“No,” Virgil said.
“Couple of days,” Wyatt said, “she’d be in a crib east of Sixth Street.”
“I know,” Virgil said. “Maybe you could move out on her.”
“She’d follow me,” Wyatt said.
Virgil nodded. He was drawing little circles with the bottom of his beer mug on the wet tabletop.
“Besides,” Wyatt said, “it’s my house.”
“Yep.”
“What you going to do about Allie?”
Virgil kept drawing his little circles while he looked across the room and out through the half-doors into Allen Street.
“I told her my brothers would always be welcome in my house.”
“How she like that?”
“She said to me that it was her house too, and she didn’t marry no goddamned brothers, she married me.”
Wyatt smiled.
“Tough, ain’t she,” he said.
“Yeah, and good-hearted. She feels bad for Mattie.”
“Hell, Virgil, I feel bad for Mattie, but there isn’t anything I can do about it.”
“You could give up Josie,” Virgil said carefully.
“No,” Wyatt said, “I couldn’t.”
Virgil continued to look out at Allen Street. It was not the kind of conversation he enjoyed.
“Guess maybe I understand that,” he said after a while. “Not so sure I could give up Allie either.”
“I don’t want to give you and Allie no trouble,” Wyatt said. “I can stay away from your house.”
Virgil shook his head, and looked, for the first time in the conversation, straight at his younger brother.
“No,” Virgil said, “ ’less you stop being my brother, or it stops being my house, you are welcome. Allie understands it. She don’t like it, but she will do what I say about this. You come over just like always. There won’t be no trouble.”
Wyatt nodded.
“What about Behan?” Virgil said.
“House belongs to Josie,” Wyatt said. “Her father paid for it.”
“So Johnny’ll have to get out?”
“Looks that way.”
“Makes him look like a fool,” Virgil said.
“Wasn’t my intention,” Wyatt said.
“It don’t help us in town to have this happen,” Virgil said. “It don’t help us to have Johnny Behan against us, either.”
“I can deal with Johnny,” Wyatt said.
“He won’t come straight at you.”
“No.”
“But it don’t mean he won’t come,” Virgil said.
“Or send somebody,” Wyatt said.
They were quiet together for a time. Listening to the saloon sounds. The click of glasses, the low murmur of the men at card games. The sound of booted feet. An occasional high laugh from one of the whores who worked the saloons.
“Whoever he sends,” Virgil said, “they got to go up against you and me and Morgan-and Holliday, I guess, if he’s sober enough to shoot.”
“Can’t recall,” Wyatt said, “Doc ever being too drunk to shoot.”
“True enough,” Virgil said. “The skinny bastard can do that, can’t he.”
“It may not come to much,” Wyatt said. “Johnny’s a pretty careful fella. Wants to get ahead.”
“Man doesn’t get ahead, around here, at least,” Virgil said. “Being made to look like a horse’s ass in public.”
“Maybe Johnny don’t know that,” Wyatt said.
“Don’t you want your breakfast?”
Wyatt shook his head. He was standing in the doorway holding a rifle, its muzzle pointed at the floor.
“I had breakfast with Morgan,” he said. “I just stopped in to pick up the Winchester.”
“I cooked it special for you,” she said. “Got some fresh eggs from Vita Coleman.”
She sniffed and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her dress.
“Christ,” Wyatt said, “do you cry in your sleep?”
Mattie shook her head and drank from her glass, her eyes fixed on the front of the iron stove across the room.
“If you’re hoping for sympathy, Mattie, I haven’t got any left. I’m doing what I have to do.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Mattie said. “If you go, I’ll follow you.”
“For what?”
“I’m your wife.”
“You’re not even that, not really. We never took any vows.”
“I’m your wife,” she said.
“You’re a damned drunk,” Wyatt said. “It’s still morning and you’re already drunk.”
“I’m only doing what you make me do,” Mattie said. “I can’t bear the pain without it.”
Wyatt took in a big breath of air and let it out slowly.
“Mattie,” he said. “That’s bullshit and you know it. You been drinking most of the time, long as I knew you. It used to be sherry. Now it’s whiskey. But the drinking ain’t new.”
“I got nothing else to do,” Mattie said. “I’m alone all the time. You’re never home.”
Her face was bunched up as if trying to be smaller. She was pale except for a red flush over her cheekbones. She drank again from the whiskey glass.
“Why would I want to come home?” Wyatt said. “Watch you cry and drink whiskey.”
Mattie didn’t answer. Her eyes were squeezed nearly shut. She had slept on top of the bed in the dress she was still wearing. She looked at the stove as if to penetrate the black iron with her narrow, wet gaze.
“I won’t give you up,” she said without inflection.
“Jesus Christ,” Wyatt said and turned and went through the parlor and out the front door.
Carrying the Winchester, Wyatt walked up Fremont Street, his boots making soft sounds in the thick dirt. The morning sun was behind him and his shadow spilled out in front of him, angular and much too long. It was already warm, and the sky was high and cloudless. He turned up Fourth Street, past Spangenberg’s Gun Shop on his left, and on the other side, farther up, at the corner of Allen Street, the Can Can Restaurant where he had had breakfast with Charlie Shibell and talked of being a deputy. Long time ago, Wyatt thought. He turned right on Allen past Hafford’s. Across the street, Johnny Behan came out of the Grand Hotel; he saw Wyatt and waved. Wyatt touched his hat brim and kept going. Johnny was a genial man. Careful about giving offense.
