White-haired, white-mustached Raymond Parker was about as distinguished-looking a character as anyone might ever hope to encounter in Trinidad, New Mexico. In his double-breasted gray-trimmed-black Newmarket coat, lighter gray waistcoat, and darker gray trousers, the fiftyish businessman cut an impressive citified figure, modified by that Western touch of a gray Stetson.
Doffing that hat, Parker beamed as he spotted York in his quiet corner, and came quickly over. “May I join you?”
“Please.”
The businessman appraised the sheriff carefully. “You look pale, man. Are you ill?”
“Nothing catching.”
One eyebrow went up. “Caleb York—unshaven, red eyed, with the general aspect of a kicked hound.” Parker reached in his pocket for his polished steel cigar case. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were hung over.”
Parker was about to open the case when York said, “If you don’t put that thing away, I’ll have to kill you.”
The laugh that came was loud enough to make York wince again. “So you are hung over. What’s the occasion? This mess with the Bar-O and Circle G?”
York nodded.
Parker tucked the case away in a side coat pocket and said, “So it’s true you shot a man. One of the gunfighters imported from Las Vegas.”
York nodded again, then added, “And last night someone took a shot at me.”
“Must have sobered you up.”
“For a few seconds. But now I’m making staying sober a general policy.”
“Not a bad one at that.” Parker’s humorous demeanor faded and he seemed almost grave when he said, “Something has to be done about this budding range war.”
“I’m trying.”
“By shooting and killing a man?”
York explained the situation, briefly.
“There’s still time to shut this thing down,” Parker said. “And we need to. Not just because we’re good citizens, either.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
Parker flipped a hand. “Should be. But turning Trinidad from a bump in the road to a town and then a city will take more than good citizens. And more brains than bullets . . . meaning no offense.”
“I like to think I have access to both.”
“You do. Didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” Parker poured himself some coffee; it was still hot, or anyway hot enough. “The Santa Fe had to hold up starting work on the spur because of the blizzards, as you know. But there is still time for them to change their mind.”
“Why would they?”
“Well,” the businessman said, and shrugged, “if you were the Santa Fe Railroad, would you want to bring in teams to lay track in the middle of the equivalent of the Lincoln County War?”
Casual as the words were delivered, they came as a slap.
“No,” York said.
Parker leaned in confidentially. “Which would make that land you own, and the train station I have contracted to build upon that land, about as valuable as Confederate money.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
He threw a hand in the air. “Oh, it’s true, all right. Caleb, Trinidad will wither away and die without the railroad. And you’ll have a handsome chunk of worthless property on the outskirts of a ghost town.”
York shifted in his chair; it took effort. “Raymond, I have talked to Willa. She’s armed and ready to fight with Victoria Hammond. Hell, she’s ready to fight with me.”
Parker’s head tilted to one side. “If you’ll forgive my intruding into personal territory . . . that wouldn’t be another reason for this hangover, would it?”
York ignored that. “The Hammond woman isn’t helping any. She lied to me, or anyway dissembled. She indicated she wanted me to help convince Willa to sell the Bar-O, but her offer to Willa was insulting. Pennies per acre.”
Parker’s eyes were narrowed. “How is it that Victoria Hammond is even on speaking terms with you, Caleb? You killed her son. I would think she would, if anything, be plotting your downfall.”
“Perhaps she is. But she presents herself as a practical woman, and paints her son as a troubled soul who met a sad fate that was likely inevitable.”
Parker was shaking his head. “A parent losing a child is rarely practical. And I know some things about her that you don’t.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. I had her looked into by your friends the Pinkertons. And I asked friendly rivals of mine, as well . . . about her and her late husband, whose reputation as an unprincipled bastard I was already well-acquainted with. Andrew Hammond was a swindler and a cheat, and my guess is his wife is no better. It’s likely their moving south was merely to make rustling in Mexico more convenient, because almost certainly that is how she intends to restock and expand the Circle G herd.”
“That’s opinion. What facts did you come up with?”
Parker leaned back, arms folded. “The Hammond ranch in Colorado is tottering, after the Big Die-Up, and their bank is facing ruin. Victoria Hammond seems to be trying to stave off outright failure by snatching up as much land in this part of the world as she can, and as much surviving cattle. The paltry offer to Miss Cullen from Mrs. Hammond may in part be all Lady Victoria can afford. If this range war develops, and Willa has to make peace by way of selling out, any offer she takes for the Bar-O should definitely be in cash.”
York raised a palm. “Raymond, I hold no sway over Willa now. And the badge I’m hired to wear puts me squarely on the Hammond side of Sugar Creek. What would you have me do?”
Parker’s voice was low, confidential, even though the chamber was largely empty of anyone but them. “We need to play for time. If you’ll keep this powder keg from blowing up in the faces of all concerned, I can finish my work in Denver.”
“What work?”
“I’m leaving on the stage today to catch the train at Las Vegas. Back in Denver I have put together a consortium of investors to buy up Mexican cattle—not just steal it—so that I can offer Willa Cullen my help in restocking the Bar-O. It will require her letting me back in as a partner, but it will save the ranch and her holdings.”
