Free Territory by Emma Bull Page A

brittle.
    “I’d have lost him in the brush along the creek if it weren’t for Morgan,” Wyatt replied.
    And that established Morgan’s upstanding-citizen bona fides once and for all. Pity no one else in the room would get the joke. A few more years in the company of the Earp family, Doc thought, and he’d be nearly amused to death.
    Doc looked around the crowded room for a chair, or even a moderately out-of-the-way corner to lean in, and found them all occupied. He didn’t much care to hang around, anyway. Wyatt would make sure King told his story as rehearsed. Behan and company would react as appropriate. He could have stayed to watch Marshall Williams sweat, but it wasn’t as much fun when he was expecting it. He shrugged and turned toward the kitchen.
    The little Mexican woman was cleaning up after the impromptu dinner party, scraping and stacking plates. She eyed Doc suspiciously when he came in. She was older than he’d first thought; he’d missed the gray at her temples and the frown lines on her forehead.
    “Excuse me,
señora,”
he said. “But there isn’t room out there to stand with your coat unbuttoned. I hope I’m not in your way.”
    She studied him for long enough that he wondered if she spoke English. Then she said, “You were not here with the others.”
    “No, ma’am. Crowds make me nervous.”
    She raised a heavy black eyebrow at that. “You look hungry.”
    “I do?”
    She nodded. “I will fix you something.”
    “I don’t want to put you to any trouble—”
    Suddenly she smiled. “That is why I do it.”
    This time the smell, when she set the plate before him, woke a coyote in his stomach. A starving one. He swallowed a tender morsel of
chile colorado
and nodded at the woman. “My compliments,
señora.
I would have ridden all the way from Tombstone for this dinner.”
    Unexpectedly, she blushed and giggled. Gracious, didn’t those two bastards ever say thank you?
    He was mopping the plate with a tortilla when Behan came in. He sat down across from Doc and smoothed the thin hair back from his high forehead with both hands. With his hat off, he looked as if he ought to be selling haberdashery in Boston, not trying to keep order in a county that didn’t much want it.
    “Slim chance that we’ll catch up with the rest of the gang, but now at least we know who they are.” He leaned forward and gazed earnestly at Doc. “Wyatt wasn’t quick to give you credit for this, but you should know that I do.”
    “My, you really do want my vote, don’t you?”
    “King wouldn’t have spilled the names of his partners if Wyatt hadn’t told that tale about your Kate. You put him up to that, didn’t you?”
    A tale about Kate. Doc studied the sheriff’s face, but there was nothing in it besides the open goodwill that Behan wore so easily. “I don’t often urge Wyatt to tell tales.”
    “Well, King was scared white as paper when Wyatt said Kate was on that stage, and was killed in the holdup by a stray shot. Until then, he was buttoned up tight.”
    “Was he,” Doc murmured. He should have stayed in the parlor after all. He could imagine the scene: King, surrounded by unsympathetic faces and without the incentive of a gun under his chin, had turned unhelpful. So Wyatt had drawn a different sort of weapon. Doc’s teeth clenched. “Glad I could be of use.”
    Behan rose. Doc looked for calculation or satisfaction in his face and saw nothing. “We’ll stay the night. In the morning Billy and I will take King to town. Wyatt says he’ll stay on the trail.”
    “Of course he will. You have yourself a good night, Sheriff.”
    Anger was like a wildfire in him, the kind that skimmed through the dry grass unnoticed until it met the trees, to explode up the trunks and leap from bough to bough. The Mexican woman picked up his plate. He raised his eyes to her face. She dropped the plate and stepped back.
    “Thank you,” he said, quietly, as he’d said everything since Behan had mentioned