The Daybreakers (1960) s-6

by Louis L'Amour

  Bill Sexton came in, and Ollie was with him. They looked worried.

  "How much of a case have you got against Fetterson?" Sexton asked me.

  "Time comes, I'll have a case."

  Sexton rubbed his jaw and then took out a cigar. He studied it while I watched him, knowing what was coming and amused by all the preliminaries, but kind of irritated by them, too.

  "This Fetterson," Sexton said, "is mighty close to Jonathan Pritts. It would be a bad idea to try to stick him with these killings. He's got proof he wasn't anywhere around when they took place."

  "There's something to that Tye," Ollie said. "It was Jonathan who helped put Orrin in office."

  "You know something?" I had my feet on the desk and I took them down and sat up in that swivel chair. "He did nothing of the kind. He jumped on the band wagon when he saw Orrin was a cinch to win. Fetterson stays in jail or I resign."

  "That's final?" Ollie asked.

  "You know it is."

  He looked relieved, I thought. Ollie Shaddock was a good man, mostly, and once an issue was faced he would stand pat and I was doing what we both believed to be right.

  "All right," Sexton said, "if you think you've got a case, we'll go along."

  It was nigh to dark when Cap came back to the office. There was no light in the office and sitting back in my chair I'd been doing some thinking.

  Cap squatted against the wall and lit his pipe. "There's a man in town," he said, "name of Wilson. He's a man who likes his bottle. He's showing quite a bit of money, and a few days ago he was broke."

  "Pretty sky," I said, "the man who named the Sangre de Cristos must have seen them like this. That red in the sky and on the peaks ... it looks like blood."

  "He's getting drunk," Cap said.

  Letting my chair down to an even keel I got up and opened the door that shut off the cells from the office. Walking over to the bars and stopping there, I watched Fetterson lying on his cot. I could not see his face, only the dark bulk of him and his boots. Yes, and the glow of his cigarette.

  "When do you want to eat?"

  He swung his boots to the floor. "Any time. Suit yourself."

  "All right." I turned to go and then let him have it easy. "You know a man named Wilson?"

  He took the cigarette from his mouth. "Can't place him. Should I?"

  "You should ... he drinks too much. Really likes that bottle. Some folks should never be trusted with money." When I'd closed the door behind me Cap lit the lamp. "A man who's got something to hide," Cap said, "has something to worry about."

  Fetterson would not, could not know what Wilson might say, and a man's imagination can work overtime. What was it the Good Book said? "The guilty flee when no man pursueth."

  The hardest thing was to wait. In that cell Fetterson was thinking things over and he was going to get mighty restless. And Jonathan Pritts had made no request to see him. Was Jonathan shaping up to cut the strings on Fetterson and leave him to shift for himself? If I could think of that, it was likely Fetterson could too.

  Cap stayed at the jail and I walked down to the eating house for a meal. Tom Sunday came in. He was a big man and he filled the door with his shoulders and height. He was unshaved and he looked like he'd been on the bottle. Once inside he blinked at the brightness of the room a moment or two before he saw me and then he crossed to my table. Maybe he weaved a mite in walking ... I wouldn't have sworn to it.

  "So you got Fetterson?" He grinned at me, his eyes faintly taunting. "Now that you've got him, what will you do with him?"

  "Convict him of complicity," I replied. "We know he paid the money."

  "That's hitting close to home," Sunday's voice held a suggestion of a sneer.

  "What'll your brother say to that?"

  "It doesn't matter what he says," I told him, "but it happens it has been said.

  I cut wood and let the chips fall where they may."

  "That would be like him," he said, "the sanctimonious son-of -a-bitch."

  "Tom," I said quietly, "that term could apply to both of us. We're brothers, you know."

  He looked at me, and for a moment there I thought he was going to let it stand, and inside me I was praying he would not. I wanted no fight with Tom Sunday.

  "Sorry," he said, "I forgot myself. Hell," he said then, "we don't want trouble.

  We've been through too much together."

  "That's the way I feel," I said, "and Tom, you can take my say-so or not, but Orrin likes you, too."

  "Likes me?" he sneered openly now. "He likes me, all right, likes me out of the way. Why, when I met him he could scarcely read or write ... I taught him. He knew I figured to run for office and he moved right in ahead of me, and you helping him."

  "There was room for both of you. There still is."

  "The hell there is. Anything I tried to do he would block me. Next time he runs for office he won't have the backing of Jonathan Pritts. I can tell you that."

  "It doesn't really matter."

  Tom laughed sardonically. "Look, kid, I'll tip you to something right now.

  Without Pritts backing him Orrin wouldn't have been elected ... and Pritts is fed up."

