“All right!” York yelled. “A duel between gentlemen!”
“A duel between goddamn gentlemen! . . . We’ll go on the count of three! I’ll count, ’less you want to!”
“I trust you, Colman! You do the counting!”
Peeking out, York saw the Cowboy holster his weapon.
York stood and fired three times, each round catching the man in the head, exploding his pretty face and the things behind it into fragments. The dead man, on legs getting no signals, stumbled forward and fell over the nearest gravestone, draped there spilling brains and blood and general gore onto a ground that would not be helped by the irrigation.
“Idiot,” York said.
The residents silently agreed.
* * *
As he rode under the Circle G archway and past the water tower, barn, and other structures, York saw no sign of the hired gunmen or indeed any of the ranch hands. They must have again either been tending to stock on the range or, most likely, the bulk of them were positioned along the nearby white bank of Sugar Creek, armed to the teeth, ready and waiting.
York tied up at the hitching rail in front of the hacienda-style ranch house and went up the several steps to the porch and found the massive front door unlocked.
He went in.
Byers, the self-described factotum, appeared from somewhere and was immediately flustered. “Mr. York! Sheriff, please! You can’t just barge in like—”
York brushed the plump little bookkeeper aside and headed for the door that led to the library/study. He went in and saw, down at the far end of the chamber, Victoria Hammond behind her desk, going over documents. Contracts? Deeds? He didn’t really care.
He strode across the lengthy room and leaned over her as she sat there; his hands were flat on the wooden surface of the desktop.
“Where is your son?”
“My . . . my son?”
“Where is he, woman?”
She sighed and straightened, gathering her dignity. Lovely, long, dark hair up, she was in a simple white blouse with a few lacy touches and a black bolo tie.
“I won’t be spoken to in that manner,” she said. “Where is Byers? Why did he admit you without informing me? How dare you—”
“Your son told me you were going to meet me at Boot Hill at dusk. You weren’t there. He wasn’t there.”
She flinched. “What are you talking about?”
A male voice blurted, “Stop!”
York turned and the bookkeeper, a little revolver in a trembling hand, was at the doorway. The small man started to move unsteadily toward York, who walked over calmly, took the gun away from him, slapped him twice, grabbed him by the suit coat, and threw him into the hall, slamming the door on him.
Then the sheriff returned to the desk, where Victoria Hammond was watching this with her mouth hanging open and her dark eyes showing white all around.
“Where were we?” York asked.
“Right here,” she said, through her teeth, and her hand came up and revealed her own little revolver, apparently plucked from a nearby drawer.
He reached out and grabbed that gun, too, right out of her hand, startling her. He flung it to the floor hard enough that they were both lucky it didn’t go off.
“Now listen, woman,” he said, and he told her quietly, calmly, but with rage bubbling, about the meeting her son had arranged.
“Obviously,” she said, “I wasn’t there.”
“Obviously. But Clay Colman was.”
She frowned in apparent confusion. “What was my ramrod doing there?”
“Getting killed. By me.”
She gasped, and he told her the circumstances, including the other two gun-toting cowhands of hers that he’d also killed.
“So,” he said. “Where is your son?”
Seemingly thrown off balance, she said, “He’s with the men. He’s in charge.... Well, he was second-in-command, really, to Clay Colman. But he thinks he’s in charge.”
“You still haven’t answered me. Where?”
“With the other men, as I said. Guarding Sugar Creek.”
York turned to go.
“Caleb! Please. I knew nothing of this. Believe me.”
Without looking back at her, but not going anywhere either, he asked, “Why should I?”
He heard her heavy chair screech, being pushed back as she stood.
“Don’t go,” she said, and came around to him. “Allow me to explain, as best I can.”
The door flew open and Byers was there again, a double-barreled shotgun in hand this time; he looked unhinged, his hair, his clothes askew.
“Mr. Byers,” she said calmly, “the sheriff is my guest. Would you have the girl get us some wine, please? The Casa Madero red.”
