Текст книги "Sliphammer"
Автор книги: Brian Garfield
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 11 страниц)
Ten
Only a handful stood on the hillside. A cold wind came down off the mountains, roughing up the aspen leaves, brushing the faces of Tree and Caroline, Sheriff McKesson, the circuit preacher, the undertaker and his two helpers, and three unshaven pilgrims drawn to the funeral by morbid curiosity. The preacher’s talk was flat, matter-of-fact, nothing beyond the words from the Book, for he had never met the deceased or even heard of Rafe Tree. When he finished his brief eulogy, Caroline sprinkled dirt on the simple pine casket and stood peering through her veil while the box was lowered by rope into the fresh grave.
The gravediggers stepped forward with their shovels. The preacher turned away, spoke softly to Caroline, shook Tree’s hand, nodded to the sheriff, and walked away down the hill toward town in the company of the undertaker.
Sheriff McKesson put his hat on-he seldom wore a hat but today he had, evidently, chosen deliberately to bring one so that he could make a point of removing it, his way of paying his respects to the deceased. Now, setting the hat firmly on his face so that the brim made a straight line across his brow, he walked ten paces downhill and stood waiting with calm patience.
Caroline seemed reluctant to move. Perhaps it was the three morbid pilgrims who refused to budge; probably they intended to stand there staring until the last shovelful of earth was in place. Tree left her standing there and walked off a little piece. He put on his hat and reached inside his coat to take out the folded telegram; he read it over for the tenth time and lifted his eyes to stare toward the rooftops of town.
McKesson walked over to him and spoke in a voice calculated to reach no farther than Tree’s ears: “Everybody in town knows what that says by now but I’d like to see it officially, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.” Tree handed it to him. “It says the Governor’s gone to Kansas on business and in his absence the Lieutenant Governor has tentatively authorized the extradition of Wyatt Earp and Warren Earp. I’m to arrest them and take them in custody to Denver.”
McKesson watched him while he spoke; then merely glanced at the telegram, nodded, and handed it back. Tree put it in his pocket.
McKesson said, “Of course, you could just walk into the Inter Ocean and tell them they’re under arrest. You could do that. If you want to commit suicide. Or get laughed at. Yes, now, think of that for a minute-what happens if you go in to arrest them and they just laugh at you? What do you do? Start filling the air with bullets? You wouldn’t get a gun out of the holster before you be whipsawed by eight different guns from eight different directions. They’ve got that whole street covered like an infantry battalion holding a strategic strong point.”
Tree murmured, “What are you trying to say to me, Sheriff?”
“I can feel it, Deputy-you’re like a keg full of blasting powder, ready to explode. There’s a lot of hate and anger in every word you’ve said this morning, no matter what you happened to be talking about at the moment. When I said it was a nice day you said yes it was and you made it sound as if what you really meant was you wanted to break every bone in my body. The size of your hate makes this valley crowded today, Deputy.”
“Maybe. Or maybe you’re reading the signs wrong. Maybe I’m just feeling frustrated and I just want to hit out at anything within reach.”
McKesson shook his head and glanced upslope at Caroline. Tree, thinking about Rafe, kept having other things intrude on him. The telegram had hit him’ like a physical blow. It made him feel like a small boy who’d made great threats against an imagined enemy giant-a small boy who’d made vast make-believe plans with the unbridled grim boldness of fantasy, only to discover with sickening helplessness that he had actually taken the step-actually moved from make-believe destructions into an impossible reality. Absurdly, he remembered how he had used to make believe, when he was a little kid, when they had locked him in the loft for some transgression or other. Was it too late to turn back? Was it done? What the hell am I doing here?
Uphill, Caroline came away from the grave, her face hidden by the borrowed veil. Tree stepped off to meet her, saying over his shoulder, “I’ll be seeing you sometime, Sheriff.”
“I’ll count the hours,” McKesson said with dismal humor, and went away down the long slope to town.
