There was water by the fire so I peeled back his clothes and went to work. First off, I bathed away the blood and plugged the holes to stop the bleeding. Come daylight, if he made it, I was going to have to do more.
With the tip of my bowie I slit the hide and eased a bullet out from under the skin of his back, then bathed the wound and fixed it up as best I could. I could hear riders working their way down the country, a-hunting him. Sooner or later they'd see the reflection of my fire and then I'd have to take care of that.
Moving Miguel back out of the firelight, I got him stashed away when I heard them coming, and they came with a rush.
"Hello, the fire!"
"You're talking. Speak your piece."
"We're hunting a wounded greaser. You seen him?"
"I've seen him and he's here, but you can't have him."
They rode up to the fire then and I stepped up to the edge of the light. Trouble was, one of those riders had a rifle and it was on me, and the range wasn't fifteen feet.
That rifle worried me. They had me sweating. A fast man on the draw can beat a man who has to think before he can fire, but that first shot better be good.
"It's Sackett. The kid they say is a gunfighter."
"So it's Sackett," it was a sandy-haired man with two tied-down guns like one of these here show-off gunmen, "I ain't seen none of his graveyards."
"You just ride on," I said, "Miguel is here. He stays here."
"Talking mighty big, ain't you?" That man was Charley Smith, a big man, bearded and tough, hard to handle in a difficulty it was said. The one with the rifle was thin, angular, with a bobbing Adam's apple and a shooting look to him.
"He's wounded," I said, "I'll take care of him."
"We don't want him alive," Smith said. "We want him dead. You give him to us and you're out of it."
"Sorry."
"That's all right," Sandy said, "I like it this way. I prefer it this way."
That Sandy didn't worry me as much as the man with the rifle. Although the chances were that Sandy had practiced some with those guns. Even a show-off may be pretty fast, and I had that to think about.
Of one thing I was sure. There was no talking my way out of this. I could stand by and see them kill Miguel or I could fight them.
Now I'm not a smoking man myself, but Miguel's makings had fallen from his pocket and I'd picked them up, so I got them out and started to roll a smoke and while I talked I went right on building that smoke.
What I needed was an edge, and I needed it bad. There was the man with the rifle and Charley Smith and there was this Sandy lad who fancied himself with six-shooters. There might be more back in the dark but those three I had to think about.
"Miguel," I said, and I was talking for time, "is a good man. I like him. I wouldn't interfere in any fight of his, but on the other hand, I don't like to see a wounded man shot without a chance, either."
Smith was the cagey one. He was looking around. I guessed Smith was worried about Orrin. He knew we were a team, and he knew there was four of us, and there might be, just might be, somebody out there in the dark.
Now I was doing some serious thinking. A man who holds a gun on somebody is all keyed up and ready to shoot when he first gets the drop on you, but after awhile his muscles get a little heavy, and his reactions will be a little slower.
Moreover, these fellows outnumbered me three to one. They had the advantage, so they just didn't think anybody would be fool enough to tackle them. That there was against them too. It sort of made them relax mentally, if you get what I mean.
Only any move I made must be timed just right and I had to slicker them into thinking of something else.
If they killed Miguel when he was wounded in my camp, I'd never feel right again ... even if I lived.
"Miguel," Smith said, "is one of Alvarado's men. We're running them out."
"Where's your brother?" The man with the rifle was asking. He'd had some of his attention on the shadows out there. In his place I'd have been giving them plenty of thought.
"He's around. Those boys are never far off."
"Only one bed." That was Sandy shooting off his fat mouth.
"I can see it." That was the man with the two big pistols who wanted to kill me.
He could make it sound mighty big, later. Charley Smith was going to kill me because he didn't want anybody around taking a shot at him later.
Putting that cigarette between my lips I stooped down and picked up a burning twig to light it. I lifted it to my cigarette, holding it in my fingers while I had my say.
"The four of us," I said, "never spread out very far. We work together, we fight together, and we can win together."
"They ain't around," Sandy-boy said, "only one bed, only his horse and the greaser's."
Up on the hills there was a stirring in the pines and because I'd been hearing it all evening I knew it was a wind along the ridge, but they stopped talking to listen.
"I'm a Sackett," I said conversationally, "out of Tennessee. We finished a feud a couple of years ago ... somebody from the other outfit shot a Sackett and we killed nineteen Higginses in the next sixteen years. Never stop huntin'. I got a brother named Tell Sackett ... best gunshot ever lived."
I was just talking, and the twig was burning. Charley Smith saw it. "Hey!" he said. "You'll burn--!"
The fire touched my fingers and I yelped with pain and dropped the twig and with the same continuing movement I drew my gun and shot that rifleman out of the saddle.
Sandy was grabbing iron when I swung my gun on him and thumbed my hammer twice so it sounded like one shot and he went backwards off his horse like he'd been hit with an axe.
Swinging my gun on Smith I saw him on the ground holding his belly and Tom Sunday came riding up with a Henry rifle.
"Smartest play I ever saw," he said, watching Smith on the ground. "When I saw you lighting up I knew there had to be something ... knowing you didn't smoke."
"Thanks, you sure picked a good time to ride up."
