But John was mercurial. Since he took orders from everyone, he had little allegiance to anyone. He loved, in his own way, both Tom and Charlie, and he believed in them. Charlie had the upper hand because he was the oldest, where Tom was the youngest. But Tom was the smarter. When Charlie and Tom were at odds, and they seemed to be at odds more and more, John would side with Charlie, and then Tom would convince John that Charlie was wrong or taking advantage of him. Since they both took ample advantage of John, he was easy to convince.

John was merely afraid of Jeff. Charlie had outgrown his fear, becoming bigger and stronger than Jeff, and Tom had learned and invented tricks to get around Jeff and to head off Jeff's anger. John simply took what Jeff dished out, though he was stronger and tougher than even Charlie. More and more, he had been siding with Tom, who protected John as best he could.

They were still fifteen hundred dollars short of the amount Tucker thought they would need. Jeff was ready to just let the whole deal slide by when Tom handed him a leather pouch.

“What's this?”

“Two thousand dollars.”

“Where'd you get it?”

“I got it is all. I got a little side business. Now we can get that mine.”

“You doing some bootlegging?” Jeff asked.

“Like I said, I got a little side business.”

Jeff looked at the two thousand dollars. “It's damned profitable, that bootlegging.”

“Now we can buy the mine.”

“I don't know. Charlie ain't keen on the idea.”

As Jeff saw it, it was two to two in the family. He and Tom were the right side. Charlie and John would block their way. He could try to exert his authority as head of the family to weight the argument to his side, but, lately, that brought only grief. The brothers would turn against each other, and at least two of them would turn against him. His ally would be Tom, and Tom looked out for himself first. It was no good. If they were going to buy that mine, John had to join with him and Tom against Charlie. And he told Tom that. And Tom nodded, understanding completely.

“What if we was to split the money from the mine three ways instead of four?” Tom asked.

“How we going to do that?”

“Well, we ain't going to give up the cattle operation, are we? After all the work we put into it, we ain't going to just turn our backs on it, are we? If the gold doesn't come through, we got to have a backup, right?”

“There's going to be gold. There's gold there now, we know that,” Jeff argued.