The Legend of Caleb York Read online

  Gauge laughed and so did his deputy.

  The sheriff spat another black stream, then said, “Old man, even with eyes, you’d be out of luck. I am just too damn fast for you or any man. You haven’t seen, but you’ve surely heard.”

  “I’ve heard,” her father said. His smile remained.

  “That’s why I wouldn’t bother tryin’ to face you down. Wouldn’t be worth it. Why, I’d just get you from a dark alley with a blast of buckshot.”

  Gauge’s expression seemed to drip delight. “In the back, old man? Bushwhack me like that? Where’s your pride?”

  “No pride or shame in killing a snake. You just kill the damn things. Blow their evil heads off.”

  Gauge and his deputy laughed some more.

  Then the sheriff said, “Those were the days, right, Cullen? Back before law and order came west, and men like me were around to keep the peace. But, old man—them days are over.”

  “Not for you they’re not.” Now her father’s smile was gone and the cold-rage mask was back. “Not for you. For you, Sheriff? ‘Those days’ are just about to start.”

  With confidence belying his sightlessness, her father shook the reins and guided the two horses around and rode back up Main. Willa smiled back at Gauge as they left, giving him a bigger nod now.

  “This is good right here, Papa,” she said. “Right here is fine.”

  They had stopped outside the telegraph office.

  Deputy Vint Rhomer had not been a lawman long, and he might have seen the irony in having shot and killed two deputies himself, in his outlaw days, had he understood the meaning of the word.

  The redheaded deputy, looking down the street where Willa Cullen was hitching her calico, said, “What the hell’s he talkin’ about, Gauge? What’s about to start?”

  The sheriff spat black liquid. “No idea, Rhomer. Old coots like that never make no sense. Goin’ blind turned him loco, maybe.”

  Rhomer shook his head. “He had somethin’ on his mind. You saw his face. He must’ve been a tough one, in his day.”

  “Only this ain’t his day.”

  Willa was helping her father down from the buggy.

  “Pretty girl,” Rhomer commented. “Looks like a good time to be had.”

  Gauge gave his deputy a smile with a sneer in it. “Watch what you say, son.”

  Rhomer scratched his bearded cheek. “Huh?”

  The sheriff put his feet back up on the railing, rocked back. “You’re talkin’ about the woman I love.”

  Rhomer snorted. “You don’t love nothin’ but money, Gauge. Money and land. And if you need lovin’, there’s always Lola.”

  “Maybe. But one day soon, I am going to own that Cullen filly.”

  The deputy studied the sheriff. “Own her like you will the Bar-O . . . someday?”

  The Bar-O was Old Man Cullen’s spread.

  The sheriff gave a slow couple of nods. “Just like that, Rhomer. Like that and every piece of land worth havin’ around these parts.”

  Horses clopped. A wagon rolled by. A fly buzzed them. Willa Cullen and her father were talking outside the telegraph office. Maybe arguing. Maybe not.

  “How will you manage that, Gauge? You can’t buy that kind of female. Not like you buy an hour with a saloon gal you can’t.”

  Gauge had a distant look, like he was gazing into the future. “There’s where you’re wrong, Vint. I’ll buy her and she’ll welcome it.”

  “Come on, Gauge. . . .”

  “Willa Cullen was born on that ranch and she wants to stay on that ranch, and her old man can’t run it forever. He’ll just get older and sicker and pretty soon she’ll have to look after him. Day will come, she’ll be happy for me to buy the Bar-O . . . and her.”

  The Cullen girl and her father were going into the telegraph office.

  Looking that direction, Rhomer said, “Tell you, that old boy is up to something.”

  Gauge spat a tobacco stream. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right.”

  “Okay, then. You’re a lawman. You’re suspicious. Do what a lawman does. Go see what he’s up to.”

  Rhomer nodded, got to his feet and headed down there, leaving the man he worked for to laze in the morning sun, hat over his eyes, boots on the rail.

  When the deputy stepped into the small telegraph office, Ralph Parsons, the scrawny, bespectacled operator behind the counter, was looking at a slip of paper as if it were his own death warrant. More likely, it was a form for a wire that the old man’s daughter must have written out for her father.

