The Daybreakers

"I know that, and you know it. The fact remains that these folks want law enforced against killers but without killing. The Mexicans ... they understand the situation better than the Americans. They know that when a man takes a weapon in hand he isn't going to put it down if you hand him a bunch of roses.

Men of violence only understand violence, most times."

Orrin rode into town and for two days I stayed by the place, working around. I cleared rocks using a couple of mules and a stone boat. I dragged the rocks off and piled them where they could be used later in building a stable. Next day I rode into town, and it looked like I'd timed things dead right. There was quite a bunch gathered outside the store Ollie was running and Ollie was on the porch, and for the first time since he came out here he had a gun where you could see it.

"It's getting so a decent person can't live in this country," he was saying.

"What we need is a town marshal that will send these folks packing. Somebody we can trust to do the right thing."

He paused, and there were murmurs of agreement. "Seems to me this could be a fine, decent place to live. Most of the riffraff that cause the trouble came from Las Vegas."

Across the way on the benches I could see some of the Settlement crowd loafing and watching. They weren't worried none, it seemed like it was a laughing matter with them for they'd played top dog so long, here and elsewhere.

I went on into the saloon, and Tom Sunday was there. He glanced at me, looking sour. "I'll buy a drink," I suggested. "And I'll take it."

He downed the one he had and the bartender filled our glasses for us.

"You Sacketts gang up on a man," Tom declared. "Orrin's got half the town working for him. Take that Ollie Shaddock. I thought he was a friend of mine."

"He is, Tom. He likes you. Only Ollie's sort of a cousin of ours and came from the same county back in the mountains. Ollie's been in politics all his life, Tom, and he's been wanting Orrin to have a try at it."

Tom said nothing for a little while, and then he said, "If a man is going to get any place in politics he has to have education. This won't help Orrin a bit."

"He's been studying, Tom."

"Like that fool Pritts girl. All she could see was Orrin. She never even looked at you or me."

"Womenfolks pay me no mind, Tom."

"They sure gave you all their attention in Santa Fe."

"That was different." He needed cheering up, so for the first time I told him--or anybody--of what happened that day. He grinned in spite of himself.

"No wonder. Why, that story would have been all over town within an hour." He chuckled. "Orrin was quite put out."

He tossed off his drink. "Well, if he can make it, more power to him."

"No matter what, Tom," I said, "the four of us should stick together."

He shot me a hard glance and said, "I always liked you, Tye, from the first day you rode up to the outfit. And from that day I knew you were poison mean in a difficulty."

He filled his glass. I wanted to tell him to quit but he was not a man to take advice and particularly from a younger man.

"Why don't you ride back with me?" I suggested. "Cap should be out there, and we could talk it up a little."

"What are you trying to do? Get me out of town so Orrin will have a clear field?"

Maybe I got a little red around the ears. I hadn't thought anything of the kind.

"Tom, yuu know better than that. Only if you want that job, you'd better lay off the whiskey."

"When I want your advice," he said coolly, "I'll ask for it."

"If you feel like it," I said, "ride out. I'm taking Ma out today."

He glanced at me and then he said, "Give her my best regards, Tye. Tell her I hope she will be happy there." And he meant it, too.

Tom was a proud man, but a gentleman, and a hard one to figure. I watched him standing there by the bar and remembered the nights around the campfire when he used to recite poetry and tell us stories from the works of Homer. It gave me a lost and lonely feeling to see trouble building between us, but pride and whiskey are a bad combination, and I figured it was the realization that he might not get the marshal's job that was bothering him.

"Come out, Tom, Ma will want to see you. We've talked of you so much."

He turned abruptly and walked out the door, leaving me standing there. On the porch he paused. Some of the settlement gang were gathered around, maybe six or eight of them, the Durango Kid and Billy Mullin right out in front. And the Durango Kid sort of figured himself as a gunman.

More than anything I wanted Tom Sunday to go home and sleep it off or to ride out to our place. I knew he was on edge, in a surly mood, and Tom could be hard to get along with.

Funny thing. Ollie had worked hard to prepare the ground work all right, and Orrin had a taking way with people, and the gift of blarney if a man ever had it. It was a funny thing that with all of that, it was Tom Sunday who elected Orrin to the marshal's job.

He did it that day there in the street. He did it right then, walking out of that door onto the porch. He was a proud and angry man, and he had a few drinks under him, and he walked right out of the door and faced the Durango Kid.

It might have been anybody. Most folks would have avoided him when he was like that, but the Kid was hunting notches for his gun. He was a lean, narrow-shouldered man of twenty-one who had a reputation for having killed three or four men up Colorado way. It was talked around that he had rustled some cows and stolen a few horses and in the Settlement outfit he was second only to Fetterson.

Anything might have happened and Tom Sunday might have gone by, but the Durango Kid saw he had been drinking and figured he had an edge. He didn't know Tom Sunday like I did.

"He wants to be marshal, Billy," the Durango Kid said it just loud enough, "I'd like to see that."

Tom Sunday faced him. Like I said, Tom was tall, and he was a handsome man, and drinking or not, he walked straight and stood straight. Tom had been an officer in the Army at one time, and that was how he looked now.

"If I become marshal," he spoke coolly, distinctly, "I shall begin by arresting you. I know you are a thief and a murderer. I shall arrest you for the murder of Martin Abreu."

How Tom knew that, I don't know, but a man needed no more than a look at the Kid's face to know Tom had called it right.

"You're a liar!" the Kid yelled. He grabbed for his gun.

It cleared leather, but the Durango Kid was dead when it cleared. The range was not over a dozen feet and Tom Sunday--I'd never really seen him draw before--had three bullets into the Kid with one rolling sound.

The Kid was smashed back. He staggered against the water trough and fell, hitting the edge and falling into the street. Billy Mullin turned sharply. He didn't reach for a gun, but Tom Sunday was a deadly man when drinking. That sharp movement of Billy's cost him, because Tom saw it out of the tail of his eye and he turned and shot Billy in the belly.

I'm not saying I mightn't have done the same. I don't think I would have, but a move like that at a time like that from a man known to be an enemy of Tom's and a friend to the Kid ... well, Tom shot him.

That crowd across the street saw it. Ollie saw it. Tom Sunday killed the Durango Kid, and Billy Mullin was in bed for a couple of months and was never the same man again after that gunshot ... but Tom Sunday shot himself right out of consideration as a possible marshal.

The killing of the Kid ... well, they all knew the Kid had it coming, but the shooting of Billy Mullin, thief and everything else that he was, was so offhand that it turned even Tom's friends against him.

It shouldn't have. There probably wasn't a man across the street who mightn't have done the same thing. It was a friend of Tom's who turned his back on him that day and said, "Let's talk to Orrin Sackett about that job."

Tom Sunday heard it, and he thumbed shells into his gun and walked down the middle of the street toward the house where he'd been sharing with Orrin, Cap, and me when we were in Mora.

And that night, Tom Sunday rode away.

Chapter XII

Come Sunday we drove around to the house where Ma was living with the two boys and we helped her out to the buckboard. Ma was all slicked out in her Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes--which meant she was dressed in black--and all set to see her new home for the first time.

Orrin, he sat in the seat alongside her to drive, and Bob and Joe, both mounted up on Indian ponies, they brought up the rear. Cap and me, we led off.

Cap didn't say much, but I think he had a deep feeling about what we were doing.

He knew how much Orrin and me had planned for this day, and how hard we had worked. Behind that rasping voice and cold way of his I think there was a lot of sentiment in Cap, although a body would never know it.

It was a mighty exciting thing at that, and we were glad the time of year was right, for the trees were green, and the meadows green, and the cattle feeding there ... well, it looked mighty fine. And it was a good deal better house than Ma had ever lived in before.

We started down the valley, and we were all dressed for the occasion, each of us in black broadcloth, even Cap. Ollie was going to be there, and a couple of other friends, for we'd sort of figured to make it a housewarming.

The only shadow on the day was the fact that Tom Sunday wasn't there, and we wished he was ... all of us wished it. Tom had been one of us so long, and if Orrin and me were going to amount to something, part of the credit had to be Tom's, because he took time to teach us things, and especially me.

When we drove up through the trees, after dipping through the river, we came into our own yard and right away we saw there were folks all around, there must have been fifty people.

The first person I saw was Don Luis, and beside him, Drusilla, looking more Irish today than Spanish. My eyes met hers across the heads of the crowd and for an instant there we were together like we had never been, and I longed to ride to her and claim her for my own.

Juan Torres was there, and Pete Romero, and Miguel. Miguel was looking a little pale around the gills yet, but he was on his own feet and looked great. There was a meal all spread out, and music started up, and folks started dancing a fandango or whatever they call it, and Ma just sat there and cried. Orrin, he put his arm around her and we drove all the rest of the way into the yard that way, and Don Luis stepped up and offered Ma his hand, and mister, it did us proud to see her take his hand and step down, and you'd have thought she was the grandest lady ever, and not just a mountain woman from the hills back of nowhere.

Don Luis escorted her to a chair like she was a queen, and the chair was her own old rocker, and then Don Luis spread a serape across her knees, and Ma was home.

It was quite a shindig. There was a grand meal, with a whole steer barbecued, and three or four javelinas, plenty of roasting ears, and all a man could want.

There was a little wine but no drinking liquor. That was because of Ma, and because we wanted it to be nice for her.

Vicente Romero himself, he was there, and a couple of times I saw Chico Cruz in the crowd. Everybody was having themselves a time when a horse splashed through the creek and Tom Sunday rode into the yard. He sat his horse looking around, and then Orrin saw him and Orrin walked over.

"Glad you could make it, Tom. It wouldn't have been right without you. Get down and step up to the table, but first come and speak to Ma. She's been asking for you."

That was all. No words, no explanations. Orrin was that way, though. He was a big man in more ways than one, and he liked Tom, and had wanted him there.

We had a fiddle going for the dancing, and Orrin took his old gee-tar and sang up some songs, and Juan Torres sang, and we had us a time. And I danced with Dru.

When I went up to her and asked her to dance, she looked right into my eyes and accepted, and then for a minute or two we danced together and we didn't say much until pausing for a bit when I looked at her and said, "I could dance like this forever ... with you."

She looked at me and said, her eyes sparkling a little, "I think you'd get very hungry!"

Ollie was there and he talked to Don Luis, and he talked to Torres, and he got Torres and Jim Carpenter together, and got them both with Al Brooks. They talked it over, and Torres said the Mexicans would support Orrin, and right then and there, Orrin got the appointment.

Orrin, he walked over to me and we shook hands. "We did it, Tyrel," Orrin said, "we did it. Ma's got herself a home and the boys will have a better chance out here."

"Without guns, I hope."

Orrin looked at me. "I hope so, too. Times are changing, Tyrel."

The evening passed and folks packed into their rigs or got back into the saddle and everybody went home, and Ma went inside and saw her house.

We'd bought things, the sort of things Ma would like, and some we'd heard her speak of. An old grandfather's clock, a real dresser, some fine tables and chairs, and a big old four-poster bed. The house only had three rooms, but there would be more--and we boys had slept out so much we weren't fit for a house, anyway.

I walked to her carriage with Dru, and we stood there by the wheel. "I've been happy today," I told her.

"You have brought your mother home," she said. "It is a good thing. My grandfather admires you very much, Tye. He says you are a thoughtful son and a good man."

Watching Dru drive away in that carriage it made me think of money again. It's a high card in a man's hand when he goes courting if he has money, and I had none of that. True, the place we had, belonged to Orrin and me but there was more to it than that. Land wasn't of much value those days nor even cattle. And cash money was almighty scarce.

Orrin was going to be busy, so the money question was my chore.

Orrin, he worked hard studying Blackstone. From somewhere he got a book by Montaigne and he read Plutarch's Lives, and subscribed to a couple of eastern papers, and he read all the political news he could find, and he rode around and talked to folks or listened to them tell about their troubles. Orrin was a good listener who was always ready to give a man a hand at whatever he was doing.

That was after. That was after the first big night when Orrin showed folks who was marshal of Mora. That was the night he took over, the night he laid down the law. And believe you me, when Orrin takes a-hold, he takes a-hold.

At sundown, Orrin came up the street wearing the badge, and the Settlement men were around, taking their time to look him over. Having a marshal was a new thing in town and to the Settlement outfit it was a good joke. They just wanted to see him move around so they could decide where to lay hold of him.

The first thing Orrin done was walk through the saloon to the back door and on the inside of the back door he tacked up a notice. Now that notice was in plain sight and what was printed there was in both Spanish and English.

No gun shall be drawn or fired within the town limits.

No brawling, fighting or boisterous conduct will be tolerated.

Drunks will be thrown in jail.

Repeat offenders will be asked to leave town.

No citizen will be molested in any way.

Racing horses or riding steers in the street is prohibited.

Every resident or visitor will be expected to show visible means of support on demand.

That last rule was pointed right at the riffraff which hung around the streets, molesting citizens, picking fights, and making a nuisance of themselves. They were a bad lot.

Bully Ben Baker had been a keel-boat man on the Missouri and the Platte and was a noted brawler. He was several inches taller than Orrin, weighed two hundred and forty pounds, and Bully Ben decided to find what the new marshal was made of.

Bully Ben wasted no time. He walked over to the notice, read it aloud, then ripped it from the door. Orrin got to his feet.

Ben reached around, grinning cheerfully, and took a bottle from the bar, gripping it by the neck. Orrin ignored him, picked up the notice and replaced it on the door, and then he turned around and hit Ben Baker in the belly.

When Orrin had gone by him and replaced the notice, Bully Ben had waited to see what would happen. He had lowered his bottle, for he was a man accustomed to lots of rough talk before fighting, and Orrin's punch caught him off guard right in the pit of the stomach and he gasped for breath, his knees buckling.

Coolly, Orrin hit him a chopping blow to the chin that dropped Ben to his knees.

The unexpected attack was the sort of thing Ben himself had often done but he was not expecting it from Orrin.

Ben came up with a lunge, swinging his bottle and I could have told him he was a fool. Blocking the descending blow with his left forearm, Orrin chopped that left fist down to Ben's jaw. Deliberately then, he grabbed the bigger man and threw him with a rolling hip-lock. Ben landed heavily and Orrin stood back waiting for him to get up.

All this time Orrin had acted mighty casual, like he wasn't much interested. He was just giving Bully Ben a whipping without half trying. Ben was mighty shook up and he was astonished too. The blood was dripping from a cut on his jawbone and he was stunned, but he started to get up.

Orrin let him get up and when Ben threw a punch, Orrin grabbed his wrist and threw him over his shoulder with a flying mare. This time Baker got up more slowly, for he was a heavy man and he had hit hard. Orrin waited until he was halfway to his feet and promptly knocked him down.

Ben sat on the floor staring up at Orrin. "You're a fighter," he said, "you pack a wallop in those fists."

The average man in those years knew little of fist-fighting. Men in those days, except such types as Bully Ben, never thought of fighting with anything other than a gun. Ben had won his fights because he was a big man, powerful, and had acquired a rough skill on the river boats. Pa had taught us and taught us well.

He was skilled at Cornish-style wrestling and he'd learned fist-fighting from a bare-knuckle boxer he'd met in his travels.

Ben was a mighty confused man. His strength was turned against him, and everything he did, Orrin had an answer for. On a cooler night Orrin would never have worked up a sweat.

"You had enough?" Orrin asked.

"Not yet," Ben said, and got up.

Now that was a mighty foolish thing, a sadly foolish thing, because until now, Orrin had been teaching him. Now Orrin quit fooling. As Ben Baker straightened up, Orrin hit him in the face with both fists before Ben could get set. Baker made an effort to rush and holding him with his left, Orrin smashed three wicked blows to his belly, then pushed Ben off and broke his nose with an overhand right. Ben backed up and sat down and Orrin grabbed him by the hair and picking him off the floor proceeded to smash three or four blows into his face, then Orrin picked Ben up, shoved him against the bar and said, "Give him a drink." He tossed a coin on the bar and walked out. Looked to me like Orrin was in charge.

After that there was less trouble than a man would expect. Drunks Orrin threw in jail and in the morning he turned them out.

Orrin was quick, quiet, and he wasted no time talking. By the end of the week he had jailed two men for firing guns in the town limits and each had been fined twenty-five dollars and costs. Both had been among the crowd at Pawnee Rock and Orrin told them to get out of town or go to work.

Bob and me rode down to Ruidoso with Cap Rountree and picked up a herd of cattle I'd bought for the ranch, nigh onto a hundred head.

Ollie Shaddock hired a girl to work in his store and he devoted much of his time to talking about Orrin. He went down to Santa Fe, over to Cimarron and Elizabethtown, always on business, but each time he managed to say a few words here and there about Orrin, each time mentioning him for the legislature.

After a month of being marshal in Mora there had been no killings, only one knifing, and the Settlement crowd had mostly moved over to Elizabethtown or to Las Vegas. Folks were talking about Orrin all the way down to Socorro and Silver City.

On the Grant there had been another killing. A cousin of Abreu's had been shot ... from the back. Two of the Mexican hands had quit to go back to Mexico.

Chico Cruz had killed a man in Las Vegas. One of the Settlement crowd. Jonathan Pritts came up to Mora with his daughter and he bought a house there.