York was slowly nodding. “She would go along with that, I think. Have you talked to her?”
“Not yet. It’s not solid. When I get back, with a deal, then I will approach Willa. But even so, that doesn’t solve her water rights problem.”
York grunted. “What does?”
“Stalling for time might. Once I have my investors, and Willa says yes to me as a partner, I will bring in the best lawyers in the Southwest and we will shut Victoria Hammond down. My legal advisors tell me the handshake deal of the prior owners for shared water right of way is as good as a contract, and the responsibility will carry over to the new owner—Victoria Hammond—unless the deed says otherwise.”
“How long will that take?”
“Not long. Not more than a week.”
York let out something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Raymond, a week is an eternity when two armed camps are facing each other over a narrow strip of water. And how long can cattle go without water?”
“I may have a way around that.” The businessman’s eyes grew shrewd. “For now, suppose you inform both sides that you will view any gunplay—any shooting, particularly any fatal shooting . . . other than by yourself, of course—as assault or murder or, hell, disturbing the peace. But shut it down!”
“. . . You have a lot of confidence in one man, Raymond.”
“Actually, I do. But I’m thinking you might have an easier time of it with a posse.”
York’s eyebrows rose. “A posse? What, of the barber and druggist and undertaker and a bunch of clerks?”
Parker’s upper lip curled nastily. “No. More like hard men out of Las Vegas. Those women aren’t the only ones who can hire guns.” He reached into the same inside pocket where he deposited the cigar case and came back with a thick fold of cash.
“Here’s fifty brownbacks,” Parker told York. “That’s a thousand
dollars in United States currency. Twenty-dollar bills.”
York took them, feeling a little dazed doing so.
“Go hire yourself a posse,” Parker said, “and shut this war down.”
“By declaring war on both sides?”
“One way to look at it. Have you a better idea, Caleb?”
York shook his head and pocketed the lump of cash.
Parker stood. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to join you for lunch. My stage leaves at noon.”
York found a smile. “That’s all right. I’m still working at keeping breakfast down.”
Parker laughed. “I’ll wire you with any news.”
“If things go to hell,” York said, “I won’t have to wire you. The newspapers will cover it.”
The dining room still wasn’t busy, although a few tables were taken by now. York sat with his elbows on the linen cloth and his hands on his chin, leaning forward in thought. Parker had left him with plenty to chew on, now that the steak was gone, in particular the notion of putting together yet another crew of gun handlers.
A boyish young man in a brown suit and limp black bow tie wandered in, looking a bit lost; he was clutching a derby in his hands. Though York did not recognize him, the boy picked the sheriff out in his quiet corner and came over quickly but carefully, threading through the mostly empty tables.
Only when the young man—twenty, perhaps?—deposited himself before York did the resemblance to Victoria Hammond come through—chiefly the large, dark eyes, and feminine lashes that would not help the boy out West.
“Caleb York?” he whispered.
“Yes. You’re a Hammond, aren’t you?”
The boy swallowed, nodded, clutched the hat to a suit coat that hadn’t come cheap. “Yes—Pierce. My mother is Victoria.”
York gestured. “Have a seat, Pierce.”
He shook his head, a firm no. “My mother asked me to arrange a private meeting for her with you.”
“All right. I’ll ride out this afternoon, if that’s acceptable.”
His eyes popped. “It isn’t! Can you be at the cemetery at dusk? That would be around seven.”
“I can.”
“Mother will be visiting my brother’s grave. Making sure they did right by him, till the stone arrives.”
“All right.”
The boy swallowed. “She told me not to linger. Best the Hammonds not be seen talking to you at any length, Sheriff.”
“Okay. Till seven, then.”
The boy didn’t even bother to nod before he turned and went out, even quicker than he’d come.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The cool blue touch of dusk was just threatening to darken into night as Caleb York, on the dappled gray gelding, drew near Boot Hill, the slight slope of which made its name such an exaggeration. His destination, just half a mile out of town, was to the right as he rode up, and a buckboard with a single Morgan horse was waiting on the other side of the rutted road, tied up to one of two hitching posts that served the cemetery.
Apparently Victoria Hammond had beaten him here. The buckboard suggested she wasn’t alone—perhaps Pierce, her son, who’d brought York’s invitation to this meeting, was with her.
But there was no sign of the woman in the neatly rowed-off collection of wooden crosses and flat grave markers, some wood, a few stone. He slowed the horse to a stop and then climbed down and tied the steed up at the other hitching post, the one near the resilient mesquite tree, whose color and shade were likely the reason this otherwise desolate spot had been chosen as the resting place for departed citizens of Trinidad, New Mexico.
Right now the sprawling tree that stood watch on this place was just an abstract silhouette, providing no color at all, and its shade was merely one jagged shadow throwing a pool of darkness. The sky was purple, edged streaky orange at the west, and to the north scarred buttes were like towering tombstones, as if perhaps Indian gods had been buried in the sandy earth below.
Standing at the edge of this field with its crop of dead gave even a brave man like Caleb York pause.
No, not crop of dead.
Harvest.
