go, Doc. Things don’t give me much choice.”
Wyatt took the big flat-nosed.45 bullets from the cylinder and put them one at a time into the ammunition loops on his belt.
“It was one thing in Tombstone,” Doc said. “You were a lawman. And Frank Stilwell was threatening your brothers in Tucson. But Indian Charlie… back there… that didn’t have anything to do with the law.”
Wyatt ran an oily cloth patch down the barrel of the Colt.
“The law had its chance,” Wyatt said.
Doc took a pull of whiskey and swallowed and put his head back and laughed.
“Now it’s your law,” Doc said.
Wyatt didn’t say anything. Texas Jack spread the fried salt pork over an inverted pot to drain, and dropped sourdough in small spoonfuls into the hot salt-pork fat.
“And,” Doc took another drink, “here’s the thing, parson. It’s the same goddamned law as my law.”
Wyatt carefully ran the patch through each of the six chambers in the cylinder. Then he carefully balled up the oily patch and put it in the fire.
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“No, Doc. It’s not. We got different reasons for what we do.”
Wyatt put a dry patch on the short cleaning rod and ran it down the gun barrel.
“You’ll shoot a man for spilling his drink,” Wyatt said.
“Maybe so,” Doc said. “Maybe so.”
Doc passed the whiskey bottle to McMasters and leaned back against his saddle. Wyatt discarded the second patch into the fire, put his thumbnail on the muzzle and examined the barrel in the reflected firelight.
“But you won’t be able to come back from this,” Doc said. “Maybe we’re as different as you say. But you’re on my side of the line now, and there’s no way to get back.”
Wyatt was satisfied with the condition of the Colt. He took the bullets from his cartridge belt again, one at a time, and stood them on a rock near him, nose up. Texas Jack put some fried pork and biscuits on a tin plate and handed it to Doc.
He said, “Eat something, Doc. It’ll make you stop talking for a while.”
Doc took the plate and ate with his fingers. Texas Jack dished out for the others. Everyone except Wyatt ate in silence for a time. Wyatt put his plate aside until he finished with the Colt. He was running another clean patch through the barrel. Doc finished chewing. He took a drink of whiskey.
“I’m right, though,” he said, “and Wyatt knows it.”
Wyatt picked up the fat.45 bullets one at a time from the rock where they stood and fed them, one at a time, into the cylinder. Then he snapped the cylinder shut, put the gun back in his belt, and picked up his plate.
“I like fried biscuits,” he said.
Fifty-six
For breakfast they had coffee and the last night’s leftover biscuits, and Wyatt sent Warren back to wait for Dick Wright again.
“How come I got to go?” Warren said. “Wright already brought the money.”
“We need to know what’s happening in town,” Wyatt said. “Need to know if the cowboys are there or somewhere else.”
“I don’t want to miss no action,” Warren said.
“You’re twenty-five,” Wyatt said. “You got plenty of time for action.”
Warren was a little sullen as he rode away, but Wyatt knew he’d do what he was told.
“Outta harm’s way?” Doc said as they rode down toward the watering hole.
“I lost all the brothers I’m ready to lose,” Wyatt said.
The horses smelled the water and quickened their pace. The roan got there first. As the roan started to drink, Wyatt swung down from the saddle to wash up. He loosened his gun belt. From across the spring, there was gunfire.
The other riders spun their horses and headed for cover in the cottonwoods that grew around the spring. Wyatt held the reins in his left hand. The loosened gun belt slid down over his thighs and hampered his movements as Wyatt tried to pull his Winchester from the saddle scabbard.
For Christ sake. Am I going to get shot because my gun belt fell down?
He managed to fumble the shotgun off the near side of his saddle as the roan tossed his head and twisted against the reins. Wyatt couldn’t get the Winchester out. Instead he fumbled the 10-gauge Wells Fargo shotgun from the near side of the saddle and cocked it and tried to aim over the tossing back of his horse. Across the water hole, clear as day, and slowed down like everything always did in a shooting, he could see Curley Bill aiming at him with another shotgun. There were other cowboys firing. Bullets tugged at his clothing. But Wyatt saw Curley Bill as if through crystal. He could see the Wells Fargo medallion in the stock of the shotgun. Just like the one he held.
Like mine. Bill took it off a stage.
Wyatt gently eased the front sight down on the middle of Curley Bill’s mass. Bill fired and the shot sang around him. A shotgun wasn’t so good at this range. But it was what they had. As Curley Bill broke the shotgun to reload, Wyatt squeezed off one barrel, then the other. Curley Bill seemed to shrink in on himself. Wyatt could see the blood suddenly brighten Bill’s shirt, then he sank from sight into the low growth under the trees along the water. Behind him Wyatt heard the loud sharp sound that Winchesters make coming from the cover of the cottonwoods behind him. He could hear Doc’s voice mixed in with the rifle fire.
“Wyatt, get the fuck out of there.”
