Last Stage to Hell Junction Page 18

  Sounds were coming from within—horses whinnying some and moving in place, the stagecoach’s lines and leaders and their metal work jangling. He expected this, but he drew the .44 nonetheless.

  He went quickly in.

  Jonathan Tulley, standing near the stagecoach, jumped in place and swung the scattergun toward York, who said, “Save it for the Hargrave bunch.”

  Tulley frowned. “You look a mite messed up, Caleb York.”

  “I had to kill an Indian.”

  The deputy frowned. “They ain’t hostiles afoot, is they?” Then it came to him. “Oh! That Broken Knife feller.”

  “Yeah. Him.”

  “Ain’t he suppose to’ve survived the Little Big Horn?”

  “So I’m told.”

  Tulley cackled. “Well, he didn’t survive no ruckus with Caleb York, did he?”

  “He did not. But right now I’m more concerned with Caleb York surviving a ruckus with the Hargrave gang.”

  Tulley’s expression grew serious. “So when do we go?”

  “We go right now.”

  York checked Tulley’s work. The four Morgan horses were hitched up to the stagecoach just as they should be. York was pleasantly surprised. The stagecoach had been led into the livery stable, nose first; somehow Tulley had turned the vehicle around, before hitching up the Morgans, so that the coach and the animals were facing the street.

  “Tulley, how did you manage this? There’s not room in here to swing the coach around. What did you do, drag it out the back?”

  “Yessir.”

  “But it must weigh a ton. How the hell—”

  “She’s got wheels, ain’t she?”

  He decided to leave it at that.

  But this was good, because York had assumed they would have to exit the back and come around to Main by way of the adjacent street. This would be better. More sudden, and some speed could be worked up, whereas what he’d assumed they’d be doing would have required two turns, which would really slow the coach and the animals down.

  “Tulley, you need help getting up on the box?” The “box” was the stagecoach driver’s seat.

  “Hell no! Iffen I can turn this buggy aroun’ my own seff, I surely can get my tail up on the gol-durn thing!”

  And the former desert rat did just that. It was a little like watching a squirrel climb a tree.

  York tied the gelding onto the back of the coach. Tulley’s mule, Gert, was in a stall. She’d have to stay behind for now.

  The deputy, shotgun in his lap, got the reins in hand. He looked down at a slightly astounded Caleb York and said, “’Fraid I ain’t gonna be much help where shootin’ is concerned. Got my hands full with these reins and horses.”

  “I know. Shooting is my lookout. You know how those brakes work?”

  “Shore do. Ready when you are, Sheriff.”

  “You’re a good man, Jonathan Tulley. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “Once or twict.”

  York opened the front doors, and Tulley told the horses, “Git up! Git up!”

  And he, and they, got.

  But Tulley held back on the reins some. The coach was not to get up to full speed. Not yet.

  Stagecoach and driver rumbled out of the livery stable, and York—.44 in hand—tucked behind the coach and ran along with it, holding on at the rear boot, with the gelding keeping pace.

  The coach swung left and headed for the hotel.

  They had a pick-up to make.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Several minutes before Caleb York and Jonathan Tulley began their short stagecoach ride from the livery stable to the Hell Junction Inn, Willa Cullen was inside the hotel, sitting with Rita Filley on the two-seater sofa by the boarded-up windows onto the street. To the right of the women, in the chair where he’d first been deposited in the parlor the day before, was Raymond Parker.

  To Willa’s left, in a chair pulled over from a wall, sat a rumpled, frazzled-looking Doc Miller, who earlier had escorted Ben Bemis, the wounded gang member, into the dining salon for a parlay among the outlaws. Across from them, the glass-and-wood doors stood open to the dining room, where Hargrave was at the table closest to those open doors—possibly to better keep an eye on the hostages. Seated with him were Reese Randabaugh, Bemis, and the Mexican woman, Juanita.

