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then," Virgil said, smiling for the first time. He reached across the table, offering his hand. "Welcome to Tombstone,
Johnny Waco!" "You boys want anything?" It was the girl who'd stopped him on the way in. "No thanks, Linda Lou,"
Wyatt said, his eyes glittering. "Maybe later." "Sure thing." Macklin spent the next hour with Holliday and the Earps.
As they talked, though, his mind raised a new and unsettling possibility, one that hadn't occurred to him before. He
was fast. Suppose he was a professional gunfighter? How else could he have come by his skill with a revolver? And
with that thought came another. Sarah thought he was a good man ... but what if he found out that he wasn't a good
man at all? What if he found was a thief, say, or even a killer?
FIVE
THE CLANTON RANCH WAS A FAIR-SIZED COMMUNITY IN ITS own right. There was a big house and several
barns, a number of bunkhouses for the hands and cowboys who rode the range and managed the cattle, and sheds
and storehouses enough to serve a small town. There was even a small telegraph office, not far from the cookhouse,
that let the Clantons keep in touch with the goings-on in Tombstone , and anywhere else they cared to know about. In
fact, the Clanton ranch was one of the biggest and richest in Cochise County. It had been the pride and joy of old
Newman Hayes Clanton, before he'd been gunned down that August in an ambush on the Mexican border. Other
ranchers in the region whispered, though, that the Clantons were a little quick with their branding irons and weren't all
that particular about finding the owners of any strays that happened to wander onto their grazing lands. The younger
two of the three Clanton boys, Ike and nineteen-year-old Billy, weren't all that keen on being ranchers, though, and left
most of the details to their older brother, Phineas. They thought of themselves as cowboys, but they didn't care so
much for the idea of backbreaking
work and long hours on the range. Their favorite pastime was hurrahing Tombstone and Charleston and some of the
other communities in the area ... riding in drunk, getting drunker, and raising holy hell with gunfire, shouts, and
laughter. At any given time there were a number of men on the ranch who had the reputation of being hell-raisers or
worse. Curly Bill Brocius could usually be found hanging out on the Clanton spread, along with Johnny Ringo and
quite a few others with decidedly checkered pasts. Their most lucrative pastime was the forays south across the
border into Sonora, where they raided Mexican ranches of cattle and horses and brought them north for sale.
Sometimes, it seemed like there was a war going on back and forth across the Sonoran border. Of course, some
thought that the ambush hadn't been staged by the Mexicans. There was a war, of sorts, on this side of the border,
too. At the moment, most of the hands and cowboys at the ranch were gathered around the corral near the cookhouse,
cheering and yelling as Ike Clanton took on a half-broke horse. The job of breaking wild, never-ridden horses was one
common to all cowboys in the West, from Montana to the Mexican border. The horse was the one essential of ranch
life and cattle driving-working cowboys needed six to eight mounts apiece, at least, just to handle the grueling work of
round-up and driving-and every outfit kept large strings of horses ready for use. The Clanton ranch was no exception.
Cow ponies were pulled in from among the four-year-old mustangs living wild on the range; though a yearly roundup
of wild horses
was usually held in the spring, the Clantons had brought in a number of scrawny animals during the past couple of
weeks to build up the strings. A professional bronco buster, who traveled the circuit of area ranches breaking ponies
at five dollars a head, had already been through to start the process, but the real work of breaking the animals' spirits
and teaching them to obey their human masters was up to the ranch hands. Ike Clanton, boots planted in the soft earth
of the corral, pulled hard on the reins as the animal before him reared and bucked, trying to throw the unfamiliar weight
of the saddle on its back. Earlier, he'd lassoed the animal with a lariat, then snubbed it close to a hitching post to
saddle and bridle it. Now he had it cross-hobbled, ropes tying its forefeet and one hind leg, which limited most of its
motions to straight up and down, and in tight, lurching circles around the corral, as Clanton pulled it down. The animal
gave a particularly hard lunge back, dragging Clanton forward a step, and the cowboys watching from the corral fence
cheered. God damn it, he would show this animal who was boss! If Ike Clanton didn't care for the drudgery of ranch
work and herding, he liked the excitement of busting broncs, and he definitely liked being the center of attention. All
three Clanton boys, Ike, Phineas, and young Billy, had been raised to enjoy the rough and tumble of ranch life. Their
father had had them breaking cow ponies when they were just squirts, a means, he held, of building character, self-
reliance, and self-respect. Ike enjoyed proving that he was the boss, even when he was proving it to an animal. Tired
out by the hobble, the horse was standing still now, eyes wide and rolling, nostrils flaring as it snorted and heaved.
Slowly, Ike walked his way up the reins, keeping the pressure on. The animal
seemed to have lost most of its fear of people, but it still didn't like that weight on its back. The thing about busting
broncs was that it was a great way of proving your worth to two-legged animals as well as the four-legged variety. A
cowboy who couldn't handle a horse was a pretty poor specimen, and a man's reputation and worth were pegged to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]