Hot Lead, Cold Justice Page 3

  Next to him—of the four at the table playing careless cards, often not even betting—Jake Warlow smiled as if he were holding four of a kind. Warlow was wolfishly handsome, and the best groomed of the trio, his suit and shirt a trifle cleaner than Fender’s and Sivley’s. He also looked smarter than his saddle-tramp companions, and was.

  In the next chair, Ned Sivley sat skinny as a scarecrow and twice as frightful, a cadaverous-looking lunger with a nasty cough. Sivley was a gray man—of hair, of eye, of complexion, of scraggly beard—and his ambition in life was to die in bed in a warm clime with enough money to never work again. So far he was getting the dying part right, but accumulating money had eluded him.

  None of these drifters had known Bliss Maxwell before. If anyone had seen the little group gathering, to play some nickel-dime poker, they would have thought the local merchant had sat down with the trio by accident. No one but these four themselves knew that Sivley had earlier approached Bliss in the saddle shop and given him a message from a mutual acquaintance. That message had included meeting here at the Victory at eight o’clock p.m. It was eight-thirty now.

  The leader of the three strangers in black was not present. He was Lucas “Burn ’Em” Burnham, a notorious outlaw whose appellation came from his rampaging days with the infamous bushwackers known as Quantrill’s Raiders. And Burnham was the common link between the drifters and the merchant.

  Unknown to any others in Trinidad, Bliss Maxwell had once been one of Burnham’s gang, not in raiding days but after the war, when stagecoaches were the prey. While Burnham had been caught and jailed, Maxwell had managed to steer clear of the law and never served a day.

  For the past ten years, in fact, Bliss Maxwell—whose real name was not that—had been a more or less honest businessman and upstanding citizen in the Southwest, having invested his ill-gotten gains to start over. This was not an unusual practice in the post–Civil War West.

  Maxwell had run a general store in Santa Fe that did well for a time, but when competition came in, as the town got big enough to support retailers with specialties like clothing or groceries or hardware, his business had suffered. He sold out to a competitor and hired a top Mexican saddle maker to go along with the harness-making skills he himself had picked up, and moved to Trinidad.

  The four men chatted, speaking low. Enough space was between the two tables of card players that being overheard was not a problem, unless you got careless. These men didn’t. For the most part, only Jake Warlow—who had a deep, mellow, almost soothing voice at odds with his feral countenance—did most of the talking. In the absence of Burnham, Jake spoke for him.

  “You would get a full share,” Warlow said, shuffling the cards.

  “I don’t know,” Maxwell said.

  Sivley coughed into a handkerchief dotted with red and black—fresh and dried blood. “You should count yourself lucky, storekeep.”

  Maxwell’s cool blue eyes found Sivley’s gray, gray-eyed face. “Lucky how? What would you be risking?”

  “Just my life,” Sivley said, stuffing the bloody handkerchief away, as if to hide the fact that his years remaining weren’t worth all that much at this stage.

  But Fender put in, “All of us risk life and limb, and all you got to do? Is hardly nothing. Truth be told, I was against it.”

  Maxwell frowned, absentmindedly pulling in cards Warlow had just dealt him. “Against what?”

  Fender’s sneer was nasty. “Givin’ you a full share, you damn fool.”

  “If I have to put up with you for very long,” Maxwell said, the former outlaw in the merchant coming out, “I should get more than a share.”

  “Gentlemen,” Warlow said, and smiled his handsome smile. “Who wants cards?”

  They went through the pretense of playing draw, and between bets, Maxwell said, “Why isn’t Burnham here making his own case?”

  Sivley made a face and said, “Can’t you figure that out yourself?”

  “No.” Maxwell shrugged. “He’s distinctive looking, I grant you. But he’s not famous. He’s not President Grant.”

  “Grant is dead,” Fender said.

  Maxwell frowned. “Grover Cleveland isn’t, but nobody would recognize him, either, much less Burn ’Em.”

  Warlow said, “Somebody in this town would.”

