'Mr. Pritts,' I said, 'I believe you are involved in this crime. If the evidence will substantiate my belief you will hang also, right along with Fetterson and the others.'
Why, he fooled me. I expected him to burst out with some kind of attack on me, but he did nothing of the kind. 'Have you talked to your brother about this?'
'He knows I have my duty to do, and he would not interfere. Nor would I interfere in his business.'
'How much is the bail for Mr. Fetterson?'
'You know I couldn't make any ruling. The judge does that. But there's no bail for murder.'
He did not threaten me or make any reply at all, he just turned and went outside. If he had guessed how little I had in the way of evidence he would have just sat still and waited. But I have a feeling about this sort of thing ... if you push such men they are apt to move too fast, move without planning, and so they'll make mistakes.
Bill Sexton came in, and Ollie was with him. They looked worried.
'How much of a case have you got against Fetterson?' Sexton asked me.
'Time comes, I'll have a case.'
Sexton rubbed his jaw and then took out a cigar. He studied it while I watched him, knowing what was coming and amused by all the preliminaries, but kind of irritated by them, too.
'This Fetterson,' Sexton said, 'is mighty close to Jonathan Pritts. It would be a bad idea to try to stick him with these killings. He's got proof he wasn't anywhere around when they took place.'
'There's something to that Tye,' Ollie said. 'It was Jonathan who helped put Orrin in office.'
'You know something?' I had my feet on the desk and I took them down and sat up in that swivel chair. 'He did nothing of the kind. He jumped on the band wagon when he saw Orrin was a cinch to win. Fetterson stays in jail or I resign.'
'That's final?' Ollie asked.
'You know it is.'
He looked relieved, I thought. Ollie Shaddock was a good man, mostly, and once an issue was faced he would stand pat and I was doing what we both believed to be right.
'All right,' Sexton said, 'if you think you've got a case, we'll go along.'
It was nigh to dark when Cap came back to the office. There was no light in the office and sitting back in my chair I'd been doing some thinking.
Cap squatted against the wall and lit his pipe. 'There's a man in town,' he said, 'name of Wilson. He's a man who likes his bottle. He's showing quite a bit of money, and a few days ago he was broke.'
'Pretty sky,' I said, 'the man who named the Sangre de Cristos must have seen them like this. That red in the sky and on the peaks ... it looks like blood.'
'He's getting drunk,' Cap said.
Letting my chair down to an even keel I got up and opened the door that shut off the cells from the office. Walking over to the bars and stopping there, I watched Fetterson lying on his cot. I could not see his face, only the dark bulk of him and his boots. Yes, and the glow of his cigarette.
'When do you want to eat?'
He swung his boots to the floor. 'Any time. Suit yourself.'
'All right.' I turned to go and then let him have it easy. 'You know a man named Wilson?'
He took the cigarette from his mouth. 'Can't place him. Should I?'
'You should ... he drinks too much. Really likes that bottle. Some folks should never be trusted with money.' When I'd closed the door behind me Cap lit the lamp. 'A man who's got something to hide,' Cap said, 'has something to worry about.'
Fetterson would not, could not know what Wilson might say, and a man's imagination can work overtime. What was it the Good Book said? 'The guilty flee when no man pursueth.'
The hardest thing was to wait. In that cell Fetterson was thinking things over and he was going to get mighty restless. And Jonathan Pritts had made no request to see him. Was Jonathan shaping up to cut the strings on Fetterson and leave him to shift for himself? If I could think of that, it was likely Fetterson could too.
Cap stayed at the jail and I walked down to the eating house for a meal. Tom Sunday came in. He was a big man and he filled the door with his shoulders and height. He was unshaved and he looked like he'd been on the bottle. Once inside he blinked at the brightness of the room a moment or two before he saw me and then he crossed to my table. Maybe he weaved a mite in walking ... I wouldn't have sworn to it.
'So you got Fetterson?' He grinned at me, his eyes faintly taunting. 'Now that you've got him, what will you do with him?'
'Convict him of complicity,' I replied. 'We know he paid the money.'
'That's hitting close to home,' Sunday's voice held a suggestion of a sneer.
'What'll your brother say to that?'
'It doesn't matter what he says,' I told him, 'but it happens it has been said.
I cut wood and let the chips fall where they may.'
'That would be like him,' he said, 'the sanctimonious son-of -a-bitch.'
'Tom,' I said quietly, 'that term could apply to both of us. We're brothers, you know.'
He looked at me, and for a moment there I thought he was going to let it stand, and inside me I was praying he would not. I wanted no fight with Tom Sunday.
'Sorry,' he said, 'I forgot myself. Hell,' he said then, 'we don't want trouble.
We've been through too much together.'
'That's the way I feel,' I said, 'and Tom, you can take my say-so or not, but Orrin likes you, too.'
'Likes me?' he sneered openly now. 'He likes me, all right, likes me out of the way. Why, when I met him he could scarcely read or write ... I taught him. He knew I figured to run for office and he moved right in ahead of me, and you helping him.'
'There was room for both of you. There still is.'
'The hell there is. Anything I tried to do he would block me. Next time he runs for office he won't have the backing of Jonathan Pritts. I can tell you that.'
'It doesn't really matter.'
Tom laughed sardonically. 'Look, kid, I'll tip you to something right now.
Without Pritts backing him Orrin wouldn't have been elected ... and Pritts is fed up.'
'You seem to know a lot about Pritts' plans.'
He chuckled. 'I know he's fed up, and so is Laura. They're both through with Orrin, you wait and see.'
'Tom, the four of us were mighty close back there a while. Take it from me, Tom, Orrin has never disliked you. Sure, the two of you wanted some of the same things but he would have helped you as you did him.'
He ate in silence for a moment or two, and then he said, 'I have nothing against you, Tye, nothing at all.'
After that we didn't say anything for a while. I think both of us were sort of reaching out to the other, for there had been much between us, we had shared violence and struggle and it is a deep tie. Yet when he got up to leave I think we both felt a sadness, for there was something missing.
He went outside and stood in the street a minute and I felt mighty bad. He was a good man, but nobody can buck liquor and a grudge and hope to come out of it all right. And Jonathan Pritts was talking to him.
I arrested Wilson that night. I didn't take him to jail where Fetterson could talk to him. I took him to that house at the edge of town where Cap, Orrin, and me had camped when we first came up to Mora.
I stashed him there with Cap to mount guard and keep the bottle away. Joe came in to guard Fetterson and I mounted up and took to the woods, and I wasn't riding on any wild-goose chase ... Miguel had told me that a couple of men were camped on the edge of town, and one of them was Paisano.
From the ridge back of their camp I studied the layout through a field glass. It was a mighty cozy little place among boulders and pines that a man might have passed by fifty times without seeing had it not been for Miguel being told of it by one of the Mexicans.
The other man must be Jim Dwyer--a short, thickset man who squatted on his heels most of the time and never was without his rifle.
There was no hurry. There was an idea in my skull to the effect these men were camping here for the purpose of breaking Fetterson out of jail. 1 wanted those men the worst way but I wanted them alive, and that would be hard to handle as both men were tough, game men who wouldn't back up from a shooting fight.
