That word—“gunfighter”—had just the slightest edge.
“But,” she said, “I am no señorita. That’s a happenstance of this dwelling I purchased. My mother came from Belfast and she and my father met in San Francisco, where they were both doing business. You may interpret that as you will.”
That didn’t seem to York to need much interpretation, although he couldn’t imagine why she’d be so frank with him, the small-town sheriff who killed her son.
She answered the question in his eyes. “Sheriff, my son’s tragic passing has brought us together, but we do not have to be adversaries. You’re aware that Mr. Byers, as my agent, has been purchasing the smaller spreads in the vicinity.”
“I am.”
“Do you have any idea why?”
He shrugged. “I would assume that farther north, in our sister city and thereabouts up in Colorado, you got hit even harder by the blizzards.”
Her nod was slow. “We did. That is a fact. What little stock survived we sold, and we divested ourselves of several other Colorado properties, and purchased this spread from the Gauge family, who had no interest in pursuing this difficult means of livelihood, and were only too happy to sell out reasonably.”
“The pickings here were favorable, I’m sure.”
“We mean to brazen it out, Caleb. To rebuild the cattle industry into something like what it was, before Mother Nature took her stern hand. It’s not a game for cowards or the weak.”
He gestured with an open hand. “Others are going a different way. Merging cattle ranching and farming on much smaller spreads. You aim to put together something grander, I take it?”
The big dark eyes got bigger. “I do. My youngest son is a casualty of his own weaknesses and of a part of the country where men carry guns to the grocer’s and church. My other sons will live to see this place become civilized, and, God willing, so will I.”
“In my official capacity,” York said, with a shrug, “I will do what I can to help.”
“That I am glad to hear. But you may be wondering why, under these grave circumstances, I might subject you to a lecture on the subject of the future of the Hammond family cattle business.”
“Meaning no disrespect,” York said, “I think you might feel you have me at a disadvantage. If there would ever be a time I’d be beholden to you, this would be it.”
She smiled again. She made a sound that was almost a laugh and not quite a grunt. “You are not wrong. But what I mostly want to do is make sure—despite the tragic circumstance—that we do not . . . get off on the wrong foot.”
York wondered how much farther on the wrong foot one might get than to shoot and kill someone’s son.
“I had already,” she said, head back, “made something of a study of you, from a distance. Mr. Byers made some inquiries—discreetly.”
That straightened him. “In what regard?”
“You were a close confidant of the late George Cullen. And you are friendly with his daughter.”
“Yes.” He chose not to explore the precise meaning of “friendly” in this context.
“Willa Cullen is young, I understand. Twenty-three, twenty-four?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Very young to be running a cattle ranch, and right now she—like so many others, after the blizzard—is in a most precarious position.”
“She’s a strong young woman.”
The Hammond woman leaned on her elbows. “So I understand. But I hope to buy her out. With the Bar-O merging with the Circle G, and all of the smaller ranches I’ve acquired, mine will be the biggest operation in the Territory.”
Not would be—will be.
“Miss Cullen,” York said, “grew up on that ranch. She was George Cullen’s only child. She views herself as the equivalent of her father’s son. I do know her well, and I doubt you could tempt her.”
She seemed to take no offense. “As I say, I had some discreet inquiries around Trinidad made about you, Caleb. If anyone could . . . tempt her . . . it might well be you.”
That didn’t sit well with him. He rose. “Again, Mrs. Hammond, you have my sympathies.”
The throaty voice grew just a little louder. “She grew up in that house, you say—well, she could have it. She could stay there. Perhaps we might set aside some farmland. My sole interest is in cattle.”
More so than her dead son, it would seem.
“If you feel I’m owed any debt,” she said coolly, “in the tragedy that brought you here, perhaps you would consider speaking to Miss Cullen on my behalf. Who knows? Perhaps Caleb York could persuade her to sell—that doing so would be in her best interests.”
Was he reading a threat in that?
