But the stranger seemed not to be paying attention to Whit and the threat he posed. Instead, he was looking up and beyond his Colt-waving accuser.
Quietly he said, “Before you make me kill you, Whit, you might want to look yonder.”
And the stranger, with one already upraised hand, pointed to the sky, above and behind Whit.
The foreman grunted a laugh. “You really do think I’m stupid.”
“I do,” the stranger admitted. “But that’s not why you should look. Over by that draw . . .”
Willa already had looked and seen, in the distance, ominous dark birds with widespread wings, circling.
She said, and it was a suggestion not an order, “Put that gun away, Whit.”
Everybody else was looking in that direction, too, and finally so did he.
“Buzzards!” Whit said.
“Well,” the stranger said. “Now you’re smart.”
Frowning, Whit holstered his gun and got back on his horse, to join the rest as they rode in the direction of the swooping predators who’d sensed carrion.
Soon the riders on horseback were gathered at the edge of the draw, looking down to see the partially exposed remains of a steer under a landslide that had been created to form a mass grave. A buzzard was perched, pulling an eyeball from a socket, snapping a last stubborn string of flesh like a rubber band. Then, sensing the presence of other creatures—living ones—the buzzard flapped away.
“No wonder we couldn’t see them,” the stranger said.
Whit, now riding alongside his adversary of minutes ago, said, “I want to get a look at those carcasses.”
“You want help?”
“No. No need to put anybody else at risk.”
The foreman dismounted, withdrew a folded-up shovel from a saddlebag, and stepped down into the draw, navigating the steepness of the slope with some difficulty, but managing.
Reaching the new, uneven pile of earth that filled the floor of the draw, Whit used the unfolded shovel to stroke away dirt from several suspicious lumps and expose more dead cows. He bent to each one, making an inspection, using gloved hands to help him see what he needed to. Then he stood, surveyed the grim scene, and made his way back up the steep, treacherous slope.
The foreman lifted his eyebrows and said to Willa, “Infected, all right. And they all wear Gauge’s Circle G brand.”
Rancher Gerrity said to no one in particular, “You know what that means—we gotta destroy every damn head of the sheriff’s herd.”
Whit, refolding and putting his shovel away, glanced back and said, “There’s hardly a cowhand on that spread of his who ain’t also a gunfighter, mind. He’ll be ready to fight.”
“So will we,” Gerrity said.
“If there’s time,” the stranger said.
Everyone looked at him.
“Gauge might be driving them into Las Vegas right now,” the stranger explained. “He can meet with the buyers today and give them his numbers and make a deal.”
Whit, frowning, said, “And once he’s sold ’em and they’re in pens mixed with cows from other herds, Gauge is in the clear.”
Willa wiped sweat from her brow and said, “The first batch of buyers is due into Trinidad on the stage this afternoon.”
The stranger asked, “How soon?”
She shrugged. “Three, four hours.”
He thought about that. “But first they change horses at the Brentwood Junction relay station, right?”
“That’s right.”
Eyes narrowed, he said, “If I can reach those buyers there, before they hit town, I can pass the word about the infected stock. Those businessmen won’t take a chance on paying for infected steers.”
Gerrity spat chaw and said, “You don’t have much time, mister.”
“No. And I better not waste it here.” He nodded to Whit, who nodded respectfully back.
Then the stranger swung his horse around, and as he passed by Willa, she raised a hand for him to stop.
He pulled up on the reins.
“Thank you,” she said simply, “and good luck.”
Her back to the others, with only him seeing, she kissed her palm and held her hand out to him. He took the hand, held it briefly, his eyes holding hers for several long moments.
Then he rode off.
They watered their horses at a nearby stream in a stand of cottonwood and made their plans.
With everyone circled around, Whit said, “We’d better get to riding, too. If Gauge’s bunch makes it through the pass with that herd of theirs, they’ll post a handful of men and hold us off long enough to have those beeves well on their way to the railhead.”
His hat off, scratching at his white temple, Mathis said, “Leave us handle that, Whit.”
