Hot Lead, Cold Justice Page 7

  With his left hand, Burnham grabbed the banker by his four-in-hand tie and yanked him forward until the noses of the two men almost touched. As for the nose of the Colt revolver, it was in the banker’s throat, just below his Adam’s apple.

  Burnham’s upper lip curled back. “Don’t you lie to me, you greedy bastard! Everybody knows this bank has a hundred grand in it! Where’s the rest?”

  Swallowing, shaking his head, his eyes marbles of fear, the bank president said, “There isn’t any! I can’t be held responsible for rumors you’ve heard! People who talk about such things don’t know anything about the reality of banking!”

  “I’ve seen this town. It’s rolling in it!”

  “Sir,” the banker said, not realizing his pandering only made Burnham more angry, “we handle most of our transactions on paper, by way of documents and ledger books. Most stores around here sell on credit, since so many of their customers have to wait for cattle sales or harvest time or till building construction is finished.”

  “Are you lecturing me?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  Burnham shot him in the head.

  Leaving the banker’s body slumped against the now empty safe, Burnham and his boys took their leave. They were angry over the shortfall, but not as angry as the storm they now had to flee into.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The ride on horseback from Trinidad to the Cullen ranch usually took twenty minutes or so.

  Not today.

  If he was lucky, Caleb York might make it in an hour, the road out of town an uncertain affair in a sea of white defined only by the telegraph poles that lined it, its normal straight passage compromised by drifts requiring constant small detours. Neither Caleb York nor his dappled gray gelding were accustomed to such conditions, as man and beast plowed through the kind of wind folks called a Blue Norther, with its relentless howling, swirling, blinding welcome.

  Dry desert land hid under this drifting alabaster sea, but evidence to that effect was scant. Now and then, left and right of the hide-and-seek-playing road, a yucca would raise its arms in snowy surrender, and a cottonwood would stand shivering, bare but for the patchy pearly garment it wore.

  York had a woolen muffler tying down his hat and knotted below his chin, his hat brim tugged down, his black coat flapping like frustrated wings. What uncovered flesh on his face remained bore a crystalline crust, and his breath was steam that mocked him, while his dappled gelding’s breath from its dilated nostrils was more of the same.

  York’s decades in the West had found him doing many things in any number of places, but in none of them had he ever been a cowboy. He was, however, well aware of what the life of a cowpuncher entailed, from stampedes to treacherous river crossings, from torrential rain to blistering drought. Snakes, insects, brush fires, dust storms, quicksand, mud holes, and thunderstorms—none of it appealed, even to a gunfighter whose legend made a target of him. But, hell—more cowhands were killed by lightning than shootists by gunfire.

  And now the cowboys of the Cullen ranch were out here somewhere in this swirling white death trying not to get frostbite or pick up pneumonia or just plain die, all to protect the rancher’s precious cows—to keep the beeves moving and not just standing there stupidly to freeze, as the dumb critters were prone to do, or pile up over fences or in a gully.

  What kind of fool would be out in such weather, anyway?

  Of course he knew damn well what kind of fool, because he was one of them, his concern for Willa Cullen, and what she was facing in these disastrous conditions, having sent him out here. And he couldn’t be sure he could even find his way to his objective through this wall of white.

  Then, not far off the road, the familiar rustic log arch—with its wind-swinging, chain-hung plaque, carved with a big brash O under a firm line, the Bar-O brand—announced the sheriff’s destination. He and the gelding navigated the turn, though the hard-packed dirt lane to the ranch itself soon became a guess under the treacherous beauty of snow gathered in ivory waves, like an ocean’s rough waters had frozen solid.