His hostess rose, came around the desk, and took him by the arm—this seemed her way of dismissing him, benignly. She was taller than he’d figured, and as graceful as he’d imagined, and the black dress hugged her rather curvaceous figure like an overeager suitor. This woman of perhaps forty could have made a much younger man drunk with her beauty.
“We won’t be adversaries, Sheriff York,” she said. “You’re the most famous man in the New Mexico Territory, after all.”
And would she soon be the most famous woman? York wondered. Was that her implication?
She deposited him in the hall, sealed herself back in her chamber, and Byers materialized to show him out.
“Remarkable woman, don’t you think?” the bookkeeper asked.
“Well, I’ll say one thing.”
“Yes?”
“She’s holding up.”
CHAPTER THREE
Willa Cullen guided the buckboard drawn by two quarter horses under the log arch with the chain-hung plaque boldly bearing a big burnt O—echoing the Bar-O brand.
The lovely young woman looked tomboyish in her red-and-black plaid shirt and denims and boots, but no less feminine for it. The tall, shapely girl wore her straw-yellow hair up and braided in back, which went well with her long-lashed, cornflower-blue eyes.
This late morning she was accompanied by lanky, weathered stockman Lou Morgan, who had helped her on the supply run into Trinidad for flour, sugar, beans, lard, molasses, coffee, and rice, plus bacon packed in bran and eggs in cornmeal. Even with a reduced number of cowhands, it took a lot to keep a ranch going like the one she’d inherited not so long ago.
The largest spread around, the Bar-O boasted a corral, two barns, rat-proof grain crib, log bunkhouse, and cookhouse with hand pump, wooden bench, and row of tin wash basins along an awning-shaded porch. The ranch house was a rambling log-and-stone affair that had been added onto several times, the central wooden structure with its plank-wood front porch erected by her late father in pioneering days.
But for a swirl of smoke from the cookhouse, things looked deserted, with the herders out on their grim duties—for weeks now, about half of Willa’s buckaroos were keeping watch on the skinny few thousand surviving beeves, the other hands still gathering bloated carcasses to pile up in ghastly barbecues, fighting off buzzards and wolves to do so.
About half of her hands had moved on—some had up and quit; a few had died in the last brutal blizzard. She had been impressed by how many of the colored cowboys and Mexican vaqueros had stuck despite hard going. Her current foreman, Bill Jackson, was an ex-slave from Mississippi, and didn’t seem easily thrown by anything life threw at him. Help like that in times like these was priceless.
Willa’s visitor might have been lost in the rustic landscape, but she picked him out at once—Caleb York, sitting on the front steps, hat in his hand, looking in his usual black like a handsome, rawboned preacher come calling. His dappled gray gelding, with its distinctive black mane, was hitched nearby, black tail twitching.
As she approached, guiding the buckboard toward the house, Caleb rose and smiled shyly and waved. Seeing him sent something leaping in her—that often happened, but because she’d earlier been disappointed at his absence in town, the sensation felt keener.
Back in Trinidad, w
hile Morgan and the proprietor’s slow-witted son Lem piled the sacks in back of the buckboard outside Harris Mercantile, Willa had headed up the boardwalk to the sheriff’s office, hoping to find Caleb at his desk.
Instead she’d found Deputy Jonathan P. Tulley sitting at his “desk”—a rough-hewn table overseen by wanted posters and a rifle rack near the wood-burning stove, which was going just enough to keep a pot of coffee warm. She helped herself to the chair behind the absent Caleb’s desk—the familiarity had been earned.
“Sleeping in, is he?” she said.
“Not hardly. Coffee, miss?”
“No thanks.” She’d experienced Tulley’s coffee before.
The deputy was saying, “He’s out to the Circle G.”
She sat up. “What business has he there?”
“Callin’ on the Hammond woman. Kilt her boy last night.”
Now she really sat up. “What?”
Tulley told the tale, in a colorful way almost worth sharing.
When he wrapped up his account, Tulley asked, “Have ye met the widow Hammond yet?”
“No.”
Tulley clicked in his cheek. “I hear she’s a fine figger of a female. Word is she’s buyin’ up all them small spreads in your neck of the woods.”
