Sliphammer

He put one knee-on the bed and came down, flattening himself against her, his hard, seeking organ pushing between her legs inside her wetness. She sucked and locked him in; her body twisted against him. They began to move together, slowly at first like a railroad engine getting purchase-a long, slow rhythm that filled her with exquisite agony-then faster, to a driving thud and crash of uncontrollable urgency, a hot, slick writhing of limbs and locked bodies flailing together in ecstasy: they came rigid together, so taut-crushed she felt her bones must break. She cried out, screamed with an agony of white-hot joy, feeling the spurt and ooze of him inside her; the roar of his voice blended with the thunder of blood in her ears.

He did not roll away. They lay together, pulses drumming, lungs gasping. She felt the hungry cravings subside in logged satiety. She said, “Oh, God, let’s do it forever, it feels so damned good.”

He could make her feel as though she was the only woman on earth. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed; he was still inside her and she didn’t want him to go. She said, “Know something?”

“Not much.”

“Sometimes I hate your guts because I need you so bad. Nobody should have to need anybody as bad as I need you.”

He ruffled her hair. “You’re a good girl,” he said, and rolled his weight off her. He lay back naked, his belly rising and falling gently. She felt as if she had been surgically wounded; she felt raw with the residues of high, sweet pleasure.

After a while he sat up and looked down at her. She smiled almost shyly. Lying on her back, with her breasts diminished to the shape of inverted teacups, she knew she looked girlish and wistful. She felt somnolent pleasure, the soft glow of warmth, the temporary easing of lustful needs which soon would overcome her all over again.

He did an unusual thing: he bent and very softly kissed her. And then he got off the bed and walked into the private bathroom that was part of the great carpeted suite.

He was seldom so gentle with her; it made her feel strange and puzzled. She sat up, put her feet on the floor and walked to the mirror. She could feel the wet, draining stickiness between her thighs; she liked it there.

She studied herself in the mirror. She always liked to look at herself. Once, when she was sixteen, her father had caught her admiring herself naked in front of a mirror. He had gri

Her face in the mirror had a bright, hard, shiny-eyed after-sex look. She thought, There really wasn’t much else than this; you went through the rest of the time just waiting for this.

He came out of the bathroom naked. He wasn’t smiling; he wasn’t looking at her: his mind had moved on to other things. She was struck by the sudden fear that his gentle gesture a few moments ago had been the sort of thing a man might do if he felt guilty about something. Was he getting weary of her? She felt a moment’s horror. She had always tried to ignore the dark cra

She knew it was altogether the wrong thing to say to him but she couldn’t help it. “Darling, when are we going to get married? Really married, I mean?”

She felt cold, anxious, u

“There’s no hurry, is there?” he said absently, and went to put on his clothes and guns.

Seven

In a dismal morning drizzle, Tree walked down to the telegraph office, his loose oilskin poncho flapping. Water dripped from the trough of his hat brim and his feet squished in his boots, the result of having to cross intersections that were a foot deep in mud after the steady two-day rain.

His mood was as bleak as the sky, the passage of time had screwed his nerves up past the point of alert tautness, into a state of apathetic indifference. His expression had faded to blankness.

The telegrapher gave him one brief look and said, “Nothing for you today.”

“You sure?”

The telegrapher, a wizened little man, gave him a waspish glance. “I told you, Deputy, when anything comes in for you I’ll send a ru

Tree turned the oilskin collar up around hii? face and ducked his head and stepped outside into the drizzle. He didn’t have to keep checking in with Western Union. But it gave him something to do. Besides, he didn’t trust the telegrapher: the man might deliver the message to Wyatt Earp before he delivered it to Tree.

By this time he didn’t trust anybody at all. It was a miserable feeling. Two weeks in this town had been ample to prove to him that the whole community was locked up tight against him. No one had threatened him, but no one had opened up to him. He was an enemy, tolerated because of Wyatt Earp’s truce. Even the miners, who were Earp’s enemies or thought they were, gave him wide berth. They probably didn’t want to get mixed up in what could turn out to be trouble-they had enough of that of their own.

Walking through town he passed occasional pedestrians darting from shelter to shelter, their faces as gray as the rain. He wandered unhurriedly toward the Inter Ocean because his orders were to keep an eye on the Earps. The fact was, the Earps weren’t going anywhere-they were safest right here, why should they leave? But this, too, gave him something to do.

Under the flowing oilskin his wrists brushed the paired sliphammer revolvers. His eyes, silver-hued in good light, seemed dulled to the color of tarnished lead. His face had developed a pinched pair of creases that bracketed his mouth, ordinarily good-humored, with a pattern of mute anger and volatility held precariously in check. At this point he would even welcome a fight with Reese Cooley: but Cooley, for reasons of his own, had made a point of ignoring him for two weeks.

He turned a corner a block from the Inter Ocean and stopped. A hundred feet away, under the shelter of the overhanging veranda roof, Wyatt Earp had posted himself in a porch rocking chair. Earp basked there with one boot up against the porch rail, lazy-eyed and droopy-mustached as a king lion keeping watch over his pride. If he saw Tree he made no sign of it, but it was inconceivable he was unaware of Tree’s appearance: Tree was virtually the only pedestrian in sight. Earp sat with a proprietary air, with the wise indolence of authority. He was smoking a cigar. Earp was a bit of an actor, Tree had learned; he liked to strike poses. He carried himself with the presumed superiority of a public figure who knew he was at all times on display. But his arrogance was earned. Tree had studied him with close care and thus far he had found in Earp no false note, no weakness, no sign that the pose was hollow bravado.

He and Earp had spent the two weeks feeling each other out-warily, like strange dogs on unfamiliar territory. Tree had come to Gu