Whit frowned. “What?”
The rancher put a hand on the Cullen foreman’s shoulder. “Son, you and Willa got other fish to fry.”
“No . . . we’re all in this together.”
Gerrity came up and put a hand on the foreman’s other shoulder. “We already had a powwow and you been outvoted. You take half these men and see if you can find them Bar-O cattle.”
“Listen,” Willa said, shaking her head, “this is bigger than just the Bar-O—”
“No,” Mathis said, shaking his head back at her, “you listen, young lady. In a way, all this whole damn mess is our doin’, smaller ranchers and townsfolk alike, for lettin’ Gauge get as far as he got. Independence-minded sorts sometimes don’t remember that when their neighbor is in trouble, trouble’s about to show up on your own doorstep, too.”
“I know,” she said, “but—”
“ ‘But’ nothin’,” Gerrity said. “If we succeed, we’re about to go off and destroy Gauge’s cattle. And if our stock turns out to be infected, too, we’ll have to get rid of all them. That means we may be needin’ starter cattle for next year. It’s George Cullen we’ll turn to. So you’ll be doin’ us a favor, gettin’ that healthy herd back in the right hands.”
The other rancher said, “Miss Cullen, best you go home and stay at your father’s side. Take a few men with you.”
Gerrity was nodding. “No tellin’ what Gauge might pull at this point.”
“No,” she insisted, shaking her head, ponytail swinging. “Papa’s not alone there, and you can use another experienced hand.”
“I just hope,” Mathis sighed, “that we ain’t too late.”
Frowning, Willa asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Gauge may be ahead of us. He may’ve figured that we’d try meetin’ up with the buyers at the relay station, and’s already sent somebody out there to stop us.”
Gerrity said, “And here we sit, with all our hopes pinned on one duded-up stranger.”
Whit said, “It’s a safe-enough bet.”
All heads turned his way.
“I was dead wrong about him,” the foreman said. “He’ll do right by us or die tryin’. Meantime, the rest of us need to help you destroy that infected herd.”
Shaking his head firmly, Mathis said, “Face it, Whit—you’re outnumbered. You’re gonna do it our way. Half these men are going with you and get back those healthy cows.”
There was no more arguing it. Whit did as he’d been told, and soon they were watching half of the men ride off in a dust cloud, hooves pounding.
Then Willa, Whit, and the rest rode off in the other direction, just as hard.
Tulley’s morning had been eventful.
He had spent several hours of it under the boardwalk, curled up in its coolness with the bottle of rotgut he’d bought at the Victory. It had cost him a whole dollar out of the five he’d been given, highway robbery, but seemed worth it at the time.
Only thing was, damn it, that fool conscience of his had come kicking him in the hindquarters like a mule.
And speaking of mules, early this morning, the stranger had give him all that money on the condition that Tulley buy back his mule Gert from Hitchens at the livery stable. That wa
s what come of running at the mouth around a new acquaintance. Drunks had a terrible bad habit of telling people their life stories.
When he first come to town, Tulley was sober for a spell, and got to thinking that the life of a prospector hadn’t been so bad. That had been his vocation before taking on the job of (as the stranger put it) town character. It beat sweeping out stables and doing odd jobs and sleeping in alleyways, didn’t it?
Tulley had prospected for two whole days in the foothills before he remembered why he’d stopped doing it in the first place. Back in town, he resold Gert to Hitchens for three dollars, drank it up in two days, and Gert became just another female (well, sort of female) memory in the pages of an increasingly hazy past history.
Trouble with Gert was, she wasn’t so hazy a memory, living in the stable as she did, where Tulley bedded down much of the time. Having that damn mule around served as a nagging reminder of his failings.
This morning, not that long after dawn, the stranger had given him that five dollars to buy Gert back and ride out to the Cullen spread to offer his services as a sort of guide. Nobody around Trinidad knew those foothills better than old Tulley.
