Hot Lead, Cold Justice Read online

  Caleb York himself, known throughout the Southwest as both a former Wells Fargo detective and a deadly gun-hand, was big and lean and rawboned, clean-shaved with light blue eyes that had a lazy look that belied the man. His hair was brown with some red in it, and his jaw jutted some, as if daring some fool to take a poke at it.

  When Tulley had first seen Caleb York ride in, with no idea who this was, the man seemed a dude with his citified duds, not so much the new-looking black coat and trousers, but them hand-tooled boots and the shirt with pockets on the front. And pearl buttons all the way down!

  York was wearing that very shirt right now, and also the same curled-brim, cavalry-pinch, black hat, pushed back on his head as if not to put pressure on his brain whilst he was concentrating on his cards. In such wintery weather as this, the sheriff—though a county man, he handled the marshal tasks in town at the Citizens Committee’s direction—left his shorter frock coat behind and went out in a rifle-length frock woolen coat. That coat was hanging on a wall peg just inside the Victory’s door.

  As Tulley approached the table where York and them city muckety-mucks was playing, Miss Rita noticed the deputy and met him a few feet away.

  “I’m going to guess,” the lovely saloon owner said with a smile like she was being lightly tickled, “that you would prefer coffee to sarsaparilla tonight, Mr. Tulley.”

  He liked the way she put “mister” in front of his name. He dusted snow from his shoulder, like dandruff got out of hand, and said, “I surely would like some of that there java you be known for, far and wide.”

  The smile settled in one pretty cheek, dimpling it. “Well, I don’t think my fame for making coffee has reached much beyond our city limits. But I will be glad to summon you a cup.”

  “Thank ye kindly, ma’am.”

  The sheriff had heard Tulley’s voice and, as druggist Davis shuffled the cards in preparation for dealing them, Caleb York said, “Cold night out there, Deputy?”

  Tulley shuffled over, his misshapen excuse for a hat in his hands. “Mite nippy, yessir.”

  “Coffee’s a good idea.” York gathered his cards, looked at them. Tulley hovered. The sheriff added, “Is there something else, Deputy?”

  “I wonder iffen I might ask a favor of ye.”

  “If you make it quick you might.”

  “It be colder than a witch’s teats out there, as you likely gathered, walkin’ over. I wondered . . . could I borrow that frock coat of yorn?”

  “Why, are you shivering out there?”

  “Indeed I am. Teeth chatterin’ like that girl Carmen’s god-darn castanets over at the cantina.”

  “Your teeth don’t seem to be chattering now.”

  “No, sir. Miss Rita keeps it nice and cozy-warm in here. But inside the Victory ain’t where I make my nightly rounds.”

  “Open for a dollar,” Caleb York said, and tossed some chips in, then turned to Tulley. “Go ahead and take the coat. I guess I can make it back to the office in my shirtsleeves without freezing, when I’m done here.”

  “Thank ye kindly, Sheriff!”

  Miss Rita called to Tulley and he met her over at the bar, where he drank the coffee between two boys from the Bar-O, who were not having coffee. When he put the cup down and started to dig in a pocket for a coin, burly bartender Hub Wainwright waved that off as unnecessary. Tulley never paid for sarsaparilla either, but he always tried. Seemed impolite not to.

  He was helping himself to the frock coat from its wall peg when the sheriff—someone was dealing again—called out, “Tulley! Come back over here.”

  Tulley in the coat—oversize on him, particularly the broad shoulders, getting him some smiles from bystanders that he chose to ignore—went over to see what Caleb York wanted. The garment almost touched the ground (whereas on York it would only barely meet midcalf).

  The sheriff took off his black, cavalry-pinched hat and handed it to his deputy. “Here,” he said. “Wear this. That thing you call a hat will blow away in that wind.”

  “Thank ye, Sheriff!” Tulley put the black hat on with one hand and stuffed the wadded-up headgear he’d been wearing into a pocket of the frock coat.

  This evoked more amusement on the faces of the other patrons of the Victory, but no outright laughter. Say what you will about Tulley, he was now a man all in black with a shotgun in his arms.