It was two weeks after our housewarming before I got a chance to go see Dru. She was at the door to meet me and took me in to see her grandfather. He looked mighty frail, lying there in bed.

"It is good to see you, senor," he said, almost whispering. "How is your ranch?"

He listened while I told him about it and nodded his head thoughtfully. We had three thousand acres of graze, and it was well-watered. A small ranch by most accounts.

"It is not enough," he said, at last, "to own property in these days. One must be strong enough to keep it. If one is not strong, then there is no hope."

"You'll be on your feet again in no time," I said.

He smiled at me, and from the way he smiled, he knew I was trying to make him feel good. Fact was, right at that time I wouldn't have bet that he'd live out the month.

Jonathan Pritts, he told me, was demanding a new survey of the Grant, claiming that the boundaries of the Grant were much smaller than the land the don claimed. It was a new way of getting at him and a troublesome one, for those old Grants were bounded by this peak or that ridge or some other peak, and the way they were written up a man could just about pick his own ridges and his own peak. If Pritts could get bis own surveyor appointed they would survey Don Luis right out of his ranch, his home, and everything.

"There is going to be serious trouble," he said at last. "I shall send Drusilla to Mexico to visit until it is over."

Something seemed to go out of me right then. If she went to Mexico she would never come back because the don was not going to win his fight. Jonathan Pritts had no qualms, and would stop at nothing.

I sat there with my hat in my hand wishing I could say something, but what did I have to offer a girl like Drusilla? I was nigh to broke. Right then I was wondering what we could do for operating expenses, and it was no time to talk marriage to a girl, even if she would listen to me, when that girl was used to more than I could ever give her.

At last the don reached for my hand, but his grip was feeble. "Senor, you are like a son to me. We have seen too little of you, Drusilla and I, but I have found much in you to respect, and to love. I am afraid, senor, that I have not long, and I am the last of my family. Only Drusilla is left. If there is anything you can do, senor, to help her ... take care of her, senor."

"Don Luis, I'd like ... I mean ... I don't have any money, Don Luis. Right now I'm broke. I must get money to keep my ranch working."

"There are other things, my son. You have strength, and you have youth, and those are needed now. If I had the strength ..."

Drusilla and I sat at the table together in the large room, and the Indian woman served us. Looking down the table at her my heart went out to her, I wanted her so. Yet what could I do? Always there was something that stood between us.

"Don Luis tells me you are going to Mexico?"

"He wishes it. There is trouble here, Tye."

"What about Juan Torres?"

"He is not the same ... something has happened to him, and I believe he is afraid now."

Chico Cruz ...

"I will miss you."

"I do not want to go, but what my grandfather tells me to do, I must do. I am worried for him, but if I go perhaps he will do what must be done."

"Any way I can help?"

"No!" She said it so quickly and sharply that I knew what she meant. What had to be done we both knew: Chico Cruz must be discharged, fired, sent away. But Dru was not thinking of the necessity, she was thinking of me, and she was afraid for me.

Chico Cruz ...

We knew each other, that one and I, and we each had a feeling about the other.

If this had to be done, then I would do it myself. There was no hope that the Don would recover in time, for we both knew that when we parted tonight we might not meet again. Don Luis did not have the strength, and his recovery would take weeks, or even months.

What was happening here I understood. Torres was afraid of Cruz and the others knew it, so their obedience was half-hearted. There was no leader here, and it was nothing Cruz had done or needed to do. I doubted if he had thought of it ... it was simply the evil in him and his willingness to kill.

Whatever was to be done must be done now, at once, so as we ate and talked I was thinking it out. This was nothing for Orrin, Cap, or anyone but me, and I must do it tonight. I must do it before this went any further. Perhaps then she would stay, for I knew that if she ever left I would never see her again.

At the door I took her hand ... it was the first time I had found courage to do it. "Dru ... do not worry. I will come to see you again." Suddenly, I said what I had been thinking. "Dru ... I love you."

And then I walked swiftly away, my heels clicking on the pavement as I crossed the court. But I did not go to my horse, but to the room of Juan Torres.

It seemed strange that a man could change so in three years since we had met.

Three years? He had changed in months. And I knew that Cruz had done this, not by threats, not by warnings, just by the constant pressure of his being here.

"Juan ... ?"

"Senor?"

"Come with me. We are going to fire Chico Cruz."

He sat very still behind the table and looked at me, and then he got up slowly.

"You think he will go?"

He looked at me, his eyes searching mine. And I told him what I felt. "I do not care whether he goes or stays."

We walked together to the room of Antonio Baca. He was playing cards with Pete Romero and some others.

We paused outside and I said, "We will start here. You tell him."

Juan hesitated only a minute, and then he stepped into the room and I followed.

"Baca, you will saddle your horse and you will leave ... do not come back."

Baca looked at him, and then he looked at me, and I said, "You heard what Torres said. You tried it once in the dark when my back was turned. If you try it now you will not be so lucky."

He put his cards into a neat, compact pile, and for the first time he seemed at a loss. Then he said, "I will talk to Chico."

"We will talk to Chico. You will go." Taking out my watch, I said, "Torres has told you. You have five minutes."

We turned and went down the row of rooms and stopped before one that was in the dark. Torres struck a light and lit a lantern. He held the light up to the window and I stepped into the door.

Chico Cruz had been sitting there in the darkness. Torres said, "We don't need you any longer, Chico, you can go ... now."

He looked at Torres from his dark, steady eyes and then at me.

"There is trouble here," I said, "and you do not make it easier."

"You are to make me go?" His eyes studied me carefully.

"It will not be necessary. You will go."

His left hand and arm were on the table, toying with a .44 cartridge. His right hand was in his lap.

"I said one day that we would meet."

"That's fool talk. Juan has said you are through. There is no job for you here, and the quarters are needed."

"I like it here."

"You will like it elsewhere." Torres spoke sharply. His courage was returning.

"You will go now ... tonight."

Cruz ignored him. His dark, steady eyes were on me. "I think I shall kill you, senor."

"That's fool talk," I said casually and swung my boot up in a swift, hard kick at the near edge of the table. It flipped up and he sprang back to avoid it and tripped, falling back to the floor. Before he could grasp a gun I kicked his hand away, then grabbed him quickly by the shirt and jerked him up from the floor, taking his gun and dropping him in one swift moment.

He knew I was a man who used a gun and he expected that, but I did not want to shoot him. He clung to his wrist and stared at me, his eyes unblinking like those of a rattler.

"I told you, Cruz."

Torres walked to the bunk and began stuffing Chico's clothes into his saddlebags, and rolling his bedroll. Chico still clung to his wrist.

"If I go they will attack the hacienda," Cruz said, "is that what you want?"

"It is not. But we will risk it. We cannot risk you being here, Chico. There is an evil that comes with you."

"And not with you?" He stared at me.

"Perhaps ... anyway, I shall not be here."

We heard the sound of a horse outside, and glanced out to see Pete Romero leading Chico's horse.

Chico walked to the door and he looked at me. "What of my gun?" he said, and swung into the saddle.

"You may need it," I said, "and I would not want you without it."

So I handed him the gun, nor did I take the shells from it. He opened the loading gate and flipped the cylinder curiously, and then he looked at me and held the gun in his palm, his face expressionless.

For several seconds we remained like that, and I don't know what he was thinking. He had reason to hate me, reason to kill me, but he held the gun in his hand and looked down at me, and my own gun remained in its holster.

He turned his horse. "I think we will never meet," he said, "I like you, senor."

Juan Torres and I stood there until we could hear the gallop of his horse no longer.

Chapter XIII

Jonathan Pritts had brought with him an instrument more dangerous than any gun.

He brought a printing press.

In a country hungry for news and with a scarcity of reading material, the newspaper was going to be read, and people believe whatever they read must be true--or it would not be in print.

Most folks don't stop to think that the writer of a book or the publisher of a newspaper may have his own axe to grind, or he may be influenced by others, or may not be in possession of all the information on the subject of which he writes.

Don Luis had known about Pritts' printing press before anybody else, and that was one reason he wanted his granddaughter out of the country, for a paper can be used to stir people up. And things were not like they had been.

Don Luis sent for me again, and made a deal to sell me four thousand acres of his range that joined to mine. The idea was his, and he sold it to me on my note.

"It is enough, senor. You are a man of your word, and you can use the range." He was sitting up that day. He smiled at me. "Moreover, senor, it will be a piece of land they cannot take from me, and they will not try to take it from you."

At the same time, I bought, also on my note, three hundred head of young stuff.

In both cases the notes were made payable to Drusilla. The don was worried, and he was also smart. It was plain that he could expect nothing but trouble. Defeat had angered Jonathan Pritts, and he would never quit until he had destroyed the don or been destroyed himself.

His Settlement crowd had shifted their base to Las Vegas although some of them were around Elizabethtown and Cimarron, and causing trouble in both places. But the don was playing it smart ... land and cattle sold to me they would not try to take, and he felt sure I'd make good, and so Drusilla would have that much at least coming to her.

These days I saw mighty little of Orrin. Altogether we had a thousand or so head on the place now, mostly young stuff that would grow into money. The way I figured, I wasn't going to sell anything for another three years, and by that time I would be in a position to make some money.

Orrin, the boys, and me, we talked it over. We had no idea of running the big herds some men were handling, or trying to hold big pieces of land. All the land I used I wanted title to, and I figured it would be best to run only a few cattle, keep from overgrazing the grass, and sell fat cattle. We had already found out we could get premium prices for cattle that were in good shape.

Drusilla was gone.

The don was a little better, but there was more trouble. Squatters had moved into a valley on the east side of his property and there was trouble. Pritts jumped in with his newspaper and made a lot more of the trouble than there had been.

Then Orrin was made sheriff of the county, and he asked Tom to become a deputy.

Now we had a going ranch and everything was in hand. We needed money, and if I ever expected to make anything of myself it was time I had at it. There was nothing to do about the ranch that the boys could not do, but I had notes to Don Luis to pay and it was time I started raising some money.

Cap Rountree rode out to the ranch. He got down from his horse and sat down on the step beside me. "Cap," I said, "you ever been to Montana?"

"Uh-huh. Good country, lots of grass, lots of mountains, lots of Indians, mighty few folks. Except around Virginia City. They've got a gold strike up there."

"That happened some years back."

"Still working." He gave me a shrewd look out of those old eyes. "You gettin' the itch, too?"

"Need money. We're in debt, Cap, and I never liked being beholden to anybody.

Seems to me we might strike out north and see what we can find. You want to come along?"

"Might's well. I'm gettin' the fidgets here."

So we rode over to see Tom Sunday. Tom was drinking more than a man should. He had bought a ranch for himself about ten miles from us. He had him some good grass, a fair house, but it was a rawhide outfit, generally speaking, and not at all like Tom was who was a first-rate cattleman.

"I'll stay here," he told me finally. "Orrin offered me a job as deputy sheriff, but I'm not taking it. I think I'll run for sheriff myself, next election."

"Orrin would like to have you," I said. "It's hard to get good men."

"Hell," Tom said harshly, "he should be working for me. By rights that should be my job."

"Maybe. You had a chance at it."

He sat down at the table and stared moodily out the window.

Cap got to his feet. "Might's well come along," he said, "if you don't find any gold you'll still see some fine country."

"Thanks," he said, "I'll stay here."

We mounted up and Tom put a hand on my saddle. "Tye," he said, "I've got nothing against you. You're a good man."

"So's Orrin, Tom, and he likes you."

He ignored it. "Have a good time. If you get in trouble, write me and I'll come up and pull you out of it."

"Thanks. And if you get in trouble, you send for us."

He was still standing there on the steps when we rode away, and I looked back when I could barely make him out, but he was still standing there.

"Long as I've known him, Cap," I said, "that was the first time I ever saw Tom Sunday without a shave."

Cap glanced at me out of those cold, still eyes. "He'd cleaned his gun," he said. "He didn't forget that."

The aspen were like clusters of golden candles on the green hills, and we rode north into a changing world. "Within two weeks we'll be freezin' our ears off,"

Cap commented.

Nonetheless, his eyes were keen and sharp and Cap sniffed the breeze each morning like a buffalo-hunting wolf. He was a new man, and so was I. Maybe this was what I was bred for, roaming the wild country, living off it, and moving on.

In Durango we hired out and worked two weeks on a roundup crew, gathering cattle, roping and branding calves. Then we drifted west into the Abajo Mountains, sometimes called the Blues. It was a mighty big country, two-thirds of it standing on edge, seemed like. We rode through country that looked like hell with the fires out, and we camped at night among the cool pines.

Our tiny fire was the only light in a vast world of darkness, for any way we looked there was nothing but night and the stars. The smell of coffee was good, and the smell of fresh wood burning. We hadn't seen a rider for three days when we camped among the pines up there in the Blues, and we hadn't seen a track in almost as long. Excepting deer tracks, cat or bear tracks.

Out of Pioche I got a job riding shotgun for a stage line with Cap Rountree handling the ribbons. We stayed with it two months.

Only one holdup was attempted while I rode shotgun because it seemed I was a talked-about man. That one holdup didn't pan out for them became I dropped off the stage and shot the gun out of one of the outlaw's hands--it was an accident, as my foot slipped on a rock and spoiled my aim--and put two holes in the other one.

We took them back into town, and the shot one lived. He lived but he didn't learn ... six months later they caught him stealing a horse and hung him to the frame over the nearest ranch gate.

At South Pass City we holed up to wait out a storm and I read in a newspaper how Orrin was running for the state legislature, and well spoken of. Orrin was young but it was a time for young men, and he was as old as Alexander Hamilton in 1776, and older than William Pitt when he was chancellor in England. As old as Napoleon when he completed his Italian campaign.

I'd come across a book by Jomini on Napoleon, and another by Vegetius on the tactics of the Roman legions. Most of the time I read penny dreadfuls as they were all a body could find, except once in a while those paper-bound classics given away by the Bull Durham company for coupons they enclosed. A man could find those all over the west, and many a cowhand had read all three hundred and sixty of them.

We camped along mountain streams, we fished, we hunted, we survived. Here and yonder we had a brush with Indians. One time we outran a bunch of Blackfeet, another time had a set-to with some Sioux. I got a nicked ear out of that one and Cap lost a horse, so we came into Laramie astride Montana horse, the both of us riding him.

Spring was coming and we rode north with the changing weather and staked a claim on a creek in Idaho, but nothing contented me any more. We had made our living, but little more than that. We'd taken a bunch of furs and sold out well, and I'd made a payment to Don Luis and sent some money home.

There was a two-by-four town near where we staked our claim. I mean, there was no town but a cluster of shacks and a saloon called the Rose-Marie. A big man with a square red face, sandy-red hair and small blue eyes ran the place. He laid his thick hands on the bar and you saw the scars of old fist fights there, and those little eyes studied you cruel ... like he was figuring how much you'd be worth to him.

"What'll you have, gents? Something to cut the dust?"

"Out of that bottle in the cabinet," I said, as I'd seen him take a drink out of it himself. "We'll have a shot of that bourbon."

"I can recommend the barrel whiskey."

"I bet you can. Give it to us from the bottle."

"My own whiskey. I don't usually sell it."

There were two men sitting at a back table and they were sizing us up. One thing I'd noticed about those men. They got their service without paying. I had a hunch they worked for the firm, and if they did, what did they do?

"My name is Brady," the red-haired man said, "Martin Brady."

"Good," I said, "a man should have a name." We put our money on the bar and turned to go. "You keep that bottle handy. We tried that river whiskey before."

After three days we had only a spot or two of color. Straightening up from my pick I said, "Cap, the way I hear it we should have a burro, and when the burro strays, we follow him, and when we find that burro he's pawing pay dirt right out of the ground, or you pick up a chunk to chunk at the burro and it turns out to be pure-dee gold."

"Don't you believe all you hear." He pushed his hat back. "I been lookin' the ground over. Over there," he indicated what looked like an old stream bed, "that crick flowed for centuries. If there's gold in the crick there's more of it under that bench there."

Up on the bench we cut timber and built a flume to carry water and a sluice box.

Placer mining isn't just a matter of scooping up sand and washing it out in a pan. The amount of gold a man can get that way is mighty little, and most places he can do as well punching cows or riding shotgun on a stage.

The thing to do is locate some color and then choose a likely spot like this bench and sink a shaft down to bedrock, panning out that gravel that comes off the bedrock, working down to get all the cracks and to peel off any loose slabs and work the gravel gathered beneath them. Gold is heavy, and over the years it works deeper and deeper through loose earth or gravel until it reaches bedrock and can go no further.

When we started to get down beyond six feet we commenced getting some good color, and we worked all the ground we removed from there on down. Of a night I'd often sit up late reading whatever came to hand, and gradually I was learning a good bit about a lot of things.

On the next claim there was a man named Clark who loaned me several books. Most of the reading a man could get was pretty good stuff ... nobody wanted to carry anything else that far.

Clark came to our fire one night. "Cap, you make the best sourdough bread I ever ate. I'm going to miss it."

"You taking out?"

"She's deep enough, Cap, I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm going back to the States, to my wife and family. I worked in a store for six, seven years and always wanted one of my own."

"You be careful," Cap said.

Clark glanced around, then lowered his voice. "Have you heard those yarns, too?

About the killings?"

"They found Wilton's body last week," I said, "he'd been buried in a shallow grave but the coyotes dug him out."