  Nervously looking up from the paper slip, the operator said, “Mr. Cullen . . . this is nothing I can do, in good conscience. . . .”

  “I said send it,” the old man said, his daughter at his side. “Never mind your damn conscience.”

  “Please, Mr. Cullen! There are regulations. . . .”

  Rhomer strode over and snatched the slip from the operator’s hands. “Let’s see that,” he said.

  The deputy had book learning enough to decipher the wire Old Man Cullen intended to send, though he read slowly and moved his lips.

  To Raymond L. Parker, it read, Kansas City, Kansas. Use the ten thousand you hold for me to hire Caleb York or other top shootist to kill Harry Gauge this city. George Cullen.

  Rhomer shoved his face in the old man’s. “Are you plumb crazy, Cullen? Who’s this Parker, anyway?”

  “Old business partner of mine,” Cullen said coolly. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  Rhomer was almost nose to nose with the coot now. “You wantin’ to kill the sheriff ain’t my business? I really oughta let you send this damn thing! You’d find out soon enough there ain’t any top gun who can take down Harry Gauge! The fastest around have faced him and died before a gun cleared a holster.”

  The old man’s upper lip curled back over a smile. “Not Caleb York.”

  Staring into the milky eyes, Rhomer said, “That’s another reason why I oughta let you send this cockeyed thing.”

  “What is?”

  “Caleb York is dead.” Rhomer laughed in the old man’s face. “Wes Banion killed him two years ago in Silver City! You are way behind the times, old man.”

  Cullen swallowed, then shrugged. “Then we’ll send for Wes Banion.”

  Rhomer gave the old boy another horselaugh. “Gauge has taken down faster guns than Banion!”

  “That right?”

  The deputy pointed toward the front windows. “Jack Reno stood down Banion, winged him and walked away. Two months ago, Reno died right out on that street there, bullet in the heart, courtesy of our sheriff. You could’ve said hello to Reno out at Boot Hill.”

  Cullen appeared unimpressed. “Then let me send my wire. Willa, take that form from the deputy here, and revise it—cross out ‘Caleb York’ and make it ‘Wesley Banion.’ ”

  Rhomer sputtered, “Just because Banion wouldn’t bother Gauge none don’t mean I’m lettin’ you send this thing! No, sir. You and your pretty daughter need to go back out to the Bar-O and milk a damn cow or somethin’.”

  Cullen leaned even closer and now the two men’s noses did indeed touch. “Give that to my daughter.”

  “Old man, you best—”

  Then Rhomer felt something nudge him in the belly.

  “Look down, Deputy,” the old man said, teeth bared in an awful grin.

  Rhomer glanced down at the derringer shoved in his gut.

  “Even a blind man can’t miss at this range,” Cullen said casually. “Daughter, revise that wire! Deputy Rhomer, if you don’t mind . . . ?”

  Shaken, Rhomer handed the piece of paper to the girl, who seemed half-terrified, half-amused. At the counter, she found a pencil and did as her father bade.

  Rhomer and the blind man stared at each other.

  “Done, Papa!”

  “Ralph—send that.”

  The operator said, “Mr. Cullen, really . . .”

  Willa said, “You heard the man, Ralph. That
derringer has two barrels, you know.”

  Ralph sighed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  They stood while the operator keyed in the message.

  Cullen said, “I don’t think we’ll be needing your assistance any longer, Deputy. Thanks for being such a fine servant of the public.”

  Face red under his red beard, Rhomer backed away.

  As the deputy opened the door, jangling its bell, the old man said, “Maybe you’d better tell Sheriff Gauge that Wes Banion is coming to town. Or . . . someone like him.”

  From the doorway, Rhomer said, “Oh, I’ll tell him, all right, Cullen.”

  The blind man swung the small deadly gun toward right where Rhomer stood. “Make that Mister Cullen. My taxes help pay your salary, Deputy. Something to keep in mind. You will tell Gauge?”

  “I’ll tell him, Mr. Cullen,” Rhomer said.

  Outside, heart pounding, the deputy considered going back in, .44 in hand, and arresting that old buzzard and maybe that roll-in-the-hay daughter of his, too.