  He was just thinking he’d lost his way and was headed out onto the range to freeze and die when, like a mirage in the whirling white, the Cullen ranch revealed itself. Looking less real than a painting by your maiden aunt, two barns loomed, then emerged the rat-proof grain crib, the log bunkhouse, the nearby cookhouse with its hand pump mostly lost in snow; and the corrals at left and right, but most of all the main building, a central structure fashioned of logs Willa’s late father had put up himself, with some stone add-ons. The ranch house roof was heavy with snow and silvery stuff had found its way under the overhang onto the porch, piles of it sitting on the rockers, bored misshapen spectators. But the windows burned yellow with light from kerosene lamps.

  Somehow Lou Morgan, the lanky old stockman who looked after the barns, had seen York coming, and was heading out to meet him, bundled in a sheepskin coat and heavy gloves and canvas trousers, his hat tied down with a muffler, too. Morgan was walking oddly, putting one hand at a time out in front of the other. Then, approaching on the gelding, York understood: Morgan was guiding himself along a rope tied to the door of the horse barn at his back and knotted to the wood rail of the porch ahead.

  This would guide the old boy from the stable to the main house and back again, without getting lost in the snow.

  “Caleb York!” Morgan cried, finally recognizing the rider in the poor visibility. “Let’s get that horse in the barn!”

  York climbed down and walked his horse, following the stable man on his rope back to the barn. Soon the gelding had a stall and warmth and even hay, though this had taken up one of the few remaining berths. The barn had a wood-burning stove putting out enough heat that York wouldn’t have minded curling up in a stall himself, though the wooden walls of the structure shuddered with each gust.

  Morgan, spare and grizzled, his head looking almost bandaged in the cloth he’d wrapped himself in, gazed up at the visitor, pointing in the general direction of the ranch house.

  “Miz Cullen will be glad to see you,” Morgan said. “She’s all by herself and worried to death. I don’t blame her!”

  York tipped his hat to the stable man and thanked him for accommodating the gelding, then headed over to the ranch house. He did not use the rope to drag himself there, as he could make out the building well enough not to, but he wouldn’t be ashamed if that changed on the return trip.

  York climbed the several snow-clogged stairs and got onto the porch, where fortunately no drift blocked the door. He unknotted the woolen scarf under his chin that held his hat on, and took off both the scarf and the hat. Then, after tromping snow from his boots, he knocked on the carved-wood and cut-glass door that had been purchased by Willa’s late mother long before York had met either George Cullen or his daughter. He and George had been good friends, with nary a hitch, while York and Willa’s relationship had been almost as stormy as this calamitous day.

  He didn’t have to knock twice. She jerked the door open, alarm on her pretty face, as if only more disaster could come calling about now.

  When she saw who it was, she clutched York to her and squeezed him hard, an instinctive, perhaps reflexive reaction to the sight of this particular man on her doorstep at this troubled moment. She pulled him inside, then sanity returned to her, accompanied by embarrassment.

  “Sorry,” she said, smiling awkwardly. “It’s just, uh . . . so nice to see a friendly face.”

  Willa Cullen was pretty without any daintiness, an almost tall young woman with an hourglass figure and creamy complexion courtesy of her late Swedish mother, who could also be credited with her daughter’s straw-yellow hair, which was worn up and braided in back. At twenty-three, she was older than her years, except at those times when she was younger than them.

  “I appreciate the welcome,” York said, and hung up his hat and coat on hooks inside the door, which he shut behind him, reducing the roar of wind to a dull howl.

  Having just hu
gged him, Willa—in a red-and-black plaid shirt, new-looking denims, and black leather boots—was covered in snow and general dampness herself.

  “You’re cold!” she said.

  He jerked a thumb behind him. “It’s snowing.”

  She formed half a smile. “I noticed.”

  “Now you’re soaked.”

  She gestured toward the nearby living room. “There’s a fire to dry us. Can you . . . stay a while?”

  “If you like. I was just . . .” He looked for the right words and couldn’t quite find them. So he just said, “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  Her small half smile filled itself out, but something larger was in her cornflower-blue eyes; they seemed to be watering up.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, leading him by the hand into the living room as if he were a child. “I don’t know if you can help.... You’re no cattleman.”

