“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