Sliphammer

“How’d Doc get tied up with you, anyway?”

“He had a girl friend that worked in one of Wyatt’s houses. But that’s a long story. You asked about the OK Corral and I told you. It was Texans and Kansans and we were fighting the goddamned Civil War again, is all it amounts to, because I’ve yet to meet a Texan who really believes the war’s over and Texas lost. So you see kid, it’s not heroes of the plains versus villains with black mustaches, it’s just a goddamned stupid feud between people who ought to grow up and learn better.”

“You were there-at the OK Corral.”

“I didn’t like it.”

“But you were there.”

“I was there,” Virg said in a low, harsh voice. “I was there, kid, and I got nicked by a bullet or two, and I helped kill three men-for no good reason I could think of, and afterwards they put enough buckshot in this shoulder to fill a soda cracker keg, and after that they killed our brother here, and after that Wyatt went out and killed a couple more of them, and now somebody else is go

His face completely masked in shadow, Virg wheeled away and tramped back to a dark corner. Warren stared down at the coffin under his hands.

The engine whistled, several short hoots. The train was begi

The grab of brakes threw Warren against the coffin. He righted himself and turned toward the half-open door, but Doc Holliday shouldered past him and growled, “Stay put right here, so

The train racketed to a stop with a sigh of sliding brake shoes. Warren saw a lot of freight cars on sidings in the twilight and a man dimly visible standing on the dusty ground beside the express car.

The man said, “Where’s Wyatt Earp?”

Doc Holliday said, “Buenos fucking tardes, Stillwell.”

“Up yours, Doc. The great man too chickenshit to come out of there behind you?”

Warren shifted to the side; he saw, now, that Stillwell had a rifle pointed right at Doc’s belly and cocked. The rifle shifted an inch and Stillwell yelled, “Where the hell is he?”

“Right here.”

Warren jerked. Wyatt’s deep voice had shot forward from the shadows behind Stillwell.

“Right here, you son of a bitch!”

Stillwell wheeled, frantic. The rifle didn’t turn as fast as he did. Two brilliant stabs of flame lanced from the shadows between two freight cars. Warren felt the concussion of the shotgun’s earsplitting roar.

The double ten-gauge blast slammed Stillwell back. He pitched and toppled, aglisten with raw meat and gristle from rib cage to shoulder.

Warren was unable to swallow. He felt needles in his knees. His eyes refused to blink.

Wyatt stepped into sight. It was too dark to make outhis face. Stillwell was down flat and moaning.

Warren felt weight behind him-Virg, breathing through his teeth, and Josie. Warren felt the hard grip of her hands on his arm. He couldn’t rip his eyes off Stillwell. Stillwell was grumbling deliriously; Doc Holliday drawled cruelly. “Don’t be a poor loser, Frank.”

Wyatt Earp snapped, “He wasn’t playing a game.”

“Sure he was-sure he was. What else you want to call it?”

Warren’s legs began to tremble. The man wasn’t even dead yet. Warren saw Wyatt step across Stillwell and drop the empty shotgun across Stillwell’s legs. Wyatt stood below them, looking up. Behind Warren, Virg began to curse in a dead, flat, obscene monotone.

Somewhere in the ensuing run of moments, Stillwell died. Wyatt bent over him to make sure. Josie breathed, “Sweet, sweet Jesus.” Wyatt reached up for a grip and climbed into the express car.

The engine whistle startled Warren. He turned slowly in time to see big old Virg looking at Wyatt with the kind of stare he might have used on a stranger whom he didn’t know and didn’t want to meet.

The train started up, with a curious half-scared knot of pedestrians starting to appear in the yards. Wyatt Earp slammed the door shut. Warren heard him growl, “I’m sick of Arizona anyway.”

Two

Jeremiah Tree sat his horse on the hillside, crossed one leg over the saddle horn and packed his pipe without hurry, lazy in the heat, a craggy, big man with a weathered, sun-squinted face and leathery little creases crosshatching the brown back of his neck. All around him the desert was in flower-Spanish bayonet, yucca, hummingbird bushes, chollas, staghorns, ironwoods, cat-tlaw, Joshuas, mesquite, paloverde, prickly pe’ar, ocotillo and the little red ones some drunken botanist had labeled with punful helplessness Echinocereus damdifino. Damned if I know, yeah. Didn’t matter if you knew their names anyway. The blossoming beauty of riotous color was a brief a

He put the pipe in a corner of his wide mouth but did not light it. It was too hot to smoke. He sat looking down at the ranch, where the sun seemed to set the corrugated metal shed roofs afire. The hot wind rubbed itself against him with abrasive dryness.

He had been sitting here for an hour, watching the two saddled horses ground-hitched in the ranch yard below. He had a fair idea what the two of them were doing inside, and he didn’t want to interrupt. He chewed on his pipe and waited. Absently, his left hand hooked itself for comfort over the hammer of his hip-holstered six-gun. It was a good fast gun: a fighting man’s gun. Forty-five center fire single action with a 4 %-inch barrel and a front sight that had been filed down low and smooth so it wouldn’t get caught on the holster coming out. It was a sliphammer six-gun: it had no trigger inside the oval guard; the hammer spur had been sawed off, cut down, and rewelded in place halfway down the back of the hammer. The hammer spring had been filed with care. It took a great deal of experience and practice to use a sliphammer gun effectively, but once the technique was learned-scraping the ball of the thumb fast over the lowered hammer spur-a sliphammer shooter could fire three times as fast as a man with a trigger, and far more accurately than an idiot who fa

Jeremiah Tree went with the gun: he had a workmanlike look. His face was the color of the worn walnut handle of the gun. His eyes were the color of the metal at the gun’s muzzle where holster friction had worn off the bluing: the silver color of a freshly minted. 45 slug, before corrosion dulled the lead. His skin had the texture of holster leather softened by countless saddle soap-ings. His shirt had been washed too often; the sleeves had shrunk halfway up his forearms. His long-legged stovepipe Levi’s were faded and white-threaded.

His hair was thick and black, curling out under the stained hat, and generally he had the look of an Indian or a half-breed, though he was neither: both parents had been Scotch-Irish. A history of fights was recorded in the myriad ^minor scars and half dozen major ones on his exposed face and hands; victories were implied by the fact that he was neither disfigured nor crippled.

The only clue to his present occupation was the pair of pinholes in the left breast patch pocket of his shirt. He wasn’t wearing a badge today.

Alerted by movement in the porch shadows, he straightened in the saddle and put his boots back into the stirrups. Down there he saw Caroline come out into sight and lift one hand to shade her eyes, looking toward the western horizon. Jeremiah Tree gigged his horse gently downhill.