Four
As he traveled the one-block distance between the sheriff’s office and his hotel, he was thinking darkly of the spare slipham-mer six-gun and holster packed away in his carpetbag. The way things shaped up, it looked as if he would need it: any time gunplay moved from remote possibility to likely probability, a sensible man needed two guns. Not that anybody in his right mind would use both guns at once, or be likely to need all that firepower-even case-hardened killers admitted that if you couldn’t do it with five or six bullets you probably couldn’t do it at all. But guns, even the most finely tuned and smithed guns, were never wholly reliable. You never knew when a vital spring would break, or a cartridge misfire, or a firing pin crystallize and shatter.
As he turned into the narrow lobby he became caustic with himself: Was this a legitimate errand, or was it just-a way to postpone meeting Wyatt Earp? Was he scared of Earp? Or was it that he cherished certain illusions about a legendary man and feared Wyatt Earp in the flesh wouldn’t live up to them? Or was it simply that he didn’t like this job and didn’t want to do it? If Stillwell had gone after my brother, he thought. Was it justice to arrest Earp? He couldn’t help remembering what he had said to his half brother Rafe: Fair my ass. It was a job.
He reached the back of the corridor and fumbled the room key out of his pocket, thinking maybe Earp’s influential friends would solve his problem by quashing the extradition. In the meantime, he reasoned, was there any reason why he should’hurry to meet Earp?
The key was within an inch of the lock when a corner of his vision registered warning in his mind. Alerted, he froze. The nail was gone from the doorjamb.
His left hand palmed the sliphammer gun. He moved to one side of the door and reached out to thumb the latch. The door wasn’t locked; it rode open, squeaking a little with a sappy protest of green wood. He flattened his back against the outside wall, gun up, holding his breath. Chances were there was nobody inside-somebody had searched the room, maybe, and gone…
He wheeled inside, crouching low, gun fisted tight. When the intruder fired the bullet went over his head.
Tree’s eyes registered the lancing bloom of muzzle flame and not much else: the intruder was in the dark corner. Tree shot twice, very fast; the afterglow was his aiming point.
The man came walking out of the corner as if on stilts, tripped and fell across the bed, and rolled off, leaving a red smear on the blanket. When he hit the floor his left hand opened and a tenpenny nail rolled out, clattering like a spinning coin on the floorboards.
Tree was down on one knee; he got up and strode forward and kicked the gun out of the man’s fist, and then had a look at the man.
The eyes were open, losing focus. It was the same man he had seen talking to McKesson-the man who had pointed him out to McKesson. Black bile formed in his throat; he wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and laid his fingers along the man’s skinny throat, feeling for a pulse. There was none.
Ears still ringing, Tree walked down the hall to the lobby. He still had the gun in his fist. The clerk, alarmed by the noise, stared at him and trembled.
Tree said, “Get McKesson and bring him back here.”
Swallowing, voiceless, the clerk nodded in spasms and ran flapping out the door.
Tree went back to the room, stepped across the body, and opened his carpetbag. He took out the spare gun and threaded the holster onto his gunbelt; he was buckling the rig around his hips when McKesson came in, red- faced and out of breath.
McKesson’s boot heels skidded when he came to a stop. He wore a gun, but it was holstered. His white hair was awry.
“For crying out loud,” McKesson said helplessly.
Tree bent down and picked up the intruder’s gun; glanced at it and handed it to McKesson. “One thing before you start making a speech. That’s a. 38. You can tell he fired it by the smell, and you’ll find the bullet in the wall out there in the hall. He was waiting back in that corner when I opened the door.”
McKesson took it all in his eyes, without moving from his stance in the doorway. When he spoke, he was surprisingly crisp: “Why did he miss?”
“He telegraphed. I came in low and he shot over my head.”
“If you knew he was in here why didn’t you speak out?”
“He heard my boots in the hall. He saw me open the door. If he’d had anything to say to me he had plenty of time to say it.”
McKesson gave him a sharp look. “You’re a tough son of a bitch, aren’t you?”
“I’m still taking nourishment,” Tree said. Then his temper broke: “Who the hell was this bastard? I saw him toll you onto me.”
McKesson nodded. “Grady Jestro was his name.”
“And that’s all you’re going to tell me?”
McKesson said, “I’m not obliged to tell you a damned thing. It’s within my power to run you in for homicide.”
“You can try,” Tree intoned.
“If that’s a threat I’ll ignore it. This sizes up as self-defense. Justifiable homicide. I’ll release you on your own recognizance as a courtesy to a fellow peace officer.”
“Still trying to show me what a good friend of mine you are.”
“Yes-whether you want to believe it or not.” McKesson moved into the room and Tree saw the little knot of onlookers crowded into the hallway. McKesson turned his head and said, “You two make yourselves useful. Get this out of here.”
Two men came inside; one of them said, “Where to?”
“For Christ’s sake the undertaker’s-do I have to draw a blueprint for you?”
“Okay, Ollie, keep your shirt on.” The man grimaced and bent to gather up the corpse. They carried it outside; the crowd made plenty of room for them. McKesson closed the door rudely in the onlookers’ faces and turned to Tree: “Now about Grady Jestro. He was a hired tough.”
“Strikebreaker?”
“Yes. The day after the Earps arrived here, ‘Jestro made a pass at Wyatt’s wife, not knowing who she was. It got Wyatt a little angry, to say the least, and Jestro’s been trying to make up for it. Buttering Earp up, running errands, trying to please Earp.”
“Did Earp put him up to this, then?”
“Knowing Earp I would say definitely not Jestro probably had the idea he’d be doing Earp a favor by killing you. If he’d succeeded I imagine he’d have found out Earp wouldn’t have appreciated it one bit. But the world is full of misguided idiots and when one of them gets his hands on a gun it’s disaster.”
“Yeah.” Tree brooded toward the bloodstains on the bed blanket and on the floor. He went to the door and opened it. The crowd had mostly gone away but the clerk was still there, halfway down the hall, scrubbing his hands nervously together. Tree said, “I’ll want another room. You’d better get somebody to clean this one up.”
“Yes, sir. You can take the room across the hall there. Door’s open. I’ll bring the key.”
Tree went back inside, buckled his carpetbag shut and picked up his coat; carried them across the hall into a room with a slightly higher ceiling and a smaller window; there was no other distinction. McKesson followed him as far as the door and said, “What’ll you do now?”
“What do you suggest, Sheriff?”
“You already know my advice. Get back on the train and go home to Arizona.”
“I guess not.”
“It’s your funeral.” McKesson turned out of sight and Tree heard his boots bang stiffly down the corridor. When the sheriff had gone beyond earshot Tree closed the door and sat down on the bed and waited for the needles to go out of his knees. His hands, he saw, were steady; but his heart pounded and his eyes throbbed and the pulse in his throat seemed loud. He closed his eyes very tight and held them, making fists, drew great ragged breaths into his chest, lay back on the bed, and stared at the ceiling. Then, abruptly, he jumped up and ran around the foot of the bed to the basin on the commode, and vomited his breakfast into it.