Tree glanced across the bleak anonymous grove of grave markers and brought his attention to rest on Caroline. Her body, clothed in severe black, seemed rigid with ill-controlled wrath.
She didn’t speak right away. They walked downhill together, not touching each other, and behind him Tree could hear the scrape and chink of the gravediggers’ shovels. Only when they were beyond the carry of that sound did Caroline stir from silence. She removed the veiled hat and held it at her side as she walked. Her eyes were sleepless-raw, but they burned with fevered brilliance.
She said in a hoarse voice that seemed drugged, “Well, Jerr?”
He only shook his head, and after a single frown at him she kept her peace. They walked together into town and Tree led her to a point a block from the Inter Ocean, where they stood and looked at the place; and he thought with sour irony that just thirty-six hours ago he had walked into that place and had a drink with Wyatt Earp, and they had laughed together over a coarse joke of Wayde Cardiff’s. Just thirty-six hours, and now he could no more walk peaceably into that place than fly to the moon. It had turned into a fortress and the drawbridge was up against him.
Caroline said, “Jerr, do people always have to be scared?”
He had no answer for that; what he said was, “If that warrant was for Cooley-”
“How would that make any difference?”
“I’ve got a reason to want Cooley.”
She stepped in front of him to face him. “You’re wrong, then. If Cooley’s guilty so is Wyatt Earp.”
“It wasn’t Earp that shot Rafe.”
“Earp could have prevented it. It amounts to the same thing, Jerr-don’t you see that?”
“I don’t think he had time to stop it.”
“He had plenty of time,” she said viciously. “He could have-if he’d cared.”
“No. You’re letting your temper get in the way of your sense.”
“Am I,” she said without inflection. She threw her head back to look him in the eye. “I’ll prove it to you. Will you come with me and listen to a man?”
“What man?”
“You’ll see when we get there.”
“Where?”
“Just come,” she said, and walked off. A few paces away she stopped to look back and see if he was coming. He broke loose, shaking his head, and went with her. She turned the corner and headed in the direction of Poverty Row.
On the way she said, “You still don’t want to arrest Wyatt Earp, and it’s not because you’re scared-”
“I’m not?”
“You are, but that’s not what’s making you hesitate. It’s that you don’t really think Wyatt Earp deserves to be arrested. You’re not sure where justice, is. You think Wyatt Earp’s a big wonderful man, you still believe all that dime novel junk-you think he’s the man of the legend.”
“You put it a bit strong. He’s a human being. But there’s a good chance if I arrest him he’ll get railroaded.”
“Only an innocent man can be railroaded,” Caroline said. They crossed a dust-caked intersection. Several blocks ahead he could see, over the low rooftops, the railroad trestle which was Poverty Row’s landmark.
She stopped in front of a boarding house and nodded. Tree held the door for her and they went inside. She seemed to know exactly where she was going; she went through the narrow foyer and turned up the stairs without glancing into the parlor whose door stood open across the hall. She said over her shoulder, “I was here last night,” and went right up. He followed her to the head of the stairs, where she turned left down a hallway lit only by the weak daylight that filtered through a small window set in the fire door at the far end. A little way along, she stopped at a door and lifted her small fist, whereupon a door behind her opened, across the hall, and a stout woman in a soiled apron appeared.
Caroline said, “How are they?”
“They all right.”
“Is Mr. Sparrow in here?”
“I reckon. You knock and you’ll find out.”
Coming up, Tree could see past the stout woman into the room behind her. There were two cots, both occupied by men in bandages-one on the leg, the other across his shoulder: probably the two miners who’d been shot by Earp’s people in the street fight.
Caroline was knocking at the opposite door. Little Floyd Sparrow answered it. The stout woman went back into the sickroom and closed the door. Sparrow gave Caroline his nervous glance and acknowledged Tree with a brief look of smouldering preoccupation.