  A forlorn-looking Randy Randabaugh was at the next table, alone, sitting there slumped, in the same gray shirt with arm garters he’d worn flagging down the stage just yesterday, seeming a much nicer boy than he’d proved to be. The Wileys were either not invited to the party or were choosing to be somewhere else. Tension, after all, was running high.

  Bemis—the burly, bushy-bearded individual in a plaid jacket who at the holdup had struck Willa as resembling a miner—looked pale and seemed sluggish, either from pain or the doctor’s pills. He was saying little. Of course, their leader held center stage, doing most of the talking.

  “I anticipate,” the actor was saying, “that Mr. McCory will be back with our due rewards no later than late tomorrow afternoon. He will have with him a business associate of Mr. Parker’s, who will make the exchange. It’s highly likely that this business associate will be accompanied by a Pink or some other bodyguard. But that’s of no matter.”

  Reese had been squinting skeptically at his boss through all of that. “It isn’t?”

  Hargrave shook his head. “I have no intention of allowing this exchange to be anything but a peaceful one.”

  The older Randabaugh leaned forward, hands pressed against the linen-covered table top, halfway out of his seat. “You’re going to let him go?”

  The outlaw leader flipped a hand. “I’m going to set all of them free. It’s simply good business.”

  Juanita was on her feet and swearing at him in Spanish, teeth bared, eyes flaring, spittle flying.

  Reese glanced in the direction of the hostages in the parlor and got up, closing the doors on them.

  Willa did not hear the ensuing conversation, though the animated expressions of all concerned—but for the composed, self-contained Hargrave—spoke volumes.

  What she’d have heard would have chilled her.

  Juanita said, “These are witnesses! There were killings! Their testimonio will hang us!”

  Hargrave gestured graciously for his paramour to sit back down. She didn’t. She just folded her arms on the shelf of her bosom and glared at her man.

  Who said, “We will be long gone, querida, in a place where we can’t be touched. Do not worry your pretty self.”

  Her teeth were bared, her head back. “You are sweet on that perra rubia! You lust for her!”

  He didn’t allow himself to be drawn into her storm. “I am not, and I do not. I am kind to her only to keep her calm and manageable.”

  “Never mind that blonde bitch,” Reese said, accidentally translating Juanita’s epithet. “What I want to know is, why do you trust a damn stranger like this McCory? What’s to keep him from takin’ the ransom money and hightailin’?”

  “That won’t happen,” Hargrave said, waving that off. “Parker’s people won’t hand across that kind of money anywhere but the exchange. And we will be in the rocks watching as that takes place.”

  Looking as if he were on the verge of passing out, Bemis said, “I don’t like it. I get damn near shot to death, and some outsider is part of the gang now? Trusted with gettin’ our damn money for us? All due respect, Mr. Hargrave, this don’t seem right a tall.”

  Hargrave patted the air with a palm. “No need for these qualms, gentlemen. I have dispatched our friend Broken Knife to shadow Mr. McCory, to make certain he does our bidding.”

  The conversation ended there, because Hargrave and the others heard what Willa now heard, though a few seconds after she did: the jangle of stagecoach ribbons and the hoofbeats of its horses.

  But then she’d been waiting for that. So had Parker, Rita, and Doc.

  The gang had done them a favor, congregating in the dining room like that. Had the outlaws been
in the parlor, the hostages would have had to wait until the fuss started and hope to slip out the back way, with the outlaws’ attention drawn elsewhere.

  But this arrangement allowed Willa and the others—Doc Miller in the lead, closest to the double doors onto the street—to make their escape as the horses and the vehicle they bore came to a sudden whinnying halt. Jonathan Tulley, up in the box, shotgun in his lap, had yanked the brake lever with one hand and with the other pulled the reins to a stop. Within seconds, the captives were outside, on the porch, then clambering down the steps and up into the waiting stagecoach, Parker holding the door for them as first Willa, then Rita, piled in, followed quickly by Doc Miller and Parker himself.

  Willa glimpsed Caleb York at the rear of the coach, behind his dappled-gray, black-maned gelding tied onto the boot. He flashed her a tight smile, but his eyes were on the hotel, whose broken-out but boarded-up windows allowed slots for weapons from within to be wielded.

