Brian Garfield - Sliphammer

When Tree looked at Wyatt Earp he saw an indolent smile, a slight dip of the head in acknowledgement. Earp murmured, “I like to avoid trouble when I can, Deputy. It’ll be my pleasure if you’d be our guest here as long as you’re in town.”

Tree said, “Why?”

“To avoid any more mistakes like the one Jestro made. If it’s common knowledge you and I are friends, nobody’s going to take potshots at you.” Earp was still smiling, still holding his glance; now Earp added, “Jestro was a fool but he knew how to use a gun. You’ve earned respect from me.”

Warren said, “But don’t let it go to your head, Deputy. We’d as soon-”

“Gentle down, boy,” Wyatt said, his voice a deep, soft basso profundo that rolled effortlessly over Warren’s talk, cutting it off.

Tree watched Earp, half fascinated, half baffled. Earp took a sparing sip of whisky and said mildly, “A lot of the things you’ve heard about me are probably true.”

“How do you know what I’ve heard about you?”

“I’d be a fool not to know my own reputation. I’ve got admirers and I’ve got enemies-it always pays to know both. It’s a mistake to be uninformed. Which is to say, I know your reputation too.”

Tree said, “I didn’t know I had one.”

“A man who’s named after the gun he uses is bound to be a man worth investigating,” Earp said. “You rode scout for fifteen years, served five years under Crook and two under Mackenzie. You’ve killed three white men-four, counting Jestro. You had an Indian wife, Papago, died of smallpox in ‘seventy-six. You’re left-handed and you handle a rifle well at long range, and once you drank Al Sieber under the table.”

Secretly, childishly pleased, Tree kept his face blank, reaching for his drink to mask his confusion. He said, “You probably know what I had for breakfast three Tuesdays ago.”

There followed Earp’s brief grunt of amused acknowledgement. It was neither grudging nor condescending; it was the absent chuckle of a man with other things on his mind. He appeared to be the kind of man who could juggle a dozen unrelated thoughts at the same time-a man whose brain was always busy. His eyes missed nothing; he was probably a fountain of information from petty trivia to matters of vital, if subtle, significance. All of it lurked behind the mask of massive secretiveness with which he held all men at a distance. It would probably be impossible ever to get to know him well; yet he was splendidly. endowed with animal magnetism. His appearance was one of force. A natural leader; a man who set his own standards and made his own rules. All put together, he was larger than life, it couldn’t be denied. As much as anywhere else, it was evident in his choice of a woman. Only a flamboyant stud could control the wildness and vitality in Josie; only a monolithic giant of a man could have attracted her in the first place.

No, Tree thought, he wasn’t disappointed

Earp had begun to speak, but then something stiffened him-the sight of someone at the door. “Heads up,” Earp murmured, and in the spuriously gentle tone of his voice Tree caught the run of ruthlessness: the hint of a core-deep, whetted hardness that Sheriff McKesson must have meant when he’d said Wyatt Earp was capable of swatting a man like a fly.

Tree’s head turned; in the edge of his vision he caught the front door and the men who stood just inside: the group of hard-rock miners he had seen outside on the street arguing. The leader was the narrow man with feral features and pale nervous hands.

Warren Earp said, “Who the hell’s that?”

“Floyd Sparrow,” Reese Cooley muttered in a flat voice. “Stinking dude agitatuh.”

Wayde Cardiff, the baron, twisted his bulk to look. His flinty eyes narrowed. “Those goddamn radicals got a hell of a nerve coming in here.”

Josie Earp said archly, “It’s a free country.”

Wyatt murmured, “Mind your manners,” but he seemed more amused than annoyed. Having alerted the others, he seemed satisfied and no longer interested in the intruders.

The miners had spotted the Earp table; they came forward in a crowded wedge. Their faces were almost comically grim and determined. Little Floyd Sparrow’s mouth was compressed into a thin lipless slash.

Cardiff and Cooley got to their feet, and Tree, seated between them, stood up as well, not wanting to be trapped in an armchair, surrounded by primed men on their feet. Across the table, the three Earps kept their seats. Wyatt Earp’s hand lay near his coat lapel; other than that, if he was at all uneasy he gave no sign of it. He looked sleepy and only casually concerned.

Floyd Sparrow stopped six feet from Wayde Cardiff. The millionaire opened his mouth angrily but Sparrow spoke first, in a high-pitched nasal voice: “We want to talk to you.”

“This ain’t the place.”

Reese Cooley drawled, “You boys drag-gin’ your pickets. This room’s out of bounds to you.”

Tree heard Josie snort. Floyd Sparrow snapped, “We’ll go anyplace we have to go to make you listen. We’ve got grievances-we mean to be heard.” His raspy voice was an unpleasant irritant, perhaps deliberately so; it echoed with the harsh, hurried accents of city slums. Abruptly his mean glance shifted to Tree: “Who’re you?”

Wayde Cardiff growled, “You’re disrupting the peace. This is a private club for gentlemen-take this rabble out of here.”

One of the miners cleared his throat and said, in a singsong Welsh voice, “Rabble, are we?” His fist, raised and poised, was the size of a sledgehammer and appeared just as hard.

Sparrow shook his head. “We came here to talk. If anybody starts violencing, it’ll be them, not us.” He wheeled, jabbing a pale finger toward Cardiff: “We’ve got just and reasonable demands. Either you meet them or you’ve got a miner’s strike on your hands-not just you, Cardiff, but every high-pockets son of a bitch on the Gunnison Slope. That’s the message. You bastard robber barons have exploited us long enough. We mean business.”

“Us?” Cardiff said with soft insinuation. He gave the miners a sardonic look. “Any of you boys ever see this Eastern sewer rat dirty his hands on a pick? Don’t you know when you’re being used?”

Sparrow said quickly, “That’s why they’re here-because you bastards are using them. They’ve had all the contempt and cruelty they’re going to take from you and your kind.”

Cardiff measured him with insulting calm over a long stretch of time that made Sparrow’s hands flutter; Cardiff finally said, “In just ten seconds I’m going to send for the sheriff. You people are trespassing on private property, which is a misdemeanor punishable by thirty days in jail.”

Warren Earp’s voice shot forward from behind Tree: “And if the sheriff wants help he’ll get plenty-from the Earp brothers. You understand what that means?”

In the corner of his eye, Tree saw Wyatt lift a hand casually to silence Warren.

Sparrow went right on talking to Cardiff as if he hadn’t heard: “We’re not afraid of your hired gunmen. Look at these men, Cardiff. You ever take a good hard look at the men you’ve made slaves of? Look at them! Fallon here lost two brothers when your number seven shaft caved in-because you’re too goddamned skinflinted to put proper shoring in those tunnels. Weed here’s got a wife back East and eight kids to support on the stinking sixty dollars a month you pay him to break his back a thousand feet underground in a tunnel that may collapse any day now.”

Cardiff turned without hurry and spoke across the room to a man standing at the bar. He hardly raised his voice. “Leroy, trot yourself on over to Ollie McKesson’s and ask him to come down here. Tell him he’ll need half a dozen sets of handcuffs.”