The Legend of Caleb York Page 4

  “I told you not to curse, Lola. Ain’t ladylike.”

  She ignored that. “How much can you own, Harry? How much land can one man handle? How damn big do you expect to get?”

  “Bigger than the biggest. I came up hard, you know that. Now nobody runs Harry Gauge anymore. Now I run things.”

  “I guess when you’re that big, nobody can say no to you.”

  “That’s right.”

  Her wet red smile was faintly teasing. “What about the Bar-O? They aren’t like these other little spreads you forced out and swallowed up. They’ll fight you.”

  “Let them try. There were people in this town that tried to fight me before. What happened to them? All I had to do was look at them hard and they fell apart. Sometimes I sweetened it with a little dough. But they’re all of them soft. They can’t handle the idea of maybe dying on their own front steps.”

  “Suppose they get together. It’s happened in other towns.”

  “I’ll see that they don’t.” He shook his head. “Nothing in Trinidad gets by Harry Gauge.”

  She frowned and worry lines touched her forehead. Sitting forward, to reveal not her charms but her concern, she said, “Harry, the talk around town . . . it’s like everybody’s just waiting for something to happen.”

  He shrugged, nodded toward the WANTED poster. “Cullen’s wire to his old partner got ’em all stirred up.”

  She was shaking her head, just a little, dark gypsyish curls flouncing. “Ten thousand dollars is a hell of a bounty, my friend. And you can bet Cullen isn’t paying this Banion character or anybody else up front.”

  “What’s your point?”

  She shrugged. “You figure you can take Banion.”

  He returned the shrug. “I already took down two men who outdrew him.”

  “Sure . . . but Banion lived through both tries. So fine, so you come out on top of a showdown with big, bad Wes Banion. Do I have to tell you what happens next?”

  “Can I stop you?”

  Her expression was grave. “You have a reputation, Harry. How many men have come looking for you, these past few years, to build a rep of his own?”

  “Enough.”

  “Well, Harry honey, it’s gonna be an army of ’em with Old Man Cullen’s ten thousand in the game.”

  “Plenty of room on Boot Hill.”

  “Not really. You’ve filled most of it already. That mesquite tree can only shade so much. Of course, they’d make room for you.”

  What he grunted was almost a laugh. “Banion will go down just like Caleb York went down.”

  “They say York was back-shot.”

  “If that’s what it takes. Dead is dead.”

  “Yes, and if a legend like Caleb York can die, so can the biggest man in Trinidad, if he isn’t careful.”

  “What are you sayin’, Lola?”

  She flew to her feet and leaned her hands on the desk. “I’m saying maybe it’s time to cash out. How rich do you have to be? Do you know how well we could live over the border on gringo dollars? I don’t want to be a damn madam the rest of my life, helping soiled doves duck babies and disease. And do you want to spend your days looking back over your shoulder, jumping at shadows?”

  “I don’t jump at nothing or nobody.”

  She gestured around them. “Harry, you’re sitting in your office in the dark, reading a poster over and over about a man that’s coming to kill you. Face it—the great Harry Gauge is scared.”

  He slapped her.

  The sound rang out like a gunshot, and she clenched one hand into a hard, little quivering fist as her other fingers went to a mouth where the red now wasn’t just rouge.

  Her voice trembled not with fear but rage. “Someday, Harry. Someday you’ll do that once too often. . . .”

  “Shut up. Go do your job. Get your girls to find out from these payday-rich cowhands if anybody new has signed on lately. Could even be on one of my own spreads and I wouldn’t know it. A smart man might hide in plain sight like that. Now . . . get out.”

  She’d found a handkerchief somewhere and was rubbing the blood off her mouth. That made him feel a little bad and he got her coat and helped her into it.

  Her voice trembled again, but it wasn’t rage and it wasn’t hurt. More like hurt feelings.

  “I won’t have you hitting me,” she said, sounding like a kid.

  “Won’t happen again, sugar,” he said, making himself smile as he held the door open for her.

  She paused, glancing back. “A gentleman would walk me down there.”

  He grinned. “You’re a big girl, and I’m no gentleman. Sheriff don’t need to make an entrance just yet. I’ll be down there. I’ll be down.”