  But the wire had been sent, the damage done, and the sheriff needed to be told.

  And anyway, Rhomer rarely killed anybody without the sheriff’s say-so.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Just before noon, Willa and her father made it back home without further incident, riding in under the log arch from which hung a chain-hung plaque bearing a bold line above a big O—the carved brand of the Bar-O.

  Their spread was no empire, though the largest of those remaining ranches not yet swallowed up in Sheriff Gauge’s landgrab. Washed in bright sunshine were corrals left and right, two barns, a rat-proof grain crib, a log bunkhouse, and a cookhouse with hand pump out front, a long wooden bench lined with tin washbasins on its awning-shaded porch. The main building was a sprawling log-and-stone affair, added onto several times, the only really impressive structure among the scattering of ranch buildings. The cowhands were off working the beeves, giving the place a deserted look, with only the plume of smoke from the cookhouse chimney indicating otherwise.

  Willa twirled Daisy’s reins around the hitch rail in front of the house, and when she turned, lanky Whit Murphy was there, helping her father down from the buggy. She was not surprised that their foreman stayed behind to help them in and see if there had been trouble in town.

  “I’ll tend to this,” Whit said, indicating he’d drive the rig over to the barn and get the horses into their stalls.

  “Come inside, Whit,” Papa said, “when you’re done. Something you need to know about.”

  Whit nodded, and began walking the horses and buggy toward the barn. He glanced back at Willa with a searching look and she responded with one that told the foreman, He’s gone and done it now.

  Papa needed no help up the broad wooden steps to cross the plank porch to the elaborate cut-glass and carved-wood front door that her mother had bought in Mexico a decade or more ago. They entered a living room, where only occasional touches of the late Kate Cullen lingered, finely carved Spanish-style furniture sharing space with rustic carpentry by her father’s hand. This chamber remained overwhelmingly a male domain—beam-ceilinged with hides on the floor and mounted deer heads on the walls. A formidable stone fireplace had a Sharps rifle on one side and a Winchester on the other, each cradled in mortar-mounted upturned deer hooves turned gun racks.

  Her father had come west with a horse and that Sharps rifle, and buffalo hunting had made him the seed money from which the Bar-O grew.

  Soon Papa and Whit, sipping at china cups of coffee she’d gotten them, sat in the twin Indian-blanket cushioned rough-wood chairs that faced the fireplace as if it were roaring and not unlit since February. This, of course, allowed Willa to sit on the hearth between the two men, able to face either.

  She knew very well that they did not consider her their equal. But she also knew they would tolerate her presence, and even give consideration to any opinion of hers, as the sole heir to this ranch. That she still wore the morning’s riding apparel somehow strengthened her position.

  And she knew, though she did not encourage it, that Whit had notions of his own about Willa and the ranch—not the gross ambitions of a Harry Gauge, but the dreams of a ranch hand who had risen to foreman.

  Whit said nothing as her father described sending his telegram, the old man in funereal black relishing relating the confrontation with Deputy Vint Rhomer. But the foreman’s long expression spoke volumes, as he sat there in knotted neck bandana, work shirt and Levi’s, bowed legs akimbo, turning his tan high-beamed Carlsbad hat in his hands like a wheel.

  When Papa stopped speaking, Whit said, “All due respect, Mr. Cullen, but you don’t know what you’re gettin’ yourself into.”

  Papa was bareheaded, too, his white hair as thin as grass that cattle had finished with. He frowned at his foreman, and you would swear he could see the man.

  “I paid you the respect of sharing this with you, Whit. Now you do me the service of sparing me any disapprovin’ comments. You can just stay out of it. It’s done.”

  Whit shook his head, hat turning in his hands more quickly now. “You’re beggin’ for a wide-open range war, Mr. Cullen . . . and that puts me in it already. You know how outnumbered we are? Gauge has all them deputies—outlaws to the man—and his ranch hands look like he emptied out a hoosegow to hire ’em.”

  Her father snorted a laugh. “You think you’re telling me something new? Ever since Gauge shouldered his way into that town, we’ve been at war. For how long? Near two years now!”

  Whit nodded, then remembered his boss couldn’t see and added, “Two years, more or less, yes, sir.”

