But it might have been any of the other rooms up here, except for the two-room suite where Rita herself camped out. The garish red-and-black San Francisco-style wallpaper made the small space seem even smaller; there was just room enough for a brass bed with a bedside table that was home to a hurricane lamp, which was casting a jaundiced glow, and a small dresser with a porcelain basin and pitcher. Also a chair for a cowboy to take his boots off and put them back on.
Under the sheet on the brass bed, like bundles of sticks, the skinny brunette in the white undergarment was a damn mess—her hair a tangle, her still-vaguely-pretty face, minus the paint, revealed as pockmarked and sunken-cheeked, with the big blue eyes the only real survivor among the nice features she’d started out with. A laudanum bottle was on the bedside table near the lamp.
He pulled the chair over and sat at her bedside, as if visiting a patient in a hospital, and this wasn’t that different, was it? Rita, unhappy, stood at the door, her back to it, her arms folded.
“They killed my man, Sheriff,” she said. The voice was as thin as she was. “Somebody should do somethin’ about that.”
“I’m going to,” York assured her. “But I need your help.”
“I’m too sick for that. Maybe tomorrow. He was so sweet to me. I knew he was special right off. I only let him pay me the first few times. We was gonna get married. Put all of this behind me.”
He wondered if what she planned to leave behind included her laudanum habit.
“Pearl,” he said, “I need to know if Herbert mentioned anything to you about his boss. Thomas Carter, the bank president.”
“I know who his boss is. I can’t tell you anything.”
“You can’t tell me anything because you don’t know anything? Or because you’re afraid to?”
“I can’t tell you anything.”
“If you’re afraid, I can protect you.”
Her smile was a crooked line drawn on her face by a child artist. “Herbert was a very sweet man. We was gonna move away from here. Now he’s gone. Now I’m just a girl at the Victory again.”
York sat forward. “Pearl, I think Mr. Carter may be responsible for Herbert’s death. But right now, it looks like Carter may get away with it.”
“He’s an important man in this town.”
“That’s right. But it doesn’t give him license to take a man’s life. To take your man’s life.”
“Iffen I told you something, my man would still be gone. I would still be a girl at the Victory.”
“If you know something, Pearl, you have to tell me. It’s the only way for you to . . .” What would work with her? “. . . get even.”
This smile showed teeth, yellowed but nicely formed. “Getting even don’t bring Herbert back. That’s gone from my life. Sheriff, I know you want to do right. But doin’ right don’t do no good. I’m sleepy now. Maybe we can talk later.”
“Pearl . . .”
Rita’s hand was on his shoulder. “That’s enough,” she said softly.
She was right.
York rose wearily, but when he got to the door, Pearl called to him.
“Sheriff—why are people afraid to die?”
He returned to her bedside, but didn’t sit. “Because we don’t know what’s on the other side of that door, Pearl. Not for sure we don’t.”
“Is it heaven?”
“Might be.” Of course Herbert Upton, if he were anywhere, would be in a warmer place. “You afraid to die, Pearl?”
“I am. I don’t know why, because bein’ a girl at the Victory, that’s no kind of life. But the way Herbert got shot, that hurt him, didn’t it? Bad. Did he take a very long time to die?”
“I’m afraid so, Pearl.”
“So I should help you make the person who did that die, too. Maybe die just as bad.”
“He’d hang. That’s plenty bad.”
The big blue eyes stared up at him; they were truly beautiful. “Maybe being dead ain’t what scares me. Maybe it’s the time it takes doing it. The dying?”
“Let me protect you, Pearl. Tell me what you know, agree to testify, and I’ll—”
But now the eyes had closed. She was not dead, just sleeping. Just riding the laudanum cloud like an angel.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Around six o’clock, with the day’s sun still sliding into evening, a clerk from Harris Mercantile came by the jailhouse with word from Mr. Harris.