Caroline said, without warmth, “I want you to tell him what you told me last night.”
Sparrow stepped back to let them in. His mouth was turned town in a scornful expression which seemed to have been shaped by a long, intimate acquaintance with life’s dour iniquities. Instead of making an immediate reply, he walked across the room and sat down on the sill of the filthy window, hipshot, swinging his free leg loosely. Caroline walked in and stood beside a writing desk, the entire surface of which was mounted high with disordered piles of books and pamphlets-atheist tracts, radical labor monographs, and, curiously, a copy of the Book of Mormon.
Tree propped his shoulder in the doorway, admitting to himself that he had let Caroline lead him here by the nose only because it afforded him a cheap excuse to postpone making the inevitable decision and doing what had to be done. He tried to put some show of interest on his face.
Sparrow gave him a twisted glance and said, “She tell you what I told her?”
“No.”
“Are you interested?”
“Why should I be?”
“Because it’s about your brother-how he died.” Sparrow’s city-bred voice was high-pitched, abrasive. “I was there, you weren’t.”
“Sure. Does that guarantee your word’s gospel?”
“Why? Because you expect me to make up a lie that will put the Earp gang in a bad light?”
Tree said, “Your game would be a lot easier if Wyatt Earp was out of your way.”
“So would yours, I imagine,” Sparrow said with his crooked smile. “You and I have a few interests in common, Tree.”
“Is that an offer of help?”
“You could use some, couldn’t you?”
Tree wondered if it was part of Sparrow’s technique always to answer questions with questions. He said, “Offer it and see.”
“I can’t. I’m afraid. Even if I wanted to…The miners are scared green of the Earp crowd, especially after what happened yesterday. I’ve got my hands full just keeping the fires lighted.”
“Your miners scare easy.”
“They’re not gunslingers,” Sparrow said harshly. “Neither am I. I can fight a mob with clubs by using my own mob with clubs, but we haven’t got the kind of money it takes to import hired gunmen. I’ve got a tough enough fight on my hands without taking on Wyatt Earp. All I want is to see him out of town.”
“And you expect me to do that?”
“I don’t expect anything,” Sparrow answered. “Your sister-in-law came to me last night to find out what really happened out on that street. I told her. If you want to hear it, I’ll tell you. Otherwise you can go-I’m busy.”
Tree shrugged, turned, and reached for the door latch. Caroline’s voice grabbed him as if by the elbow and turned him around again: “You’re so damn sure Wyatt Earp told you the truth that you’re not even willing to listen to the other side of the story, is that it?”
He made a face. “What other side of the story?”
“Mine,” said Sparrow. “Like I said-I was there.”
“All right, go ahead, for whatever good you think it will do you.”
Sparrow glanced bleakly at Caroline and said, “I saw all of it when your brother came out on the street. Cooley spotted him first and Cooley turned his gun on your brother. He cocked it and waited for your brother to stop moving so’s he’d have a clear shot. It was cold-blooded and deliberate, he didn’t just shoot in blind reaction. Wyatt Earp watched the whole thing. I can’t prove it but I believe if Earp had cared about seeing an innocent man shot, he’d have had plenty of time to shoot Cooley before Cooley shot your brother. At least he could have told Cooley not to do it. He had time.”
Caroline said in a low tone, “He just didn’t care.”
“Oh, he cared all right,’ Sparrow said. “He cared about Cooley.”
