The Big Showdown Page 3

  York went to the first one he’d shot, glanced down at the dead man, who was on his back with a soup of brains and blood emptied out of his ragged skull top, and kicked the weapon from limp fingers. He jogged to the other rider, the one the horse had dragged some, on his back with arms and legs going strange directions, and found the man at least as dead as his compadre, his six-gun lost in the shuffle.

  Then York sprinted to Ben Wade, though he knew there was no hurry. The heavyset older man had wound up on his side, like a man sleeping who finally found a comfortable position, hat under him like an insufficient pillow. Some red had leaked from the hole in his chest across his vest and shirt and was soaking the sand, but no blood was flowing now. Dead men don’t bleed.

  Caleb York, the black he wore making him an instant mourner, knelt over the man he’d brought to town, to take his place, and he said a prayer for him. But at the end of it he didn’t say, “Amen.”

  He said, “Goddamn.”

  God damn those who did this.

  Townspeople were moving gingerly into the street, but Willa was moving quickly past the dead thieves, the bank president, and a clerk emerging with guns in hand—too little, too late—and over to York, who still knelt at his dead friend’s side. She crouched near the man she loved, put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Caleb, are you all right?”

  “No.”

  “Lord! Were you hit?”

  “No. But I’m not all right. I won’t be till I bring in Ben Wade’s killer.”

  York unpinned the badge from Wade’s chest. Ben had said York would have to tear it off, if he wanted to take it back. But that wasn’t necessary.

  He stood, and Willa rose with him.

  She asked, “Does that mean . . . you’re staying?”

  “For as long as it takes, I am.”

  She pinned the badge on him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ladies in gingham were letting their husbands make the journey into the sandy street, to get a closer look at the aftermath of the shooting, staying behind on the plank boardwalk soothed in awning shade.

  But Willa Cullen was not some timid female. She stayed right with Caleb York as he returned to the first of the men he’d shot.

  Not that she didn’t find the sight grotesque—splayed out like a squashed spider, empty eyes staring up into the heaven that no doubt would be denied him, the insides of his skull emptied out like pie filling that hadn’t set yet.

  But a woman raised on a ranch—even a woman of a mere twenty-two years—had viewed many a gory sight before, had witnessed butchery of beef and seen men horribly injured, and by age seven had overcome any girlish queasiness of stomach. Last year, when both Trinidad and the surrounding countryside seemed littered with carnage as a result of Harry Gauge’s misdeeds, she’d had her lack of squeamishness challenged, and rose to the occasion.

  Still, when Caleb knelt over the corpse, Willa chose not to kneel with him. But she did not avert her gaze when he pulled down the man’s red-and-black bandana kerchief to reveal a scruffy, bearded face.

  “Recognize him?” Caleb asked her, without looking her way.

  “One of Harry Gauge’s deputies, isn’t he?”

  Caleb rose and his eyes met hers. “Clay Peterson. He didn’t wear a star. He worked at the Circle G.”

  The Circle G had been the biggest ranch controlled by Gauge, out of the seven or eight the schemer had bought up in that landgrab. The G became the corrupt sheriff’s home, when he wasn’t staying in town.

  Caleb walked over to the second of the dead men, the one who’d been hauled by his horse a ways. One of the man’s boots was gone, probably still in its stirrup, on a horse headed nowhere. He was on his back with his arms and legs going every which way. His masked face was to his left, and his torso bore two big gaping wounds, chest and stomach, scorched black and shiny red with glimpses of innards. Ranch girl Willa knew that exit wounds always looked worse than entry ones, and this crook had got two from Caleb in the back.

  She asked him, “Ever shot a man in the back before?”

  “Sure. That’s how you stop somebody running away.”

  Caleb knelt over the corpse. Willa was fine just standing nearby. Didn’t want to get in his way, after all. He turned the dead man’s face toward him and tugged down the dark blue handkerchief mask, revealing a mustache over an open mouth showing off terrible, sporadic teeth. The dead man’s face was frozen in surprise and . . . something else, what?

  Disappointment.

  Glancing up at her, Caleb said, “How about this one?”