  Then, with the former hostages barely in their seats, the coach took off, Tulley yelling, “Yee-haw! Yee-haw!”

  And the jangle of reins and hoofbeats of horses picked up again, almost as if they had never stopped, and the stagecoach, the gelding tied behind it, charged down Main Street, leaving behind a dust cloud . . .

  . . . and Caleb York.

  * * *

  Blaine Hargrave was the first one out of the dining room and into the parlor, fast on his feet but not enough so to get there before the front doors, with their fancy stained-glass windows, swung themselves shut behind the fleeing hostages.

  And by the time Hargrave got to a front window in the parlor, his knees on a sofa still warm from Willa Cullen’s backside, he saw only the stagecoach rumbling off and the cloud of dust that subsumed a male figure that, of all people, appeared to be Bret McCory.

  Reese rushed to the two-seater sofa, and his knees found the warmth Rita Finney had left behind. He was at the window, too, muttering, “McCory? What the hell . . . ?”

  Then, as the dust dissipated, no one was there.

  Hargrave called out: “What have you done, man? Et tu, Bret?”

  Young Randy was behind them, a .45 in hand. “Who et what?”

  Hargrave spat, “Take a window, man!”

  Reese did, shoving aside the chair that had been Parker’s to get at it.

  “The name’s Caleb York!” came the familiar voice from somewhere in or across the street. “Never saw this Bret McCory in my life—and neither have you!”

  Juanita was leaning in beside Hargrave, putting a hand on his shoulder. “How can I help, querida?”

  “Seems someone in our little play was a better actor than I,” he told her with a rueful smile. “I’ve been upstaged.”

  “What can I do?”

  Then he looked hard at her and said, “You can start by going upstairs and getting your thirty-eight.”

  She nodded and ran off through the lobby and up the stairs.

  Bemis, looking barely able to stay conscious, stood in the parlor waiting for directions.

  From outside thundered that voice again: “I’m sheriff of Trinidad County, and you’re all under arrest! Throw out your weapons and come out with your hands empty and high!”

  Hargrave said, “There’s only one of him and five of us. So we wait him out. In the meantime, Broken Knife will sneak up on him like a good little redskin and get rid of the white eyes.”

  As if he’d heard that, York yelled: “Get out here now, or I will cut you down like I did your Indian scout! Your choice.”

  Hargrave could see no target, and no shots had been leveled their way; nothing provided help in figuring the sheriff’s position . . .

  Still on his knees on the sofa, the outlaw leader said, “All right, everyone. We can’t get to the horses, either out front or in the stable. We have no choice but to go out the back way and come around and flank the bastard.”

  Bemis said, “I ain’t much on runnin’ and gunnin’ at present. How about I take a high winder?”

  “Do that,” Hargrave said, nodding as he got off the couch and onto his feet. “Reese, you and your brother go out by the kitchen. You go left, Reese, and Randy, go right. Head down behind a building or two and squeeze our friend between you.”

  “Whatever you say, Blaine,” Reese said. Smiling, eyes glittering, the older Randabaugh obviously relished the idea that his competition for Hargrave’s approval would soon be removed from the gang—and that he might be the one doing the removing, was all the sweeter . . .

  Randy, so hangdog this morning from last night’s trashing and humiliation, had come alive, the blond boy smiling and holding his .45 with its barrel in the air, as if about to fire the starting shot on a race.

  And it was a race of sorts—which of them could get to York first without getting themselves killed . . .

  But Hargrave had something else in mind for himself and Juanita. Muttering, he said, “Son of a bitch always did have a lean and hungry look . . .”

  Reese frowned. “What, Blaine?”

  “Nothing. Get to it. Enjoy yourselves. Surviving this is the prize now, because our hostages are lost to us.”

  * * *

  Caleb York was positioned behind Doc Miller’s buckboard, which remained tied to the hotel’s façade. The outlaws within hadn’t seemed to get a fix on him yet, and not a single shot had been fired his way, though he’d seen the barrels of revolvers poking from between the slats of the boarded-up windows.

