She touched his face. “Alive when it’s over.”
Her kiss was sudden and brief but no less passionate.
Then she was gone, and shortly so was York and his small, expensive posse.
* * *
In a world washed ivory by moonlight, as stars kept silent vigil, York and his posse of three left their horses tied to scrawny trees among the spiny shrubs and bunch grass off the narrow lane to the Circle G. A short walk led to the fence-post archway to the handful of frame buildings and the single impressive structure among them, the one-story hacienda-like ranch house.
The sheriff led the way, handguns drawn and Tully lugging his shotgun, moving into the compound, keeping low and slow. A slight breeze stirred brush and leaves, and a nocturnal songbird chimed in now and then. No sign presented itself of anyone standing guard among the structures, including the hacienda, where a window glowed with yellow lamplight. The bunkhouse with a cookhouse nearby was off to the right. No lights were on in either structure.
The four men headed that way.
Colt at the ready, York stepped to the door of the bunkhouse, a glorified shack much as the Bar-O’s had been. He tried the door and found it unlocked. He opened it and went in fast, .44 moving right and then left, with the other three poised to follow him in and back him up.
The bunks were empty. The sitting area with potbellied stove was similarly unpopulated.
He closed the door, quietly.
Moving low and quick, he led his men to the left and the sheltering cottonwood. They were just tucking in back of its massive trunk when a guard revealed himself, coming around one side of the big adobe house.
They waited a few seconds. Then, peeking out, York snatched a look. The guard had positioned himself in front of the several steps to the porch; he was rolling a cigarette—a burly character with a cavalry shirt and a yellow bandanna knotted loose at his throat, his short-crowned hat bearing a telltale genuine rattlesnake band.
As the four huddled behind the broad cottonwood trunk, Duffy raised his left hand in a “hold on” motion, then with his right plucked a knife from a sheath on his left hip—the blade’s blued finish gleaming in the moonlight. Duffy held the eight-inch throwing knife near the tip, exposing its leather-wrapped grip.
York gave him a look that said, Are you sure?
And Duffy gave him back a look that said, Don’t insult me.
The watchdog, pleased with himself, was just lighting up a well-made cigarette when the blade thunked into the left side of his chest. He grunted, as if he’d been struck a blow with a fist. His legs gave away and he toppled hard on his back.
Duffy and O’Fallon scurried over and—after the tall knife thrower had retrieved his blade—dragged the dead man off, one on each arm, to some bushes on the far side of the cottonwood, where he’d not likely attract any attention.
Reporting back for duty, the two shootists paused as York raised a cautionary hand, and his expression told them to listen. From the direction of the creek came the echoey sound of rowdy carousing, muffled but distinct with raucous laughs occasionally rising above an overall murmuring clamor.
York smiled. He looked from face to face, and they knew the Circle G raiders were—as the sheriff had predicted—celebrating their victorious attack.
As they’d been instructed, Duffy and O’Fallon moved left and right, respectively, the former between the water tower and barn, the latter circling the cookhouse and bunkhouse. Duffy was heading upstream, O’Fallon down, with the idea being that York and Tulley would move through the towering trees beyond the hacienda. The sheriff and deputy would then position themselves at the edge of the stand of firs and York would fire the first shot.
There would be no callout for surrender, no “You’re under arrest.” The raiders would get no more warning than the Bar-O bunkhouse got.
With .44 in hand, York sent the shotgun-toting Tulley to the left while he headed right, both into the pines, and it was a trickier journey than the other time he’d moved through the stand of firs as, despite the moonlight, the lack of sun shining down through high branches made getting through this forest of no paths truly a case of making your way in the dark. Add to that the need to make as little noise as possible, with the crushing of dry leaves and needles underfoot a dead (in several senses) giveaway, should any watcher be posted in these trees.
