“You hired him? Pa, he’s an outlaw!” Cletus said.
Ike chuckled. “Hell, son, if it weren’t for the fact that we got Belmond in our hip pockets, we would be outlaws, too,” he said.
“Well, what the hell do you need him for anyway?”
“I thought we might be able to use him in our little disagreement with General Wade Garrison,” Ike explained.
“You don’t need him, Pa. You got me’n Ray. What do you need someone else for?”
“Because, like you said, I have you and Ray,” Ike said. “Two of the must useless sons a man has ever been cursed with.”
“Yeah? Well, what is he goin’ to do that we can’t?” Cletus challenged, pointing to Tyree.
“If I had been with you tonight, I would’ve smelled the trap, and I wouldn’t have gotten a man killed. Like I said, you’re the ones who got him killed. You killed him by going out there without knowing what you were doing,” Tyree said. He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back against one of the columns that fronted the patio. “Don’t be doing anything like that again, unless I give you permission.”
“Now, wait just a damn minute here,” Cletus said angrily. “If Pa hired you, then that means you work for me, I don’t work for you. So you won’t be giving me permission to do anything.”
Tyree uncrossed his arms. “Sonny, I not only don’t work for you,” he said. “I no longer work for your pa.” He started toward the barn.
“What do you mean, you don’t work for me?” Ike called after him.
“Ought not to be that hard to figure out,” Tyree replied without looking back. He continued walking toward the barn.
“No, wait!” Ike called after him. He glared at his son. “Ray, Cletus, Tyree is right. Neither one of you have any business messing in his business. And from now on, you won’t do one damn thing unless he tells you to do it.”
Ray stood there for a moment, seething, as he clenched and unclenched his fists.
“This ain’t right, Pa!” Ray said. “This ain’t in no way right, and you know it!”
“Boy, you know me well enough now to know that I don’t give a tinker’s damn what’s right or wrong,” Ike said. “I only care for results. And so far, neither you nor Cletus has given me any results. That’s why I hired Tyree.”
“We don’t need him, Pa,” Ray said. “Me’n Cletus can take care of—”
“So far you and Cletus haven’t been able to take care of shit,” Ike said, interrupting his son in mid-sentence. “I’ve hired Jefferson Tyree because I’m tired of getting my men killed. I think it’s time we started killing a few of Garrison’s men. Do you understand that?”
“Yeah,” Ray said, biting off his words. “Yeah, I understand it.”
“And you won’t go off on your own anymore. You won’t do anything like that unless Tyree tells you it’s all right. Do you understand that?”
Ray sighed. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Yeah, I won’t do anything unless Tyree tells me it’s all right,” Ray said, nearly choking on the words.
“Cletus? What about you?”
“Hell, Pa, it weren’t my idee to go over there in the first place,” Cletus said. “It was all Ray’s idee and I was just doin’ what he said.”
“Then I take it that you agree to do nothing without Tyree’s permission?” Ike asked.
“Yeah, sure, whatever you say, Pa,” Cletus said, looking away so as not to have to face the angry glare he was getting from Ray.
“Tyree?” Ike called. “You heard all this?”
“I heard it,” Tyree replied from over by the barn.
“Will you stay?”
Tyree didn’t make a verbal response, but he answered in the affirmative by making an almost imperceptible nod of his head.
“What about Billy?” Cletus asked.
“What about him?”
“Are you saying Billy is to take his orders from Tyree same as us?”
Ike shook his head. “Billy ain’t a part of this,” he said.
“What do you mean, he ain’t a part of it?”
“You boys know what Billy is like. When it comes to something like this, he’s as worthless as tits on a boar hog. Hell, I ain’t even told him about Tyree yet.”
When he heard the early morning commotion out on the front porch, Billy got out of bed and came down to see what was going on. He intended to step out on the front porch to be closer to what was happening, but when he heard them talking about Tyree, he stopped and stood just inside the door in the parlor, drinking a cup of coffee. When he heard his father’s assessment of him, he turned and left the parlor, not wanting to be there when they came back inside.
Chapter Twenty
When Tyree, Cletus, and Ray rode into town, Harold Denham was standing on the front porch of his newspaper officer, supervising the replacement of the window that had been broken out.
“Son of a bitch,” he said quietly as the three rode by him, then dismounted in front of the Hog Waller.
“What is it, Mr. Denham, what are we doin’ wrong?” one of the workers asked.
“What?” Denham asked. Then, realizing that he had said the words “son of a bitch” aloud, he shook his head.
“No, nothing to do with what you boys are doing,” he said. “You’re doing a fine job.”
“Thanks.”
“Look, you seem to have everything in hand here. You just keep going the way you are. I need to walk down to the marshal’s office and have a word with Travis. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Denham.”
When Denham reached the marshal’s office, he saw Travis sitting at the desk, the top of which was covered with a rather messy spread of papers. The new marshal looked up as Denham stepped inside.
“Would you look at all this?” Travis said. “How did Titus keep up with it all? I had no idea there was so much paperwork involved in being a marshal. It could be that I’m just not cut out for this job.”
“You’ll do fine,” Denham said. “I think it was a smart decision to appoint you.”
“We’ll see, we’ll see,” Travis said. “What brings you by?”
“Do you have anything in there about Jefferson Tyree?” Denham asked.
“Jefferson Tyree? Hmm, seems to me like I’ve heard that name. Now, why is that name familiar?”
“He murdered an entire family a year or so ago. He was caught and put in prison for life, but last month he escaped from prison,” Denham said.
Travis nodded. “Jefferson Tyree,” he said again. “Yes, I do remember that now. Well, if he is a murderer and an escaped prisoner, I’m sure there must be something on him in here somewhere.” Travis started shuffling through the papers on his desk until he turned up a poster. “Ah, yes. Here it is.”
WANTED!
DEAD OR ALIVE
JEFFERSON
TYREE
$5,000.00 REWARD!
The poster also had a woodcut picture of the outlaw. “Is this the man you’re talking about?”
“Yes,” Denham said. “He’s here, Travis. Jefferson Tyree is here.”
“Here?”
“In Higbee. I just saw him.”
“Are you sure?” Travis asked. He pointed to the picture. “Because, to be honest, these woodcuts aren’t always that good.”
“It doesn’t matter how good the woodcut is,” Denham said. “I know it is Tyree. I just saw him ride in with Ray and Cletus Clinton.”
“How can you be so sure that it’s Tyree?”
“Because I covered his trial last year,” Denham replied. “I sat in the courtroom and looked at that son of a bitch all through his entire trial.”
“And you say he’s with the Clintons?”
“Yes.”
Travis sighed. “In that case then, there’s not much doubt about why he’s here, is there? It looks like the Clintons have just upped the ante by hiring themselves a gun.”
“Where’s Falcon MacCallister?”
“He’s with the crew that’s putting up the bridge,” Travis said.
“Maybe we’d better send for him.”