I meant to be ready. Horse stealing was a hanging matter anywhere west of the Mississippi and some places east of it. It was also a shooting matter, and I had an idea this Boley gent knew aplenty about how those brands were burned.
Suddenly, McCaire reined around and came back on a lope.
Orrin followed just behind Tom. When we were all together again, Charley turned to face us. 'Ride off,' he said. 'We're through talkin'.'
'Charley,' Tom said, 'look here, man, I--'
'Are you ridin' for the brand or agin it?' Charley's face was flushed and angry.
'If you ain't with us, ride out of here.'
'Charley! Think! You've always been an honest man, and by the lord harry, you know those brands are--'
Boley's hand dropped for his gun ... mine was covering him. 'You draw that,' I said, 'and when she clears leather you'll be belly up to the sky.'
Nobody moved. 'All right, Charley,' Tom said, 'I've rode for your brand for nigh onto twelve year now, but I'm quittin'. You just keep what you owe me because a man cheap enough to read those brands wrong is nobody whose money I want.'
'Tom!' It was a protest.
'No.'
'Go to hell, then!'
'That's your route, Charley, not mine.'
Tom turned his horse and rode slowly away over the bunch grass.
My gun was still in my hand. Boley was pale around the gills. He fancied himself with a six-gun, I could see that, but he wasn't up to it.
'That's a mighty rough trail you're choosin' for yourself,' I said casually.
'This is a flat-out steal, McCaire, if you can bring it off.'
'Don't be a fool! We outnumber you three to one!'
'You better look at your hole card, mister,' I told him. 'I'm already holding a gun. Now I don't know how the rest of your boys will make out, but I'll lay you five to one you an' Boley are dead.'
'Take 'em, Uncle Charley,' Boley said. 'There's only two of 'em. That nigger won't stand. Neither will the other one.'
'If you think I won't stand, suh,' Judas said politely, 'why don't you just step out to one side an' let just the two of us try it?'
Boley started to move, then stopped, his eyes on Judas Priest's gun. It was a Colt revolving shotgun.
'Finally got around to looking, did you? This here weapon holds four ca'tridges ... an' if I can hit a duck on the wing I believe I can hit a man in a saddle.'
Well, this Boley sort of backed off and flattened his hair down. A shotgun has that effect on a lot of folks. It seems somehow dampening to the spirits.
'Mr. McCaire,' Orrin suggested, 'why not give this further thought? We've no desire for trouble. As a matter of fact, this man here and those with him have already been notified of their arrest for possession of stolen property and an apparent theft of horses.'
'You're no officer!'
'I made a citizen's arrest, but even so, every lawyer is an officer of the court.'
Charley McCaire was simmering down a mite, but I had my doubts whether he'd changed his mind. My gun was one thing he could not sidestep. After Boley's move I had drawn without starting anything, and fast enough so that nobody had a chance to do much about it. A man could see that somebody was going to get shot, and Charley was smart enough to see he was first man up on the list.
'How do I know you ain't bluffin'? I don't know what your brother's road brand is, or even that he's fixin' to move stock.'
'Unless I am mistaken about my brother, Mr. McCaire, he's on the trail of this missing stock right now, and unless I am again mistaken I would say you're a lot better off with us than with him.
'Tyrel,' he added, 'doesn't have the patience that Tell and I have, and I think he's every bit as good with a gun as Tell, here. Back home we always figured him to be the mean one of the family.'
We didn't want any shooting. The incident had happened unexpectedly, and now a wrong word could turn that meadow into a bloodbath.
The next thing we heard was a pound of hooves, and into the valley came Tyrel, riding straight up in the saddle, young and tall in a fitted buckskin jacket of the Spanish style.
Behind him were half a dozen riders, all Mexicans, sporting big sombreros, bandoliers, and six-shooters as well as rifles. I knew those vaqueros of Tyrel's and they were a salty lot. He wouldn't have a man on the place who wasn't a fighter as well as a stockman.
Believe me, they were a pretty sight to see. He always mounted his men well, and those vaqueros rode like nothing you ever saw. They were a bold, reckless lot of men, and they'd have followed Tyrel through the bottom layer of hell.
'Looks like you boys found my horses,' he said. He glanced over at Charley McCaire, then at the others. Tyrel looked better than I'd ever seen him. He was six feet two in his sock feet; he must've weighed a good one-ninety, and not an ounce of it was excess weight.
'You'll find the brands altered,' said Orrin.
Tyrel glanced at him. Orrin said, 'This is Charley McCaire, of the Three Eights.
Some of his hands got a little ambitious, but it's all straight now.'
The vaqueros bunched the horses and started them toward the trail, then held up.
The Tinker turned his horse and waited for Priest to come alongside. Then Tyrel turned to his men.
'We're taking our horses back,' he said, 'and, at the request of my brother we're making no further move, but if any of you ever see one of these men near any of my stock, shoot him.'
The vaqueros sat their horses, rifles ready, while the rest of us bunched our stock and started moving. Then they rode to join us.
Glancing back, I saw McCaire jerk his hat from his head and throw it to the ground, but that was all I saw, and I was too far away to hear what he said.
Tyrel and Orrin rode point, and I guess Orrin was filling in the blank spaces on the horse stealing and then on pa. I trailed off to one side, away from the dust of the horses and riders. I needed to think, and a riding man is always better thinking off by himself. Leastways, that's the way I think best, if I think at all.
Sometimes I wonder how much thinking anybody does, and if their life hasn't shaped every decision for them before they make it. But now I had to consider pa. I had to put myself in his place.
The gold Pierre and the others were hunting seemed to be in the San Juans, and certainly, the last I heard, there was a lot of it. Also, that was a mighty bunch of mountains, some thundering deep canyons, and a lot of high, rough country no white man had ever ridden over.
Galloway and Flagan Sackett had moved some stock there near the town of Shalako and set up camp. They'd established no proper ranch yet, as they were still kind of looking around, but from all they'd said in their letters it was our kind of country.
I'd been to the San Juans before. It was in the mountains above Vallecitos where I'd found Ange and Tyrel as well as pa had been through Baker Park and the country around Durango. Pa had known that country pretty well-- probably as well as anybody could know it without a good many years up there.
The way I figured it, we'd take the same route north Cap Rountree an' me had taken when we went back up the Vallecitos to stake our claims. We'd ride north from Mora, go up through the Eagle's Nest country and E-town, then to the San Luis Valley and west on the trail into the San Juans.
Suppose pa was still alive, like ma thought? Suppose he was busted up and back in a corner of the mountains he couldn't get out of? Or held by Indians? I hadn't a moment's thought that such could be true, but pa was a tough man, a hang-in-there-an'-fight sort of man, and a body would have to go all the way to salt him down.
We camped that night by a spring of cold, clear water where there was grass for the horses. When everybody was around the fire, I took my Winchester and climbed to the rim of the mesa. There was an almighty fine view up there. The sun was gone, but she'd left gold in the sky and streaks of red, as well as a few pink puffballs of cloud.