  A tall man, lean yet broad of shoulder, came in wearing a long black frock coat, which he hung up on a peg inside the door. He was still in black underneath as well, including his hat.

  “That’s him,” Maxwell said.

  The other three card players had a good look. Nothing suspicious about that—unlike President Cleveland, Caleb York was somebody people might well recognize. Good likenesses of him had appeared on the front of dime novels, and anyway it was well known that York was sheriff of Trinidad County.

  “He’s a tall one,” Warlow admitted, looking at his latest hand of cards.

  “Wears that .44 low,” Sivley said, “like a damn gunfighter.”

  “That’s what he is, fool,” Fender said.

  “Keep callin’ me fool, Moody,” Sivley said with a nasty smile. “See where it gets you.”

  “Go to hell.” Fender was looking at his cards, too.

  Sometimes men who rode together or worked a ranch side by side would tell another to go to hell in a good-natured way. Fender’s remark read different. These were men who put up with each other’s company.

  “Okay,” Maxwell said, even softer than before, almost a whisper. “You wanted York pointed out. I pointed him out. Now what?”

  “Play cards,” Warlow advised.

  They did this for a while. They noticed that Sheriff York sat at one of the small tables between them and the door, having a drink with the bosomy looker in dark blue silk who ran the place. They did not hear the conversation between the bar owner and the sheriff.

  What they specifically didn’t hear was Rita Filley asking Caleb York, “Do you know those three characters playing nickel-dime poker with Bliss Maxwell?”

  Without looking at them, York said, “No. But I don’t care for the cut of their jib. They don’t punch cows for a living and they sure as hell aren’t drummers.”

  York meant salesmen, not musicians.

  “They’re drifters,” she said, “if you ask me.”

  Of course, he hadn’t, but York did ask her, “What’s your beef with them?”

  “Nothing. But they don’t look like the type to play that kind of poker.”

  “What kind of poker is that? Playing for loose change, you mean?”

  She shook her head. “They aren’t really playing. They’re paying no attention to their cards. Just talking. What about, is what I want to know.” She leaned forward and York managed to keep his eyes off her neckline. “We’ve never been robbed here, Caleb, but I’m wondering if tonight’s the night.”

  “I’ll settle in next to them,” he said, starting to rise.

  She stopped him with a hand on a wrist. “What I really want to know is . . . what’s Maxwell doing with them?”

  York sat himself back down. “Did they come in together?”

  “No,” she said. “The saddle shop man was having a beer at the bar. Those three sauntered in, looking around the place in a way thirsty customers don’t usually look. Then one of them, the death-warmed-over character, nodded toward the bar and they approached Bliss. They spoke some, then he guided them over to the empty table. Started playing for nothing much.”

  York thought that over. “I’ve been suspicious about more.”

  “You’ve also been suspicious about less. As long as they’re here, Caleb? You be here, too, all right?” She squeezed his hand. “Then you can come upstairs, if you like. It has been a while.”

  “It has,” he admitted.

  Then he went over and settled into a free seat at Yancy’s table. He kept an eye on the other table without really seeming to.

  With York nearby, Bliss Maxwell and the three outlaws played without talk of anything but cards. Warlow won s
ome money. Nobody else did. Half an hour or so passed.

  Maxwell said, “I’d like to see our mutual friend.”

  Warlow nodded, said, “Good idea. He’s waiting.”

  They were not aware that Caleb York had heard that and stored it away.

  Then the card players got up and went out into the chilly night.

  * * *

  Over the archway entrance, its door shut tight against the cold, the words CANTINA DE TORO ROJO curved in red letters so faded they were almost orange. The two-story adobe structure—its glass-free windows shuttered and bleeding yellow light around their edges—might have been an old church, the outpost of some long-forgotten mission. And one could certainly commune over wine here.

  A bar with food did business below while an exposed wooden staircase along the right side of the building led to a tawdry heaven of small rooms where fallen amber angels blessed customers for modest offerings. Few of the worshipers lived in the small, shabby barrio whose central lane led to the cantina. The believers making this impure pilgrimage, after dark anyway, were mostly cowboys—white and black and brown—as well as proper town men, who felt confident that any other proper town men they encountered would keep all impropriety to themselves.