Byers, his eyes wide, his mouth an O, had to think about that for a moment. Then he swallowed and said, “Yes, mistress.”
The factotum, shotgun lowered, closed the door gently behind him.
Victoria Hammond had York by the arm now. She looked up at him, so very beautiful, and said, “Please don’t kill Mr. Byers. He’d be terribly difficult to replace.”
“Do my best,” he said.
York allowed her to lead him to the sitting area overseen by the looming oil portrait of her dead husband, looking down at them disapprovingly, or at least so it seemed to York. She guided him onto the two-seater sofa and nestled beside him.
“And I don’t want you to kill my son Pierce, either,” she said, with an enigmatic smile, hands folded in her lap. “You’ve already taken one son from me. Do you want to make me cross?”
He didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t even know what to think of it.
“I did not send Clay Colman to kill you,” she assured him. “Why would I?”
Because I killed your son? York thought.
“You defended my interests at Sugar Creek,” she said. “I appreciate that. You’re the law. I need the law in this.”
York said, “I know why Colman wanted me dead.”
Interested, as if he had suggested a book she might care to read, she said, “Really? Why?”
“I killed two friends of his. Stagecoach bandits. Years ago. He was one, too, but got away from me.”
“Why didn’t you bring him in, when you saw him working here for me? Isn’t that what you do? Arrest them or . . . shoot them?”
“He was just a suspect in that robbery,” York said. “I hardly ever shoot suspects.”
“You do have your standards.”
“Is that what you intend to do? Rib me?”
The serving girl came in with a tray of glasses and a carafe of red wine. Poured for them both and York thanked her, while the mistress of the Circle G did not. The girl went out.
“No,” Victoria Hammond said. “It’s just that . . . some things are just so terribly sad that sometimes a person simply has to laugh or go mad. Don’t you find that to be the case?”
“Not particularly. Why would your son help Colman set me up if he wasn’t doing your bidding?”
Now she did seem closer to tears than laughter.
She sipped her wine. Said, “He’s a young, impetuous boy. He loved his brother, so he would obviously resent you for taking William away from him . . . and he wants to impress me. Wants to show his mother that he’s a man, capable of . . .”
“Murder?”
“No. He wasn’t there, at the cemetery, was he? No, he’s fallen under Clay Colman’s spell, I’m afraid. Ever since I assigned him to ride at Colman’s side, he’s tried to be one of them, those men. Strong like them.”
“Well, nobody’s under Colman’s spell now.” York had some wine. Not bad. “Victoria, you have to put a stop to this. If your men take part in this water-rights war, I will start arresting them.”
She frowned in frustration. “But we’re in the right.”
“No. It’s clear you have assembled a band of cutthroats to do your dirty work. You want a war. You lied to me, or led me astray anyway, by indicating you pl
anned to make a good offer to Willa Cullen for the Bar-O. Then you offered her peanuts. You didn’t even salt the damn things.”
“It was . . . a tactic.”
He looked at her, stern. “Let this play out legally. This is your land. You’ll likely come out on top. If you don’t, and you recklessly kill your neighbor’s cowhands, and cause her stock to die of thirst, you may face legal and certainly civil ramifications.”
Her expression now was thoughtful. “What would you suggest?”
“Just take a step back. Turn down the heat. You should limit this to a couple of campsites on the Sugar Creek banks, keeping watch. If the Bar-O roars back with a passel of men, you have a right to defend yourself.”
“You’re suggesting that if I make an effort to curtail the violence, it will look better. In court. And to the Trinidad citizens.”
He shook his head. “I’m suggesting you do it because it’s the right thing. If you don’t, I might have to raise a posse and wade in and stop people on each side. Fill my jail with both your crew and Willa’s.”
“The ones you don’t kill.”
“I’ve never killed a man who didn’t pull on me first.”
“Not that you’ll admit to.”