  “Another of Harry Gauge’s bunch. Worked in town some and did wear a badge.”

  Brushing off the knees of his black trousers as he rose, Caleb said, “Len Cormack. He was working one of the spreads Gauge took over. The Running C. What do you make of it?”

  “Even dead,” she said, with a shudder, “Harry Gauge is bedeviling this town.”

  Caleb shook his head. “No, he just left a bunch of rabble behind in his wake. The kind of excuse for a man who can’t earn an honest day’s wage.” He noticed something behind him and turned. “Perkins!”

  The undertaker—who at the sound of gunfire could get into his black coat and black top hat so fast he might have willed it—was having his own look at the corpses. Right now this exclamation point of a man was goggling at the one with the top of his head shot off.

  Caleb went over to him.

  “Mr. Perkins,” Caleb said sternly, “your first order of business is to get Ben Wade off the street and into your funeral parlor. The dead lowlifes can wait.”

  Perkins nodded. “You mind if I clean up them other two, and put ’em in my window? Good for business.”

  “I don’t care what you do, after you done right by Ben. This one here, you’d best find his hat and the rest of his head.”

  “I was just thinkin’ that, Sheriff.”

  “Just the temporary sheriff, Jacob.”

  “Everything’s temporary in this life, Mr. York.”

  A group of men had gathered in the street, well-dressed, older; they included the bank president who’d just been robbed and other members of the Trinidad Citizens Committee. Normally, a gavel called such a meeting to order. Today it had been gunshots.

  Seeing the men murmuring among themselves, their concern clear, Caleb called, “I’ve put this badge on for now—any objections?”

  The city fathers glanced at each other and began exchanging head shakes that amounted to glum approval. After some low-voiced muttering, they almost shoved the mayor forward.

  Jasper Hardy, the town’s barber, had gained his leadership position primarily because he was the best-groomed man in Trinidad. Small, about forty, with slicked-back black hair and a handlebar mustache worthy of a picture frame, the mayor approached Caleb with halting, tentative steps.

  “Mr. York . . . Sheriff York . . . would you like us to raise a posse?”

  “No, sir. Thank you. Only one man escaped and only one man will pursue. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to fetch my gun belt.”

  “Certainly.”

  Willa waited while Caleb headed back to the hotel, where his carpetbag remained. As she stood there in the street, she heard a familiar voice call out, “Miz Cullen! Where’s Sheriff York got hisself off to? There’s a bank robber needs catchin’.”

  She turned to see the supposedly reformed town drunk, Jonathan Tulley, leading Caleb’s beautiful black-maned, dappled gray gelding by its reins. On the steed’s back, a black well-tooled saddle awaited its rider.

  “He’s just gone to get his gun belt,” she said. “He’s going after the scoundrel, all right.”

  “Good! You know, he give me that Remington coach gun of his, the other day . . . but I’m givin’ it back.” Tulley gestured to the double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun already in its scabbard.

  “I know he’ll appreciate that, Jonathan.”

  Caleb was coming out of the hotel, taking the steps down to the street two at a time, buckli
ng on his gun belt, leaving the holster tie-down loose. For now.

  Seeing the saddled-up gelding waiting, Caleb grinned and he came over and patted Tulley on the shoulder, and no dust rose for a change. The old boy really had turned a new leaf, she noted—no liquor smell on him, either.

  Tulley said to Caleb, “Fixed you up some jerky and a full canteen, Sheriff.”

  “Appreciated.”

  Blue eyes sparkled in the leathery bearded face. “You want me to ride along with you, Sheriff? Well, mebbe not ‘along’—me and Gert can’t keep pace. But we could bring up the rear.”

  Gert was Tulley’s mule, who’d been with him going back to when his prospecting petered out.

  “No thanks, amigo. Keep an eye on the town for me.”

  “Will do, Sheriff! Will do.”

  Before he mounted the gelding, Caleb gave Willa’s hand a squeeze and her eyes told him to take care. His nod said he would, but in truth she was not much worried for this man. Yes, there was always danger, and if that robber had any sense, he’d be waiting in high rocks with a rifle to bushwhack Caleb York, because facing this man down could only end badly for the one doing it.

