“No. But I am saying, even with this town snowed in, the law in Trinidad is still Caleb York. And that man is hell on two legs. There would be no back-shooting. He would come straight at you. You would still have him to deal with.”
“I’m counting on that,” Burnham said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The snow had reached the bottom of the windows of The ranch house kitchen where Willa Cullen served Caleb York scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, and biscuits with honey.
York was back in the clothing that had dried overnight, having retrieved them from the hearth of a fireplace where flames were still working. Willa wore a white bib apron over a tailored dress (likely a ready-made, York figured) the color of her cornflower-blue eyes—straight-cut bodice, high collar, and tapered sleeves. No plaid shirt and denims today—was she painting a picture of the wife she might one day be to him? Had this been contrived to ensnare him? If so, when had a sprung trap felt so comfortable?
She served herself and sat down next to him at the table for four.
They ate in silence for a while, exchanging shy smiles, embarrassed but in no way ashamed. The wind was whistling at the moment, not roaring, and the snowfall seemed to have let up some. Some.
Between bites of eggs, York said, “I guess we’ve moved past it.”
She blinked at him. “Past what?”
“The friendship stage.”
She smiled a little, and he grinned.
Willa got up—was she blushing, and turning her back to him to hide it?—and took the coffeepot from the stove, then refreshed his cup.
At his shoulder, she said, “So what’s next?”
“We’ll both have to mull that. I’m no rancher, and you aren’t cut out for town. So for now . . .”
She leaned in and nibbled at his ear. “Very good friends?”
“Real damn good,” he admitted.
She went back to her chair. “I may not have a ranch after this.”
He shook his head. “You’ll have a ranch. Like you were saying last night, the going may be different, here on out. But it’d take a lot more than a little snow to bring down George Cullen’s daughter.”
She was smiling, picking at her scrambled eggs. “A little snow?”
He forked up some potatoes. “This is New Mexico. There’s gonna be more sun than snow, when the reckoning comes.” He pushed his plate away a few inches. “Afraid I have to get back to Trinidad. Not sure what a sheriff can do to help much, when Nature gets in a mood. But I have to be available.”
Her frown was of concern. “Please tell your deputy I’m thinking of him.”
“I will do that.”
Soon they were at the door. He had a hunch she’d be getting out of that dress that matched her eyes and into her rancher-gal plaid shirt and jeans as soon as he left, but he appreciated the trouble she’d gone to for him. Loving this young woman wasn’t tough at all, and he liked that she had both a hard and soft side. A woman in this country, in such times, needed that.
“I heard coyotes last night,” she said. “Sounded mean and hungry.”
“There were wolves out there, too. Howling like they were tryin’ to sing along with the wind.”
“I heard them.”
He was putting on the long black frock coat. “All manner of predators come out in weather such as this, when their prey’s at its weakest. You’ll lose some cattle to them. Not as many as to the cold, but . . . you will lose some that way.”
She was frowning at him, leaning around to get a better look at something at the back of the coat he’d just put on and was now buttoning up. “What is that? Is that blood?”
He nodded and snugged on the cavalry-pinched Stetson. “Tulley’s. Should have been mine.”
“I could mend those bullet holes.”
He smiled. “I didn’t take you for a seamstress.”
She smiled. “I’m a woman. I may run this place, but I am not a man.”
“Noticed that. No mending of this garment just yet. I want the men who almost killed Tulley to know who’s come for them.”
She nodded, her smile barely there . . . but there. That she understood and approved meant much to him.
They were standing close, her face tilted up, his down. They were deciding whether a good-bye kiss was called for. York decided it was and gave her a soft, gentle one. They stood there looking at each other from just a few inches, then she kissed him back, hard, forceful, passionate enough to have gotten him out of his coat and more, if he’d let it.
And she knew as much, backing away a little, her smile a pretty, pretty mischievous thing. She folded her arms over her pert bosom and watched as he tied the muffler around the hat.
