by Mark Warren
“I heard from Wells, Fargo,” Wyatt said, opening the negotiations. “The reward is for dead or alive. That’s official.”
Ike could not keep the excitement from his face, but Frank’s mouth crimped into a knot. “We’re gonna need something better’n your word on that,” McLaury said.
“I just got the telegram.” Wyatt’s voice had a calming effect on Ike and Hill, but it was clear from the look on Frank’s face that he needed more.
“Then we’ll see that telegram,” McLaury said testily. Holding the contempt on his face, he turned to Virgil. “You backing this with your word, too?”
“I am,” Virgil said, his voice filling the alley.
Wyatt hitched his head toward Allen Street. “I’ll need to walk to the Wells, Fargo office.”
McLaury turned on his heel. “We’ll be at the Alhambra. Bring it there.”
Virgil and Wyatt walked out to Fifth Street, Virgil crossing to the Oriental and Wyatt walking toward the corner, making for Marsh Williams’s office.
Virgil stopped halfway across the street and turned to Wyatt. “You still think this is a good idea?”
Wyatt halted at the question and looked at his brother. He said nothing.
“Like parleying with a trio of vultures over a carcass,” Virgil said and continued across the street. “I just hope we don’t regret this,” he murmured, as much to himself as to his brother.
Wyatt turned the corner, carrying the image of Frank McLaury’s surly face in his mind. Sometimes, he knew, it took a certain boldness to get to a place that was not easy to get to. In the end, if everything went well on this deal, the reward would be worth the trouble. It was up to Wyatt to see that it ran smoothly.
Marsh Williams was curious about Wyatt’s tight-lipped request for the telegram, but he detached it from his files without a question. “I’ll need that copy back,” Williams said. “We got to keep all the official communications. Company rule.”
Five minutes later, after showing the telegram to Frank McLaury under the awning outside the Alhambra, Wyatt folded the paper and watched through the saloon window as McLaury returned to his friends and engaged in private conversation. Looking east down the boardwalk he saw Williams standing in front of his office staring at him, his arms folded across his chest. Turning, the agent walked back inside and closed the door.
Wyatt slipped the paper into his coat pocket and walked west. He was in no mood to answer any questions Williams might have.
Within the week Ike Clanton appeared in the back room of the Oriental. Well past midnight, the tables were filled with gamblers. Clanton paced around the room, keeping his distance, and then he settled at the bar and ordered a drink. Finally, he signaled Wyatt, nodding toward the rear of the building with a nervous tic around his eyes. Ike threw back what was left of his drink, slapped the glass on the bar, and marched out through the front door.
At his break, Wyatt found Ike pacing in the alleyway where they had first talked. As soon as Ike saw him, he hurried forward, his face creased with worry.
“Leonard and Head are dead,” Ike said in a rush. “The Heslet brothers kilt ’em over in New Mexico.”
Wyatt hid his disappointment and nodded. “There’ll still be a reward on Crane.”
Ike shook his head. “Listen, Earp. This whole thing is feeling like a bad idea. Some of our boys shot the Heslets all to pieces.” Ike’s face hardened, and his eyes burned bright with fear. “That’s what could happen to me! Let’s just forget about this! To hell with Crane! And to hell with the reward money! I’d rather save my own skin!” Ike poked a finger at Wyatt. “You tell your brother, too. I don’t want no part o’ this deal!”
Wyatt removed his cigar from his mouth. His face went cold as stone. Though Wyatt made no other movement, Ike took a step backward in the narrow alley.
“I’ll be waiting to hear from you about Crane,” Wyatt said, his quiet voice as hard as his expression. Clanton started to protest, but Wyatt quickly held up his palm, the cigar sketching a red arc in the air. “I don’t want to hear anything about you backing out, Ike. Either you deliver Crane up, or be ready to have this thing blow up in your face.”
Ike paled. “What do you mean? This can blow up for you just as bad.”
Wyatt almost smiled. “What makes you think I give a damn if your crowd knows I want Crane? Me going after him is one thing. You giving him up is another. You’re gonna hold up your end of this bargain, Ike.”
