problem, and I wanted them all alive, which would not be a simple thing. Yet I
had it to do. What made me turn my head, I don’t know. There was a man standing
in the brush about fifty feet away, standing death-still, his outline vague in
the shadowy brush. How long that man had been there I had no idea, but there he
was, standing silent and watching.
It gave me a spooky feeling to realize that man had been so close all the while
and I’d known nothing about it. Not one time in a thousand could that happen to
me. Trouble was, I’d had my eyes on that camp, waiting, watching to miss
nothing.
Suddenly, that dark figure in the brush moved ever so slightly, edging forward.
He was higher than I, and could see down the canyon, although he was not
concealed nearly so well as I was. My rifle was ready, but what I wanted was the
bunch of them, and all alive so they could testify. And I’d had my fill of
killing and had never wished to use my gun against anyone.
It was growing lighter, and the man in the brush was out further in the open,
looking down as if about to move down there into the camp. And then he turned
his head and some of the light fell across his face and I saw who it was.
It was Orrin.
Chapter XVIII
Orrin ….
It was so unexpected that I just lay there staring and then I began to bring my
thoughts together and when I considered it I couldn’t believe it. Sure, Orrin
was married to Pritts’ daughter, but Orrin had always seemed the sort of man who
couldn’t be influenced against his principles. We’d been closer even than most
brothers.
So where did that leave me? Our lives had been built tightly around our blood
ties for Lord knows how many years. Only I knew that even if it was Orrin, I was
going to arrest him. Brother or not, blood tie or not, It was my job and I would
do it.
And then I had another thought. Sure, I could see then I was a fool. There had
to be another reason. My faith in Orrin went far beyond any suspicion his
presence here seemed to mean.
So I got up.
His attention was on that camp as mine had been, and I had taken three steps
before he saw me. He turned his head and we looked into each other’s eyes, and
then I walked on toward him.
Before I could speak he lifted a hand. “Wait!” he whispered, and in the
stillness that followed I heard what those men down below must have heard some
time before … the sound of a buckboard coming.
We stood there with the sky blushing rose and red and the gold cresting the
far-off ridges and the shadows still lying black in the hollows. We stood
together there, as we had stood together before, against the Higginses, against
the dark demons of drought and stones that plagued our hillside farm in
Tennessee, against the Utes, and against Reed Carney. We stood together, and in
that moment I suddenly knew why he was here, and knew before the buckboard came
into sight just who I would see.
The buckboard came into the trail below and drew up. And the driver was Laura.
Paisano and Dwyer went out to meet her and we watched money pass between them
and watched them unload supplies from the back of the buckboard.
Somehow I’d never figured on a woman, least of all, Laura. In the west in those
years we respected our women, and it was not in me to arrest one although I
surely had no doubts that a woman could be mighty evil and wrong.
Least of all could I arrest Laura. It was a duty I had, but it was her father I
wanted and the truth was plain to see. A man who would send his daughter on such
a job … he was lower than I figured.
Of course, there were mighty few would believe it or even suspect such a frail,
blond, and ladylike girl of meeting and delivering money to murderers. Orrin
shifted his feet slightly and sighed. I never saw him look the way he did, his
face looking sick and empty like somebody had hit him in the midsection with a
stiff punch.
“I had to see it,” he said to me, “I had to see it myself to believe it. Last
night I suspected something like this, but I had to be here to see.”
“You knew where the camp was?”
“Jonathan gave her most careful directions last night.”
“I should arrest her,” I said.
“As you think best.”
“It isn’t her I want,” I said, “and she would be no good to me. She’d never
talk.”
Orrin was quiet and then he said, “I think I’ll move out to the ranch, Tyrel.
I’ll move out today.”
“Ma will like that. She’s getting feeble, Orrin.” We went back into the brush a
mite and Orrin rolled a smoke and lit up. “Tyrel,” he said after a minute,
“what’s he paying them for? Was it for Torres?”
“Not for Torres,” I said, “Fetterson already paid them.”
“For you?”
“Maybe … I doubt it.”
Suddenly I wanted to get away from there. Those two I could find when I wanted
them for they were known men, and the man I had wanted had been cagey enough not
to appear.
“Orrin,” I said, “I’ve got to head Laura off. I’m not going to arrest her, I
just want her to know she was seen and I know what’s going on. I want them to
know and to worry about it.”
“Is that why you’re holding Wilson apart?”
“Yes.”
We went back to our horses and then we cut along the hill through the bright
beauty of the morning to join the trail a mile or so beyond where Laura would
be.
When she came up, for a minute I thought she would try to drive right over us,
but she drew up.
She was pale, but the planes of her face had drawn down in hard lines and I
never saw such hatred in a woman’s eyes. “Now you’re spying on me!” There was
nothing soft and delicate about her voice then, it was strident, angry. “Not on
you,” I said, “on Paisano and Dwyer.” She flinched as if I’d struck her, started
to speak, then pressed her lips together.
“They were in the group that killed Juan Torres,” I said, “along with Wilson.”
“If you believe that, why don’t you arrest them? Are you afraid?”
“Just waiting … sometimes if a man let’s a small fish be his bait he can catch
bigger fish. Like you, bringing supplies and money to them. That makes you an
accessory. You can be tried for aiding and abetting.”
For the first time she was really scared. She was a girl who made much of
position, a mighty snooty sort, if you ask me, and being arrested would just
about kill her. “You wouldn’t dare!” She said it, but she didn’t believe it. She
believed I would, and it scared the devil out of her.
“Your father has been buying murder too long, and there is no place for such
men. Now you know.”
Her face was pinched and white and there was nothing pretty about her then. “Let
me pass!” she demanded bitterly.
We drew aside, and she looked at Orrin. “You were nothing when we met, and
you’ll be nothing again.”
Orrin removed his hat, “Under the circumstances,” he said gently, “you will
pardon me if I remove my belongings?”
She slashed the horses with the whip and went off. Orrin’s face was white as we
cut over across the hills. “I’d like to be out of the house,” he said, “before
she gets back.”
The town was quiet when I rode in. Fetterson came to the bars of his cell and
stared at me when I entered. He knew I’d been away and it worried him he didn’t
know what I was doing.
“Paisano and Dwyer are just outside the town,” I said, “and no two men are going
to manage a jail delivery, but Pritts was paying them … what for?”
His eyes searched my face and suddenly he turned and looked at the barred
window. Beyond the window, three hundred yards away, was the wooded hillside …
and to the right, not over sixty yards off, the roof of the store.
He turned back swiftly. “Tye,” he said, “you’ve got to get me out of here.”
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