Normally Caleb York would have been in and out of the office enough for Tulley to get roused at some point. But today—or tonight, more like—the deputy didn’t wake till moonlight was coming through the high barred window. He got himself up, went out and poured some coffee and drank it down. The clock on the wall high up behind the sheriff’s desk said eleven-fifteen—Judas Priest, how long had Tulley been sawing logs, anyway?
He’d slept through his chores, such as sweeping out and mopping up as needed. No time for that before starting up his evening rounds, which he decided to tend to.
Soon he was heading down the boardwalk, shotgun in hand. Things was typically deserted, this time of night, save for the Victory Saloon, where the windows were letting out light like the place was burning up.
He pushed through the batwings and found Hell’s half acre hopping. Some of the same cowhands and clerks were back, or were maybe still there, plus more of both breeds, keeping the dice, roulette, chuck-a-luck, and wheel of fortune stations bustling. The piano player was pounding out hurdy-gurdy-type tunes while grubby cowpokes and fancy gals cuddled upright—just because no rental brides was taking them temporary grooms upstairs no more didn’t mean some hanky-panky weren’t still being arranged.
Yancy Cole was dealing faro again, and Caleb York was back playing poker with the city fathers, looking to win back what they took from him the night before, t’would seem. The sheriff’s black frock coat looked rumpled and his hat was shoved back on his head. He could have used a shave. At his elbow was a glass of brown liquid that was likely whiskey. He had a few piles of chips in front of him, whereas several of his friendly opponents had assembled a number of towers of such chips, blue, red, orange, and white.
The mayor was shuffling, so Tulley took that moment to sidle up to Caleb York.
“Sheriff,” he said.
“Deputy.” Not looking at Tulley.
“Ye be missed today.”
“Any trouble?”
“No! No, sir. Quiet. Like a Sunday service, minus the preacher jawin’.”
“Good.”
Cards were being dealt now. It was a five-card draw game. Dealer’s choice.
Tulley cleared his throat. “Word is they was trouble out to Sugar Crick.”
“Some.”
“You have to shoot a man?”
“Yes.”
“Pulled on you, did he?”
“He pulled. Why I shot him.”
“One of Miss Willa’s guntoters, was it?”
“Yes. They were on Hammond land. Tulley, I’m playing cards.”
“So I see.”
“Pull up a chair or find somewhere else to be.”
“You know I don’t indulge in games of chance, Caleb York.”
“I do know. And kibitzers ain’t allowed. Which leaves you one choice.”
Tulley knew what choice that was. He shuffled over to the bar. Miss Rita, in a green gown trimmed white, came up and said, “He’s losing even worse tonight. At his request, I’ve been feeding him straight whiskey and poker chips all evening. Tin box under the bar has five IOUs of his in it.”
“Caleb York’s got the money.”
“I know he does. But Tulley, I’m worried. I never saw him like this.”
“Nor I.”
She told bartender Hub Wainwright to get Tulley a sarsaparilla, and left the deputy at the bar amongst the others bellied up there, and proceeded to thread through the customers, spreading smiles and nods.
Tulley had just finished his glass of the sweet soda water when across the room Caleb York pushed his chair away from the table and stood, not terribly steady about it. No chips were in front of him. He made an awkward trip over to the bar where Miss Rita was talking to Hub.
Conversation ensued but didn’t last long, and Caleb York hustled out, damn near losing his balance doing so.
Tulley got up and went over to the saloon gal and didn’t even have to ask what it was about. She just started right in.
“I cut him off,” she said, looking a little pale. “No more money, no more whiskey.”
“He’s got money in the safe and whiskey in a desk drawer.”
“He said as much to me,” she told the deputy. “Said he’d be back in a flash.”
“On his hands and knees, more like. He’s so drunk he couldn’t hit the ground with his hat in three throws.”
Her expression screamed worry. “Better follow him, Mr. Tulley. If he’s headed back to the jail, maybe you can talk sense to him.”
