Текст книги "Sliphammer"

Автор книги: Brian Garfield

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

She sighed warmly and wriggled and gave him a serene, unhurried kiss; he wanted to He with her, her breasts in his hands, but he said, “We are goddamn loco,” and got his pants on and went down through the trees with his rifle. In camp nothing stirred; the prisoners lay asleep. He put on his hat and laid the rifle across his crook’d elbow, still tasting the flavor of her skin on his tongue. She came out of the trees tucking in her shirt and he saw the happiness glowing in her face and felt an overwhelming warmth course through him, an unreasoning reaching out of his heart. He felt absurdly pleased with himself, and grinned at her idiotically.

She came close and brushed him with her lips; she said, “It’s all right, isn’t it? I was so afraid it would come between us-remembering Rafe, I mean.” Her face changed; she was looking toward the sky, not meeting his eyes, and she said slowly, “I do feel guilty about it. I can’t help it. And so do you. But it wouldn’t be any good if we didn’t feel like that.”

“Maybe it’ll take a while to sort it all out.”

She said, “Is your back bleeding?”

“I don’t know-I don’t mind.”

“I never did that with-” she began, and stopped. He took her hand in both of his. She smiled briefly and said, “Fm sorry, I won’t do that again. I love you, Jerr, I always did.”

Thirteen

The high passes were cold, wind-raked. On tired horses they struggled slowly upward. Tree rode ahead early in the afternoon to seek out a way across; his exhilaration had crumbled, he felt sour and weary. He had begun to smell himself. That afternoon they wasted four hours doubling back from a blind cliff and he knew it was time they couldn’t afford to lose: he had seen the first signs of pursuit, a rising of flocked birds from a mountain behind them.

Taking the chance it would work, he spent an hour planting another false trail and led the way up a narrow granite gorge. Hoofbeat sound swelled and echoed between the rocky walls. For two hours Gant and Macklin had been filling the air with threats-what they’d do if Cooley caught up. Gant said, “I’d sooner kill you, Arp, than turn you over to them alive.”

Macklin said, “After all, that Arizona ree-ward’s dead or alive.”

“Yuh,” said Gant. “Yuh, and it’s easier handlin’ a corpse than a live, squirmin’ sumbitch like Arp here.”

Finally, having enough, Tree shut them up. He, wanted the Earps lathered; he didn’t want them so infuriated they would take stupid chances.

Wyatt Earp had maintained an air of disinterested righteousness; Caroline kept hammering him about Rafe’s death, about Cooley, and Earp only replied, “I’m not responsible for your opinions-he was your husband and you’re mad, all right. For myself, I regret nothing. Badgering me will get you nowhere.”

They threaded the edge of a deep forest and stayed within it all afternoon. There was no further chance to survey the trail behind them-the trees closed off the view; Tree saw no further sign of pursuit that day but it didn’t mean pursuit wasn’t there. After dark he had to call a halt. They camped beneath the solid mass of a mountain saddle he planned to cross in the morning. It turned bitter cold. Tree took down his rifle but Caroline spoke low to him: “You have got to sleep, Jerr. Those two can watch the Earps, and I’ll watch them. I’ll wake you up if I have to.”

He didn’t protest: he had gone too long without sleep. He felt drunk, in that stage where nothing seemed quite real; everything seemed slightly farther away than it was, and the things he said and heard no longer quite made sense. When he sat down he felt needles in his legs. He rolled up in coat and blankets and lay on his back, belly rising and falling with his breath, closed his eyes, and in five seconds was unconscious.

Obie Macklin watched Tree go to sleep, then picked up his rifle and walked past the three trussed prisoners to where Mordecai Gant stood bulky against the sky. Macklin spoke in a low voice: “I hope to God this works.”

“You thank Floyd’U catch us up tomorrow?”

“Maybe. I ain’t worried about Floyd. It’s Cooley I’m thinking about.”

“If Floyd don’t get here first, Obie, we got to do it ourselves and get the hell out of here before Cooley shows up with that fucking army of his.” Gant glanced across the camp at Caroline, lowered his voice still more, and said, “Cooley ain’t gonna find them messages you left for Floyd, is he?”