As Wyatt held unforgiving eyes on Clanton, the Cow-boy found no words to argue. He managed to swallow, and the sound of it crackled in his throat. Wyatt spun on his heel and walked out of the alley back toward the front of the building.
CHAPTER 12
Summer 1881: Tombstone, A. T.
On a hot day in June, in front of the Arcade saloon, the bartender rolled out a barrel of whiskey as he argued with the delivery man who had just freighted in the shipment by wagon. After dipping a measuring stick into the bunghole, the saloon-keeper gritted his teeth around his cigar and squinted in the bright sun to read the calibration.
“We ain’t buyin’ no more air from them damn chiselers. Either these barrels arrive full or—”
As he railed against his wholesalers, a red brick of ash broke from the tip of his cigar and disappeared into the bunghole like a bright orange bee homing in on its hive. The men scrambled away as the explosion flared like the surprise of a photographer’s flash.
A bright flame leapt to the boardwalk awning, and burning pieces of barrel staves tumbled through the air, crashing into the windows of nearby shops. Within minutes a section of the dry tinderbox of Tombstone was burning out of control, the angry flames moving with alarming speed from the Oriental east to Seventh Street, from Fremont south to Toughnut.
Despite the efforts of firefighters and volunteer citizens, the conflagration raged with what seemed an insatiable hunger to consume the sun-bleached buildings. The blistering waves made the heat of the surrounding desert seem a refuge. In only an hour four city blocks had been reduced to a charred hole of blackened building frames and the scorched relics of furniture and goods that had filled the stores.
After the initial, frantic scramble to save lives, douse flames, and tear down walls that could spread the flames to other blocks, the spectacle of ruin became an altar to which citizens came to grieve over their own losses or those of their friends. Already there was talk of rebuilding. Even before the flames subsided, a vision of a bigger and better Tombstone was taking root.
But the disaster opened the scene for other opportunities, both nefarious and calculated. That night hired muscle from the corrupt county ring surfaced to stake claims on contested properties. They were like nocturnal snakes come out of their holes to slither through the darkness. Each mercenary employed speed and intimidation to back off his quarry.
To counter this, Virgil deputized Wyatt, Morgan, Fred Dodge, and John Vermillion, their former carpenter. Throughout that night the lawmen patrolled the streets, tearing down the tents of lot-jumpers wherever they appeared. Against these four, every contest was a brief one.
The larger timbers of the storied buildings glowed well into the night, as unnamed items from various businesses plumed steam or spewed black, acrid smoke that fanned into the night as if it were the source of the darkness itself. There was an unaccountable beauty to this aftermath of calamity, and the citizens gathered in the dark to witness it like an impromptu though somber social event.
On one of his vigils riding the perimeter of the embers, Wyatt recognized Behan’s woman standing outside the Russ House. She leaned to a young boy and pointed at something, and their heads stayed together in conversation. As Wyatt approached on his horse at a walk, she looked up, saw him, and slowly straightened.
“Marshal?” she said.
Wyatt reined up and turned in his saddle. “No, ma’am. You’re thinking of my brother.”
“You’re Wyatt, aren’t you?”
He dismounted and took off his hat, which
was more than half ruined by the day’s work. “That’s right,” he replied. His shirt was torn and soot-smudged and his body covered with sweat and grime from the endless hacking at timbers with an axe or sledgehammer. Though he felt ill at ease standing before her beauty in such disarray, there was an accompanying sensation of baring his soul. His was a smoke-stained portrait capturing him in the act of living. Nothing to show but himself. Somehow he knew she saw through the charred exterior right into the center of him.
He turned to stand beside her, and together, like a man and woman come to hear a selection of musical pieces at a concert, they witnessed the glow of orange coals that breathed in the night air. The smoke lifted at an angle, riding the slight breeze like an incantation on the folly of men’s plans. The crowd kept up a continuous overlay of muted conversations, all deferential to the sobering memory of the fire’s earlier domination, when it had raged uncontrolled. The assembly of the townspeople was like a final ritual meant to mark this day in Tombstone’s history.
