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 yo
urself? 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.
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