  Tulley exited the Victory and continued on his rounds. Before long he was checking on the street of facing houses that had grown up behind the businesses on this side of Main Street. Nothing had gone in on the other side of Main yet. That would come, with the railroad.

  The houses back here were all quiet and no lamps glowed in windows. In the sheriff’s long black frock coat, Tulley blended right in with the snow-flecked dark. He still had the other side of Main Street to check, but first he would traverse the alley behind the businesses. On the other side of the alley were houses as well as businesses of a sort that didn’t require a storefront. This included a rooming house like the one where Miss Rita had her saloon gals stay, ever since the Victory closed its second-floor bordello. There were also privies back there, one of which he used to divest himself of that cup of coffee, careful the sheriff’s coat did not drag and get itself unclean.

  When he emerged from that privy in the alley, he found himself right behind the Victory. On his way around to the front of the saloon, to go in and report to the sheriff and wangle himself another cup of coffee, Tulley tucked down his hat and lowered his head as he walked into a wind that was tossing snow in his face like a bride and groom getting pelted with rice outside a church.

  His head was down that way when somebody fired at him, twice, blasts that shattered the night silence, and Jonathan Tulley—scattergun tumbling from a grip gone limp—fell on his face to the boardwalk just outside the Victory, the long black frock coat covering him like a protective blanket, even as snowflakes dusted it and red pooled.

  * * *

  Shortly after his deputy, Jonathan Tulley, exited the Victory in the frock coat the sheriff had loaned him, Caleb York started having a run of bad luck.

  Normally, with these town fathers, he would either win substantially or hold his own. So far tonight the latter had been the case. Then bad cards came flying at him unbidden and, hand after hand, good cards chose someone else to bless. No special someone—everybody but York was taking winnings in, time to time, no cheating—but that was when the evening had started going wrong.

  The only thing different tonight at the table was the addition of banker Godfrey, in his first time playing with the little group. Admittedly this portly, distinguished-looking newcomer—brought to town by Raymond Parker to run the First Bank of Trinidad—was showing himself to be a smart, shrewd card player. But certainly no smarter nor better than Caleb York.

  Yet if York had learned anything in his going on forty years above ground, it was that a man’s luck could change on the turn of a card. He’d had his share of luck, both good and bad, though truth be told sometimes those two things could mingle.

  His skill and speed with a sidearm had aided him as a Wells Fargo detective who had been sent to track bad men down and bring them back in that traditional dead or alive fashion. And when York consistently came back alive with his quarry slung over a saddle dead, that was skill and speed, yes, but luck was also involved in life-and-death confrontations, always.

  So that was good luck, right?

  Only earning a reputation as a fast gun wasn’t really lucky at all. York had too often been backed into corners by challengers who required him shooting . . . killing . . . his way out. So a while back, when a false story blew across the Southwest saying that Caleb York had been gunned down, he had embraced the lie. When he’d first ridden into Trinidad, on his way to a Pinkerton job waiting in San Diego, California, he was blissfully free of the burden of his own identity.

  Just another stranger passing through.

  But then he’d gotten himself tangled up with a corrupt local sheriff and an hon
est ranch owner with a beautiful daughter, and now somehow—not even a year later—he was wearing the badge of the vile sheriff he’d been forced to kill. After that, his reputation as the “legendary” Caleb York had made him a local hero and some kind of fool tourist attraction (“Yes, Willie boy—that’s him! That’s Caleb York himself from the dime novels!”).

  And no question York was making good money as county sheriff—without a marshal in town, he was handling that role as well, getting a share of the taxes he collected plus rewards for bagging wanted men, not to mention all kinds of perquisites piled on to keep him happy.

  And in Trinidad.

  Right now the white-haired banker was dealing a hand and, suddenly, York’s luck seemed to change. First one ace, then another, then a king . . . then another king! Two high-riding pairs! He drew a single card.

  Another ace.

  Aces full.

  Two others at the table seemed to have drawn decent hands as well, and when the time came for the players to show their cards, the pot was piled with chips—probably twenty dollars; no fortune maybe, but real money.