That smell of loam and grass and resin was the same, but the rest was some new nightmare he was slogging through. No animals were scurrying, but an owl wanted to know who the hell he was. The only thing keeping York from getting turned around and winding up back where he started or off to one side or the other was the echoing of drunken revelry bouncing off the nearby stream.
He was nearing the far edge of the fir stand when an arm looped around his neck and the flash of a blade not unlike the one that had killed that cigarette-rolling guard minutes ago came swiftly down seeking similar purchase when York brought his right elbow up, hard, and knocked into the wrist of his attacker and sent the knife flying God knew where in this darkness.
He thrust himself backward and the attacker, luckily, was forced back into a pine, with enough force to loosen that arm looped around his neck, which he slipped under, and in one swift motion he got the .44 out—firing it would cause everything to go to hell, and would signal a general assault by his posse of three that it was not yet time to make—and swung the weapon, landing it hard against the side of his attacker’s head, to stun or even knock out that vague, threatening shape assailing him like a dream demon, just enough moonlight filtering through at that moment, at that angle, to reveal who his opponent was: the Chiricahua Kid.
The Kid was reeling from the blow, and without the knife that was an Apache’s tool of close-in fighting, for a few moments York had the upper hand. He swung the. 44 again, backhanded this time, and the second blow opened up a bloody gash from temple to cheek, then he head-butted the Indian, who was already pinned against the tree, and the Kid slid down the bark surface, gurgling.
York leaned down to hit him again, if need be, but the gurgling stopped and the man was dead or one hell of a faker. Moonlight found the knife and it glinted at York, as if to say, Better safe than sorry. York grabbed it up and pounded the blade into the fallen warrior’s heart.
Dead for sure now.
York sat for a moment, the rough pinecone-strewn surface of the small forest making for uncomfortable seating; but he needed to catch his breath, leaning back against another fir. Enabled by night vision and a little moonlight, he regarded the dead renegade, and thought about what an ignoble end this storied fighter had come to. On the other hand, the son of a bitch had burned down that bunkhouse and caused the death of every man in it, so to hell with him.
He got to his feet and made his way to the edge of the trees. Positioned himself behind one, .44 nose pointed up.
And there they were.
The raiders laughing, slapping each other on the back, their glee echoing off ivory-glimmering waters gliding by, moving through the moon’s reflection and leaving it behind on the northward journey. The sand looked like sugar, all right, whiter than sugar, as pure as these outlaw creatures cavorting on it were not.
The campfire at this end had four Circle G hands gathered around it, two sitting, two standing, passing a bottle around. A few others were sitting and standing between this point and the other campfire perhaps ten yards upstream. Across the way the white bank, glowing in ivory moonlight, looked pristine, unfouled by humanity.
Dave Carson, a onetime lawman himself, was strutting around, smoking a cigar, his close-set eyes giving him a dumber look than he maybe deserved.
York, behind a tree at the edge of the grassy incline down to the sand, leaned around and shot Carson in the head. It came apart like a melon and the cigar almost seemed to pause in midair before it dropped to the bank as men went for their guns and looked around them for cover, of which there was none. From the right came more gunfire—O’Fallon engaging the raiders—and, from upstream, Duffy�
��s barrage began. Men wiggled and danced and died.
To the left a shotgun exploded from the trees—Tulley getting into the one-sided fray—and another Arizona Cowboy bought himself a ticket to the undertaker’s display window, since the blast to the belly that killed him wouldn’t show under the Sunday suit he’d be wearing to impress the mourners, if any.
A few of the rustlers turned cowboys went for their guns and returned fire, the reports echoing off the water, as if this were happening somewhere else and not right here.
The celebrants quickly died, thanks to whichever of the posse was closest by.
“Hands in the air!” York yelled. “Or join your friends in hell!”
All along the beach, the Circle G crew raised their arms and froze in place.
Between where York and Tulley were positioned, one man had brains enough to head into the trees, which after all provided the only cover—Billy Bassett, that skinny killer whose mustache overwhelmed his face, his Remington revolver firing at no one in particular, chewing up branches, as he slipped into the relative safety of the trees.
