Sliphammer

Six

Josie watched the deputy, Tree, thread his way out of the saloon. He had a wide, flat back. The shoulder blades made muscular ridges in his shirt. He had long arms and legs and under the clothes, she was sure, he would be a hairy beast. Wyatt had a lot of hair on his body-fine brown fur. She liked hairy men.

When Tree paused at the corner door to look back, she saw again the good-natured humor that had not wholly gone out of his silver eyes even when he was fighting. He was a big, craggy man with Indian-black hair and ugly powerful hands. He had more substance than all the other men in the place together, Wyatt excluded. She thought, if she had never met Wyatt she could have been real interested in Jeremiah Sliphammer Tree.

As Tree went out the door she was wondering if a left-handed man made love any differently. She couldn’t remember ever sleeping with a lef-handed man.

The barkeep brought two drinks to the table. Warren came to the table, sucking ski

Warren’s boyish grin was full of handsome charm. Josie hoped she’d be around to see what he’d be like once he discovered how easy it would be to get women. For a kid with his good looks and the magic of his name, it would be hke falhng off a log. He hadn’t found that out yet, but when he did, she expected it would be fun to watch.

Warren had a shiny bruise on his cheek; soon enough it would work up into a painful discoloration. Warren was unsteady, brash because he wasn’t sure of himself, but she liked him: he had the Earp wildness and the. flamboyant Earp contempt for mundane conversations. He even had the Earp brains-the shrewd ability to observe everything at once, carry a dozen trains of thought in his head at once, and calculate cleverly. He had that intelligence, whenever he stopped to use it; a few years and, if he managed to live that long, he would grow up to be an impressive man. Maybe not quite the man Wyatt was, but Wyatt was unique.

Warren brought up a chair and sat. “That was a good fight. I like a good fight.” He had evidently put the maimed miner clean out of his head.

Wyatt snorted. “Those miners were outnumbered four to one. Is that what you call a good fight?”

“You’re the one who’s always saying it’s smart to make sure the odds are on your side before you mix into a thing.”

Wyatt said, “You still need to learn the difference between a serious fight and a fight for fun.”

“Which was this, then?”

“More fun than serious,” Wyatt said. “Sparrow only brought them here to feel us out If he’d been serious they’d have been armed.”

Josie said, “Horse shit. You call what Cooley did fun?”

Wyatt looked at her. “It was fun for Cooley,” he told her. His eyes were a bit cool.

Warren acted out a shudder with head and shoulders; he said, “Cooley’s the kind of bastard you can have nightmares about. I’d hate to be alone with him in a dark alley.”

Wyatt said, “Cooley’s all right. He knows what he does best and he takes pride in his work, which is one measure of a man.” That was, Josie thought, the kind of thing that could only be said by a man like Wyatt who was totally unafraid of Cooley. But she found it hard to reconcile with what Wyatt had said to Deputy Tree a few minutes before. Maybe Wyatt had just been testing Tree to find out which way Tree would jump.

Wyatt said to Warren, “You look kind of beat-you ought to go up and he down and put a beefsteak on that bruise.”

“I’m all right.”

“You look tired.”

“I’m not tired.”

“All right,” Wyatt said, “you’re not tired.” He smiled and winked at Josie.

Warren was about to deliver some angry retort, but he curbed his tongue, thought a moment, and finally said earnestly, “Look, I just don’t want you to think I’m weak. I know you haven’t got patience with weakness.”

“I’ve got nothing against natural weakness,” Wyatt said. “I despise a man who decides to be weak when the choice is open to him. But nobody thinks you’re soft, kid. You don’t have to prove anything.”

“I don’t want charity from you,” Warren said.

“You won’t get any,” Wyatt told him. “I still recommend a beefsteak.”

Warren grumbled, got up, downed the last of his drink, and left. Wyatt watched him with filial amusement* his expression was more gentle than Josie could ever remember it.

At the door, Warren turned and looked back at them. Seeing Wyatt watching him, Warren gri

Wyatt growled, “Pretty soon I’m going to have to teach him to hobble his mouth.”

“He’s only trying to please you by showing you how tough he is.”

“I know, girl. Doesn’t take toughness to make a fool out of yourself. What do you think of the deputy?”

“He’s nice,” she said.

He laughed at her. “You’re always man-hungry.”

“Not any more-not with you here. I’m only hungry for you. The deputy’s not fit to wash your underwear.”

“Gently, girl. You exaggerate a thing too much and it’ll make a man suspicious. The deputy’s all right, he’s got sand.”

“Why did you want him to jump Cooley?”

“I had my reasons,” he replied, and looked up. Wayde Cardiff was coming toward the table with two other captains of industry. Josie made a face.

The mineowners sat down and started talking all at once. After they got it sorted out the talk proceeded with lusty abandon. They were wealthy men whose power was unfettered by good ma

It gratified Josie that these wealthy titans spoke to Wyatt with great respect. Not obeisance: they were too arrogant themselves to patronize anybody they didn’t genuinely admire. They were a tough breed who did not hold ordinary gun-slingers in awe; they hired gunslingers by the dozens and treated them like dirt, which was to say they treated them as they would treat any other hired hands. But nobody had hired Wyatt. It was merely understood that they were all equals here. If Wyatt did these gentlemen a favor, they were in a position to repay him in kind, as equals; they had the Governor’s ear.

A small part of the mutual respect had to do with money and-position, she thought: Wyatt wasn’t rich, but he was financially sound; he still owned, or had a share of, a score of businesses down in Arizona. Like the mining bosses, he too was an owner.

But it went much farther than that. They respected him as a man.

That he was a man was a fact nobody knew better than Josie. He radiated force, like heat. He flowed full with the bull juices of life. She remembered first meeting him-a night in Tombstone, very late, all of them sitting around the saloon drinking and laughing after the last customers had left. Wyatt and Doc Holliday had won a lot of money dealing faro. Virgil, at the bar, was methodically counting the wi

It was before all the trouble, before Warren came to Tombstone. Morgan Earp and Texas Jack were playing darts for a hundred dollars a game-they were drunk — and whooping. Josie had come over after the last curtain at the Bird Cage, brought by the three other girls from the show. Morg and Texas Jack had immediately adopted two of the girls and introduced them to the dart game. The third girl, the one who had suggested they all come over and meet the Earps, was a lusty, sensuous girl with abundant breasts and hips who was somehow fascinated by Doc Holliday. She was trying to cozy up to Holliday but Holliday was splendidly drunk by that time of night-as usual, as Josie later learned. The girl had pouted resentfully, taken three drinks in succession, and then jumped up on a table and clapped her hands for attention.