  The banker had a flush in hearts. The druggist had his own full house—queens over deuces. Those two hands had driven that pot to its lovely, plump, current state. And now Caleb York, with his aces and kings, was pulling in all those chips.

  “Looks like my luck has finally turned,” he told his fellow players, grinning but trying not to seem too damn smug about it.

  That was when came the two gunshots, right outside, so close they almost seemed to be in the saloon with them. Barroom chatter ceased and a church-like quiet settled in an instant.

  Then York was on his feet with his Colt Single Action Army .44 in hand, the silence filled by the sound of his boots slapping the wooden floor as he headed to the doors. The batwings opened onto a shallow entryway, with double doors that had been shut to keep out the cold but not customers, easy enough to push through.

  There, as if he’d been tossed from a horse and dropped on the Victory’s doorstep, was the sprawl of Jonathan Tulley, the long black coat draped on his skinny form like a shroud.

  York crouched at his fallen deputy’s side. The loaned hat had been knocked off the man and York rather absentmindedly retrieved it and put it back on. He retrieved the shotgun Tulley had dropped, as well. Behind the two lawmen the other card players gathered, as well as bartender Wainwright and a few rubbernecking cowboys. Doc Miller pushed through and knelt beside York, who got out of the way but stayed down there, literally on his toes.

  Then Rita Filley was hovering, asking, “Is he. . . ?”

  “Breathing,” the doctor said, his voice midrange and husky. “For now. Hub!”

  The bartender pushed through. “Yes, sir?”

  “You help the sheriff here carry Deputy Tulley over to my surgery.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The bartender took Tulley’s ankles, and York—after passing the shotgun off to Rita for safekeeping—hooked his hands up under the deputy’s shoulders. The shooting victim was as unconscious as a stone, the activity not getting a whimper out of him. Leaving a blood-droplet trail, the two men, led by the doctor, made the walk quickly and even whisked what seemed to be a corpse up the outer steps outside the formidable bank building and in through the doc’s office with its waiting area and, beyond that, into the small surgery. York and Wainwright, at the doc’s direction, deposited Tulley on the mahogany examination table.

  The bartender was thanked and excused while York helped the doctor get the long frock coat off the deputy and together they got him out of his clothing. This exposed two wounds under the left rib cage. Both bubbled blood.

  The doc put a hand on York’s shoulder. “I’ll take it from here. Go back to the game.”

  “Hell with the game!”

  “Then take it to your room at the hotel. I’ll send for you.”

  York’s head shake was firm. “No. I’ll be in your office if you need me or have anything to report.”

  Sighing, nodding, Miller was climbing out of his suit coat. “Do as you like.”

  “Are we going to lose him?”

  “I need a closer look. No talk now, Caleb. Sit out there and wait. Pray if you like.”

  “Not much for that, Doc.”

  Miller was hanging his suit coat on a coat tree. “Not a bad time to start.”

  York went out into the waiting room, taking with him the long frock coat he’d loaned Tulley. He held it in his arms as if it needed comforting. The chair he took was the doctor’s own, behind the desk; the seat was padded and the thing rocked, which gave the sheriff something to do. He sent a prayer up. It was an awkward, inarticulate thing, and if God was listening, York hoped the Entity was in a New Testament mood. There would be time enough for York’s own Old Testament one.

  By the time the sheriff checked his pocket watch, over an hour had crawled by. York’s heartbeat had slowed to normal now, and he’d taken time to examine the coat. It had four holes in it, which told him something.

  Finally the doc came out, his hair mussed as if he’d been trying to tear it out, his shirtsleeves rolled up with the smell of alcohol on his flesh and blossoms of red here and there on the white shirt like a careless print.

  “He’s not awake,” the doctor said, standing by his desk and looking down at the man sitting in his chair. “But Tulley’s breathing regular. Lost some blood, but I have him cleaned up and stitched, fore and aft. Bullets went in and out, which is a small blessing, anyway.”

  “I know they did.”

