the Daybreakers (1960) (27 page)

Turning away from the crowd, I walked slowly back to the street and between the buildings and when I emerged on the sunlit street, Tom Sunday was standing there.

I stopped where I stood and could not see his eyes but as flecks of light from the shadow beneath his hat brim. He was big, broad, and powerful. He was unshaved and duty, but never in my life had I seen such a figure of raw, physical power in one man.

"Hello, Tom."

"I've come for him, Tyrel. Stay out of the way."

"He's building his future," I said, "you helped him start it, Tom. He's going to be a big man and you helped him."

Maybe he didn't even hear me. He just looked at me straight on like a man staring down a narrow hallway.

"I'm going to kill him," he said, "I should have done it years ago."

We were talking now, like in a conversation, yet something warned me to be careful. What had Cap said? He was a killer and he would go on killing until something or somebody stopped him.

This was the man who had killed the Durango Kid, who had killed Ed Fry and Chico Cruz ... Chico never even got off a shot.

"Get out of the way, Tye," he said, "I've nothing against you, I--"

He was going to kill me. I was going to die ... I was sure of it.

Only he must not come out of it alive. Orrin must have his future. Anyway, I was the mean one ... I always had been.

Once before I had stepped in to help Orrin and I would now.

There was nobody there on the street but the two of us, just Tom Sunday, the man who had been my best friend, and me. He had stood up for me before this and we had drunk from the same rivers, fought Indians together. ...

"Tom," I said, "remember that dusty afternoon on that hillside up there on the Purgatoire when we ..."

Sweat trickled down my spine and tasted salt on my lips. His shirt was open to his belt and I could see the hair on his big chest and the wide buckle of his belt. His hat was pulled low but there was no expression on his face.

This was Tom Sunday, my friend ... only now he was a stranger.

"You can get out of the way, Tye," he said, "I'm going to kill him."

He spoke easily, quietly. I knew I had it to do, but this man had helped teach me to read, he had loaned me books, he had ridden the plains with me.

"You can't do it," I said. Right then, he went for his gun.

There was an instant before he drew when I knew he was going to draw. It was an instant only, a flickering instant that triggered my mind. My hand dropped and I palmed my gun, but his came up and he was looking across it, his eyes like white fire, and I saw the gun blossom with a rose of flame and felt my own gun buck in my hand, and then I stepped forward and left--one quick step--and fired again.

He stood there looking across his gun at me and then he fired, but his bullet made a clean miss. Thumbing back the hammer I said, "Damn it, Tom. ..." and I shot him in the chest.

He still stood there but his gun muzzle was lowering and he was still looking at me. A strange, puzzled expression came into his eyes and he stepped toward me, dropping his gun. "Tyrel ... Tye, what. ..." He reached out a hand toward me, but when I stepped quickly to take it, he fell.

He went full face to the dust, falling hard, and when he hit the ground he groaned, then he half-turned and dropping to my knees I grabbed his hand and gripped it hard.

"Tye ... Tye, damn it, I ..." He breathed hoarsely, and the front of his shirt was red with blood.

"The books," he whispered, "take the ... books."

He died like that, gripping my hand, and when I looked up the street was full of people, and Orrin was there, and Dru.

And over the heads of some of the nearest, Jonathan Pritts.

Pushing through the crowd I stopped, facing Jonathan. "You get out of town," I told him, "you get out of the state. If you aren't out of town within the hour, or if you ever come back, for any reason at all, I'll kill you."

He just turned and walked away, his back stiff as a ramrod ... but it wasn't even thirty minutes until he and Laura drove from town in a buckboard.

"That was my fight, Tye," Orrin said quietly, "it was my fight."

"No, it was mine. From the beginning it was mine. He knew it would be, I think.

Maybe we both knew it ... and Cap. I think Cap Rountree knew it first of all."

We live on the hill back of Mora, and sometimes in Santa Fe, Dru and me ... we've sixty thousand acres of land in two states and a lot of cattle. Orrin, he's a state senator now, and pointing for greater things.

Sometimes of an evening I think of that, think when the shadows grow long of two boys who rode out of the high hill country of Tennessee to make a home in the western lands.

We found our home, and we graze and work our acres, and since that day in the street of Mora when I killed Tom Sunday I have never drawn a gun on any man.

Nor will I ...

About the Author "I think of myself in the oral tradition -- of a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered -- as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, assessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books.

His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel) Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L'Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio Publishing.

The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties -- among them, four Hopalong Cassidy novels: The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, The Riders of High Rock, and Trouble Shooter.

[10 May 2002] Scanned by pandor [27 May 2002] (v1.0) proofed and formatted by NickL