Sliphammer

“All right, now,” roared the Welsh miner, they asked for this,” and swung a great looping punch at Reese Cooley.

Five

Cooley avoided the roundhouse punch easily. He let it sweep past six inches away. The force of the blow carried the Welsh miner off his feet. Cooley rabbit-punched him in the kidney as he went down.

A lot of things happened at once. It was instantly clear to Tree and everybody else in the saloon that a brawl of riot proportions was on. Nobody could stop it now. The only thing to do was get the hell out of the way, or pick a side.

As soon as the trouble started he saw Josie Earp get up and drift quickly, but without unseemly hurry, around the open end of the bar to cover. She moved the way you learned how to move when you had got used to seeing trouble erupt.

Cardiff was on his feet; Wyatt Earp had shoved his chair back to get free room, but he was still seated, wearing a slight twisted smile. Warren was up, raging. The six miners waded forward, choosing targets. Tree had no fight with them but he was in the wrong place to avoid it: he stood between Cardiff and Cooley, and that was all the miners needed.

Two of them converged on him. Tree, who had fast hands and knew a few Indian things the miners didn’t know, felt more regret than fear. He wheeled to one side, to place both charging miners on the same side of him; grabbed the nearer man by the wrist and twisted. He used one man as a shield against the other. His two-fisted grip was so tight an ape couldn’t have pried it loose. He swung the miner’s thick arm around, levered it up toward the shoulder blade and planted the heel of his boot against the man’s spine. It was a brutal hold: if the victim struggled, either his arm or his spine would break. All it would take to snap his backbone would be a hard thrust of Tree’s boot heel, but he withheld it, only interposing the helpless man against his companion and. speaking in a calm voice loud enough to be heard: “Back off or I’ll cripple him.”

The second miner stepped back reluctantly. Warren Earp, Cardiff, and Reese Cooley were going around with the other miners. Cooley had two of them on him. It was none of Tree’s affair. He backed up, pulling the helpless miner along clumsily, until his shoulders were wedged into the back corner of the room. He held the miner in front of him as a shield. It wasn’t dignified, but it wasn’t his fight. The miner said in a pinched voice, “Ease off, for the love of God,” but Tree ignored him.

Wyatt Earp left his chair. Men rushed forward from the bar to pitch in against the miners. Earp sidestepped a wrestling pair and came toward Tree, seeming to amble unconcernedly; only alert attention could detect the speed with which he actually moved. He made it look effortless; yet with half the room boiling with hurtling fists, jabbing boots, and tumbling bodies, he reached the corner without a hair out of place. He tipped his shoulder against the wall beside the helplessly snared miner and said to Tree, “You’ve got real balls to pull out of it and not care a damn who notices.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve won a few and lost a few. I’ve seen my fights.” Earp smiled, extracted a cigar from his inside coat pocket, and held a steady match to it while he watched the battle with the abstracted amusement of a wise parent with sense to keep hands off a fight between ten-year-old boys.

The imprisoned miner said in a small voice, “Please let go of my arm, Mister.”

Tree eased the pressure an inch. “Stay put.”

“Yeah-you bet.”

Earp smiled, squinting through his cigar smoke. Tree couldn’t help smiling back.

The noise was tremendous. Boots and bodies hit the floor like felled trees. There was a lot of hard breathing and grunting; not much speech. Nearby, the Welsh miner had found his way to Reese Cooley. They were both huge men. The Welsh miner jabbed a hard-muscled blow against Cooley’s big taut belly and Cooley laughed. “That your best shot, bucko?” Cooley brought his fist up almost casually. It came all the way from hip level, thudded the miner’s face with a sound like the flat of a cleaver striking a side of beef. It lifted the Welsh miner completely off his feet and spilled him over flat on his back with a crash that shook the room. The miner seemed less hurt than murderously enraged: suddenly a knife blade glittered, coming out of the top of his jackboot, lifting in his fist as he came warily to his feet.

The voice was hoarse: “I’m go

Cooley had lost his grin. “Think about it, bucko. Next time I’ll drop you in the ground.” He backed up, both hands raised on guard, until his back ribs hit the edge of the bar. The miner followed him, knife weaving in front of him, ignoring the combatants who wheeled past locked in struggle. Cooley spoke; from this distance Tree couldn’t hear the words. Behind the bar, Josie Earp matter-of-factly lifted a full, corked bottle of whisky and placed it in Cooley’s fist. Tree heard Wyatt Earp laugh deep in his big chest.

Cooley ranged forward from the bar to get swinging room. The Welsh miner’s knife sizzled back and forth, keeping Cooley at bay. Once, the knife clinked against the bottle.

The odds were all in the miner’s favor. Tree glanced at Earp, who shook his head mutely, watching for the first time with concern. Warren Earp was across the room somewhere, his voice rising and falling with lusty anger, full of hot juices. Wayde Cardiff had Floyd Sparrow up in the air, lifted above his head; Cardiff made a rush for the door, a man held it open, and Cardiff threw Sparrow outside as if he were a sack of feed. Men were mixing it up in pairs and quartets but there was an open circle around Cooley and the Welsh miner, who went around each other with loud-breathing care, seeking openings. The bottle was a wicked weapon but it was full, heavy, and slow with inertia; the knife was swift and darting. Cooley, fast on his feet, had to suck in his belly more than once to avoid wide sweeps of the glittering blade.

Then the blade made one more arc and Cooley had his opening. The knife went past, breathlessly close to his ribs. Cooley plunged forward and cracked the bottle down.

It smacked the Welsh miner square on the head; it broke with the sound of shattering glass. A dozen bladed fragments and a quart of whisky poured down the miner’s face. Blinded, the miner roared with panic. Cooley still had the jagged, broken end of the bottle; he shoved it in the miner’s face and twisted with a screwing motion. The miner’s scream was cut off abruptly. When he went down he had no face.

Tree had seen a great many brutalities but this one made him turn his face away. When he looked at Earp he saw Earp’s Adam’s apple go up and down; otherwise Earp maintained his strict composure.

At the bar, Josie whooped, perhaps in approval. Reese Cooley dropped the jagged, bloody neck of the bottle and rubbed the small streak of blood on his cheek where the Welsh miner’s knife had nicked him. The miner was down flat, no longer moving or groaning. Cooley kicked him in the head and stepped across him, looking for someone else to fight. His blood was up; his appetite was whetted; he was beyond control. His bald head bobbed through the center of a tangle of men and Tree saw three of them come flying out of the knot. Cooley tramped on through the melee and came in sight with his lips peeled back in an involuntary spasm, a grotesque mockery of a grin; he glanced Tree’s way, and his attention froze on Tree, and he roared and rushed forward, his bare bloody fists lifting. There was no mistaking his intent. His. motive was unclear-maybe he had recalled, in some dim animal corner of his mind, that Tree had killed his man Jestro. It didn’t matter; Cooley had the taste of blood on his tongue and needed no ordinary excuse.

Wyatt Earp grunted to Tree, “Use your guns if you have to,” and stepped away from the corner-certainly not in fear, but perhaps out of obeisance to some obscure code of conventions. There was no question but that if Cooley had chosen out Earp, Earp would not have turned away. Tree only had time for that thought before Cooley stopped, planted his feet, and said between deep heaving breaths, “Turn loose of that bastard and come out here, you son of a bitch.”