put out.'
He tossed off his drink. 'Well, if he can make it, more power to him.'
'No matter what, Tom,' I said, 'the four of us should stick together.'
He shot me a hard glance and said, 'I always liked you, Tye, from the first day you rode up to the outfit. And from that day I knew you were poison mean in a difficulty.'
He filled his glass. I wanted to tell him to quit but he was not a man to take advice and particularly from a younger man.
'Why don't you ride back with me?' I suggested. 'Cap should be out there, and we could talk it up a little.'
'What are you trying to do? Get me out of town so Orrin will have a clear field?'
Maybe I got a little red around the ears. I hadn't thought anything of the kind.
'Tom, yuu know better than that. Only if you want that job, you'd better lay off the whiskey.'
'When I want your advice,' he said coolly, 'I'll ask for it.'
'If you feel like it,' I said, 'ride out. I'm taking Ma out today.'
He glanced at me and then he said, 'Give her my best regards, Tye. Tell her I hope she will be happy there.' And he meant it, too.
Tom was a proud man, but a gentleman, and a hard one to figure. I watched him standing there by the bar and remembered the nights around the campfire when he used to recite poetry and tell us stories from the works of Homer. It gave me a lost and lonely feeling to see trouble building between us, but pride and whiskey are a bad combination, and I figured it was the realization that he might not get the marshal's job that was bothering him.
'Come out, Tom, Ma will want to see you. We've talked of you so much.'
He turned abruptly and walked out the door, leaving me standing there. On the porch he paused. Some of the settlement gang were gathered around, maybe six or eight of them, the Durango Kid and Billy Mullin right out in front. And the Durango Kid sort of figured himself as a gunman.
More than anything I wanted Tom Sunday to go home and sleep it off or to ride out to our place. I knew he was on edge, in a surly mood, and Tom could be hard to get along with.
Funny thing. Ollie had worked hard to prepare the ground work all right, and Orrin had a taking way with people, and the gift of blarney if a man ever had it. It was a funny thing that with all of that, it was Tom Sunday who elected Orrin to the marshal's job.
He did it that day there in the street. He did it right then, walking out of that door onto the porch. He was a proud and angry man, and he had a few drinks under him, and he walked right out of the door and faced the Durango Kid.
It might have been anybody. Most folks would have avoided him when he was like that, but the Kid was hunting notches for his gun. He was a lean, narrow-shouldered man of twenty-one who had a reputation for having killed three or four men up Colorado way. It was talked around that he had rustled some cows and stolen a few horses and in the Settlement outfit he was second only to Fetterson.
Anything might have happened and Tom Sunday might have gone by, but the Durango Kid saw he had been drinking and figured he had an edge. He didn't know Tom Sunday like I did.
'He wants to be marshal, Billy,' the Durango Kid said it just loud enough, 'I'd like to see that.'
Tom Sunday faced him. Like I said, Tom was tall, and he was a handsome man, and drinking or not, he walked straight and stood straight. Tom had been an officer in the Army at one time, and that was how he looked now.
'If I become marshal,' he spoke coolly, distinctly, 'I shall begin by arresting you. I know you are a thief and a murderer. I shall arrest you for the murder of Martin Abreu.'
How Tom knew that, I don't know, but a man needed no more than a look at the Kid's face to know Tom had called it right.
'You're a liar!' the Kid yelled. He grabbed for his gun.
It cleared leather, but the Durango Kid was dead when it cleared. The range was not over a dozen feet and Tom Sunday--I'd never really seen him draw before--had three bullets into the Kid with one rolling sound.
The Kid was smashed back. He staggered against the water trough and fell, hitting the edge and falling into the street. Billy Mullin turned sharply. He didn't reach for a gun, but Tom Sunday was a deadly man when drinking. That sharp movement of Billy's cost him, because Tom saw it out of the tail of his eye and he turned and shot Billy in the belly.
I'm not saying I mightn't have done the same. I don't think I would have, but a move like that at a time like that from a man known to be an enemy of Tom's and a friend to the Kid ... well, Tom shot him.
That crowd across the street saw it. Ollie saw it. Tom Sunday killed the Durango Kid, and Billy Mullin was in bed for a couple of months and was never the same man again after that gunshot ... but Tom Sunday shot himself right out of consideration as a possible marshal.
The killing of the Kid ... well, they all knew the Kid had it coming, but the shooting of Billy Mullin, thief and everything else that he was, was so offhand that it turned even Tom's friends against him.
It shouldn't have. There probably wasn't a man across the street who mightn't have done the same thing. It was a friend of Tom's who turned his back on him that day and said, 'Let's talk to Orrin Sackett about that job.'
Tom Sunday heard it, and he thumbed shells into his gun and walked down the middle of the street toward the house where he'd been sharing with Orrin, Cap, and me when we were in Mora.
And that night, Tom Sunday rode away.
Chapter XII
Come Sunday we drove around to the house where Ma was living with the two boys and we helped her out to the buckboard. Ma was all slicked out in her Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes--which meant she was dressed in black--and all set to see her new home for the first time.
Orrin, he sat in the seat alongside her to drive, and Bob and Joe, both mounted up on Indian ponies, they brought up the rear. Cap and me, we led off.
Cap didn't say much, but I think he had a deep feeling about what we were doing.
He knew how much Orrin and me had planned for this day, and how hard we had worked. Behind that rasping voice and cold way of his I think there was a lot of sentiment in Cap, although a body would never know it.
It was a mighty exciting thing at that, and we were glad the time of year was right, for the trees were green, and the meadows green, and the cattle feeding there ... well, it looked mighty fine. And it was a good deal better house than Ma had ever lived in before.
We started down the valley, and we were all dressed for the occasion, each of us in black broadcloth, even Cap. Ollie was going to be there, and a couple of other friends, for we'd sort of figured to make it a housewarming.
The only shadow on the day was the fact that Tom Sunday wasn't there, and we wished he was ... all of us wished it. Tom had been one of us so long, and if Orrin and me were going to amount to something, part of the credit had to be Tom's, because he took time to teach us things, and especially me.
When we drove up through the trees, after dipping through the river, we came into our own yard and right away we saw there were folks all around, there must have been fifty people.
The first person I saw was Don Luis, and beside him, Drusilla, looking more Irish today than Spanish. My eyes met hers across the heads of the crowd and for an instant there we were together like we had never been, and I longed to ride to her and claim her for my own.
Juan Torres was there, and Pete Romero, and Miguel. Miguel was looking a little pale around the gills yet, but he was on his own feet and looked great. There was a meal all spread out, and music started up, and folks started dancing a fandango or whatever they call it, and Ma just sat there and cried. Orrin, he put his arm around her and we drove all the rest of the way into the yard that way, and Don Luis stepped up and offered Ma his hand, and mister, it did us proud to see her take his hand and step down, and you'd have thought she was the grandest lady ever, and not just a mountain woman from the hills back of nowhere.
Don Luis escorted her to a chair like she was a queen, and the chair was her own old rocker, and then Don Luis spread a serape across her knees, and Ma was home.
