The Daybreakers (1960) s-6

by Louis L'Amour

  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 pr
eparation 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.