He snapped his head to the side and saw Wyatt Earp spinning around, a revolver in his trussed hands.
Josie had jumped Caroline; they were locked together. Earp must have dodged past Caroline to the guns. Earp’s eyes were wide, as if in surprise. His gun swiveled toward Tree. Tree yanked the rifle around, triggered it.
Nothing—the rifle was empty. He dived flat for the ground, hitting on his right shoulder, and Earp’s gun roared. Tree, not knowing if he was hit or not, spun the sliphammer gun up in his left hand and flicked the hammer. Earp was dodging; the .45 hit him in the arm, spun him around and knocked him back into the rocks. Earp lost the six-gun when he fell: his hands, tied together for so long, must have lost strength. Tree scrambled back into the rocks. The miners were shooting but some of Cooley’s men were down there too, and it wasn’t clear who was shooting at whom. Tree slid himself tight into the rocks, ready to shoot Earp again if he had to—Earp was getting his feet under him, doggedly going toward the gun on the ground. Caroline was wrestling with Josie, who had made a grab for the .38. Warren Earp came raging out of cover to make a dash for the guns Tree had left ten yards away, above Wyatt in the rocks.
That was when Floyd Sparrow appeared, on the grass edge above the rocks to Tree’s left. Movement drew the corner of Tree’s vision and when he turned he saw Sparrow, face twisted cruelly, lifting a rifle toward Warren, who was the only Earp in Sparrow’s range of vision. Warren had his back to Sparrow; Wyatt was still scrambling for the dropped gun; Tree turned the sliphammer gun and fired upward.
Sparrow’s body snapped to one side under the bullet’s impact: he fell with the quick, spineless looseness of instant death.
When Tree turned back, he saw Wyatt Earp’s gun dead level on him.
Earp’s face was unreadable. His eyes flickered. The gun shifted up, pointed somewhere above Tree, and with immediate knowing, Tree wheeled fully around. He saw Cooley up there.
Cooley had guns in both fists; he was running; he started shooting—at Tree—and as Tree began to dive away, bringing his own gun up too late he knew, he heard Wyatt Earp’s gun go off and saw Cooley’s face change. The bullet fractured the lens of Cooley’s right eye like a plate of shattered glass; the eye filled with blood. Wyatt Earp’s second bullet drilled through Cooley’s throat and blasted out a splatter of tissue. Cooley tumbled out of sight beyond the rock rim.
Head spinning, Tree got to one knee and coughed, choking on smoke. His eyes watered. He scraped a hand across his eyes and tried to see Wyatt Earp; he held the sliphammer back with his thumb but couldn’t see. He braced his body for a bullet’s impact. Someone on the grass, outside the gully, was yelling in a murderous roar and he thought he recognized the voice.
His eyes cleared and he saw Wyatt Earp, still as granite, watching him over the muzzle of the cocked gun.
The voice beyond was still roaring—Sheriff McKesson’s voice. Tree held the hammer back, his glance locked with Wyatt Earp’s. Earp’s eyes flashed very wide, once, and slowly he lowered the gun without firing.
In the gully below, there was a ragged aftervolley of gunfire, and then stillness. McKesson’s loud voice rode across the flats, calling for calm. The sheriff came in sight on his horse, his hawked, predatory face grim under the white thatch of hair; he had a rifle in one hand and a revolver in the other. Across the gully, Wyatt Earp stood with his gun held muzzledown in both fists; his arm was bleeding slowly. Josie and Caroline had quit wrestling; the .38 lay in the center of the gully. Warren Earp had picked up a gun and was watching his brother for a lead. It was a stilled tableau. McKesson wheeled past on horseback, yelling at everybody, rounding up the miners and Cooley’s men and telling them the war was over, the leaders dead.
Uncertain, Tree got upright and sprinted across the gully. No one shot at him. Josie moved toward Wyatt and began to fuss with his arm. Earp looked across the top of her head at Tree. McKesson clattered into the gully on his horse and yanked a document out of his shirt and tossed it down; it fluttered to Tree’s feet and Tree said, “What’s that?” in a stupid voice.
“Your goddamned warrant from the Lieutenant Governor,” McKesson said. “It’s no good. The Governor rescinded it. Cut the Earps loose—you’ve got no more authority to hold them.”
Tree had the impulse to laugh. Hysteria, he knew; he fought it down. Slowly, involuntarily, he reached down to pick up the mocking warrant. As he straightened he heard the sheriff say, “You might want to wipe your ass with it.”
The river ran along noisily. Up the steel tracks a train hooted on the downgrade and began to slow down a full mile away, responding to McKesson’s flag signal. The mountains, trees, men, horses all threw long shadows from the late sun. Wyatt Earp, on horseback with his arm made bulky by bandages, loomed against the cobalt sky, his face in shadow because the sun was behind him. Tree stood by the tracks with Caroline, squinting up at the Earps and McKesson. Young Warren looked badly shaken—his face was pale and his hands, lifting a canteen, were unsteady. McKesson had a disgusted look on his pitted face; the lip corners were turned sternly down. Of them all only Josie seemed unchanged, as if none of it had really touched her. She looked impatient to be getting on.
Tree glanced at the approaching train. Wyatt Earp was lifting his reins, adjusting them in his hand, and Tree said to him, “You had a chance to kill me—I think maybe you wanted to.”
“If you’re wondering why I didn’t—a life for a life,” Earp growled. “You saved my brother’s skin when you took Sparrow out. I pay my debts—always.”
Tree said, choosing his words with care, “Then if you didn’t owe me for that, you’d have shot me in the back.”
“You had it coming,” Earp said. His voice was strictly flat; it gave away nothing.
“Honor,” said Sheriff McKesson, “is for fools and story-book heroes.”
Tree said, “You’re dead wrong about that.”
McKesson shrugged. Wyatt Earp said, “Amigo, you had a lot of luck and you didn’t get killed. That kind of luck won’t hold out very long unless you learn how to be practical about things. Right and wrong are flexible ideas—you’ve got to learn how to count up the odds.”
The train was close, sliding on protesting wheels. Tree took Caroline’s hand and when the train stopped he handed her up to the coach platform and climbed onto the step behind her. The whistle hooted. Wyatt Earp made a vague, grave sort of hand salute and neck-reined his horse around; the four riders went toward the mountains, not hurrying; Josie and Warren were looking back. The train jerked and began to pick up speed. He stood gripping the handrails and felt Caroline’s hand on his arm; she said, “Do you still doubt which one of you was the better man?”
He gave her a quick, blank look. She said, “I think you’ve learned something about legends.”
He made a puzzled frown and looked up toward the mountains at the four riders. It was young Warren who hipped around in the saddle and, hesitantly, lifted his arm and waved. Tree didn’t answer the gesture. The train clattered along the Arkansas bank and Caroline moved close against him, warm and soft; she said, “Maybe they’ll write a dime novel about you.” When he looked at her he saw she was joking.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1970 by Brian Garfield
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