'Cap and you are all right. It's that brother of yours I don't like. But he'll make it all right,' he added grudgingly, 'he'll get ahead and make the rest of us look like bums.'
'He offered you a job. That was the deal: if you won you were to give him a job, if he won he would give you a job.'
Tom turned sharply around. 'I don't need his damned job! Hell, if it hadn't been for me he'd never have had the idea of running for office!'
Now that wasn't true but I didn't want to argue, so after awhile I got up and rinsed out my cup. 'I'll be riding. Come out to the house and see us, Tom. Cap would like to see you and so would Ma.' Then I added, 'Orrin isn't there very much.'
Tom's eyes glinted. 'That wife of his. You sure had her figured right. Why, if I ever saw a double-crossing no-account female, she's the one. And her old man ...
I hate his guts.'
When I stepped into the saddle I turned for one last word. 'Tom, stay clear of Ed Fry, will you? I don't want trouble.'
'You're one to talk.' He grinned at me. 'All right, I'll lay off, but he sticks in my craw.'
Then as I rode away, he said, 'My respects to your mother, Tye.'
Riding away I felt mighty miserable, like I'd lost something good out of my life. Tom Sunday's eyes had been bloodshot, he was unshaven and he was careless about everything but bis range. Riding over it, I could see that whatever else Tom might be, he was still a first-rate cattleman. Ed Fry and some of the others had talked of Tom's herds increasing, but by the look of things it was no wonder, for there was good grass, and he was keeping it from overgrazing, which Fry nor the others gave no thought to ... and his water holes were cleaned out, and at one place he'd built a dam in the river to stop water so there would be plenty to last.
There was no rain. As the months went by, the rains held off, and the ranchers were worried, yet Tom Sunday's stock, in the few times I rode that way, always looked good. He had done a lot of work for a man whose home place was in such rawhide shape, and there was a good bit of water dammed up in several washes, and spreader dams he had put in had used the water he had gotten to better effect, so he had better grass than almost anybody around.
Ed Fry was a sorehead. A dozen times I'd met such men, the kind who get something in their craw and can't let it alone. Fry was an ex-soldier who had never seen combat, and was a man with little fighting experience anywhere else, and in this country, a man who wasn't prepared to back his mouth with action was better off if he kept still. But Ed Fry was a big man who talked big, and was too egotistical to believe anything could happen to him.
One morning when I came into the office I sat down and said, 'Bill, you could do us both a favor if you'd have a talk with Ed Fry.'
Sexton put down some papers and rolled his cigar in his jaws. 'Has he been shooting off his mouth again?'
'He sure has. It came to me secondhand, but he called Tom Sunday a thief last night. If Tom hears about that we'll have a shooting. In fact, if Cap Rountree heard it there would be a shooting.'
Sexton glanced at me. 'And I wouldn't want you to hear it,' he said bluntly, 'or Orrin, either.'
'If I figured to do anything about it, I'd take off this badge. There's no place in this office for personal feelings.'
Sexton studied the matter. 'I'll talk to Ed. Although I don't believe he'll listen. He only gets more bullheaded. He said the investigation you made was a cover-up for Sunday, and both you and Orrin are protecting him.'
'He's a liar and nobody knows it better than you, Bill. When he wants to bear down, Tom Sunday is the best cattleman around. Drunk or sober he's a better cattleman than Ed Fry will ever be.'
Sexton ran his fingers through his hair. 'Tye, let's make Ed put up or shut up.
Let's demand to know what cattle he thinks he has missing, and what, exactly, makes him suspect Sunday. Let's make him put his cards on the table.'
'You do it,' I said, 'he would be apt to say the wrong thing to me. The man's a fool, talking around the way he is.' Since taking over my job as deputy sheriff and holding down that of town marshal as well, I'd not had to use my gun nor had there been a shooting in town in that time. I wanted that record to stand, but what concerned me most was keeping Tom Sunday out of trouble.
Only sometimes there isn't anything a man can do, and Ed Fry was a man bound and determined to have his say. When he said it once too often it was in the St.
James Hotel up at Cimarron, and there was quite a crowd in the saloon. Clay Allison was there, having a drink with a man from whom he was buying a team of mules. That man was Tom Sunday.
Cap was there, and Cap saw it all. Cap Rountree had a suspicion that trouble was heading for Sunday when he found out that Fry was going to Cimarron. Cap already knew that Sunday had gone there, so he took off himself, and he swapped horses a couple of times but beat Fry to town.
Ed Fry was talking when Cap Rountree came into the St. James. 'He's nothing but a damned cow thief!' Fry said loudly. 'That Tom Sunday is a thief and those Sacketts protect him!'
Tom Sunday had a couple of drinks under his belt and he turned slowly and looked at Ed Fry.
Probably Fry hadn't known until then that Sunday was in the saloon, because according to the way Cap told it, Fry went kind of gray in the face and Cap said you could see the sweat break out on his face. Folks had warned him what loose talk would do, but now he was face to face with it.
Tom was very quiet. When he spoke you could hear him in every corner of the room, it was that still.
'Mr. Fry, it comes to my attention that you have on repeated occasions stated that I was a cow thief. You have done this on the wildest supposition and without one particle of evidence. You have done it partly because you are yourself a poor cowman as well as a very inept and stupid man.'
When Tom was drinking he was apt to fall into a very precise way of speaking as well as using all that highfalutin language he knew so well.
'You can't talk to me like--'
'You have said I was a cow thief, and you have said the Sacketts protect me. I have never been a cow thief, Mr. Fry, and I have never stolen anything in my life, nor do I need protection from the Sacketts or anyone else. Anyone that says I have stolen cattle or that I have been protected is a liar, Mr. Fry, a very fat-headed and stupid liar.'
He had not raised his voice but there was something in his tone that lashed a man like a whip and in even the simplest words, the way Tom said them, there was an insult.
Ed Fry lunged to his feet and Tom merely watched him. 'By the Lord--'
Ed Fry grabbed for his gun. He was a big man but a clumsy one, and when he got the gun out he almost dropped it. Sunday did not make a move until Fry recovered his grip on the gun and started to bring it level, and then Tom palmed his gun and shot him dead.
Cap Rountree told Bill Sexton, Orrin, and me about it in the sheriff's office two' days later. 'No man ever had a better chance,' Cap said, 'Tom, he just stood there and I figured for a minute he was going to let Fry kill him. Tom's fast, Tye, he's real fast.'
And the way he looked at me when he said it was a thing I'll never forget.
Chapter XV
It was only a few days later that I rode over to see Drusilla. Not that I hadn't wanted to see her before, but there had been no chance. This time there was nobody to turn me away and I stopped before an open doorway.
She was standing there, tall and quiet, and at the moment I appeared in the door she turned her head and saw me.
'Dru,' I said, 'I love you.'
She caught her breath sharply and started to turn away. 'Please,' she said, 'go away. You mustn't say that.'
When I came on into the room she turned to face me. 'Tye, you shouldn't have come here, and you shouldn't say that to me.'
'You know that I mean it?'