  This seemed to mildly amuse the medical man. “How did you come to make that diagnosis, Caleb?”

  With one hand, York hefted the heavy cloth coat. “Four bullet holes and two gunshots. You think anything vital got hit?”

  Miller shook his head. “Appears not. Seems to have missed his lung. Don’t believe we’ll risk a transfusion. I’ve seen chills and pains and even death set in, when that doesn’t go right.”

  York nodded. “What’s next?”

  “I’m not going to move him just yet. When I do, I’ll get help. I have that room with an extra bed in my apartment here, where I can keep an eye on him. With any luck, he’ll be conscious by morning and I’ll send for you. Maybe he saw who did this.”

  “Good.” York got to his feet.

  “Tulley’s a harmless soul,” the doc said, sighing, making room for York to pass. “Never hurt a fly that I know of.”

  “Not true,” York said. “He killed one of the Rhomers, when they came after me not so long ago.”

  The doc frowned in thought. “Aren’t all the Rhomer boys dead?”

  “I certainly hope so. But this isn’t about Tulley.”

  “What, was he shot for sport?”

  York shook his head. “It’s a dark, snowy night, Doc. And he was in my hat and long coat.”

  The doctor’s eyes flared. “I’m a fool! Should’ve figured that from the outset.”

  “You had your hands full. Mind was elsewhere.”

  York put on his hat and tipped it to the doctor. Then he gathered up the frock coat.

  Some of Tulley’s blood was on it, soaking it in places. Already it was getting dry and crinkly and black. The Chinese laundry would get rid of the stain, but Caleb York would not have the local seamstress patch the holes. They were a reminder.

  A reminder of who the intended victim almost certainly was.

  York put on the coat and went out into the cold.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The night before the shooting of Deputy Jonathan P. Tulley on its doorstep, the Victory had unknowingly hosted a little group whose conversation over cards would spawn that crime and others.

  Rita Filley, the saloon’s beauteous owner, had only one house dealer on staff, Yancy Cole, with a second table available to patrons who were restricted to nickel and dime play. The city fathers who frequently took over that spare table were not held to that general rule, and pots could get healthy indeed. But if a group of cowhands and clerks was
playing, any coin higher than a twenty-cent piece would earn the wrath of bartending bouncer Hub Wainwright.

  On this very slow weekday night, Yancy’s table had a quartet of cowboys from various local ranches playing. This time of year was slow even on weekends, most spreads laying off as many as half their hands till spring. The other table with its four players was enough of an oddity that Rita herself would wander over from time to time, casting a wary eye. Low speaking would then get louder and strictly be poker talk—raises or bets or folds or what-have-you.

  What was unusual were the three nonlocals—bigger men than most cowboys (a smaller size rider was easier on a rancher’s horses). Their attire was an odd commingling of city and country. Cowhands tended to wear homemade cotton shirts and woolen trousers, the latter often with stitched buckskin across the butt and inner thighs to prevent wearing out from rubbing against a saddle all day.

  These three wore black suits, but without the necktie a merchant or clerk might wear, and overall more threadbare than most; meanwhile, their weathered hats were tall-crowned and wide-brimmed like a buckaroo’s, which might well brand them as drifters.

  The fourth at the table was a local merchant, though a relative newcomer to Trinidad—his business, Maxwell Boots, Saddle, and Harness Depot, had only been open since November. He was well-dressed, in a similar but unfrayed black suit, and wore a light blue cravat. Bliss Maxwell was thirty-eight and prematurely gray, his face pleasant but stopping short of handsome, his wide-set, light blue eyes his only striking feature and going well with the neckwear.

  The three strangers in the black, well-worn suits were Frank Fender, Jake Warlow, and Ned Sivley.

  Frank “Moody” Fender was a broad-shouldered sort, if somewhat stooped, hunching in on himself as if the dark attitude that earned him his nickname was forcing that upon him. His small dark eyes lurked under a shelf of forehead, over a knob of a nose, a beard surrounding thick lips. He smoked a crooked cheroot, and looked a bit stupid. Which he was. Also he was at least as crooked as the cheroot.