Chapter 9
Shea Wardell sat on a crate behind the counter at his father's general store and watched a third townsman walk out the front door without his money.
The bell above the door rang and stopped. Sippy stood behind the counter with both hands flat on the wood and his head down. He had not lifted his eyes since the first man came in. Sippy had been like that since dawn.
"Pa."
“Yeah?"
"Pa, look at me a second."
Sippy looked up. His eyes had gone red around the rims and the red was the red of a man who had not slept the night before, and Shea, who had slept worse but did not show it the same way, made his own face into the face of a son who was sorry.
A worn-out man was an easier man. He had counted on the night having done its work on his father, and it had.
"Listen," he said, "I've been thinking."
"You've been thinking what?"
Sippy's eyes stayed on the counter wood.
"I've been thinking that the sheriff is a good man, but a slow man, and that a slow man and an empty box are not a good match. The box is empty today. It’ll be empty tomorrow. The Drews want their wages. Mr. Inglis wants his percent. Widow Calder wants to pay her mortgage."
"They'll have to wait, Shea."
Shea kept his face sorrowful.
"They will wait. And while they wait, that boy will be sitting at Mr. Barclay's kitchen table eating Mrs. Letts's eggs, and the money he took from your box will be sitting somewhere on that ranch under a board.
Mr. Barclay will be telling every man who comes up that lane that he has the boy on his word, and every day it goes on that way is a day longer this town is laughing at you. "
"The town’s not laughing at me."
“Maybe not. It's feeling sorry for you, though. And behind the feeling sorry, it's going to start thinking you're a man who's lost their money to a boy and let the boy sit with his feet up."
Sippy closed his eyes. His shoulders gave a fraction. Shea took it as his opening.
"What if we got the men together?"
Sippy opened his eyes.
"Got them together?"
Sippy was listening now. Shea breathed once before answering, slow.
"The men whose money was in the box. The Drews.
Inglis. McAfee. Foster Fairchild. Calder.
The Lacey brothers. Got them together first thing in the morning.
Rode out to Mr. Barclay's place. Asked him, plain, to put the boy in front of us.
Not the sheriff. Us. The men who lost. We won't do anything ugly.
We'll tell the boy what was ours and tell him to give back what he took.
We'll say it together, with all of our names on it.
Mr. Barclay is a fair man. He'll hear it. "
“Him hearing it isn’t the problem."
“It's not violence, Pa."
"It is close enough to it."
"We're not going to do harm. We're going to put eight men in a row and ask a question."
Sippy put both hands over his face.
"I'm tired, Shea."
"I know."
He did know it. He was counting on it.
"I don't want to ride out anywhere."
"You don't have to ride out, Pa. You stay here and sweep the floor. You count what's left. I'll go around and put the word together and tell them you've given it your blessing. They'll come if you've given it. They won't come if I'm the only name on it."
Sippy looked at his son. He looked at him with a narrowed look that Shea hadn't seen on him in some years, and Shea, behind his sorry face, held his feelings in his own chest and did not breathe.
“You're very ready for this."
"I'm angry, Pa. I'm angry that he came out of our store with our money on his shoulder."
The anger was real. That was the useful part of it. A man could show real anger and let it stand for honesty.
"You are ready in a way I'm not used to seeing in you."
"I'm old enough, Pa."
"Mm."
Sippy looked at him another second. Then he dropped his hands from his face. He looked old. The old of him sat in Shea's chest without pity and without triumph, only relief, maybe, that he wasn't the one behind the counter.
"All right."
“You'll give it your blessing?”
“I'll not call it that. I'll say I haven't stopped you. I'll say I've asked you to keep it short. And if any man on that ride puts a hand on the boy without the sheriff present, I’ll have his name. You understand me, Shea?”
"We're clear."
Shea kept the rest behind his teeth.
"Then go."
Shea didn't need to be told twice. He slid off the crate, set his hat on his head, and went around the counter. He was almost to the door when his father spoke again.
"I will ride at the front of it," Sippy said. He did not look up from the counter. “It's my box. I’ll be the one to ask."
Shea stood still a moment. Then he nodded once and stepped out into the afternoon.
The town was thin in the mid-light, a few wagons at the rail, a dog asleep on the boards in front of the milliner's.
He stood on the boardwalk and let his shoulders ease.
He had a list in his pocket of every man whose money had been in the box.
He had names down each side of the page in his father's neat hand.
The image came up in front of him… the ride, Mr. Barclay coming out onto the porch with his hat in his hand, Boone Keaton being asked in front of eight men where the money had gone, and Boone with no answer.
He had thought, when the shots had stopped echoing off the church, that he might be done for inside the week.
He had thought wrong. A town had its own justice when a sheriff was slow.
It was a wheel, and a boy who knew how to set his shoulder against it could turn it. The wheel was turning. He felt it.
He stepped down off the boardwalk and started up the street toward the Drews'. He kept his face arranged. He was a son of a wronged shopkeeper, on a sober errand, and he had a list.