Sunday got down and walked over to the man who'd held the rifle. He was dead with a shot through the heart and Sandy had taken two bullets through the heart also. Sunday glanced at me. "I saw it but I still don't believe it."
Thumbing shells into my gun I walked over to Miguel. He was up on one elbow his face whiter than I'd have believed and his eyes bigger. "Gracias, amigos," he whispered.
"Orrin told me you'd come out here and I was restless so I figured I'd ride out and camp with you. When I saw you in the middle of them I was trying to figure out what to do that wouldn't start them shooting at you. Then you did it."
"They'd have killed us."
"Pritts will take your helping Miguel as a declaration of war."
There was more sound out in the darkness and we pulled back out of the light of the fire. It was Cap Rountree and two of Alvarado's hands. One of them was Pete Romero, but the other was a man I didn't know.
He was a slim, knifelike man in a braided leather jacket, the most duded-up man I ever saw, but his pearl-handled six-shooter was hung for business and he had a look in his eyes that I didn't like.
His name was Chico Cruz.
Cruz walked over to the bodies and looked at them. He took out a silver dollar and placed it over the two bullet holes in Sandy's chest. He pocketed the dollar and looked at us.
"Who?"
Sunday jerked his head to indicate me. "His ... and that one too." He indicated the man with the rifle. Then he explained what had happened, not mentioning the burning twig, but the fact that I'd been covered by the rifle.
Cruz looked at me carefully and I had a feeling this was a man who enjoyed killing and who was proud of his ability with a gun. He squatted by the fire and poured a cup of coffee. It was old coffee, black and strong. Cruz seemed to like it.
Out in the darkness, helping Romero get Miguel into the saddle, I asked, "Who's he?"
"From Mexico. Torres sent for heem. He is a bad man. He has kill many times."
<
br /> Cruz looked to me like one of those sleek prairie rattlers who move like lightning and kill just as easily, and there was nothing about him that I liked.
Yet I could understand the don sending for him. The don was up against a fight for everything he had. It worried him, and he knew he was getting old, and he was no longer sure that he could win.
When I came back to the fire, Chico Cruz looked up at me. "It was good shooting," he said, "but I can shoot better."
Now I'm not a man to brag, but how much better can you get?
"Maybe," I said.
"Someday we might shoot together," he said, looking at me through the smoke of his cigarette.
"Someday," I said quietly, "we might."
"I shall look forward to it, senor."
"And I," I smiled at him, "I shall look back upon it."
Chapter XI
We expected trouble from Pritts but it failed to show up. Orrin came out to the place and with a couple of men Don Luis loaned us and help from Cap and Tom we put a house together. It was the second day, just after work finished when we were setting around the fire that Orrin told Tom Sunday he was going after the marshal's job.
Sunday filled his cup with coffee. His mouth stiffened up a little, but he laughed. "Well, why not? You'd make a good marshal, Orrin ... if you get the job."
"I figured you wanted it ...." Orrin started to say, then his words trailed off as Tom Sunday waved a hand.
"Forget it. The town needs somebody and whoever gets it will do a job. If I don't get it and you do, I'll lend a hand ... I promise that. And if I get it, you can help me."
Orrin looked relieved, and I knew he was, because he had been worried about it.
Only Cap looked over his coffee cup at Tom and made no comment, and Cap was a knowing man.
Nobody needed to be a fortuneteller to see what was happening around town. Every night there were drunken brawls in the street, and a man had been murdered near Elizabethtown, and there had been robberies near Cimarron. It was just a question of how long folks would put up with it.
Meanwhile we went on working on the house, got two rooms of it up and Orrin and me set to making furniture for them. We finished the third room on the house and then Orrin and me rode with Cap over to the Grant where we bought fifty head of young stuff and drove it back and through the gap where we branded the cattle and turned them loose.
Working hard like we had, I'd not seen much of Drusilla, so I decided to ride over. When I came up Antonio Baca and Chico Cruz were standing at the gate, and I could see that Baca was on duty there. It was the first time I'd seen him since the night he tried to knife me on the trail.
When I started to ride through the gate, he stopped me. "What is it you want?"
"To see Don Luis," I replied.
"He is not here."
"To see the senorita, then."
"She does not wish to see you."
Suddenly I was mad. Yet I knew he would like nothing better than to kill me.
Also, I detected something in his manner ... he was insolent. He was sure of himself.
Was it because of Chico Cruz? Or could it be that the don was growing old and Torres could not be everywhere?
"Tell the senorita," I said, "that I am here. She will see me."
"It is not necessary." His eyes taunted me. "The senorita is not interested in such as you."
Chico Cruz moved his shoulders from the wall and walked slowly over. "I think," he said, "you had better do like he say."
There was no burned-match trick to work on them, and anyway, I wasn't looking for a fight with any of Don Luis' people. The don had troubles of his own without me adding to them. So I was about to ride off when I heard her voice.
"Tye!" She sounded so glad I felt a funny little jump inside me. "Tye, why are you waiting out there? Come in!"
Only I didn't come in, I just sat my horse and said, "Senorita, is it all right if I call here? At any time?"
