The Legend of Caleb York Page 10

  Tulley’s eyes popped open and she repeated her question.

  He chuckled, but this time spoke only to himself as he said, “Banion . . . that’s rich . . . Banion . . .”

  “Tulley!”

  But the old desert rat was snoring now.

  Shaking her head in frustration, Willa rose and began down the boardwalk, toward the Victory. She wasn’t about to go in that den of iniquity, but she could wait outside for him. She’d barely started when she saw that dance-hall female Lola step through the batwing doors, in her satin-and-lace finery, her bosom hanging half-out, legs above her ankles showing through a slit at the front.

  Trollop.

  Right behind her, having held open a swinging door for her, was the stranger, a real gentleman in his dudish apparel, hat in hand and everything. For some reason, Willa felt anger flush her throat.

  She tucked into the recessed doorway of the mercantile shop, just to get out of sight, not really to eavesdrop. But she couldn’t avoid hearing, voices carrying on the clear, cool night....

  The stranger and the dance-hall female were walking slowly toward her up the boardwalk. Strolling, the dude’s spurs jingling musically.

  The fallen female said, “Would you like to walk me to the hotel, stranger? I keep a room.”

  “I need to seek lodging there myself.”

  Jingle jangle, creak of boards.

  “You’ve made quite an impression around Trinidad, stranger.”

  “I guess I make friends everywhere I go.”

  “I’m glad I was able to provide a place for you to rest those weary bones of yours, this afternoon.”

  What did that mean?

  “Very kind of you, ma’am. Very generous.”

  “I told you I prefer ‘Lola’ to ‘ma’am.’ Don’t you think I’ve earned the right to get a name from you?”

  “I like the way you call me ‘stranger.’ Kind of has a nice ring.”

  “Your name might have a nicer one.”

  “Maybe it would. . . .”

  “So what is it?”

  The jingle of spurs stopped.

  The woman asked again, “What is it?”

  But there was an urgency in the words that said the female was no longer asking about his name.

  Willa froze, already plastered against the mercantile door, shadowed in darkness. She’d made no sound.

  What might he have heard?

  The spur jingle returned, making quicker music, and he walked right by her. Went over to his hitched-up horse and withdrew a shotgun from its scabbard, and a handful of shells from a saddlebag. He put three in a breast pocket, three more in the right pocket of his black cotton trousers.

  The fancy woman was at his side now, concerned, touching his sleeve. Eyeing the shotgun, she said, “What’s that for?”

  “I don’t like sudden silences.”

  “. . . It’s a sleepy town after dark. You’ll get used to it.”

  “You have to be dead to get used to it.”

  Finally they walked on.

  This gave Willa the opportunity to slip out of her hiding place. She moved quietly to her horse, disgusted that these two were headed to the hotel together, disgusted with herself that she’d volunteered to come to Trinidad and find the stranger, and what? Bat her eyelashes at him till he gave her his name?

  That Lola creature was ready to give him much more than that for revealing his identity. Maybe the woman already had done so, getting nowhere for her trouble. Served the trollop right.

  Willa approached Daisy, who whinnied just a little, and the stranger and his female companion turned immediately toward her, just one store down from where she stood. She hoped the red burning her face did not show in the moonlight.

  The female smiled big and said, “Well! Good evening, Miss Cullen. Aren’t you afraid to be out in this chilly night air?”

  “I am of the people out walking around in it,” she said, even chillier.

  The dance-hall queen had the temerity to walk nearer. “Then maybe it would be better if you stayed out on that ranch of yours. Where it’s safe. Trinidad after dark is no place for a sweet young girl like yourself to be.”

  Willa glared at her, but said nothing.

  With a tiny, sneering smile, the female returned to her escort, offering her crooked elbow for his arm, and said, “Coming, stranger?”

  He gave her a mild smile. “Do you mind walking the rest of the way yourself? I have to meet someone tonight, before I check into the hotel.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Nothing to do with you . . . ma’am.”

  He tipped his Stetson.