Macklin said, “Cooley wouldn’t know where to look-I hope.” He followed Gant’s glance and saw Caroline watching them. That lit Je blonde catamount didn’t trust nobody at all. He made a note to watch out for her-she had a gun and it wouldn’t be smart to assume she wouldn’t use it.

Gant said, “Maybe we ought to do it now.”

“You that hungry for somebody’s blood?”

“I don’t mind,” Gant said. “We ought to do it and git shet of it and git the hell out of here.”

“Go ahead and try if you want to. Me, I keep remembering the way he handles that sliphammer gun of his. I’d just as soon wait for help. Hell, that was the whole object of setting this thing up.”

“How hard you think Tree’d fight to save Wyatt Arp’s hide?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“You funny, Obie, real funny. Sometime you gonna laugh yoseff to death.”

“Screw you, Mordecai.”

Gant scowled. “Some reason you don’t want to go on living, Obie?” he asked with soft, bloodthirsty insinuation.

Macklin laughed bitterly. “Living? Hell, I never even wanted to be born.” He turned and moved away.

The third day was the heartbreaker. They got all the way up the mountain saddle only to find that the far side was a sheer cliff. Nothing to do but retrace and go around: it took hours. When Tree finally found a pass that crossed over, he halted his horse to the crest to look back, and saw two armies of horsemen doggedly descending the slopes five or six miles back. The two groups were a mile apart, separated by a hogback ridge. Tree’s pinched mouth formed a slash across his face like a surgeon’s wound.

Caroline said, puzzled, “They look like they’re hiding from each other.”

Wyatt Earp said, “I recognize that white horse-Floyd Sparrow’s. Trying to beat Cooley to us.”

Mordecai Gant laughed coarsely. “Lookin’ to skin your hide, Arp.”

Earp looked at Tree with venom. “This game’s rigged, isn’t it.”

“Not by me,” Tree answered shortly, and led them through the pass; He had been spotted; the pursuers lifted their pace.

The far side was a long, sweeping downslope. They crossed at a canter. Up above was a sawtooth tangle of peaks, the highest in this range-Continental Divide. Beyond that, it would be mostly downhill; but it was still three days to Denver.

He tried to stretch the hour’s lead. They found a spring, watered, and walked the horses downslope in the creek, then came to the confluence of a tributary and turned deliberately upstream in the secondary creek. It was out of the way but it might confuse pursuit. Tree led them out onto a shale slide that made dangerous footing but concealed all sign of their passage. When they had gone a mile beyond, he discovered Macklin wasn’t with them: Macklin trotted up from behind and saw his look, and said casually, “Thought I better have one more look back the way we come.”

“See anything?”

“Not a thing,” Macklin said, and pushed on.

They breathed the horses at intervals but made no noon halt. At two they spent fifteen minutes in a creek, going upstream and thus losing a mile’s progress to gain concealment; at a tortuous chasm Tree tossed big rocks across to the far side until he had overturned a fair number of loose stones to expose their damp undersides. It would take pursuers an hour or more to get over to that side. Tree led down the near side to the belly of the gorge, which took them by a series of rock-floored hairpin twists down through the upper elevations of timber forests. They entered groves so thickly massed at the treetops that no sun got through to the ground. Moss and decaying growth made easy footing for the horses but left clear sign. The riders had to ward off branches and duck under tree limbs. Once, in the center of the timber, Tree called a halt to blow the horses and listen for pursuit. He turned his head slowly to catch any sounds that might come rolling down the long-sounding forest corridors. He heard nothing-which in itself was not reassuring-and led on, noticing vaguely that Obie Macklin was occupying his nervous hands by sharpening his knife on stirrup leathers.

Distances in the high-country air deceived the eye. The high peaks that had loomed within obvious bullet range that morning were still ahead of them in midaf-ternoon, when they climbed past timberline into stunted marginal growth. The air had a clear, gemlike quality. Tree halted to give the canyons behind him a long inspection; doubtless the two pursuing bands were down there under the trees somewhere-the question was, how close?

Warren Earp said, “God damn it, I wish they’d show themselves.”

Wyatt said testily, “Take it easy, boy, take it easy.” It made Tree look at him. The deep voice, calm on the surface, had a strained, false timbre.

