'What are you gettin' at, Sackett?'
'They elected me marshal.'
'So?'
'You sell out, Martin Brady, they'll pay you a fair price. You sell out, and you get out.'
He took the cigar from his teeth with his left hand and rested that hand on the bar. 'And if I don't want to sell?'
'You have no choice.'
He smiled and leaned toward me as if to say something in a low tone and when he did he touched that burning cigar to my hand.
My hand jerked and I realized the trick too late and those gunmen down the bar, who had evidently seen it done before, shot me full of holes.
My hand jerked and then guns were hammering. A slug hit me and turned me away from the bar, and two more bullets grooved the edge of the bar where I'd been standing.
Another slug hit me and I started to fall but my gun was out and I rolled over on the floor with bullets kicking splinters at my eyes and shot the big one with the dark eyes.
He was coming up to me for a finishing shot and I put a bullet into his brisket and saw him stop dead still, turn half around and fall.
Then I was rolling over and on my feet and out of the corner of my eye I saw Martin Brady standing with both hands on the bar and his cigar in his teeth, watching me. My shirt was smoldering where it had caught fire from that black powder, but I shot the other man, taking my time, and my second bullet drove teeth back into his mouth and I saw the blood dribble from the corner of his mouth.
They were both down and they weren't getting up and I looked at Martin Brady and I said, 'You haven't a choice, Martin.'
His face turned strange and shapeless and I felt myself falling and remembered Ma asking me about Long Higgins.
There were cracks in the ceiling. It seemed I lay there staring at them for a dozen years, and remembered that it had been a long time since I'd been in a house and wondered if I was delirious.
Cap Rountree came into the room and I turned my head and looked at him. 'If this here is hell, they sure picked the right people for it.'
'Never knew a man to find so many excuses to get out of his work,' Cap grumbled.
'How much longer do I do the work in this shebang?'
'You're an old pirate,' I said, 'who never did an honest day's work in his life.'
Cap came back in with a bowl of soup which he started spooning into me. 'Last time I recollect they were shooting holes in me. Did you plug them up?'
'You'll hold soup. Only maybe all your sand run out.'
On my hand I could see the scar of that cigar burn, almost healed now. That was one time I was sure enough outsmarted. It was one trick Pa never told me about, and I'd had to learn it the hard way.
'You took four bullets,' Cap said, 'an' lost a sight more blood than a man can afford.'
'What about Brady?'
'He lit a shuck whilst they were huntin' a rope to hang him.' Cap sat down.
'Funny thing. He showed up here the next night.'
'Here?'
'Stopped by to see how you was. Said you were too good a man to die like that--both of you were damned fools but a man got into a way of livin' and there was no way but to go on.'
'The others?'
'Those boys of his were shot to doll rags.'
Outside the door I could see the sunshine on the creek and I could hear the water chuckling over the rocks, and I got to thinking of Ma and Drusilla, and one day when I could sit up I looked over at Cap.
'Anything left out there?'
'Ain't been a day's wages in weeks. If you figure to do any more minin' you better find yourself another crick.'
'We'll go home. Come morning you saddle up.'
He looked at me skeptically. 'Can you set a saddle?'
'If I'm going home. I can sit a saddle if I'm headed for Santa Fe.'
Next morning, Cap and me headed as due south as the country would allow, but it is a long way in the saddle from Idaho to New Mexico. From time to time we heard news about Sacketts. Men on the trail carried news along with them and everybody was on the prod to know all that was going on. The Sackett news was all Orrin ... it would take awhile for the story of what happened at Rose-Marie to get around and I'd as soon it never did. But Orrin was making a name for himself.
Only there was a rumor that he was to be married.
Cap told me that because he heard it before I did and neither of us made comments. Cap felt as I did about Laura Pritts and we were afraid it was her.
We rode right to the ranch.
Bob came out to meet us, and Joe was right behind him. Ma had seen us coming up the road. She came to the steps to meet me. Ma was better than she had been in years, a credit to few worries and a better climate, I suppose. There was a Navajo woman helping with the housework now, and for the first time Ma had it easier.
There were bookshelves in the parlor and both the boys had taken to reading.
There was other news. Don Luis was dead ... had been buried only two days ago, but already the Settlement crowd had moved in. Torres was in bad shape ... he had been ambushed months ago and from what I was told there was small chance he'd be himself again.
Drusilla was in town.
And Orrin was married to Laura Pritts.
Chapter XIV
Orrin came out to the ranch in the morning, driving a buckboard. He got down and came to me with his hand out, a handsome man by any standards, wearing black broadcloth now like he was born to it.
He was older, more sure of himself, and there was a tone of authority in his voice. Orrin had done all right, no doubt of that, and beneath it all he was the same man he had always been, only a better man because of the education he had given himself and the experience behind him.
'It's good to see you, boy.' He was sizing me up as he talked, and I had to grin, for I knew his way.
'You've had trouble,' he said suddenly, 'you've been hurt.'
So I told him about Martin Brady and the Rose-Marie, my brief term as marshal, and the showdown. When he realized how close I'd come to cashing in my chips he grew a little pale. 'Tyrel,' he said slowly, 'I know what you've been through, but they need a man right here. They need a deputy sheriff who is honest and I sure know you'd never draw on anybody without cause.'
'Has somebody been saying the contrary?' I asked him quietly.
'No ... no, of course not.' He spoke hastily, and I knew he didn't want to say who, which was all the answer I needed.
'Of course, there's always talk about a man who has to use a gun. Folks don't understand.'
He paused. 'I suppose you know I'm married?'
'Heard about it. Has Laura been out to see Ma?'
Orrin flushed. 'Laura doesn't take to Ma. Says a woman smoking is indecent, and smoking a pipe is worse.'
'That may be true,' I replied carefully. 'Out here you don't see it much, but that's Ma.'
He kicked at the earth, his face gloomy. 'You may think I did wrong, Tyrel, but I love that girl. She's ... she's different, Tyrel, she's so pretty, so delicate, so refined and everything. A man in politics, he needs a wife like that. And whatever else you can say about Jonathan, he's done everything he could to help me.'
I'll bet, I said to myself. I'll just bet he has. And he'll want a return on it too. So far I hadn't noticed Jonathan Pritts being freehanded with anything but other folks' land.