Tree said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Politics,” said Sparrow. “Earp’s using the mining barons for his own political ends and he can’t afford to alienate them. Cooley was brought in here with his gang as a strikebreaker-Cooley works for the mining barons. Cardiff and the rest of those bastards need Cooley, and Earp’s too shrewd to turn against Cooley for the sake of any piddling abstraction like justice. Besides, you made a mistake going over to the Inter Ocean and expecting Earp to turn Cooley over to you just like that. That ain’t the way you operate with a fellow like Earp. You rubbed him the wrong way because he resents having his authority questioned. No, I say Earp could have stopped it, but you don’t have to believe that. What you do have to believe is that Earp saw it happen just like I did, he knew Cooley had a choice. Cooley didn’t have to shoot your brother-your brother didn’t have a gun in his hand. There was time. So when Earp lets Cooley hide behind his skirts, he’s not doing it to protect a man who did the right thing-he’s just proving what a big shot he is by forcing you to back away empty-handed, and he’s cementing his own position with the mining barons. You may think it’s too late for that but I’ve got news for you, that telegram of yours may yet turn out to be worthless, because the Governor may get back from Kansas and get worked over by Earp’s friends and decide to rescind the Lieutenant Governor’s extradition order.”
Tree regarded him unblinkingly. “You’re a shrewd little hairpin, I’ll give you that.”
“Why? Don’t you believe me? Why don’t you ask Earp?”
Caroline said, “There you have it, Jerr. If Earp had cared at all, he could have prevented Rafe’s dying. There’s your big hero for you.”
Sparrow murmured, in his abrasive, insinuating twang, “It changes the picture a little for you, doesn’t it? Before, it was a disagreeable job somebody told you to do, you didn’t think it was just, you had trouble making up your mind whether to do it or not. But this has got to change things for you, Tree. Now you’ve got a personal stake. Earp the same as pulled the trigger that killed your brother.”
“If I believe you.”
“I think you do,” Sparrow said. “You know damned well I’ve got my own ax to grind but you still know I’m not lying. I don’t have to.” He flicked imaginary moisture from the corners of his mouth with thumb and forefinger, and added, “There was one thing I didn’t strictly tell the truth – about. I said none of the miners would help you arrest Earp. That was true, but I do know a couple of men who might give you a hand-hot miners. One’s a foundry worker from the smelter on Bald Hill; he was one of us on the street yesterday, damn near’got killed in the gunfight. He’s mad enough to want to get even, not too bright, but he’ll do. The other man I’ve got in mind is an ex-convict who used to be a cattle thief, ran with the old Clanton gang. He’s a liltle gone to seed but he hates the Earps on principle and he’d go along with you for a cut of the reward money. You asked for help. I can get you those two-not much but better than nothing. I wish I could do more but I’ve got big problems of my own. Morale stinks in my organization after that fiasco yesterday-Warren Earp upset my applecart when he got those miners fired up; the timing was all wrong but I had to go along with them or they’d have lost all respect for me. It’s going to take a while for me to get things built up again. If I told a bunch of miners to go with you right now and face Wyatt Earp, they’d ride me out of town on a rail. But I told you before, I want the Earps out of this town, and if you’re the man who can do it, I’ll do my best to help.”
“I’ll give it some thought,” Tree said, and turned once again to open the door. Caroline got up and followed him out, not speaking. He went downstairs and outside. She trailed along, almost demure, until he stopped on the corner and said to her, “You’d better start back for Arizona.”
“I’m staying.” Her face was set. “What are you going to do?”
“The day after tomorrow,” he said, “is Saturday night That’s when I’ll make my move.”
“Are you going to use those two men he offered?”
“I haven’t got much choice. McKesson’s out of it.”
“I’ll help too,” she said.
“Caroline,” he breathed, “you’ve got a beautiful face and a beautiful body and plenty of guts but you’re short on sense. It’ll be tough enough without having to keep one eye out for your safety.”
“He was my husband,” she snapped, and strode away fast, leaving the words hanging behind in the still air.
Eleven
He didn’t like either one of them. Obie Macklin was small, a quick-moving man, all sharp angles. His eyes never stopped moving restlessly. His biceps were thick, his hands calloused and scarred from foundry work, but he looked unsteady, undependable. The other one, Mordecai Gant, was even worse: a burly ex-convict down on his luck, Gant was a used-up tough, with no skill but thievery and fighting, and no future in sight. He had been reduced to cleaning out stables for a living and he smelled like it. Gant protested to Floyd Sparrow in a pained whine: “Look, it may be a half-assed pissante job but it’s the first one I ever had where I didn’t have to rob somebody or kill somebody to get paid. I made myself a nice quiet nest here and I don’t want nobody shake the limb.”
