by Mark Warren
“And what about your sheriff? How do you square that?”
Not hearing the censure in Wyatt’s words, Miller moved in close again, trying to establish some confidentiality. “We’ll take that up with Billy, if and when he’s brought up on charges.”
In Lamar, Wyatt had known city councilmen like this, and he had never learned how to talk to them. Their words rattled down like dirty water rushing off a rusted roof, wearing a man down by the drone of their voices. Miller narrowed his eyes, and his breath caught.
“Wait . . . do you mean you might like to be sheriff?” The mayor’s tongue flicked across his lips. “I can’t promise you anything on the county level, but I can appoint you the post of city marshal.” He searched Wyatt’s eyes. “Is that what you mean?” He put a fingertip on Wyatt’s chest and tapped lightly. “Soon as I find Norton, I’ll get that badge and pin it there myself.”
Wyatt took Miller’s wrist and moved it aside. Wiping his palm against his trouser leg, Wyatt said, “This ain’t my problem.” He brushed past the mayor, heading for the back door, and James followed him.
The sound of the Earp brothers’ boots on the plank floor dominated the large room of Beebe’s store. When the Texans in the street let go with a chorus of rebel yells, Wyatt’s hand paused on the doorknob, a sense of unease rising inside him. Stumbling at his heels, James stopped.
“Wyatt?”
For a time, Wyatt stared at the backdoor of the store just as he would a man who had insulted him. In that frozen moment, he realized, a boundary had materialized at the door’s threshold, just as clearly as if someone had chalked a line in front of his boots. In his mind he went back to Lamar. That was where he had begun the backslide that had buried him in the slums of Peoria and dogged him to this Kansas town.
When Rilla died, he had allowed himself to believe he could bend the rules. He had taken money that wasn’t his . . . and he had run. He had tried to believe the horse theft charge in the Cherokee Nations had been his penance, but it had changed nothing. It had simply been a bad hand dealt to him. He had run then, too, broken out of jail, and fled the territory.
At just twenty-five years old, he had been arrested four times. He had built nothing, not even a house of mud. When he closed his eyes, he saw Valenzuela Cos’s dark eyes mock him for the failures he had accrued. He tried to bring up the visage of Rilla to supplant the insult of the Mexican girl’s face, but the image would not come.
“Wyatt?” James said again.
Wyatt turned and looked past his brother, past the men crowded at the window. The light in the plaza streamed beyond the boardwalk awning like a bright blade—a clean cut, severing the past from present . . . and laying a fresh start on the future. On the hardpan of the plaza, a precise line of shadow marked his way. The intensity in Wyatt’s eyes caused James’s face to lose its indifference.
“Wyatt, what the hell are you ’bout to do?”
Wyatt looked at the men in the room, bound together by a common tension, no man rising above it to take control. Some shift of perspective, like light bending through water, set him to one side of this picture, and he saw himself standing before a path of his own choosing. He could bury every ill-taken step of his past, bury it like the corpse of his wife and son. He could do that now. What he would be . . . had meant to be . . . hinged upon his next step.
“Wyatt,” James whispered, “let’s get the hell out of here!”
“I ain’t goin’ out the backdoor,” Wyatt said and stepped to the front. The crowd of men opened a space for him, just as Peshaur’s booming voice filled the plaza.
“There ain’t none o’ you in this goddamn town got anythin’ hangin’ down ’tween your legs!”
The line in the street was there, well defined and waiting. Wyatt could see it through the windowglass—the sharp edge of shadow hard against the sun-baked road. Beyond that line lay a second chance. In the few seconds it took to make up his mind, he understood one certainty: that it was better to walk out into that plaza than to carry his sullied history with him out the back. Even if it meant dying. Rilla’s face hovered clearly before him now, and he felt himself go cold and resolute. Impenetrable. It didn’t matter if he died. Every man died sometime.
Beebe was watching him. “Better take this,” he said, offering up the new model Colt’s. Wyatt took the gun, checked the loads, and slipped the revolver into his waistband.
James stepped in front of him. “Wyatt?”
Wyatt’s face was set like stone. “Someone’s got to stop this foolishness,” he murmured.
