The horses clambered uphill, heaving and beaten. Tree looked at Earp again and found Earp chewing his lip. Earp caught Tree looking at him and straightened up in the saddle with an expression under his mustache that might have been a sullen snarl; Earp said, “Sparrow’s the kind of man who won’t mind shooting the lot of us whether we’ve got our hands tied or not-fish in a rain barrel to him.”
“What do you want me to do?” Tree snapped.
“I know,” Earp said, with imperfect sarcasm “you’ve got your stupid duty to do.”
Caroline, overhearing, let her horse drop back and said angrily to Earp, “Maybe just one time in your miserable life you ought to try pretending the rest of us are almost as good as you are.”
Earp tried to shrug with disdain. “I’m only pointing out the odds to your pigheaded friend. Why should all of you have to die over me?”
Caroline cried, “People are always deliberately choosing to die around you. All the people who absolutely force you to kill them!”
“I didn’t kill your husband,” Earp snapped.
“You did everything but pull the trigger!”
“Nonsense!”
“You could have stopped Cooley,” she said, with scorn.
“You’re babbling,” Earp grunted, and stirred in the saddle, looking back and making a face. “Can’t we speed this up? Or are we going to dawdle and wait for Sparrow to ride right up?” He poked his face toward Tree: “Maybe you made a private arrangement with Sparrow to sell us out?”
Tree tried to keep the anger off his face. Earp’s raucous bleatings were the signs of a man cracking up. Where was the man’s courage? Earp hadn’t once tried to escape-waiting for Cooley, maybe? Or just using his head, appraising the “odds” so coolly? Earp was a poker player-maybe he’d started out with a plan of some kind; but poker was a game in which you lost if you hesitated too long before bluffing. There didn’t seem any getting around the obvious fact that Wyatt Earp was losing his nerve.
Not sure any more, Tree was enraged-enraged more by disillusion and his own uncertainty than by anything else, even Sparrow back there. Everything he had taken for granted seemed to be falling apart. He had, in a strange way, believed in Wyatt Earp; it had been important to him. Now either Earp was folding up, or it was some fantastic trick designed to get Tree off guard.
The thought grenaded into his mind, and he clung to the possibility almost with relief. He realized: he wanted Earp to try to escape.
Then Earp crushed him. Earp said, “Maybe you ought to think what it could mean to you to have the gratitude of men like Wayde Cardiff. I’m offering no bribes but you need to be reminded of reality. Damn it, all I want is a fair chance against those red-eyed sons of bitches down there.” He was brooding back toward Sparrow’s bunch.
“Good God,” Tree said, his voice grating hoarse. “Shut up now, will you?” Shut up before you destroy yourself!
He gigged the tired horse ahead.
The sun went down behind them, a vivid splash of colors across the mountains. The horses were played out; it was an agony of stumbling hoofs and slip-sliding boots, all the riders on foot now, leading the animals. Tree posted himself in the rear, guarding the backtrail. The pass was in sight, clearly silhouetted against the stars as night came down full; and they kept plugging stubbornly toward it until, dropping across a rocky bowl of ground, Tree called forward softly, went past the line, and spoke to Gant: “They can’t see us in this hollow. We’ll turn left and go north through the gully until it peters out.”
“Take us north of the pass,” Gant grumbled.
“Can’t be helped. We’ll go over the north side of the mountain. It may just lose them.”
So they turned, keeping to the concealment of the lateral gully along the flank of the mountain, hoping Sparrow behind them would keep going straight up for the pass. Tree dropped back to the rear. He felt stunned by weariness. His footing was bad, his eyesight played tricks on him. Once up ahead he thought he saw Obie Macklin stooping by a rock, doing something, his knife blade glinting dully. When Tree reached that area he gave the ground a close search and finally found it: a round quartzite stone the size of a hat, with bright, fresh slashes across its top, three parallel straight lines-a signal in private code. Sparrow, knowing what to look for, would spot it immediately. So, there it was. Tree closed his eyes and gathered himself, marshaling strength, and strode forward, dragging the horse, clambering past the rest of them until he caught up with Macklin.
Gant and Macklin were talking in subdued tones; they drew apart when he approached. Everybody halted, without needing instructions. Macklin caught some sign, even in the starlight; he stiffened arid said tentatively, “What’s wrong with you?”
Tree said, “That’s all for both of you. Shuck your gunbelts.”
Gant said, “Huh?” and Macklin at the same time said, “What the hell’s all this?”
Tree shook his head. “Drop those belts and then sit down and take off your boots.” His palm curved over the sliphammer gun. Macklin and Gant looked at each other; then, as if on prearranged signal, they dived in opposite directions, both clawing at their revolvers.
The sliphammer gun fired-once-at Gant’s big shadow, and whipped across toward Macklin. The little man was rolling under the belly of his horse, snapping off a shot. The report of the gun was startling. Muzzle flame lanced forward. The bullet went wide somewhere and Tree fired at the only target visible beyond the horse’s shadow-Macklin’s head. Bone fragments and blood sprayed from the skull. The horse reared, slipped on the loose rocks, and fell on Macklin, crushing his body underneath.
Tree spun, crouching, toward Gant, but Gant hadn’t fired at alclass="underline" clearly Tree’s first one had hit him somewhere. His bodily functions had lost control; there was the sharp stink of human urine and manure coming upwind from Gant. Tree got to him in four strides and found him dying.
Macklin’s horse scrambled for footing and ran in terror, back the way they had come. Gant’s horse wanted to run too but it was joined by rope tether to the prisoners’ horses; it reared and stayed put. Caroline stood back there with the birdhead. 38 in her fist, aimed at Wyatt Earp, who hadn’t moved a muscle after crouching down and whipping Josie flat to the ground.
Tree walked away from Gant, taking a deep breath and letting it out, went past Macklin’s body, and reached for the reins of his horse. “That gunshot will bring them on the run. Get mounted.”
Josie said in a cracked voice, “Dear God. But those-” she was staring at the bodies.
Tree said harshly, “Let Sparrow bury them.” He led his horse over to Wyatt and Josie, glanced at Warren’s shocked face, and said in a bitter, clipped way, ‘They were blazing a trail for Sparrow-Sparrow had to get you out here alone, away from Cooley and the rest of your friends.”
“How long have you known that?”
“I just got proof. Do you want to argue about it or get out of here?”
“Untie my hands first,” said Earp.
“No. I’m not done yet. Now damn it get mounted.” He swung toward Caroline: “You’ll ride Gant’s horse and lead the others.”
She didn’t ask questions; she went to Gant’s horse. The stirrups were far too long for her and she had to ride with her feet dangling. They left the dead men on the ground and went out as fast as the bone-tired horses would move them, curving broadly northeast, then east, then back toward the pass, because there was a chance Sparrow would not double back after finding the bodies. And the pass, now, was the fastest way across.
Fourteen
In the pass, the night wind sliced through Tree as if he were naked. His horse turned a fetlock and went lame; he swapped over to the spare animal but even without a rider the lame horse couldn’t keep up with the slow pace, and he had to unsaddle it and turn it loose. With a game leg it wouldn’t drift far and Sparrow would surely pick it up. Luck had turned all bad; this was just one more thing that couldn’t be helped. Wyatt Earp’s remarks, delivered at intervals, were snappish and bitter. Josie swore in a monotonous voice, going through her limited vocabulary of obscenities and then going through it again. Warren was the silent one; his eyes were shut half the time and he was probably half drugged with sleeplessness, so tired he just didn’t care any more. Of the five of them, only Caroline didn’t seem to have run out of stamina.