Read Online Sliphammer by Brian Garfield - Free Book Online Page A

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—”
    â€œGentle 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.”
    â€œHow do you know what I’ve heard about you?”
    â€œI’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.”
    â€œA 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?”
    â€œFloyd 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