Territory (10 page)

Suddenly she smiled. “That is why I do it.”

This time the smell, when she set the plate before him, woke a coyote in his stomach. A starving one. He swallowed a tender morsel of
chile colorado
and nodded at the woman. “My compliments,
señora.
I would have ridden all the way from Tombstone for this dinner.”

Unexpectedly, she blushed and giggled. Gracious, didn’t those two bastards ever say thank you?

He was mopping the plate with a tortilla when Behan came in. He sat down across from Doc and smoothed the thin hair back from his high forehead with both hands. With his hat off, he looked as if he ought to be selling haberdashery in Boston, not trying to keep order in a county that didn’t much want it.

“Slim chance that we’ll catch up with the rest of the gang, but now at least we know who they are.” He leaned forward and gazed earnestly at Doc. “Wyatt wasn’t quick to give you credit for this, but you should know that I do.”

“My, you really do want my vote, don’t you?”

“King wouldn’t have spilled the names of his partners if Wyatt hadn’t told that tale about your Kate. You put him up to that, didn’t you?”

A tale about Kate. Doc studied the sheriff’s face, but there was nothing in it besides the open goodwill that Behan wore so easily. “I don’t often urge Wyatt to tell tales.”

“Well, King was scared white as paper when Wyatt said Kate was on that stage, and was killed in the holdup by a stray shot. Until then, he was buttoned up tight.”

“Was he,” Doc murmured. He should have stayed in the parlor after all. He could imagine the scene: King, surrounded by unsympathetic faces and without the incentive of a gun under his chin, had turned unhelpful. So Wyatt had drawn a different sort of weapon. Doc’s teeth clenched. “Glad I could be of use.”

Behan rose. Doc looked for calculation or satisfaction in his face and saw nothing. “We’ll stay the night. In the morning Billy and I will take King to town. Wyatt says he’ll stay on the trail.”

“Of course he will. You have yourself a good night, Sheriff.”

Anger was like a wildfire in him, the kind that skimmed through the dry grass unnoticed until it met the trees, to explode up the trunks and leap from bough to bough. The Mexican woman picked up his plate. He raised his eyes to her face. She dropped the plate and stepped back.

“Thank you,” he said, quietly, as he’d said everything since Behan had mentioned Kate. Then he pushed back his chair and left the kitchen.

Outside the moon was up, full and bright and low in the east. Wyatt was untying his horse from the porch rail. Doc took hold of the reins just below the bit.

“Do I bandy your wife’s name about?” Doc said. The fire in his chest had grown until he could barely speak above a whisper.

Wyatt’s back was to the moonlight; Doc couldn’t see his face. “I don’t know. Do you?”

“If I did, what would I get from you?”

“I think you know.” From his voice, Wyatt was smiling.

“Then tell me what you deserve for lying about Kate.”

A gust of cold wind rattled the scrub around them.

“You’re not angry because I made use of Kate,” Wyatt said calmly. “Besides, I did her no harm.” He took hold of the reins below Doc’s hand. Doc didn’t let go.

“I don’t believe you gave a damn about that.”

Wyatt stepped forward. He occluded the moon, so that the black shape of him was rimmed with silver. The night wind whistled through brush and boards and every opening that might hum with it.

There was a knife hidden in Doc’s sleeve. He was suddenly conscious of how short a distance lay between it and Wyatt’s body. But he felt helpless, even so.

“I didn’t give a damn,” Wyatt answered, cold as snow. “If I have to hurt everyone in the world to protect what’s mine, I will do it like a shot. Making Luther King think you were gunning for him is nothing to what I’d do.”

And Doc realized Wyatt was right. Kate was only an excuse. “I am not your hired killer.”

“That’s because I don’t need one.” Wyatt drew his reins out of Doc’s fingers, backed his horse, and led him off toward the corral.

Doc clutched the porch rail and stared out at the silver-and-black landscape. The air felt thin in his lungs, searing as he dragged it in. He’d thought he was the wildfire. Now he knew he was only the tree.

 6 

Missin son flavior debac

No matter how hard Mildred stared at Harry Woods’s handwritten copy, that was what it said. Missing some flavor debacle? It made no sense, and had nothing to do with the story—a short color piece on Papago Indian folklore. Besides, even Harry wasn’t that bad a speller.

She held the page closer to the lamp over the type case. No help. So much for working late to get ahead of tomorrow’s edition.

The back door banged, and Mildred looked up hopefully. But it was only Ernesto Pasillo, wrestling a bale of paper from the freight wagon to the storeroom.

“Ernesto!
¿Momento, por favor?
”

“Sí, señora,”
he gasped. A thump, and he backed out of the storeroom, dusting himself and eyeing her warily. Ernesto was about sixteen, with strong Indian features that made him look older. But whenever Mildred spoke to him, she could see him regress to half that age. He must have once been under the thumb of an implacable Anglo schoolmarm.

“Ernesto, I need to go see Harry at the county jail. I’ll only be a minute. Can you keep an eye on things?”

Mildred heard his sigh of relief. “Yes,
señora.”
He looked back over his shoulder. “The new paper—”

“Finish that, then sit down and take a load off your feet.” She yanked off her apron. “If anyone expects the office to be open at this hour, he can start his own newspaper.”

She stuffed Harry’s copy in her handbag, pinned her hat on her head, and bolted out the back door into the lamplit night.

She had to wait for two ranch wagons, a gig, and a stagecoach before she could cross Fifth Street at the corner of Toughnut. The town’s early arrivals claimed that in ’79 the only time they had to wait to cross a street was during
the Fourth of July parade. Surely, with this many residents to draw on, a man didn’t have to be both a newspaper editor and undersheriff for the county? It was downright prideful. She’d tell Harry so, right after she told him if he didn’t type his copy, she’d make him set it himself.