"I knew him." Clark accepted another plate of beans and beef and then he said, "I believe those stories. Wilton was carrying a heavy poke, and he wasn't a man to talk it around."

He forked up some more beans, then paused. "Sackett, you've been talked up as a man who's good with a gun."

"It's exaggerated."

"If you'll ride out with me I'll pay you a hundred dollars each."

"That's good money, but what about our claim?"

"This means everything to me, boys. I talked to Dickey and Wells, and they're reliable men who will watch your claim."

Cap lit up his pipe and I poured coffee for all of us. Clark just wasn't a-woofin'. Most of the miners who gambled their money away at the Rose-Marie in town had no trouble leaving. It was only those who tried to leave with their money. At least three were sitting a-top some fat pokes of gold wondering how to get out alive and still keep what they'd worked for.

"Clark," I said, "Cap and me, we need the money. We'd help even if you couldn't afford to pay."

"Believe me, it's worth it."

So I got up off the ground. "Cap, I'll just go in and have a little talk with Martin Brady."

Clark got up. "You're crazy!"

"Why, I wouldn't want him to think us deceitful, Clark, so I'll just go tell him we're riding out tomorrow. I'll also tell him what will happen if anybody bothers us."

There were thirty or forty men in the Rose-Marie when I came in. Brady came to me, drying his big hands on his apron. "We're fresh out of bourbon," he said, "you'll have to take bar whiskey."

"I just came to tell you Jim Clark is riding out of the country tomorrow and he's taking all that gold he didn't spend in here."

You could have heard a pin drop. When I spoke those words I said them out loud so everybody could hear. Brady's cigar rolled between his teeth and he got white around the eyes, but I had an eye on the two loafers at the end of the bar.

"Why tell me?" He didn't know what was coming but he knew he wouldn't like it.

"Somebody might think Clark was going alone," I said "and they might try to kill him the way Wilton and Jacks and Thompson were killed, but I figured it would be deceitful of me to ride along with Clark and let somebody get killed trying to get his gold. You see, Clark is going to make it."

"I hope he does," Brady rolled that cigar again, those cold little eyes telling me they hated me. "He's a good man."

He started to walk away but I wasn't through with him.

"Brady?"

He turned slowly.

"Clark is going through because I'm going to see that he gets through, and when he's gone, I'm coming back."

"So?" He put his big hands on the edge of the bar. "What does that mean?"

"It means that if we have any trouble at all, I'm going to come back here and either run you out of town or bury you."

Somebody gasped and Martin Brady's face turned a kind of sick white, he was that mad. "It sounds like you're calling me a thief." He kept both hands in plain sight. "You'd have to prove that."

"Prove it? Who to? Everybody knows what killing and robbery there has been was engineered by you. There's no court here but a six-shooter court and I'm presiding."

So nothing happened. It was like I figured and it was out in the open now, and Martin Brady had to have me killed, but he didn't dare do it right then. We put Clark on the stage and started back to our own claims.

We were almost to bedrock now and we wanted to clean up and get out. We were getting the itch to go back to Santa Fe and back to Mora. Besides, I kept thinking of Dursilla.

Bob Wells was sitting on our claim with a rifle across his knees when we came in. "I was gettin' spooked," he said, "it don't seem like Brady to take this layin' down."

Dickey came over from his claim and several others, two of whom I remembered from the Rose-Marie Saloon the night I told off Martin Brady.

"We been talking it around," Dickey said, "and we figure you should be marshal."

"No."

"Can you name anybody else?" Wells asked reasonably. "This gold strike is going to play out, but a few of the mines will continue to work, and I plan to stay on here. I want to open a business, and I want this to be a clean town."

The others all pitched in, and finally Dickey said, "Sackett, with all respect, I believe it's your public duty."

Now I was beginning to see where reading can make a man trouble. Reading Locke, Hume, Jefferson, and Madison, had made me begin to think mighty high of a man's public duty.

Violence is an evil thing, but when the guns are all in the hands of the men without respect for human rights, then men are really in trouble.

It was all right for folks back east to give reasons why trouble should be handled without violence. Folks who talk about no violence are always the ones who are first to call a policeman, and usually they are sure there's one handy.

"All right," I said, "on two conditions: first, that somebody else takes over when the town is cleaned up. Second, that you raise money enough to buy out Martin Brady."

"Buy him out? I say, run him out!"

Who it was yelled, I don't know, but I spoke right up in meeting. "All right, whoever you are. You run him out."

There was a silence then, and when they had gathered the fact that the speaker wasn't going to offer I said, "We run him out and we're no better than he is."

"All right," Wells agreed, "buy him out."

"Well, now," I said, "we can be too hasty. I didn't say we should buy him out, what I say is we should offer. We make him a cash offer and whatever he does then is up to him."

Next day in town I got down from my horse in front of the store. Wind blew dust along the street and skittered dry leaves along the boardwalk. It gave me a lonesome feeling. Looking down the street I had a feeling the town would die.

No matter what happened here, what I was going to do was important. Maybe not for this town, but for men everywhere, for there must be right. Strength never made right, and it is an indecency when it is allowed to breed corruption. The west was changing. One time they would have organized vigilantes and had some necktie parties, but now they were hiring a marshal, and the next step would be a town meeting and a judge or a mayor.

Martin Brady saw me come in. His two men standing at the bar saw me too, and one of them moved a mite so his gun could be right under his hand and not under the edge of the bar.

There was nothing jumpy inside me, just a slow, measured, waiting feeling.

Around me everything seemed clearer, sharper in detail, the shadows and lights, the grain of wood on the bar, the stains left by the glasses, a slight tic on the cheek of one of Brady's men, and he was forty feet away.

"Brady, this country is growing up. Folks are moving in and they want schools, churches, and quiet towns where they can walk in the streets of an evening."

He never took his eyes from me, and I had a feeling he knew what was coming.

Right then I felt sorry for Martin Brady, although his kind would outlast my kind because people have a greater tolerance for evil than for violence. If crooked gambling, thieving, and robbing are covered over, folks will tolerate it longer than outright violence, even when the violence may be cleansing.

Folks had much to say about the evil of those years, yet it took hard men to live the life, and their pleasures were apt to be rough and violent. They came from the world around, the younger sons of fine families, the ne'er-do-wells, the soldiers of fortune, the drifters, the always-broke, the promoters, the con men, the thieves. The frontier asked no questions and gave its rewards to the strong.

Maybe it needed men like Martin Brady, even the kind who lived on murder and robbery, to plant a town here at such a jumping-off place to nowhere. An odd thought occurred to me. Why had he called the saloon and the town Rose-Marie?

"Like I said, the country is growing up, Martin. You've been selling people rot-gut liquor, you've been cheating them out of hide an' hair, you've been robbing and murdering them. Murdering them was going too far, Martin, because when you start killing men, they fight back."

"What are you gettin' at, Sackett?"

"They elected me marshal."

"So?"

"You sell out, Martin Brady, they'll pay you a fair price. You sell out, and you get out."

He took the cigar from his teeth with his left hand and rested that hand on the bar. "And if I don't want to sell?"

"You have no choice."

He smiled and leaned toward me as if to say something in a low tone and when he did he touched that burning cigar to my hand.

My hand jerked and I realized the trick too late and those gunmen down the bar, who had evidently seen it done before, shot me full of holes.

My hand jerked and then guns were hammering. A slug hit me and turned me away from the bar, and two more bullets grooved the edge of the bar where I'd been standing.

Another slug hit me and I started to fall but my gun was out and I rolled over on the floor with bullets kicking splinters at my eyes and shot the big one with the dark eyes.

He was coming up to me for a finishing shot and I put a bullet into his brisket and saw him stop dead still, turn half around and fall.

Then I was rolling over and on my feet and out of the corner of my eye I saw Martin Brady standing with both hands on the bar and his cigar in his teeth, watching me. My shirt was smoldering where it had caught fire from that black powder, but I shot the other man, taking my time, and my second bullet drove teeth back into his mouth and I saw the blood dribble from the corner of his mouth.

They were both down and they weren't getting up and I looked at Martin Brady and I said, "You haven't a choice, Martin."

His face turned strange and shapeless and I felt myself falling and remembered Ma asking me about Long Higgins.

There were cracks in the ceiling. It seemed I lay there staring at them for a dozen years, and remembered that it had been a long time since I'd been in a house and wondered if I was delirious.

Cap Rountree came into the room and I turned my head and looked at him. "If this here is hell, they sure picked the right people for it."

"Never knew a man to find so many excuses to get out of his work," Cap grumbled.

"How much longer do I do the work in this shebang?"

"You're an old pirate," I said, "who never did an honest day's work in his life."

Cap came back in with a bowl of soup which he started spooning into me. "Last time I recollect they were shooting holes in me. Did you plug them up?"

"You'll hold soup. Only maybe all your sand run out."

On my hand I could see the scar of that cigar burn, almost healed now. That was one time I was sure enough outsmarted. It was one trick Pa never told me about, and I'd had to learn it the hard way.

"You took four bullets," Cap said, "an' lost a sight more blood than a man can afford."

"What about Brady?"

"He lit a shuck whilst they were huntin' a rope to hang him." Cap sat down.

"Funny thing. He showed up here the next night."

"Here?"

"Stopped by to see how you was. Said you were too good a man to die like that--both of you were damned fools but a man got into a way of livin' and there was no way but to go on."

"The others?"

"Those boys of his were shot to doll rags."

Outside the door I could see the sunshine on the creek and I could hear the water chuckling over the rocks, and I got to thinking of Ma and Drusilla, and one day when I could sit up I looked over at Cap.

"Anything left out there?"

"Ain't been a day's wages in weeks. If you figure to do any more minin' you better find yourself another crick."

"We'll go home. Come morning you saddle up."

He looked at me skeptically. "Can you set a saddle?"

"If I'm going home. I can sit a saddle if I'm headed for Santa Fe."

Next morning, Cap and me headed as due south as the country would allow, but it is a long way in the saddle from Idaho to New Mexico. From time to time we heard news about Sacketts. Men on the trail carried news along with them and everybody was on the prod to know all that was going on. The Sackett news was all Orrin ... it would take awhile for the story of what happened at Rose-Marie to get around and I'd as soon it never did. But Orrin was making a name for himself.

Only there was a rumor that he was to be married.

Cap told me that because he heard it before I did and neither of us made comments. Cap felt as I did about Laura Pritts and we were afraid it was her.

We rode right to the ranch.

Bob came out to meet us, and Joe was right behind him. Ma had seen us coming up the road. She came to the steps to meet me. Ma was better than she had been in years, a credit to few worries and a better climate, I suppose. There was a Navajo woman helping with the housework now, and for the first time Ma had it easier.

There were bookshelves in the parlor and both the boys had taken to reading.

There was other news. Don Luis was dead ... had been buried only two days ago, but already the Settlement crowd had moved in. Torres was in bad shape ... he had been ambushed months ago and from what I was told there was small chance he'd be himself again.

Drusilla was in town.

And Orrin was married to Laura Pritts.

Chapter XIV

Orrin came out to the ranch in the morning, driving a buckboard. He got down and came to me with his hand out, a handsome man by any standards, wearing black broadcloth now like he was born to it.

He was older, more sure of himself, and there was a tone of authority in his voice. Orrin had done all right, no doubt of that, and beneath it all he was the same man he had always been, only a better man because of the education he had given himself and the experience behind him.

"It's good to see you, boy." He was sizing me up as he talked, and I had to grin, for I knew his way.

"You've had trouble," he said suddenly, "you've been hurt."

So I told him about Martin Brady and the Rose-Marie, my brief term as marshal, and the showdown. When he realized how close I'd come to cashing in my chips he grew a little pale. "Tyrel," he said slowly, "I know what you've been through, but they need a man right here. They need a deputy sheriff who is honest and I sure know you'd never draw on anybody without cause."

"Has somebody been saying the contrary?" I asked him quietly.

"No ... no, of course not." He spoke hastily, and I knew he didn't want to say who, which was all the answer I needed.

"Of course, there's always talk about a man who has to use a gun. Folks don't understand."

He paused. "I suppose you know I'm married?"

"Heard about it. Has Laura been out to see Ma?"

Orrin flushed. "Laura doesn't take to Ma. Says a woman smoking is indecent, and smoking a pipe is worse."

"That may be true," I replied carefully. "Out here you don't see it much, but that's Ma."

He kicked at the earth, his face gloomy. "You may think I did wrong, Tyrel, but I love that girl. She's ... she's different, Tyrel, she's so pretty, so delicate, so refined and everything. A man in politics, he needs a wife like that. And whatever else you can say about Jonathan, he's done everything he could to help me."

I'll bet, I said to myself. I'll just bet he has. And he'll want a return on it too. So far I hadn't noticed Jonathan Pritts being freehanded with anything but other folks' land.

"Orrin, if Laura suits you, and if she makes you happy, then it doesn't matter who likes her. A man has to live his own life."

Orrin walked out to the corral with me and leaned on the rail and we stood there and talked the sun out of the sky and the first stars up before we went in to dinner. He had learned a lot, and he had been elected to the legislature, and a good part of it had been the Mexican vote, but at the last minute the Pritts crowd had gotten behind him, too. He had won by a big majority and in politics a man who can command votes can be mighty important.

Already they were talking about Orrin for the United States Senate, or even for governor. Looking at him across the table as he talked to Ma and the boys, I could see him as a senator ... and he'd make a good one.

Orrin was a smart man who had grown smarter. He had no illusions about how a man got office or kept it, yet he was an honest man, seeking nothing for himself beyond what he could make in the natural way of things.

"I wanted Tom Sunday for the deputy job," Orrin said, "he turned it down, saying he didn't need any handouts." Orrin looked at me. "Tye, I didn't mean it that way. I liked Tom, and I needed a strong man here."

"Tom could have handled it," Cap said. "That's bad, Tom feelin' thataway."

Orrin nodded. "It doesn't seem right without Tom. He's changed, Cap. He drinks too much, but that's only part of it. He's like an old bear with a sore tooth, and I'm afraid there'll be a killing if it keeps up."

Orrin looked at me. "Tom always liked you. If there is anybody can keep him in line it will be you. If anybody else even tried, and that includes me, he would go for his gun."

"All right."

Miguel rode over on the second day and we talked. Drusilla did not want to see me--he'd been sent to tell me that.

"Why, Miguel?"

"Because of the woman your brother has married. The senorita believes the hatred of Jonathan Pritts killed her father."

"I am not my brother's keeper," I replied slowly, "nor did I choose his wife." I looked up at him. "Miguel, I love the senorita."

"I know, senor. I know."

The ranch was moving nicely. The stock we had bought had fattened out nicely, and some had been sold that year. Bill Sexton was sheriff, and I took to him right off, but I could also see that he was an office man, built for a swivel chair and a roll-top desk.

Around Mora I was a known man, and there was mighty little trouble. Once I had to run down a couple of horse thieves, but I brought them in, without shooting, after trailing them to where they had holed up, then--after they'd turned in--I injuned down there and got their guns before I woke them up.

Only once did I see Tom Sunday. He came into town, unshaven and looking might unpleasant, but when he saw me he grinned and held out his hand. We talked a few minutes and had coffee together, and it seemed like old times.

"One thing," he said, "you don't have to worry about. Reed Carney is dead."

"What happened?"

"Chico Cruz killed him over to Socorro."

It gave me a cold feeling, all of a sudden, knowing that gun-slinging Mexican was still around, and I found myself hoping that he did not come up this way.

When I'd been on the job about a week I was out to the ranch one day when I saw that shining black buckboard coming, only it wasn't Orrin driving. It was Laura.

I walked down from the steps to meet her. "How are you, Laura? It's good to see you."

"It isn't good to see you." She spoke sharply, and her lips thinned down. Right at that moment she was a downright ugly woman. "If you have any feeling for your brother, you will leave here and never come back."

"This is my home."

"You'd better leave," she insisted, "everybody knows you're a vicious killer, and now you've wheedled the deputy's job out of Sexton, and you'll stay around here until you've ruined Orrin and me and everybody."

She made me mad so I said, "What's the difference between being a killer and hiring your killing done?"

She struck at me, but I just stepped back and she almost fell out of the buckboard. Catching her arm, I steadied her, and she jerked away from me. "If you don't leave, I'll find a way to make you. You hate me and my father and if it hadn't been for you there wouldn't have been any of this trouble."

"I'm sorry. I'm staying."

She turned so sharply that she almost upset the buggy and drove away, and I couldn't help wondering if Orrin had ever seen her look like that. She wasn't like that hammer-headed roan I'd said she was like. That roan was a whole damned sight better.

Ma said nothing to me but I could see that she missed Orrin's visits, which became fewer and fewer, Laura usually contrived to have something important to do or somewhere important for him to be whenever he thought about coming out.

There was talk of rustling by Ed Fry who ranched near Tom's place, and we had several complaints about Tom Sunday. Whatever else Tom might be, he was an honest man. I got up on Kelly and rode the big red horse out to Sunday's place.

It was a rawhide outfit. I mean it the western way where a term like that is used to mean an outfit that's held together with rawhide, otherwise it would fall apart. Tom Sunday came to the door when I rode up and he stood leaning against the doorjamb watching me tie my horse.

"That's a good horse, Tye," he said, "you always had a feeling for a good horse."