  “That I’m not.” He grinned. “The only thing I know about beef is how to eat it. Maybe cook it, under pressing circumstances.”

  Bathed in the yellow of the window-set kerosene lamps, the living room was a mix of her two late parents—her father’s hand-hewn, bark-and-all carpentry and her mother’s finely carved Spanish-style furnishings purchased on trips to Mexico. Her father’s influence dominated, though—the beam ceilings, hides on the floor, mounted antlers, the stone fireplace, in which a fire fed warmth to a room that would otherwise be starving in the cold. Old rifles were wall mounted on upturned deer hoofs on either side of the fireplace.

  As they neared the fire and the pair of angled rough-wood chairs draped in Indian blankets facing it, a small, wooden George Cullen–crafted table between them, she said, “You’re frozen solid.”

  “This’ll thaw me nicely,” he said, nodding toward the dancing blue-and-orange flames.

  They each took a chair.

  Willa sat forward, hands clasped, her expression concerned. “I heard about Deputy Tulley. Is he all right?”

  “Doc Miller thinks he’ll recover.”

  She sighed. “And how is Trinidad coping with this storm?”

  “Like they say at sea, the town’s battened down the hatches. I took stock this afternoon, as best I could, and everyone seems to be fixed for firewood and fuel oil.”

  “Good. Good.” She shook her head, frowning. “You should get out of those things.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You know where my father’s bedroom is?”

  “No.”

  She told him.

  “All Papa’s clothes are still in there,” she said, “in the armoire.” She pointed to where a hallway crossed between them and the dining room. “Get into something dry before you catch your death. Can’t have the legendary Caleb York dying of a cough or the sniffles.”

  He did as he was told. In a bedroom dominated by an old brass bed and adorned only with one hanging framed print of a herd of buffalo, he got out of his things and was standing in his red long-johns when the knock came.

  He went to the door and said, “Yes?”

  “Hand your clothes out. I’ll put them on the hearth to dry.”

  “All right,” he said, and did so.

  When he handed the stack of clothing out, she said, “That underwear—is it damp, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get out of them. Papa’s undergarments are in the dresser. Should fit you.”

  Again, he did as he was told. Standing there buck naked on one side of the door, and feeling damned funny about it, he passed the clothing around and out to her. She took them with a smile and a giggle, then disappeared.

  He shut the door, frowning, then glanced behind him and saw the mirror over the dresser. Well, he hoped she’d enjoyed the rear view.

  From the dresser he took fresh long-johns, white ones, and black trousers and a gray shirt from the wardrobe. Everything fit him fine, which surprised him some. He’d always thought of George Cullen as a smaller man, physically, than himself. But when he thought about it, he realized that Cullen must have been good-size, merely bent over some with age. The old boy had seen his share of hard days, and was blind at the end, but always had more spine than any other two men. Three.

  Dressed, including some brown woolen socks he’d found in the drawer given to underthings, York sat on the side of George Cullen’s bed and thought about the dead man’s daughter. They’d had a rocky time of it, Willa and Caleb. They’d expressed love for each other, early on, and had kissed more than once, though it never got much farther. She was young and he’d respected her father and, anyway, York had come to Trinidad as somebody just passing through.

  Didn’t seem right to have his way, then be on his way.

  He’d had a job lined up with Pinkerton, in San Diego, and wanted to get shy of these old-fashioned Southwestern towns. The big city was for him. And he’d told her as much.

  She had not taken it well, particularly after she’d pulled strings to get the Citizens Committee to offer him the county sheriff’s job (the mayor held sway with the Territorial governor). It had gone back and forth, with him accepting the job temporarily, still intending to go, quitting, then taking it on again. Unintentionally, he’d kind of whipsawed the girl.

  Eventually, with all kinds of perquisites thrown his way, he’d decided to stay, at least for a time. Only by then Willa had got herself involved with another man, a rotter, who Caleb York had come to have to kill.

  It was self-defense, but tell that to the woman engaged to the rotter!

