Free Territory by Emma Bull Page B

Kate. Then he pushed back his chair and left the kitchen.
    Outside the moon was up, full and bright and low in the east. Wyatt was untying his horse from the porch rail. Doc took hold of the reins just below the bit.
    “Do I bandy your wife’s name about?” Doc said. The fire in his chest had grown until he could barely speak above a whisper.
    Wyatt’s back was to the moonlight; Doc couldn’t see his face. “I don’t know. Do you?”
    “If I did, what would I get from you?”
    “I think you know.” From his voice, Wyatt was smiling.
    “Then tell me what you deserve for lying about Kate.”
    A gust of cold wind rattled the scrub around them.
    “You’re not angry because I made use of Kate,” Wyatt said calmly. “Besides, I did her no harm.” He took hold of the reins below Doc’s hand. Doc didn’t let go.
    “I don’t believe you gave a damn about that.”
    Wyatt stepped forward. He occluded the moon, so that the black shape of him was rimmed with silver. The night wind whistled through brush and boards and every opening that might hum with it.
    There was a knife hidden in Doc’s sleeve. He was suddenly conscious of how short a distance lay between it and Wyatt’s body. But he felt helpless, even so.
    “I didn’t give a damn,” Wyatt answered, cold as snow. “If I have to hurt everyone in the world to protect what’s mine, I will do it like a shot. Making Luther King think you were gunning for him is nothing to what I’d do.”
    And Doc realized Wyatt was right. Kate was only an excuse. “I am not your hired killer.”
    “That’s because I don’t need one.” Wyatt drew his reins out of Doc’s fingers, backed his horse, and led him off toward the corral.
    Doc clutched the porch rail and stared out at the silver-and-black landscape. The air felt thin in his lungs, searing as he dragged it in. He’d thought he was the wildfire. Now he knew he was only the tree.

 
     6 
     
    Missin son flavior debac
    No matter how hard Mildred stared at Harry Woods’s handwritten copy, that was what it said. Missing some flavor debacle? It made no sense, and had nothing to do with the story—a short color piece on Papago Indian folklore. Besides, even Harry wasn’t that bad a speller.
    She held the page closer to the lamp over the type case. No help. So much for working late to get ahead of tomorrow’s edition.
    The back door banged, and Mildred looked up hopefully. But it was only Ernesto Pasillo, wrestling a bale of paper from the freight wagon to the storeroom.
    “Ernesto!
¿Momento, por favor?
”
    “Sí, señora,”
he gasped. A thump, and he backed out of the storeroom, dusting himself and eyeing her warily. Ernesto was about sixteen, with strong Indian features that made him look older. But whenever Mildred spoke to him, she could see him regress to half that age. He must have once been under the thumb of an implacable Anglo schoolmarm.
    “Ernesto, I need to go see Harry at the county jail. I’ll only be a minute. Can you keep an eye on things?”
    Mildred heard his sigh of relief. “Yes,
señora.”
He looked back over his shoulder. “The new paper—”
    “Finish that, then sit down and take a load off your feet.” She yanked off her apron. “If anyone expects the office to be open at this hour, he can start his own newspaper.”
    She stuffed Harry’s copy in her handbag, pinned her hat on her head, and bolted out the back door into the lamplit night.
    She had to wait for two ranch wagons, a gig, and a stagecoach before she could cross Fifth Street at the corner of Toughnut. The town’s early arrivals claimed that in ’79 the only time they had to wait to cross a street was duringthe Fourth of July parade. Surely, with this many residents to draw on, a man didn’t have to be both a newspaper editor and undersheriff for the county? It was downright prideful. She’d tell Harry so, right after she told him if he didn’t type his copy, she’d make him set it himself.
    A sunburned,