He squatted on his heels and began to build a smoke. Hunkering down beside him I made talk about the range and finally asked him about his trouble with Fry.

He stared at me from hard eyes. "Look, Tye, that's my business. You leave it alone."

"I'm the law, Tom," I said mildly. "I want to keep the peace if I can do it."

"I don't need any help and I don't want any interference."

"Look, Tom, look at it this way. I like this job. The boys do all there is to do on the ranch, so I took this job. If you make trouble for me, I may lose out."

His eyes glinted a little with sardonic humor. "Don't try to get around me, Tye.

You came down here because you've been hearing stories about me and you're worried. Well, the stories are a damned lie and you know it."

"I do know it, Tom, but there's others."

"The hell with them."

"That may be all right for you, but it isn't for me. One reason I came down was to check on what's been happening, another was to see you. We four were mighty close for a long time, Tom, and we should stay that way."

He stared out gloomily. "I never did get along with that high-and-mighty brother of yours, Tye. He always thought he was better than anybody else."

"You forget, Tom. You helped him along. You helped him with his reading, almost as much as you did me. If he is getting somewhere it is partly because of you."

I figured that would please him but it didn't seem to reach him at all. He threw his cigarette down. "I got some coffee," he said, and straightening up he went inside.

We didn't talk much over coffee, but just sat there together, and I think we both enjoyed it. Often on the drives we would ride for miles like that, never saying a word, but with a kind of companionship better than any words.

There was a book lying on the table called Bleak House by Charles Dickens. I'd read parts of some of Dickens' books that were run as serials in papers. "How is it?" I asked.

"Good ... damned good."

He sat down opposite me and tasted the coffee. "Seems a long time ago," he said gloomily, "when you rode up to our camp outside of Baxter Springs."

"Five years," I agreed. "We've been friends a long time, Tom. We missed you, Cap and me, on this last trip."

"Cap and you are all right. It's that brother of yours I don't like. But he'll make it all right," he added grudgingly, "he'll get ahead and make the rest of us look like bums."

"He offered you a job. That was the deal: if you won you were to give him a job, if he won he would give you a job."

Tom turned sharply around. "I don't need his damned job! Hell, if it hadn't been for me he'd never have had the idea of running for office!"

Now that wasn't true but I didn't want to argue, so after awhile I got up and rinsed out my cup. "I'll be riding. Come out to the house and see us, Tom. Cap would like to see you and so would Ma." Then I added, "Orrin isn't there very much."

Tom's eyes glinted. "That wife of his. You sure had her figured right. Why, if I ever saw a double-crossing no-account female, she's the one. And her old man ...

I hate his guts."

When I stepped into the saddle I turned for one last word. "Tom, stay clear of Ed Fry, will you? I don't want trouble."

"You're one to talk." He grinned at me. "All right, I'll lay off, but he sticks in my craw."

Then as I rode away, he said, "My respects to your mother, Tye."

Riding away I felt mighty miserable, like I'd lost something good out of my life. Tom Sunday's eyes had been bloodshot, he was unshaven and he was careless about everything but bis range. Riding over it, I could see that whatever else Tom might be, he was still a first-rate cattleman. Ed Fry and some of the others had talked of Tom's herds increasing, but by the look of things it was no wonder, for there was good grass, and he was keeping it from overgrazing, which Fry nor the others gave no thought to ... and his water holes were cleaned out, and at one place he'd built a dam in the river to stop water so there would be plenty to last.

There was no rain. As the months went by, the rains held off, and the ranchers were worried, yet Tom Sunday's stock, in the few times I rode that way, always looked good. He had done a lot of work for a man whose home place was in such rawhide shape, and there was a good bit of water dammed up in several washes, and spreader dams he had put in had used the water he had gotten to better effect, so he had better grass than almost anybody around.

Ed Fry was a sorehead. A dozen times I'd met such men, the kind who get something in their craw and can't let it alone. Fry was an ex-soldier who had never seen combat, and was a man with little fighting experience anywhere else, and in this country, a man who wasn't prepared to back his mouth with action was better off if he kept still. But Ed Fry was a big man who talked big, and was too egotistical to believe anything could happen to him.

One morning when I came into the office I sat down and said, "Bill, you could do us both a favor if you'd have a talk with Ed Fry."

Sexton put down some papers and rolled his cigar in his jaws. "Has he been shooting off his mouth again?"

"He sure has. It came to me secondhand, but he called Tom Sunday a thief last night. If Tom hears about that we'll have a shooting. In fact, if Cap Rountree heard it there would be a shooting."

Sexton glanced at me. "And I wouldn't want you to hear it," he said bluntly, "or Orrin, either."

"If I figured to do anything about it, I'd take off this badge. There's no place in this office for personal feelings."

Sexton studied the matter. "I'll talk to Ed. Although I don't believe he'll listen. He only gets more bullheaded. He said the investigation you made was a cover-up for Sunday, and both you and Orrin are protecting him."

"He's a liar and nobody knows it better than you, Bill. When he wants to bear down, Tom Sunday is the best cattleman around. Drunk or sober he's a better cattleman than Ed Fry will ever be."

Sexton ran his fingers through his hair. "Tye, let's make Ed put up or shut up.

Let's demand to know what cattle he thinks he has missing, and what, exactly, makes him suspect Sunday. Let's make him put his cards on the table."

"You do it," I said, "he would be apt to say the wrong thing to me. The man's a fool, talking around the way he is." Since taking over my job as deputy sheriff and holding down that of town marshal as well, I'd not had to use my gun nor had there been a shooting in town in that time. I wanted that record to stand, but what concerned me most was keeping Tom Sunday out of trouble.

Only sometimes there isn't anything a man can do, and Ed Fry was a man bound and determined to have his say. When he said it once too often it was in the St.

James Hotel up at Cimarron, and there was quite a crowd in the saloon. Clay Allison was there, having a drink with a man from whom he was buying a team of mules. That man was Tom Sunday.

Cap was there, and Cap saw it all. Cap Rountree had a suspicion that trouble was heading for Sunday when he found out that Fry was going to Cimarron. Cap already knew that Sunday had gone there, so he took off himself, and he swapped horses a couple of times but beat Fry to town.

Ed Fry was talking when Cap Rountree came into the St. James. "He's nothing but a damned cow thief!" Fry said loudly. "That Tom Sunday is a thief and those Sacketts protect him!"

Tom Sunday had a couple of drinks under his belt and he turned slowly and looked at Ed Fry.

Probably Fry hadn't known until then that Sunday was in the saloon, because according to the way Cap told it, Fry went kind of gray in the face and Cap said you could see the sweat break out on his face. Folks had warned him what loose talk would do, but now he was face to face with it.

Tom was very quiet. When he spoke you could hear him in every corner of the room, it was that still.

"Mr. Fry, it comes to my attention that you have on repeated occasions stated that I was a cow thief. You have done this on the wildest supposition and without one particle of evidence. You have done it partly because you are yourself a poor cowman as well as a very inept and stupid man."

When Tom was drinking he was apt to fall into a very precise way of speaking as well as using all that highfalutin language he knew so well.

"You can't talk to me like--"

"You have said I was a cow thief, and you have said the Sacketts protect me. I have never been a cow thief, Mr. Fry, and I have never stolen anything in my life, nor do I need protection from the Sacketts or anyone else. Anyone that says I have stolen cattle or that I have been protected is a liar, Mr. Fry, a very fat-headed and stupid liar."

He had not raised his voice but there was something in his tone that lashed a man like a whip and in even the simplest words, the way Tom said them, there was an insult.

Ed Fry lunged to his feet and Tom merely watched him. "By the Lord--"

Ed Fry grabbed for his gun. He was a big man but a clumsy one, and when he got the gun out he almost dropped it. Sunday did not make a move until Fry recovered his grip on the gun and started to bring it level, and then Tom palmed his gun and shot him dead.

Cap Rountree told Bill Sexton, Orrin, and me about it in the sheriff's office two' days later. "No man ever had a better chance," Cap said, "Tom, he just stood there and I figured for a minute he was going to let Fry kill him. Tom's fast, Tye, he's real fast."

And the way he looked at me when he said it was a thing I'll never forget.

Chapter XV

It was only a few days later that I rode over to see Drusilla. Not that I hadn't wanted to see her before, but there had been no chance. This time there was nobody to turn me away and I stopped before an open doorway.

She was standing there, tall and quiet, and at the moment I appeared in the door she turned her head and saw me.

"Dru," I said, "I love you."

She caught her breath sharply and started to turn away. "Please," she said, "go away. You mustn't say that."

When I came on into the room she turned to face me. "Tye, you shouldn't have come here, and you shouldn't say that to me."

"You know that I mean it?"

She nodded. "Yes ... I know. But you love your brother, and his wife's family hate me, and I ... I hate them too."

"If you hate them, you're going about it as if you tried to please them. They think they've beaten your grandfather and beaten you because you live like a hermit. What you should do is come out, let people see you, go to places."

"You may be right."

"Dru, what's happening to you? What are you going to do with yourself? I came here today to pay you money, but I'm glad I came and for another reason.

"Don Luis is gone, and he was a good man, but he would want you to be happy. You are a beautiful girl, Dru, and you have friends. Your very presence around Santa Fe would worry Laura and Jonathan Pritts more than anything we could think of.

Besides, I want to take you dancing. I want to marry you, Dru."

Her eyes were soft. "Tye, I've always wanted to marry you. A long time ago I would have done it had you asked me, that first time you visisted us in Santa Fe ..."

"I didn't have anything. I was nobody. Just another drifter with a horse and a gun."

"You were you, Tye."

"Sometimes there were things I wanted to say so bad I'd almost choke. Only I never could find the words."

So we sat down and we had coffee again like we used to and I told her about Laura and Ma, which made Dru angry.

"There's trouble shaping, Dru. I can't read the sign clear enough to say where it will happen, but Pritts is getting ready for a showdown.

"There's a lot could happen, but when it happens, I want you with me."

We talked the sun down, and it wasn't until I got up to go that I remembered the money. She pushed it away. "No, Tyrel, you keep if for me. Invest it for me if you want to. Grandfather left me quite a bit, and I don't know what to do with it now."

That made sense, and I didn't argue with her. Then she told me something that should have tipped me off as to what was coming.

"I have an uncle, Tye, and he is an attorney. He is going to bring an action to clear the titles to all the land in our Grant. When they are clear," she added, "I am going to see the United States Marshal moves any squatters off the land."

Well ... what could I say? Certainly it was what needed to be done and what had to be done sooner or later, but there was nothing I could think of that was apt to start more trouble than that.

Jonathan Pritts had settled a lot of his crowd on land belonging to the Alvarado Grant. Then he had bought their claims from them, and he was now laying claim to more than a hundred thousand acres. Probably Pritts figured when the don died that he had no more worries ... anyway, he was in it up to his ears and if the title of the Alvarado Grant proved itself, he had no more claim than nothing. I mean, he was broke.

Not that I felt sorry for him. He hadn't worried about what happened to the don or his granddaughter, all he thought of was what he wanted. Only if there was anything that was figured to blow the lid off this country it was such a suit.

"If I were you," I advised her, "I'd go to Mexico and I'd stay there until this is settled."

"This is my home," Dru said quietly.

"Dru, you don't seem to realize. This is a shooting matter. They'll kill you ... or they'll try."

"They may try," she said quietly. "I shall not leave."

When I left the house I was worried about Dru. If I had not been so concerned with her situation I might have given some thought to myself.

They would think I had put her up to it. From the day that action was announced I would be the Number-One target in the shooting gallery.

When I was expecting everything to happen, nothing happened. There were a few scattered killings further north. One was a Settlement man who had broken with Jonathan Pritts and the Settlement Company ... it was out of my bailiwick and the killing went unsolved, but it had an ugly look to it.

Jonathan Pritts remained in Santa Fe, Laura was receiving important guests at her parties and fandangos most every night. Pritts was generally agreed to have a good deal of political power. Me, I was a skeptic ... because folks associate in a social way doesn't mean they are political friends, and most everybody likes a get-together.

One Saturday afternoon Orrin pulled up alongside me in a buckboard. He looked up at me and grinned as I sat Sate's saddle.

"Looks to me like you'd sell that horse, Tyrel," he said. "He was always a mean one."

"I like him," I said. "He's contrary as all get-out, and he's got a streak of meanness in him, but I like him."

"How's Ma?"

"She's doing fine." It was a hot day and the sweat trickled down my face. The long street was busy. Fetterson was down there with the one they called Paisano, because he gave a man a feeling that he was some kin to a chaparral cock or road runner. Folks down New Mexico way called them paisanos.

Only I had a feeling about Paisano. I didn't care for him much.

"Ma misses you, Orrin. You should drive out to see her."

"I know ... I know. Damn it, Tyrel, why can't womenfolks get along?"

"Ma hasn't had any trouble with anybody. She's all right, Orrin, the same as always. Only she still smokes a pipe."

He mopped his face, looking mighty harried and miserable. "Laura's not used to that." He scowled. "She raises hell every time I go out to the place."

"Womenfolks," I said, "sometimes need some handling. You let them keep the bit in their teeth and they'll make you miserable and themselves too. You pet 'em a little and keep a firm hand on the bridle and you'll have no trouble."

He stared down the sun-bright street, squinting his eyes a little. "It sounds very easy, Tyrel. Only there's so many things tied in with it. When we become a state I want to run for the Senate, and it may be only a few years now."

"How do you and Pritts get along?"

Orrin gathered the reins. He didn't need to tell me. Orrin was an easygoing man, but he wasn't a man you could push around or take advantage of. Except maybe by that woman.

"We don't." He looked up at me. "That's between us, Tyrel. I wouldn't even tell Ma. Jonathan and I don't get along, and Laura .. . well, she can be difficult."

"You were quite a bronc rider, Orrin."

"What's that mean?"

"Why," I pushed my hat back on my head, "I'd say it meant your feet aren't tied to the stirrups, Orrin. I'd say there isn't a thing to keep you in the saddle but your mind to stay there, and nobody's going to give you a medal for staying in the saddle when you can't make a decent ride of it.

"Take Sate here," I rubbed Sate's neck and that bronc laid back his ears, "you take Sate. He's a mean horse. He's tough and he's game and he'll go until the sun comes up, but Orrin, if I could only have one horse, I'd never have this one. I'd have Dapple or that Montana horse.

"It's fun to ride a mean one when you don't have to do it every day, but if I stay with Sate long enough he'll turn on me. And there's some women like that."

Orrin gathered the reins. "Too hot ... I'll see you later, Tyrel."

He drove off and I watched him go. He was a fine, upstanding man but when he married that Laura girl he bought himself a packet of grief.

Glancing down the street I saw Fetterson hand something to Paisano. It caught the sunlight an instant, then disappeared in Paisano's pocket. But the glimpse was enough. Paisano had gotten himself a fistful of gold coins from Fetterson, which was an interesting thought.

Sometimes a man knows something is about to happen. He can't put a finger on a reason, but he gets an itch inside him, and I had it now. Something was building up. I could smell trouble in the making, and oddly enough it might have been avoided by a casual comment. The trouble was that I did not know that Torres was coming up from Socorro, and that he was returning to work for Dru.

Had I known that, I would have known what Jonathan Pritts' reaction was to be.

If Dru had happened to mention the fact that Torres was finally well and able to be around and was coming back, I would have gone down to meet him and come back with him.

Juan Torres was riding with two other Mexicans, men he had recruited in Socorro to work for Dru, and they were riding together. They had just ridden through the gap about four miles from Mora when they were shot to doll rags.

Mountain air is clear, and sound carries, particularly when it has the hills behind it. The valley was narrow all the way to town, and it was early monring with no other sound to interfere.

Orrin had come up from Santa Fe by stage to Las Vegas and had driven up to town from there. We had walked out on the street together for I'd spent the night in the back room at the sheriff's office.

We all heard the shots, there was a broken volley that sounded like four or five guns at least, and then, almost a full half minute later, a single, final shot.

Now nobody shoots like that if they are hunting game. For that much shooting it has to be a battle, and I headed for Orrin's buckboard on the run with him right behind me. His Winchester was there and each of us wore a belt gun.

Dust lingered in the air at the gap, only a faint suggestion of it. The killers were gone and nobody was going to catch up with them right away, especially in a buckboard, so I wasted no time thinking about that.

Juan Torres lay on his back with three bullet holes in his chest and a fourth between his eyes, and there was a nasty powder burn around that.

"You know what that means?" I asked Orrin. "Somebody wanted him dead. Remember that final shot?" There was a rattle of hoofs on the road and I looked around to see my brother Joe and Cap Rountree riding bareback. The ranch was closer than the town and they must have come as fast as they could get to their horses. They knew better than to mess things up. Juan Torres had been dead when that final shot was fired, I figured, because at least two of the bullets in the chest would have killed him. The two others were also dead. I began casting for sign.

Not thirty feet off the trail I found where several men had waited for quite some time. There were cigarette stubs there and the grass was matted down.

Orrin had taken one look at the bodies and had walked back to the buckboard and he stood there, saying no word to anybody, just staring first at the ground and then at his hands, looking like he'd never seen them before.

A Mexican I knew had come down the road from town, and he was sitting there on his horse looking at those bodies. "Bandidos?" he looked at me with eyes that held no question.

"No," I said, "assassins."