“You don’t look like a legend,” she said, “in that torn coat and muffler knotted under your chin.”
“It is deceiving,” he said, touched his brim, gave her his own mischievous smile (though not at all pretty), and went outside to find his way to his horse.
The snow had trailed off enough that he didn’t have to embarrass himself by using old Lou Morgan’s rope getting from porch to barn. She watched from the doorway, but not for long, the cold and snow chasing her back inside, however warm her sentiment.
The dappled gelding—after a good night’s sleep (York had found the animal lying flat in the stall) and well-fed on oats and straw—was ready to ride. And ride the gelding he did, all right. Not hard but steady, slowing only to navigate the drifts along the telegraph-pole-marked road, and again when York spotted the frozen legs of horses, hooves rising from snowbanks as if in surrender.
He counted four horses that had died along here last night, fairly close together, and that made York sad, easily as sad as if they had been humans. After all, people should be smart enough not to be out in this merciless cold and snow, while the horses they rode had no choice. It did not occur to him that he apparently wasn’t smart enough not to be out in this weather, either.
Humans had died on this frozen byway, too, but York did not see the murdered father and son who had been dragged off the road by Burnham’s boys, the snowfall since having hidden these creatures, their corpses more easily interred in the white than equines.
So when the sheriff rode into Trinidad, whose Main Street was a weirdly beautiful and still sea of white waves, he had no notion that the Luke Burnham gang was yet in town. He left the gelding at the livery stable, where there was feed and warmth and a stall for the animal, then walked over to his office.
Without Tulley tending things, the interior of the small jailhouse office was damn near as chill as the out of doors. York built a fire in the potbellied stove and then went over to the wall of wanted posters, reading them over, like a man window-shopping. His eyes lingered on the Burnham poster, which he had tacked back up after showing it around. He took it down again and tucked it folded into a pocket.
In a drawer of his desk there were more circulars, and he sat and went quickly through them. The stove hadn’t kicked in yet when he got up and was about to go, then he paused and smiled. Then he went over to grab his deputy’s scattergun off the gun rack before getting out of there. He would return when a climate difference could be told between inside and outside.
Doc Miller was not in, but his office was unlocked, and York was able to walk right into Tulley’s sickroom, pull up a chair and sit while his deputy in a nightshirt sawed logs. This was a sound to which York was well accustomed, as Tulley often snoozed in the cell the old boy used as lodging. Previously, York had found the snoring either annoying or amusing; right now it seemed reassuring.
Tulley looked good. For Tulley. His color was fine, and he appeared no skinnier than usual, nicely warm under several blankets. With the doc and the deputy both out in their respective ways, York rose after a few minutes and leaned Tulley’s shotgun against the wall by the window onto the street.
Somehow the small clunk that made was enough to nudge Tulley awake, his eyes snapping open like a man who heard a prowler, although he did not sit up. Appa
rently he was still too sore for that.
“Caleb York!” Tulley said, eyelids fluttering. “Have ye killed the ones that shot me yet?”
Standing at the bedside, York shook his head. “No. I’ve had this blizzard to contend with. I fear those that done this to you are at large and likely gone from these parts.”
Tulley frowned, more sad than anything else. “Tain’t like you, Caleb York. Ye don’t seem like the sort of lawman what would allow his faithful deputy to be shot down in the street like a dog.”
York returned to his chair. “That’s true, Tulley. But I do know who did this, at least I think I do.”
Now Tulley sat up.
The sheriff rose and stuffed and fluffed the pillows behind his deputy, then again resumed his seat.
Tulley was saying, “Who done this then? Iffen ye must pursue the blackguard, I am here to tell ye that Jonathan P. Tulley be fit as a fiddle, and ready to ride!”
York shook a forefinger. “There will be no riding till this blizzard lets up, and the sun leans into all this drifted snow. As for who done it, have you heard of Luke Burnham?”
The deputy’s eyes popped. “ ‘Burn ’Em’ Burnham? ’Deed I have. We have a poster on him. Quantrill rabble, I recall.”
