Last Stage to Hell Junction Read online

  “And,” Rita put in, “at the Victory. Anyway, I agree, a general melee-style shoot-out could find the wrong people getting killed.”

  “Now,” York said, “I’m still getting the lay of the land, here . . . and I have the aforementioned Mr. Tulley checking around the otherwise not bustling Hell Junction to make sure there are no lookouts positioned we don’t know about.”

  “There’s an Indian on the porch,” Parker said. “His name is Broken Knife, if it matters.”

  “That he’s on the porch matters,” York said, “and I made notice of him coming in. He wears the jacket of a cavalry scout and the red turban of an Apache. Not a healthy combination for us.”

  Willa asked, “If there’s no one stationed out back, however . . .”

  Again York nodded. “It’s my intention to liberate you good people tonight, with minimal fuss . . .”

  “Gunplay,” Rita said, redefining that.

  “. . . and threat to you. But first I have to know the geography of this building and of the outside surroundings before putting any kind of plan together.”

  “Cay . . .” Willa began.

  “No,” York said, stopping her.

  She flushed.

  Firmly he said, barely audible, “Unless we’re behind closed doors, never call me by name. And probably better not even then. A slip could mean the death of us all.”

  She nodded, the flush fading.

  York continued: “I’ll tell Hargrave I introduced myself—that you have my name: Bret. If you must call me something, make it that. We are behind enemy lines—and have always to keep that in mind.”

  “Hard to forget,” Willa breathed.

  “Might I say,” Parker said, “that I believe time is of the essence.”

  “It is indeed that. The longer we’re here, the more likely it is some or all of us will be killed.”

  The female hostages exchanged grave looks. Parker was simply staring at York, but the businessman had a nice firmness about him, a tangible resolve.

  “My hope,” York said, “is to sneak the three of you out of here sometime this very night.”

  “Actually,” Parker said, “it’s four of us. Dr. Miller was brought here to attend an outlaw wounded in the hijacking.”

  “I misspoke,” York said. “I’m aware the doctor is in, as they say.”

  Willa frowned. “How did you know that?”

  York allowed himself a smile. “No great example of my deductive skills, Miss Cullen. The doc’s buckboard and trotter are tied up out front.”

  The two women nodded at that.

  “We overheard,” Parker said, sitting forward, “that you had a run-in with the ransom messenger at the relay station.”

  “I did. A fatal one, where he was concerned. But he may yet deliver a message.”

  Rita’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you killed him?”

  “Certainly did. But as I approached the Inn, I spied a wicker casket partly covered by a tarp. And I believe I know who the passenger is, in back of that buckboard.”

  Judging by the lack of blood in the faces of the hostages, they all did.

  “If he’s discovered,” Parker said, “our circumstances will change far for the worse.”

  York gestured with two open hands. “All the more reason to get you folks out of here sometime in the dead of night. If you’ll forgive the expression.”

  The door to the Wileys’ living quarters opened with wood slapping wood, and an individual stepped out—just the man the little group had been discussing, Dr. Albert Miller. The doc looked bedraggled and his clothing had patches of blood, both fresh and dried. He came quickly over, if stumbling a bit, into the parlor.

  His eyes met with those of the seated York.

  York saw confusion in those eyes, knowing the doc was trying to calculate exactly the meaning of the sheriff’s presence. Simultaneously—also having heard that door open noisily, most likely—Blaine Hargrave came striding out through the dining room and met Miller almost directly in front of where York sat in the parlor.

  Doing the best he could, what the doctor managed was a gesture toward York as he said, “And who is this then?”

  York sprang to his feet and slapped Miller, hard.

  The doc stood there, stunned, mouth open, eyes wide, some blood trickling from a corner of his lips.

  Teeth bared, York grabbed the doc by the coat, shaking him like he would a disobedient child.

  “You don’t need to know,” York said.

  Then he tossed the doc to one side, with just a brief exchange of the eyes in which the two men understood each other and their respective positions.