  "You seem to know a lot about Pritts' plans."

  He chuckled. "I know he's fed up, and so is Laura. They're both through with Orrin, you wait and see."

  "Tom, the four of us were mighty close back there a while. Take it from me, Tom, Orrin has never disliked you. Sure, the two of you wanted some of the same things but he would have helped you as you did him."

  He ate in silence for a moment or two, and then he said, "I have nothing against you, Tye, nothing at all."

  After that we didn't say anything for a while. I think both of us were sort of reaching out to the other, for there had been much between us, we had shared violence and struggle and it is a deep tie. Yet when he got up to leave I think we both felt a sadness, for there was something missing.

  He went outside and stood in the street a minute and I felt mighty bad. He was a good man, but nobody can buck liquor and a grudge and hope to come out of it all right. And Jonathan Pritts was talking to him.

  I arrested Wilson that night. I didn't take him to jail where Fetterson could talk to him. I took him to that house at the edge of town where Cap, Orrin, and me had camped when we first came up to Mora.

  I stashed him there with Cap to mount guard and keep the bottle away. Joe came in to guard Fetterson and I mounted up and took to the woods, and I wasn't riding on any wild-goose chase ... Miguel had told me that a couple of men were camped on the edge of town, and one of them was Paisano.

  From the ridge back of their camp I studied the layout through a field glass. It was a mighty cozy little place among boulders and pines that a man might have passed by fifty times without seeing had it not been for Miguel being told of it by one of the Mexicans.

  The other man must be Jim Dwyer--a short, thickset man who squatted on his heels most of the time and never was without his rifle.

  There was no hurry. There was an idea in my skull to the effect these men were camping here for the purpose of breaking Fetterson out of jail. 1 wanted those men the worst way but I wanted them alive, and that would be hard to handle as both men were tough, game men who wouldn't back up from a shooting fight.

  There was a spring about fifty yards away, out of sight of the camp. From the layout I'd an idea this place had been used by them before. There was a crude brush shelter built to use a couple of big boulders that formed its walls. All the rest of the day I lay there watching them. From time to time one of them would get up and stroll out to the thin trail that led down toward Mora.

  They had plenty of grub and a couple of bottles but neither of them did much drinking. By the time dark settled down I knew every rock, every tree, and every bit of cover in that area. Also I had spotted the easiest places to move quietly in the dark, studying the ground for sticks, finding openings in the brush.

  Those men down there were mighty touchy folks with whom
a man only made one mistake.

  Come nightfall I moved my horse to fresh grass after watering him at the creek.

  Then I took a mite of grub and a canteen and worked my way down to within about a hundred feet of their camp.

  They had a small fire going, and coffee on. They were broiling some beef, too, and it smelled almighty good. There I was, lying on my belly smelling that good grub and chewing on a dry sandwich that had been packed early in the day. From where I lay I could hear them but couldn't make out the words.

  My idea was that with Fetterson in jail it was just a chance Jonathan Pritts might come out himself. He was a cagey man and smart enough to keep at least one man between himself and any gun trouble. But Pritts wanted Fetterson out of jail.

  It seemed to me that in the time I'd known Jonathan Pritts he had put faith in nobody. Such a man was unlikely to have confidence in Fetterson's willingness to remain silent when by talking he might save his own skin. Right now I thought Pritts would be a worried man, and with reason enough.

  Fetterson had plenty to think about too. He knew that we had Wilson, and Wilson was a drinker who would do almost anything for his bottle. If Wilson talked, Fetterson was in trouble. His one chance to get out of it easier was to talk himself. Personally, I did not believe Fetterson would talk--there was a loyalty in the man, and a kind of iron in him, that would not allow him to break or be broken.

  I was counting on the fact that Pritts believed in nobody, was eternally suspicious and would expect betrayal.

  What I did not expect was the alternative on which Jonathan Pritts had decided.

  I should have guessed, but did not. Jonathan was a hard man, a cold man, a resolute man.

  Now it can be mighty miserable lying up in the brush, never really sleeping, and keeping an eye on a camp like that. Down there, they'd sleep awhile and then rouse up and throw some sticks on the fire, and go back to sleep again. And that's how the night run away.

  It got to be the hour of dawn with the sun some time away but crimson streaking the sky, and those New Mexico sunrises ... well, there's nothing like the way they build a glory in the sky.

  Paisano stood up suddenly. He was listening. He was lower in the canyon and might hear more than I. Would it be Jonathan Pritts himself? If it was, I would move in, taking the three of them in a bundle. Now that might offer a man a 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 to
gether.

  "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."