The desert rat had agreed, shaking hands with the stranger, who had ridden off, after which Tulley waited till the saloon opened at ten and bought his bottle. Crazy part was, he never uncapped the thing. He lay in the coolness under the boardwalk with the bottle in one hand and the rest of them dollars in the other.
Finally, around noon, he opened that damn bottle, chugged down several slugs of it, enjoying the burning in his belly, then capped it and went over to the livery stable and talked Hitchens into selling Gert back to him for three dollars.
When Tulley was riding out of town on Gert—no saddle, just an Injun blanket—Ralph from the telegraph office started in, yelling at him.
Tulley pulled back on Gert’s reins (Hitchens threw them in).
“You want to make half a buck, Tulley?”
“Sure.”
The clerk delivered the coin and also a slip of paper. “Run this wire out to the Cullen place. I think it may be real important. Can I trust you to do that?”
“Well, sure you can.” Wasn’t he already headed out there, anyway?
“If you drink it up, I won’t be pleased.”
“I ain’t just on this mule, friend. I’m on the wagon.”
So he had delivered the wire to old Mr. Cullen, who give him two bits more for his trouble. Actually, a ranch hand took the wire because the old man was blind and needed someone to read it to him. Tulley stood there while the man rattled it off to his boss, but the thing was just some business nonsense that Tulley couldn’t follow.
“Mr. Cullen,” Tulley said, on the porch of the ranch house as its owner and his man were about to go in, “you know that stranger? He wanted me to offer to help you look for your cows in them foothills.”
“What?” The old boy seemed kind of out of sorts since he heard what was in that wire. “Oh, uh . . . they left hours ago, Tulley. I doubt you could find them. But I thank you for the offer.”
Then Tulley remembered something he’d overheard back in town that might be of interest to the rancher, and he shared it, the news upsetting the blind man even more than that wire, though Tulley didn’t really understand why.
Things in and around Trinidad had been happening so fast, since the stranger come to town, that an old sot like him could barely keep track or make sense of it.
After that, part of him wanted to head back to town with his bottle and sell the mule to Hitchens again. But Tulley liked the stranger, looked up to him like he hadn’t anybody for as long as he could remember, and for no reason he could understand, Tulley just didn’t want to let the man down.
So he left the road into Trinidad and started out overland, toward the foothills. After a while, he saw the dust of horses not too far off and headed that way.
Before long, he intersected with those riders, who turned out to be Willa Cullen, Whit Murphy, and a mess of Bar-O boys and some men from town, too. A regular posse.
“Whoa there, Gert! . . . Howdy, Miss Cullen, Mr. Murphy.”
Whit Murphy, yanking back on his reins, frowning curiously, said, “What are you doin’ out this way, Tulley?”
“Well, sir, that stranger asked me to throw in with you, if I was lucky enough to run into you.”
This seemed to amuse Whit. “Why would we want you to join us?”
“Well, you might. See, I done a good share of prospectin’ in them foothills in my day, Mr. Murphy, and there ain’t nobody nowhere who knows every draw and gulley out there like this old bird does.” He patted his chest, raising some dust. “Thought maybe I might help you look for them cows you folks misplaced.”
Whit still seemed uncertain. “The stranger entrusted you with this?”
Tulley grinned, scratching Gert’s right ear. “Well, I don’t think he put all his money on this horse, or anyway mule. But he knows I see and hear things. I ain’t always drunk and asleep in the street like some folk think.”
Willa, smiling, said, “Listen to him, Whit. Tulley’s a good man.”
The desert rat beamed at her. “Thank you kindly, Miss Cullen. You warm an old feller’s heart.”
“Whit,” she said to her foreman, “you take Tulley here and the rest of the men and follow his lead in those foothills. If Tulley can help locate the herd . . . well, we might be able to stall those buyers until we know we’ve actually got something to sell them.”
Whit narrowed his gaze. “What about you?”
“I’ll take Dave and Pete and head back to the Bar-O, and make sure Papa’s safe from Gauge.”
