There was a spring about fifty yards away, out of sight of the camp. From the layout I'd an idea this place had been used by them before. There was a crude brush shelter built to use a couple of big boulders that formed its walls. All the rest of the day I lay there watching them. From time to time one of them would get up and stroll out to the thin trail that led down toward Mora.
They had plenty of grub and a couple of bottles but neither of them did much drinking. By the time dark settled down I knew every rock, every tree, and every bit of cover in that area. Also I had spotted the easiest places to move quietly in the dark, studying the ground for sticks, finding openings in the brush.
Those men down there were mighty touchy folks with whom a man only made one mistake.
Come nightfall I moved my horse to fresh grass after watering him at the creek.
Then I took a mite of grub and a canteen and worked my way down to within about a hundred feet of their camp.
They had a small fire going, and coffee on. They were broiling some beef, too, and it smelled almighty good. There I was, lying on my belly smelling that good grub and chewing on a dry sandwich that had been packed early in the day. From where I lay I could hear them but couldn't make out the words.
My idea was that with Fetterson in jail it was just a chance Jonathan Pritts might come out himself. He was a cagey man and smart enough to keep at least one man between himself and any gun trouble. But Pritts wanted Fetterson out of jail.
It seemed to me that in the time I'd known Jonathan Pritts he had put faith in nobody. Such a man was unlikely to have confidence in Fetterson's willingness to remain silent when by talking he might save his own skin. Right now I thought Pritts would be a worried man, and with reason enough.
Fetterson had plenty to think about too. He knew that we had Wilson, and Wilson was a drinker who would do almost anything for his bottle. If Wilson talked, Fetterson was in trouble. His one chance to get out of it easier was to talk himself. Personally, I did not believe Fetterson would talk--there was a loyalty in the man, and a kind of iron in him, that would not allow him to break or be broken.
I was counting on the fact that Pritts believed in nobody, was eternally suspicious and would expect betrayal.
What I did not expect was the alternative on which Jonathan Pritts had decided.
I should have guessed, but did not. Jonathan was a hard man, a cold man, a resolute man.
Now it can be mighty miserable lying up in the brush, never really sleeping, and keeping an eye on a camp like that. Down there, they'd sleep awhile and then rouse up and throw some sticks on the fire, and go back to sleep again. And that's how the night run away.
It got to be the hour of dawn with the sun some time away but crimson streaking the sky, and those New Mexico sunrises ... well, there's nothing like the way they build a glory in the sky.
Paisano stood up suddenly. He was listening. He was lower in the canyon and might hear more than I. Would it be Jonathan Pritts himself? If it was, I would move in, taking the three of them in a bundle. Now that might offer a man a problem, and I wanted them all alive, which would not be a simple thing. Yet I had it to do. What made me turn my head, I don't know. There was a man standing in the brush about fifty feet away, standing death-still, his outline vague in the shadowy brush. How long that man had been there I had no idea, but there he was, standing silent and watching.
It gave me a spooky feeling to realize that man had been so close all the while and I'd known nothing about it. Not one time in a thousand could that happen to me. Trouble was, I'd had my eyes on that camp, waiting, watching to miss nothing.
Suddenly, that dark figure in the brush moved ever so slightly, edging forward.
He was higher than I, and could see down the canyon, although he was not concealed nearly so well as I was. My rifle was ready, but what I wanted was the bunch of them, and all alive so they could testify. And I'd had my fill of killing and had never wished to use my gun against anyone.
It was growing lighter, and the man in the brush was out further in the open, looking down as if about to move down there into the camp. And then he turned his head and some of the light fell across his face and I saw who it was.
It was Orrin.
Chapter XVIII
Orrin ....
It was so unexpected that I just lay there staring and then I began to bring my thoughts together and when I considered it I couldn't believe it. Sure, Orrin was married to Pritts' daughter, but Orrin had always seemed the sort of man who couldn't be influenced against his principles. We'd been closer even than most brothers.
So where did that leave me? Our lives had been built tightly around our blood ties for Lord knows how many years. Only I knew that even if it was Orrin, I was going to arrest him. Brother or not, blood tie or not, It was my job and I would do it.
And then I had another thought. Sure, I could see then I was a fool. There had to be another reason. My faith in Orrin went far beyond any suspicion his presence here seemed to mean.
So I got up.
His attention was on that camp as mine had been, and I had taken three steps before he saw me. He turned his head and we looked into each other's eyes, and then I walked on toward him.
Before I could speak he lifted a hand. 'Wait!' he whispered, and in the stillness that followed I heard what those men down below must have heard some time before ... the sound of a buckboard coming.
We stood there with the sky blushing rose and red and the gold cresting the far-off ridges and the shadows still lying black in the hollows. We stood together there, as we had stood together before, against the Higginses, against the dark demons of drought and stones that plagued our hillside farm in Tennessee, against the Utes, and against Reed Carney. We stood together, and in that moment I suddenly knew why he was here, and knew before the buckboard came into sight just who I would see.
The buckboard came into the trail below and drew up. And the driver was Laura.
Paisano and Dwyer went out to meet her and we watched money pass between them and watched them unload supplies from the back of the buckboard.
Somehow I'd never figured on a woman, least of all, Laura. In the west in those years we respected our women, and it was not in me to arrest one although I surely had no doubts that a woman could be mighty evil and wrong.
Least of all could I arrest Laura. It was a duty I had, but it was her father I wanted and the truth was plain to see. A man who would send his daughter on such a job ... he was lower than I figured.
Of course, there were mighty few would believe it or even suspect such a frail, blond, and ladylike girl of meeting and delivering money to murderers. Orrin shifted his feet slightly and sighed. I never saw him look the way he did, his face looking sick and empty like somebody had hit him in the midsection with a stiff punch.
'I had to see it,' he said to me, 'I had to see it myself to believe it. Last night I suspected something like this, but I had to be here to see.'
'You knew where the camp was?'
'Jonathan gave her most careful directions last night.'
'I should arrest her,' I said.
'As you think best.'
'It isn't her I want,' I said, 'and she would be no good to me. She'd never talk.'
Orrin was quiet and then he said, 'I think I'll move out to the ranch, Tyrel.
I'll move out today.'
'Ma will like that. She's getting feeble, Orrin.' We went back into the brush a mite and Orrin rolled a smoke and lit up. 'Tyrel,' he said after a minute, 'what's he paying them for? Was it for Torres?'
'Not for Torres,' I said, 'Fetterson already paid them.'
'For you?'
'Maybe ... I doubt it.'
Suddenly I wanted to get away from there. Those two I could find when I wanted them for they were known men, and the man I had wanted had been cagey enough not to appear.
'Orrin,' I said, 'I've got to head Laura off. I'm not going to arrest her, I just want her to know she was seen