A sunburned, grim-faced man leaned against the front wall of the jail. No one she recognized; she shortened her steps. He looked her up and down as she came into the light of the lamps.

Mildred summoned a mental image of Ernesto’s schoolmarm, looked the man in the eye, and said, “Good evening.” As she swept through the jailhouse door, she thought he flushed.

“Harry,” she said as the door shut behind her, “I have no idea—”

Harry stood behind the jailer’s desk. Something in his face stopped her voice: a stiffness of the mouth, a fixed look in the eyes. A man stood in front of the desk, his back a vista of pin-striped broadcloth.

“Hello, Mrs. Benjamin,” Harry said. “You know John Dunbar?”

Dunbar turned and smiled widely at her. “Hello there, Mrs. Benjamin. I was just telling your boss he ought to be sorry he wasn’t there when his prisoner was caught. That was a damned—beg pardon—a mighty fine chase.”

And if Harry had been out chasing bandits, the last few days would have been as big a nuisance as this evening. Men who ran businesses ought to stay put and run them. “Were you there, Mr. Dunbar?”

Dunbar had the grace to flush. “No, ma’am. I had a mare due to foal. But I’d admire to have seen it. Wyatt and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday flushed Luther King out smart as you please, and scared the whole story out of him. Now that we know who the murderers were who stopped that stage, the Earps’ll catch ’em.”

“Sheriff Behan will probably help a mite,” Harry said mildly, and looked around as if to remind Dunbar whose jailhouse he was in.

“Oh, Johnny!” Dunbar laughed. “Of course he will. I’m in business with Johnny, though, and I know him pretty well. As long as the county stays quiet, it’s live and let live with Johnny.”

Harry looked over Dunbar’s shoulder at her. “Mrs. Benjamin, problem at the paper?”

There was something wrong in the room, in spite of Harry’s mildness, Dunbar’s laugh. “Nothing a minute of your time won’t fix.”

“Let’s step in the back, then. John, if the lawyer shows up with that bill of sale, you deal with him. I’ll be right back.”

Harry opened the door behind the desk and beckoned Mildred. When she
got there, Harry put his hand between her shoulder blades and propelled her through.

He shut the door with a thump and pulled her to the other end of the narrow hall. “Listen to me,” he whispered. “If Luther King stays in this jail, he’s going to be killed. I can’t do anything about it with Dunbar out front. You have to get King out.”

Mildred stared. This was a melodrama, with actors playing Harry and Dunbar. It had nothing to do with real life. The hanging lamp cast the wrong shadows; there ought to be footlights. “What are you talking about? Who’s going to kill him? Why would—”

“Because he can tell who held up that stage and shot Philpot and Roerig.”

“But he already has!”

“He’s said what the Earps want him to. If he’s dead, he can’t be made to say more. You heard Dunbar: they scared him into telling the story they wanted.”

“That’s a nasty accusation.” Harry had precious little use for the Earps, but could he really believe something as bad as this?

Harry shook his head. “Witnesses saw Holliday ride like hell out of town the night of the holdup, carrying a Henry rifle. If Holliday helped stop that stage, the Earps’ll lose ground. So will people who’ve sided with them.”

“Ground”—political office, elected and appointed; money; influence. Luther King’s mouth, open or closed, could affect the balance of power in Cochise County. There’d been a lot of silver on that stage, but it was nothing to the stakes on the table now.

Harry grabbed her shoulders and gave her a shake. “Mildred, please.” His grip was hard enough to hurt. Harry never touched her.

“I can’t possibly do that.” Was that her voice? It wasn’t even short of breath.

“The cells are through there.” Harry nodded at a bolted door. “The keys are here on the wall. You’ll have to find him a horse ….”

“No, I won’t have to find him a horse. It’s madness—”

Harry reached inside his sack coat and pulled out a revolver. He shoved it into her hands. “Take it. It’s King’s.”

Mildred had held a pistol before. But this one lay unnaturally heavy across her palms. The weight of a life.

Give it back. Refuse to do this.
She looked into Harry’s pale, sweating face, saw his eyes dart to the door that led to the front room. Cocky, ironic, confident Harry.

She turned her back on him and pulled up the front of her bodice. She pushed the pistol barrel-first into the waistband of her skirt, against her petticoat, until nothing but the grip showed. She arranged the drape of her overskirt to hide the bulge of the cylinder, and tugged her bodice down over the grip. Then she turned back to Harry. Her heart hammered like some out-of-control engine.

“Go look in on your prisoner,” she said. He frowned. “Go, or close your eyes, Harry.” She honestly wasn’t sure if she was protecting Harry or herself.

Harry turned and went through the door to the cells.

Mildred snatched the cell keys off the hook, wrapped them in her handkerchief to keep them quiet, and shoved them into her handbag. Then she hurried to the back door and unbolted it.

Harry came back in. “Have we finished our business?”

Mildred caught her breath. “Dear heaven, that’s right. Dunbar may ask. I couldn’t read your handwriting. There was only one line, really—” She remembered the line, and in her head, the characters shifted, reshaped themselves. “Never mind. It was Mission San Xavier del Bac, wasn’t it? It makes sense in context.”

“The White Dove of the Desert. I expect it was.”

“Dunbar has one of his hands waiting outside the front door.”

“Then you don’t want to disappoint him, Mrs. Benjamin. After you.” He opened the door to the office.

She sailed through, wondering if her smile was as ghastly as it felt. Dunbar beamed back. It must be good enough. “Good evening, Mr. Dunbar,” she said, and offered her hand.