“You hired him? Pa, he’s an outlaw!” Cletus said.
Ike chuckled. “Hell, son, if it weren’t for the fact that we got Belmond in our hip pockets, we would be outlaws, too,” he said.
“Well, what the hell do you need him for anyway?”
“I thought we might be able to use him in our little disagreement with General Wade Garrison,” Ike explained.
“You don’t need him, Pa. You got me’n Ray. What do you need someone else for?”
“Because, like you said, I have you and Ray,” Ike said. “Two of the must useless sons a man has ever been cursed with.”
“Yeah? Well, what is he goin’ to do that we can’t?” Cletus challenged, pointing to Tyree.
“If I had been with you tonight, I would’ve smelled the trap, and I wouldn’t have gotten a man killed. Like I said, you’re the ones who got him killed. You killed him by going out there without knowing what you were doing,” Tyree said. He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back against one of the columns that fronted the patio. “Don’t be doing anything like that again, unless I give you permission.”
“Now, wait just a damn minute here,” Cletus said angrily. “If Pa hired you, then that means you work for me, I don’t work for you. So you won’t be giving me permission to do anything.”
Tyree uncrossed his arms. “Sonny, I not only don’t work for you,” he said. “I no longer work for your pa.” He started toward the barn.
“What do you mean, you don’t work for me?” Ike called after him.
“Ought not to be that hard to figure out,” Tyree replied without looking back. He continued walking toward the barn.
“No, wait!” Ike called after him. He glared at his son. “Ray, Cletus, Tyree is right. Neither one of you have any business messing in his business. And from now on, you won’t do one damn thing unless he tells you to do it.”
Ray stood there for a moment, seething, as he clenched and unclenched his fists.
“This ain’t right, Pa!” Ray said. “This ain’t in no way right, and you know it!”
“Boy, you know me well enough now to know that I don’t give a tinker’s damn what’s right or wrong,” Ike said. “I only care for results. And so far, neither you nor Cletus has given me any results. That’s why I hired Tyree.”
“We don’t need him, Pa,” Ray said. “Me’n Cletus can take care of—”
“So far you and Cletus haven’t been able to take care of shit,” Ike said, interrupting his son in mid-sentence. “I’ve hired Jefferson Tyree because I’m tired of getting my men killed. I think it’s time we started killing a few of Garrison’s men. Do you understand that?”
“Yeah,” Ray said, biting off his words. “Yeah, I understand it.”
“And you won’t go off on your own anymore. You won’t do anything like that unless Tyree tells you it’s all right. Do you understand that?”
Ray sighed. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Yeah, I won’t do anything unless Tyree tells me it’s all right,” Ray said, nearly choking on the words.
“Cletus? What about you?”
“Hell, Pa, it weren’t my idee to go over there in the first place,” Cletus said. “It was all Ray’s idee and I was just doin’ what he said.”
“Then I take it that you agree to do nothing without Tyree’s permission?” Ike asked.
“Yeah, sure, whatever you say, Pa,” Cletus said, looking away so as not to have to face the angry glare he was getting from Ray.
“Tyree?” Ike called. “You heard all this?”
“I heard it,” Tyree replied from over by the barn.
“Will you stay?”
Tyree didn’t make a verbal response, but he answered in the affirmative by making an almost imperceptible nod of his head.
“What about Billy?” Cletus asked.
“What about him?”
“Are you saying Billy is to take his orders from Tyree same as us?”
Ike shook his head. “Billy ain’t a part of this,” he said.
“What do you mean, he ain’t a part of it?”
“You boys know what Billy is like. When it comes to something like this, he’s as worthless as tits on a boar hog. Hell, I ain’t even told him about Tyree yet.”
When he heard the early morning commotion out on the front porch, Billy got out of bed and came down to see what was going on. He intended to step out on the front porch to be closer to what was happening, but when he heard them talking about Tyree, he stopped and stood just inside the door in the parlor, drinking a cup of coffee. When he heard his father’s assessment of him, he turned and left the parlor, not wanting to be there when they came back inside.
Chapter Twenty
