Territory (33 page)

Wyatt shook his head. “You stood by me when there wasn’t much in it for you, when you didn’t have to. I know that.”

“And now I have to.”

Wyatt shook his head. “My friends wear no chains. I say I’ll keep you out of Yuma or a noose, but saying isn’t doing, even for me. So go if you want to, Doc.”

He meant it. Didn’t he? He was saying that Doc could pack up and head out, back to Las Vegas or Fort Griffin or out to California if it pleased him. He could pull until the silk thread that connected them snapped, and he was free. He felt Wyatt’s eyes on him.

And he felt the strength slipping out of his limbs. His heart labored and accomplished little, and his lungs ached. He doubted he could walk as far as his room at Fly’s, let alone to a livery stable to mount a horse and ride away.

He should have been dead years ago. He’d always said so. When he was ready to surrender to the inevitable, he could walk away, but until then, he would stand by Wyatt. Because by some devilish device, he was taking part of Wyatt’s bottomless strength for his own. Wyatt was what kept him alive.

Wyatt broke the long silence. “I can’t do without you, Doc.” There was an apology in the words, an earnest sorrow.

“I know. You won’t have to.”

He was strong again, and the stars were decently muzzled. If he had the sense to stay a little more sober, he wouldn’t have these fits and fancies.

“What will you do about Crane and Head and Leonard?”

Wyatt turned his face south, toward the hills. “I’ll take care of it.”

Doc put the whole business out of his head for upwards of a week. Kate was restless and irritable, and wanted Doc to take her north to cooler air. “It’s bad for me,” he told her, without specifying the sort of badness. He set himself to amuse her in Tombstone instead, and hoped that, intermittently, he was successful.

He was on his way to the barber, thinking that the heat and his own sweat was softening his beard better than hot towels could, when he saw Virgil Earp coming down Fremont.

“How did that horse breaker do for you?” Doc asked.

“Seems like a decent fellow. And it was a treat to watch him work.”

In the middle of that, Doc saw the badge on Virgil’s breast pocket. “Good God. What have you gone and done?”

Virgil tucked his chin to look down at his own chest. “Didn’t you hear? Sippy’s gone out of town. I’m city marshal in his place.”

“Well. I expect congratulations are in order.” That was a foothold for Wyatt; if Virgil got a chance to make his mark as marshal, it would give luster to the name of Earp in the county elections. “How long do you have Marshal Sippy’s seat?”

“Good question. He said he’d be away two weeks, but there are folks who swear he’s cleared out for good. Seems he owes a little money here and there.”

“O ye of little faith. Shall I make the town hot for you, so you can show what you’re made of?”

“Plenty hot as it is.” Virgil nodded and raised his hand to a man across the street, and turned back to Doc. “Oh, did you hear about Billy Leonard and Harry Head?”

Doc felt his insides drop a little, though he couldn’t have said why. “Not as yet.”

“Killed, over by Hachita. The Haslett boys thought Leonard and Head had come into New Mexico to murder them and take their land. So they shot ‘em.”

“Who the hell told them such a thing?” Doc asked, before he thought better of asking.

But Virgil only shrugged. “Wyatt sent Morgan to scout after Leonard, Head,
and Crane, but he got there after the Hasletts. Leonard lived long enough to clear you, by the way.”

That and the direct intervention of Jesus Christ would prove him innocent in the eyes of Tombstone. Morgan was a well-meaning idiot. “What about Jim Crane?”

“Away when the Hasletts came. If I were those boys, I’d be trying to grow eyes in the back of my head.”

The Haslett brothers would certainly have to fear Crane’s vengeance. Whether they had anyone else to fear depended on whether the rest of the world shared Virgil’s ignorance on the subject of who put the notion in their heads to kill Crane’s pals. “If this keeps up, the call for coffin wood will have us all living in tents.”

“They can kill each other as they please. My house is built.”

Doc watched him cross the street.
Not quite,
he thought.
It’s building, but the Earp family is not weather-tight yet.
And a lot could happen to a structure even after it was finished. He’d entrusted his future to Wyatt, as Wyatt’s brothers had. He hoped to God that whatever Wyatt chose to build would shelter them all.

