. . . Jonathan P. Tulley in his hospital gown with a shotgun in his hands, angled downward.
And in the street, facedown—or body down, because no face was left to speak of, just some neck pouring red into the white—was one of Burnham’s boys, while their leader and the other two were milling in momentary panic. One was scooping snow up to wash the gore from his face.
Then Burnham cried, “Moody! Forget that! Get that son of a bitch!”
And Tulley left the window while one of Burnham’s boys ran back around the side of the bank building, while the other two headed York’s way. Even from where York stood, the heavy footsteps going up the side exterior stairs to Doc Miller’s office could easily be heard, like drumbeats.
* * *
With Moody Fender dispatched to take care of whoever it was that had ambushed them, blowing Jake Warlow’s head clean off (well, not clean off), Ned Sivley and Luke Burnham ran as best they could through the deep snow drifting across Main Street. Running in sand would have been swifter.
The boss was at Sivley’s side, saying, “We’ll get the horses at Maxwell’s and light out!”
Sivley said nothing, trying to suppress a cough.
Then somebody over at the left was running right for them, down the boardwalk, which was cleared enough to make his passage quicker than theirs. Somebody in a black frock coat and black hat, the coat flapping like the wings of an angry swooping raven, the hat flying off like a smaller black bird, and a big handgun pointed right at them.
Could that be . . . Caleb York?
Burnham thought so, apparently, because he stopped in his tracks and screamed, “Caleb York!” and fired right at the man, who dropped to the boardwalk and fired back.
The bullet took Sivley down, through the chest, and he fell backward, sending up bursts of powdery snow; the lunger lay there, looking up at the white-swirling gray of a sky that seemed to have no sun in it at all, snowflakes kissing his face, then he started to cough blood, but the liquid caught in his throat and gathered in his mouth and he began choking and drowning in bubbling scarlet. He was still in the process of dying when a second shot from the prone shooter on the boardwalk knocked Burnham back and down, arms spread, like a kid making a snow angel.
* * *
Caleb York got up, a man in black with the front of him coated white, then ran over bareheaded to the two bodies with his .44 extended and ready. He kicked each man’s gun away. Sivley was kind of gargling blood, and would be gone in seconds or maybe minutes. Burnham was either unconscious or dead, his face to one side, the milky eye shut. The bullet appeared to be a chest wound near his left shoulder. Whether the outlaw was breathing or not could not be told, the duster too bulky and concealing to know without stopping for inspection. Burnham had a big canvas bank bag slung over his left arm. York didn’t bother with that for now.
He could take no more time with these fallen outlaws—not when he knew the remaining one had been dispatched to deal with Tulley. He ran as well as the Main Street accumulation of white would allow, and soon was going up the stairs, fast, to the landing outside Doc Miller’s office.
The door hadn’t been locked, so York went right in, much as Moody Fender no doubt had. The office was empty, and so was the surgery. The sitting room off of which the bedrooms lay was also empty, though heavy tracks of snowy footprints led, not surprisingly, to the sickroom.
An unearthly scream came from behind the closed door to that room.
York shouldered in and there stood the sullen outlaw, covered in dripping yellow liquid, beads of it dangling from his hat brim, his eyes wide, his expression horrified. He had a Merwin .38 in hand; he was facing the overturned sickbed, which had been pushed on its side to make a barrier by Tulley, the top of whose head could just barely be seen by York. The drenched outlaw, his face a mask of rage, swung toward the sheriff, who put a bullet in the man’s chest.
Moody Fender’s last word was, “Shit,” before he collapsed in a pile of dead, a patient Dr. Miller would have no luck reviving. The outlaw’s last word was inaccurate, because as Tulley popped up from behind the barricade of his sickbed, he was holding in both hands, as if it were a serving dish, the now empty chamber pot, the contents of which he’d splashed on his would-be assailant.