  Caleb was barely in the saddle when bank president Thomas Carter strode up and planted himself before man-and-steed, much as Sheriff Wade had done with the fleeing bandit. In a dark gray suit and an embroidered waistcoat, the big-framed banker made an imposing figure, his hair dark but speckled with white, mustache, too, his chin firm if resting on a second one.

  “Mr. York . . . Caleb . . . Sheriff . . . I’m offering you ten percent of anything you recover. This town is depending on you, sir.”

  Caleb pulled back on the reins, his horse ready to go. “Mr. Carter, with this star on my shirt, even temporary, any reward is improper. But you can do me one favor.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Pay for Ben Wade’s burial.”

  Men in the street parted like the Red Sea to let Caleb on his gelding pound by, heading for the livery and making the same left turn the outlaw had.

  The undertaker and an assistant were getting Ben Wade into a wicker basket, while the townspeople were slowly scattering and getting back to whatever they’d been doing. Perhaps Willa should, too.

  Harmon, the plump, white-bearded Bar-O cook, had ridden in with her on a buckboard to get some supplies from Harris Mercantile, which he was likely doing right now, unless he’d got caught up in the rubbernecking.

  So when heavyset, blond, mustached Newt Harris approached her, a man in his fifties in a medium brown suit and dark brown string tie, she figured he was going to tell her the buckboard was loaded, and he was due some payment.

  But it was something else.

  “The Citizens Committee is holding a meeting,” he said, hat in hands, and nodded toward his store. The rear of the place was where the group usually got together. It was also where the circuit judge sat, as well, when the town had one of its rare trials.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Harris,” she said, “but my father didn’t come into town with me today.”

  George Cullen was a member of the committee.

  “Miss Cullen,” he said, with an oddly shy smile, “it’s not your father we wish to talk to. And we don’t need him for a quorum. Everybody else is present. Would you please come?”

  And within a very few minutes, she found herself seated at the table in the very chair where the circuit court judge usually sat, with Mayor Hardy next to her, a gavel before him. He used it to bring the meeting to order, though that wasn’t necessary—the half-dozen men in chairs facing her in a semicircle sat as quiet as Sunday mid-sermon.

  A wood-burning stove was to their backs, unlit, between them and the front two-thirds of the store, with its high shelved walls of goods, a pair of clerks doing their best to keep customers from being distracted by the important doings in back. Harmon wasn’t among the customers, so the cook must already be loaded up and waiting.

  Everything seemed very formal at first, but then the well-groomed mayor turned to her and smiled. The big mustache seemed to be its own smile.

  “We’d like to ask your help, Miss Cullen.”

  How strange.

  She said, “Anything within reason, Your Honor.”

  “Uh, that designation isn’t necessary, my dear. I hope we’re all friends here. All good citizens of Trinidad.”

  An edge of irritation made her shift in her wooden chair.

  “Well,” she said, “I don’t live in Trinidad. I live on my father’s ranch, as you well know. But I consider Trinidad my home, in a way. We do business here. We have friends. What is it you need from the Cullens?”

  Skinny, bug-eyed Clem Davis, the apothecary, chimed in, “Miss Cullen, as the mayor says, it’s your help we need. With... with Caleb York.”

  Hardware-store owner Clarence Mathers, his elaborate mutton chops seeking to make up for a lack of hair on top, said, “Not meaning to speak out of turn, young lady, but it’s well-known around these parts that you carry a certain. . . influence . . . with Caleb York.”

  She frowned. She did think he was speaking out of turn.

  What did they want from her?

  “What we’re trying to get at,” the mayor said, his smile nervous now beneath the grandiose handlebar mustache, “is that we hope you will try to convince Mr. York to stay on in Trinidad.”

  She almost laughed, but managed to stifle it.

  If they only knew . . .

  “My dear,” the mayor was saying, “we would like Mr. York to take on the position of sheriff on more than a merely temporary or interim basis.”