“Round these prisoners up!” York yelled to Tulley and the other two deputies, who converged as they herded captives.
The sheriff moved through the little forest as quickly as he could, hoping to get to the clearing that was the hacienda’s backyard before Bassett did. He bumped into a tree, and another, and another, and it rocked him but didn’t slow him much, though when he emerged he was reeling. He stood there getting his feet under him and looked around for Bassett.
Nowhere to be seen.
Had the outlaw’s head start been enough for him to slip away entirely?
Then the little man with the big mustache emerged from the pines and planted himself for a moment, similarly needing to find his balance after his trip through those bewildering trees.
And the two men faced each other, perhaps four yards separating them, each breathing hard and with his six-gun hanging unholstered at his side.
Bassett looked at the sheriff with rage and disgust. “You . . . you’re the killer they say you are, Caleb York.”
“An expert opinion.”
The hired gun’s eyes were hard, his lips beneath the elaborate mustache soft and trembling. “You just . . . just up and shot Dave. Killed him. He never had a damn chance.”
“Like the men in that bunkhouse. Anyway, Billy, I had a point to make.”
“A point?”
“Only a handful died. In a fair fight, Sugar Creek would be running red.”
“You’re a bastard, York!”
The Remington came up.
The .44 came up faster.
“And you’re a dead one,” York said.
Billy’s eyes looked up, as if checking to see if that really was a hole in his forehead. He was, of course, unable to confirm that, though the mist of red he left behind when his legs gave up and deposited him on his back on the grass did indeed affirm it, as did the gray-green soup of brains his head sank into, as if he were reclaiming them.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Aided by moonlight, Caleb York helped his deputies round up the seven survivors of the shoot-out at Sugar Creek, disarming them, herding them into a hands-up group near the Circle G’s horse barn behind which the water tower loomed.
Rope was cut in strips, each captive made to get on horseback and have his wrists bound to the saddle horn, as the little posse prepared to convey the prisoners back to Trinidad.
Tulley looked unhappy.
York asked him why.
“Where’s Jonathan P. Tulley gonna sleep tonight?” he pondered aloud.
With a nod toward the prisoners on horseback, York said, “Sit up with them till I can spell you, then you can borrow my hotel room.”
Tulley beamed. “The good Lord broke the mold makin’ ye, Caleb York.”
“Didn’t he, though.”
The bookkeeper, Byers, in the derby and cutaway jacket he’d worn when York first encountered him, hustled out of the ranch house with a carpetbag in hand. He waddled up to York, who was supervising, and said, “Two things, Sheriff.”
“Which are?”
“The mistress requests an audience in the library.”
“When I get around to it.”
The bookkeeper’s head tilted sideways. “And I was wondering . . . might I collect my personal steed and make my way elsewhere?”
York grinned, laughed once. “Be my guest, Mr. Byers.”
The gray-mustached former factotum tipped his derby and was heading into the horse barn when York said, “And Mr. Byers?”
The stout little fellow turned to face the sheriff. “Yes, sir?”
“Perhaps you might be more prudent in selecting your next employer.”
“Excellent advice, sir.” He gave a little bow. “And good evening. Or is it morning now?”
“Not really keeping track. Might I suggest the Trinidad House for the night, rather than setting out for parts unknown at such an hour?”
“More first-rate advice.”
And Byers slipped into the barn.
Fifteen minutes or so later, York saw the little three-deputy-and-seven-prisoner caravan off and then the sheriff was alone in the Circle G compound.
Only the rush of water filtering back through the pines remained to keep him company, the songbirds apparently out of tunes to share, small creatures and their predators alike sleeping between encounters, the breeze dying down enough to leave leaves and brush alone. Even the bookkeeper was gone. No sign of the pretty little serving girl, either. Perhaps she slept. Perhaps she’d slipped away less openly than Byers.