Tulley said, “That’s a right good idea, Miss Cullen. I seen your daddy not long ago, maybe an hour? And he was pretty damn upset. Excuse the language.”
She gave him a sharp look. “How so, Tulley?”
He told her about the telegram he’d brought her father from town, and apologized for not remembering what was in it.
Then he added, “And I also told your daddy how Gauge and his deputy got together some of their outlaw bunch and beat it on up the trail. They was headed toward the Brentwood Junction relay station.”
“When was this?”
“Right when I was ridin’ out of town.”
Whit said, “How do you know where they were going?”
Tulley grinned. “Heard him talkin’. I hear all sorts of things. You be surprised.”
Willa and her foreman exchanged troubled glances.
“Tulley,” she said, “have you seen anything of the stranger? He might have cut across your path on his way to . . . well, any sign of him?”
“Not since this mornin’ in Trinidad.”
Whit said, “And you haven’t seen Banion since?”
Tulley chortled. “Seen Banion since when? What, on angel wings? Though I doubt that’s what he’s wearin’ right now, unless they’s asbestos.”
Whit snapped, “What the hell are you goin’ on about, you old fool?”
Shaking his head, Tulley said, “You people keep talkin’ ‘Banion this, Banion that.’ Wes Banion was shot down and killed dead over Ellis way, two month ago.”
Whit frowned, saying, “You heard this where?”
“I didn’t hear it. I seen it. Seen it happen, right in the street, afore these very eyes. You see a lot of things happen from under a boardwalk.”
Willa said, “You sound sure it was Banion.”
“Sure I’m sure. I’m one of the only ones who knew the man by sight back when he was still breathin’. Banion, he was a careful sort. Though, I guess, not careful enough.”
“But the stranger,” Willa said, frowning so hard it must have hurt. “Who is he, then?”
“Beats me, ma’am. I kinder think he was just passin’ through, you know, and took an interest? Maybe an interest in you, Miss Cullen . . . if you’ll tolerate my liberty sayin’ so.”
Willa swung her horse around, glancing back at Whit. “Get going. Locate that h
erd!”
Nodding to Tulley, he said, “And let him lead the way?”
“Yes.”
Tulley said, “Sometimes a young fool can learn things from an old fool, sonny.”
Whit sighed, but nodded dutifully at Willa, and Tulley fell in with them as they rode off.
Keeping up on the mule took some doing, but for the first time, in a long time, Jonathan R. Tulley felt like he was part of something.
Something that mattered.
Willa and the two Bar-O hands rode hard and fast, and soon she was rushing into the ranch house, calling out for her father.
No answer, just the sound of her own voice ringing off the walls.
Then she saw the telegram, discarded on the floor in the middle of the front room. She bent and picked it up, reading it before she’d even gotten to her feet:
To George Cullen, Trinidad, N.M. Mister Parker in California on extended business. Not available to comply with request. Will hold money awaiting further instructions. Nellie Peters, secretary, Parker Company
She stood, and the house seemed terribly empty. And she knew why it was, as surely as if a note had been left for her spelling it out.
Then one of her men rushed in and came to her side, saying, “Nobody around. The buggy’s gone. What’s goin’ on, Miss Cullen?”
“My father,” she said, “has gone off to try to stop Harry Gauge himself.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
His name was Caleb York.
He had come to Trinidad by happenstance, on his meandering way to California, where in San Diego the Pinkerton people were holding a position for him.
Well, “holding” was too strong a word—more like an open invitation, based upon his days as a Wells Fargo detective, during which time he’d made a certain reputation. As a sleuth, yes, but more so as a shootist.
That latter reputation had become a burden in some respects—particularly when crazy gunhands, young mostly, tried to make their own name by killing him. Pushing forty, he was getting old for the game, and when a shotgun-mangled body had been misidentified as him in Silver City, he had done nothing to correct the impression. He was fine with letting his “killer,” Wes Banion—whom he’d never met other than by bad reputation—bask in the glory of being the man who gunned down Caleb York.
The Legend of Caleb York Page 16