Wyatt turned, wanting to see her face this close, and when he did, he knew he preferred the whites of her eyes to the glowing embers across the street. Her eyes shone like pale moons against the dark of her skin. She bent to the boy, and Wyatt was surprised at the strength in her voice so close to his ear.
“Albert, this is the man who carried the woman out of the burning building.” The boy looked up, squinting with his front teeth pinched down on his lower lip. She straightened, smiled at Wyatt, and tapped her own ear, conveying a message. “He’s hard of hearing,” she whispered. The communication was like a secret, settling them onto a common ground that strengthened their connection, and at the same time it set them farther apart from the others gathered there.
Wyatt looked at the ruins of the brothel—the place where he had broken through a wall and carried out the unconscious whore. When he saw the boy still studying him, Wyatt bent from the waist and spoke close to his ear.
“She’ll be all right. Just breathed in a little too much smoke.” Straightening, he returned his eyes to Behan’s woman. “This your son?”
“Albert is Sheriff Behan’s son.”
Wyatt studied the boy again, looking for a resemblance. All the while he felt the woman’s attention on him.
“My name is Sadie Marcus,” she said.
Wyatt looked at his hat in his hands, and then at her. “I’ve seen you around town.”
“Yes, I know. And I’ve seen you.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, but he was comfortable in the silence that followed. It isolated them even more from everything else. He liked standing with this woman, Sadie Marcus. He thought of Mattie in their bedroom sucking her life from a brown bottle and quickly fed this image to the lingering flames across the street.
“Were there many people hurt today?” she asked him.
Wyatt shook his head. “I reckon we were lucky on that count. There was some, but—”
He could not interpret her smile as one wholly reacting to this news. The smile gathered him into its domain in some way that he could not define. Across the block Wyatt heard Virgil’s booming voice, ordering someone off a piece of charred property.
Sadie’s smile all but dissolved. “Looks like it will be a long night.”
He nodded and was surprised at the words he composed on the spot. “Some parts of the night might not be so bad.”
Her wan smile did not alter, but her lambent eyes absorbed a part of the smile, until her face filled with a gracious warmth. Hers was an uncommon beauty, but she wore it with an effortless grace. Something else lay beneath her looks—something daring and determined—like the soul of a traveler who was willing to go wherever the next journey beckoned.
“How’d you know who I was?” Wyatt said.
“Johnny pointed you out.” It was a clean, honest statement, like a drink of cool water.
He almost laughed. “I reckon there was a little more to it than that. Johnny and I don’t exactly—”
“I asked him who you were,” she interrupted.
John Vermillion rode up on his big dapple gray, his long, dark locks of hair fanned out behind him and bouncing with the horse’s stride. Standing in his stirrups he searched the faces in the crowd.
“Wyatt!” he called out. “Better git over to the backside of the block. We got more lot-jumpers to drag out.” Vermillion spun his horse around and galloped off around the corner, his fast exit spurring the crowd to more lively conversation.
Wyatt pushed his battered hat onto his head and tipped the brim to Sadie and the boy. As he walked away, he felt something tugging at him—a part of himself trying to stay with this woman. It was an unexpected connection, one he would have to think about. But one thing he knew: he would see this woman again, if only to hear her speak in the timbre of honesty that made him feel so comfortable around her, Behan’s fiancée or not.
He let two days go by. There were half a dozen reasons not to go to the Grand Hotel—where Sadie Marcus lived—Mattie being at the head of that list. He only needed one reason to enter. Coffee would do. The Oriental had burned to the ground. He had to get his coffee somewhere.
The hotel bar was crowded with miners just off the late shift. Most tables were filled, and, at one of these, Joe Hill drank with four other men. One was the gloomy-eyed Ringo, slouching in a chair like a corpse that had been propped up for appearances. Frank Stilwell, recently acquitted on a murder charge and now Behan’s deputy, hunched forward with his elbows on the table, a shot glass held by fingertips hanging below his limp wrists. A surly smile stretched across his face as he held court to attentive ears. Next to Stilwell was Pete Spence, thin with a sly ferret face, who lived with a Mexican woman across from Wyatt’s house. The fifth man was McMaster.