James looked out the door, shook his head, and exhaled heavily. “Well, goddamnit,” he said and took off his coat. “Put this on and cover that gun, or you might not make it past the boardwalk.” James pulled a short-barreled Remington from the scabbard now exposed under his ruined shoulder. “I’ll be right here in the doorway. Just keep yourself out of my goddamn line of fire. We’ll burn down the whole damned lot of ’em if we need to.”
Wyatt donned the coat and pushed a button through its hole. Without another word he opened the front door and walked out. He strode across the planks of the boardwalk and stepped down into the street. When he crossed the line of the shadow into the light of the plaza, everything dark fell behind him.
A wave of heat radiated off the hardpan. Stepping into it was like walking through flames. Wyatt moved toward the Texans slowly, deliberately, knowing at his core that he was made for a moment like this: to walk through fire . . . to set straight something gone askew.
Though he didn’t fear Thompson, he was wary of him. It was the showboater, Peshaur, who could be the more pressing problem. Utterly unpredictable, the big Texan carried the bluster of a reputation—something he would have to protect. Wyatt focused on both men as he crossed the open ground, letting his peripheral vision include the others.
“What do you want?” Thompson yelled.
“I’m delivering a message,” Wyatt answered flatly. Halfway to the rail tracks he added, “To you.”
“Well, deliver it from there!” Peshaur called out. It was only then that the muscular Texan seemed to recognize Wyatt, and a broad smile sliced across his face. “I’ll be damned.” He laughed, but then just as quickly he frowned, and his eyes tightened. “Stop right there, California boy!”
Wyatt maintained his steady pace. “My message is for Ben Thompson . . . nobody else.”
Thompson pointed the shotgun loosely at the ground in Wyatt’s path. “You heeled, son?”
In midstride Wyatt opened his coat and let the material fall back to expose the new Colt’s jammed into the waistband of his trousers.
Thompson’s eyes sharpened. “You need a gun to deliver a message?”
Wyatt kept walking. “Not to you, I reckon. These others I ain’t so sure about.” Wyatt let his arms swing their natural rhythm, showing no indication that he intended to use the gun. “I’ll deliver the message, Mr. Thompson. What you do then is your decision.”
“Why’re you doing this, son? Are you standin’ with these Kansas bastards?”
“A man’s dying right now. Might be more to die unless you see this out legal.”
“How do you mean?”
Ten feet from Thompson, Wyatt stopped and spread his boots, his arms hanging relaxed at his sides. He angled his eyes toward Peshaur, and the quiet in the plaza became absolute. Peshaur began to sidestep in a careful rocking motion away from Thompson, his boots barely scuffing the dust in the dry street.
In a quiet voice, meant only for Thompson’s ears, Wyatt spelled out the mayor’s offer. He displayed no emotion, no inflection of distaste, no air of authority. He said the message in his own words, not the mayor’s, but the gist was the same. By the time he had finished talking, his plan was clear as to the order of the men he would shoot, if shooting commenced.
“The mayor is trying to give you a way out of all this,” Wyatt said. “So make up your mind right now which way it’s gonna go.”
“They’re tryin’ to ca
ndy-coat it, Ben!” Peshaur crowed. “So it reads right in the papers. They’re scared.”
Thompson chewed on that for a time. “That about right?” he said to Wyatt.
Wyatt said nothing. He noted the position of the revolver in Peshaur’s hand—the barrel pointing at the ground, hammer not cocked, the thumb wrapped around the butt of the pistol. Wyatt felt the borrowed Colt’s press against his belly, the gun butt positioned just so.
“What if I agree?” Thompson said. “How do we go about it?”
“Agree!” Peshaur jerked his head around to the Texas leader. “Hell, Ben, what’re—”
“Shut up, Peshaur! I’m the one’s got his brother’s head stickin’ in a noose. I might can work somethin’ out.” He looked at Wyatt. “You think that’s about right, son?”
Wyatt hitched his head back toward Beebe’s store. “That mayor back there might deny knowing his mother if he thought you’d agree to this.”
Thompson’s hands remained relaxed on the shotgun. “So, what do we do here?”
“You surrender up your guns. Make it official. I reckon you’ve got enough friends here with guns to make you feel comfortable about doin’ that.”