Warren said, “What the hell you mean, take it easy? My damn wrists are just about to start bleeding and we’re unarmed and hogtied and right back there we’ve got a pack of stinking miners wanting to lynch both of us.”

Caroline said, with acid, “Don’t you think your friend Cooley can take care of a few worthless miners?”

“Not if they get to us first,” Warren said, looking as miserable as he probably felt. He hadn’t whined much, which was to his credit, but the strain was getting to him now. There was, Tree observed, a surprising amount of sand beneath Warren’s bravado. A lesser man would have crumbled by now-he had expected it to happen, and found himself curiously pleased that it hadn’t. Now, after the one minor outburst, Warren clamped his mouth shut and turned to stare stonily ahead.

They climbed another mile and Tree looked back again, saw nothing, and urged the weary horses on. Caroline drew alongside and crinkled her nose at him. At that moment Josie Earp, looking down the backtrail, said, “Oh, shit-Oh, Jesus Christ!”

Tree’s attention whipped down the mountain. He saw them then-Floyd Sparrow’s bunch, the white horse in the lead, coming up from the trees not three miles below.

Josie said, “Sweet Jesus, get us out of this.” She was talking to Wyatt.

Wyatt put his hooded eyes on Tree and said, “Don’t you think this damned foolishness has gone far enough now?”

It was Caroline who said, “What’s the matter-afraid you won’t make it to Denver?”

Earp’s eyes, flashing bright for a moment, receded under drooping lids; he said nothing more.

Dead weary, Tree pushed them on. He kept looking back, kept getting glimpses of Floyd Sparrow’s determined gang, and knew without being told exactly what Sparrow wanted.

The hard pressures of pursuit, fatigue, vigilance constricted him like iron hoops drawn painfully around his chest. He glanced at Wyatt Earp and knew the man was getting rattled. He felt acutely embarrassed, as if he had blundered in on Earp’s privacy. All during these endless hours of riding he had communicated very little with Earp but he still hadn’t shaken the possibility he was doing Earp an injustice, Rafe or no Rafe. Nothing was simple, he thought; particularly in questions of guilt. There were no innocent men.

The horses clambered uphill, heaving and beaten. Tree looked at Earp again and found Earp chewing his lip. Earp caught Tree looking at him and straightened up in the saddle with an expression under his mustache that might have been a sullen snarl; Earp said, “Sparrow’s the kind of man who won’t mind shooting the lot of us whether we’ve got our hands tied or not-fish in a rain barrel to him.”

“What do you want me to do?” Tree snapped.

“I know,” Earp said, with imperfect sarcasm “you’ve got your stupid duty to do.”

Caroline, overhearing, let her horse drop back and said angrily to Earp, “Maybe just one time in your miserable life you ought to try pretending the rest of us are almost as good as you are.”

Earp tried to shrug with disdain. “I’m only pointing out the odds to your pigheaded friend. Why should all of you have to die over me?”

Caroline cried, “People are always deliberately choosing to die around you. All the people who absolutely force you to kill them!”

“I didn’t kill your husband,” Earp snapped.

“You did everything but pull the trigger!”

“Nonsense!”

“You could have stopped Cooley,” she said, with scorn.

“You’re babbling,” Earp grunted, and stirred in the saddle, looking back and making a face. “Can’t we speed this up? Or are we going to dawdle and wait for Sparrow to ride right up?” He poked his face toward Tree: “Maybe you made a private arrangement with Sparrow to sell us out?”

Tree tried to keep the anger off his face. Earp’s raucous bleatings were the signs of a man cracking up. Where was the man’s courage? Earp hadn’t once tried to escape-waiting for Cooley, maybe? Or just using his head, appraising the “odds” so coolly? Earp was a poker player-maybe he’d started out with a plan of some kind; but poker was a game in which you lost if you hesitated too long before bluffing. There didn’t seem any getting around the obvious fact that Wyatt Earp was losing his nerve.

Not sure any more, Tree was enraged-enraged more by disillusion and his own uncertainty than by anything else, even Sparrow back there. Everything he had taken for granted seemed to be falling apart. He had, in a strange way, believed in Wyatt Earp; it had been important to him. Now either Earp was folding up, or it was some fantastic trick designed to get Tree off guard.