He nodded his head slowly. "There will be much trouble," he said, "this one," he indicated Torres, "was a good man."

"He was my friend."

"Si."

Leaving the Mexican to guard the road approaching the spot--just beyond the gap--I put Joe between the spot and the town. Only I did this after we loaded the bodies in the buckboard. Then I sent Orrin and Cap off to town with the bodies.

Joe looked at me, his eyes large. "Keep anybody from messing up the road," I said, "until I've looked it over."

First I went back to the spot in the grass where the drygulchers had waited. I took time to look all around very carefully before approaching the spot itself.

Yet even as I looked, a part of my mind was thinking this would mean the lid was going to blow off. Juan Torres had been a popular man and he had been killed, the others, God rest their souls, were incidental. But it was not that alone, it was what was going to happen to my own family, and what Orrin already knew. Only one man had real reason to want Juan Torres dead ...

One of the men had smoked his cigarettes right down to the nub. There was a place where he had knelt to take aim, the spot where his knee had been and where his boot toe dug in was mighty close. He was a man, I calculated, not over five feet-four or-five. A short man who smoked his cigarettes to the nub wasn't much to go on, but it was a beginning.

One thing I knew. This had been a cold-blooded murder of men who had had no chance to defend themselves, and it had happened in my bailiwick and I did not plan to rest until I had every man who took part in it ... no matter where the trail led.

It was a crime on my threshold, and it was a friend of mine who had been killed.

And once before Orrin and I had prevented his murder ... and another time Torres had been shot up and left for dead.

I was going to get every man Jack of them. There had been five of them here and they had gathered up all the shells before leaving ... or had they?

Working through the tall grass that had been crashed down by them, I found a shell and I struck gold. It was a .44 shell and it was brand, spanking new. I put that shell in my pocket with a mental note to give some time to it later.

Five men ... and Torres himself had been hit by four bullets. Even allowing that some of them might have gotten off more than one shot, judging by the bodies there had been at least nine shots fired before that final shot.

Now some men can lever and fire a rifle mighty fast, but it was unlikely you'd find more than one man, at most two, who could work a lever and aim a shot as fast as those bullets had been, in one group of five men.

Torres must have been moving, maybe falling after that first volley, yet somebody had gotten more bullets into him. The answer to that one was simple.

There were more than five.

Thoughtfully, I looked up at that hill crested with cedar which arose behind the place where they'd been waiting. They would have had a lookout up there, someone to tell them when Torres was coining.

For a couple of hours I scouted around. I found where they had their horses and they had seven of them, and atop the ridge I found where two men had waited, smoking. One of them had slid right down to the horses, and a man could see where he had dug his heels into the bank to keep from sliding too fast.

Cap came and lent me a hand and after a bit, Orrin came out and joined us.

One more thing I knew by that time. The man who had walked up to Torres' body and fired that last shot into his head had been a tall man with fairly new boots and he had stepped in the blood.

Although Orrin held off and let me do it--knowing too many feet would tramp everything up--he saw enough to know here was a plain, outright murder, and a carefully planned murder at that.

First off, I had to decide whether they expected to be chased or not and about how far they would run. How well did they know the country? Were they likely to go to some ranch owned by friends, or hide out in the hills?

Cap had brought back Kelly all saddled and ready, so when I'd seen about all I could see there, I got into the saddle and sent Joe back to our ranch. He was mighty upset, wanting to go along with a posse, but if it was possible I wanted to keep Joe and Bob out of any shooting and away from the trouble.

"What do you think, Tyrel?" Orrin watched me carefully as he spoke.

"It was out-and-out murder," I said, "by seven men who knew Torres would be coming to Mora. It was planned murder, with the men getting there six to seven hours beforehand. Two of them came along later and I'd guess they watched Torres from the hills to make sure he didn't turn off or stop."

Orrin stared at the backs of his hands and I didn't say anything about what I suspected nor did Cap.

"All right," Orrin said, "you go after them and bring them in, no matter how long it takes or what money you need."

I hesitated. Only Cap, Orrin, and me were there together. "Orrin," I said, "you had me hired, and you can fire me. You can leave it to Bill Sexton or you can put in someone else."

Orrin seldom got mad but he was angry when he stared back at me. "Tyrel, that's damn-fool talk. You do what you were hired to do."

Not one of the three of us could have doubted where that trail would lead, but maybe even then Orrin figured it would lead to Fetterson, maybe, but not to Pritts.

Bill Sexton came up just then. "You'll be wanting a posse," he said, "I can get a few good men."

"No posse ... I want Cap, that's all."

"Are you crazy? There's seven of them ... at least."

"Look, if I take a posse there's apt to be one in the crowd who's trigger happy.

If I can avoid it I don't want any shooting. If I can take these men alive, I'm going to do it."

"You're looking to lose your scalp," Sexton said doubtfully, "but it's your hair. You do what you've a mind to."

"Want me to come along?" Orrin asked.

"No." I wanted him the worst way but the less involved he was, the better. "Cap will do."

The way I looked at it, the chances were almighty slim that the seven would stay together very long. Some of them would split off and that would shorten the odds.

The Alvarado Ranch lay quiet under low gray clouds when Cap and I rode up to the door. Briefly, I told Miguel about Torres. "I will come with you," he said instantly.

"You stay here." I gave it to him straight. "They thought by killing Torres they would ruin any chance the senorita would have. Torres is killed but you are not.

You're going to take his place, Miguel. You are going to be foreman."

He was startled. "But I--"

"You will have to protect the senorita," I said, "and you will have to hire at least a dozen good men. You'll have to bunch what cattle she has left and guard them. It looks to me like the killing of Juan Torres was the beginning of an attempt to put her out of business."

I went on inside, walking fast, and Dru was there to meet me. Quietly as possible, I told her about Juan Torres' death and what I had told Miguel.

"He's a good man," I said, "a better man than he knows, and this will prove it to him and to you. Give him authority and give him responsibility. You can trust him to use good judgment."

"What are you going to do?"

"Why, what a deputy sheriff has to do. I am going to run down the killers."

"And what does your brother say?"

"He says to find them, no matter what, no matter how long, and no matter who."

"Tyrel--be careful!"

That made me grin. "Why, ma'am," I said, grinning at her, "I'm the most careful man you know. Getting myself killed is the last idea in my mind ... I want to come back to you."

She just looked at me. "You know, Dru, we've waited long enough. When I've caught these men I am going to resign and we are going to be married ... and I'm not taking no for an answer."

Her eyes laughed at me. "Who said no?"

At the gap Cap and I picked up the trail and for several miles it gave us no trouble at all. Along here they had been riding fast, trying to put distance between themselves and pursuit.

It was a green, lovely country, with mountain meadows, the ridges crested with cedar that gave way to pine as we climbed into the foothills. We camped that night by a little stream where we could have a fire without giving our presence away.

Chances were they would be expecting a large party and if they saw us, would not recognize us. That was one reason I was riding Kelly. Usually I was up on Dapple or Montana horse, and Kelly was not likely to be known.

Cap made the coffee and sat back into the shadows. He poked sticks into the fire for a few minutes the way he did when he was getting ready to talk.

"Figured you'd want to know. Pritts has been down to see Tom Sunday."

I burned my mouth on a spoonful of stew and when I'd swallowed it I looked at him and said, "Pritts to see Tom?"

"Uh-huh. Dropped by sort of casual-like, but stayed some time."

"Tom tell you that?"

"No ... I've got a friend down thataway."

"What happened?"

"Well, seems they talked quite some time and when Pritts left, Tom came out to the horse with him and they parted friendly."

Jonathan Pritts and Tom ... it made no kind of sense. Or did it?

The more thought I gave to it the more worried I became, for Tom Sunday was a mighty changeable man, and drinking as he was, with his temper, anything might happen.

Orrin had had trouble with Pritts--of this I was certain sure--and Pritts had made a friendly visit to Tom Sunday. I didn't like the feel of it. I didn't like it at all.

Chapter XVI

There was a pale lemon glow over the eastern mountains when we killed the last coals of our fire and saddled up. Kelly was feeling sharp and twisty, for Kelly was a trail-loving horse who could look over big country longer than any horse I ever knew, except maybe Montana horse.

Inside me there was a patience growing and I knew I was going to need it. We were riding a trail that could only bring us to trouble because the men we were seeking had friends who would not take lightly our taking them. But the job was ours to do and those times a man didn't think too much of consequences but crossed each bridge as he came to it.

It was utterly still. In this, the last hour before dawn, all was quiet. Even with my coat on, the sharp chill struck through and I shivered. There was a bad taste in my mouth and I hated the stubble on my jaws ... I'd gotten used to shaving living in town and being an officer. It spoiled a man.

Even in the vague light we could see the lighter trail of pushed-down grass where the riders had ridden ahead of us. Suddenly, the trail dipped into a hollow in the trees and we found their camp of the night before.

They were confident, we could see that, for they had taken only the usual, normal precaution in hiding their camp, and they hadn't made any effort to conceal that they'd been there.

We took our time there for much can be learned of men at such a time, and to seek out a trail it is well to know the manner of men you seek after. If Cap Rountree and me were to fetch these men we would have to follow them a far piece.

They ate well. They had brought grub with them and there was plenty of it. At least a couple of them were drinking, for we found a bottle near the edge of the camp ... it looked like whoever was drinking didn't want the others to know, for the bottle had been covered over with leaves.

"Fresh bottle," I said to Cap and handed it to him. He sniffed it thoughtfully.

"Smells like good whiskey, not none of this here Indian whiskey."

"They don't want for anything. This outfit is traveling mighty plush."

Cap studied me carefully. "You ain't in no hurry."

"They finished their job, they'll want their pay. I want the man who pays them."

"You figured out who it'll be?"

"No ... all I want is for these men to take me there. Twice before they tried to kill Juan and now they got him. I'm thinking they won't stop there and the only way to stop it is to get the man who pays out the money."

As I was talking a picture suddenly came to mind. It was Fetterson passing out gold to that renegade Paisano. It was a thing to be remembered.

"Bearing west," Cap said suddenly, "I think they've taken a notion."

"Tres Ritos?"

"My guess." Cap considered it "That drinkin' man now. Supposin' he's run out of whiskey? The way I figure, he's a man who likes his bottle and whoever is bossin' the bunch has kept him off it as much as possible.

"Drinkin' man now, he gets mighty canny about hidin' his stuff. He figures he got folks fooled ... trouble is, it becomes mighty obvious to everybody but the one drinkin'. They may believe that because the job's finished they can have a drink, and Tres Ritos is the closest place."

"I'd guess it's about an easy two-hour ride from here," I looked ahead, searching out the way the riders had gone. "They've taken themselves a notion, all right. Tres Ritos, it is."

Nevertheless, we kept a close watch on the trail. Neither of us had a good feeling about it. A man living in wild country develops a sense of the rightness of things ... and he becomes like an animal in sensing when all is not well.

So far it had been easy, but I was riding rifle in hand now and ready for trouble. Believe me, I wanted that Henry where I could use it. We had seven tough men ahead of us, men who had killed and who did not wish to be caught. I believe we had them fooled, for they would expect to be followed by a posse, but only a fool depends on a feeling like that.

Against such men you never ride easy in the saddle, you make your plans, you figure things out, and then you are careful. I never knew a really brave man yet who was reckless, nor did I ever know a real fighting man who was reckless ... maybe because the reckless ones were all dead.

Cap drew up. "I think I'll have a smoke," he said. Cap got down from his saddle, keeping his rifle in his hand. He drew his horse back under the trees out of sight and I did likewise. Only one fault with Kelly. That big red horse stood out like a forest fire in this green country.

We sat there studying the country around but doing no talking until Cap smoked his pipe out. Meanwhile both of us had seen a long bench far above the trail that led in the direction of Tres Ritos.

"We might ride along there," I suggested, "I'm spooky about that trail ahead."

"If they turn off we'll lose 'em."

"We can come back and pick up the trail."

We started off at an easy lope, going up through the trees, cutting back around some rocks. We'd gone about a mile when Cap pointed with his rifle.

Down the hill, not far off the trail, we could see some horses tied in the trees. One of them was a dark roan that had a familiar look. Reminded me of a horse I'd seen Paisano riding. And Paisano had taken money from Fetterson. This trail might take us somewhere at that.

We dusted the trail into Tres Ritos shy of sundown. We had taken our own time scouting around and getting the country in our minds. We headed for the livery stable. The sleepy hostler was sitting on the ground with his back to the wall.

He had a red headband and looked like a Navajo. He took our horses and we watched him stall them and put corn in the box. Cap walked down between the rows of stalls and said, "Nobody ... we beat 'em to town."

The barkeep in the saloon was an unwashed half-breed with a scar over his left eye like somebody had clouted him with an axe.

We asked for coffee and he turned and yelled something at a back door. The girl his yell brought out was Tina Fernandez. She knew me all right. All those Santa Fe women knew me.

Only she didn't make out like she knew me. She was neat as a new pin, and she brought a pot of coffee and two cups and she poured the coffee and whispered something that sounded like cuidado--a word meaning we should be careful.

We drank our coffee and ate some chili and beans with tortillas and I watched the kitchen door and Cap watched the street.

The grub was good, the coffee better, so we had another cup. "Behind the corral," she whispered, "after dark."

Cap chewed his gray mustache and looked at me out of those old, wise-hard eyes.

"You mixin' pleasure with business?"

"This is business."

We finished our coffee and we got up and I paid the bartender while Cap studied the street outside. The bartender looked at my face very carefully and then he said, "Do I know you?"

"If you do," I said, "you're going to develop a mighty bad memory."

The street was empty. Not even a stray dog appeared. Had we guessed wrong? Had they gone around Tres Ritos? Or were they here now, waiting for us?

Standing there in the quiet of early evening I had a dry mouth and could feel my heart beating big inside of me. Time to time I'd seen a few men shot and had no idea to go out that way if I could avoid it.

We heard them come into town about an hour later. Chances are they grew tired of waiting for us, if that was what they had been doing. They came down the street strung out like Indians on the trail, and from where we lay in the loft over the livery stable we could not see them but we could hear their horses.

They rode directly to the saloon and got down there, talking very little. As we had ridden into Tres Ritos by a back trail they would have seen no tracks, so unless they were told by the bartender they were not likely to realize we were around.

Lying there on the hay, listening out of the back of my mind for any noise that would warn us they were coming our way, I was not thinking of them, but of Orrin, Laura, Tom Sunday, Dru, and myself. And there was a lot to think about.

Jonathan Pritts would not be talking to Tom Sunday unless there was a shady side to his talk, for Jonathan was a man who did nothing by accident. I knew Tom had no use for the man, but as far back as the night Jonathan had sent for us in Santa Fe there had been a streak of compromise in Tom. He had hesitated that night, recognizing, I think, that Jonathan was a man who was going to be a power.

What was Jonathan Pritts up to? The thought stayed with me and I worried it like a dog at a bone, trying to figure it out. Of one thing I was sure: it promised no good for us.

Cap sat up finally and took out his pipe. "You're restless, boy."

"I don't like this."

"You got it to do. A man wants peace in a country he has to go straight to the heart of things." He smoked in silence for a few minutes. "Time to time I've come across a few men like Pritts ... once set on a trail they can't see anything but that and the more they're balked the stiffer they get." He paused a moment. "As he gets older he gets meaner ... he wants what he's after and he knows time is short."

The loft smelled of the fresh hay and of the horses below in their stalls. The sound of their eating was a comfortable sound, a good sleeping sound, but I could not sleep, tired as I was.

If I was to do anything with my life it had to be now and when this trail had been followed to the end I was going to quit my job, marry Dru, and settle down to build something.

We'd never rightly had a real home and for my youngsters I wanted one. I wanted a place they could grow up with, where they could put down roots. I wanted a place they'd be proud to come back to and which they could always call home ... no matter how far they went or what happened.

Getting up I brushed off the hay, hitched my gun belt into position, and started for the ladder.

"You be careful."

"I'm a careful man by nature."

At the back of the corral I squatted on my heels against a corral post and waited.

Time dragged and then I heard a soft rustle of feet in the grass and saw a shadow near me and smelled a faint touch of woman-smell.

"You all right?"

It was scarcely a whisper but she came to me and I stood up keeping myself in line with that corral post at the corner.

"They are gone," Tina said.

"What?"

"They are gone," she repeated, "I was 'fraid for you."

She explained there had been horses for them hidden in ths woods back of the saloon, and while they were inside drinking, their saddles had been switched and they had come out one by one and gone off into the woods.

"Fooled us ... hornswoggled us."

"The other one is there. He is upstairs but I think he will go in the morning."

"Who?"

"The man who gave them money. The blond man."

Fetterson? It could be.

"You saw the money paid?"

"Yes, senor. With my two eyes I saw it. They were paid much in gold ... the balance, he said."

"Tina, they killed Juan Torres ... did you know him?"

"Si... he was a good man."

"In court, Tina. Would you testify against them? Would you tell you saw money paid? It would be dangerous for you."

"I will testify. I am not afraid." She stood very still in the darkness. "I know, senor, you are in love with the Senorita Alvarado, but could you help me, senor? Could you help me to go away from here? This man, the one you talked to, he is my ... how do you call it? He married my mother."

"Stepfather."

"Si ... and my mother is dead and he keeps me here and I work, senor. Someday I will be old. I wish now to go to Santa Fe again but he will not let me."