  The female shrugged and said, “Good night, stranger. And thank you for this afternoon. Thank you very much.” She reached her face up and gave him a quick kiss, then crossed the street, hips swaying—Disgusting! Willa thought—heading toward the hotel.

  The stranger walked over to Willa, taking his time, glancing toward the retreating female, who was entering the hotel now.

  “Well, you choose sides quick enough,” she said to him. “What kind of offer did she make?”

  “Does it make any difference?”

  Burning, she said, “Not to me.”

  She started for Daisy and he stopped her by the arm.

  “Let go of me!” she blurted.

  “Try shutting up for a change.”

  The surprising harshness of that made her draw in breath, but he held up a hand, palm out.

  He said, in a near whisper, “I don’t like the smell of this.”

  “Smell of what?”

  “It’s hanging in the air like smoke.”

  “What?”

  He put his hands on the sides of her arms, facing her. “Listen to me now. Step back into that doorway. Stay in the shadows. Something’s going to happen and I don’t want you to be part of it.”

  “Stop this,” she said through tight teeth, shaking free. “Do you think I scare that easily? Because I don’t.”

  “Good for you,” he said. “Because I do.”

  Lola unlocked the door of her room at the hotel and flinched, startled by the sight of Sheriff Harry Gauge, seated in a hardback chair arranged to face her upon her arrival.

  “What’s the idea?” she said irritably, shutting the door behind her. “Want me to jump out of my skin?”

  He didn’t look at all friendly. He leaned forward, hands clasped and dropped between spread knees, his holstered .45 hanging loose, too, its tie-down strap dangling. He was at once casual and deadly.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well . . . what?”

  “What did you get out of that S.O.B.?”

  She sat on the edge of the nearby bed, a bed big enough for two; its springs whined. “Nothing. Not a damn thing.”

  He frowned. “You mean, no name? No nothing? Damn, woman, do you have any idea how long you were in there with him?”

  She shrugged. “He was dog-tired. Been riding all night, and probably exerted himself killing your stupid underlings. No hotel rooms available, so I let him nap all afternoon in one of the girls’ cribs.”

  Gauge scowled. “You mean, you had him alone in a room, asleep, and didn’t tell me?”

  She curled her upper lip at him. “Why, so you could stage another killing in my saloon? And the answer is, yes—what I got out of him is exactly what I said. Nothing.”

  His smile was terrible. “You aren’t that stupid. You got two little fingers you can wrap men around, and I’ve seen you do it.”

  She shrugged, shook her head. “He doesn’t talk much. Plays his cards close to the vest.... Speaking of which, he won several hundred this afternoon. Man knows his poker.”

  “Tell me you picked up something.”

  She thought about it. “Well . . . whoever he is, he doesn’t want it known. Very cagey about that. I think he really may be passing through. Could be wanted.”

  “A dude like that?”

  She let out a little laugh. “A dude that shot down two of you
r boys who already had the drop on him. You can see that this one’s got all the instincts of a gunfighter. I wouldn’t pay any never-mind to the way he dresses. Hell, look how Bill Hickok used to dude up.”

  “He ain’t no Hickok.”

  “But he’s somebody. He’s got a style about him that I just can’t put my finger on.”

  Gauge got up suddenly, standing as straight as he’d been slumped before. “Maybe you’d like to lay more than just a finger on him, huh?”

  She bared her teeth. “And what if I do? What if I did? Didn’t you say you wanted me to use my talents?”

  “I don’t care about that. Once a whore, always a whore. Just don’t go takin’ a shine to that dude or anything.” He started toward her, a fist raised like a rock. “Or I’ll . . .”

  “Or you’ll nothing,” she said, and she showed him the derringer she’d had up her sleeve. “You’re not to hit me no more, Harry. Remember?”

  “Not bad,” he said, grinning appreciatively, nodding at the little gun. “Maybe I should’ve sent you to kill that stranger, not Britt and Manning.”

  She frowned. “You wouldn’t send saddle tramps like those two to take that one down, would you?”

  “Wouldn’t I?”

  She shook her head, rolled her eyes. “They aren’t man enough for the job, Harry.”