They stood in the dark maw of the stable; it was past midnight. Floyd Sparrow said to Tree, “He’ll work for you. He just likes to whine.”
Gant clamped his mouth shut. He was squat and greasy, his features fleshy, his cheeks folded and jowled; he looked like a thief.
“He’ll come,” said Obie Macklin. Mackjin ended every sentence with a nervous, meaningless laugh. “He’ll think about his share of that ree-ward money and he’ll come.”
Gant glared at him. “Obie, I’ll do my own thanking. You about four seconds short of losing your front teeth.”
“You wouldn’t hit me-I’m littler’n you are!”
Gant said, “Nobody that wears a gun is little. If you got the guts to pull that on me.”
“Listen,” Floyd Sparrow said, “try saving the violencing for the Earps.”
Gant turned and gave Sparrow what passed for a shrewd squint. “Buddy, less I get paid in advance, I ain’t about to go fool with the Arp brothers.”
“Sure you are,” Sparrow breathed. “You made a deal, remember?” Then, without warning, he slugged his little fist into Gant’s unsuspecting face.
It hardly budged Gant but his nose immediately began to bleed. He touched it, looked at the blood on his finger, and held his hand cupped under his nose to catch the blood as if he had some compelling reason „to avoid staining his filthy shirt or the manure-fouled stable floor. He said in a slow-grappling, awkward way, “Whud you do that for, Floyd?”
“To remind you you gave your word on this little thing.”
“They ain’t enough of us. You didn’t say they’d only be three of us.” Gant tugged a shirttail out of his pants and bent his head to wipe his nose.
Sparrow said, “You’ve got a choice, Mordecai. You can go up against the Earps, which gives you a chance, or you can go up against me, which gives you no chance. You’ve seen me work on a man. Now which is it to be?”
Sparrow’s voice had been more gentle than Tree had ever heard it before, but something in Sparrow’s manner carried absolute conviction. It struck Tree for the first time that Sparrow’s carping, nervous personality was a ruse, that the man behind it was as ruthless and hard as any man alive. Sparrow was a dangerous man.
Now, with a guilelessly dour glance at Tree, Sparrow said, “There they are-not much, I’ll admit. Can you use them?”
“I’ll have to.”
Sparrow said, “You heard the man, boys. Pay attention to what he says and follow his orders to the letter. I’ll bid you all good night.” With a sardonic salute, Sparrow walked out of the stable.
Mordecai Gant wiped his nose and looked at Tree with baleful reluctance. Obie Mack-lin put a chaw of tobacco in his mouth; it bulged in his cheek, squirrel-like. He gave a nervous bray of laughter that trailed off into silence.
Tree gave them both his unhappy scrutiny and began to speak.
He got back to his room late that night. He didn’t have to check the tenpenny nail because the door was wide open, the lamp alight; Caroline was inside, gnawing on a hunk of cheese.
He pushed the door shut and said, “I want you to go home to your daddy, Caroline.”
With her mouth full she said, muffled, “You set it up for tomorrow night like you planned?”
“Uh-hunh. I don’t give much for our chances now I’ve seen Sparrow’s two prize boys.”
She swallowed, wiped her mouth, and said matter-of-factly, “I’ve been thinking on it. Suppose you get the Earps out of the hotel. You can’t use the railroad because the Earps’ mining boss friends could have the train held down the line, intercept you. So you’ve got to go out horseback.”
He made a patient grimace.
She grinned. “I know-I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. But you’re going to need somebody to hold the horses ready for you, and more than that, you’re going to need a goddamn chaper-one.”
