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been
hit with an axe.
Swinging my gun on Smith I saw him on the ground holding his belly and Tom
Sunday came riding up with a Henry rifle.
"Smartest play I ever saw," he said, watching Smith on the ground. "When I
saw
you lighting up I knew there had to be something ... knowing you didn't
smoke."
"Thanks, you sure picked a good time to ride up."
Sunday got down and walked over to the man who'd held the rifle. He was dead
with a shot through the heart and Sandy had taken two bullets through the
heart
also. Sunday glanced at me. "I saw it but I still don't believe it."
Thumbing shells into my gun I walked over to Miguel. He was up on one elbow
his
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face whiter than I'd have believed and his eyes bigger. "Gracias, amigos," he
whispered.
"Orrin told me you'd come out here and I was restless so I figured I'd ride
out
and camp with you. When I saw you in the middle of them I was trying to
figure
out what to do that wouldn't start them shooting at you. Then you did it."
"They'd have killed us."
"Pritts will take your helping Miguel as a declaration of war."
There was more sound out in the darkness and we pulled back out of the light
of
the fire. It was Cap Rountree and two of Alvarado's hands. One of them was
Pete
Romero, but the other was a man I didn't know.
He was a slim, knifelike man in a braided leather jacket, the most duded-up
man
I ever saw, but his pearl-handled six-shooter was hung for business and he
had a
look in his eyes that I didn't like.
His name was Chico Cruz.
Cruz walked over to the bodies and looked at them. He took out a silver
dollar
and placed it over the two bullet holes in Sandy's chest. He pocketed the
dollar
and looked at us.
"Who?"
Sunday jerked his head to indicate me. "His ... and that one too." He
indicated
the man with the rifle. Then he explained what had happened, not mentioning
the
burning twig, but the fact that I'd been covered by the rifle.
Cruz looked at me carefully and I had a feeling this was a man who enjoyed
killing and who was proud of his ability with a gun. He squatted by the fire
and
poured a cup of coffee. It was old coffee, black and strong. Cruz seemed to
like
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it.
Out in the darkness, helping Romero get Miguel into the saddle, I asked,
"Who's
he?"
"From Mexico. Torres sent for heem. He is a bad man. He has kill many times."
Cruz looked to me like one of those sleek prairie rattlers who move like
lightning and kill just as easily, and there was nothing about him that I
liked.
Yet I could understand the don sending for him. The don was up against a
fight
for everything he had. It worried him, and he knew he was getting old, and he
was no longer sure that he could win.
When I came back to the fire, Chico Cruz looked up at me. "It was good
shooting," he said, "but I can shoot better."
Now I'm not a man to brag, but how much better can you get?
"Maybe," I said.
"Someday we might shoot together," he said, looking at me through the smoke
of
his cigarette.
"Someday," I said quietly, "we might."
"I shall look forward to it, señor."
"And I," I smiled at him, "I shall look back upon it."
Chapter XI
We expected trouble from Pritts but it failed to show up. Orrin came out to
the
place and with a couple of men Don Luis loaned us and help from Cap and Tom
we
put a house together. It was the second day, just after work finished when we
were setting around the fire that Orrin told Tom Sunday he was going after
the
marshal's job.
Sunday filled his cup with coffee. His mouth stiffened up a little, but he
laughed. "Well, why not? You'd make a good marshal, Orrin ... if you get the
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job."
"I figured you wanted it & ." Orrin started to say, then his words trailed off
as
Tom Sunday waved a hand.
"Forget it. The town needs somebody and whoever gets it will do a job. If I
don't get it and you do, I'll lend a hand ... I promise that. And if I get
it,
you can help me."
Orrin looked relieved, and I knew he was, because he had been worried about
it.
Only Cap looked over his coffee cup at Tom and made no comment, and Cap was a
knowing man.
Nobody needed to be a fortuneteller to see what was happening around town.
Every
night there were drunken brawls in the street, and a man had been murdered
near
Elizabethtown, and there had been robberies near Cimarron. It was just a
question of how long folks would put up with it.
Meanwhile we went on working on the house, got two rooms of it up and Orrin
and
me set to making furniture for them. We finished the third room on the house
and
then Orrin and me rode with Cap over to the Grant where we bought fifty head
of
young stuff and drove it back and through the gap where we branded the cattle
and turned them loose.
Working hard like we had, I'd not seen much of Drusilla, so I decided to ride
over. When I came up Antonio Baca and Chico Cruz were standing at the gate,
and
I could see that Baca was on duty there. It was the first time I'd seen him
since the night he tried to knife me on the trail.
When I started to ride through the gate, he stopped me. "What is it you
want?"
"To see Don Luis," I replied.
"He is not here."
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"To see the señorita, then."
"She does not wish to see you."
Suddenly I was mad. Yet I knew he would like nothing better than to kill me.
Also, I detected something in his manner ... he was insolent. He was sure of
himself.
Was it because of Chico Cruz? Or could it be that the don was growing old and
Torres could not be everywhere?
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