How many men had he put here? He knew. He knew. And he wasn’t proud of it, either, yet there wasn’t one he wouldn’t send here again.
The absence of the woman who’d summoned him began to worry him. He moved slowly through the boneyard, stepping around graves, including the fresh one that housed William Hammond, glancing from side to side.
Where was she?
This began to feel wrong. At the far east side of the cemetery was the handful of headstones of various respectable citizens, relatively new residents of this city of the dead, fieldstone and granite, shipped in from Denver.
Towering over them—well, towering was an exaggeration, he supposed—was a modest mausoleum, as mausoleums went, with the word CULLEN carved in marble above its wrought-iron door. Willa had sprung for this, and had moved her mother inside to be with her father, who had inspired in his daughter this tribute.
No one considered this inappropriate, not that York knew, at least. After all, George Cullen had made the existence of Trinidad possible. He had brought in tradesmen to occupy land he gave them to have the convenience of a town near his ranch. The man had been, in his way, in his day, the kind of cattle baron that the would-be cattle baroness could never rival.
“You won’t rate anything so fine, York,” a male voice said.
York looked toward the sound as Clay Colman, his Peacemaker drawn and ready, came around from behind the structure, his smile curling up into a smirk. The gun-fighting Cowboy had worn black to better blend in with the night, but the brown of his hat made the rattlesnake band stand out, and his pale, clean-shaven complexion and blue-eyed blond looks were whitish smears in the near night.
Colman’s tone struck York as a little too self-satisfied: “Did you think I forgot?”
“Forgot what, Colman?”
Now an edge came in, and the blue eyes narrowed in the white blur of face. “Not what. Who. Do you remember, York? Owen Burge.”
“Bit familiar.”
“Burrell Eyler.”
“Might I do.”
Colman thrust the gun forward, his barrel accusatory. “Do you need remindin’?”
A dry wind was blowing, gentle, but enough to stir hat brims and rustle sagebrush.
“No,” York said. “They were in on that stagecoach holdup. You slipped away. Well, I never had enough to really go after you.”
“But you got them, didn’t you?”
“I did. I recovered the ten thousand for Wells Fargo, too. At my five percent reward, that’s five hundred more than you made.”
The almost too handsome face scowled. “Shot down like dogs in the street.”
“No. Like fools. They pulled on me, Colman—two men on one. Damn near as bad as back-shooting.”
“You’ve shot men in the back.”
“I have,” York admitted. “When they were fleeing and I didn’t feel like running after them.”
The sounds were simultaneous—somebody coming up behind him at the far left, somebody else behind him at the far right. Slow, trying not to be heard, but coming. Whoever they were, they’d either tucked themselves behind the mesquite or found one of the larger grave markers to skulk behind.
But that didn’t matter.
What mattered was this had just turned into three to one, and even Caleb York didn’t relish those odds.
He said to Colman, “But I feel like it now.”
“Feel like what?”
Running.
York turned tail and ran back into the cemetery, and as the shots flew, he dove and tumbled and got himself behind a gravestone, a real one, not a wood marker and certainly not a damn cross. He got the .44 out and Colman was yelling, but not at him—at his confederates, telling them to spread out. Probably literal Confederates, considering.
Because his glimpse of the other two had identified these accomplices as part of the Arizona Cowboy
crowd, no one he knew by name, but wearers of the telltale rattlesnake hatband, whether genuine article or silversmith copy.
Crouching, York started moving to his right, staying low, the darkness covering him well enough that he didn’t draw any fire. As he got close to the south edge of the cemetery, he planted himself behind another sturdy marker and listened.
One of the bastards was moving, too fast, stirring up dust and pebbles enough to be heard.
York popped up, not all the way, just about as high as the stone he was behind, and demonstrated his willingness to shoot a man in the back, or rather in the back of the head, because that was what he did to a Cowboy who was a mere six or seven feet away, close enough for the man’s skull to crack and bleed bloody brains like a jam jar burst in a pantry.
Immediately York scrambled toward the west of the cemetery and found cover behind another marker. He huddled there, listening. Whispers and shouts told the story—they were spooked. Spooked in a spooky damn place like this—that was a good one.
He waited.
But after thirty seconds or so had passed, he was afraid they’d be coming around in a pincher move, so he got up and ran. Ran like hell between rows of graves, giving them just enough time to shoot at him and reveal their position, and him enough time to dive for the dirt and let their slugs fly overhead.
One was just behind him, on the same row, and York swivelled onto his back and let fly with three rounds that peppered a Cowboy’s midsection and turned him into an awkward floundering thing that seemed to be going in every direction at once, as if chasing the spurts of scarlet in the night that blew out of him like streamers on the Fourth of July.
Scrambling again, on his hands and knees, York got into the next row west and found cover again.
“York!”
York didn’t respond. The voice was coming from several rows to the east, fairly close to the Cullen mausoleum.
“Caleb York, you son of a bitch! . . . I will holster my weapon if you pledge to holster yours. We will face each other like men!”
York peeked around the gravestone. He could see Colman clearly—the man had his six-gun poised to be stuffed back in his holster.
Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek (A Caleb York Western Book 6) Page 14