  Hargrave put a hand on Miller’s shoulder and looked at York. “This is a doctor who’s making a house call. We’re grateful to him, but he is not one of ours.” Then with a nod toward the three seated hostages, he asked, “Have you introduced yourself to our guests?”

  “I said my name is Bret. And let’s leave it at that.”

  “And Bret you shall be. But please do not damage the doctor—we have further need for him. Have you properly welcomed Mr. Parker and the lovely ladies?”

  York nodded, then headed into the outer lobby, gesturing for Hargrave to follow. The outlaw leader frowned at being so summoned, but obeyed.

  Whispering, York said, “They think I’m their bosom buddy. That just because I’m a desperate outlaw, it doesn’t mean I want to see respectable people . . . lovely females in particular . . . abused and misused.”

  “Good. Very good.”

  York scratched his bearded chin. “They gave me several names to try. I believe it likely that these same city fathers will want their doctor back, so we may well have a fourth ransom to add to the kitty.”

  Liking the sound of that, nodding, Hargrave said, “Excellent. Might you ride now?”

  York thought that over. “I suppose. But it’d be well into night by the time I got to Trinidad. Raising people out of bed could stir a general commotion, I reckon. And nobody could get to the bank, should they need to withdraw money.”

  “What do you suggest? Wait until morning—‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow’?”

  “I do. On top of everything, there’s all this hard riding I had today—even a notorious bank robber needs his rest, y’know.”

  Hargrave smiled and nodded, seeing the sense of all that. “You’ll head out first thing, then.”

  York nodded back. “Is there hay in that stable across the way? A stall maybe, for my gelding?”

  “There is. We have the stagecoach and its horses stowed there. No one’s guarding them, though, but my Indian, Broken Knife, has a view.”

  Conversationally, York asked, “What plans have you for that stagecoach?”

  “None. Just getting it out of the way. The horses we can use to spell our own steeds when we hie to a safer clime.”

  “Good. I’ll walk the gelding over and collect my saddlebags. With your blessin’, I’ll come back and head upstairs and see if my room has a comfortable bed.”

  Hargrave beamed. “You have my blessing indeed. Your sheets will be fresh and clean. This Mahalia is a wonder. And I might say I already find you a suitable, even commendable addition to our cast of players.”

  “Thanks. How’s your man doin’, the doc was tending?”

  “I believe he’s doing well. I’ll discuss that with the doctor, when he himself is feeling better.”

  Miller had pulled over the chair that York had been using, where the plump little man now sat slump-shouldered, droopy-faced, thin white hair a wispy tangle, exhausted. He was trying to look dejected and fearful, too, but York knew the doc was relieved to find his lawman friend there, properly insinuated into the Hargrave gang . . . even though the doc’s welcome had been a rough one.

  Hargrave offered his hand.

  Caleb York shook it.

  Then the man calling himself McCory stepped out into a cool night onto the squeaky porch, wondering what the hell was next.

  CHAPTER TEN
r />   On the porch, down to the left a ways as York exited through the hotel’s double doors, the compact Indian known as Broken Knife was sitting cross-legged, arms folded, chin on his chest. Apparently asleep . . . although York wouldn’t bet on it. Next to the quiet but deeply breathing figure, a rifle across his lap, were an empty plate and cup—seemed the Indian had taken supper out here.

  The figure didn’t stir as York stepped across the creaky plank porch and down the equally noisy steps. But, again, the sheriff of Trinidad County would not have been surprised to turn and see eyes glittering at him in the dark, like a cougar studying its prey from the brush.

  As York walked the crushed-rock, tumbleweed-touched Main Street of Hale Junction, moonlight washed the deserted mining town in blue-tinged ivory, giving everything an otherworldly glow. Wind gave a gentle ghostly howl, as if the dead were bored.

  Out in front of the inn, to one side of the porch steps, some horses were tied up for easy access in case of an unwanted variety of visitors—a posse, perhaps, or a sheriff wearing a badge and not a false name. The doctor’s buckboard with his trotter, still hitched up, was out front as well, parallel to the building on the other side of those steps. York was all too aware that the wicker coffin in back, draped with a tarp, held its own kind of hostage.