“So I hear. But I also hear she’s taken on some rough cowboys.”
“. . . Cowboys like them that rode with the Clantons and McLauries?”
“That’s right.” She sighed. “I hope Caleb knows what he’s doing.”
“Generally does. He only kilt that boy ’cause that’s what you do with mad dogs. How is things out to the Bar-O, since the Die-Up?”
“Taxing. Ugly.”
“Sheriff’s gettin’ a house, I hear.” He looked at her with a twinkle. “Mayhap ye should move to town. Cattle ranchin’ is no fit trade for the gentler sex.”
She got up and went over and grabbed him by his suspenders and yanked him bug-eyed to his feet. “ ‘Mayhap’ you should mind your own business, Deputy Tulley.”
She let go of him and the sounds of his suspenders snapping and him sitting hard in his wooden chair foreshadowed her slamming of the jailhouse door.
Looking back on that, in the buckboard, she felt foolish. Tulley hadn’t meant any harm—he seldom did, unless wielding a shotgun at the sheriff’s behest.
And now here Caleb was, on her literal doorstep! Tulley had been wrong—the sheriff had ridden out to see her, not the high-and-mighty Victoria Hammond.
Caleb came over and helped her down from the buckboard—she didn’t need the help, of course, but it was gentlemanly of him. The jangle of harness announced Lou was heading over to the cookhouse to start unloading the cookie’s share of supplies.
“Willa,” he said, smiling.
“Caleb,” she said, smiling back. “Why am I honored with this visit? Your deputy said you were going out to see the Hammond woman.”
His gaze lowered. “I was. I needed to convey my sympathies.”
“For killing her son?”
“Yes. For killing her son.”
The buckboard was whining under the unloading down at the cookhouse, Harmon, the plump white-bearded cook, lending a hand.
“From what Tulley told me,” she said, “the boy had it coming.... Care to sit for a while? I made lemonade this morning.”
“Best offer I’ve had today.”
She was glad to hear that.
When they were inside, with the door shut, Caleb put his hat and coat on the wall pegs, then took her in his arms and kissed her. The kiss, and the embrace that went with it, lasted a while. They were alone in the house—she had no servant, unless you counted Caleb York. Then she took him by the hand and walked him into and across the living room.
The narrowness of the room made it seem longer and larger than it was, the fittings a mix of her late parents—her mother’s finely carved Spanish-style furnishings and her father’s hand-hewn, bark-and-all carpentry that went well with the hides on the floor and mounted antler heads. An imposing stone fireplace seemed protected by a pair of Winchesters—a Model 1866 and a Model 1855—working relics from her papa’s pioneer past, each supported by mounted upturned deer hoofs.
In front of the unlit fireplace were positioned twin homemade chairs, good size, with folded-over Indian blankets serving as cushions; Caleb sat. She fetched him a mason jar of lemonade, and one for herself as well, and settled into the other chair. A rough-hewn table fashioned by George Cullen separated them.
“How did she take it?” Willa asked him.
“I don’t really know.”
“You . . . ?”
He shrugged, sipped lemonade. “She has a bookkeeper and . . . ‘factotum’ he calls himself, name of Byers, who came by last night and got the particulars. Took the word out to her.”
“I’ve met Byers. He seems too nice to trust.”
Caleb twitched a smile. “I sensed that myself. The clean man who does the dirty work.”
“Then you went there, strictly to . . .”
“Pay my respects.” He sipped more lemonade. “You make a mean glass of this stuff. Very nice. Tart.”
“She’s a very nice tart, you say? Victoria Hammond?”
That made him outright smile, but he said, “Don’t be unkind. She lost her son.”
“Word is he was a drunken lout and, after all, he ravaged and thrashed that poor girl, if Tulley’s to be believed.”
“He’s generally reliable. The whelp forced me into killing him, so I won’t lose sleep. Still. Sitting across from the deceased’s mother was unsettling.”
“She gave you what for?”