Thompson shifted his weight left, then right. “I don’t like giving up my guns.” He nodded toward Brennan’s. “Those damned yellow law dogs are prob’ly waitin’ to get off a shot at me.”
Wyatt looked squarely at Peshaur. “Go over to Brennan’s,” he said. “Take a look. I think you’ll find they’ve hightailed it out the back a half hour ago.”
Something changed in Peshaur’s eyes, a nervous shimmer of light that could not find its way out. The Texan frowned and looked across the street to the saloon. The challenge had been tacit but clear: Wyatt had crossed over on his own; now it was Peshaur’s turn.
The muscular man attempted a bray of a laugh. “How’d I know it ain’t a set-up?” When Wyatt did not answer, Peshaur scowled at Brennan’s. “That damned Morco is a back-shooter.”
“I’ll walk in with you,” Wyatt said, “if that’s what you need.”
“Hell,” Peshaur scoffed, “you might be a back-shooter, too.”
For five seconds Wyatt looked at the Texan with dead eyes, and then he turned back to Ben Thompson. “Guess he ain’t going.”
Ben Thompson narrowed his eyes at Wyatt. “But why’d you get involved? I don’t see how you’ve got any stake in this.”
“Wasn’t no one else to do it,” Wyatt said.
Thompson cocked his head to one side, the question on his face creasing the skin around the corners of his eyes like the spokes of a broken wheel. “I give the word . . . and you’ll be lyin’ here in the street like the sheriff.”
Wyatt stared at Thompson, letting his eyes go to ice. “Won’t be just me.”
No one moved or spoke. The sunlight bore down mercilessly all around them, as though burning a tintype of every detail of the plaza, each man standing inside the fragile scene as if it could be his last chance at life.
“He’s bluffin’,” Peshaur growled, but his voice sounded empty.
“No,” Thompson said, a calm now smoothing the lines of his face as he studied Wyatt. “He ain’t.” The Texas leader looked toward Brennan’s and began shaking his head. The shotgun sagged in his arms. “Hell, I know there ain’t none o’ those bastards over there no more. Those boys are halfway to Salina. They’re yellow. And now they ain’t got no badge to take up the difference.”
“That’s the way I figure it,” Wyatt said.
“So who do I give my guns to? You?”
“I’m not an officer. Just the one delivering the message. I can call the mayor out here.”
Thompson thought about it. “Yeah, get his sorry ass out here, ’n case the ball opens.”
Wyatt half twisted at the waist and called over his shoulder. When Miller came out, a short man in a straight-brimmed, gray hat walked beside him. This man wore a sheriff’s deputy badge and a holstered gun strapped to his waist. His arms hovered well clear of his body to show he had no intention of using his weapon. His face was ashen, and his bulging eyes shone like wet creek stones.
“This is Deputy Hogue, Ben,” Miller announced. “All right? So let’s all just go down to Judge Osborne’s and get this thing settled. How does that sound to you?”
“I know who the hell the little runt is. You stay over there where you are, Hogue.”
Hogue stopped and eased a hand forward, palm up. “If I could just have your guns, Ben.”
Thompson, seeming suddenly irritated, threw the shotgun toward him into the street. Hogue jumped at the clatter, and Peshaur laughed. Ben unbuckled his pistol belt and spoke to Miller. “This one you can have for a while.” He dropped the holstered pistol in the dirt. “But the shotgun . . . that belongs to him.” He canted his head toward Wyatt.
With head bowed, Hogue shuffled in front of Miller, bent, and retrieved both guns. “I’ll have to carry these down to the courtroom,” he explained to no one in particular.
It was a charade of police work. The mayor and the deputy followed Thompson while the rest of the Texans—still armed—trailed behind . . . all but Peshaur, who holstered his gun and stood glaring at Wyatt, his ugly gray scar shining under his eye like a mark of insolence.
“So, now the California boy is runnin’ errands in Kansas,” Peshaur drawled, his words impudent and taunting. He sneered and turned to join the parade headed for the courtroom.
“Need me to walk with you?” Wyatt said in the flat tone of insult.
Peshaur hesitated and lowered his eyes to the Colt’s tucked into Wyatt’s waistband.
