“No!” Kathleen said quickly. “It wasn’t them.”
“It was the same as them,” Garrison said. “It was their hired gun.”
“Their hired gun?”
“Jefferson Tyree,” Garrison said. “Do you know him?”
Falcon nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I know him. Tell me what happened.”
Garrison told the story to Falcon as it was told to him by Harold Denham.
“Can a man really be that fast?” Garrison asked. “Everyone agrees that Travis already had his gun out and drawn, but Tyree just spun around and shot him.”
“Yes, a man can be that fast,” Falcon said. He sighed, and ran his hand through his hair. “You say Tyree is working for the Clintons now?”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” Garrison said. “And he was with them when this happened.”
“If the Clintons actually have hired Jefferson Tyree, then they are as guilty of Travis’s murder as he is.”
“No!” Kathleen said.
“What do you mean no?” Garrison asked his daughter. “Think about it, Kathleen. You know that is true.”
“It might be true about the rest of the Clintons, but not about Billy. I know that he wouldn’t have anything to do with something like this. You don’t know Billy the way I do.”
“Are you sure that you know him that well?” Garrison asked.
“Yes, I’m positive. What are you trying to say, Papa? Are you saying that you think Billy is like his brothers or his father? Because I know that he is not.”
“And yet, he stays with them, does he not?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Kathleen said.
“Kathleen, I think you should listen to your father,” Falcon said. “I know men like this. I have known them for my entire life.”
“You, too? But you met him on the train. And you saw how he was at the dance. You know he was different from the others.”
“He behaves differently, now that is true,” Falcon said. “But the very thing that makes him a good man is his sense of honor. And if that sense of honor is misplaced, it’s also going to doom him.”
“What do you mean, misplaced?”
“I mean that when it comes right down to it, if Billy is forced into choosing between his family and outsiders, Billy is going to choose his family,” Falcon said.
“No, never.”
Falcon nodded. “I’m afraid he will have no choice. It will be an act of honor—twisted honor to be sure, but its hold on him will not let him go.”
Falcon attended the church part of Travis Calhoun’s funeral, but as the funeral cortege moved slowly down Front Street toward the cemetery, Falcon saw Cletus and Ray Clinton going into the Hog Waller. Jefferson Tyree was with them.
“Corey,” he said. “Give my apologies to Troy.”
“What do you mean? You aren’t going out to the cemetery?”
“I’ve got some business to attend to,” Falcon said without further explanation.
Evidently, someone had said something very funny just before Falcon stepped in through the door, because everyone was laughing. But as they saw Falcon, the laughter stopped, not all at once, but in ragged spikes so that the last bit of laughter was Rosie’s single cackle. Then, realizing she was laughing alone, she turned to see why.
“Well, now, if it ain’t my old friend Falcon MacCallister,” Tyree said. “My, my, look at you, all dressed up like that. You been to a wedding or something?”
“I’ve been to a funeral,” Falcon replied.
“A funeral? Oh, yes, you must be talking about the marshal. I’m just real sorry ’bout that. All I saw was someone pointing a gun at me. Maybe if he had come in here and talked to me just right, I wouldn’t have had to kill him. He was your friend, was he?”
“He was.”
“Well, I tell you what. Just to show you that there’s no hard feelin’s, how about steppin’ up to the bar and havin’ a drink with me. Bartender, give Mr. MacCallister anything he wants to drink, on me.” A broad, arrogant smile spread across Tyree’s face.
“I didn’t come here to drink with you, Tyree. I came here to kill you.”
Falcon spoke the sentence so calmly that, for a moment, those who heard him weren’t sure what they heard. Then, as they repeated it to each other, and as they measured the cold set of Falcon’s eyes, they realized what he had actually said.
“Hold on there, MacCallister,” Cletus said. “You can’t just come in here and—”
“Shut up, Clinton,” Falcon said.
“You can’t talk to me—”
Suddenly, Ray brought the back of his hand across Cletus’s face, hitting him so hard that his lip began to bleed.
