The Legend of Caleb York Read online

  Gauge pointed to the east. “Drag these damn carcasses over to the ravine and start a slide and cover ’em up.”

  “We can do that. But the men won’t take to handlin’ such dead critters as these.”

  He frowned at the foreman. “They’re already wearin’ gloves, ain’t they? They’ll be fine. Tell ’em I’ll pay double wages.”

  Willart nodded. “That should do it. What about the main herd?”

  Gauge gestured toward the landscape of death. “These were too far gone to follow the graze. The others should last long enough to get themselves sold.”

  The foreman nodded, then raised his eyebrows skeptically. “Even our survivors are pretty scrawny, up against the Bar-O herd. As it stands, boss, Cullen’s likely to get the lion’s share of buyer dollars.”

  The sheriff gave his man a surly grin. “Not after tonight. Get started cleanin’ up this mess.... Hey, Tenny!”

  The foreman went off, just as Joe Tenny, a cowboy who had run with Gauge in outlaw days, ambled over. He had shaggy eyebrows that met in the middle and a lazy smile with a droopy, thick mustache shaped like the smile’s upside-down twin.

  “Y’know,” Tenny said, “I was thinkin’ maybe we oughter have ourselves a bar-be-cue. Or maybe you got a better idea?”

  “Funny feller.” Gauge nodded vaguely north. “Listen, you know those foothills near the Sangre de Cristo?”

  That was the mountain range that expanded northward to become the Rockies.

  “Ought to,” Tenny said with a nod. “We hid out there enough times.”

  Gauge put a hand on his old accomplice’s shoulder. “I want the Bar-O cattle driven into those canyons. Every damn cow. Main herd’s in the valley now, and you can get them over the foothills before daylight.”

  Tenny raised his shaggy eyebrows. “That’ll take a heap of men.”

  “Not so many,” Gauge said, shaking his head. “Those Bar-O boys won’t be expectin’ us to hit their camp. Anyway, they’re spread thin over there. Hell, you won’t even have to waste bullets killin’ ’em.”

  Tenny frowned. “You know, Harry, I ain’t real big on leavin’ witnesses. . . .”

  Gauge patted the man’s shoulder. “Joe, in this case it’ll be better if you do. Wear masks or somethin’. But leave them breathe so they can spread word that the Bar-O is finished. What hands Cullen does have left’ll leave like rats off a sinkin’ ship.”

  Tenny was thinking that over, his battered hat pushed back on his head. “There’s no water in them draws, y’know.”

  “Those cows’ll get by till I need ’em.”

  “What do you need ’em for?”

  Gauge gave his old friend a big, beautiful grin. “Why, Joe, we’re gonna kill off the rest of our sickly beeves and restock with Bar-O cows.”

  Tenny gave up his lazy smile of approval. “I like it. Damn, if I don’t like it a bunch. Always figured offerin’ money to that blind old coot was a waste when we could just take what he had.”

  Gauge glanced again at the moon-swept, remains-strewn terrain, where cowhands were dragging dead cattle off through grass riffling with the breeze. “All right, Joe. Get the men you need and move out.”

  Tenny nodded and went off to do that while his boss stayed back to watch cowhands haul dead cattle by their hooves to the nearby ravine. It was a bizarre-looking process and it took a while. Gauge didn’t supervise—he left that to foreman Willart.

  They were just starting to get a slide going, to cover up the dead cows, when Gauge collected his horse and started back to town, as his underlings continued his dirty work. He felt very much a cattle baron in the making.

  Never realizing that even after all he’d accomplished, he was still no more than the leader of an outlaw gang.

  On the Cullen range, a camp of sleeping cowhands were kicked awake by armed, masked gunmen. Without a word, in the glow of a small fire, the invaders gestured with weapons toward the small remuda, and without having to be told, the cowhands walked to their horses and rode off into night, heads hanging, while behind them the herd that had been their responsibility was being driven off by more armed men on horseback.

  Two of the Cullen cowhands paused atop a bluff, reins pulled back, and looked down as their herd disappeared off toward Gauge range.

  “I guess that’s the end of the Bar-O,” one said.