  Muffled talk and the strumming of a guitar could barely be heard by the four men who had walked up Main Street from the Victory to the livery stable end of town, with the sheriff’s jailhouse office at right and the Mexican section at left. At the leather-glazed hitch rail out front stood four horses, shuffling in place whenever the wind would pick up. A pleasantly pudgy señorita of about fifteen was leading a vaquero client twice her age up those stairs.

  Within the cantina waited the leader of the three drifters, a man who had once led another thieving band that included an unreformed Bliss Maxwell. Luke Burnham—a bottle of tequila before him as well as glasses for himself and the coming guests—wore an old military jacket, a practice not unusual even twenty years after the war. But his was a heavy gray Confederate coat, not often seen now, though still a damn good choice for winter weather.

  Since the war, Burnham had been two things: an outlaw and a convict. His distinctive scarred face had got him identified when he’d started robbing stages, and as a notorious raider who had ridden with Quantrill. He had been tracked down by a Wells Fargo detective and served ten years for armed robbery at the Kansas State Pen. The only luck he’d had was getting nabbed for a holdup where no one had gotten killed, an exception in Burnham’s practice, not the rule.

  Warlow entered the cantina first, followed by Fender and Sivley, with Maxwell bringing up the rear, looking around him to see if any other townspeople were there who might recognize him. This was Maxwell’s first visit to the cantina (he was seeing a young woman he’d met at a First Missionary Baptist social).

  Their flat boots crunched on the straw-strewn floor. Only half a dozen patrons were present, including two Mexican cowboys and a black one playing three-handed poker, a genuine nickel-dime game. The restaurant aspect of the Red Bull (as most gringos called it) was closed though the odor of refried beans hung stubbornly in the air. A little guy in a big sombrero perched in a corner noodling flamenco-style guitar on a battered instrument.

  The fat, balding bartender with a droopy bandido mustache gave the new customers an equally droopy-eyed nod as he wiped down the bar with a filthy rag. The yellow-painted walls were faded and so was a bullfighter mural near the guitarist.

  A slender señorita in her ancient late twenties was fading, too; she sported a nest of dark hair and a surprisingly full bosom that was too much for her peasant blouse. Her ballooning black skirt swirled with red, green, and yellow petticoats as she danced to the music of a guitarist who seemed more interested in her than did the clientele. Mismatched tables and chairs seemed flung around haphazardly, though a few areas were lattice-worked off, and at a table in one of those was where Burnham waited.

  The table, meant for four, had chairs for five, one of which contained Burnham, who got slowly to his feet, his smile slow as well, as he held out a hand for Maxwell to shake. The former outlaw did so, finding a nervous smile to accompany a nod to his old gang leader.

  “Sit, old friend,” Burnham said, gesturing to the chair at his right.

  The other men exchanged glances—normally their boss wasn’t this polite or friendly. Generally the man was a cross between a military task master and a foul-tempered parent. But his followers considered him tough and fearless and daring as hell, so they put up with him.

  Everybody sat, the leader last.

  “Burn ’Em” Burnham’s hair was dark and streaked gray, as was the beard he kept trimmed. He was as broad-shouldered as his man Moody, only with no stoop and, unlike that underling, was no stupe. He was considerably smarter even than ladies’ man Warlow, and might have been one himself, such were his handsome features in their rough-hewn masculine manner. But a damned sword blade in battle had put a scar through an eye and left him mildly disfigured and half blind, the eye still there but milky now.

  Burnham served tequila all around. The glasses were squat things, not designed for shots, and the outlaw leader poured generously. Then he raised his glass in a thick-fingered hand and everyone followed suit. They drank.

  “Nice and smooth and smoky,” Burnham said with a smile. He put a hand on Maxwell’s sleeve and his non-milky eye on the man’s face. “I understand business has been slow.”

  Maxwell frowned, more in surprise than anything else. “Who told you that?”