Tulley seemed embarrassed. “ ’Twas all I had at hand,” he said. “I used up both barrels of the scattergun, blowin’ that other fool’s head offen his shoulders.”
Whether by “other fool,” Tulley referred to himself or the urine-drenched dead outlaw between them on the floor, remained open to interpretation.
York took only time to smile before he rushed out to check on the other two bodies.
But only one body awaited him.
Burnham was gone.
CHAPTER TEN
Seeing the skinny lunger sprawled dead on the snow-covered street, without the outlaw leader lying next to him, Caleb York realized he had not killed Burnham, merely wounded him. Somehow the bastard had managed to get up again and stagger off.
But in which direction?
York went over and retrieved his hat, putting it on with his left hand while keeping his right filled with the. 44. He looked up and down Main, his detective’s eyes searching through snow that still came down, if not quite so heavily.
The drifted street was stirred between where York stood and the saddle shop half a block behind him, the result of both the outlaws and himself heading to the bank from Maxwell’s. Beyond the bank, looking toward the east, he clearly saw plenty more of the white stuff disturbed by the many footsteps of customers who’d headed into the Victory from all up and down the street.
The other day, Rita had told York that while the cowboys who’d chosen the saloon as their oasis in the storm were staying put, other locals—going stir-crazy, fighting cabin fever—would head over to the Victory, time to time, for drinks and some food.
So that meant the outlaw had ceded to the snow no tracks that stood out from the rest . . . unless he’d left a blood trail. But Burnham’s bleeding must have soaked into his clothing under the duster, because no red stood out on the white, except what the dead lunger had spilled and, of course, where the one outlaw had lost his head.
York half smiled at his own grisly if unintentional joke.
Where had the son of a bitch Burnham gone?
Had the raider broken into one of the stores, perhaps through the back, to seek warmth and shelter and try not to bleed to death? Or was Burnham thinking more of revenge than survival, hoping York would come looking for him and walk into a bullet, or two or six?
The most logical possibility—the nearest shelter that the outlaw might possibly have reached before a blood trail began—was the saddle shop. Not the shop itself, but the second-floor living quarters where the haul from the Vegas bank job had been waiting—possibly, if Burnham’s wound allowed, for him to retrieve it before fleeing.
Of course, right now that haul wasn’t where the gang had put it, even if it was still in the shop—York had left the saddlebags he’d filled with the loot on the back of the saddle stand.
More pertinent, though, were the horses waiting in the workshop at the rear of the building with its several stable stalls. If he were Burnham, that’s where he’d head—hop a horse and get somewhere else, fast as the weather allowed.
But frustrating as it was, York had to take it slow. He knew Burnham was likely lying in wait for him, so rushing through the late Maxwell’s little world of living quarters and commerce could have fatal consequences for the sheriff.
So he started with the shop, going in low through the front doors he’d kicked open not long ago. With no lamps lit, the place was shadowed even by day—it was afternoon now—and York took his time, moving on his haunches.
The shop was empty, the saddlebags of money still riding the stand behind the saddle where earlier York had perched. So at least that hadn’t been found.
Again keeping low, York and his .44 moved into the workshop, where he found the two horses
still in their stalls. No sign a thing had been touched since he checked here earlier. Nor did the cramped sleeping quarters of the absent Mexican saddle maker show any signs that someone had been here since York.
Who now had a decision to make. Go up the back steps to the apartment, where Burnham could well be waiting at the top of the stairwell for the sheriff to emerge. Or go back outside and up the exterior staircase and in where the outlaw waited, ready to shoot him dead.
York decided on the stairwell, where he’d left the door open up top. Outside, he would be exposed to too many possibilities for ambush—corners for Burnham to hide behind, rooftops to pick York off from, windows to shoot at him from. Going up the steps, confined though he’d be, the dangers were real but predictable.
After getting out of the frock coat, York rested it and his hat on top of a display case. This left him in his light gray shirt with black string tie and his black cotton pants. His boots he slipped off, anticipating exploring the apartment above, where his stocking feet wouldn’t announce him.