“A what?”
“Chaperone, you know-duenna”
“I know what the damned word means,” he growled.
“Well, then?”
“Well what?”
“You can’t get Earp out of his hotel room without her knowing-Josie, his wife. You leave her behind, and she’ll raise a hue and cry they’ll hear from here to Leadville. You’ve got to keep her quiet, and you can’t very well shoot her. So you’ve got to take her with you. Besides, Earp might be easier to handle if she was along-he wouldn’t want to risk getting her caught in the middle of a shooting war.”
Tree glared at her. She was smiling innocently; she said triumphantly, “So you need a chaperone to look after the lady prisoner. Me.”
“No. Absolutely no.”
She sighed. “Look, Jerr, forget that I’m Rafe’s widow, which gives me a stake in this too. Forget that if you want to, but think of this: you need all the help you can get, and I’m not just a frilly petticoat schoolmarm all aflutter with my-goodnesses. I’m a ranch girl born and bred. I’m full of fight and vinegar. Maybe I don’t shoot so good but I don’t intend to shoot anybody. I can handle horses almost as well as Rafe could. Horse for horse I can probably outride you because I weigh fifty pounds less than you. I’m not dead weight, Jerr. I can help. I mean it.”
She picked up the hunk of cheese and bit off a corner, watching him out of the side of her vision. “You need every pair of eyes you can get to keep watch on those Earps. And one more thing: you don’t know how far you can trust those two bully boys of Floyd Sparrow’s, if you can trust them at all. You do know you can trust me,” she finished, and added after a moment, “all the way.”
He said sourly, “Thought it all out, have you?”
“It’s a couple of hundred miles from here to Denver and you’ll have to horseback across some of the ruggedest mountains this side of Hell. It’ll take a week to get there and you can’t stay awake the whole way. You’ll want somebody on your side that you can trust.”
He said, “Your daddy was right about you.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Damn it,” she said, “I only want you to have the best possible chance of coming out of this alive-I want you to make it, Jerr.”
Her eyes were open wide; her breasts lifted and fell with her breath. Her lips were parted, moist and heavy in repose. She wrenched her eyes away, walked quickly to the door, and went.
When it came time to perform, Macklin and Gant did better than he had expected of them. They were like garrison soldiers who only griped when there was nothing better to do. Once the action started, they did fine.
The operation was as simple as it was desperate. Because of its boldness, and because of the strength of the Earps’ defenses, Tree gave it a fifty-fifty chance to succeed: the Earps were so well defended that their sentries were less alert than they would have been had the situation seemed precarious. Their complacence was a formidable weakness.
The Earps expected a night raid; because they expected it, they didn’t give its success much credence. The Inter Ocean was guarded at every entrance by Cooley’s strike-breaker-thugs. Men were posted on the staircase landings, front and back, and two armed guards stood outside the bedroom doors of Wyatt and Warren Earp, covering the corridor between them in cross fire. It had been no great task to leam that; the whole town buzzed with word of the Inter Ocean’s fortifications, and while Tree made a point of being visible and nonagres-sive all day Saturday, Macklin and Gant gathered intelligence. Once it became clear that there was no way to get into the Inter Ocean by any ground-floor entrance, and that even if somehow such entrance should be achieved there would still be no way to get upstairs undiscovered, Tree knew he had a good chance. They had made it so difficult for him to get at the Earps that they must believe, by now, that he probably wouldn’t even try.
Wyatt and Josie slept in the bedroom of the big second-floor suite at the back corner of the building. Their windows gave out onto gingerbread balconies which overhung alleys at the side and back of the Inter Ocean. Two sentries stood guard in the alley under bright lights. They were expertly posted-too far apart to be taken together, too close to each other to be surprised one at a time. The chance of silencing them simultaneously, to prevent one of them from seeing the other attacked and giving the alarm, was too remote to consider. Nobody was going to get past those two; thus, clearly, nobody was going to climb to the balconies and get in through the windows.