“That’s right. And he has a bad grudge on me. I sent him to the graybar. You caught the brunt.”
York filled his deputy in.
“Ye say,” Tulley said, eyes narrowed, “he don’t ride alone?”
“That poster of yours says he’s leader of the Burnham gang. That’s not alone. And Rita Filley saw him in town, day before you were bushwacked, with three no-accounts.”
“Then ye must wait for me to get out of this here bed and on the back of Gertie.”
Tulley’s mule.
“I will welcome your support,” York told him, “when the times comes. In fact, I brought you your scattergun.” He gestured to where he’d leaned the weapon against the wall. “Might come in handy if looting breaks out.”
This was nonsense, but York wanted Tulley to feel a part of things. Wanted the old desert rat to know that the sheriff considered him his valued deputy, even if bedridden.
“Never can tell,” Tulley said, shutting an eye and leaving it that way a few seconds. “There’s always them what takes advantage of the misfortune of others.”
“Truer words.” York rose. “I was out to the Cullen ranch. They’re hit hard by this. But Miss Cullen asked of you.”
“Kind of her. She’s a fine lady.”
“She is indeed. Sends you her best.”
“So kind, she be.”
By the time York had reached the door, and looked back to bid his deputy good-bye, the old fellow was asleep again. Not snoring yet, but judging by Tulley’s elaborate lip action, that would come soon enough.
When he entered the surgery’s office, York found Doc Miller just coming in. The little pear-shaped physician looked beaten down as he brushed snow from his overcoat, then hung it and his hat on the coat tree. He removed his fogged-over glasses and tossed them on his desk.
“How’s my patient?” Miller asked.
“I was going to ask you. But my diagnosis is, he’s full of prunes.”
Miller found a smile. “Nicely on the mend, yes.”
The doctor gestured for York to follow him, and in moments they were in the medic’s small kitchen, where Miller prescribed them both cups of coffee from the pot on his stove.
“He needs more rest, of course,” Miller said, after a sip of the Arbuckles’. “But he’s doing well. I wish I could say the same for the bulk of my patients.”
York frowned. “How bad?”
The doctor sighed long and deep, shaking his head. He said, “These folks aren’t used to this kind of cold. This preponderance of snow and ice. They try to keep the boardwalks outside their businesses cleared off when they don’t have any customers, ’cept for the Mercantile, whose shelves are mostly bare now anyway. These fools should have just stayed inside, next to a damn stove or fireplace! I have enough cases of frostbite to make the ’73 outbreak of cholera look like last year’s chicken pox!”
York sipped coffee. “What can you do for it?”
The doctor rolled his eyes, shook his head. “Their idea of a remedy is worse than the ailment! Who told these fools to rub their frostbit feet in snow!”
“I’ve heard that myself.”
“Well, it’s nonsense. Dangerous nonsense.” Miller wagged a finger at the sheriff. “Come the thaw, you’re going to see a lot of strange-lookin’ people walkin’ around this town with fingers, toes, and ears and noses missin’. Warmth and light massage are all that can be done, really.”
“What do you hear about Irish potatoes?”
“That they’re good boiled—why?”
York finished his coffee. “Nothing.” He got up. “I’m going down to the Victory and see how Miss Filley is faring.”
The doc smiled and chuckled. Was that a twinkle in the old boy’s eyes? “You’re sweet on that particular filly, aren’t you, Caleb?”
“Well, uh . . . she’s a nice woman.”
“Very nice. Very nice indeed. Were I younger, and not so devoted to my late wife’s memory, you might have some competition there!”
“You know, Doc,” York said, snugging his hat on, not bothering with the muffler now, “I might not mind.”
The doc clearly didn’t follow that, but York had no intention of explaining himself.
In the Victory, York was greeted by the warmth of the potbelly heating stove near the wall toward the front of the rear dance-floor area. The welcome heat, amplified by a cooking stove in the small kitchen behind the bar, was such that the sheriff climbed out of the frock coat and hung it and his hat on the pegs inside the front doors.