  That the gang would stay inside and use the hotel as their fortress remained a possibility, but York considered it a distant one. Managing to keep them pinned down might give Doc Miller time to raise a posse to send to support him. But that would be hours from now.

  He’d considered having Tulley drive the stage a respectable distance and then let either Doc Miller or Raymond Parker take over at the reins, delivering the women back to Trinidad. That would have given him Tulley and his scattergun, making it possible to keep both the front and back of the hotel covered.

  But getting those two females back to safety had been his major concern, and he didn’t feel confident that either Miller or Parker could handle the role of stagecoach driver.

  So that left him here, a man alone, which was probably his preference anyway. He grinned as he peeked around the rear of the buckboard. Ned Clutter was getting ripe, but at least the ruckus had scared the flies off.

  Now several minutes had gone by and nothing—not a voice, not a gunshot—had emanated from the hotel, the slots between boards on those windows no longer sprouting gun barrels, either.

  So they were coming for him.

  He felt his best bet, in that case, was to hug the buildings along the boardwalk of the ghost town, though the squeaks of the weathered wood underfoot, and the spurs on his boots, would almost certainly announce him. Keeping a gun in his right hand, he sat on the crushed-rock street behind the buckboard, and his left hand encouraged his boots off. In his stocking feet now, he could edge down that boardwalk and not be easily heard, as long as he took care.

  Staying low, he started around the buckboard, at his left, but this exposed him in the street briefly, which was enough to draw a shot from above.

  York ducked, rolled, and aimed up at a vague figure in a second-floor window. The .44 cracked the silence and the window glass. The vague figure seemed to totter, as if the man were using his last conscious moments on earth to decide whether to fall backward or forward.

  The shooter chose the latter and burst through the window in a shower of shards and crunching glass and splintered wood, pitching onto the overhang of the hotel porch. He rolled like a log down and off that roof and hit the street with a whump, raising dust.

  By this time York was under that overhang, his back against the building. Wondering who he’d killed, York looked past the still hitched-up horses of the outlaws at the facedown bearded man in the street, and figured this to be Ben Bemis, who he’d never seen before. That was as much thought as he gave that subject, as stayin
g alive was more important.

  So he crept along the boardwalk, past the next building, what had been a laundry, waiting for someone to try to come around on him from the back. With spaces between buildings, he needed to glance behind him every two seconds or so. His progress was slow.

  Then, between a dead restaurant and the equally defunct post office, Reese Randabaugh emerged onto the boardwalk, gun in hand raised and ready to shoot, just a few feet from York. The older Randabaugh’s face contorted with rage, his hatred and perhaps his jealousy of the man who’d called himself Bret McCory overwhelming him for half a second.

  York, not encumbered with any such emotion, used that half second to blow a hole through Reese’s forehead. The close-set eyes, shared by the brothers, had just time to widen before the works within him shut off; the hole, not quite in the center of his brow, looked black, then wept a single scarlet tear that trickled between blue eyes.

  Then Reese tumbled to the boardwalk, his head hanging off the slightly elevated side, leaking blood and brain and bone matter onto the crushed-rock street.

  York headed back the way he came, figuring they would try a pincer move, meaning the next gun should come from the other side of the hotel, between it and the assay office. As York moved by Doc’s hitched-up buckboard, the trotter restlessly dancing after the gunfire, he wondered if he’d misjudged their strategy; but then Randy Randabaugh stepped out from between buildings, revolver ready, and looked past York at his fallen brother.

  Screaming, the boy started shooting wildly, staying put but issuing one gunshot after another. The idiocy of this non-tactic caught York by surprise. He dove into the street, seeking to return fire from a prone position.

  Randy had availed himself of a second handgun and was firing just as wildly with it now, pausing only to skirt Doc’s buckboard, making it momentarily impossible for York to return fire. When the boy was in view, in the street, the incessant gunfire caused York to have to again roll back out of the way.