On the way back to the ranch, Jorge reminded Will of the tragedy that struck the Galvez family over twenty years earlier. And explained that Senor Galvez had remarried and now had a new family that lived in town.
“He never took his son back?”
“No, the boy was so young and the family that took him in, good friends of Senora Galvez, agreed with the father that it was best for the boy to stay where a woman could help raise him. And the boy seemed afraid of the man. He hid from his father whenever he saw him. I suppose after seeing all that killing, he associated his father with the murders.”
“I suppose that’s possible. Or maybe it is something more. Did they ever catch the killer?” Will asked.
“Galvez was suspected at first, but they couldn’t find the weapon. There was a drifter that had been hanging around town when the murders happened, and Galvez said he saw the man leaving his home as arrived back from working in his fields. They decided he had done it and they hanged him. Why a drifter would want to kill a family he never knew is beyond me, but there are a lot of strange people in this world.
“Just last year old man Mendez went off his rocker and killed his wife while she slept,” Jorge said. “He thought she was an intruder who was trying to harm him.”
Will hadn’t worked as a lawman for almost two years now, but it was hard for him to let go when he came upon an injustice that needed to be made right. He looked off to horizon, lost in thought again for the rest of the way to the ranch.
No comments:
Post a Comment