  That none of the outlaws had thought to check the identity of Doc Miller’s silent passenger was a blessing; but the possibility of that turning to a curse hung over everything.

  For the next half hour York strolled Main Street, taking in the weathered façades of the theater where Hargrave had likely once performed, a general store, café, post office, saloon, assay office, and dead lumberyard, among others. He was a military man taking stock of a potential future battlefield.

  On the side streets and two streets behind Main on either side were perfectly good houses, if paint-blistered and broken-windowed, their yards scruffy with weeds, echoes of the boisterous, growing community Hale Junction had not long ago been.

  It was as if some plague out of the Middle Ages had hit, decimating the population and leaving their dwellings and businesses behind. How easily Trinidad could become such a place, if dire circumstances prevailed. York felt those who tried to keep the railroad out might have consigned Trinidad to a similar fate, but that bullet had been narrowly dodged. Fear of natural progress could be as deadly as the Black Death.

  York returned to the hotel, where the Indian still apparently slept on the porch—the lawman collected the dappled gelding and walked it to the livery stable. There he found the stagecoach stowed away, as Hargrave had indicated, its Morgan horses in stalls. Gert, Tulley’s mule, was in a stall here, too—obviously the old boy had done some scouting himself, and found the back way into the livery.

  The man who wasn’t Bret McCory fed hay to the gelding, then used those rear doors to skirt behind several buildings, winding up at the two-story structure whose bottom floor had once been the general store. The living quarters above, abandoned obviously, were accessible by an exposed stairway on the far side of the structure, not visible to the Indian on guard across the way, should the red man’s slumber turn out to be faked.

  After going in through what had been a kitchen, and crossing a hallway that cut the second floor in half, York entered a front parlor, where Tulley was seated near double windows that wore what little remained of its glass in jagged irregular teeth around the edges. Moonlight leached in, giving the desert-rat-turned-deputy and the area near the broken windows puddles of ivory to bask in on the street side of a room otherwise lost in darkness.

  Unlike the Indian on the porch, Jonathan Tulley—scattergun across his lap, much as that ex-cavalry scout’s rifle had been across his—was definitely asleep . . . unless the snoring the deputy was doing was worthy of an actor more skilled even than Blaine Hargrave. At least the sound of the logs Tulley was sawing didn’t carry—York had walked past the general store and heard nothing.

  The sheriff stepped gingerly into the darkness, but his boots announced him, crunching under their tread.

  Tulley was instantly awake, jerking that shotgun and its twin black eyes up toward York, who said quietly, “It’s me, Deputy. Lower that scattergun if you want your next paycheck.”

  Tulley’s smile appeared in his beard like a blade glittering in the night. “You ain’t much on sneakin’ up on folks, is you, Caleb York?”

  York knelt, his night vision with him enough now to see that Tulley had spread pebbles from the street all around the entry area into the room. Smiling, he rose and moved past the crunching little rocks that had exposed his presence. Then he crouched near Tulley by the windows onto Main.

  “I tell people all the time,” York said, “that they underestimate you. You took a look around, I see.”

  “How do ye know that?”

  York brushed some dust and dirt away from the floor and sat by his deputy, his back against the wall.

  “I figured,” he said, “Gert didn’t put herself in that stall. Come sunup, if nothing has transpired, you best move her back behind this building. There’s trees back there where you can hitch her up.”

  Tulley nodded. “Best nobody from them lodgings ’crost the way should spy a strange mule amongst their familiar steeds.”

  “Right. But for now Gert’s fine where she is.” He gestured toward the street. “What did you see? Anyone standing guard or working the periphery?”

  “Nossir. Jest that injun feller. He’s small but big trouble, I reckon, iffen you should get on the wrong side of him.”

  “An ex-cavalry Apache scout? Yes. I’d wager he’s the most dangerous one over there. But a couple of them are damned dumb, and nothing is more dangerous than an idiot with a gun.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Tulley said, nodding as he clutched the scattergun to him like a baby.