They were looking right at each other, close enough to touch noses.
“Not that I admit to, no,” he said. “Can you give me one good reason not to haul your son in for aiding and abetting attempted murder? My attempted murder?”
She kissed him.
It was warm and slow and seemed to tell him things. No, did tell him things. He hadn’t pulled away, at first as startled as if she’d slapped him, but then he just got caught up in it, in the sensuousness of it, the lilac scent of her.
She moved herself up to where she was sitting in his lap and kissed him again and, without any sense that he’d willed it, his arms went around her and he held her to him and the kiss went on and on....
Finally it ended, but her face was still near his when she said, “I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you, Caleb. I knew of you, I’d heard of you, but it seemed . . . it had to be an exaggeration. Men like you just don’t exist. Men so strong.” She moved her bottom as if trying to find a more comfortable place in his lap.
Not that he was comfortable.
Then he got hold of himself, and of her, and lifted her by her narrow waist above the sweep of her hips and set her down gently but firmly beside him on the love seat.
He said, “I need you to reduce your men’s presence on Sugar Creek.”
She nodded, breathing hard. “Two campsites. Two men per campsite. I promise.”
“Good. Good.” He stood.
Her husband glowered down.
She rose, took his arm, led him slowly to the door, as if sending her man off to serve in a war somewhere. And wasn’t she?
“When this is over,” she said, “I will need someone strong by my side at this place.”
He told her what he’d told Willa so many times: “I’m no cattleman.”
“I don’t want a man to head up a cattle drive or fix a fence and rope a calf. I want a man with sand who can stand up to challenges. A man smart enough to make hard decisions, who understands that business is a perilous but oh so profitable affair. I can offer you so much, Caleb . . . so much.”
She deposited him in the hallway and shut the door softly on him, sealing herself in the library. Byers was nowhere to be seen. York found his way to the door.
As he stood near the gelding, like a man who’d fallen down a flight of stairs but didn’t seem to be damaged in particular, he nonetheless felt shaken.
And suspicious.
But all the way out to the main road, he wondered.
Wondered what a night with that woman would be like.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
With a full moon and a starry sky lighting the way, Caleb York, on his way back to Trinidad, paused at the mouth of the Circle G lane at the irregular excuse for a main road, where telegraph poles, post-blizzard, still tilted at awkward angles. The pole closest pointed in the opposite direction of town—to the fairly nearby artery to the Bar-O.
York sucked in breath, let it out as a sigh, and guided the gelding north.
Awkward though it surely would be, talking to Willa was a duty that best not be shirked. On the way, he imagined what he’d say to her and got nowhere, encouraging his horse to just lope along. As he rode at an easy trot into the Bar-O grounds with its corral, grain crib, water tower, cook’s shack, bunkhouse, and ranch house—the only signs of life were the yellow glow of lamplight in a few windows of the latter two.
So York didn’t see her at first, sitting in the dark on the porch in a chair her father had fashioned. Not till his horse was hitched and he’d gone up the steps and was standing with fist poised to pound on the door.
“I’m here,” Willa said quietly.
She was in denims and a green-and-black plaid shirt and her bare feet. Usually, with her yellow hair braided up, she brought to mind a young Viking woman, waiting for her warrior husband’s return from his plunder. Tonight she looked small. Like a girl. Waiting for nobody at all.
He walked over to her, footsteps echoing on the wooden planking, spurs singing a melancholy tune. Positioning himself before her, he took the liberty of leaning back against the porch railing. He took his hat off, brushed back his hair. A lamp in the window behind her put half of her in darkness.
The half of her in light was enough to let him see the handgun in her lap—a .22 Colt Open Top Model revolver, pearl handled, with fancy engraving. Her father had given it to her for her eighteenth birthday, York knew. Capable of seven deadly shots.
He said, “I’ve spoken to Victoria Hammond again.”