The towheaded youth—maybe sixteen—was the shop-owner’s middle boy. He’d never been in the sheriff’s office before and his eyes were big with the gun rack and wanted posters as he said, “Pa says the Citizens Committee is about to convene. They request you attend, with due respect.”
Caleb York—seated not at his desk but by the barred window onto the street, should the Rhomers make good time on their ride from Las Vegas—said to the boy, “That ‘due respect,’ son—are they giving it, or am I to bring it?”
“Sir, I don’t know, sir. I just know they want you.”
“I’ll be right down.”
The boy nodded, looking around all big-eyed, taking in the first of the cells before the others disappeared out of sight behind the far wall.
“Sheriff, how many cells you got back there?”
“How many do you need?”
The boy blinked at him.
York smiled. “Four cells. We accommodate four to a cell, if called for.”
“What if there was more bad people than sixteen?”
The boy had math skills.
“Well, then,” York said, “I guess I’d just have to shoot the excess.”
The boy’s eyes got even bigger, he swallowed, and scurried out.
York got up, tied his .44 down just in case, went out, and locked the door behind him. As he began to walk down to the mercantile, he nodded over to Tulley, out in front of the livery stable, leaning on a broom.
The deputy, who nodded back, would appear to anyone riding in—the Rhomers, for instance—just a harmless coot doing odd jobs at the livery. Few if any would notice the scattergun leaned up against, and mostly hidden, by the nearby blacksmith anvil.
The sign said CLOSED in the window of Harris Mercantile, but the door was unlocked. A meeting was already under way in back, past the front two-thirds of the store, and just beyond the wood-burning stove. Perhaps a dozen chairs were arranged in two semicircular rows, leaving an aisle between; the seating faced the same slightly raised table used on occasion by the circuit-court judge.
Is this a trial? York wondered. And am I the defendant?
At that table, in the judge’s chair, sat Jasper Hardy, the town’s fastidious little barber mayor, gavel in hand, with elaborately well-dressed banker Carter seated up there at His Honor’s left, their host Newt Harris to his right.
Curl-brimmed hat in hand, the black-clad sheriff moved down the aisle past the other city fathers—druggist Clem Davis, hardware man Clarence Mathers, telegraph manager Ralph Parsons, undertaker Perkins, among others—and took a seat right in front.
York knew he must be a topic of discussion here—perhaps the topic—because he normally wasn’t invited to these meetings. So he positioned himself where they could have at him. If they had the grit.
Too late he realized he was sitting right across from Willa, seated next to her father, with Zachary Gauge on the other side of the old man. She wore a blue-and-white calico dress and her hair was down, blue-ribboned back—she looked nothing like a tomboy this afternoon. They exchanged nods and polite, awkward smiles.
The smile the mayor gave to York was similarly polite and even more awkward. “Sheriff, we’re glad to see you here. Thank you, sir, for accepting our invitation.”
Why? he thought. Is it a dance?
The room was already pin-drop quiet when the mustached mayor pointlessly banged his gavel a couple of times, then contradicted the formality of that by addressing York again.
“Sheriff,” Hardy said, “please understand—this isn’t an official meeting.”
/> York said, “Could have fooled me.”
“The committee members did meet just half an hour ago,” the mayor went on, “and while no vote was taken on the subject, we were in general agreement that it would be best for Trinidad . . . and in your best interests, too . . . if you were to step down from your post.”
“That’s my intention,” York said, in a voice both quiet and strong, “when a certain matter is resolved.”
“If I might, Jasper,” Thomas Carter said to the mayor. Then the banker’s gaze went to those watching, though not landing on York. “I believe this concerns me as much, if not more, than anyone here.”
Then, with the kind of sincerity only a crooked bank president could muster, Carter smiled down at York and said, “We all appreciate everything you’ve done for Trinidad. Your quick response to the robbery of First Bank took down two of the scoundrels right at the scene, and, of course, you tracked down and shot and killed their ringleader. You even returned a portion of the stolen funds. A small portion, granted, but nonetheless a gesture appreciated by me . . . by all of us.”
