Sliphammer

Wyatt said testily, “Take it easy, boy, take it easy.” It made Tree look at him. The deep voice, calm on the surface, had a strained, false timbre.

Warren said, “What the hell you mean, take it easy? My damn wrists are just about to start bleeding and we’re unarmed and hogtied and right back there we’ve got a pack of stinking miners wanting to lynch both of us.”

Caroline said, with acid, “Don’t you think your friend Cooley can take care of a few worthless miners?”

“Not if they get to us first,” Warren said, looking as miserable as he probably felt. He hadn’t whined much, which was to his credit, but the strain was getting to him now. There was, Tree observed, a surprising amount of sand beneath Warren’s bravado. A lesser man would have crumbled by now-he had expected it to happen, and found himself curiously pleased that it hadn’t. Now, after the one minor outburst, Warren clamped his mouth shut and turned to stare stonily ahead.

They climbed another mile and Tree looked back again, saw nothing, and urged the weary horses on. Caroline drew alongside and crinkled her nose at him. At that moment Josie Earp, looking down the backtrail, said, “Oh, shit-Oh, Jesus Christ!”

Tree’s attention whipped down the mountain. He saw them then-Floyd Sparrow’s bunch, the white horse in the lead, coming up from the trees not three miles below.

Josie said, “Sweet Jesus, get us out of this.” She was talking to Wyatt.

Wyatt put his hooded eyes on Tree and said, “Don’t you think this damned foolishness has gone far enough now?”

It was Caroline who said, “What’s the matter-afraid you won’t make it to Denver?”

Earp’s eyes, flashing bright for a moment, receded under drooping lids; he said nothing more.

Dead weary, Tree pushed them on. He kept looking back, kept getting glimpses of Floyd Sparrow’s determined gang, and knew without being told exactly what Sparrow wanted.

The hard pressures of pursuit, fatigue, vigilance constricted him like iron hoops drawn painfully around his chest. He glanced at Wyatt Earp and knew the man was getting rattled. He felt acutely embarrassed, as if he had blundered in on Earp’s privacy. All during these endless hours of riding he had communicated very little with Earp but he still hadn’t shaken the possibility he was doing Earp an injustice, Rafe or no Rafe. Nothing was simple, he thought; particularly in questions of guilt. There were no i

The horses clambered uphill, heaving and beaten. Tree looked at Earp again and found Earp chewing his lip. Earp caught Tree looking at him and straightened up in the saddle with an expression under his mustache that might have been a sullen snarl; Earp said, “Sparrow’s the kind of man who won’t mind shooting the lot of us whether we’ve got our hands tied or not-fish in a rain barrel to him.”

“What do you want me to do?” Tree snapped.

“I know,” Earp said, with imperfect sarcasm “you’ve got your stupid duty to do.”

Caroline, overhearing, let her horse drop back and said angrily to Earp, “Maybe just one time in your miserable life you ought to try pretending the rest of us are almost as good as you are.”

Earp tried to shrug with disdain. “I’m only pointing out the odds to your pigheaded friend. Why should all of you have to die over me?”

Caroline cried, “People are always deliberately choosing to die around you. All the people who absolutely force you to kill them!”

“I didn’t kill your husband,” Earp snapped.

“You did everything but pull the trigger!”

“Nonsense!”

“You could have stopped Cooley,” she said, with scorn.

“You’re babbling,” Earp grunted, and stirred in the saddle, looking back and making a face. “Can’t we speed this up? Or are we going to dawdle and wait for Sparrow to ride right up?” He poked his face toward Tree: “Maybe you made a private arrangement with Sparrow to sell us out?”

Tree tried to keep the anger off his face. Earp’s raucous bleatings were the signs of a man cracking up. Where was the man’s courage? Earp hadn’t once tried to escape-waiting for Cooley, maybe? Or just using his head, appraising the “odds” so coolly? Earp was a poker player-maybe he’d started out with a plan of some kind; but poker was a game in which you lost if you hesitated too long before bluffing. There didn’t seem any getting around the obvious fact that Wyatt Earp was losing his nerve.

Not sure any more, Tree was enraged-enraged more by disillusion and his own uncertainty than by anything else, even Sparrow back there. Everything he had taken for granted seemed to be falling apart. He had, in a strange way, believed in Wyatt Earp; it had been important to him. Now either Earp was folding up, or it was some fantastic trick designed to get Tree off guard.

The thought grenaded into his mind, and he clung to the possibility almost with relief. He realized: he wanted Earp to try to escape.

Then Earp crushed him. Earp said, “Maybe you ought to think what it could mean to you to have the gratitude of men like Wayde Cardiff. I’m offering no bribes but you need to be reminded of reality. Damn it, all I want is a fair chance against those red-eyed sons of bitches down there.” He was brooding back toward Sparrow’s bunch.

“Good God,” Tree said, his voice grating hoarse. “Shut up now, will you?” Shut up before you destroy yourself!

He gigged the tired horse ahead.

The sun went down behind them, a vivid splash of colors across the mountains. The horses were played out; it was an agony of stumbling hoofs and slip-sliding boots, all the riders on foot now, leading the animals. Tree posted himself in the rear, guarding the backtrail. The pass was in sight, clearly silhouetted against the stars as night came down full; and they kept plugging stubbornly toward it until, dropping across a rocky bowl of ground, Tree called forward softly, went past the line, and spoke to Gant: “They can’t see us in this hollow. We’ll turn left and go north through the gully until it peters out.”

“Take us north of the pass,” Gant grumbled.

“Can’t be helped. We’ll go over the north side of the mountain. It may just lose them.”

So they turned, keeping to the concealment of the lateral gully along the flank of the mountain, hoping Sparrow behind them would keep going straight up for the pass. Tree dropped back to the rear. He felt stu

Gant and Macklin were talking in subdued tones; they drew apart when he approached. Everybody halted, without needing instructions. Macklin caught some sign, even in the starlight; he stiffened arid said tentatively, “What’s wrong with you?”

Tree said, “That’s all for both of you. Shuck your gunbelts.”

Gant said, “Huh?” and Macklin at the same time said, “What the hell’s all this?”

Tree shook his head. “Drop those belts and then sit down and take off your boots.” His palm curved over the sliphammer gun. Macklin and Gant looked at each other; then, as if on prearranged signal, they dived in opposite directions, both clawing at their revolvers.

The sliphammer gun fired-once-at Gant’s big shadow, and whipped across toward Macklin. The little man was rolling under the belly of his horse, snapping off a shot. The report of the gun was startling. Muzzle flame lanced forward. The bullet went wide somewhere and Tree fired at the only target visible beyond the horse’s shadow-Macklin’s head. Bone fragments and blood sprayed from the skull. The horse reared, slipped on the loose rocks, and fell on Macklin, crushing his body underneath.