  “I guess so,” the other said. “Never had a chance, did we?”

  “Never a chance in hell.”

  And they rode away—away from the herd, away from Cullen land, on their way to somewhere else.

  Dr. Miller had his latest patient—the corpse of Cyrus Swenson—on his examination table in his simple surgery. His office and living quarters were on the second floor of the brick building that housed the bank.

  The stubby, rotund physician—his rumpled suit looking as exhausted as he felt—had just gotten back to town after delivering the latest Haywood baby when rancher Burl Owen rolled up in a wagon with Swenson laid out in back of it.

  Sometimes it seemed those were his only patients here in Trinidad—newborn babies and freshly-made corpses.

  Burl had been irritable as hell, after being shuffled around from some deputies at the jailhouse who didn’t want anything to do with the corpse, and undertaker Perkins who had insisted that the first stop for the deceased be the doctor’s office for a death’s certificate.

  Luckily, somebody had come along to help the doctor cart the body up to his office by way of the outside wooden stairway in the alley. The volunteer was, of all people, the stranger who’d shot four of his other most recent patients.

  Now the late Swenson was on the table, on his side, so that the doctor could get a look at what appeared to be the fatal wound.

  “You figure this is a murder,” the doc said to his new helper.

  “That’s how I figure it.”

  Everybody thought they knew better than their doctor.

  “Mister,” Doc Miller said, “nobody in this town or anywhere else would be bothered murdering Old Swenson.”

  “So I hear. But wasn’t there bad blood between him and the sheriff?”

  The doctor nodded. “Bad blood that got resolved by Swenson selling Harry Gauge that little spread of his, finally.”

  The doc leaned in for a closer look at the wound, black and clotted now. Deep. Oval-shaped. Hard damn blow.

  The stranger said, “I imagine you’ve seen your share of wounds like that before.”

  “Quite often. Some were caused accidentally.”

  “Not most?”

  The doc shrugged, raised both white eyebrows. “Most were from a gun-butt blow from behind.”

  “This could be that?”

  “That, or he fell on some farm implement.”

  “Out by the relay station?”

  “Or an odd-shaped rock. Still. That indentation does look like a gun butt. . . .”

  “Enough for you to change your diagnosis?”

  “This could be murder, yes . . . but . . . hell.”

  “What is it, Doctor?”

  “Stand back a bit, would you, son?”

  The corpse’s shirt had got untucked near the bottom, giving the doctor a troubling glimpse of something. He moved the body onto its back. Pulled up the shirt. Took a close look at the man’s belly, where it was broken out in red pustules.

  The doc said, “Help me with his trousers . . . but don’t touch him.”

  The stranger did as he was told.

  The doctor had a look at the man’s legs, which bore the same red blisters. Quickly he took a sheet and covered up the body.

  More to himself than his guest, the doc said, “This corpse needs to be buried immediately.” Then meeting the stranger’s eyes, he said, “Perhaps you might help. You’d be performing a service. You could help avoid a panic.”

  “What kind of panic?”

  “You ever see these signs before, son?” The doctor lifted the sheet, indicated the stomach. “Step closer. Don’t touch.”


  “Don’t worry.” The stranger’s eyes widened. “My God—is that . . . cowpox?”

  The doctor covered his patient up again. “Exactly right. And it can wipe out a town like this and leave nothing but the grass . . . and I’m guessing that’s why Old Swenson here got himself killed. Somebody didn’t want him spreading this foul thing.”

  But the stranger was shaking his head. “That’s not why, Doc.”

  Almost amused, the doctor said, “You have your own diagnosis, do you?”

  “Not exactly. And my suggested treatment is the same as yours—bury him.”

  “You’re willing to help? Not afraid of infection?”

  “I’ll follow your lead, Doc, as to precautions.” The stranger’s expression was grave. “But the reason Old Swenson was killed is even worse than you think.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was going on three in the morning when Harry Gauge rode back into Trinidad.

  He could have bedded down under cool sheets to rest his head on down-stuffed pillows at any of the ranch houses on the spreads he owned; but with what he had sent his bunch off doing right now, Gauge figured being seen—and thought of—as the sheriff made better sense.