  She nodded and went out onto the porch and down the steps into the street, where a full moon was climbing to paint the dusty town ivory. He watched her go, admiring the sway of her hips, until she got to where the boardwalk started.

  Then he went back in his office and got the bottle out of the bottom desk drawer. That had been one good idea she had.

  Under that same moon but a little higher now, on the porch of the Bar-O ranch house, Willa Cullen stood with her father as foreman Whit Murphy, already on horseback at the head of a party of ten mounted cowhands, waited for his final instructions.

  Both father and daughter remained in the attire they’d worn to Boot Hill this morning, and Papa was back in his wide-brimmed black hat.

  Willa, almost whispering, said, “Papa . . . are you sure . . . ?”

  “That I know what I’m doing?” The old man laughed hollowly. “Do you think Harry Gauge is going to wait for Banion to show up? I know our sheriff’s kind too well. He’ll try hitting us from every angle he can think of. Soften us up.”

  “You said it yourself,” she said, still very quiet, “our men aren’t gunfighters.”

  “No, but they don’t have to be. Most fought for one side or the other, not so long ago, in a conflict bigger than this. And this is war, too.”

  Then Papa strode down the steps with the confidence of a sighted man and positioned himself just in front of the mounted foreman.

  “Whit, my boy,” he said. “You straight on what to do?”

  “We’re set,” he said. His hat was off in respect to Willa and her father. “Bulk of the cattle are on the north end, have been since dark, and the trenches are dug. Carmen took the crew out with the water wagons two hours ago.”

  “Good.” Papa took off his hat and lifted his unseeing eyes to the sky, turning his face toward the breeze, which was not considerable. “Long as this wind doesn’t pick up, we should make out fine.”

  Whit leaned down and spoke directly to Papa, soft enough that Willa barely heard: “You think it’s wise to just leave five men here, Mr. Cullen?”

  “Gauge’s first move won’t be against the house.”

  “Can we be sure of that, sir?”

  “Nothing’s sure in this life but death. Just do it my way, son, and we’ll see how we come out.”

  “Yes, sir.” Whit put his hat back on, turned to his men and said, “Okay—let’s move on out!”

  The other cowhands waited for Whit to bring his horse around and take the head position. Then they went out, two by two, in an even gait that built into pounding hooves when the riders had disappeared into the night.

  Willa came down and joined her father, slipping an arm in his. “How can you be so sure, Papa, that Gauge will do what you think he will?”

  “Because when I was his age,” her father said, “and not such a nice fella myself . . . it’s exactly what I would have done.” He sighed. “Anyway, we can’t pin all our hopes on this Banion.”

  Frowning, she said, “Well, you’re putting all your money on him.”

  The old man sighed. “Would have been a better bet,” he admitted, “if it was Caleb York coming.”

  “If you’re pinning our hopes on a dead man, Papa, we really are in a bad way.”

  He didn’t seem to be listening to her. To himself
he said, “It would have been so easy for that man. As easy as it would have been for me. Back when these sorry eyes could see.”

  Her arm still in his, she tugged at him. “Come inside, Papa. Come inside. Coffee’s on the stove.”

  “I’ll be in, girl. Leave me be.”

  She left him there in the moonlight, staring out at the dissipating dust cloud his men had left, as if he could see it.

  Moonlight lent a rugged beauty to the three open wagons loaded down with barrels of water, positioned a dozen yards apart, with the cowhands’ horses tied up behind them. Blankets had already been soaked down and tied onto the backs of the saddled and ready steeds. One cowhand was back there with the animals, tending them, steadying them.

  Another dozen yards down the gentle slope were three four-foot-deep trenches, each with room enough for three men with rifles. For a short while, Whit moved from one trench to another, keeping low, passing along instructions, until completing the armed trio in the center. Beyond the trenches in high grass, a scattering of underfed cows stood stupidly under the moon, as if contemplating jumping over it.

  “We’re ready,” Whit told the two other middle-trench cowboys.

  Stubby Jerry Morris, not as dumb as his close-set eyes made him look, said, “You see anything out there, Whit?”

  “Not yet. It’ll come.”

