Free Bloody Season by Loren D. Estleman Page A

said, “Look out,” and Wyatt kicked a Colt’s Navy out of the man’s hand. Then he kicked him in the face.
    Behan said, “There is no call for that.”
    “Luther, you’re putting on weight.” Wyatt took hold of the bib of the stunned man’s overalls and tore it loose from the buttons. Red-and-white cartridge boxes spilled out. He threw the boxes after the Navy, unbuckled two cartridge belts from around King’s waist and added them to the pile, found a short-barreled Colt’s Thunderer in a duster pocket and got rid of that. King looked a lot less lumpy now. “Luther, what if you fell in the San Pedro? I have saved you from drowning.”
    “Company.” Marshall Williams, one stovepipe-booted leg resting across his pommel, paused in the midst of building a cigarette to loosen his Winchester in its scabbard.
    Behan shielded his eyes and squinted at the rider coming in out of the sun. “It is Len’s brother Hank.”
    Wyatt said, “Bat.”
    Masterson quirted his mount and cantered out to intercept the rider. The other man drew rein and they conversed across ten feet of ground, gesturing. Finally they rode in. Hank was as tall as his brother but not as wide and wore big sad moustaches under the black pinch hat with a Spanish brim.
    Len was sitting on the porch steps now, a hand on his side. His wife had come out and squatted next to him with her skirt in the dust of the yard. She was bareheaded and her skin and dress and tied-back hair were all the same sand color. Her face was long and simian and she had large ears that stuck out.
    Virgil stepped down and told Masterson and Williams to search the outbuildings. “We will have a talk with Luther indoors.”
    Wyatt twisted a hand inside the collar of King’s duster and heaved him to his feet. He had to clutch his overalls with one hand to keep them from sliding down.
    Dismounting, Bob Paul followed the Earps and their prisoner into the house, leaving Behan and Breakenridge to watch the Redfields. Inside the small parlor Wyatt hurled King into a horsehair armchair pinned all over with doilies and antimacassars. An oval-framed picture fell off a wall, cracking the thick glass.
    “You are some bad road agent, Luther,” Wyatt said. “You should seek another line of work, the others too.”
    “I ain’t no road agent.”
    Wyatt backhanded him across the face. The noise was like a pistol shot in the room.
    “Why’d you run, Luther?” Virgil lowered himself onto a davenport that sighed under his weight. Troughs of dust curled up around him and settled on the flowered upholstery.
    “Fthzlwz.” King’s lip was swelling.
    “Talk plain.” Wyatt slapped him again.
    “I thought you was outlaws.” He grimaced out each word. “This country is full of them.”
    “Marsh Williams and Bat have guns to your friends’ heads,” Wyatt said. “They will shoot the woman first and then it is up to you whether Len or Hank gets it next.”
    King said nothing and Wyatt cocked his hand a third time. Virgil interrupted him.
    “You don’t want to be in Yuma with summer coming on.” He sat back with his knees spread and his hands on them and the palm-polished handle of his Army Colt’s turning out past his open greatcoat. “They stick you in a tin box in the sun like a sourdough biscuit and don’t let you out until you are baked down to skin and skeleton.”
    Bob Paul said, “He won’t see Yuma. When Doc Holliday hears about it he will be lucky to see a rope.”
    “Wzdk—” He pinched his torn lip. “What’s Holliday to do with it?”
    “Hell, his woman Kate was riding on that stage. All that hare-assed shooting got her killed. Doc is some taken with that Kate.”
    Wyatt snatched at it. “Three of you stood by the road, stuck up the stage and killed Philpot and Roerig and Kate Fisher. The other one held the horses in the brush. I don’t know which one he was, but whoever he was he is lucky. Dec will run down the others and cut off their wedding-tackles with that