the Daybreakers (1960) (24 page)

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 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, senor? 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.