“You just walk steady,” I told him, “I’m not in the mood for trouble myself. I
got a backache and I don’t feel up to a shooting, so don’t push me.”
“Who’s pushing?”
“Red,” Orrin said seriously, “you’re the kind of a man we like to see. Handsome,
upstanding … and alive.”
“Alive!” I added, “But you’d make a handsome corpse, Red.”
By now we had him out in the dark and away from his friends, and he was scared,
his eyes big as pesos. He looked like a treed coon in the lanternlight. “What
you goin’ to do to me?” he protested. “Look, I—”
“Red,” Orrin said, “There’s a fair land up north, a wide and beautiful land.
It’s a land with running water, clear streams, and grass hip-high to a tall elk.
I tell you Red, that’s a country!”
“And you know something, Red?” I put in my two-bits’ worth. “We think you should
see it.”
“We surely do.” Orrin was dead serious. “We’re going to miss you if you go, Red.
But Red, you stay and we won’t miss you.”
“You got a horse, Red?”
“Yeah, sure.” He was looking from one to the other of us. “Sure, I got a horse.”
“You’ll like that country up north. Now it can get too hot here for a man, Red,
and the atmosphere is heavy … there’s lead in it, you know, or liable to be.
We think you should get a-straddle of that cayuse of yours, Red, and keep riding
until you get to Pike’s Peak, or maybe Montana.”
“To—tonight!” he protested.
“Of course. All your life you’ve wanted to see that country up north, Red, and
you just can’t wait.”
“I—I got to get my outfit. I—”
“Don’t do it, Red.” Orrin shook his head, big-eyed. “Don’t you do it.” He leaned
closer. “Vigilantes, Red. Vigilantes.”
Red jerked under my hand, and he wet his lips with his tongue. “Now, look here!”
he protested.
“The climate’s bad here, Red. A man’s been known to die from it. Why, I know men
that’d bet you wouldn’t live to see daybreak.”
We came to a nice little gray. “This your horse?”
He nodded.
“You get right up into the saddle, Red. No—keep your gun. If somebody should
decide to shoot you, they’d want you to have your gun on to make it look right.
Looks bad to shoot an unarmed man. Now don’t you feel like traveling, Red?”
By this time Red may have been figuring things out, or maybe he never even got
started. Anyway, he turned his horse into the street and went out of town at a
fast canter.
Orrin looked at me and grinned. “Now there’s a traveling man!” He looked more
serious. “I never thought we’d get out of there without a shooting. That bunch
was drinking and they would have loved to lynch a couple of us, or shoot us.”
We rode back to join Cap and Tom Sunday. “About time. Tom has been afraid he’d
have to go down and pull you out from under some Settlement man,” Cap said.
“What do you mean … Settlement man?”
“Jonathan Pritts has organized a company which he calls the Settlement Company.
You can buy shares. If you don’t have money you can buy them with your gun.”
Orrin had nothing to say, he never did when Pritts’ name was mentioned. He just
sat down on his bed and pulled off a boot.
“You know,” he said reflectively, “all that talk about the country up north
convinced me. I think we should all go.”
Chapter X
Mora lay quiet in the warm sun, and along the single street, nothing stirred.
From the porch of the empty house in which we had been camping, I looked up the
street, feeling the tautness that lay beneath the calm. Orrin was asleep inside
the house, and I was cleaning my .44 Henry. There was trouble building and we
all knew it.
Fifty or sixty of the Settlement crowd were in town, and they were getting
restless for something to do, but I had my own plans and didn’t intend they
should be ruined by a bunch of imported trouble makers.
Tom Sunday came out on the porch and stopped under the overhang where I was
working on my rifle. He took out one of those thin black cigars and lighted up.
“Are you riding out today?”
“Out to the place,” I said, “we’ve found us a place about eight or nine miles
from here.”
He paused and took the cigar from his mouth. “I want a place too, but first I
want to see what happens here. A man with an education could get into politics
and do all right out here.” He walked on down the street.
Tom was no fool; he knew there was going to be a demand for some law in Mora,
and he intended to be it. I knew he wouldn’t take a back seat because of Orrin.
It worried me to think of what would happen when Orrin and Tom found out each
wanted the same office, although I doubted if Orrin would mind too much.
When I finished cleaning my rifle I saddled up, put my blanket roll behind the
saddle and got ready to ride out. Orrin crawled out of bed and came to the door.
“I’ll be out later, or Cap will,” he said. “I want to keep an eye on things
here.” He walked to the horse with me. “Tom say anything?”
“He wants to be marshal.”
Orrin scowled. “Damn it, Tyrel, I was afraid of that. He’d probably make a
better marshal than me.”
“There’s no telling about that, but I’d say it was a tossup, Orrin, but you can
win in the election. I just hate to see you two set off against each other.
Tom’s a good man.”
Neither one of us said anything for a while, standing there in the sun, thinking
about it. It was a mighty fine morning and hard to believe so much trouble was
building around us.
“I’ve got to talk to him,” Orrin said at last, “this ain’t right. We’ve got to
level with him.”
All I could think of was the fact the four of us had been together two years
now, and it had been a good period for all of us. I wanted nothing to happen to
that. Friendships are not so many in this life, and we had put rough country
behind us and kicked up some dust in our passing, and we had smelled a little
powder smoke together and there’s nothing binds men together like sweat and
gunsmoke.
“You go ahead, Orrin. We’ll talk to Tom tomorrow.”
I wanted to be there when it was talked out, because Tom liked me and he trusted
me. He and Orrin were too near alike in some ways, and too different in others.
There was room enough for both of them, but I was quite sure that Tom would want
to go first.
It took me a shade more than an hour to ride down to where we figured to start
ranching. There were trees along the river there, and some good grass, and I
bedded down at the mouth of the gap, in a corner among the rocks. Picketing
Montana horse, I switched from boots to moccasins and scouted around, choosing
the site for the house and the corrals.
The bench where the house was to be was only twenty feet above the river, but
above the highest watermark. The cliff raised up behind the bench, and the
location was a good one.
Peeling off my shirt, I worked through the afternoon clearing rocks and brush
off the building site and pacing it off. Then I cut poles and began building a
corral for our horses, for we would need that first of all. Later, when dark
began to come, I bathed in the creek and putting on my clothes, built a small
fire and made coffee and chewed on some jerked beef.
After I’d eaten I dug into my saddlebags for a book and settled down to read.
Time to time I’d get up and look around, or stand for a spell in the darkness
away from the fire, just listening. By the time the fire was burning down I
moved back from the fire and unrolled my bed. A bit of wind was blowing up and a
few clouds had drifted over the stars.
Taking my rifle I went out to check on Montana horse who was close by. I shifted
his picket pin a little closer and on fresh grass. There was a feel to the night
that I didn’t like, and I found myself wishing the boys would show up.
When I heard a sound it was faint, but Montana horse got it, too. His head came
up and his ears pricked and his nostrils reached out for the smell of things.