The thought grenaded into his mind, and he clung to the possibility almost with relief. He realized: he wanted Earp to try to escape.

Then Earp crushed him. Earp said, “Maybe you ought to think what it could mean to you to have the gratitude of men like Wayde Cardiff. I’m offering no bribes but you need to be reminded of reality. Damn it, all I want is a fair chance against those red-eyed sons of bitches down there.” He was brooding back toward Sparrow’s bunch.

“Good God,” Tree said, his voice grating hoarse. “Shut up now, will you?” Shut up before you destroy yourself!

He gigged the tired horse ahead.

The sun went down behind them, a vivid splash of colors across the mountains. The horses were played out; it was an agony of stumbling hoofs and slip-sliding boots, all the riders on foot now, leading the animals. Tree posted himself in the rear, guarding the backtrail. The pass was in sight, clearly silhouetted against the stars as night came down full; and they kept plugging stubbornly toward it until, dropping across a rocky bowl of ground, Tree called forward softly, went past the line, and spoke to Gant: “They can’t see us in this hollow. We’ll turn left and go north through the gully until it peters out.”

“Take us north of the pass,” Gant grumbled.

“Can’t be helped. We’ll go over the north side of the mountain. It may just lose them.”

So they turned, keeping to the concealment of the lateral gully along the flank of the mountain, hoping Sparrow behind them would keep going straight up for the pass. Tree dropped back to the rear. He felt stunned by weariness. His footing was bad, his eyesight played tricks on him. Once up ahead he thought he saw Obie Macklin stooping by a rock, doing something, his knife blade glinting dully. When Tree reached that area he gave the ground a close search and finally found it: a round quartzite stone the size of a hat, with bright, fresh slashes across its top, three parallel straight lines-a signal in private code. Sparrow, knowing what to look for, would spot it immediately. So, there it was. Tree closed his eyes and gathered himself, marshaling strength, and strode forward, dragging the horse, clambering past the rest of them until he caught up with Macklin.

Gant and Macklin were talking in subdued tones; they drew apart when he approached. Everybody halted, without needing instructions. Macklin caught some sign, even in the starlight; he stiffened arid said tentatively, “What’s wrong with you?”

Tree said, “That’s all for both of you. Shuck your gunbelts.”

Gant said, “Huh?” and Macklin at the same time said, “What the hell’s all this?”

Tree shook his head. “Drop those belts and then sit down and take off your boots.” His palm curved over the sliphammer gun. Macklin and Gant looked at each other; then, as if on prearranged signal, they dived in opposite directions, both clawing at their revolvers.

The sliphammer gun fired-once-at Gant’s big shadow, and whipped across toward Macklin. The little man was rolling under the belly of his horse, snapping off a shot. The report of the gun was startling. Muzzle flame lanced forward. The bullet went wide somewhere and Tree fired at the only target visible beyond the horse’s shadow-Macklin’s head. Bone fragments and blood sprayed from the skull. The horse reared, slipped on the loose rocks, and fell on Macklin, crushing his body underneath.

Tree spun, crouching, toward Gant, but Gant hadn’t fired at all: clearly Tree’s first one had hit him somewhere. His bodily functions had lost control; there was the sharp stink of human urine and manure coming upwind from Gant. Tree got to him in four strides and found him dying.

Macklin’s horse scrambled for footing and ran in terror, back the way they had come. Gant’s horse wanted to run too but it was joined by rope tether to the prisoners’ horses; it reared and stayed put. Caroline stood back there with the birdhead. 38 in her fist, aimed at Wyatt Earp, who hadn’t moved a muscle after crouching down and whipping Josie flat to the ground.

Tree walked away from Gant, taking a deep breath and letting it out, went past Macklin’s body, and reached for the reins of his horse. “That gunshot will bring them on the run. Get mounted.”

Josie said in a cracked voice, “Dear God. But those-” she was staring at the bodies.

Tree said harshly, “Let Sparrow bury them.” He led his horse over to Wyatt and Josie, glanced at Warren’s shocked face, and said in a bitter, clipped way, ‘They were blazing a trail for Sparrow-Sparrow had to get you out here alone, away from Cooley and the rest of your friends.”

“How long have you known that?”

“I just got proof. Do you want to argue about it or get out of here?”

“Untie my hands first,” said Earp.