"But of course, Tye!" She came to the gate and saw Baca standing there with his rifle. Her eyes flashed. "Antonio! Put that rifle down! Senor Sackett is our friend! He is to come and go as he wishes, do you understand?"
He turned slowly, insolently away. "Si," he said, "I understand."
But when he looked at me his eyes were filled with hatred and I glanced at Cruz, who lifted a hand in a careless gesture.
When we were inside, she turned on me. "Tye, why have you stayed away? Why haven't you been to see us? Grandfather misses you. And he wanted to thank you for what you did for Juan Torres, and for Miguel."
'They were my friends."
"And you are our friend."
She looked up at me, then took my hand and led me into another room and rang a little bell. She had grown older, it seemed, in the short time since I had last seen her. She looked taller, more composed, yet she was worried too, I could see that.
"How is Don Luis?"
"Not well, Tye. My grandfather grows old. He is more than seventy, you know. I do not even know how old, but surely more than that, and he finds it difficult to ride now.
"He fears trouble with your people. He has many friends among them, but most of them resent the size of the ranch. He wants only to keep it intact for me."
"It is yours."
"Do you remember Abreu?"
"Of course."
"He is dead. Pete Romero found him dead last week, ten miles from here. He had been shot in the back by someone with a Sharps buffalo gun."
"That's too bad. He was a good man."
We drank tea together, and she told me all that had been happening. Some days now it was difficult for the don to get out of bed, and Juan Torres was often off across the ranch. Some of the men had become hard to handle and lazy.
Apparently, what had happened today was not the only such thing.
Don Luis was losing his grip when he needed desperately to be strong, and his son, Drusilla's father, had long been dead.
"If there is any way that I can help, you just call on me."
She looked down at her hands and said nothing at all, and I sort of felt guilty, although there was no reason why. There was nobody I loved so much as Drusilla, but I'd never talked of love to anybody, and didn't know how to go about it.
"There's going to be trouble at Mora," I said, "it would be well to keep your men away from there."
"I know." She paused. "Does your brother see Senorita Pritts?"
"Not lately." I paused, uncertain of what to say. She seemed older.
So I told her about the place we had found, and thanked her for the help of the men the don had sent to help us with the adobe bricks. Then I told her about Tom Sunday and Orrin, and she listened thoughtfully. All the Mexicans were interested in the selection of the marshal, for it was of great importance to them. His authority would be local, but there was a chance he could move into the sheriff's job and in any case, the selection of a man would mean a lot to the Mexicans who traded in Mora and who lived there, as many did.
What I was saying wasn't at all what I wanted to say, and I searched for the words I wanted and they would not come. "Dru," I said suddenly, "I wish--"
She waited but all I could do was get red in the face and look at my hands.
Finally, I got up, angry with myself. "I've got to be going," I said, "only--"
"Yes?"
"Can I come back? I mean, can I come to see you often?"
She looked straight into my eyes. "Yes, you can, Tye. I wish you would."
When I rode away I was mad with myself for saying nothing more. This was the girl I wanted. I was no hand with women but most likely Drusilla considered me a man who knew a lot about women, and figured if I had anything to say, that I'd say it.
She had a right to think that, for a man who won't speak his mind at a time like that is no man at all. More than likely she would think I just didn't want to say anything. If she thought of me that way at all.
That was a gloomy ride home, and had anybody been laying for me that
night I'd have been shot dead I was that preoccupied. When I rode up to the house I saw Ollie's horse tied outside.
Ollie was there, along with a man who operated a supply store in Mora. His name was Wilson. "The time is now, Orrin. You've got to come in and stay in town a few days. Charley Smith and that sandy-haired man who was with him have done a lot to rile folks around town, and they were mighty impressed the way Tyrel handled them."
"That was Tyrel, not me."
"They know that, but they say you're two of a kind. Only," ... Ollie looked apologetically at me, "they don't figure you're as mean as your brother. I mean they like what happened out here, only they don't hold with killing."
Orrin glanced at him. "There wasn't another thing Tyrel could have done, and mighty few who could have done what he did."
"I know that, and you know it. The fact remains that these folks want law enforced against killers but without killing. The Mexicans ... they understand the situation better than the Americans. They know that when a man takes a weapon in hand he isn't going to put it down if you hand him a bunch of roses.
Men of violence only understand violence, most times."
Orrin rode into town and for two days I stayed by the place, working around. I cleared rocks using a couple of mules and a stone boat. I dragged the rocks off and piled them where they could be used later in building a stable. Next day I rode into town, and it looked like I'd timed things dead right. There was quite a bunch gathered outside the store Ollie was running and Ollie was on the porch, and for the first time since he came out here he had a gun where you could see it.
"It's getting so a decent person can't live in this country," he was saying.
"What we need is a town marshal that will send these folks packing. Somebody we can trust to do the right thing."
He paused, and there were murmurs of agreement. "Seems to me this could be a fine, decent place to live. Most of the riffraff that cause the trouble came from Las Vegas."
Across the way on the benches I could see some of the Settlement crowd loafing and watching. They weren't worried none, it seemed like it was a laughing matter with them for they'd played top dog so long, here and elsewhere.
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