Rafe said, “You got a nice warm way of greetin’ us, ain’t you?”
“What the hell is this all about?”
Caroline said, “We were afraid you’d get hurt. We came to help.”
“Sure you did.”
Rafe came around him from the door and went back to the bed, where he sat down and tipped his head to one side. “That ain’t exactly the whole truth. We couldn’t get the fare together so we came in the buggy.”
“All the way from Tucson?”
“Left right after you did,” Rafe said, not without pride. “All the way across the goddamn desert and the goddamn mountains in that old buggy, campin’ out. Caroline’s a right good traveler, she’d of made a good Forty-niner.” Rafe grinned at his wife.
“Both of you,” Tree said, shaking his head. “Why’d both of you come, for crying out loud?”
“Because,” Caroline said quietly, “I wouldn’t let him go without me. He came with me or not at all.”
Looking at both of them, Tree saw how it was. Once more he remembered what Caroline’s father had said to him not too long ago: J told her not to marry your brother because he just ain’t tough enough for her. She’ll put spurs to him one time when she ain’t even thanking about it, and she’ll rip him to shreds ‘thout ever knowing how it happened. It was clear to see how this marriage had settled down, who wore the pants. Tree thought, You poor son of a bitch, you should’ve known better.
He said to Rafe, “I suppose you’ve still got your tongue hanging out over that four-thousand-dollar reward on the Earp brothers.”
“I still need the money to buy that ranch. Where else am I, gonna get that kind of money?”
“You’re both pretty damned young,” Tree said, looking straight at Caroline. “Couldn’t you settle for something less than your own ranch to start out with?”
“Why should we?” Rafe demanded. “You take what you can get, Jeremy, it’s a me-first country.”
Tree jerked a thumb toward the invisible hills. “A lot of bleached bones up in those mountains thought the same thing.”
“I ain’t scared of Wyatt Earp.”
No, Tree thought, you’re not, are you? It surprised him a little-particularly because even if Rafe didn’t think he was scared of Earp, he was certainly intimidated enough by his own wife. But that was a different sort of thing: petticoat power was too subtle for Rafe to handle. Rafe was brash, bold, full of bullheaded guts, and no less callow than an ignorant puppy.
“Listen,” Tree said, “you two just get back in your goddamn buggy and drive back to Arizona. There’s nothing here for you.”
Caroline scowled at him but did not speak. Rafe, his face red, said, “Damn it, when you gonna quit treating me like a kid?”
“When you quit acting like one.”
Caroline said, “That’s not fair.”
He looked at her. “Shut up.”
Rafe sat up straight. “Who you tellin’ to shut up?”
Tree ignored him; he said flatly to Caroline, “You put him up to this-you filled his head with notions. If you don’t want him dead, you’d better change his mind.”
Caroline gave him a savage mock-sweet smile. “Rafe’s a man-he makes his own decisions.”
“In a pig’s eye. Now grab him by the ear and get him out of here-or I’ll do it myself.”
“You just try,” Rafe growled, eyes flashing. “You just try that little thing, Jeremy.”
Tree snorted, walked around the foot of the bed and picked up a newspaper from the little lamp table. He went over to the bed and lay down, crossing his muddy boots on the coverlet, and held the newspaper up in front of his face.
Caroline said, “What do you think you’re doing?”.
“Reading,” Tree said.
“And just what are we supposed to do?”
Tree lowered the newspaper and looked at her. “I couldn’t care less what you do,” he said, and lifted the paper.
Caroline said, “We haven’t got the money for a hotel room.”
“Should’ve thought of that before you came all this way, shouldn’t you?”
“You bastard,” she said.
Tree said, “There sure as hell isn’t room for all three of us on this bed, Caroline.”
“Jerr, you’re a first class A number one son of a bitch.”
“Uh-hunh,” he muttered, reading.
Rafe got off the corner of the bed, assembled his dignity, and said, “Come on, honey, let’s you and me go get something to eat. To hell with his majesty.”
“Enjoy yourselves,” Tree intoned, without looking away from his reading matter.
Caroline said in a stifled, angry little voice, “You just wait till you need our help arresting Wyatt Earp. You’ll come begging on your knees, Jeremiah Tree.”
“All right,” Tree drawled. “You two just stay out of trouble until I do.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” said Rafe, yanking the door open. He stopped. “You coming?”
Caroline came away from the window. “You just wait,” she fumed.
The two of them went out; the door slammed angrily. Tree put the paper down on his chest and frowned at the ceiling. The frown turned to a scowl.
Wyatt Earp said to him, “I’ve got a skittish brother too, amigo, but I can handle him. You put hobbles on that kid or he’ll get hurt.”
Tree glowered down at the man in the rocking chair. “What’d he do?”
“Came right up here and told me he wasn’t scared of me. Now, I don’t mind a man not being scared of me. I never asked him to be scared of me, did I? But I don’t like it when a man sneers at me.”
“You won’t kill him for a sneer.”
Earp gave a loud bark of laughter. “Hardly-hardly. But I’ll tell you something, it’s the kids you always have to watch. They’re the ones who haven’t got a layer of sense grown onto their hides. At thirty you start counting up the odds, you start recognizing consequences. At twenty you don’t believe a damned thing can ever happen to you. A tough kid is a lot more dangerous than a tough grown-up man. Which is to say I won’t give your brother as much leeway as I’d give you, because I don’t trust him half as far as you. If that kid makes the wrong move in front of me I won’t wait to find out whether he’s bluffing. I state that as a warning between friends, not a threat to scare you. Understand me?”
“Aeah.”
“Then hobble him,” Wyatt Earp said, got up from his chair and went inside.
Tree stayed put, scowling. Across the street, Sheriff McKesson ambled into sight and gave him a courteous look of mild inquisitiveness. Tree yanked his hat down tight and strode away up the street, breaking out into the brass afternoon sunlight with long-legged strides, tramping his shadow into the ground, heading with enraged aimlessness toward the telegraph office, where he knew there would be no message for him.
Eight
“Look at him,” Rafe complained. “Sittin’ up there on that porch like an old lizard lazy in the sun, actin’ like he owned all of Creation. I’d like to bring him down a peg.”
Caroline said, “You couldn’t beat him in a fair fight and you know it. It’s not smart to needle him, Rafe.”
“What the hell am I doing here if I can’t lick him? Hell yes I can lick him. He ain’t so tough. Look at him, he’s half asleep-he’s tired and he’s gettin’ old.”
“He’s thirty-four years old, Rafe.”
“Which means I’m a dozen years faster than he is. Listen, whose side are you on?”
They sat at the window table in a miner’s lunchroom. Empty plates sat before them gathering flies. They had wiped up every last drop of gravy with hunks of stone-ground bread. They had almost no money and they had eaten meagerly the past three days, sleeping outside town underneath their wagon; luckily, the afternoon they had arrived the rain quit.