  “Friend Sivley,” Burnham said, nodding toward the lunger. An unsettling smile flashed in the midst of the black-and-gray beard. “Ned here spoke to that pelado saddle maker of yours—Salazar? Some fine ones on display, Ned says, but not a sale in a month.”

  “It’s a waiting game,” Maxwell said, quietly defensive.

  The smile flashed again. “You’re waitin’ for that railroad spur, and all the people it’ll bring. You’re waitin’ for this bump in the road to blossom.”

  Maxwell shrugged, then nodded. “Juan Salazar is a first-rate saddle man. And I know everything there is to know about harness making. Between the two of us, we’ll make a fortune someday.”

  Burnham lifted a forefinger. “Someday. Not this day. Or the next. How long can you hang on, old friend? How long will this bean-eater of yours stick, makin’ fancy saddles with no asses to sit them?”

  Maxwell shrugged again. “I have a decent stake. We can hold on.”

  Burnham sipped tequila. “You can really taste the agave,” he said appreciatively. “Surprising good, for a craphole deadfall like this. You know, ol’ compadre, you deserve better.”

  “Better than what?”

  “Better than holdin’ on for dear life. Better than chippin’ away at your stake waiting for the gold rush to come. It would give me genuine pleasure to help you out of this fix.”

  “Help me out.”

  Burnham gestured with two open hands. “Surely would. We’re gonna plump that stake of yours up, boy. You may think you’re sittin’ at a table in a low-down Mexie thirst parlor, but that’s really opportunity knockin’.”

  Maxwell sipped his tequila. He flinched a little, indicating he didn’t find it as smooth and sweet a drink as his old boss did. He said, “I did you a favor, Luke. I pointed out Caleb York to your friends here. That’s on the house. No charge whatsoever.”

  “Big of you.”

  “But couldn’t you have pointed York out just as easy as I did?”

  Burnham shook his head. “Not without riskin’ him spotting me and wondering what I was doing in his town.”

  Maxwell looked at Burnham long and hard. “York’s the one put you away, isn’t he?”

  “He is. You were already off on your own when the bastard picked up our trail. So he doesn’t know you from Adam. You’re just another honest storekeep to”—he spoke the next three words with sublime contempt—“Sheriff Caleb York.”

  Maxwell leaned closer to the man he’d once ridden for. �
��I don’t know what exactly you’re up to, Luke. Nor do I know what it is you want from me.” He slammed a fist on the table and made the tequila glasses jump. “And I don’t want to know.”

  Burnham, perhaps not liking Maxwell getting so tough—or the man’s show of stubbornness—leaned back and folded his arms. In the Confederate coat he could have fallen out of a Mathew Brady tintype. “You might as well know, old friend. You might as well play. You’re an accessory already, if they catch us.”

  “How so?”

  A thick-fingered hand patted the air. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, son. You hear me out. You don’t like the sound, you don’t like the monetary prospect, why, you just thank us for thinkin’ of you and go along about your respectable way. And we will wish you the best, includin’ the hope that you don’t go bust before this here town goes boom.”

  Maxwell thought about that. Warlow smiled at Fender, who for all his surliness smiled back—both men knew their boss had the shopkeeper thinking. They were well aware that Burnham was a master at devil’s bargains.

  Finally Maxwell asked, “How much?”

  “I have it on reliable authority that the Bank of Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory, keeps one hundred thousand dollars on hand. Paper money, mostly. Some hard coin, but with luck not too much to haul away.”

  Maxwell’s eyes widened. It might have been the thought of all that money. Or of all that risk.

  Or both.

  Then Maxwell asked, “My share would be what?”

  “Like my boys told you. Full share, son. That’s in the neighborhood of twenty-thousand dollars, cash and coin. Tell me, Mr. Maxwell—do you think twenty thousand would tide you over till your ship comes in? Or I should say, train?”

  Maxwell thought about it, but then shook his head. “I sell saddles. I don’t sit them. My days doing . . . your kind of work are well behind me. I’m no road agent now. I rarely carry a gun, for pity’s sake. Anyway, Las Vegas is too close to home.”