  “Right now,” their host, Harris, said, “he’s acting out of friendship and loyalty . . . and dare I say anger . . . in going after Ben Wade’s killer.”

  “If anyone can succeed in doing that,” she said, “Caleb York is the man.”

  “Oh, we know,” the mayor said. “It brings our little community honor and even prestige to have such a stalwart figure among us—a legend who has stepped right out of the pages of the history of the West to be tiny Trinidad’s representative of law and order.”

  He might have been making a campaign speech.

  “I don’t think,” Willa said, and now her smile came through, “that telling Caleb York he makes a good tourist attraction is the way to convince him to stay on.”

  “Not our intention!” the mayor blurted. “Right now we need him, desperately, because . . . and this is not hyperbole, my dear . . . Trinidad’s very existence is at stake.”

  Nods among the city fathers blossomed all round.

  Willa was frowning. “How so?”

  The men seated before her turned to the distinguished figure seated in their midst—the president of the First Bank of Trinidad, Thomas Carter.

  “Miss Cullen,” he said, in a rich baritone that did not diminish the devastation his expression conveyed, “that wretched bandit today made off with almost all of the cash in our vault. It represents a sizeable portion of our institution’s worth, virtually everything but the building itself and, of course, what we’ve invested in our local businesses and the ranches around us.”

  His fellow committee members were glumly shaking their heads.

  Carter continued: “Frankly . . . and I would appreciate it if everyone here would keep this under their hats . . . it positions the bank at the brink of failure. It’s as if those blaggards had robbed each and every one of First Bank’s depositors at gunpoint.”

  “The loss,” the mayor said, “could kill our community.”

  The banker shook his head. “No, it will kill our community. There’s no coming back from this, short of a miracle. That money must be recovered.”

  “Well,” Willa said, “I’m sure it’s Caleb’s intention to do just that. This isn’t merely a man seeking revenge for the death of a friend. Temporary or not, he takes that star on his chest most seriously.”

  A collective sigh of relief went up.

  “But,” she said, holding up a forefinger, “once that jo
b is done, Caleb York will pack up that carpetbag of his and depart Trinidad. Of that I have little doubt.”

  Apothecary Davis, who seemed to need one of his own calming powders about now, was half out of his chair. “You have to convince him, Miss Cullen! Use your feminine wiles, if needs must!”

  This embarrassed everyone at the meeting, including (belatedly) Davis himself.

  “Perhaps you should check at the Victory Saloon, Mr. Davis,” she said coolly. “I believe you can purchase, or least rent, feminine wiles at that establishment.”

  “Apologies, ma’am,” Davis said, hanging his head now.

  Calling her “ma’am” didn’t warm her to the man, either. But at least it hadn’t been “madam.”

  The mayor said, “We have another concern, Miss Cullen, and surely it’s one that has occurred to you. Your mention of the Victory Saloon brings it to mind, in fact.”

  She blinked at him. “It does?”

  Hardy nodded.

  How did that small face manage that large mustache?

  He said, “We will soon have, among us, another of the Gauge clan . . . one Zachary, a cousin. From the East.”

  “I’m aware of that,” she said. “We all are, aren’t we? There’s no reason to assume that Zachary will be the same kind of man as his late cousin. ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged.’ ”

  Perhaps an ill-chosen remark, Willa thought, seated as she was in a chair often occupied by a circuit court judge.

  “But he may well be of that same evil stripe,” Mathers said, shaking a finger worthy of a tent preacher. “And if he is, we face a day as dark as anything Sheriff Harry Gauge ever visited upon this town.”

  The apothecary spoke up again, less excited now but no less sincere. “Every one of us, Miss Cullen . . . every one of us . . . was in business with Sheriff Gauge. We didn’t want to be. . . .”

  “You did at first,” she reminded them.

  “True,” Harris put in. “True enough. But Harry Gauge was a swindler. And we will be pursuing the rightful ownership of our businesses through the courts. You may be aware we hired a legal man in Albuquerque. The thing is, law or not . . . if Zachary turns out to be his cousin incarnate, we might be bullied and battered into maintaining co-ownerships that were born out of extortion.”