"You shall go. I promise it."

The men had gone and we had not seen them but she told me one had been Paisano.

Only one other she knew. A stocky, very tough man named Jim Dwyer ... he had been among those at Pawnee Rock. But Fetterson was here and he was the one I wanted most.

We slept a little, and shy of daybreak we rolled out and brushed off the hay. I felt sticky and dirty and wanted a bath and a shave the worst way but I checked my gun and we walked down to the hotel. There was a light in the kitchen and we shoved open the back door.

The bartender was there in his undershirt and pants and sock feet. There was the tumbled, dirty bedding where he had slept, some scattered boots, dirty socks, and some coats hung on the wall, on one nail a gun belt hung. I turned the cylinder and shucked out the shells while the bartender watched grimly.

"What's all this about?"

Turning him around we walked through the dark hall with a lantern in Cap's hand to throw a vague light ahead.

"Which room is he in?"

The bartender just looked at me, and Cap, winking at me, said, "Shall I do it here? Or should we take him out back where they won't find the body so soon?"

The bartender's feet shifted "No, look!" he protested. "I ain't done nothing."

"He'd be in the way," I said thoughtfully, "and he's no account to us. We might as well take him out back."

Cap looked mean enough to do it, and folks always figured after a look at me that killing would be easier for me than smiling.

"Wait a minute ... he ain't nothin' to me. He's in Room Six, up the stairs."

Looking at him, I said "Cap, you keep him here." And then looking at the bartender I said, "You know something? That had better be the right room."

Up the stairs I went, tiptoeing each step and at the top, shielding the lantern with my coat, I walked down the hall and opened the door to Room Six.

His eyes opened when I came through the door but the light was in his eyes when I suddenly unveiled the lantern and his gun was on the table alongside the bed.

He started to reach for it and I said, "Go ahead, Fetterson, you pick it up and I can kill you."

His hand hung suspended above the gun and slowly he withdrew it. He sat up in bed then, a big, rawboned man with a shock of rumpled blond hair and his hard-boned, wedgelike face. There was nothing soft about his eyes.

"Sackett? I might have expected it would be you." Careful to make no mistakes he reached for the makings and began to build a smoke. "What do you want?"

"It's a murder charge, Fett. If you have a good lawyer you might beat it, but you make a wrong move and nothing will beat what I give you."

He struck a match and lit up. "All right ... I'm no Reed Carney and if I had a chance I'd try shooting it out, but if that gun stuck in the holster I'd be a dead man."

"You'd never get a hand on it, Fett."

"You takin' me in?"

"Uh-huh. Get into your clothes."

He took his time dressing and I didn't hurry him. I figured if I gave him time he would decide it was best to ride along and go to jail, for with Pritts to back him there was small chance he would ever come to trial. My case was mighty light on evidence, largely on what Tina could tell us and what I had seen myself, which was little enough.

When he was dressed he walked ahead of me down the hall to where Cap was waiting with a gun on the bartender. We gathered up Fetterson's horse and started back to town. I wasn't through with that crowd I'd trailed, but they would have to wait.

Our return trip took us mighty little time because I was edgy about being on the trail, knowing that the bartender might get word to Fetterson's crowd. By noon the next day we had him behind bars in Mora and the town was boiling.

Fetterson stood with his hands on the bars. "I won't be here long," he said, "I'd nothing to do with this."

"You paid them off. You paid Paisano an advance earlier."

There was a tic in his eyelid, that little jump of the lid that I'd noticed long ago in Abilene when he had realized they were boxed and could do nothing without being killed.

"You take it easy," I said, "because by the time this case comes to court I'll have enough to hang you."

He laughed, and it was a hard, contemptuous laugh, too. "You'll never see the day!" he said. "This is a put-up job."

When I walked outside in the sunlight, Jonathan Pritts was getting down from his buckboard.

One thing I could say for Jonathan ... he moved fast.

Chapter XVII

It had been a long time since I'd stood face to face with Jonathan Pritts. He walked through the open door and confronted me in the small office, his pale blue eyes hard with anger. "You have Mr. Fetterson in prison. I want him released."

"Sorry."

"On what charge are you holding him?"

"He is involved in the murder of Juan Torres."

He glared at me. "You have arrested this man because of your hatred for me. He is completely innocent and you can have no evidence to warrant holding him. If you do not release him I will have you removed from office."

He had no idea how empty that threat was. He was a man who liked power and could not have understood how little I wanted the job I had, or how eager I was to be rid of it.

"He will be held for trial."

Jonathan Pritts measured me carefully. "I see you are not disposed to be reasonable." His tone was quieter.

"There has been a crime committed, Mr. Pritts. You cannot expect me to release a prisoner because the first citizen who walks into my office asks me to. The time has come to end crimes of violence, and especially," I added this carefully, "murder that has been paid for."

This would hit him where he lived, I thought, and maybe it did, only there was no trace of feeling on his face. "Now what do you mean by that?"

"We have evidence that Fetterson paid money to the murderers of Juan Torres."

Sure, I was bluffing. We had nothing that would stand up in court, not much, actually, on which to hold him. Only that I had seen him paying money to Paisano, and he had been at Tres Ritos when the killers arrived, and that Tina would testify to the fact that he had paid money there. "That is impossible."

Picking up a sheaf of papers, I began sorting them. He was a man who demanded attention and my action made him furious.

"Mr. Pritts," I said, "I believe you are involved in this crime. If the evidence will substantiate my belief you will hang also, right along with Fetterson and the others."

Why, he fooled me. I expected him to burst out with some kind of attack on me, but he did nothing of the kind. "Have you talked to your brother about this?"

"He knows I have my duty to do, and he would not interfere. Nor would I interfere in his business."

"How much is the bail for Mr. Fetterson?"

"You know I couldn't make any ruling. The judge does that. But there's no bail for murder."

He did not threaten me or make any reply at all, he just turned and went outside. If he had guessed how little I had in the way of evidence he would have just sat still and waited. But I have a feeling about this sort of thing ... if you push such men they are apt to move too fast, move without planning, and so they'll make mistakes.

Bill Sexton came in, and Ollie was with him. They looked worried.

"How much of a case have you got against Fetterson?" Sexton asked me.

"Time comes, I'll have a case."

Sexton rubbed his jaw and then took out a cigar. He studied it while I watched him, knowing what was coming and amused by all the preliminaries, but kind of irritated by them, too.

"This Fetterson," Sexton said, "is mighty close to Jonathan Pritts. It would be a bad idea to try to stick him with these killings. He's got proof he wasn't anywhere around when they took place."

"There's something to that Tye," Ollie said. "It was Jonathan who helped put Orrin in office."

"You know something?" I had my feet on the desk and I took them down and sat up in that swivel chair. "He did nothing of the kind. He jumped on the band wagon when he saw Orrin was a cinch to win. Fetterson stays in jail or I resign."

"That's final?" Ollie asked.

"You know it is."

He looked relieved, I thought. Ollie Shaddock was a good man, mostly, and once an issue was faced he would stand pat and I was doing what we both believed to be right.

"All right," Sexton said, "if you think you've got a case, we'll go along."

It was nigh to dark when Cap came back to the office. There was no light in the office and sitting back in my chair I'd been doing some thinking.

Cap squatted against the wall and lit his pipe. "There's a man in town," he said, "name of Wilson. He's a man who likes his bottle. He's showing quite a bit of money, and a few days ago he was broke."

"Pretty sky," I said, "the man who named the Sangre de Cristos must have seen them like this. That red in the sky and on the peaks ... it looks like blood."

"He's getting drunk," Cap said.

Letting my chair down to an even keel I got up and opened the door that shut off the cells from the office. Walking over to the bars and stopping there, I watched Fetterson lying on his cot. I could not see his face, only the dark bulk of him and his boots. Yes, and the glow of his cigarette.

"When do you want to eat?"

He swung his boots to the floor. "Any time. Suit yourself."

"All right." I turned to go and then let him have it easy. "You know a man named Wilson?"

He took the cigarette from his mouth. "Can't place him. Should I?"

"You should ... he drinks too much. Really likes that bottle. Some folks should never be trusted with money." When I'd closed the door behind me Cap lit the lamp. "A man who's got something to hide," Cap said, "has something to worry about."

Fetterson would not, could not know what Wilson might say, and a man's imagination can work overtime. What was it the Good Book said? "The guilty flee when no man pursueth."

The hardest thing was to wait. In that cell Fetterson was thinking things over and he was going to get mighty restless. And Jonathan Pritts had made no request to see him. Was Jonathan shaping up to cut the strings on Fetterson and leave him to shift for himself? If I could think of that, it was likely Fetterson could too.

Cap stayed at the jail and I walked down to the eating house for a meal. Tom Sunday came in. He was a big man and he filled the door with his shoulders and height. He was unshaved and he looked like he'd been on the bottle. Once inside he blinked at the brightness of the room a moment or two before he saw me and then he crossed to my table. Maybe he weaved a mite in walking ... I wouldn't have sworn to it.

"So you got Fetterson?" He grinned at me, his eyes faintly taunting. "Now that you've got him, what will you do with him?"

"Convict him of complicity," I replied. "We know he paid the money."

"That's hitting close to home," Sunday's voice held a suggestion of a sneer.

"What'll your brother say to that?"

"It doesn't matter what he says," I told him, "but it happens it has been said.

I cut wood and let the chips fall where they may."

"That would be like him," he said, "the sanctimonious son-of -a-bitch."

"Tom," I said quietly, "that term could apply to both of us. We're brothers, you know."

He looked at me, and for a moment there I thought he was going to let it stand, and inside me I was praying he would not. I wanted no fight with Tom Sunday.

"Sorry," he said, "I forgot myself. Hell," he said then, "we don't want trouble.

We've been through too much together."

"That's the way I feel," I said, "and Tom, you can take my say-so or not, but Orrin likes you, too."

"Likes me?" he sneered openly now. "He likes me, all right, likes me out of the way. Why, when I met him he could scarcely read or write ... I taught him. He knew I figured to run for office and he moved right in ahead of me, and you helping him."

"There was room for both of you. There still is."

"The hell there is. Anything I tried to do he would block me. Next time he runs for office he won't have the backing of Jonathan Pritts. I can tell you that."

"It doesn't really matter."

Tom laughed sardonically. "Look, kid, I'll tip you to something right now.

Without Pritts backing him Orrin wouldn't have been elected ... and Pritts is fed up."

"You seem to know a lot about Pritts' plans."

He chuckled. "I know he's fed up, and so is Laura. They're both through with Orrin, you wait and see."

"Tom, the four of us were mighty close back there a while. Take it from me, Tom, Orrin has never disliked you. Sure, the two of you wanted some of the same things but he would have helped you as you did him."

He ate in silence for a moment or two, and then he said, "I have nothing against you, Tye, nothing at all."

After that we didn't say anything for a while. I think both of us were sort of reaching out to the other, for there had been much between us, we had shared violence and struggle and it is a deep tie. Yet when he got up to leave I think we both felt a sadness, for there was something missing.

He went outside and stood in the street a minute and I felt mighty bad. He was a good man, but nobody can buck liquor and a grudge and hope to come out of it all right. And Jonathan Pritts was talking to him.

I arrested Wilson that night. I didn't take him to jail where Fetterson could talk to him. I took him to that house at the edge of town where Cap, Orrin, and me had camped when we first came up to Mora.

I stashed him there with Cap to mount guard and keep the bottle away. Joe came in to guard Fetterson and I mounted up and took to the woods, and I wasn't riding on any wild-goose chase ... Miguel had told me that a couple of men were camped on the edge of town, and one of them was Paisano.

From the ridge back of their camp I studied the layout through a field glass. It was a mighty cozy little place among boulders and pines that a man might have passed by fifty times without seeing had it not been for Miguel being told of it by one of the Mexicans.

The other man must be Jim Dwyer--a short, thickset man who squatted on his heels most of the time and never was without his rifle.

There was no hurry. There was an idea in my skull to the effect these men were camping here for the purpose of breaking Fetterson out of jail. 1 wanted those men the worst way but I wanted them alive, and that would be hard to handle as both men were tough, game men who wouldn't back up from a shooting fight.

There was a spring about fifty yards away, out of sight of the camp. From the layout I'd an idea this place had been used by them before. There was a crude brush shelter built to use a couple of big boulders that formed its walls. All the rest of the day I lay there watching them. From time to time one of them would get up and stroll out to the thin trail that led down toward Mora.

They had plenty of grub and a couple of bottles but neither of them did much drinking. By the time dark settled down I knew every rock, every tree, and every bit of cover in that area. Also I had spotted the easiest places to move quietly in the dark, studying the ground for sticks, finding openings in the brush.

Those men down there were mighty touchy folks with whom a man only made one mistake.

Come nightfall I moved my horse to fresh grass after watering him at the creek.

Then I took a mite of grub and a canteen and worked my way down to within about a hundred feet of their camp.

They had a small fire going, and coffee on. They were broiling some beef, too, and it smelled almighty good. There I was, lying on my belly smelling that good grub and chewing on a dry sandwich that had been packed early in the day. From where I lay I could hear them but couldn't make out the words.

My idea was that with Fetterson in jail it was just a chance Jonathan Pritts might come out himself. He was a cagey man and smart enough to keep at least one man between himself and any gun trouble. But Pritts wanted Fetterson out of jail.

It seemed to me that in the time I'd known Jonathan Pritts he had put faith in nobody. Such a man was unlikely to have confidence in Fetterson's willingness to remain silent when by talking he might save his own skin. Right now I thought Pritts would be a worried man, and with reason enough.

Fetterson had plenty to think about too. He knew that we had Wilson, and Wilson was a drinker who would do almost anything for his bottle. If Wilson talked, Fetterson was in trouble. His one chance to get out of it easier was to talk himself. Personally, I did not believe Fetterson would talk--there was a loyalty in the man, and a kind of iron in him, that would not allow him to break or be broken.

I was counting on the fact that Pritts believed in nobody, was eternally suspicious and would expect betrayal.

What I did not expect was the alternative on which Jonathan Pritts had decided.

I should have guessed, but did not. Jonathan was a hard man, a cold man, a resolute man.

Now it can be mighty miserable lying up in the brush, never really sleeping, and keeping an eye on a camp like that. Down there, they'd sleep awhile and then rouse up and throw some sticks on the fire, and go back to sleep again. And that's how the night run away.

It got to be the hour of dawn with the sun some time away but crimson streaking the sky, and those New Mexico sunrises ... well, there's nothing like the way they build a glory in the sky.

Paisano stood up suddenly. He was listening. He was lower in the canyon and might hear more than I. Would it be Jonathan Pritts himself? If it was, I would move in, taking the three of them in a bundle. Now that might offer a man a problem, and I wanted them all alive, which would not be a simple thing. Yet I had it to do. What made me turn my head, I don't know. There was a man standing in the brush about fifty feet away, standing death-still, his outline vague in the shadowy brush. How long that man had been there I had no idea, but there he was, standing silent and watching.

It gave me a spooky feeling to realize that man had been so close all the while and I'd known nothing about it. Not one time in a thousand could that happen to me. Trouble was, I'd had my eyes on that camp, waiting, watching to miss nothing.

Suddenly, that dark figure in the brush moved ever so slightly, edging forward.

He was higher than I, and could see down the canyon, although he was not concealed nearly so well as I was. My rifle was ready, but what I wanted was the bunch of them, and all alive so they could testify. And I'd had my fill of killing and had never wished to use my gun against anyone.

It was growing lighter, and the man in the brush was out further in the open, looking down as if about to move down there into the camp. And then he turned his head and some of the light fell across his face and I saw who it was.

It was Orrin.

Chapter XVIII

Orrin ....

It was so unexpected that I just lay there staring and then I began to bring my thoughts together and when I considered it I couldn't believe it. Sure, Orrin was married to Pritts' daughter, but Orrin had always seemed the sort of man who couldn't be influenced against his principles. We'd been closer even than most brothers.

So where did that leave me? Our lives had been built tightly around our blood ties for Lord knows how many years. Only I knew that even if it was Orrin, I was going to arrest him. Brother or not, blood tie or not, It was my job and I would do it.

And then I had another thought. Sure, I could see then I was a fool. There had to be another reason. My faith in Orrin went far beyond any suspicion his presence here seemed to mean.

So I got up.

His attention was on that camp as mine had been, and I had taken three steps before he saw me. He turned his head and we looked into each other's eyes, and then I walked on toward him.

Before I could speak he lifted a hand. "Wait!" he whispered, and in the stillness that followed I heard what those men down below must have heard some time before ... the sound of a buckboard coming.

We stood there with the sky blushing rose and red and the gold cresting the far-off ridges and the shadows still lying black in the hollows. We stood together there, as we had stood together before, against the Higginses, against the dark demons of drought and stones that plagued our hillside farm in Tennessee, against the Utes, and against Reed Carney. We stood together, and in that moment I suddenly knew why he was here, and knew before the buckboard came into sight just who I would see.

The buckboard came into the trail below and drew up. And the driver was Laura.

Paisano and Dwyer went out to meet her and we watched money pass between them and watched them unload supplies from the back of the buckboard.

Somehow I'd never figured on a woman, least of all, Laura. In the west in those years we respected our women, and it was not in me to arrest one although I surely had no doubts that a woman could be mighty evil and wrong.

