Turning at right angles I walked right into the middle of the street and then I faced them. Sixty yards separated us. Looking at those rifles and shotguns I knew I was in trouble and plenty of it, but I knew this was what I had been waiting for.
There were eight of them and they would be confident, but they would also be aware that I was going to get off at least one shot and probably one man would be killed ... nobody would want to be that man.
'What are you boys getting out of this?' I asked them coolly. 'Fifty dollars apiece? It's a cinch Jonathan isn't going to pay more than that ... hope you collected in advance.'
'We want the keys!' The man talking was named Stott. 'Toss them over here!'
'You're talking, Stott ... but are you watching? You boys are going to get it from the jail.'
'The keys!'
Stott I was going to kill. He was the leader. I was going to get him and as many more as possible. There was a rustle of movement down the street behind them.
There was movement down there but I didn't dare take my eyes off them. So I started to walk. I started right down the street toward them, hoping to get so close they would endanger each other if they started shooting. Beyond them I could see movement and when I realized who it was I was so startled they might have killed me.
It was Dru.
She wasn't alone. She had six buckskin-clad riders with her and they all had Winchesters and they looked like they wanted to start shooting.
'All right,' I said, 'the fun's over. Drop your gun belts.'
Stott was angry. 'What are you trying--' Behind him seven Winchesters were cocked on signal, and he looked sharply around. And after that it was settled ... they were not nearly so anxious for trouble and when they were disarmed, they were jailed along with the others.
Dru walked her horse up to the front of the jail. 'Miguel saw them coming,' she said, 'so we rode down to help.'
'Help? You did it all.'
We talked there in the street and then I walked beside her horse over to the speaking. When this was over I was going to go after Jonathan Pritts. I was going to arrest him but oddly enough, I did not want him jailed. He was an old man, and defeat now would ruin him enough and he was whipped. When this was over he would be arrested, but if St. Vrain, Romero, and the others agreed, I'd just send him out of town with his daughter and a buckboard ... they deserved each other.
Orrin was introduced. He got up and walked to the front of the platform and he started to speak in that fine Welsh voice of his. He spoke quietly, with none of that oratory they had been hearing. He just talked to them as he would to friends in his own home, yet as he continued his voice grew in power and conviction, and he was speaking as I had never heard him speak.
Standing there in the shade of a building I listened and was proud. This was my brother up there ... this was Orrin. This was the boy I'd grown up with, left the mountains with, herded cattle, and fought Indians beside.
There was a strange power in him now that was born of thought and dream and that fine Welsh magic in his voice and mind. He was talking to them of what the country needed, of what had to be done, but he was using their own language, the language of the mountains, the desert, the cattle drives. And I was proud of him.
Turning away from the crowd, I walked slowly back to the street and between the buildings and when I emerged on the sunlit street, Tom Sunday was standing there.
I stopped where I stood and could not see his eyes but as flecks of light from the shadow beneath his hat brim. He was big, broad, and powerful. He was unshaved and duty, but never in my life had I seen such a figure of raw, physical power in one man.
'Hello, Tom.'
'I've come for him, Tyrel. Stay out of the way.'
'He's building his future,' I said, 'you helped him start it, Tom. He's going to be a big man and you helped him.'
Maybe he didn't even hear me. He just looked at me straight on like a man staring down a narrow hallway.
'I'm going to kill him,' he said, 'I should have done it years ago.'
We were talking now, like in a conversation, yet something warned me to be careful. What had Cap said? He was a killer and he would go on killing until something or somebody stopped him.
This was the man who had killed the Durango Kid, who had killed Ed Fry and Chico Cruz ... Chico never even got off a shot.
'Get out of the way, Tye,' he said, 'I've nothing against you, I--'
He was going to kill me. I was going to die ... I was sure of it.
Only he must not come out of it alive. Orrin must have his future. Anyway, I was the mean one ... I always had been.
Once before I had stepped in to help Orrin and I would now.
There was nobody there on the street but the two of us, just Tom Sunday, the man who had been my best friend, and me. He had stood up for me before this and we had drunk from the same rivers, fought Indians together. ...
'Tom,' I said, 'remember that dusty afternoon on that hillside up there on the Purgatoire when we ...'
Sweat trickled down my spine and tasted salt on my lips. His shirt was open to his belt and I could see the hair on his big chest and the wide buckle of his belt. His hat was pulled low but there was no expression on his face.
This was Tom Sunday, my friend ... only now he was a stranger.
'You can get out of the way, Tye,' he said, 'I'm going to kill him.'
He spoke easily, quietly. I knew I had it to do, but this man had helped teach me to read, he had loaned me books, he had ridden the plains with me.
'You can't do it,' I said. Right then, he went for his gun.
There was an instant before he drew when I knew he was going to draw. It was an instant only, a flickering instant that triggered my mind. My hand dropped and I palmed my gun, but his came up and he was looking across it, his eyes like white fire, and I saw the gun blossom with a rose of flame and felt my own gun buck in my hand, and then I stepped forward and left--one quick step--and fired again.
He stood there looking across his gun at me and then he fired, but his bullet made a clean miss. Thumbing back the hammer I said, 'Damn it, Tom. ...' and I shot him in the chest.
He still stood there but his gun muzzle was lowering and he was still looking at me. A strange, puzzled expression came into his eyes and he stepped toward me, dropping his gun. 'Tyrel ... Tye, what. ...' He reached out a hand toward me, but when I stepped quickly to take it, he fell.
He went full face to the dust, falling hard, and when he hit the ground he groaned, then he half-turned and dropping to my knees I grabbed his hand and gripped it hard.
'Tye ... Tye, damn it, I ...' He breathed hoarsely, and the front of his shirt was red with blood.
'The books,' he whispered, 'take the ... books.'
He died like that, gripping my hand, and when I looked up the street was full of people, and Orrin was there, and Dru.
And over the heads of some of the nearest, Jonathan Pritts.
Pushing through the crowd I stopped, facing Jonathan. 'You get out of town,' I told him, 'you get out of the state. If you aren't out of town within the hour, or if you ever come back, for any reason at all, I'll kill you.'
He just turned and walked away, his back stiff as a ramrod ... but it wasn't even thirty minutes until he and Laura drove from town in a buckboard.
'That was my fight, Tye,' Orrin said quietly, 'it was my fight.'
'No, it was mine. From the beginning it was mine. He knew it would be, I think.
Maybe we both knew it ... and Cap. I think Cap Rountree knew it first of all.'
We live on the hill back of Mora, and sometimes in Santa Fe, Dru and me ... we've sixty thousand acres of land in two states and a lot of cattle. Orrin, he's a state senator now, and pointing for greater things.
Sometimes of an evening I think of that, think when the shadows grow long of two boys who rode out of the
