But the animals did not provide enough concealment for that. The outlaw had simply angled off in another direction, whether on purpose or accidentally, the wind wiping out any tracks as it had behind the pursuer himself, and now York was alone.
Alone and realizing how much trouble he was in.
The cold, the frostbite, and especially the whistling wind was scoffing at the clothing he thought would protect him. He was far away now, from the Bar-O ranch house grounds. The only sense of where he was, what direction he was going in, was the storm that he’d been pressing through. From the north, it came. So that was north. Straight ahead.
What else was straight ahead?
More snow. More wind. More dead cows.
He staggered up to one such animal, a massive steer, worthy of being called the pride of the Cullen spread. It turned its head just a little, whether to avoid the icy wind or to acknowledge his presence, York couldn’t say. His gloved fingers still worked well enough to find, in his coat pocket, the James & Sheffield folding knife. He opened the ivory-handled beauty to its full nine inches, its steel blade etched with a floral design. He slit the steer’s throat.
Then York knelt at the fallen animal and, with all his strength, right hand gripping the handle of the knife, the left hand gripping the right, he cut it open from throat till he ran out of anything but tail. An awful avalanche of entrails spilled out.
Then he crawled inside and into a fetal position, the warmth of the dead creature around him as wonderful as the feel of the organs was terrible. Wrapped up in slimy bovine body heat, he risked going to sleep, wondering if he would ever wake.
* * *
He woke.
The dead animal and its entrails around him were cold, frozen. They stuck to his clothing some, and snapping sounds—like twigs breaking—accompanied his extrusion from the late beast.
He got to his feet and various sensations coursed through him. Cold, of course. Disgust, from the bits and pieces of cattle innards that stuck to him here and there in various hellish shades, like Joseph’s coat of many colors if each hue were horrid. Surprise, or perhaps relief, that he was still alive.
And delight in the absence of snow.
Not that snow wasn’t all around. It was everywhere, except in the air.
The downfall had ceased.
The cold hadn’t let up. The temperature seemed to have dropped even further. In fact, now as he walked, the snow was frozen over and didn’t give way. It was slippery and its feel took a while getting used to, to keep from falling on his ass.
And the wind was still there, the Norther that gave him a hint of where he might be. Only it was halfhearted now. As if Old Man Winter had tired himself out. Given his all. But was keeping up a pathetic front. Still, the Blue Norther came, obviously, from the north. So he walked south. Maybe, with luck—plenty of it—he might find his way back to the Bar-O through this ghastly cemetery of beef, just another stray creature on a vista of frigid death.
Not long after—perhaps fifteen minutes—he came upon a sight he would not soon forget.
Caleb York had finally caught up with Lucas Burnham.
Burnham had propped himself behind a fallen dead steer. The outlaw hadn’t climbed into this dead steer, rather used it to sit behind and wait. Wait for Caleb York to come along. Burnham had his Colt in a gloved hand, steadied on the back of the dead animal, as if a target was lined up in his sights.
York laughed.
He laughed loud and hard. Not for long, though, because he lacked the energy. But it was clear that he and Burnham had walked pretty much right past each other after night fell and the storm kept at it. So the outlaw had perched himself here, waiting to finally take his revenge.
Lucas “Burn ’Em” Burnham wouldn’t be doing that. “Burn ‘Em” Burnham was dead. The icy snow that enveloped him had turned this man, who’d been so proud to wear gray in life, a brilliant blue in death, his face hanging with icicles of various size, his one good eye rolled upward, white touching him everywhere with little brush strokes.
The raider who had burned so many out of their homes and taken so many lives with fire had lost his to an element every bit as deadly.
Which was why Caleb York was smiling even before the little group of riders, led by foreman Earl Colson, found him sliding over, and stumbling through, the snow.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In the aftermath of the Big Die-Up, particularly in the northern plains, prairies were piled with decomposing cattle.
Cows aborted calves that would otherwise have boosted herds, and those dogies that did survive were the meat of coyotes and wolves, who, like many a Western outlaw, faced a bounty (twenty dollars per wolf pelt, a buck fifty for a coyote). Meanwhile, starving herds with no cud to chew settled for tar paper from ranch house walls, bark from cottonwoods, and wool from decaying sheep remains.
Many ranchers reacted to the disaster by quitting, one Montana cattle baron saying, “A business that had been fascinating to me before became distasteful,” adding that he never again wanted to own an animal that he couldn’t feed and shelter.
Bones of cattle were rounded up and sold back east for fertilizer, the scent of prairie flowers overwhelmed by the odor of death. Rotting beef choked rivers and creeks to where water was no longer safe to drink. And some skeletons of cattle and horses would continue to be discovered in gullies and pastures over the next twenty years.
Trinidad, and most of the New Mexico Territory, however, fared better than most.
The big ceramic thermometer on the wall outside Harris Mercantile said 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Three days before it had read 3 degrees below zero. Only vague hints of the snow and ice that had shrouded Trinidad remained, and the more typical New Mexico winter weather dried everything out almost overnight.
The only exception was Main Street—not the buildings, but the thoroughfare that regularly wore sand carted in from the nearby Purgatory River to hold the dust down. That sand was a virtual riverbed itself now, a sloppy, soppy mess. Patrons were walking into shops and leaving sandy footprints behind. The same brooms that had tried, often vainly, to clear snow from the boardwalk into the street were now sweeping sand from the floors of the shops onto the boardwalk and back out into the street.
Caleb York—now wearing a shorter, hip-length black frock coat (his longer one finally at the seamstress), his pearl-buttoned gray shirt, a black string tie, and his tied-down holstered .44—walked the boardwalk in late morning, happy to see town folk out in the sunshine. Ladies promenaded in bonnets and gingham, some joined by men in derbies and cutaway jackets that showed off their vests and watch chains. The citizens were all smiles, the blizzard of ’87 already fading into memory and anecdote.