At any rate, when York entered the house, the emptiness was emphasized by a darkness only mildly alleviated by the moon creeping in windows. Still, he had no problem making his way to the library, where he opened the heavy door to find Victoria Hammond pacing slowly on the chamber’s midroom Oriental carpet. She halted, hearing him come in, her eyes going to him, where he stood framed in the doorway.
The woman was always a rather remarkable sight for a man’s eyes to take in and his mind to assess. But tonight Victoria Hammond made a picture so striking he would never forget it.
All that ebony hair was down and bouncing on her shoulders, nothing pinned up or back, giving her a look as wild as any animal. She had applied face paint as bold as any bordello wench’s, yet she looked beautiful and somehow not at all cheap. Her clothing was such that he’d never seen a woman wearing anything like it, not even on a theater stage—a black silk shirt under a black leather vest, black gaucho trousers, pointed-toe boots with heels so high she would easily reach his eyes.
And on her right hip, worn as low as any man-killer’s, was an elaborately tooled holster, tan against the black apparel, with a pearl-gripped Colt .45 revolver, perfectly positioned for her slender fingers to touch the handle, if her arm hung loose and natural.
Which it did.
“Caleb,” she said.
“Mrs. Hammond.”
He stepped in, shut the door behind him.
She gestured toward the love seat. “Shall we sit?”
“I think not.”
The would-be cattle baroness turned sideways, folded her arms, looking away from him. The sitting area, overseen by her husband’s standing portrait, was at her back.
She said, “I lost another son tonight.”
“Condolences,” he said.
Still not looking at him, she asked, flatly, “Do you intend to arrest me?”
“I do.” York strolled over, got in front of and faced her, the desk at his back, the woman maybe six feet from him, her husband staring over her shoulder. “You shot Willa Cullen.”
Her chin came up. Her eyes were steady and half-lidded. “. . . I did. That woman killed my son Pierce. It’s a mother’s right, settling such a score. A lioness would do the same.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I killed your William. Were you settling up for that when you sent Clay Colman to kill me at the graveyard? And to ambush me
at night in town?”
She shook her head and all that dark hair came along for the ride. “That was Colman’s own doing. I knew nothing of it, any of it. He had a personal grudge, I hear.”
“You heard right.”
A shrug. The dark eyes remained steady. “I instructed my ramrod to work with you. I was unaware of the actions he took on his own. I told him you were on our side of this.” Another shrug. “At the time, I thought you were.”
York frowned. “Your side? The law’s side. I’m a peace officer, woman.”
With a regal smile, she said, “You didn’t sow much peace tonight, did you, Sheriff?”
He huffed a laugh. “Did you give me much choice? As for you impulsively trying to settle up with Willa, you may be relieved to hear she may recover.”
Her eyelashes fluttered just a bit, as she digested this news. “Uh, well. That’s a relief to learn. Of course.”
“So I heard from her lips that you shot her. Which confirms that you knew about the raid on the Bar-O. That you sent those attackers in to burn and murder.”
Her chin came up. “I did no such thing. I knew nothing of it! The first I became aware of what they’d done was when they reported my son’s murder.”
“His murder?”
Indignation now. “What would you call it?”
“Self-defense. The ranch was attacked and Willa stood her ground. That’s what we do in the Southwest.” He laughed harshly. “You expect me to believe you didn’t orchestrate that raid? After you returned yourself to launch a second assault?”
Now the dark arching eyebrows rose. “Can you prove I dispatched those men? They quite naturally developed an animosity against a rival team of gunmen. And my son, Pierce . . .” She stopped, swallowed. “. . . Pierce is the one who organized what you call a raid, or so it would seem. He must have wanted to impress his mother, the poor misguided soul.”
Her chin trembled, whether out of emotion or at her bidding for effect, he couldn’t guess.
She added, “He should have known that wasn’t necessary to win . . . win his mother’s love.”
She swallowed; tears were pooling.
Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek (A Caleb York Western Book 6) Page 18