  Things had settled down some between them, and they had more or less agreed to be friends, which of course was the worst thing two people who loved each other—or at least had loved each other once—could try to pull off.

  He went out there in his stocking feet and found her sitting on the hearth next to his clothes, which were laid out like a dead man.

  Sitting himself in one of the rough-wood chairs, he said, “Thank you, Willa. These fit fine.”

  “Papa was a big man. So are you.”

  “Few men were ever bigger than George Cullen.”

  She smiled sadly. Then she looked at him and said, “I wish he were here.”

  “As do I.”

  “I mean . . . right here, in this situation.... I wish he were here.”

  York nodded. “Blind, your papa saw more than most.”

  The warmth of the fire felt very good, but the moaning, witchy cry of the wind-driven snow just outside was a reminder of reality.

  “This is more than a storm,” he told her quietly. “It’s a full-scale blizzard. They’re getting hit bad up north. Hard as we’re getting it, we may be luckier than those in the other territories—Wyoming, Montana, Dakota, the rest of the Plains.”

  “Funny thing is,” she said, eyes on the fire now, “it’s last summer that set us up for this.”

  “How so?”

  She turned to him with a smile. “You really aren’t a cattleman, are you?”

  He smiled a little, too. “No. I’m really not. I’m just a drifter trying to find his way to California. Remember?”

  She laughed very softly. “I remember. . . . Do you remember how hot it got last summer?”

  He nodded. “A real scorcher.”

  “With hardly any rain to relieve it. Streams and water holes dried up, range burned brown, feed grew short, beef prices fell.... We fared better than most, but our cattle were skin and bones compared to usual.”

  York had been aware of all that, but from a town person’s perspective—cowhands coming into the Victory, needing a drink because they were “spitting cotton,” merchants having to give loyal customers lines of credit.

  Willa sighed, patted the thighs of her denims, and smiled at him—a smile she had to work at, though. “I would just bet you wouldn’t mind if I stood you to a cup of coffee. Am I right?”

  He smiled back. “Wouldn’t mind at all.”

  She came back with two china cups brimming with coffee, handing one to him, setting the other on the rough-hewn
table nearby. Then, from the other bark-wood chair, she snatched away the Indian blanket and stood with it folded over her arm, looking at him expressionlessly.

  “Cold as it is,” she said, “would you mind if I joined you?”

  “Not at all,” he said, and sipped coffee, while she slipped in beside him, covering them both with the blanket.

  They sat and sipped coffee and stared at the crackling fire. Once York took it upon himself to throw another log on and stir the blaze some, then returned to their chair. Both coffee cups were empty now and resting on the table. She nestled herself next to him under the blanket, and after a while she looked up at him.

  He could take a hint. He kissed her. It was gentle and sweet, but it lasted long enough to turn the corner into something else. They kissed quite a while, and he had just unbuttoned her plaid shirt, with no complaint from her, slipping his hand inside to cup a breast, when a knock at the door—loud and insistent—just about tumbled them from the chair.

  Willa sat up, the blanket falling to their laps, and she quickly buttoned her shirt back up and straightened her hair absently, though it was pinned back enough not to need it.

  “What could that be?” she said, and again alarm was her automatic reaction to someone at the door. She rose and, with a glance at York, said, “I’ll see what it is. You just stay put.”

  He nodded. In his present state, staying put was the better part of valor.

  Willa hurried toward the door, where the pounding was repeated before she got there. She opened it a crack, then all the way, and a snow-covered cowboy lurched in. She shut the door behind him. The cowboy stood there weaving in his duster.

  “Earl,” she said, gesturing to the living room, “come in and warm yourself at the fire.”

  “Thank you, Miz Cullen.” His voice was husky and out of breath.

  “I want a complete report!”

  “That’s what you’ll get, ma’am.”

  York had met Earl Colson, but only once, and didn’t really know the man—just that he’d been well-recommended by a rancher up north when Willa needed to hire on a new foreman.