  Anyway, he could catch a few winks at his office and then, bright and early, go and deal with a certain town problem—that gunfighter, who he’d come to believe was almost surely Wes Banion. Time to show Trinidad that strangers couldn’t just ride into town and start shooting down deputies....

  Gauge had figured to stretch out on a jail cell cot, but found Rhomer had beat him to it, sleeping it off in their nicest accommodations. His number two man looked disheveled and battered, his left ear bandaged, the white of it stained red.

  The sheriff kicked the cot until the red-bearded deputy woke with a start, propping up on his elbows, dark blue, bloodshot eyes popping.

  Gauge frowned at him. “What the hell happened to you? Horse throw you?”

  Rhomer swallowed thickly, held one side of his head, then sat up, rattling the chains that held the cot to the wall. “Hell . . . really tore one on over at the Victory. Is it morning?”

  “It’s the A.M., but it ain’t morning. Your ear’s bleedin’.”

  “One of Lola’s girls got rough and I got rough and . . .” He grinned stupidly. Touched his bandaged ear, grimaced. “Kind of got bit.”

  “Well, I hope you gave her as good as you got. Is our shootist still in town?”

  Rhomer nodded. “I think he’s over at the hotel. But that ain’t the half of it.”

  Gauge sat next to him. “What is?”

  The deputy swallowed, apparently not relishing the taste, and gathered his thoughts, such as they were.

  “When I went over to the doc’s,” he began, “to get this flapper patched up? Doc and Banion . . . I mean, I figure it’s Banion. . . .”

  “So do I. Go on.”

  “Anyway, Doc and Banion come down the steps carryin’ somethin’—somethin’ all wrapped up in a sheet. Now, I figure right off it’s a body . . .”

  Wincing, Gauge thought, I really do need to find a brighter second-in-command.

  “. . . and then I was sure it was a body, when I saw this hand flop down, and the doc kind of picks it up and tucks it back under. The doc, he was wearin’ work gloves, what’s a doc wearin’ work gloves for?”

  “I don’t know. Go on.”

  “Anyhow, the doc and Banion cart this body out back and walk past the houses to where it’s nothin’ but country, and just disappear off into the dark. Did I say that there was this shovel laid out on top of the body, on the sheet?”

  “No. You didn’t.”

  Rhomer nodded shrewdly, eyes narrowed. “I figure that was a body that they was goin’ out to bury in the boonies.”

  “Seems at least a possibility.”

  “Anyways, I sat on the stairs in the alley there, by the bank, waitin’ for the doc to get back. When he finally does, Banion ain’t with him. Or the body, neither, of course. All he has is that shovel.”

  “Did you ask him what he’d been up to?”

  “Well, yeah, in a way, but mostly I was hurtin’ and wantin’ him to tend to my ear. I lost a piece of it, and he done some stitchin’. So we was just jawin’, while he was sewin’, and I ask him where he’d been and such. I josh him—‘You off diggin’ for gold, Doc?’ He laughs a bit and says, no, he just had this-here dead dog to bury.”

  “Bury a dog. Middle of the night. You just let that slide, did you, Vint?”

  “I was lucky gettin’ the doc to patch me up, middle of the night, is how I took it.”

  What body would the doc and the stranger feel the need to bury, right now, right this instant, under cover of night?

  Troubled, the sheriff rose. “Catch yourself some more sleep, Vint. We may have a busy day tomorrow. Likely an early start.”

  Gauge decided to go over to the hotel to get a decent bed—maybe a few hours would help him think straighter, to cipher through this conundrum of bodies buried in the wee hours But as he passed his desk, he noticed something : an envelope with Sheriff Gauge written neatly there. He went around to sit and saw that it was a telegraph office envelope.

  He tore it open and read:

  To Sheriff Harry Gauge, Trinidad, N.M. Wesley C. Banion killed by deputies this city two months prior. R. Bishop, Marshal, Ellis, Colorado

  “When did this come?” he demanded of the deputy in the jail cell.