“Have you.” Her voice was soft, uninflected, her blue eyes fixed on him, rarely blinking.
“She’s agreed to pull her men off the banks of the creek,” he said, nodding in that direction. “Just a handful are keeping watch now at two campfires.”
Her voice still soft, she said, “More than a dozen men were on the shore and above, on the grassy patch by the pines, this afternoon.”
He held up a palm. “I just came from the Circle G. She’s agreed not to let this thing get any further out of hand.”
“Has she.”
The front door opened and someone stepped out. For a moment York didn’t know who it was, but then he realized it was her foreman, Bill Jackson. He wore no hat, but was in a gray sparkly sateen shirt and brown duck trousers, wearing no sidearm. Looked like he’d been making himself at home.
At least he wasn’t barefoot, too.
Jackson frowned—not threateningly, but a frown. “What’s this about?”
What was he now? The man of the damn house?
Half turning, York said to him, “I’ve convinced the Hammond woman to back off at Sugar Creek.”
Jackson spoke as he came over to plant himself with York to his left and the seated Willa to his right.
“How did you manage that?” he asked the sheriff.
Patiently, York said, “I told her what I’m about to tell the two of you. That I am prepared to put a posse together to shut down both sides in this squabble. To charge anybody who starts shooting, and anybody who shoots back, with assault or worse. And throw their tails in jail.”
Jackson’s laugh was curt. “You’re the only one here who’s fired a shot so far.”
“I know, and I’ll shoot again, if I have to.” He sent his eyes to Willa, whose oval face, glowing in the near dark, was as unmoving as a carved ivory cameo. “You and the Hammond woman need to let your lawyers work this thing out.”
Jackson grunted a nonlaugh. “And in the meantime let our cattle die of thirst?”
“Our” cattle?
“Those steers’ll die all the sooner,” York said tightly, “if they’re stampeded in the middle of a gun battle. Or if it’s just men fighting it out, this time it won’t be dead cows floating and fouling the water.” He looked at her, hard. “Y
ou two women need to stop feuding and turn your lawyers loose . . . and tell them to negotiate fast and fair.” Her eyes tightened, but her voice remained neutral. “You’d have me sell to that witch?”
He gave his head a single shake. “That’s not my concern in this.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. Keeping the peace is.”
Jackson gestured to the .44 at York’s right hip. “And that’s the peacekeeper you use to do that with, correct?”
York shrugged. “Sometimes that’s what it takes.”
The foreman lurched forward and got his face right in York’s. “How much is Victoria Hammond paying you, exactly, Sheriff?”
“Not a red cent.”
Jackson’s breath was hot on York’s face. “Maybe it isn’t with money. Maybe it’s something else.”
York shoved him, and Jackson came back with a roundhouse swing that the sheriff ducked, coming up with a solid right fist that rocked the foreman, lifting the man’s chin and staggering him back. The two were poised with fists clenched, ready to make much more of it when Willa said, firm, not a scream, “Stop, you two!”
They stopped.
York felt embarrassed, and it was clear so did Jackson.
“Bill,” she said, on her feet now, “go inside. Please.”
The foreman looked at her, then at York, and back at her. “Are you . . . sure?”
She nodded. “I’m quite sure.” She pointed to the door. “Go.”
Clearly not liking being treated like a child, Jackson sighed, glowered at York, then shuffled over and went inside, having at least enough dignity left not to slam the door.
York and Willa were standing on the porch now, facing each other.
Nodding toward the ranch house, York said, “So, Jackson lives here now?”
She frowned, disgusted. “He’s in the guest room. He insisted.”
“Oh, he did, did he?”
“He felt I might be in danger. He said he wanted to post a man in the house with a gun to protect me.”
“He wasn’t wearing one. Anyway, you have a gun.”
“I do,” she said, lifting the little weapon in her palm. “And Victoria Hammond has a whole lot of guns.”
Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek (A Caleb York Western Book 6) Page 15