“No. I’m not done yet. Now damn it get mounted.” He swung toward Caroline: “You’ll ride Gant’s horse and lead the others.”

She didn’t ask questions; she went to Gant’s horse. The stirrups were far too long for her and she had to ride with her feet dangling. They left the dead men on the ground and went out as fast as the bone-tired horses would move them, curving broadly northeast, then east, then back toward the pass, because there was a chance Sparrow would not double back after finding the bodies. And the pass, now, was the fastest way across.

Fourteen

In the pass, the night wind sliced through Tree as if he were naked. His horse turned a fetlock and went lame; he swapped over to the spare animal but even without a rider the lame horse couldn’t keep up with the slow pace, and he had to unsaddle it and turn it loose. With a game leg it wouldn’t drift far and Sparrow would surely pick it up. Luck had turned all bad; this was just one more thing that couldn’t be helped. Wyatt Earp’s remarks, delivered at intervals, were snappish and bitter. Josie swore in a monotonous voice, going through her limited vocabulary of obscenities and then going through it again. Warren was the silent one; his eyes were shut half the time and he was probably half drugged with sleeplessness, so tired he just didn’t care any more. Of the five of them, only Caroline didn’t seem to have run out of stamina.

Beyond the pass the slope was a downgrade but not an easy one. Steep slides alternated with boulder-littered humps. At intervals they trotted, walked, and got off to lead. Tree kept looking back, expecting to see horsemen on the skyline. The moon rose, a pale, thin rind. They walked down into the forest of scrub pine and high mountain piiion and Caroline broke off unripe pinon nuts to chew. By the time dawn broke across the Rockies, there was a glaze on the surfaces of Tree’s eyes that made him blink continuously to keep it away. He felt as if he had gritty sand under his eyelids. His legs were numb stumps, blistered and uncooperative. Wyatt Earp had developed a tic above his right cheekbone; his eyes were raw, sunk back behind dark pouches. He had gone hoarse and stopped talking an hour before sunrise.

They ate on the move. Around nine o’clock they entered the upper fringe of taller pine forest and at the edge Tree looked back once more. Still no sign of Sparrow: had he lost them? It didn’t seem possible. They went down through the dry timber-land, zigzagging through canyons to stay dff the visible high ground. He checked the ropes which lashed the Earps’ wrists. There was a raw-rubbed spot on Warren’s left wrist that was ugly red with scabbed blood but Tree didn’t loosen the ropes. Warren hardly seemed to recognize him. Tree scraped a hand across the abrasive stubble on his jaw, pinched his eyes with thumb and forefinger, and looked up to see they were near the edge of a promontory that looked down past a tortured series of gorges and ridges into a deep river valley. The sun, in the east beyond, reflected painfully off the rushing river several miles below and the steel ribbons of railroad tracks running along by the river. Tree looked at Caroline and said, “The Arkansas. If these horses get us that far we’ll flag a southbound train and ram through to Denver if I have to hold a gun at the engineer’s head.”

A wind rushed through the trees and at midafternoon they were within a mile of the Arkansas when a rifle went off somewhere not too far away, the solitary crack echoing and rebounding through the canyons. It stirred Tree’s adrenalin, bringing him more fully awake. All of them had stiffened in their saddles; they were all looking around. The timber was broken up into patches separated by meadows; the hilly horizons were near. Abruptly Tree spotted movement: a bunch, on horseback, wheeling out of the forest half a mile back. The rifle shot had been a rallying signal; horsemen galloped in from several directions. He recognized the white horse.

Wyatt Earp bellowed, “We can’t outrun them on these horses.”

“We can try,” Tree said. “On the run, now!” They urged the faltering animals downslope-just one more ridge to cross, then downhill to the river. But when they started up the ridge, a pack of riders materialized at the crest. Tree reined in; Caroline yanked her horse to a stop so abruptly that the other three got tangled up. Tree slapped Caroline’s horse across the rump and went wheeling past her, turning aside into a boulder-strewn gully that angled upslope to the right. They clattered up the defile in a row. It took them five hundred yards toward the crest of the ridge, and turned a bend, and ended: it just petered out in a sloping field of buffalo grass. They emerged, fully exposed on the flats. The upper band of riders was ramming forward at a gallop-and Caroline sucked in her breath: “That’s Cooley’s gang. God damn them!” Cooley must have taken a calculated chance, cutting ahead to wait by the Arkansas and trap the fugitives coming down. So now it was Cooley up there and Sparrow’s miners galloping up from below-a hopeless pincer.