Staying low, gun angled upward, his back to the wall of the well, York slowly ascended. He paused at each step and listened. Then, one step down from the top, he pitched himself through the open doorway, sliding in flat on his belly with his gun aimed up and ready.
The hallway was empty.
So was the indoor privy at the end of it, and the two facing bedrooms. Slow and careful, he made his exploration, pausing frequently to listen.
Nothing.
And that is what he found in the kitchen and the living room. Everything, including the dirty dishes and cups on the table, was as he’d left it. He pushed through the door he’d kicked open earlier to check the landing now, and it too was free of anything but the snow still piling up out there. Fresh accumulation on the stairs to the street seemed undisturbed.
Back down in the shadows of the saddle shop, York again got into his frock coat, hat, and boots, frowning. He’d guessed wrong. The close proximity of the saddle shop had seemed the most likely destination for the wounded outlaw, where Burnham could have taken a horse and checked on his money, if he was inclined to leave town. Or to set up an ambush within the living quarters for Caleb York when the sheriff came around.
Neither had proved true.
Lost in thought, he returned to the bodies in the snow-drifted street.
Burnham, he knew, was shrewd. The man had seen York coming from the direction of the saddle shop and likely instantly figured that the Vegas bank money was lost, and possibly the horses had been slapped on the ass and sent running, or maybe killed by York.
York, of course, would never have considered killing the animals to keep the outlaws from using them. But the one-time guerilla raider wouldn’t have thought twice before putting bullets in the brains of the beasts. So he’d assumed the same of York.
Where had the outlaw gone?
The possibility that Burnham had holed up in one of the closed stores, breaking in to do so, couldn’t be ignored. But checking each of them would take precious time—if Burnham was fleeing on horseback, in whatever direction, the outlaw would be getting a hell of a head start.
What to do first? What to do next?
“If I were ye,” Deputy Jonathan P. Tulley said, “I would see if that there banker feller is alive or dead inside of that bank of hissen.”
This voice might have been in York’s imagination, conjuring what Tulley would have thought in reply. While it did sometimes seem that old desert rat could read York’s mind, what was more surprising right now was the deputy’s presence in the street next to him.
Yet there Tulley stood, no longer in his hospital gown, rather in a heavy black jacket that York recognized as one of Doc Miller’s, and the dark flannel shirt, gray woolen pants, and red suspenders he’d worn the night he was shot—just a few days ago! The deputy probably wore the usual work boots, too, but those were buried in the snow where he stood, bandy-legged and bright-eyed.
“What the hell,” York said, “are you doing out of bed?”
“Wal, sir, that bed got all upended, like . . . and that sickroom of mine has a dead man in it with his brains spilled out, and I believe he soiled hisself upon dyin’. Plus which, in addition, the place reeks like some damn horse pissed all over it.”
“That’s not a horse’s work, Tulley. It’s yours.” York shook his head. “I can’t believe the doc approved this.”
“Wal, he didn’t. He’s still out ‘n’ about, tryin’ to save people’s noses and toes-es and fingers and such, that been bit up by the frost. Me, I feel fine, but not fine enough to put that bed back the way she belongs, plus I don’t cotton to spendin’ time with no dead man what did his business in his britches.”
York looked at Tulley.
Tulley looked at York.
“Sheriff,” the deputy said. “I am rarin’ to go. Tell me how I can best be of use to ye.”
Truth was, Tulley could be of use.
“Right now,” York said, “we go over and see how that bank president fared.”
A big smile blossomed. “You’re followin’ my counsel!”
“I am following your counsel, yes. Now, Tulley, if you feel tired or faint, you just let me know. Don’t be shy.”
“Ain’t never been accused of bein’ the shy type.”
“No. I would imagine not.”
They trudged through the snow to the bank, skirting dead outlaws. The front doors were locked and they went around back where, though fresh snow had filled it in somewhat, the area the robbers had cleared away with their feet by the door was still evident.