Covered by the rifle fire, Wyatt dropped the shotgun, hitched up his gun belt, got hold of the roan’s mane, and heaved himself up onto the frantic horse. Something hammered the heel of his right boot. His leg went numb. He yanked the roan’s head around and rammed him into the trees on a dead run. In the shelter of the trees he dismounted, hitched the still-panicky roan to a tree, and, crouching, moved back toward the water with a Colt in his hand. His posse was on the ground, spread out, each with a Winchester. The levered shells scattered brightly on the leaf mold around them. The gunfire stopped. There was uncertain movement across the water, then the sound of horses, and then silence and the reek of spent ammunition. The silence seemed to spiral around them. Wyatt could hear Doc’s breathing.
“They’ve scooted,” Texas Jack said.
His voice was hoarse. So was Sherman McMasters’s.
“You see who it was?” McMasters said.
“Curley Bill was one of them,” Wyatt said.
“You hit anyone?” Doc said.
“Curley Bill, straight on in the chest,” Wyatt said. “Both barrels.”
“Curley Bill’s dead?”
“Be surprised if he wasn’t,” Wyatt said.
“Shit!” Turkey Creek Jack Johnson said. “I always kind of liked Bill.”
“Fuck him,” Doc said. “Let’s take a look.”
“You and I’ll look, Doc,” Wyatt said. “The rest of you boys stay ready in case they didn’t all scoot.”
Doc and Wyatt walked around the water hole. The cowboys were gone, including Curley Bill. At the spot where Wyatt estimated that he had dropped Curley Bill, there was blood on the ground, and some splattered on the leaves near the spot.
“You think the sonova bitch is alive?” Doc said.
“No. He took both barrels. They must have hauled him off to bury him.”
They were quiet under the trees, near the still water of the spring. Doc looked thoughtfully at Wyatt.
“When they opened fire on us,” Doc said, “you rode right in on them, ’stead of taking cover.”
“I saw Curley Bill,” Wyatt said.
“I done that, you’d have said I was a drunken fool,” Doc said.
“Curley Bill shot my brother,” Wyatt said.
“And you don’t drink,” Doc said.
Fifty-seven
Hooker’s ranch was in the Sulfur Springs Valley near the San Simon River. There was a central fortified house and outbuildings, and grazing land spread out around the house to the horizon.
“Sierra Bonita,” Wyatt said to Warren as they rode down the slow slope toward the main house. “Henry was a general in the war, came out here from back east after, found the best water around, and built a ranch on it.”
“We going to be welcome?” Warren said.
“Henry’s very hospitable,” Wyatt said. He smiled. “And the cowboys been hitting his stock pretty hard.”
“I’ll be glad to get off this animal,” Warren said. “Maybe sleep in a bed.”
“Maybe have something but fried pork and biscuits for supper,” Doc said.
The horses had been watered and fed and washed down and turned out to graze by two of Hooker’s stable hands. The men had washed and changed clothes and sat on the wide front porch in the encroaching April night to drink before dinner.
“I’ll have a little whiskey myself, Henry,” Wyatt said. Doc hooted.
“Watch out for this,” he said. “Earp’s having a drink. Be hell to pay for this.”
Wyatt smiled and sipped at the whiskey. He still didn’t like it, but he took pleasure in the warm spread of it through his chest and stomach.
Hooker sat with them and his foreman, Billy Whelan.
“Understand Behan’
s chasing you boys,” Hooker said.
“Carefully,” Wyatt said, “so’s he won’t actually catch us.”
“I hear that Ringo’s with him, and Pony Diehl, and Curley Bill.”
“Curley Bill’s not with him,” Wyatt said.
Hooker looked at Wyatt thoughtfully for a moment.
“Well,” he said, “whoever’s with him, one of my drovers says they’re coming along this way. Expect they’ll show up here around midday tomorrow, looking for a meal.”
“There won’t be any trouble, Henry,” Wyatt said. “I’ll have my people out of here ’fore then.”
“If you want trouble we’ll back you,” Hooker said. “I got fifty tough hands that can shoot.”
“Behan won’t fight,” Wyatt said.
Doc poured himself another drink and gestured at Wyatt with the bottle. Wyatt shook his head. Doc laughed and put the bottle back on the table.
“Ringo will fight,” Doc said.
“There’s no reason to get Mr. Hooker’s ranch shot up and maybe some of his hands hurt,” Wyatt said.
“We could end it right here, Wyatt,” Doc said. “Behan, Ringo, Pony Diehl, Ike Clanton, here altogether. We could finish the goddamned thing.”
“No.”
“You already got Brocius, why not clean the rest of it up.”
Again Hooker looked at Wyatt without saying anything.
“No.”
“You won’t fight Behan, will you?” Doc said. “Because he used to be with Josie. You can’t, can you?”
Wyatt turned his gaze on Doc for a long moment and Doc went quiet.
“In the morning,” Wyatt said, “I want all of you up on the top of that hill.” He pointed at the hill on the opposite side of the valley. “You can see in all directions, and if somebody wants to rush you, there’s no cover from them on the hillside.”
“What are you going to do?” Warren said.
“I’m going to stay here and see what Behan wants.”
“He wants your fucking ass,” Doc said. “You stay, I stay.”
“No,” Wyatt said.
“Who’s going to cover your back?”
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