  Roughneck Rafe Connor, black handlebar mustache falling below his face, said, “I sure as hell hope Old Man Cullen knows what the hell he’s doin’.”

  Two utterances of “hell” in one outburst seemed disrespectful to Whit, but he let it go.

  Jerry said, “I ain’t known ol’ Cullen to be wrong yet.”

  “Me neither,” Rafe admitted with a sigh. “But there just ain’t enough of us.”

  Jerry shook his head. “We can’t know how many men Gauge’ll send.”

  All three men were peering over their Winchesters into the nearby tall grass, which riffled in the breeze, tickling the legs of the handful of cows.

  Calmly, Whit said, “Don’t matter how many there are. Not if we’re ready and they ain’t.”

  Rafe, always something of a complainer, said, “But how do we know we’re in the right spot? They could come in over there, or over yonder, and we’d never get wise till it was too late to do a damn thing about it.”

  Whit placed a patient hand on Rafe’s shoulder. “We’re right where we need to be. Out there is where the high grass is. Gauge knows our line shack is just over the ridge behind us, and figures to run them cows right on through it. Losin’ Mr. Cullen some steers and maybe a man or two and cost him considerable.”

  Jerry said, “Sure glad we moved them beeves out. You think we left enough of them scrawny ones to sucker ’em?”

  “Should be just what they want to see,” Whit said. “They’ll just figure the rest of the herd’s bedded down. Anyway, they wouldn’t risk a fire right by the main herd.”

  “Why not?”

  “Think about it, boyo. A fire would stampede ’em right onto Gauge’s range. All his cows would join in and there’d be hell to pay.”

  Rafe said, “Would that be so bad? Maybe that’d be the last of Gauge, then.”

  Whit shook his head. “Too high a cost. Steady your rifle, boy, and don’t think about nothin’ but what’s out there and about to come at you.”

  “Okay,” Rafe said, and shivered, though it wasn’t all that cold. “I just hope we ain’t the Alamo and they’s Santa Anna.”

  The men with rifles watched in quiet silence for five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Then a few along the line began to chat in their boredom.

  “You know,” Rafe said, “those dumb cows’ll get caught in the cross fire.”

  “That just means,” Jerry said, “we’ll have a hell of a barbecue tomorrow.”

  Whit whispered harshly, “Hold it down. I heard something. . . .”

  Silence took over again.

  Then: snorting horses and metal clanking.

  Whit pointed.

  Shadowy figures on horseback were moving toward the edge of the high grass. Somewhere a steer bawled, and horses were brought to an abrupt whinnying halt.

  Silhouetted men climbed down from their saddles. Across the grass, orange flashes, chest-high, lit the night like plump fireflies. Then lower, bigger pops of yellow-orange-blue seemed to float toward the watchers while half-a-dozen intruders with torches dropped blossoms of flame onto the grass. For now, the cattle ignored them.

  Whit said, “They’ve made their move. Now!”

  The Bar-O cowhands down in their trenches let go with a fusillade of rifle fire over the heads of the scrawny beeves.

  One man howled and dropped. Another man fell without a sound, disappearing into a fire he’d just set. Dead already, or he’d be screaming.

  “It’s a trap!” somebody yelled on the other side of the grass.

  Deputy Vint Rhomer’s voice! Whit thought.

  The remaining intruders—four? five?—tossed their torches and ran to their horses, mounted them, and tried to head across the burning grass, but their horses protested, neighing, rearing, damn near throwing them. Bullets falling around them like deadly rain, Rhomer and his raiders retreated, the deputy’s voice rising above the crackle of flames: “Clear out! Clear out!”

  Then the intruders were swallowed back into the night, leaving a field whose fiery edge was spreading, the cattle starting to bray in fear, stirring but too far apart from each other to stampede in any meaningful way.

  Whit raised up in the trench and held his rifle high in one hand like an attacking Apache. “Bring those horses and blankets up!”

  The men scrambled from the trenches and circled behind the water-barrel-loaded wagons to get the horses. The cowhands climbed up into their saddles and rode across the high grass to where it was burning, then cut across the edges of the burning patch of range, never exposing the horses so directly to the flames that they, too, would protest, cutting in, cutting out, expertly dragging those soaked blankets across the burning grass, making it smaller and smaller, until in minutes the fire was doused and only gray wisps of smoke remained. That, and a scorched smell to the air and a strip of blackened prairie.