  Papa shook his head. “Bud Meadow makes seven of our men buried out there in that excuse for a cemetery. Seven dead in this war, and who knows how many head rustled.”

  Hands on her knees, Willa said, “That’s a good reason to appeal to the authorities again, Papa.”

  “Is it girl?” her father said, turning his milky gaze her way. “And what will the ‘authorities’ say after I tell them my sad tale? What they always do! That under territorial law, Gauge is the duly constituted authority in these parts.”

  “That just can’t be possible, Papa.”

  “It’s very damn possible, daughter. So far, everything Gauge has done—taking over the other spreads, buying out businesses in town—is legal in the eyes of the law.”

  Whit was nodding. “Any . . . what’s the word I hear you use for Gauge’s tactics, Mr. Cullen? ‘Intimation’?”

  “It’s called ‘intimidation,’ Whit.”

  “Well, I call it ‘muscle and murder,’ but Gauge and his crowd have a way of doin’ it on the sly. Strikin’ under cover of night like the damn bandits they are.... Excuse the language, Miss Gauge.”

  Willa just smiled a little, sadly. “Language, I can excuse.”

  Papa said, “Whit is right, girl. Gauge is an animal, but he’s a smart one. So if he’s going to operate outside the law, even while he poses at representing it, we’ll play this game his dirty way.”

  She was shaking her head, rolling her eyes. “Papa, that makes us no better than him.”

  “We’re better than that buzzard on our worst day.”

  She spread her hands, her words for her father but her eyes on Whit. “Go down to his level, and what will happen to us? Look what happened to Peterson, Reese, and the rest of the ranchers!”

  Papa said, “They just rolled over for Gauge. Not one stood up to him. And if we don’t stand up, it’ll happen to us.”

  Straightening, Whit said, “Every one of the boys will right there with you, Mr. Cullen. With you all the way. But . . . we only number fifteen, and we ain’t gunhands.”

  Papa swung his gaze toward the foreman. “And that is why I sent for one.”

  Then the spooky eyes were on Willa again.

  His voice softened, but there was nothing gentle about his tone. “Daughter . . . must I remind you what Harry Gauge wants the most out here at the Bar-O?”

  That hung in the air like
acrid smoke.

  Then she said, “I know that all too well, Papa. He’s told me. And I gave him my answer, too.”

  Color had come into Whit’s tanned face. “Somebody oughta kill that filthy son of a—”

  “That,” her father said, “is the idea.”

  Willa said to Whit, “He’s a filthy animal, all right. But for all his men and land, he’s still not big enough to touch the Bar-O. And, sure as sin, he isn’t big enough to touch me.”

  Her father said, “He’ll only get bigger, girl. He’ll own all the land around us and we’ll be choked off by what he’s managed to do.”

  The old man shifted in the rustic chair he’d built so long ago; it creaked as if it were his own aging bones. But the hard young man he’d been was somehow still in that face and the set of his shoulders.

  “But before our good sheriff can do that,” Papa said, “my old pard Parker will find the right man and send him to us.” He sighed, shook his head. “I only wish it could be Caleb York. . . .”

  Whit said, “You’re lucky it ain’t Caleb York . . . if you’ll forgive me sayin’, sir.”

  Papa frowned at his foreman. “Fool talk, Whit! York was the fastest gun alive, best of ’em all! He’d be perfect for the job.”

  “No. All due respect, sir, but no. Caleb York was no hired gun. Oh, he was a killer, all right . . . but in his own way.” Whit shrugged. “Not that it matters. Surprised you hadn’t heard he was dead, Mr. Cullen. Common knowledge.”

  “Is that right?”

  “It’s right, sir. They say Banion killed Caleb York near Silver City. A good two year ago.”

  Papa’s jaw muscles worked. “That’s exactly why I told Parker to send Banion.”

  Willa scooted forward on the stone hearth. “But that man is a murderer!”

  “So is Harry Gauge, girl. So is Harry Gauge.” Her father almost snapped at her: “You think I wouldn’t rather have a man like Caleb York?”

  She sighed wearily. “A man, Papa . . . or a legend? Who was he, really?”

  “. . . A man.”