Shortly the sheriff and his deputy were inside and freeing the bank president, York getting his ivory-handled Sheffield folding knife from his right-hand pants pocket to cut the twine binding the man. The banker thanked them and York quickly questioned him.
Godfrey, who was still sitting on the floor with the two lawmen hunkered down around him, finished up his story by saying, “I heard what I took for a shotgun blast outside. Was anyone injured?”
Tulley said, “I blowed the head offen one of ’em.”
Godfrey frowned. “Which one?”
York said, “Not the leader, who I wounded but got away. The skinny one I killed, and I plugged the stupid-looking one, too. I saw the whole bunch of ’em together at the Victory a few days ago—I think it was the handsome fella that Tulley sent to hell.”
The banker shook his head. “Too bad.”
York frowned. “Pardon?”
Godfrey sighed. “I believe that man saved my life. He outright talked the others into not killing me. On the other hand, I feel sure the one heading up the gang is a ruthless, heartless killer.”
“You’re not wrong.”
York helped the man to his feet.
Godfrey asked, “What do I do now?”
“We’ll check the upstairs,” York said, “and make sure it’s safe for you to stay there . . . unless you’d rather go to the hotel, or perhaps a table at the Victory?”
The little banker waved a hand. “No, no. My apartment will be fine. As far as what happened here, I will deal with that tomorrow, when my . . . my head is clear.”
“Fine.”
“If I understood you right, all those men have met their Maker except for the leader.”
“Yes. Lucas Burnham. He was one of Quantrill’s top lieutenants. Quantrill’s Raiders?”
“Oh my,” the banker said, his lips against his fingers. “I’m glad I answered as I did.”
“Answered what?”
“His question about where I hailed from. I said Kentucky. Not true, but I said it.”
“Good choice,” York said, and grinned and patted the man’s shoulder. “I believe Raymond Parker made a good choice, too—in you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Tulley stayed with the banker while York went outside and up the stairs to the third-floor living quarters. The place was clear of any threat.
With the banker locked in at home, York and Tulley
came down the exterior stairs, where Doc Miller—looking confused, worried, and a little irritated—was coming up.
They met on the second-floor landing, wind whipping white around them as if they stood inside a snow globe.
“What’s this?” the doctor demanded. “Corpses in the street and Tulley out of bed? Is this your handiwork, Caleb?”
“Some of it. The one with the haircut that got a mite too close is my deputy’s doing.”
Tulley was nodding. “Me and the scattergun. Uh, Doc, you best be wary. There’s a mess in my sickroom.”
“Is that right?”
Tulley nodded. “A chamber pot got spilled. Also some blood and innards.”
The doc didn’t shock easily and it was almost amusing to see his eyes go that wide and his mouth drop that far open. But right there on the landing in the falling snow, York explained and the doc calmed.
“Well, Tulley,” Miller said, “we need to straighten up in there and get you back in bed.”
“No, sir. I done checked out of this horse-pitul.”
York said, “Tulley’s right. I need him. These are obviously extraordinary circumstances and I can use his help. If he shows signs of failing, I will ship him back to you.”
The doc smirked. “Not in a wicker casket, I hope.”
“No, but speaking of wicker caskets, could you call on our undertaker friend, Perkins, and get those bodies off the street and that one out of your quarters? You should also check in with the bank president, Peter Godfrey—he got some rough treatment from the brigands. Freshen up first, if you like.”
“You’re too good to me, Caleb.”
“Well, now that you’re the official coroner of the city of Trinidad, it is your job.”
“It is at that,” the doctor admitted, then nodded and went inside with a sigh.
At the bottom of the steps, Tulley turned to York and said, “I forgot my scattergun! It’s upstairs!”
The deputy was starting back up, but York stopped him with a hand on an arm. “It’s also empty. Go help yourself to a gun off one of the dead men. Get yourself a cartridge belt, too.”
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