Earp’s generalship was excellent. But the world boasted very few impregnable fortresses, and the Inter Ocean had not been designed with the idea in mind of repelling invasion. There was an obvious chink in Earp’s defenses-Tree hoped it wasn’t so obvious that Earp was waiting for it.
By three in the morning the Saturday night crowds had broken up. Obie Macklin strolled past the front of the Inter Ocean, acting like a drunk on his way home. He peered in the windows as he went by, and ambled the long way around several blocks to report to Tree and Mordecai Gant, who stood in a dim alley at the foot of the two-story Gunnison Bank’s fire stairs.
Macklin said in a businesslike tone, “They all gone up to bed. Cooley was makin’ the rounds to check on his bully boys. Barkeep was puttin’ out the lights when I come by.”
Tree said, “We’ll give them forty-five minutes to get to sleep,” and they did.
At the end of that interval the three men went up the bank’s outside staircase. Over his shoulder Mordecai Gant carried a heavy ten-foot plank that would have staggered a smaller man. From the landing, Gant gave Tree a boost up onto the roof. Tree flattened himself by the edge and hauled up the plank. Gant boosted Macklin up, then lifted both arms; Tree and Macklin hauled him up by the arms.
The bank’s roof was six feet lower than the roof of the Inter Ocean, which stood faintly silhouetted above the far end of the bank roof. An eight-foot alley separated the two buildings.
The night, like most Rocky Mountain nights, was clear and starlit. Tree would have preferred a cloudy night but that might have required a month’s wait. The chill air had a bite in it. Tree felt an involuntary tremor. He picked up one end of the ten-foot plank and led the way, crouched to half his normal height, toward the far corner of the roof, with Gant carrying the other end of the plank and Macklin crawling on the right flank with his gun drawn.
There was, of course, a sentry on the roof of the Inter Ocean; that was taken into account. Crossing the roof of the bank, Tree kept his attention riveted to the hotel’s roofline, ready to freeze if a man’s head appeared. It did not; they crossed the bank without alarms and reached the corner which stood directly opposite the south corner of the back of the Inter Ocean. The Earp suites were up at the farther end of the hotel; the guards would not be watching this end with as much care. Tree sat down, removed his hat and both boots, and lifted his head, carefully to look down into the alley. He had time to glimpse the two sentries, fifty feet apart below the far corner of the hotel under gaslights which stood under the Earps’ balconies and threw heavy shadows across the windows above. Obie Macklin suddenly hissed and grabbed Tree’s arm. Turning his head slightly, Tree saw the red button-tip of a cigarette on the far roof corner, above the Earps’ balconies. View of the balconies themselves would be cut off to that sentry’s view by the deep overhanging window cornices. With that man above, and the two alley sentries below, nobody could get onto the balconies from overhead or from underneath; but once a man was on one of the balconies, none of the guards would be able to see him. That was the trick: to reach the balcony without discovery. Tree had considered the idea of a diversionary attack but assumed it wouldn’t work. Earp was smart enough to instruct his men to keep their posts. He had discarded the notion in favor of silence and subterfuge.
The cigarette alternately glowed and dimmed on the far corner, six feet above Tree and a hundred feet away down the length of the eight-foot-wide alley. He didn’t withdraw his head; he knew the guard with the cigarette couldn’t see him against the black mass of the bank roof. The downward angle of the sentry’s view would keep Tree invisible unless he stood up to his full height.
The cigarette moved back and forth; the rooftop sentry was pacing. Tree squinted toward him. After a few minutes the cigarette went flicking over the edge of the hotel roof. Wind made it flare angry red; it hit the alley floor in a shower of sparks. The sentry’s silhouette, heightened by a tall-domed hat, moved back and forth against the sky with shoulders raised against the chill. Gant whispered in Tree’s ear, “Maybe he won’t move away again.”