Least of all could I arrest Laura. It was a duty I had, but it was her father I wanted and the truth was plain to see. A man who would send his daughter on such a job ... he was lower than I figured.

Of course, there were mighty few would believe it or even suspect such a frail, blond, and ladylike girl of meeting and delivering money to murderers. Orrin shifted his feet slightly and sighed. I never saw him look the way he did, his face looking sick and empty like somebody had hit him in the midsection with a stiff punch.

"I had to see it," he said to me, "I had to see it myself to believe it. Last night I suspected something like this, but I had to be here to see."

"You knew where the camp was?"

"Jonathan gave her most careful directions last night."

"I should arrest her," I said.

"As you think best."

"It isn't her I want," I said, "and she would be no good to me. She'd never talk."

Orrin was quiet and then he said, "I think I'll move out to the ranch, Tyrel.

I'll move out today."

"Ma will like that. She's getting feeble, Orrin." We went back into the brush a mite and Orrin rolled a smoke and lit up. "Tyrel," he said after a minute, "what's he paying them for? Was it for Torres?"

"Not for Torres," I said, "Fetterson already paid them."

"For you?"

"Maybe ... I doubt it."

Suddenly I wanted to get away from there. Those two I could find when I wanted them for they were known men, and the man I had wanted had been cagey enough not to appear.

"Orrin," I said, "I've got to head Laura off. I'm not going to arrest her, I just want her to know she was seen and I know what's going on. I want them to know and to worry about it."

"Is that why you're holding Wilson apart?"

"Yes."

We went back to our horses and then we cut along the hill through the bright beauty of the morning to join the trail a mile or so beyond where Laura would be.

When she came up, for a minute I thought she would try to drive right over us, but she drew up.

She was pale, but the planes of her face had drawn down in hard lines and I never saw such hatred in a woman's eyes. "Now you're spying on me!" There was nothing soft and delicate about her voice then, it was strident, angry. "Not on you," I said, "on Paisano and Dwyer." She flinched as if I'd struck her, started to speak, then pressed her lips together.

"They were in the group that killed Juan Torres," I said, "along with Wilson."

"If you believe that, why don't you arrest them? Are you afraid?"

"Just waiting ... sometimes if a man let's a small fish be his bait he can catch bigger fish. Like you, bringing supplies and money to them. That makes you an accessory. You can be tried for aiding and abetting."

For the first time she was really scared. She was a girl who made much of position, a mighty snooty sort, if you ask me, and being arrested would just about kill her. "You wouldn't dare!" She said it, but she didn't believe it. She believed I would, and it scared the devil out of her.

"Your father has been buying murder too long, and there is no place for such men. Now you know."

Her face was pinched and white and there was nothing pretty about her then. "Let me pass!" she demanded bitterly.

We drew aside, and she looked at Orrin. "You were nothing when we met, and you'll be nothing again."

Orrin removed his hat, "Under the circumstances," he said gently, "you will pardon me if I remove my belongings?"

She slashed the horses with the whip and went off. Orrin's face was white as we cut over across the hills. "I'd like to be out of the house," he said, "before she gets back."

The town was quiet when I rode in. Fetterson came to the bars of his cell and stared at me when I entered. He knew I'd been away and it worried him he didn't know what I was doing.

"Paisano and Dwyer are just outside the town," I said, "and no two men are going to manage a jail delivery, but Pritts was paying them ... what for?"

His eyes searched my face and suddenly he turned and looked at the barred window. Beyond the window, three hundred yards away, was the wooded hillside ... and to the right, not over sixty yards off, the roof of the store.

He turned back swiftly. "Tye," he said, "you've got to get me out of here."

Fetterson was no fool and he knew that there was no trust in Jonathan Pritts.

Fetterson would die before he would talk, but Pritts did not for a minute believe that. Consequently he intended that Fetterson should die before he could talk.

"Fett," I said, "It's up to you not to get in front of that window. Or," I paused and let the word hang for a minute, "you can talk and tell me the whole story."

He turned sharply away and walked back to his cot and lay down. I knew that window would worry him, Wilson would worry him, and he would worry about how much I knew.

"You might as well tell me and save your bacon," I said, "Wilson hasn't had a drink in three days and he'll tell all he knows any day now. After that we won't care about you."

Right then I went to Ceran St. Vrain. He was the most influential man in Mora, and I had Vicente Romero come in, and we had a talk. Ollie Shaddock was there, Bill Sexton, and Orrin.

"I want ten deputies," I said, "I want Ceran to pick five of them and Romero to pick the other five. I want solid, reliable men. I don't care whether they are good men with guns or not, I want substantial citizens."

They picked them and we talked the whole thing over. I laid all my cards on the table. Told them just what the situation was and I didn't beat around the bush.

Wilson was talking, all right. He had a hand in the killing of Torres and the others and he named the other men involved, and I told them that Paisano and Dwyer were out in the hills and that I was going after them myself. I made good on my word to Tina Fernandez and got a promise from Ceran himself to go after her with a couple of his riders to back him up. He was a man respected and liked and feared.

On Jonathan Pritts I didn't pull my punches. Telling them of our meeting with him in Abilene, of our talk with him in Santa Fe, of the men waiting at Pawnee Rock, and of what he had done since. St. Vrain was an old friend to the Alvarado family ... he knew much of what I said.

"What is it, senor? What do you wish to do?"

"I believe Fetterson is ready to talk." I said, "We will have Wilson, we will have Tina, and Cap's evidence as well as my own, for we trailed the killers to Tres Ritos."

"What about Mrs. Sackett?" St. Vrain asked.

Right there I hesitated. "She's a woman and I'd like to keep her out of it."

They all agreed to this and when the meeting broke up, I was to have a final talk with Fetterson. So this was to be an end to it. There was no anger in me any more. Juan Torres was gone and another death could not bring him back.

Jonathan Pritts would suffer enough to see all his schemes come to nothing, and they would, now. I knew that Vicente Romero was the most respected man in the Spanish-speaking group, and St. Vrain among the Anglos. Once they had said what they had to say, Jonathan Pritts would no longer have influence locally nor in Santa Fe.

Orrin and me, we walked back to the jail together and it was good to walk beside him, brothers in feeling as well as in blood.

"It's tough," I said to him, "I know how you felt about Laura, but Orrin, you were in love with what you thought she was. A man often creates an image of a girl in his mind but when it comes right down to it that's the only place the girl exists."

"Maybe," Orrin was gloomy, "I was never meant to be married."

We stopped in front of the sheriff's office and Cap came out to join us.

"Tom's in town," he said, "and he's drunk and spoilin' for a fight."

"We'll go talk to him," Orrin said.

Cap caught Orrin's arm. "Not you, Orrin. You'd set him off. If you see him now there'll be a shootin' sure."

"A shooting?" Orrin smiled disbelievingly. "Cap, you're clean off the trail.

Why, Tom's one of my best friends!"

"Look," Cap replied shortly, "you're no tenderfoot. How much common sense or reason is there behind two-thirds of the killings out here? You bump into a man and spill his drink, you say the wrong thing ... it doesn't have to make sense."

"There's no danger from Tom," Orrin insisted quietly. "I'd stake my life on it."

"That's just what you're doing," Cap replied. "The man's not the Tom Sunday that drove cows with us. He's turned into a mighty mean man, and he's riding herd on a grudge against you. He's been living alone down there and he's been hitting the bottle."

"Cap's right." I told him, "Tom's carrying a chip on his shoulder."

"All right, I want no trouble with him or anyone."

"You got an election comin' up," Cap added. "You get in a gun battle an' a lot of folks will turn their backs on you."

Reluctantly, Orrin mounted up and rode out to the ranch, and for the first time in my life, I was glad to see him go. Things had been building toward trouble for months now, and Tom Sunday was only one small part of it, but the last thing I wanted was a gun battle between Tom and Orrin.

At all costs that fight must be prevented both for their sakes and for Orrin's future.

Ollie came by the office after Orrin had left. "Pritts is down to Santa Fe," he said, "and he's getting himself nowhere. Vicente Romero has been down there, and so has St. Vrain and it looks like they put the kibosh on him."

Tina was in town and staying with Dru and we had our deposition from Wilson. I expect he was ready to get shut of the whole shebang, for at heart Wilson was not a bad man, only he was where bad company and bad liquor had taken him.

He talked about things clear back to Pawnee Rock, and we took that deposition in front of seven witnesses, three of them Mexican, and four Anglos. When the trial came up I didn't want it said that we'd beaten it out of him, but once he started talking he left nothing untold.

On Wednesday night I went to see Fetterson for I'd been staying away and giving him time to think. He looked gaunt and scared. He was a man with plenty of sand but nobody likes to be set up as Number-One target in a shooting gallery.

"Fett," I said, "I can't promise you anything but a chance in court, but the more you co-operate the better. If you want out of this cell you'd better talk."

"You're a hard man, Tyrel," he said gloomily. "You stay with a thing."

"Fett," I said, "men like you and me have had our day. Folks want to settle affairs in court now, and not with guns. Women and children coming west want to walk a street without stray bullets flying around. A man has to make peace with the times."

"If I talk I'll hang myself."

"Maybe not ... folks are more anxious to have an end to all this trouble than to punish anybody."

He still hesitated so I left him there and went out into the cool night. Orrin was out at the ranch and better off there, and Cap Rountree was some place up the street.

Bill Shea came out of the jail house. "Take a walk if you're of a mind to, Tyrel," he suggested, "there's three of us here."

Saddling the Montana horse I rode over to see Dru. It was a desert mountain night with the sky so clear and the stars so close it looked like you could knock them down with a stick. Dru had sold the big house that lay closer to Santa Fe, and was spending most of her time in this smaller but comfortable house near Mora.

She came to the door to meet me and we walked back inside and I told her about the meeting with Romero and St. Vrain, and the situation with Fetterson.

"Move him, Tye, you must move him out of there before he is killed. It is not right to keep him there."

"I want him to talk."

"Move him," Dru insisted, "you must. Think of how you would feel if he was killed."

She was right, of course, and I'd been thinking of it. "All right," I said, "first thing in the morning."

Sometimes the most important things in a man's life are the ones he talks about least. It was that way with Dru and me. No day passed that I did not think of her much of the time, she was always with me, and even when we were together we didn't talk a lot because so much of the time there was no need for words, it was something that existed between us that we both understood.

The happiest hours of my life were those when I was riding with Dru or sitting across a table from her. And I'll always remember her face by candlelight ... it seemed I was always seeing it that way, and soft sounds of the rustle of gowns, the tinkle of silver and glass, and Dru's voice, never raised and always exciting.

Within the thick adobe walls of the old Spanish house there was quiet, a shadowed peace that I have associated with such houses all my years. One stepped through the door into another world, and left outside the trouble, confusion, and storm of the day.

"When this is over, Dru," I said, "we'll wait no longer. And it will soon be over."

"We do not need to wait." She turned from the window where we stood and looked up at me. "I am ready now."

"This must be over first, Dru. It is a thing I have to do and when it is finished I shall take off my badge and leave the public offices to Orrin."

Suddenly there was an uneasiness upon me and I said to her, "I must go."

She walked to the door with me. "Vaya con Dios," she said, and she waited there until I was gone.

And that night there was trouble in town but it was not the trouble I expected.

Chapter XIX

It happened as I left my horse in front of the saloon and stepped in for a last look around. It was after ten o'clock, and getting late for the town of Mora, and I went into the saloon and stepped into trouble.

Two men faced each other across the room and the rest were flattened against the walls. Chico Cruz, deadly as a sidewinder, stood posed and negligent, a slight smile on his lips, bis black eyes flat and without expression.

And facing him was Tom Sunday. Big, blond, and powerful, unshaven as always these days, heavier than he used to be, but looking as solid and formidable as a blockhouse.

Neither of them saw me. Their attention was concentrated on each other and death hung in the air like the smell of lightning on a rocky hillside. As I stepped in, they drew.

With my own eyes I saw it. Saw Chico's hand flash. I had never believed a man could draw so fast, his gun came up and then he jerked queerly and his body snapped sidewise and his gun went off into the floor and Tom Sunday was walking.

Tom Sunday was walking in, gun poised. Chico was trying to get his gun up and Tom stopped and spread his legs and grimly, brutally, he fired a shot into Chico's body, and then coolly, another shot.

Chico's gun dropped, hit the floor with a thud. Chico turned and in turning his eyes met mine across the room, and he said very distinctly into the silence that followed the thundering of the guns, "It was not you." He fell then, fell all in a piece and his hat rolled free and he lay on the floor and he was dead.

Tom Sunday turned and stared at me and his eyes were blazing with a hot, hard flame. "You want me?" he said, and the words were almost a challenge.

"It was a fair shooting, Tom," I said quietly. "I do not want you."

He pushed by me and went out of the door, and the room broke into wild talk.

"Never would have believed it. ... Fastest thing I ever saw. ... But Chico!" The voice was filled with astonishment. "He killed Chico Cruz!"

Until that moment I had always believed that if it came to a difficulty that Orrin could take care of Tom Sunday, but I no longer believed it. More than any of them I knew the stuff of which Orrin was made. He had a kind of nerve rarely seen, but he was no match for Tom when it came to speed. And there was a fatal weakness against him, for Orrin truly liked Tom Sunday.

And Tom?

Somehow I didn't think there was any feeling left in Tom, not for anyone, unless it was me. The easy comradeship was gone. Tom was ingrown, bitter, hard as nails.

When Chico's body was moved out I tried to find out what started the trouble, but it was like so many barroom fights, just sort of happened. Two, tough, edgy men and neither about to take any pushing around. Maybe it was a word, maybe a spilled drink, a push, or a brush against each other, and then guns were out and they were shooting.

Tom had ridden out of town.

Cap was sitting in the jail house with Babcock and Shea when I walked in. I could see Fetterson through the open door, so walked back to the cells.

'That right? What they're saying?"

"Tom Sunday killed Chico Cruz ... beat him to the draw."

Fetterson shook his head unbelievingly, "I never would have believed it. I thought Chico was the fastest thing around ... unless it was you."

Fetterson grinned suddenly. "How about you and Tom? You two still friends?"

It made me mad and I turned sharply around and he stepped back from the bars, but he was grinning when he moved back. "Well, I just asked," he said, "some folks never bought that story about you backin' Cruz down."

"Tom is my friend," I told him, "we'll always be friends."

"Maybe," he said, "maybe." He walked back to the bars. "Looks like I ain't the only one has troubles."

Outside in the dark I told Cap about it, every detail. He listened, nodding thoughtfully. "Tyrel," Cap said, "we been friends, and trail dust is thicker'n blood, but you watch Tom Sunday. You watch him. That man's gone loco like an old buffalo bull who's left the herd."

Cap took his pipe out of his mouth and knocked out the ashes against the awning post. "Tyrel, mark my words! He's started now an' nuthin's goin' to stop him.

Orrin will be next an' then you."

That night I got into the saddle and rode all the way out to the ranch to sleep, pausing only a moment at the gap where the river flowed through, remembering Juan Torres who died there. It was bloody country and time it was quieted down.

Inside me I didn't want to admit that Cap was right, but I was afraid, I was very much afraid.

As if the shooting, which had nothing to do with Pritts, Alvarado, or myself, had triggered the whole situation from Santa Fe to Cimarron, the lid suddenly blew off. Maybe it was that Pritts was shrewd enough to see his own position weakening and if anything was to be done it had to be done now.

Jonathan and Laura, they moved back up to Mora and it looked like they had come to stay. Things were shaping up for a trial of Wilson and Fetterson for the murder of Juan Torres.

We moved Fetterson to a room in an old adobe up the street that had been built for a fort. We moved him by night and the next morning we stuck a dummy up in the window of the jail. We put that dummy up just before daylight and then Cap, Orrin, and me, we took to the hills right where we knew we ought to be.

We heard the shots down the slope from us and we went down riding fast. They were wearing Sharps buffalo guns. They both fired and when we heard those two rifles talk we came down out of the higher trees and had them boxed. The Sharps buffalo was a good rifle, but it was a single shot, and we had both those men covered with Winchesters before they could get to their horses or had time to reload.

Paisano and Dwyer. Caught flat-footed and red-handed, and nothing to show for it but a couple of bullets through a dummy.

That was what broke Jonathan Pritts' back. We had four of the seven men now and within a matter of hours after, we tied up two more. That seventh man wasn't going to cause anybody any harm. Seems he got drunk one night and on the way home something scared his horse and he got bucked off and with a foot caught in the stirrup there wasn't much he could do. Somewhere along the line he'd lost his pistol and couldn't kill the horse. He was found tangled in some brush, his foot still in the stirrup, and the only way they knew him was by his boots, which were new, and his saddle and horse. A man dragged like that is no pretty sight, and he had been dead for ten to twelve hours.

Ollie came down to the sheriff's office with Bill Sexton and Vicente Romero.

They were getting up a political rally and Orrin was going to speak. Several of the high mucky-mucks from Santa Fe were coming up, but this was to be Orrin's big day.

It was a good time for him to put himself forward and the stage was being set for it. There was to be a real ol' time fandango with the folks coming in from back at the forks of the creeks. Everybody was to be there and all dressed in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.

In preparation for it I made the rounds and gave several of the trouble makers their walking papers. What I mean is, I told them they would enjoy Las Vegas or Socorro or Cimarron a whole sight better and why didn't they start now.