  Rhomer, already half-asleep again, sat up like a man out of a bad dream. “Don’t rightly know, Harry. Saw it on the desk when I come in. Door was open. Somebody dropped it off, I guess.”

  The telegraph clerk Parsons. Gauge had told him to deliver anything that came in, whenever it came in....

  “And Banion’s over at the hotel?” Gauge asked.

  “Far as I know,” Rhomer said, touching his sore ear, then flopping back down on the cot, hurting side up, and turning to put his back to his boss.

  A few minutes later, Gauge found Lola, in a dressing gown, standing at the check-in desk. She turned to him with surprise, maybe even alarm, showing in her features. The same could be said of the scrawny, near-hairless clerk, eyes wide and blinking behind spectacles that pinched his nose.

  Lola, rather breathlessly, said, “Harry! . . . I was just coming to find you.”

  “What are you doin’ up?”

  Her smile seemed nervous to him, as she said, “Oh, some damn kid threw a rock through my window. Now there’s a mess up there, and I was inquiring after another room for tonight.”

  The chinless clerk was nodding and smiling in a sickly fashion, backing her up.

  Gauge frowned. This didn’t sound right. But he had bigger things on his mind.

  “Let me see that register,” he said to the clerk, gesturing impatiently at the tall, narrow volume.

  The clerk swallowed, making his bow tie bobble, and said, “Just so you know, I was going to send somebody over to your office first thing in the morning, Sheriff.”

  “Give it here.”

  The clerk turned the register around and pushed it across. “I mean, it’s plain that this stranger was playing me for a fool. Just the same, I thought you should see this.... Like I said, I was going to bring it over first thing . . .”

  Gauge was looking at the name that the stranger had signed into the book.

  Caleb York.

  Lola, at his side, was looking, too. “It’s a joke. Has to be. Caleb York is long dead. A year or more. Wes Banion shot him.”

  “Two years ago,” Gauge said.

  She looked at him with wide eyes in a pretty face still wearing evening paint. “Then . . . he is Banion.”

  “No. Just some fool.” His gaze bore into the clerk. “Is he here?”

  “No!” The quavery man pointed to the upstairs. “He took a room”—and then to the entry doors—“but he went back out some time ago.”

  Gauge nodded, shut the register hard, shoved it back at the clerk, and turned to head out. Lola’s hand at his arm
stopped him.

  “Harry . . . what now?”

  “Now I’m gonna rouse Rhomer out of his dainty slumber and have him round up every man I got in this town. Then I’m gonna send them out lookin’ for this would-be Caleb York, and have them—”

  “Kill him?”

  What did she care?

  “No. Have them bring him to me.” He stopped just before he went out to add, “I’m going to kill him myself.”

  Dawn was just a yellow-orange threat, like a distant fire hovering over distant buttes, as Willa brought more coffee to her father, their breakfast over, the dining table otherwise cleared. Both were in red plaid flannel shirts and denims, a blind man and his daughter, well-matched and ready for a working day.

  Her blond hair ribboned back in a ponytail, Willa filled her own cup, then joined Papa at one end of the big table. There was so much to talk about . . . yet neither seemed able to find a word.

  When a wall of stones is about to fall on you, she thought, which rock do you discuss?

  Hoofbeats out in front of the ranch house caught the attention of both, and Willa got up and went to see who might be calling so early. Her father followed, moving every bit as quickly as his sighted daughter. She cracked the front door, saw who it was, then opened it wider.

  Behind her, her father said hopefully, “Is it him? It’s him, isn’t it?”

  The stranger in black was climbing down off his foam-flecked mount—both man and beast had been riding hard.

  “It’s him, Papa.”

  Their visitor was tying up the dark-maned dappled animal now. His expression she found unreadable.

  She stepped out onto the porch and so did her father, moving around her to lean against the rough post there. The guilty hope in his voice was a terrible thing for her to hear. “Is it . . . done, then?”

  The stranger walked over and stopped at the foot of the steps. “If you mean is Harry Gauge dead, no.”

  Softly, bitterly, she said, “Yet you took our money.”

  “Did I?”

  Her chin came up. “Why are you here, then?”