  “We’ll see.”

  She found his gaze and held it. “There’s only one man in this town who could take that stranger, Harry . . . and I’m looking at him.”

  He came over and kissed her roughly.

  But he didn’t hit her.

  Willa, in the recession of the barbershop doorway, watched as the stranger unhitched his horse with his left hand, the shotgun stock clutched in his right. He was looking everywhere, listening intently for any hint of sound over the muffled fun from the Victory.

  Nothing.

  She left the recession of the doorway and stepped across the boardwalk and down into the street, approaching him. He spun toward her, swinging the shotgun her way, making her jump back a little.

  Then he let out so much air that he might have collapsed. “I told you stay back, woman.”

  She gestured to the quiet, dark street around them. “You’re imagining things. Who are you meeting, anyway?”

  He took a step closer to her. Softly he said, “You. I want to ride out to your father’s ranch for a talk.”

  This news widened her eyes, threw her off balance. “Well . . . that’s why I came to town. To talk to you.”

  A tiny click froze them both.

  Just the smallest little noise . . .

  . . . a gun cocking?

  Swiftly the stranger shoved her to the street, where she landed whump in a dust cloud of her making, and he ducked down to where that desert rat was napping, pulling out from under Tulley the seed bag that had been the old boy’s mattress, and slinging the thing over the saddle of his horse, whose rump he slapped, sending the animal charging down the street, galloping in the direction of the hotel.

  A dark-mustached man in a black vest emerged fast from the alley across the way, to aim a pistol at what he must have figured was the stranger on horseback, trying to get away.

  But the stranger was in the midst of the street now and the shooter turned in surprise and got a bellyful of buckshot for his trouble. Blown onto his backside, the openmouthed ambusher stared at the sky, but wasn’t seeing it.

  From the alley off to her right came another attacker, a smaller man but burly, on the move, firing a pistol at the stranger, three shots cracking the night, but his target had hit the street in a roll and came up in a crouch, letting loose the other barrel of the shotgun with a boom that sounded like dynamite exploding.

  The smaller man was lifted off his feet, then fell back and splashed onto his own spilled blood and innards.

  Now she could smell it.

  Gunsmoke in the air like gray-blue drifting fog, the stranger was getting to his feet, slowly, looking all around him.

  She stayed down, trembling, wondering what might come next, and from her vantage point she could see men pouring out of the Victory down one way and people coming out more tentatively from the hotel down the other. The glow of lights came to windows of second-floor living quarters here and there, folks leaning out for a look, as the stranger calmly, almost casually walked first to one corpse, kicking it, then to the other, and doing the same.

  A cowboy, who’d come out of the Victory, close enough to see, called out, “My gosh, he got Jake Britt! And Lars Manning!”

  Townspeople, men mostly, tucking nightshirts into trousers they quickly stepped into, some in bare feet, were emerging from this place and that one for a look. Pushing through this assembling wall of gawkers, came the sheriff.

  “All right!” Gauge yelled. “All right, get back, back, all of you!”

  The stranger was standing near the second of the dead bodies he’d made, the shotgun cradled in his arms.

  The sheriff faced the stranger, putting perhaps three feet between them. He almost snarled as he said, “What is this? What happened here?”

  “I’d call it an ambush,” the stranger said offhandedly, breaking the shotgun, snapping out shells, reloading but leaving the gun open. “Or I guess in more official terms? An attempted ambush.”

  Gauge backed away a few steps, hands on hips, and called around to those gathered at this latest shooting scene, “Anybody see what happened here?”

  Around them were the faces belonging to what must have been a third of the town, anyway . . . and all were shaking their heads.

  The sheriff wheeled back to the man with the shotgun and pointed a finger at him like a pistol. “Who ambushed who, stranger? What I see is two of my deputies shot down like dogs in the street, and nobody but you to say how it happened.”

  Willa was already heading over, dusting herself off from the fall. “I saw it, Sheriff.”