They started.

"Have you heard the talk that's going around?" Shea asked me.

"What talk?"

"It's being said that Tom Sunday is coming into town after Orrin."

"Tom Sunday and Orrin are friends," I said, "I know Tom's changed, but I don't believe he'll go that far."

"Put no faith in that line of thought, Tyrel. Believe me, the man hasn't a friend left. He's surly as a grizzly with a sore tooth, and nobody goes near him any more. The man's changed, and he works with a gun nearly every day. Folks coming by there say they can hear it almost any hour."

"Tom never thought much of Orrin as a fighter. Tom never knew him like I have."

"That isn't all." Shea put his cigar down on the edge of the desk. "There's talk about what would happen if you and Tom should meet."

Well, I was mad. I got up and walked across the office and swore. Yes, and I wasn't a swearing man. Oddly enough, thinking back, I can't remember many gunfighters who were. Most of them I knew were sparing in the use of words as well as whiskey.

But one thing I knew: Orrin must not meet Tom Sunday. Even if Orrin beat him, Orrin would lose. A few years ago it would not have mattered that he had been in a gun battle, now it could wreck his career.

If Orrin would get out of town ... but he couldn't. He had been selected as the speaker for the big political rally and that would be just the time when Tom Sunday would be in town.

"Thanks," I said to Shea, "thanks for telling me."

Leaving Cap in charge of the office I mounted up and rode out to the ranch.

Orrin was there, and we sat down and had dinner with Ma. It was good to have our feet under the same table again, and Ma brightened up and talked like her old self.

Next day was Sunday and Orrin and me decided to take Ma to church. It was a lazy morning with bright sunshine and Orrin took Ma in the buckboard and we boys rode along behind.

We wore our broadcloth suits and the four of us dressed in black made a sight walking around Ma, who was a mighty little woman among her four tall sons, and Dru was with us, standing there beside Ma and me, and I was a proud man.

It was a meeting I'll not soon forget, that one was, because when Ollie heard the family was going, he came along and stood with us at the hymn singing and the preaching.

Whether or not Orrin had heard any of the stories going round about Tom I felt it necessary to warn him. If I expected him to brush it off, I was wrong. He was dead serious about it when I explained. "But I can't leave," he added, "everybody would know why I went and if they thought I was afraid, I'd lose as many votes as if I actually fought him."

He was right, of course, so we prepared for the meeting with no happy anticipation of it, although this was to be Orrin's big day, and his biggest speech, and the one that would have him fairly launched in politics. Men were coming up from Santa Fe to hear him, all the crowd around the capital who pulled the political strings.

Everybody knew Orrin was to speak and everybody knew Tom would be there. And nothing any of us could do but wait.

Jonathan Pritts knew he had been left out and he knew it was no accident. He also knew that it was to be Orrin's big day and that Laura's cutting loose had not hurt him one bit.

Also Jonathan knew the trial was due to come off soon, and before the attorney got through cross-examining Wilson and some of the others the whole story of his move into the Territory would be revealed. There was small chance it could be stopped, but if something were to happen to Orrin and me, if there was to be a jail delivery ...

He wouldn't dare.

Or would he?

Chapter XX

The sun was warm in the street that morning, warm even at the early hour when I rode in from the ranch. The town lay quiet and a lazy dog sprawled in the dust opened one eye and flapped his tail in a I-won't-bother-you-if-you-don't-bother-me sort of way, as I approached.

Cap Rountree looked me over carefully from those shrewd old eyes as I rode up.

"You wearing war paint, boy? If you ain't, you better. I got a bad feeling about today."

Getting down from the saddle I stood beside him and watched the hills against the skyline. People were getting up all over town now, or lying there awake and thinking about the events of the day. There was to be the speaking, a band concert, and most folks would bring picnic lunches.

"I hope he stays away."

Cap stuffed his pipe with tobacco. "He'll be here."

"What happened, Cap? Where did it start?"

He leaned a thin shoulder against the awning post. "You could say it was at the burned wagons when Orrin and him had words about that money. No man likes to be put in the wrong.

"Or you could say it was back there at the camp near Baxter Springs, or maybe it was the day they were born. Sometimes men are born who just can't abide one another from the time they meet ... don't make no rhyme nor reason, but it's so."

"They are proud men."

"Tom's gone killer, Tyrel, don't you ever forget that. It infects some men like rabies, and they keep on killing until somebody kills them."

We stood there, not talking for awhile, each of us busy with his own thoughts.

What would Dru be doing about now? Rising at home, and planning her day, bathing, combing her long dark hair, having breakfast.

Turning away I went inside and started looking over the day's roundup of mail.

This morning there was a letter from Tell, my oldest brother. Tell was in Virginia City, Montana, and was planning to come down and see us. Ma would be pleased, mighty pleased. It had been a sorry time since we had seen Tell.

There was a letter from that girl, too. The one we had sent the money we found in that burned wagon ... she was coming west and wanted to meet us. The letter had been forwarded from Santa Fe where it had been for weeks ... by this time she must be out here, or almost here. It gave me an odd feeling to get that letter on this morning, thinking back to the trouble it had caused.

Cap came in from outside and I said, "I'm going to have coffee with Dru. You hold the fort, will you?"

"You do that, boy. You just do that."

Folks were beginning to crowd the streets now, and some were hanging out hunting and flags. Here and there a few rigs stood along the street, all with picnic baskets in the back. There were big, rawboned men in the Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and women in fresh-washed ginghams and sunbonnets. Little boys ran and played in the streets, and their mothers scolded and called after them while little girls, starched and ribboned, looked on enviously and disdainfully.

It was good to be alive. Everything seemed to move slow today, everything seemed to take its time ... was this the way a man felt on his last day? Was it to be my last day?

When I knocked on the door Dru answered it herself. Beyond the welcome I could see the worry.

"How's about a poor drifter begging a cup of coffee, ma'am? I was just passin' through and the place had a kindly look."

"Come in, Tye. You don't have to knock."

"Big day in town. Biggest crowd I ever saw. Why, I've seen folks from Santa Fe ... as far as Raton or Durango."

The maid brought in the coffee and we sat at the breakfast table looking out the low-silled window over the town and the hillside and we sat talking for awhile and at last I got up and she came with me to the door. She put her hand on my sleeve. "Stay here, Tye ... don't go."

"Got to ... busy day today."

Folks were crowded along the street and there were wagons drawn up where the speaking was to be--with many people taking their places early so they could be close enough to hear. When I got down to the office Orrin was there in his black frock coat and string tie. He grinned at me, but beyond the grin his eyes were serious.

"You get up there and talk," I said, "you're the speaker of this family."

Me, I stayed at the office. Cap was out and around, nosing after news like a smart old coon dog looking up trails in the dust or the berry patches. There was no sign of Tom Sunday, and around the jail everything was quiet. Nor was Jonathan Pritts anywhere in sight. My guards were restless, most of them men with families who wanted to be with them on a big day like this.

Ma and the boys came in about noon, Ma riding in the buckboard with Joe driving.

Ollie had held a place for them where Ma could hear the speaking, and it would be the first time she had ever heard Orrin make a speech. Folks were mighty impressed with speechmaking those days, and a man who could talk right up and make his words sound like something, well, he rated mighty high up there. He was a big man.

That day I was wearing black broadcloth pants down over my boots, a style just then coming in, and I had on a gray shirt with a black string tie and a black, braided Spanish-style jacket and a black hat. My gun was on, and I was carrying a spare tucked into my waistband out of sight under my jacket.

About noon Caribou Brown rode into town with Doubleout Sam. Shea saw them ride in and reported to me at once and I went down to the saloon where they had bellied up to the bar.

"All right, boys. Finish your drink and ride out."

They turned around on me, the both of them, but they knew me pretty well by then. "You're a hard man," Brown said. "Can't a man stay around for the fun?"

"Sorry."

They had their drinks but they didn't like it and when they finished them I was standing right there. "If you boys start right now you can make Vegas," I told them. "You'll have trouble if you think you can stay. I'll throw you both in jail and you'll be there next month at this time."

"On what charge?" Sam didn't like it.

"Loitering, obstructing justice, interfering with an officer, peddling without a license ... I'll think of something."

"Oh, damn you!"Brown said. "Come on, Sam ... let's ride."

They started for the door.

"Boys?"

They turned. "Don't circle around. I've got some deputies who are mighty concerned about the town today. You're known men and if you come back they'll be shooting on sight."

They rode out of town and I was glad to see them go. Both were known trouble makers of the old Settlement crowd and they had been in several shootings.

The streets began to grow empty as folks drifted toward the speechmaking and the band concert, which was going full blast. Going slow along the walks the streets were so empty the sound of my heels was loud. When I reached the adobe where Fetterson was held, I stopped by. Shea was on guard there.

"Hello, Fett," I said.

He got up and came to the bars. "That right? That they shot into my cell? Into a dummy?"

"What did you expect? You can hang him, Fetterson, and he knows that. He's got to do something ... or run!"

Fetterson rubbed his jaw. The man looked worried. "How does a man get into these things?" he asked suddenly. "Damn it, I played square with him."

"He's wrong, Fett. He cares nothing for you except in so far as you are useful and when your usefulness is ended, so's his interest. You're too good a man to be wasted, Fett ... you're loyal to a man who does not understand loyalty."

"Maybe ... maybe."

He listened to the band, which was playing My Darling Nelly Gray. "Sounds like a good time," he said wistfully.

"I've got to go," I said, "the speaking starts in a few minutes."

He was still standing by the bars when I went out. Shea got up and walked outside with me. "Are you expecting trouble?"

"At any minute."

"All right," he cradled the shotgun in his arms, "I just don't want to miss all the fun."

From the gathering place beyond the buildings I could hear Ollie introducing somebody. Pausing, I listened. It was the speaker from Santa Fe--the one who preceded Orrin--and I could hear his rolling tones, although he was too far away to distinguish more than a word or two, and when it happened, it happened so suddenly that I was taken by surprise.

They came into the street below the jail and they came suddenly and they were on foot. Obviously they had been hidden during the night in the houses of some of the citizens, and there were eight of. Them and they had rifles. Everyone of them was a familiar face, all were from the old Settlement crowd, and they had me dead to rights.

They were near the jail and there was a man inside. There were probably two men inside. Up the street behind me Shea could do little unless I gave him room, but I had to be where I could do the most damage.

Turning at right angles I walked right into the middle of the street and then I faced them. Sixty yards separated us. Looking at those rifles and shotguns I knew I was in trouble and plenty of it, but I knew this was what I had been waiting for.

There were eight of them and they would be confident, but they would also be aware that I was going to get off at least one shot and probably one man would be killed ... nobody would want to be that man.

"What are you boys getting out of this?" I asked them coolly. "Fifty dollars apiece? It's a cinch Jonathan isn't going to pay more than that ... hope you collected in advance."

"We want the keys!" The man talking was named Stott. "Toss them over here!"

"You're talking, Stott ... but are you watching? You boys are going to get it from the jail."

"The keys!"

Stott I was going to kill. He was the leader. I was going to get him and as many more as possible. There was a rustle of movement down the street behind them.

There was movement down there but I didn't dare take my eyes off them. So I started to walk. I started right down the street toward them, hoping to get so close they would endanger each other if they started shooting. Beyond them I could see movement and when I realized who it was I was so startled they might have killed me.

It was Dru.

She wasn't alone. She had six buckskin-clad riders with her and they all had Winchesters and they looked like they wanted to start shooting.

"All right," I said, "the fun's over. Drop your gun belts."

Stott was angry. "What are you trying--" Behind him seven Winchesters were cocked on signal, and he looked sharply around. And after that it was settled ... they were not nearly so anxious for trouble and when they were disarmed, they were jailed along with the others.

Dru walked her horse up to the front of the jail. "Miguel saw them coming," she said, "so we rode down to help."

"Help? You did it all."

We talked there in the street and then I walked beside her horse over to the speaking. When this was over I was going to go after Jonathan Pritts. I was going to arrest him but oddly enough, I did not want him jailed. He was an old man, and defeat now would ruin him enough and he was whipped. When this was over he would be arrested, but if St. Vrain, Romero, and the others agreed, I'd just send him out of town with his daughter and a buckboard ... they deserved each other.

Orrin was introduced. He got up and walked to the front of the platform and he started to speak in that fine Welsh voice of his. He spoke quietly, with none of that oratory they had been hearing. He just talked to them as he would to friends in his own home, yet as he continued his voice grew in power and conviction, and he was speaking as I had never heard him speak.

Standing there in the shade of a building I listened and was proud. This was my brother up there ... this was Orrin. This was the boy I'd grown up with, left the mountains with, herded cattle, and fought Indians beside.

There was a strange power in him now that was born of thought and dream and that fine Welsh magic in his voice and mind. He was talking to them of what the country needed, of what had to be done, but he was using their own language, the language of the mountains, the desert, the cattle drives. And I was proud of him.

Turning away from the crowd, I walked slowly back to the street and between the buildings and when I emerged on the sunlit street, Tom Sunday was standing there.

I stopped where I stood and could not see his eyes but as flecks of light from the shadow beneath his hat brim. He was big, broad, and powerful. He was unshaved and duty, but never in my life had I seen such a figure of raw, physical power in one man.

"Hello, Tom."

"I've come for him, Tyrel. Stay out of the way."

"He's building his future," I said, "you helped him start it, Tom. He's going to be a big man and you helped him."

Maybe he didn't even hear me. He just looked at me straight on like a man staring down a narrow hallway.

"I'm going to kill him," he said, "I should have done it years ago."

We were talking now, like in a conversation, yet something warned me to be careful. What had Cap said? He was a killer and he would go on killing until something or somebody stopped him.

This was the man who had killed the Durango Kid, who had killed Ed Fry and Chico Cruz ... Chico never even got off a shot.

"Get out of the way, Tye," he said, "I've nothing against you, I--"

He was going to kill me. I was going to die ... I was sure of it.

Only he must not come out of it alive. Orrin must have his future. Anyway, I was the mean one ... I always had been.

Once before I had stepped in to help Orrin and I would now.

There was nobody there on the street but the two of us, just Tom Sunday, the man who had been my best friend, and me. He had stood up for me before this and we had drunk from the same rivers, fought Indians together. ...

"Tom," I said, "remember that dusty afternoon on that hillside up there on the Purgatoire when we ..."

Sweat trickled down my spine and tasted salt on my lips. His shirt was open to his belt and I could see the hair on his big chest and the wide buckle of his belt. His hat was pulled low but there was no expression on his face.

This was Tom Sunday, my friend ... only now he was a stranger.

"You can get out of the way, Tye," he said, "I'm going to kill him."

He spoke easily, quietly. I knew I had it to do, but this man had helped teach me to read, he had loaned me books, he had ridden the plains with me.

"You can't do it," I said. Right then, he went for his gun.

There was an instant before he drew when I knew he was going to draw. It was an instant only, a flickering instant that triggered my mind. My hand dropped and I palmed my gun, but his came up and he was looking across it, his eyes like white fire, and I saw the gun blossom with a rose of flame and felt my own gun buck in my hand, and then I stepped forward and left--one quick step--and fired again.

He stood there looking across his gun at me and then he fired, but his bullet made a clean miss. Thumbing back the hammer I said, "Damn it, Tom. ..." and I shot him in the chest.

He still stood there but his gun muzzle was lowering and he was still looking at me. A strange, puzzled expression came into his eyes and he stepped toward me, dropping his gun. "Tyrel ... Tye, what. ..." He reached out a hand toward me, but when I stepped quickly to take it, he fell.

He went full face to the dust, falling hard, and when he hit the ground he groaned, then he half-turned and dropping to my knees I grabbed his hand and gripped it hard.

"Tye ... Tye, damn it, I ..." He breathed hoarsely, and the front of his shirt was red with blood.

"The books," he whispered, "take the ... books."

He died like that, gripping my hand, and when I looked up the street was full of people, and Orrin was there, and Dru.

And over the heads of some of the nearest, Jonathan Pritts.

Pushing through the crowd I stopped, facing Jonathan. "You get out of town," I told him, "you get out of the state. If you aren't out of town within the hour, or if you ever come back, for any reason at all, I'll kill you."

He just turned and walked away, his back stiff as a ramrod ... but it wasn't even thirty minutes until he and Laura drove from town in a buckboard.

"That was my fight, Tye," Orrin said quietly, "it was my fight."

"No, it was mine. From the beginning it was mine. He knew it would be, I think.

Maybe we both knew it ... and Cap. I think Cap Rountree knew it first of all."

We live on the hill back of Mora, and sometimes in Santa Fe, Dru and me ... we've sixty thousand acres of land in two states and a lot of cattle. Orrin, he's a state senator now, and pointing for greater things.

Sometimes of an evening I think of that, think when the shadows grow long of two boys who rode out of the high hill country of Tennessee to make a home in the western lands.

We found our home, and we graze and work our acres, and since that day in the street of Mora when I killed Tom Sunday I have never drawn a gun on any man.

Nor will I ...

About the Author "I think of myself in the oral tradition -- of a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered -- as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, assessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books.

His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel) Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L'Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio Publishing.

The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties -- among them, four Hopalong Cassidy novels: The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, The Riders of High Rock, and Trouble Shooter.