Sliphammer

“I don’t know-I don’t mind.”

“I never did that with-” she began, and stopped. He took her hand in both of his. She smiled briefly and said, “Fm sorry, I won’t do that again. I love you, Jerr, I always did.”

Thirteen

The high passes were cold, wind-raked. On tired horses they struggled slowly upward. Tree rode ahead early in the afternoon to seek out a way across; his exhilaration had crumbled, he felt sour and weary. He had begun to smell himself. That afternoon they wasted four hours doubling back from a blind cliff and he knew it was time they couldn’t afford to lose: he had seen the first signs of pursuit, a rising of flocked birds from a mountain behind them.

Taking the chance it would work, he spent an hour planting another false trail and led the way up a narrow granite gorge. Hoofbeat sound swelled and echoed between the rocky walls. For two hours Gant and Macklin had been filling the air with threats-what they’d do if Cooley caught up. Gant said, “I’d sooner kill you, Arp, than turn you over to them alive.”

Macklin said, “After all, that Arizona ree-ward’s dead or alive.”

“Yuh,” said Gant. “Yuh, and it’s easier handlin’ a corpse than a live, squirmin’ sumbitch like Arp here.”

Finally, having enough, Tree shut them up. He, wanted the Earps lathered; he didn’t want them so infuriated they would take stupid chances.

Wyatt Earp had maintained an air of disinterested righteousness; Caroline kept hammering him about Rafe’s death, about Cooley, and Earp only replied, “I’m not responsible for your opinions-he was your husband and you’re mad, all right. For myself, I regret nothing. Badgering me will get you nowhere.”

They threaded the edge of a deep forest and stayed within it all afternoon. There was no further chance to survey the trail behind them-the trees closed off the view; Tree saw no further sign of pursuit that day but it didn’t mean pursuit wasn’t there. After dark he had to call a halt. They camped beneath the solid mass of a mountain saddle he pla

He didn’t protest: he had gone too long without sleep. He felt drunk, in that stage where nothing seemed quite real; everything seemed slightly farther away than it was, and the things he said and heard no longer quite made sense. When he sat down he felt needles in his legs. He rolled up in coat and blankets and lay on his back, belly rising and falling with his breath, closed his eyes, and in five seconds was unconscious.

Obie Macklin watched Tree go to sleep, then picked up his rifle and walked past the three trussed prisoners to where Mordecai Gant stood bulky against the sky. Macklin spoke in a low voice: “I hope to God this works.”

“You thank Floyd’U catch us up tomorrow?”

“Maybe. I ain’t worried about Floyd. It’s Cooley I’m thinking about.”

“If Floyd don’t get here first, Obie, we got to do it ourselves and get the hell out of here before Cooley shows up with that fucking army of his.” Gant glanced across the camp at Caroline, lowered his voice still more, and said, “Cooley ain’t go

Macklin said, “Cooley wouldn’t know where to look-I hope.” He followed Gant’s glance and saw Caroline watching them. That lit Je blonde catamount didn’t trust nobody at all. He made a note to watch out for her-she had a gun and it wouldn’t be smart to assume she wouldn’t use it.

Gant said, “Maybe we ought to do it now.”

“You that hungry for somebody’s blood?”

“I don’t mind,” Gant said. “We ought to do it and git shet of it and git the hell out of here.”

“Go ahead and try if you want to. Me, I keep remembering the way he handles that sliphammer gun of his. I’d just as soon wait for help. Hell, that was the whole object of setting this thing up.”

“How hard you think Tree’d fight to save Wyatt Arp’s hide?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“You fu

“Screw you, Mordecai.”

Gant scowled. “Some reason you don’t want to go on living, Obie?” he asked with soft, bloodthirsty insinuation.

Macklin laughed bitterly. “Living? Hell, I never even wanted to be born.” He turned and moved away.

The third day was the heartbreaker. They got all the way up the mountain saddle only to find that the far side was a sheer cliff. Nothing to do but retrace and go around: it took hours. When Tree finally found a pass that crossed over, he halted his horse to the crest to look back, and saw two armies of horsemen doggedly descending the slopes five or six miles back. The two groups were a mile apart, separated by a hogback ridge. Tree’s pinched mouth formed a slash across his face like a surgeon’s wound.

Caroline said, puzzled, “They look like they’re hiding from each other.”

Wyatt Earp said, “I recognize that white horse-Floyd Sparrow’s. Trying to beat Cooley to us.”

Mordecai Gant laughed coarsely. “Lookin’ to skin your hide, Arp.”

Earp looked at Tree with venom. “This game’s rigged, isn’t it.”

“Not by me,” Tree answered shortly, and led them through the pass; He had been spotted; the pursuers lifted their pace.

The far side was a long, sweeping downslope. They crossed at a canter. Up above was a sawtooth tangle of peaks, the highest in this range-Continental Divide. Beyond that, it would be mostly downhill; but it was still three days to Denver.

He tried to stretch the hour’s lead. They found a spring, watered, and walked the horses downslope in the creek, then came to the confluence of a tributary and turned deliberately upstream in the secondary creek. It was out of the way but it might confuse pursuit. Tree led them out onto a shale slide that made dangerous footing but concealed all sign of their passage. When they had gone a mile beyond, he discovered Macklin wasn’t with them: Macklin trotted up from behind and saw his look, and said casually, “Thought I better have one more look back the way we come.”

“See anything?”

“Not a thing,” Macklin said, and pushed on.

They breathed the horses at intervals but made no noon halt. At two they spent fifteen minutes in a creek, going upstream and thus losing a mile’s progress to gain concealment; at a tortuous chasm Tree tossed big rocks across to the far side until he had overturned a fair number of loose stones to expose their damp undersides. It would take pursuers an hour or more to get over to that side. Tree led down the near side to the belly of the gorge, which took them by a series of rock-floored hairpin twists down through the upper elevations of timber forests. They entered groves so thickly massed at the treetops that no sun got through to the ground. Moss and decaying growth made easy footing for the horses but left clear sign. The riders had to ward off branches and duck under tree limbs. Once, in the center of the timber, Tree called a halt to blow the horses and listen for pursuit. He turned his head slowly to catch any sounds that might come rolling down the long-sounding forest corridors. He heard nothing-which in itself was not reassuring-and led on, noticing vaguely that Obie Macklin was occupying his nervous hands by sharpening his knife on stirrup leathers.

Distances in the high-country air deceived the eye. The high peaks that had loomed within obvious bullet range that morning were still ahead of them in midaf-ternoon, when they climbed past timberline into stunted marginal growth. The air had a clear, gemlike quality. Tree halted to give the canyons behind him a long inspection; doubtless the two pursuing bands were down there under the trees somewhere-the question was, how close?

Warren Earp said, “God damn it, I wish they’d show themselves.”