The tables in front were empty and the casino aspect of the facility shut down; and no one stood at the bar itself, its brass foot rail and spittoons ignored.
But the place was anything but empty. Cowboys, their hats pushed back on their heads, sat in chairs commandeered from here and there in a semicircle three rows deep around the glowing potbelly. A few grouped in trios and quartets, facing each other to play cards, using empty chairs as tables, playing for small stakes. York noticed the telltale bedrolls piled against the wall on the other side of the room.
“We’re the desert island,” a familiar high-pitched yet throaty purr whispered, “where these sailors washed up in the storm.”
A small, gentle hand had already settled on his arm as York turned to smile at the owner and hostess of the Victory Saloon. But though Rita Filley was very much her lovely self, she was not attired in one of her standard low-cut satin gowns that so emphasized the full bosom of her otherwise slender though shapely frame. Instead she was covered, chin to ankle, by a gray cotton blouse with a pink cameo pin, stand-up collar, and puffy sleeves with fitted cuffs, and a walking skirt of black twill.
And she wore no face paint whatever.
Was it possible she was even prettier without it?
She walked him to the bar, where head bartender Hub Wainwright—a big man with skimpy brown hair and broad shoulders that indicated his secondary role as bouncer—was working alone.
“I’m afraid,” York said, smiling at the fetching-looking woman, who appeared surprisingly like a prairie housewife at the moment, “a cold beer does not sound tempting today.”
“We’re way ahead of you,” Rita said, then nodded to Hub, who disappeared into the kitchen. “Right now our own version of a hot toddy is the specialty of the house.”
Soon a coffee cup was before him, and York again smiled at Rita and had a sip of the hot whiskey, honey, herbs, and spices. Then he had several more sips, before saying, “Just the ticket. So these boys were stranded here when the storm hit?”
“Or just decided from the start to ride it out in town,” she said. “The hotel is full, so we’re accommodating anyone who doesn’t mind sleeping on the floor. And these cowhands all have bedrolls.”
&nb
sp; “Feeding them, too?”
Rita nodded, taking his arm again and walking him toward a table, where they sat in the warm path of the kitchen in back of the bar. York glimpsed the attractive colored girl who was Rita’s new cook.
“By rescuing Mahalia from Hell Junction,” Rita said, referring to a recent incident, “you did me a big favor. The girl works magic over a stove.”
The high-yellow gal in black-and-white livery noticed him looking her way and smiled shyly and waved like a little girl. But she was full-growed, all right, and York returned the smile but quickly looked away. The last thing he needed right now was another good-looking woman in his life.
“I had plenty of provisions already laid in,” Rita was saying with a shrug, “for our free lunches and suppers.”
The saloon typically served up cold cuts, yellow cheese, rye bread, celery stalks, pretzels, peanuts, smoked herring, and dill pickles—salty fare to encourage thirsts that needed quenching.
“I take it you’re not charging for lodging,” York said, lifting the steaming coffee cup, “but that you are charging for hot toddies.”
“Most perceptive,” she said with a smile. “Only the sheriff drinks free. How is Deputy Tulley faring?”
“Doc says he should be fine,” York said, “but the men who did it are well away by now.”
“Are they?”
He frowned, leaning closer. “What do you mean by that, Rita?”
She sighed, then leaned in some herself, keeping her voice down. “I can’t help but think about those three gunfighter-type characters who were so suddenly friendly with our local saddle shop man.”
“I was there that night. Saw them myself, remember? Didn’t recognize them. And I just went through the wanted circulars at the jailhouse. Of course, the son of a bitch who I figure shot Tulley, looking to kill me, does ride with three or four others.”
“What son of a bitch?” The words sounded funny coming from Rita in her conservative attire.
“Luke Burnham.”
Her eyes narrowed. “The man in the wanted circular you showed me.”
York nodded. “He could very well be the man in the Confederate jacket you saw, with the mismatched eyes.”
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