“Lenny rides with the rustlers too,” Wyatt said. “Him and his brother.”
“Got nothing on Len,” Behan said. “He had no way of knowing. He just traded some horses.”
“And tried to let Luther here get away,” Wyatt said.
“Appreciate your help on this, Wyatt, but I’m the sheriff, and you’re just along to help shoot, you know what I mean.”
Wyatt looked at Virgil, and both men smiled in a way that Behan didn’t understand, though he knew he didn’t like it.
“We’ll take Luther back to Tombstone,” Behan said. “Rest of you can follow on, see if you can’t run down these other fellas.”
“Behan and all his deputies?” Wyatt said.
“Under heavy guard,” Virgil murmured.
“I’m sorry about your wife, Mr. Holliday,” Luther said.
Doc grinned at him. “Kate ain’t my wife,” he said. “She wasn’t on the stage. She didn’t get shot, and if she had, I wouldn’t care.”
King looked as if he, Holliday, had said too much too fast, but Doc was already turning his horse, the shotgun back in the saddle scabbard under his leg. His shoulders shook. It might have been laughter, Wyatt knew. Or he might have been coughing.
Propped against his saddle, Holliday wrote by firelight in a small notebook.
“You writing about our thrilling adventures, Doc?” Wyatt said. “Sell it to one of those magazines in New York City.”
“I’m writing a letter to my cousin,” Holliday said.
“You got a cousin can read?” Morgan said.
“This one can,” Holliday said. “She’s a nun.”
“Goddamn,” Morgan said. “A nun? You a papist, Doc?”
“She is,” Holliday said. “And I don’t want to hear anything about it.”
Morgan shrugged. There was a thin rasp in Holliday’s voice that Morgan recognized. Doc sure did have a hair trigger.
“You telling her about us heroic lawmen?”
Doc snorted.
“I’m telling her that I’ll mail this tomorrow because I’m hauling my sore ass back into Tombstone,” he said, “instead of chasing around in these mountains like a goddamned fool.”
“Quitting, Doc?” Virgil said.
“You’re goddamned right I am,” Doc said. “We ain’t going to catch Billy Leonard or anybody else riding around these mountains. I’m going back and wait for them to show up.”
“He’s right,” Masterson said. “I’m a little saddle sore myself.”
“You’re getting soft, Bat,” Wyatt said.
“I’m getting smart,” Masterson said. “We’re just in the foothills and we’re low on food. You want to wander around out here, until you run out altogether, God bless you. I’m going to get a bath and a hot meal and maybe a whore.”
“We’ll resupply at Joe Hill’s ranch,” Virgil said.
“Resupply my ass,” Holliday said. “Hill’s in with the rustlers as much as Len Redfield.”
“Sure,” Wyatt said. “But he’ll sell us food.”
“I’m going back with Doc,” Masterson said and rolled over in his blankets, with his back to the fire.
“Free country,” Virgil said.
One by one, the posse dropped off to sleep, leaving only Holliday still sitting up by the fire writing in his notebook. The next morning, he and Masterson saddled up right after breakfast and rode their tired horses at an easy pace west toward Tombstone.
Two days later, Johnny Behan, with Billy Breakenridge and Buckskin Frank Leslie to track, caught up with the Earp posse in the valley of the San Simon River near the New Mexico border.
“King busted out,” Breakenridge told them, laughing, while Behan was ahead with Leslie looking for sign. “Henry Jones was drawing up a bill of sale for King’s horse to John Dunbar, and King went out the back door, mounted up and rode away.”
“Who had him?” Virgil asked.
“Harry Woods,” Breakenridge said. “Standing right there.”
“Amazing that Harry didn’t see him go,” Virgil said.
“Amazing,” Breakenridge said.
“Amazing that a horse happened to be saddled out back,” Virgil said.
“Amazing.”
“We’ll be out awhile,” Virgil said. “Somebody ought to go back and look for King.”
He looked at Breakenridge.
“Billy?”
Breakenridge shook his head.
“I’m with Johnny,” he said.
“Why not Johnny?” Morgan said. “He’s the damn sheriff.”
Virgil smiled and shook his head without saying anything.
“Johnny won’t go,” Wyatt said.
“It should be you, Wyatt,” Virgil said. “You’re the best of us anyway.”
Wyatt nodded.
“How long you planning to be out?”
Virgil shrugged.
“A week if we’re lucky, maybe more. See what Johnny says.”
“He’s talking ’bout a week,” Breakenridge said.
“Luther’s got a two-day start on me, three at least by the time I get to Tombstone.”
“What I don’t want,” Virgil said, “is for Luther to be swaggering around town making us look like a bunch of goddamned jackasses.”
Wyatt nodded.
“If he’s around town,” Wyatt said, “I’ll make sure he don’t swagger.”
He and Virgil grinned at each other. Then Wyatt turned his horse and rode slowly away, toward Tombstone, thinking about Josie Marcus. There was nothing new in that. He thought about Josie Marcus most of the time.
“A week,” he said to the chestnut gelding he was riding. The horse’s ears moved slightly. “A goddamned week.”
Wearing a freshly laundered shirt, bathed and clean-shaven and smelling of bay rum, Wyatt knocked on Josie Marcus’s door on a pleasant March evening, just getting dark and lyrical with the sound of desert bird-song.
“Wyatt,” she said.
“Evening, Josie.”
“I thought you were with the posse.”
“Posse’s still out,” Wyatt said. “I came back to see about Luther King.”
Josie smiled.
“He’s not here,” she said.
“Neither is Johnny,” Wyatt said.
“Why, so he isn’t,” she said, and smiled. “May I come in?”
“Yes,” Josie said. “You may.”
She stepped aside and held the door, and he took off his hat and walked into the small living room that looked out onto Third Street.
“Would you like coffee?” she said.
“Yes, please,” Wyatt said.
He waited while she went into the kitchen and made the coffee. The room was silent. Third Street was far enough from the center of town so that there was no street sound, except the occasional sound of a horse going slowly by. There were flowers in a pottery vase on the table by the window.
Josie returned with two cups of coffee in saucers on a small wooden tray. She handed one cup and saucer to Wyatt.
“Won’t you sit?” she said, and nodded toward a straight-backed wooden chair with curved arms and an upholstered back, which must have been freighted in from San Francisco.
He sat, carefully so as not to spill the coffee.
“Have you had any luck finding Luther King?” she asked.
Wyatt smiled.
“Luther’s probably in Mexico by now,” Wyatt said.
“I see. Will you be rejoining the posse?”
Again Wyatt smiled.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think I will.”
“Do you know when they’ll be back?”
“Be out another week for sure,” Wyatt said.
This time it was Josie who smiled.
“Did you really come back to look for Luther King?” Josie said.
“If I’d seen him, I’d have collared him.”
“But you didn’t, and now you’re here,” Josie said. “Did you plan to collar me?”
Wyatt drank coffee, and put the cup back down carefully in the saucer, and looked up at her. His face was serious.
“Well, yes,” he said. “In a manner of speaking.”
There was a little more color in Josie’s face, he thought, and maybe she was breathing a little quicker, but it was hard to see because it was nearly dark out and Josie had not lit a lamp. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she stood and picked up the two cups and saucers and put them on the tray and carried them without a word into the kitchen. He heard her put the tray on the kitchen table. Then she came back into the room, walking quite briskly. He stood, afraid she was going to show him the door, but she didn’t. She walked right up to him and put her body against his and raised her face and said in the softest voice imaginable, “I’ll go peacefully.”