“What can I get you, Mr. Earp?” the bartender said.
“Coffee.” Wyatt pushed a coin across the bar. “Miss Marcus been down?”
The bartender set down a mug and poured. “Usually comes down about noon.” He waited with his fingertips on the edge of the bar and a question on his face, but Wyatt said no more.
The men at McMaster’s table erupted into deep guttural laughter, and Wyatt checked them in the mirror. Only Ringo was not smiling. Wyatt carried his coffee to the empty table at the front window. He sat, set his new hat in the windowsill, and gazed diagonally across Allen Street as he tested his coffee. Workers were laying out a new foundation amid the rubble where the Oriental had stood. Vermillion was there stringing a chalk line. Wyatt sipped from his cup and considered the effects of the fire tripling business at the saloons that had survived.
A woman with painted lips and rings of jangling bracelets appeared next to Wyatt and leaned on his table. “Which Earp are you? You’re Wyatt, aren’t you?”
Wyatt nodded and studied her face, but he came up with nothing. He started to stand, but she pushed him back into his seat.
“Don’t get up, honey.” Something changed in her eyes, and an impudent smile pushed her mouth to one side. “You don’t remember. You carried me out of the fire.”
Wyatt let his eyes rove freely over her, inventorying her by portions. “I reckon so.”
She leaned and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m Nina,” she whispered into his ear. She stepped back, her face showing more mischief than gratitude. “I believe I am in your debt, Mr. Earp.”
Wyatt glanced at the upstairs landing. “Do you know Sadie Marcus?”
Her playful eyes seemed to look through him. “Sure. We worked together over in Tip Top.”
Wyatt frowned. “She came in from San Francisco.”
Nina’s eyes slid away, and the smile on her painted mouth turned sly. “Well, yeah . . . she came from there, all right.” She turned to Wyatt and bobbed her eyebrows. “Then she was at Tip Top. Now she’s here.”
“She livin’ here permanent at the Grand?”
Nina tilted her head as if looking at Wyatt from a different angle might explain something more about him. “She’s with Johnn
y Behan mostly, I guess.”
Wyatt nodded. “She really his fiancée?”
The girl sat and crossed her forearms on the table. “So she says.” Her head sagged between her shoulders and bounced once with a quiet laugh. When she looked up, smiling, her eyebrows rose again and remained in a double arch.
“You know something she don’t?” Wyatt asked.
She shrugged. “I know Johnny,” she said dryly.
A disheveled woman shuffled through the front door, stopped, and eyed the crowd. It took Wyatt a moment to recognize Kate Elder, Doc Holliday’s consort. When she began to reel, Wyatt excused himself and walked to her, taking her arm to offer support. Her head came around quickly, and her eyes flashed with a fury that suggested he ought to grab both her arms.
“Let me go, godt-damnt you!” Whiskey slurred her words and thickened her Hungarian accent. She scanned the room with angry jerks of her head. “Where is dat damnt whore?”
Wyatt pulled her as gently as he could back toward the door. “Let’s go outside, Kate. You don’t want—”
“Don’t you tell me vhat I vant!”
Her face had turned vicious, and she tried to slap him. In one motion he caught her wrist and swept her out the door and around the side of the building. In the alleyway he pressed her back against the side of the building.
“Maybe we should go and find Doc,” Wyatt suggested.
She exhaled a whiskey-soaked screech. “You findt him! He loff to see you!” Her voice was shrill, like a rough stone scratched against glass. She tried to jerk free, but when she couldn’t, her eyes clamped shut and tears squeezed out, running in silver streaks down her cheeks. “You vant to beat me, too?”
“I don’t want to beat on anybody, Kate. But I can’t have you beatin’ on me. Where is Doc?”
She turned her face away. “How do I know! Maybe vit dat whore.”
“Kate, you’ve been with other men. You know how it works.”