“You’re welcome,” York said dryly.
“But it seems unlikely that you will be able to recover the rest of the stolen funds. . . .”
“I have a pretty good idea where they are.”
The banker flinched, smiled nervously, and went on, “Be that as it may, the city of Trinidad no longer requires your services.”
“Oh,” York said, his surprise clearly feigned, “you want me to step down now? Not let the door hit me in the tail on the way out, you mean?”
A few chuckles came from those seated behind the sheriff.
“We do,” the banker said firmly. “Our, uh, relative haste has a practical basis, as you well know.”
You mean, York thought, the longer I stay, the more likely I’ll nab your well-dressed ass?
But York said, “I’m afraid I don’t know. You’ll have to educate me.”
The banker sighed and turned to the mayor with an exasperated expression. “Jasper? Please. Explain to the man.”
The little barber said, “We learned earlier today that five very dangerous men are riding from Las Vegas to Trinidad to . . . how best to put it? Do battle with you, Sheriff. To engage in the kind of shoot-out that gave Tombstone such a black eye.”
“Their names are Rhomer,” York said, in a clear, loud voice. “Brothers—very dangerous, yes. You’ll all recall our ex-sheriff Harry Gauge’s brutal deputy, Vint Rhomer. I shot him down like the animal he was at the relay station last April. Many of you here thanked me for that.”
Willa’s head was lowered.
“I can well understand,” York said, “that you don’t want Main Street turned into a shooting gallery. Neither do I. But I do have one question.”
Up on the raised table, the mayor, the banker, and the mercantile owner glanced at each other. Then Hardy asked York, “What question is that, Sheriff?”
York turned and looked at skinny, four-eyed Ralph Parsons. “Since when did Western Union start making the contents of their telegrams public?”
Parsons gulped and lowered his gaze; his derby was in his hands and he was turning it like a spigot he wanted to shut off.
“Those men,” York said, addressing them all, “could be here at any moment.”
The banker snapped, “That’s right! So you need to pack up your things and saddle your horse and go, while there’s still time.”
With a frustrated sigh, Harris said, “Sheriff, nobody appreciates what you’ve done for this town more than we do. But the last thing Trinidad needs is a big showdown like the one promised by these five notorious killers.”
The mayor said, “But if they come to town, and find you gone, they’ll move on. No harm done.”
Willa almost shouted: “They’ll move on, all right, and go after Caleb! What’s wrong with you people, anyway? Aren’t there any men in this room?”
A warm feeling for the girl flowed through York, but as if in answer to her question, Zachary Gauge sprang to his feet. He was in the black frock coat that made him look half preacher, half gambler.
“Miss Cullen’s words ring true,” the Easterner said. “We should be banding together to help the sheriff stave off these outlaws. They are five—we are a whole blasted town. If the Rhomers ride in, expecting to find one man and instead find themselves facing a well-armed community, why, they’ll scatter to the four winds like the cowards such men always are.”
A smattering of applause.
Old man Cullen shouted, “You people should be ashamed! Caleb York is the best damned thing that ever happened to this town.”
More applause, not just a smattering.
“I demand a vote on this issue!” the banker said, just shy of yelling, his fist raised like it was the gavel.
The mayor said, “We’ll take a vote.... Sheriff, is there anything else you’d like to say before we do?”
“Only that while I appreciate my friend Zachary here, for expressing his sentiments, I am not asking you good people to stand behind me with anything but moral support. I’ll take your prayers but not your guns.”
Frowning, Zachary said, “But one man alone—”
“Sir, I’m not alone.”
The banker snorted. “What, that desert-rat deputy of yours? You must be joking.”
“I can handle this. There are only five of them.”
Harris said, “Five guns, Sheriff.”
“Five guns. In the hands of five louts.”