“It’s just you and me now, Texas,” Wyatt said.
Peshaur’s lips parted, but he only forced a smile as he hooked both thumbs into his cartridge belt.
“Nobody here to watch you strut now ’cept me,” Wyatt said, “and I ain’t impressed.”
Now James appeared, stepping beside Wyatt, his hand on the revolver holstered under his arm. Peshaur managed an amused snort, turned, and ambled down the street where his friends had gone. He didn’t look back, but Wyatt could feel the thread of animosity stretch taut between them.
“Little brother, you damn sure know how to poke your nose in a hornets’ nest.”
Wyatt turned to see Beebe and the others approaching excitedly from the boardwalk. They were like children let out from school.
“This town’s wearing thin on me,” Wyatt said quietly.
When the group circled around the Earp brothers, Wyatt held out the Colt’s to Beebe, who took the gun, smiled broadly, and pumped his hand up and down as if he were trying to draw water from a dry well.
“Son, the goddamn governor could’n’a handled that better’n you,” Beebe said.
James laughed. “Ain’t politics a goddamn wonder?” He pulled a fresh cigar from the pocket of the coat that Wyatt still wore, and then he pointed it toward Brennan’s. “Guess I’ll go see if my new dove’s acquired any bullet holes.” He hesitated as he watched the party of townspeople move off down the street toward the courthouse and their contrived version of justice. “What about you, Wyatt? You goin’ down to watch the sham?”
Wyatt shook his head. “Think I’ll go wash this town off my skin.”
CHAPTER 25
* * *
August, 1873: Last night in Ellsworth, Kansas
At the boardinghouse Wyatt washed his face and torso from a small porcelain basin of fresh water. The bar of lye soap was scented with sage, reminding him of the prairie just after a rain. He had heard that Indians used sage to cleanse not only the skin but the soul, and he wondered if he were doing something like that now in the privacy of his room.
As he dried his hands with a towel, the image of Sheriff Whitney would not leave his mind. The sheriff had lain sprawled out in the street, his white shirt glistening bright red in the hard light of the plaza. The shotgun blast had come without warning, changing everything in an instant. Every plan and ambition the sheriff might have laid claim to
had drained out of him into the street. Wyatt’s thoughts began to run to Rilla and crimson sheets when a knock rattled his door.
“Mr. Earp? It’s Larkin, manager over at the Grand Central.”
Still holding the towel, Wyatt opened the door to find the hotel man smiling and rubbing his palms together in the hallway.
“Well, it’s all settled. They’ve fined him. And the city police are all out.”
“What did the judge say?” Wyatt asked.
“Oh, that,” Larkin said, pushing a hand at the air. “Twenty-five dollars, just like the mayor said . . . disturbing the peace.” He flashed a sneer as if someone had cracked a lame joke.
Wyatt turned and carried the towel to the washstand. Larkin followed him into the room and partially closed the door as he watched Wyatt button up a shirt.
“ ‘Disturbing the peace,’ ” Wyatt muttered. He stopped buttoning, pivoted his head to the window, and stared for a time at the fading light beyond the windowglass. When he turned back to Larkin, the hotelier seemed to be appraising the room.
“Mr. Earp, I hope you’ll consider letting me put you up at the hotel. I would say that our amenities are several cuts above what you have here. I can give you a good rate for an extended stay. Now that you’ll be—”
“What about the sheriff?” Wyatt said.
Larkin appeared surprised at the change in the conversation’s direction, but he quickly adjusted, frowning to show his concern. “He’s at home. Very weak. Not much hope for him, I expect.” Pressing his lips into a thin line, he shook his head. “It’s a shame. He was a good family man . . . an Indian fighter, you know . . . fought at Beecher’s Island.” Larkin tried for a remorseful smile but dropped it when Wyatt said nothing. “Mr. Earp, we’d like you to join us in the hotel dining room for supper. It’ll be the mayor and a few of the council. We’ve invited your brother, too. The mayor would like to make the appointment official tonight. And the newspaper editor wants to interview you. They’re all convening at the hotel at seven.”
Larkin was just a messenger, he knew, but Wyatt made no effort to keep the coldness out of his voice. “Where’s my brother now?”