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