Tulley felt kind of honored by that. It had been many years since anyone had suggested to Tulley that he might be the right person to talk sense to anyone.
Shotgun stock tight in his left hand, Tulley exited the saloon into a moon-swept night and an empty street. Almost empty—ahead on the boardwalk, Caleb York was halfway up the next block, obviously on his way back to the jail. He was not moving fast. In fact, he was weaving.
That may have saved his life.
Because when the shot cracked the emptiness like small sudden thunder—coming from across the street, around the corner, orange muzzle flame making a brief brightness in the dark—the sheriff had made a moving target of himself by almost losing his balance.
Tulley, already running toward the danger, saw Caleb York sober up just long enough to draw his .44 and duck backward into the recession of a storefront’s entryway. Tulley—his footfall making the boards beneath creak and groan—yelled, “Stay put, Sheriff! Stay put!”
The deputy ran into the street and across, shotgun primed for action, but when he got to the corner and peeked around, and then stepped out, nothing was waiting but the stench of gunpowder. Beyond were the handful of residences back there. Not a light in any window, not even second floor. Then he heard hoofbeats that quickly receded, and figured the trouble was leaving of its own accord.
Best check and make sure the sheriff hadn’t been hit.
He did so, finding Caleb York huddled against the doorway of the pharmacy with his .44 in a shaking fist.
“He hightailed, Sheriff,” Tulley said, slipping an arm around his friend’s shoulder. “Ye ain’t hit, is ye?”
“No . . . no . . .”
“You reckon ye had enough cards and whiskey to suit you for a night?”
The sheriff nodded. His body relaxed. He seemed almost asleep, his eyelids at half-mast.
Tulley said, “Bein’ as ye is already three sheets to the wind, let’s get ye ’tween some nice clean sheets over to the hotel.”
Getting no argument, Tulley slipped his right arm around Caleb York’s waist, keeping the shotgun ready in his left fist, and walked him to the Trinidad House. The going was slow, with Tulley looking every which way in case the shooter doubled back; but they made it.
Wilson, the desk clerk, got Tulley the room key and even helped him half-drag their charge up the stairs and down the hall and to the sheriff’s door. Once inside, with a lamp lit low, they took off the now-unconscious man’s coat—his hat had been lost along the way—and his gun belt and boots, then slung him into the bed and got the covers over him.
Not an experienced hotel guest himself, Tulley knew nothing of tipping, and yet he appreciated what Wilson helped him do so much he dug a quarter eagle out of his pants and handed it over.
Wilson, who seemed to appreciate that, left and Caleb York began to snore.
Tulley shook his head. He felt sympathy, having been on more benders in a lifetime than a man should have been able to survive. But he thought he’d never see such a thing out of Caleb York, and it did disappoint him. In another sense, though, he didn’t mind seeing this man was a human after all.
Someone burst in the room and Tulley jerked the shotgun up and damn near shot a hole in Miss Rita.
He didn’t, though, and if she realized she’d almost been subject of a tragedy, she didn’t show it none. She just shut the door behind her, looking like the damnedest apparition standing there with her bosom heaving in that silk-and-satin green thing—the kin
d of dress that seemed befitting in a saloon but just plain strange anywheres else.
She leaned over the bed and she stroked the snoring man’s face, like he was a child of hers with a fever.
“Someone said a shot was fired,” she said, her eyes wide and almost accusative. “Someone else said they saw you hauling Caleb over here. What happened?”
Tulley told her.
She stood straight, but them creamy mounds was still heaving. Mercy sakes.
“I’ll be back,” she said. “Meantime, you stand guard.”
“I was aimin’ to sit. On a chair? In the hall?”
“That’s fine,” she said.
And that’s what he was doing, shotgun in his lap, when she returned in the light blue shirt and black riding skirt and boots. She had a small revolver in hand.
Tulley was blocking the door, so he stood and moved the chair for her to go into the room. She paused before she did, saying, “That window on the street could give someone access.”
“Ye mean they could climb up and crawl in?”