  Gauge turned toward her and his smile was witheringly sarcastic, as was his tone as he said, “Now, ain’t that just nice. Ain’t that convenient and all. The little lady comes up with a story just in the nick of time to clear her father’s hired gun.”

  “He’s not my father’s hired gun,” she said, almost spitting the words. “But I saw those two men try to bushwhack him. That one shot first, then the stranger defended himself, and after that, this one came out shooting and got what he asked for. Self-defense in anybody’s book. Any questions, Sheriff?”

  Before Gauge could respond, the desert rat scrambled out from under the boardwalk, saying, “Wait just a minute, Sheriff! Hold your horses.”

  Gauge looked with contempt at the ragged figure shambling toward him. “What is it, Tulley?”

  The desert rat patted his chest, raising dust. “Maybe you better count me as a witness, too, Sheriff. I saw the whole blasted thing myself. Came about just like Miss Cullen said. Couple of back-shooters got shot front-ways. Better than they merited.”

  The sheriff scowled at this second witness. “Are you drunk, old man?”

  “Not presently.” Tulley pointed to the boardwalk. “That’s what I was doin’ under there—sleepin’ it off!”

  Gauge gave first Tulley, and then Willa, a lingering look at his disgusted sneer.

  Then he turned to the stranger and said, “Fine pair of witnesses you got here, mister. Town drunk and the daughter of a man who hates my guts. Maybe I ought to take you in, anyway.”

  The stranger snapped the shotgun shut and grinned, though his eyes weren’t friendly at all. “Guess you could try, Sheriff.”

  The two men faced each other for five seconds that must have seemed, to one and all, a very long time.

  Deputy Rhomer stepped from the crowd—“Out of the way, out of the way!”—and took the sheriff’s arm, jerking his head to one side, indicating they should move away from their potential prisoner.

  Willa could hear what Rhomer whispered: “Take it easy, Harry. Suppose he is Banion. He’ll cut you to pieces with that shotgun!”

&nb
sp; “If he ain’t Banion,” Gauge said, “he’s a fool.”

  The sheriff stepped away from his deputy, sighed deep, hitched his gun belt, and returned to the stranger, saying, “I’m not going to waste time or taxpayer money arrestin’ you. Thanks to these two witnesses, you’re free to go.”

  The stranger smiled, nodded. “Right kind of you, Sheriff.”

  Gauge gave him a hard look, a hand on the butt of his holstered .44. “You still claim to just be passin’ through, mister?”

  “That’s my intention.”

  The sheriff’s chin raised, as if begging the stranger to take a swing. “You could stand to pick up the pace a mite.”

  Then the lawman went back to the milling citizens, perhaps half of whom had lost interest and gone back home and to bed already, and got somebody to go after Doc Miller. Not that pronouncing either of these two dead would take much effort. Nobody had to seek out undertaker Perkins, who always showed up, no matter what time of day, whenever there were gunshots. Just trying to serve his community.

  Willa went to the stranger, who said to her, “Sorry about the rough treatment.”

  “I won’t fault you,” she said. “I believe you may have saved my life.”

  He nodded toward the sheriff, presently conferring with the undertaker. “You may have already returned the favor.”

  “Mister!”

  They turned and Tulley was walking the dappled gelding toward them. “Here’s your horse! Didn’t get far.”

  “Thanks, Tulley.” He took the reins from the old man. “Sorry about borrowing your bed.”

  The feed bag was no longer on the animal.

  “Oh, it fell off back there a ways,” Tulley said with a good-natured grin shy a few teeth. “Broke apart where it hit. Maybe somethin’ will grow!”

  “Maybe,” the stranger said, and patted the old man’s shoulder, “you can sleep at the stable tonight.”

  “Didn’t earn enough of my keep over there today for that, mister.”

  “You tell Hitchens I’ll pay your freight tomorrow.”

  Tulley beamed. “You’re a fine human man, mister. Fine human man.”

  The desert rat headed toward the livery stable with some spring in his step.

  Smiling, Willa said, “I guess you do make friends everywhere you go. Where are you going tonight? You staying here, at the hotel maybe?”