Tad, in the act of pulling off a second tight-fitting boot, paused, his wide brow furrowed in thought. For as long as a minute he sat thus. Then he pulled the boot back on his foot and donned its mate. He listened for a moment to Shorty’s snoring then, moving stealthily, Tad made his way to the cabin, crouching by the window, the glass of which had been broken earlier in the night.
“Hurry up and cut these ropes,” Tad heard Black Jack command in a low-pitched tone.
“No,” came Kipp’s answer.
The sheriff’s voice sounded tired, the voice of an old man who carried too heavy a burden.
“Yuh know what it means fer us both if I talk?”
“Yes. I’ve done figgered it all out. I’m takin’ my medicine and givin’ you yourn. There ain’t no use talkin’. I’m goin’ through with this. I aim tuh come clean with the hull story. How you killed a man when he ketched yuh stealin’ hosses. How yuh got life fer it. How I filed the bars uh the window on that Los Cruces jail and staked yuh to a hoss tuh git away into Mexico. Yuh said you’d never bother me no more. I come north, changed my name and lets the past lay dead. Then you and this Fox hunts me out and makes me play yore dirty game. I’m tellin’ all that when the time comes. They kin do what they —— please with me. I’ll die in the pen knowin’ I’ve squared my accounts here on this side uh the Big Divide.”
The breed made no reply. Tad, peering through the logs where a bit of chinking had dropped out, saw the sheriff squatted with his back against the door, a Winchester across his knees.
Black Jack’s back was toward Tad. He could see the brown, muscular hands, one of them swollen and discolored, twist at the tightly knotted rope.
“You’d bust the promise yuh made to a dyin’ woman?”
“I’ve kept that promise,” replied Kipp slowly, “more than kept it. I reckon you know that as well as I do.”