More chuckles, more scattered applause.
“Mr. Carter,” York said affably, “look at it this way—if they shoot me down, you won’t have to fire me. Hell, you won’t even have to pay me my last month’s salary.”
They voted.
The bank president’s was the only hand raised in favor of removing Caleb York from the office of sheriff.
As Carter was stepping down from the table, York was right there. “Mr. Carter, I have a comment.”
“I have no interest, sir, in hearing it.”
“Here it is, anyway. If one of us needs to leave town in a hurry, it isn’t me.”
York smiled pleasantly, put his hat on, tipped it to the banker, whose face had gone pale, and started out.
But then Zachary, in the aisle just ahead of York, turned, a big smile under the thin mustache in his narrow, well-carved face.
“If you handle the Rhomers,” Zachary said, in a near whisper, “half as well as you did that banker, none of us have anything to worry about.”
And Zachary extended a hand, which York shook.
“I appreciate you standin’ up for me,” York told the man.
Zachary’s smile disappeared and something thoughtful took its place. Something . . . troubled.
“Might we have a word in private?” Zachary asked.
“Sure.”
The two men walked away from where many of those in attendance were lingering, talking in smaller groups.
Over by a wall, Zachary said, “You once recommended I take the counsel of my Circle G foreman, Gil Willart.”
“Well, if I did, I shouldn’t have put it so strong. Willart was one of your cousin’s men, though he’s no outlaw. Strictly a cattleman. I just thought he might be useful in pointing out the bad apples still in your crop.”
“I’m afraid,” Zachary said, frowning, “Gil may be one of those apples. My understanding is that this Rhomer gang is coming in from Las Vegas.”
“Yes, sir. That’s been confirmed.”
“Well, Gil spent two days in Las Vegas this week, looking into buying cattle for me. Is that a coincidence?”
“Could be.”
“And I know he’s been thick with these roughnecks my cousin Harry brought in, may he not rest in peace.” Zachary shrugged. “Just thought you should know that this Willart may not be an ally.”
“Appreciate it,” York said with a nod.
Zachary nodded back, and went over to where Willa had been waiting. They spoke briefly
and then she came over to York.
“Caleb,” she said, smiling, less awkwardly now, “while there’s part of me that does wish you would leave before these outlaws come to town . . . I am very happy that things this afternoon went the way you wanted.”
“Thank you, Willa. And thanks for sticking up for me.”
She swallowed. Nodded shyly. “You deserve no less. And I’m so pleased that you and Zachary are getting along so famously.”
“Seems to be a good man.”
“I’m glad you feel that way. Because . . . you have a right to know this . . . he and I are engaged to be married.”
York said nothing. It was tough to talk after a blow to the belly like that. But he did find a smile, and so did Willa, before she joined Zachary and exited with him, arm in arm, following her blind father out.
York walked up to the livery, where Tulley was sitting on the anvil, smoking a cheroot that smelled only a trifle worse than the crapped-on straw in the stable behind him.
“Seen all kinds of folks head in the mercantile,” Tulley remarked. “You was about the last of ’em. Am I wrong sayin’ it looked like an indoors hangin’ about to commence?”
“It almost was. Any doubt I had about that bank president killing his chief cashier? Just rolled out of town like a tumbleweed.”
York filled his deputy in on the meeting, including Willa’s surprise announcement of her engagement to Zachary Gauge.
“That feller moves faster than a Texas twister,” Tulley said. “You trust him?”
“He stood up for me.”
“Tryin’ to look good, y’think?”
“Mebbe. Tulley, when it gets along about midnight, there’s scant chance the Rhomers will ride in. And if they do, doubtful they’ll be lookin’ for trouble, at that hour.”
Tulley nodded emphatically. “Gunfights in the dark ain’t good for nobody. I don’t think we’ll see them sidewinders till after sunup.”
“ ‘Sidewinders’?”
The Big Showdown Page 15