“Exactly what I mean. I’ll sit at the foot of his bed and you stay out here. Maybe by morning he’ll have come to his senses.”
“One can only hope.... Ye know how to use that peashooter, Miss Rita?”
She nodded. “A man in Houston tried to force his way on me once and I shot him.”
“Kill him?”
“I did.”
“How many shots?”
“Just the one.” She touched her forehead near the bridge of her nose.
Then she slipped inside the room.
What a female, Tulley thought, smiling to himself, as he sat back down and cradled the shotgun like a precious child.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
While hardly a teetotaler, Caleb York was not what you’d call a hard-drinking man. He could have tallied up on his fingers the times he’d been hung over in his life, with digits to spare.
The condition had afflicted him often enough, however, for him to recognize the signs: feeling tired however much sleep he’d had, a bilious stomach, and a pounding headache, not helped by the midmorning sun. That had driven York from his usual window seat in the Trinidad House Hotel’s dining room to this one in a far corner.
That window seat had been “usual” in the sense that when he took supper here (which was frequent) that spot with a view onto the street was reserved for him. And taking breakfast at the hotel was not at all usual, as he took advantage of the arrangement with the town café to feed prisoners at the jail to get himself a free morning meal, almost every day.
Not this one.
Coming down the steps in the clothes he’d slept in, and making it into the dining room, was as major an expedition as he cared to embark upon right now, particularly with that morning sun painting the world out there a painful yellow.
So he was settled, with his back to the corner where the far walls met (expanding his expedition but in an acceptable manner) so he could sit with his back unexposed. After all, he had dreamt last night of being shot at and he’d woken with a dizzy sense that maybe that had not been a nightmare at all.
Choosing the hotel dining room this morning also had to do with the superior fare—he could get a nice big steak of the best quality, and despite his lingering nausea, a slab of rare dead beef with some eggs was what had once been recommended to him as a hangover cure of sorts by a doctor. That the doctor in question was named Holliday only served to lend the prescription verity.
The food had not yet arrived but he was already on his second cup of coffee, attempting to quench what seemed to him a surprising thirst considering how much liquid he’d tossed down over the past—damn, two days was it?
And had he dreamed, too, of losing hundreds of dollars to those amateurs on the City Council?
At half-past ten, the dining room was otherwise empty—too late for breakfast, too early for lunch—but a frantic pair came rushing in nonetheless, as if desperate to find seating.
In reality, they were looking to see where York might be seated: Rita Filley, mussed but lovely in a shirt and riding dress, her revolver in hand, and Tulley, shotgun in his hand, store-bought clothes looking so rumpled the old boy might have slept under the boardwalk last night, like the not-so-good-old-days.
Of course, York knew damn well where Tulley had spent the previous night, and Rita as well. The sheriff had woken to find the latter in a chair, asleep, facing the window, a revolver in her lap; and York had slipped around the former, asleep in a chair in front of the hotel room door, shotgun cradled, as if the deputy were in the Land of Nod with a lovely wench he was wooing.
Well, anybody can dream.
They charged over and fixed themselves side by side before him, looking down with alarm and accusation.
“Good morning,” York managed to say, between sips of coffee.
“Thank God,” Rita said. “We didn’t know where you’d gone off to!”
“Caleb York,” Tulley said, trembling, “ye put a right scare in the two of us!”
York winced and raised a hand. “No need to shout,” he said gently. “Pull up a chair. Both of you.”
They did.
“Coffee?” he asked them. Place settings with cups were before them, and the waiter had left York a steaming pot of Arbuckle’s.
“No thank ye,” Tulley said. “I prefer my own.”
York and Rita exchanged raised-eyebrow looks, but let the opinion stand.
Then York said, “I dreamed someone shot at me last night.”
“Tweren’t no dream,” Tulley said.
York grunted, and it hurt. “Suspected as much.”
“Ye got yore gun out of its scabbard,” his deputy said, “but that be about all. Had sense enough to duck in a doorway, anyways.”
“Did you see who, Tulley?”