Wyatt Earp roared, “For the love of God cut us loose-at least let a man die with a gun in his hand!”

Warren said bitterly, “You really fucked it up, Deputy-I hope you roast in Hell.”

Tree got them dismounted. Cooley was three quarters of a mile away, plunging his army forward at a full gallop, riders fanning out in a tense arc-and half a mile below them, Sparrow’s miners, ungainly on horseback but armed to the teeth, came swirling upslope, disdaining the gully.

Warren said, “All fucked up,” spitting it out like acid, and Wyatt Earp’s eyes, gone hard again, penetrated Tree. Dispassionately Tree took down his rifle, cocked it, and said with unhurried clarity, “We’re all going to walk back into that gully and belly down in the rocks. Move.”

He jabbed Wyatt Earp in the gut, hard enough to make the big man stumble. Earp, his hands tied together, turned lobster red and went at an awkward, shambling run. Tree gathered up all the guns, handed some of them to Caroline to carry, and brought up the rear. They tumbled into the rocks and flattened themselves in boulder crevices.

Wyatt Earp said, “Give us to Cooley and I’ll safeguard your hide. It’s the only chance you’ve got.”

“My string’s not played out,” Tree said, watching the miners come-Sparrow had the lead, two or three hundred yards, but his path was uphill and Cooley’s was down. It looked like a dead heat: already both groups were lifting their guns, reining in, trying to feel out the shape of things.

Tree said, “Keep your heads down.”

Josie said, “Horse shit. If I’ve got to get shot I want to watch.”

Warren Earp banged his shoulder into her and knocked her down. Two or three rifles went off-Sparrow’s men-the bullets singing off the rocks. Both posses came within two hundred yards of the gully, on the opposite sides of it-and stopped.

Tree said softly, “We’ll just count on Cooley to protect us from Sparrow.”

Caroline said dully, “And who protects us from our protector?”

“Cooley won’t ram in here as long as I’ve got a gun at Wyatt Earp’s head.”

“So,” said Warren, “that’s it.”

Rifles opened up: Cooley’s men shot high overhead in arced trajectories, trying to scatter Sparrow’s bunch. The miners returned the fire. It wasn’t long before both groups retired beyond rifle range of each other, leaving a few gunshot horses on the field. Wyatt Earp, squatting in the rocks, said, “Fine. Mexican standoff till sundown and then Sparrow’s ghouls sneak in here and finish us off.”

Caroline said, “Will you shut up? Will you please just shut up?”

Tree scanned the grass. Cooley’s strikebreakers had moved back into a grove of trees, left their horses, and now could be seen fanning out on foot. Sparrow’s men were somewhere in the thickets below. Tree thought, We won’t have to wait until dark. He said, “They’ll be coming up the gully. Watch the bend.”

“With what?” Wyatt Earp demanded. “God damn it, a gun, man!”

The grass was waving in various places; there was no wind to stir it. Men crawling on their bellies. Tree said, “Oh, Christ.” He looked at his rifle and closed his eyes down hard, hating it all, hating Wyatt Earp most of all. He opened his eyes and turned a bleak, hollow stare on Earp and said, “Call your friends down here.” He put his gun to Earp’s head.

A man came in sight down the gully, a miner with a rifle. The rifle went off, badly aimed, and Tree fired a snap shot which drove the miner behind cover. Tree wheeled flat against a boulder, jacked a cartridge into the magazine and heard Wyatt Earp bellow, “Cooley! Get down here!”

Lower down in the gully bend, several miners flitted from cover to cover. Tree raked the bend with rifle fire, and sprinted across to the far side. A bullet kicked up rock dust at his heels. He slammed behind a boulder and fired. From this angle he had a wider field of fire along the bend; he could keep them back, two hundred yards below. He levered the rifle, fast, slamming bullets into the rocks, hearing the ricochets buzz and crang. The miners went to cover-and Caroline shrieked, “Jerr!”

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.