 14 

Mildred looked out the window of the Nugget office as another gust of wind rattled the glass. For a moment, dust hid the buildings across the street, as if a curtain had been yanked across her view.

“It’s not as bad as last week,” Harry said behind her, sounding resigned.

“The knowledge that I’m biting down on infinitesimally less grit every time I chew is
such
a comfort.”

“Then there’s the pleasure of wiping mud out of the corners of your eyes.”

“And knowing that, no matter how much you sweat, there will always be enough dust to stick to you and blot it up.”

“Ugh. You’ve gone too far for me. Besides, I thought ladies don’t sweat.”

“You thought no such thing. My God, Harry, it’s like living in a furnace with a bellows going, and we’re only two-thirds through June. None of us will survive to see the rains.”

Harry mopped his face with his handkerchief. He no longer bothered to put it back in his pocket. “If you’ll quit yammering, I can edit your copy.”

The sound was like a cannon, and the way the ground shook, and the windows rattled—“Are they blasting at the mines?” Mildred asked, even as she thought,
That was downtown.

Harry shook his head, his face blank with listening.

She threw open the door. Over the sound of the wind she heard, growing from mutter to thunder like the sound of an approaching train, voices shouting, and screaming.

“Get your things,” Harry said.

She could smell smoke on the wind.

Brown’s Hotel lurched. For a disorienting instant, Jesse thought Allen Street was under attack. Then he heard the shouting, and the crackle of fire.

He grabbed his gunbelt and his coat. The corridor was jammed with guests. One man clutched his arm. “What was that?”

“Out,” Jesse said, and then again, much louder, “everyone out. Down the stairs and out the side door. Whatever’s in your rooms can stay there. Move!”

For a wonder, they did, scurrying down the stairs and pouring out into the lobby like cattle into a stockyard pen. But the hotel staff had the herd moving, out the doors, and the new arrivals had a current of other guests to join.

It occurred to Jesse, finally, to doubt what he knew and how he knew it. But by then he could feel unseen things being broken down, transformed by heat and oxygen. The web of the world was being ripped apart and remade.

He heard, “Mr. Fox!” as he came out on Fourth Street. Chu ran across the street and stopped, puffing. “Mr. Fox, what you want me do?” Chu was wide-eyed, but not, Jesse thought, with fear.

“Saddle Sam and be ready to get him someplace safe if the fire comes that way.”

Chu made a rude noise past his front teeth. “Already saddle. Feed in damn saddlebag, too. That all?”

Lung’s efforts to impress Chu with Jesse’s importance hadn’t been entirely successful. Jesse handed him his coat. “Take care of this. And don’t leave Sam alone no matter what.”

Chu pelted off toward the livery stable.

Allen Street was bedlam. Men filled buckets and ran with them, east toward Fifth Street. Others staggered out of businesses with armloads of ledger books, boxes, piles of whatever needed saving. A Negro man in miner’s denim ran toward him, carrying a crowbar. Jesse grabbed his shoulder to slow him down.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Vizina Works. But the hardware’s closer.”

Jesse let him go and ran for the hardware store.

Doc lay on the floor and thought,
Damned if I drink here again. After I gut the man who did that.
Then it dawned on him that he didn’t know what “that” was.

He looked out across the floor of the Arcade Saloon, across shards of glass and mirror and splintered wood and shattered ornamental millwork, and understood that whatever had knocked him down hadn’t been anything personal. He was on his feet and moving before he realized he’d seen the front wall of the saloon burning, flames floor to ceiling like wallpaper.

One of the bartenders stood wobbling in the middle of the floor, staring
down at his apron, which was on fire. Doc yanked it off him. The man’s moustache and eyebrows and the hair above his forehead were singed half away, but otherwise he seemed all right. Doc pushed him toward the back and hoped he wouldn’t fall down before he got to the door.

The few other customers were already cramming out the back entrance. If this had happened only hours before, the place would have been jammed for the free lunch. Now there weren’t half a dozen people in the room.

The other bartender staggered to his feet behind the bar. Blood poured down his face from a cut in his hair. Doc grabbed him by his vest and pulled him into the room.