“No. Come from across the street. Feller lit out like his tail was afire. Heard his horse sweepin’ him off to hell and gone. Pardon the language, Miss Rita.”
York looked from one to the other. “And you two stood guard on me? All night?”
Rita’s nod was barely perceptible. Tulley’s was so enthusiastic York could barely watch, the deputy adding, “Sat, not stood. And might be dropped off a second or two.”
The Victory’s hostess, frowning in thought, asked, “Who would want you dead, Caleb?”
“It’s a long list.” He sipped. “Going back fifteen years, leastways.”
She leaned forward. Even with her hair a tangle, and not a lick of face paint, she was a lovely, dark-eyed creature, almost enough to make a man not want to crawl off somewhere and die.
“Caleb,” she said quietly, “let me amend that—who would want you dead right now?”
He thought about it. That took effort, as the throbbing headache just didn’t want to make room.
“Rita,” he said, “best candidate would be one of Willa’s hired guns. You’ve heard about them?”
She nodded. “Cowboys like to talk almost as much as they like to drink. And word’s around you shot and killed one of the Circle G riders.”
He nodded back. “Wes Hardin’s cousin.”
Tulley’s eyes popped. “Heaven’s bells! Now you got John Wesley Hardin out to get ye!”
York smiled, just a little. Bigger would have hurt.
“I doubt that,” he said. “News doesn’t travel that fast. Anyway, Hardin doesn’t give a damn about anybody but himself, and he prefers facing down men slower and less dangerous.”
Rita was frowning. “I can’t imagine Willa Cullen would . . . no, that’s out of the question.”
“She wouldn’t,” York said confidently. “We’ve had a . . . falling-out, it’s true. But, no. Somebody in her crew who wanted to get back at me—one of the other guns—maybe.”
Rita’s chin lifted. “Victoria Hammond hired on guns, too. Maybe one of them would want you out of the picture.”
“That makes more sense, only . . .”
“Only?”
“I was on
her side of the creek. When I fired across and killed that man.”
“On her side of the creek? On her side of the war, you mean!”
“I’m on the county’s side, Rita. The law’s side.”
She shook her head slowly. “But that’s not how Willa sees it, I would guess.”
“No,” he admitted. “It’s not.”
His food came, the steak sizzling. When the waiter had left, York summoned a smile.
“Would you two be willin’ to do me another favor? One apiece?”
Tulley and Rita just listened.
“Rita,” York said, “go back to the Victory and keep your eyes and ears open. Either Tulley or I will be by from time to time to see what, if anything, you’ve picked up.”
“All right,” she said. “And if it’s urgent . . . ?”
“I’ll likely be at my office. I need to recover a bit before I take any kind of action.”
“And,” Tulley advised, “what kinder action needs takin’.”
“Truer words,” York said with a smile that came more easy now. “Deputy, go get yourself some sleep in your favorite cell. I imagine you only caught a few hours last night. I’ll rouse you if you’re needed.”
Tulley’s eyes narrowed. “Anything else, Caleb York?”
“Yes. You two let me try to eat this dead animal in peace. I might get it down, but it may come up again, and that won’t be pretty.”
They rose to go, but York found himself somehow rising, too. He reached a hand out and touched Rita’s cheek, momentarily, and her eyes got big and wet.
York looked at her, then at Tulley.
“No drunken son of a bitch,” he said, “ever had better friends.”
Tulley’s smile was endless, but Rita’s smile was tight and her chin was crinkled. She swallowed and was gone, Tulley trailing.
It did not occur to York that calling her a friend might not strike her as enough.
He ate slowly, chewing the beef thoroughly before sending it down his gullet, washing everything down with hot coffee. When he had finished, he pushed the plate away and just sat there, letting his stomach deal with the problem.
The dishes had been cleared away and York was considering whether to risk getting to his feet again when another individual entered the dining room. By now it was after eleven o’clock and those taking an early lunch would be filtering in. First of these was a familiar face.
Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek (A Caleb York Western Book 6) Page 13