  Most of the cows had just stood there through all this; a few had wandered off, but two had been drilled by one side of the fracas or the other. Jerry had been right—there would be good eating tomorrow.

  The men gathered between the trenches and the wagons. Everybody was breathing hard and grinning, some laughing. Whit remained somber.

  He said, “Anybody hurt?”

  Holding on to his arm, some red seeping between his fingers, Jerry said, “I got grazed. Nothin’ some alcohol won’t cure.”

  Whit knew the cowhand probably meant alcohol poured down his gullet, not onto the wound.

  Rafe said, “We got two of them.”

  “Yeah,” Whit said, nodding, letting out air. “I saw them go down and nobody of theirs bothered pickin’ ’em up. Let’s check ’em out—pretty sure one’s dead, but the other may just be wounded. So six-guns ready, gents.”

  Whit was on his way to one of the fallen when, from over to his left, he heard Jerry call out: “This here’s Stringer!”

  The foreman went over for a look. Bending for a closer view, he said, “Stringer, all right. Part of the first batch Gauge brought to town. Dead as hell—head shot.”

  Whit went over to the second fallen man, found him also deceased, bullet in the chest. The foreman said, loud enough for all to hear, “This one’s Bradley! One of Gauge’s men, all right.”

  They removed one empty water barrel to make room in one of the wagons for the two bodies. Whit figured Mr. Cullen would want a look at them. They loaded up the two dead steers, too, in another wagon.

  Cocky and confident now, Rafe ambled up to Whit and asked, “Think they’ll be back again?”

  “Not tonight, they won’t,” Whit said, allowing himself a grin, finally. “We won this battle.”

  But all of them knew one battle wasn
’t a war.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sheriff Harry Gauge sat quietly in his darkened office and enjoyed a few fingers—well, maybe more than a few—of the whiskey from his bottom desk-drawer bottle. Then the big blond man rolled and smoked a cigarette as he mulled his situation, and barely noticed when, around nine, arriving in groups from the various ranches, cowhands started roaring into town, whooping and hollering and firing off rounds. Similarly, he’d barely noticed when the more timid storekeepers boarded up their windows in anticipation of the monthly hooraw. He hadn’t stuck his nose out of his office in either case.

  Just past ten, feeling loose but in no way drunk—at least from where he sat—the sheriff gave his sidearm, a . 44 Colt, a cursory check (he’d cleaned and oiled it earlier) before locking up the office and heading down to the Victory Saloon, Trinidad’s only watering hole.

  But with a watering hole like the Victory, who needed another option?

  The sheriff pushed through the batwing doors into the impressive saloon with its ornately decorated tin ceiling and gas lamp chandeliers, its long, well-polished carved oak bar at left with mirrors and bottles of rye and bourbon behind, towels hanging down for brushing beer out of mustaches, and gleaming brass foot rail with an array of spittoons. The contrast was sharp between the high-class bar’s bow-tied, white-shirt-sporting bartenders and the dusty cowboys in frayed bandanas, faded work shirts, and seat-patched Levi’s who leaned there.

  Though there were tables for drinking men at right as you came in, most of the big space was a casino, filled to capacity tonight with already liquored-up cowhands freely losing their money at dice, faro, red dog, twenty-one, and poker. Busy, too, were the roulette, chuck-a-luck, and wheel-of-fortune stations. At the far end of the saloon—whose walls bore such rustic decorative touches as saddles, spurs, and steer horns, riding the fancy gold-and-black wallpaper—rose a small stage with a piano and a fiddle player, near which a modest dance floor was crowded with cowboys doing awkward steps with the patient silk-and-satin saloon gals who were plying their own trade.

  Gauge and Lola owned the joint, fifty-fifty, and it was a sweet damn moneymaker. Imagine running half-a-dozen spreads, on which several hundred men worked for you, only to fleece them out of their wages month in, month out. But this was chickenfeed compared to where Gauge was heading.