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, señor? 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