  York almost grinned at that, but Tulley was no idiot—though the old boy was dangerous in his own right.

  “Was that Doc Miller,” Tulley asked, excited suddenly, his head bobbing toward the street, “I seen go up in there?”

  York explained that the doctor had been brought here to deal with a wounded gang member, and also told his deputy about the wicker coffin the buckboard bore.

  “Iffen somebody spies that dead feller,” Tulley said, eyes wide, “we’re gonna have a shootin’ war upon us.”

  “We will at that. Only they’re a regiment and we’re a couple of spare troopers.”

  Tulley squinted at his boss. “What’s your plan, Caleb? Knowin’ you as I do, there must be a plan.”

  “Just the beginnings of one. All I really know is that the longer I wait to spring those hostages, the worse off we’ll all be. Best we do this before morning, with the dark for a friend.”

  “No argyment.”

  York grimaced. “But I still haven’t had an opportunity to get a handle on the layout of that damn place. Haven’t even been upstairs yet. It’s my intention, my hope, to find a back way out, and sneak those hostages free.”

  Tulley frowned in thought. “Where does I come in?”

  York gestured with a thumb over his shoulder. “When I give you the signal, head down to the livery and hitch those horses up to that stagecoach. Go in those rear doors, of course. Keep the horses settled. Be nice and easy with ’em as you hitch ’em up. You don’t want to attract any unwanted attention.”

  “Shore don’t.”

  York shook a finger at his deputy. “Stay right there, sit tight and wait. If things get noisy across the way—gunfire, yelling—that’ll tell you something went awry. Drive that coach up to the hotel, hell bent. I should be flying out of there with those folks.”

  “From around back?”

  “Probably from in back, but I can’t be sure. So when you bring that coach to a stop, position it between the hotel and its neighbor to the east. The assay office.”

  “Assay office, yessir.”

  “If you don’t hear anything alerting you to trouble,” York said, “just stay put there in the l
ivery. It’s possible I can make my way there with the hostages without alerting anybody.”

  “Iffen we take that coach down Main,” Tulley reminded him, “they’ll know we’re leavin’, all right.”

  York held up a cautionary palm. “If I’m able to sneak everybody out, we’ll head over to the livery and meet you there, going in the back way. Willa Cullen is a skilled rider—she can go bareback on one of those Morgans. Parker knows how to ride and the Filley woman, too—maybe not expert, but good enough.”

  “What about the doc?”

  “If Miller can’t get to his buckboard, we’ll need a horse for him, as well. He can muddle through a bareback ride, if need be. If we can sneak out on the street behind us, we won’t be chased, not for a while anyway. But if they’re on to us, we need the coach. And going down Main’ll be the least of our worries. Got all that?”

  Tulley was thinking. “Might be they’s saddles somewhere in that livery.”

  “Might be. After you hitch those Morgans up to the coach, you can scout around for saddles and such. We need to be ready, a couple of ways.”

  Tulley’s eyes were tight. “How outnumbered is we?”

  “Well, there’s Blaine and the two Randabaugh brothers.. . . ”

  “Is they the idjits?”

  York nodded. “The wounded man, Bemis, may be up to joining the fray. The Apache, of course. Hargrave’s woman is a hellfire Mexican gal. She’ll wade in with the men, all right, bullet for bullet. The innkeeper, Wiley, has a business to protect, and his wife looks like she’d sooner kill you than look at you.”

  “But the menfolk only numbers five or mebbe six. That ain’t no regiment, Caleb. And we’s a two-man army, you ask me.”

  York put a hand on his deputy’s shoulder. “You’re not wrong, Jonathan Tulley.”

  The old boy grinned, and his eyes popped. “Got me an i-dee, Caleb!”

  He grinned back. “The name’s Bret McCory—which was also your ‘i-dee’—but let’s hear it.”

  Tulley’s gaze was glittering. “Why not wait till all them outlaws is asleep, and you and me just go in and shoot ’em in their beds!”