“Not at all.” He told her how the mother had spoken openly of her son’s failings and even those of her late husband. “She was very frank.”
“It may have been a device.”
“How so?”
Willa sipped her lemonade; she felt she hadn’t made it sweet enough, but it would have to do. “My understanding is the woman has taken on some of the lowest-down cowhands in the Southwest. Brigands and gunfighters, rabble left over from Tombstone days.”
“I’ve heard that too,” he admitted.
“And the way her husband made himself a cattle baron was by buying beef rustled from Mexico.” She rolled her eyes. “Situated here, all the closer to the border, I can well imagine we’ll have a cattle baroness soon, doing much the same.”
His eyebrows flicked up and down. “If so, and if the Mexican authorities want my help, I will pitch in. But it’s not my place to do anything in San Miguel County, unless they rustle from you or the other ranchers around. Is that your concern?”
She laughed and it was bitter enough to make the lemonade seem sweet. “What cattle is there to rustle? My poor scrawny things? There’ll be no roundup this year, and I’ll have to find a way to fatten them up to make it next season. No, Victoria Hammond will be following her late husband’s lead by taking on beef below the border, where they didn’t get hit by the blizzards.”
This time his eyebrows stayed up a while. “Maybe you should consider selling out to her. She’s buying. She said so.”
Willa frowned. “I know she’s buying. She’s grabbed half a dozen of the small spreads, at bargain rates.” She looked at him, hard. “Did she ask you to . . . Caleb, are you her damn messenger?”
He winced at that. “She did ask me to approach you, yes . . . but that’s not what I’m doing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. I’m just telling what she told me. What her intentions are. I didn’t get the sense she wanted to take advantage of you, even if she has done, where some of the smaller ranchers are concerned.”
She stood.
Came over and planted herself in front of him and put her hands on her hips, her legs apart, a female Colossus of Rhodes.
“You really don’t know, do you, Caleb York?”
“What don’t I know?”
“She’s liable to make me an offer so paltry the other deals her man Byers wangled wi
ll make her look the soul of generosity. She thinks she has me at a disadvantage, and . . . and maybe she does.”
She sighed and joined him in the big rugged chair. He slipped an arm around her shoulders and she sat in his lap with her head on his chest like he was Daddy.
Her laugh was almost a moan. “You really don’t know anything about cattle, do you, Caleb?”
“No.”
“Aren’t interested in the least.”
“No. Well. I’m interested in a certain cattle rancher, but . . . no. My interest in beef stops when I cut into a thick steak and hope to find it nice and bloody. Tender, too, preferably.”
“Oh, you like them tender, do you?”
“I do.”
She kissed him. He kissed her.
“What this is about,” she told him, and she may have been in Daddy’s lap but he was the child being lectured, “is Sugar Creek.”
“It is? The stream with all the white sand, you mean.”
She looked up at him and nodded. “Which is why it’s called Sugar Creek, most likely, yes. It’s on Victoria Hammond’s property. It’s practically in her backyard.”
“What’s important about some little crick? You have a river running through your land.”
“The Purgatory River, yes. And what’s the Purgatory River like right now?”
He thought about it. “Fouled by rotting cattle carcasses . . . clogged with death and decay. We’re lucky we have wells in town, because that polluted stuff’s not fit to drink.”
“For man . . . nor beast.”
His head went back. “Oh. You’re saying, right now she has the only source in these parts for clean water . . . for anybody’s herd.”
“Yes. We never put anything in writing, any of us cattle ranchers. But Papa never asked anything for sharing the Purgatory’s clean water with his neighbors. Likewise any cattlemen who wanted their beef to partake of Sugar Creek were free to do so, with their neighbor’s blessing. Byers brought word to me that the Hammonds did not feel obliged to honor that understanding. Sugar Creek was theirs.”
Caleb’s features had turned stony. “That woman thought I’d do her bidding for her . . . with you. She thought she could hold that boy’s killing over my head and make me come to you and.... What the hell kind of woman uses her son’s death to gain a business advantage?”
Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek (A Caleb York Western Book 6) Page 4