York showed few physical signs of what he’d endured, just some tender pink flesh around his temples. He had been brought in off the wintry pasture by the Bar-O foreman and his riders, and set on one of several horses they’d recovered. He had been delivered to the ranch house, where a tub of warm water was prepared by Willa. Someone—he had no memory of any of that—had helped him into the water and washed him gently with scented soap.
Must have been Willa, a thought that didn’t embarrass him really, now that they’d shared a bed.
She was also likely the one who’d got him into one of her father’s nightshirts and guided him to George Cullen’s bed, where he slept around the clock. He’d woken in the late morning two days after his pursuit of Burnham into the cold. The covers were pulled back and Dr. Miller was examining him.
York asked, “Will I lose any ears or fingers or my nose, Doc?”
Miller, apparently finished with his inspection, flipped the covers back in place, pulled a chair up bedside, pointlessly smoothed his rumpled brown suit coat, and sat.
“Nothing wrong that I can see,” the doctor said, “except exhaustion, to which you’ve been applying Nature’s remedy yourself.”
York propped himself on a pillow. “Sleep, you mean.”
The plum
p little bespectacled physician nodded. “You must have bundled yourself up good. You suffered a touch of first-degree frostbite around the eyes, but otherwise seems you covered up. I hear you crawled into a cow.”
It did burn around his eyes some. Nodding, he said, “Turnabout’s fair play. After all, I put enough beef in my belly, over time.”
That mildly amused the doc, which York figured was about all the remark deserved.
“Some aren’t so lucky,” Miller said. “Some lost a foot or two. And not everybody in Trinidad has ten fingers and toes now. But for the most part, folks got themselves inside and stayed warm.”
“And have you restored Tulley to his sickbed?”
The doc’s smile was wry. “No, your deputy’s a stubborn old fool. He’s returned to watch the jailhouse office till you get back. I made him promise to take it easy. No rounds, just hold things down. I, uh, have restored the sickroom. Got the blood off the floor, bleached the stain out. Would hate to give future patients the wrong idea.”
York frowned. “Do you know if Burnham’s body has been recovered?”
Miller nodded. “Apparently you were insistent about that when they brought you in. That foreman had some men collect him. Mr. Burnham is wrapped up in my buckboard outside right now, like a late Christmas present.”
“Good,” York said with a tight smile. “Deliver him to the undertaker’s. Tell Perkins he’s welcome to thaw the bastard out and put him in the window.”
“With a sign that says ‘Tracked and killed by Caleb York’?”
“I didn’t kill him. God and Mother Nature conspired on his doom. ‘Tracked down by’ would do it. Get the newspaper man, Penniman, to have a picture of the deceased taken. In the window or out, I don’t care.”
Miller frowned. “What the hell for, Caleb?”
“Proof. That son of a bitch is worth five hundred dollars dead or alive. A sheriff has to make an honest living.”
The doc nodded, having no argument with that thinking.
“If Perkins hasn’t already buried them,” York went on, “have Penniman get photographs of the other three deceased outlaws, too. They may be worth something, dead, too. Lord knows they weren’t worth much alive.”
“They’re in the undertaker’s window already,” he said. “Likely getting ripe.” The doctor gathered his Gladstone bag, rose, and said, “Get some more rest, Caleb. You don’t need any other medication than that.”
The doctor went out, and soon York had taken the medic’s advice, falling back into slumber. He woke with darkness at the windows and Willa Cullen at his bedside.
The seated young woman wore a green-and-black plaid shirt and Levi’s, typical for this daughter of a rancher. But now she was the rancher, wasn’t she? She had her folded hands in her lap and her cornflower-blue eyes were on him as he stirred. Despite her tomboy apparel, she was quite lovely, her blond hair pinned atop her head in circling braids, somehow suggesting a Viking woman.
He asked, “How long have I been here?”
“A full day and night,” she said, “and all of today until now. You should stay put.”
“Have I been out of this bed?”
“No.”
“I’d like to be. Are my clothes dry?”
Willa nodded, but added, “The doctor brought you some clean things.” She gestured to a dresser, where the clothing was stacked neatly on top. “Would you like to get into them?”
“Yes.”
She rose. “I’ll leave you to it then.”
He got into the clothes, then found her at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee before her and another cup waiting for him. He told her he needed the privy and she asked if he needed help getting out there.
“No,” he said. “I’m fine.”
In truth he was somewhat unsteady, but he made the round trip, almost startled by the warming change of temperature, and joined her again at the table.
He sipped the hot black coffee, then said, “I’m so relieved that bastard didn’t hurt you. He didn’t, did he?”
“No. As I said, he was playing a role. A ‘distressed wayfarer.’ ”
“Kind of you to . . . house me.”
“Don’t be silly.” She seemed to have something on her mind, holding the cup of coffee in both her hands, warming them. She stared into the liquid as if it bore answers to questions unasked. “Caleb . . .”
“Yes, Willa?”
Emotionlessly, she said, “I want you to know . . . what happened between us . . . I mean to exert no hold on you. We both of us knew what we were doing. Acted of our own free will. You are not beholden to me for . . . for what I willingly shared.”
Her eyes were not on him, but his were very much on her.
Then, in an almost accusatory manner, York asked, “Do you love me?”
She looked up sharply, as stunned as if he’d slapped her. “What kind of question is that to ask?”
“The right one. Well, I love you, woman, so let’s hear where you stand.”
She swallowed, eyes aimed into her coffee again. “I know what it means to be able to live a life you’ve chosen. I was raised to this one, and all its hardships . . . and there are plenty of those right now. But it’s the life I want. I raise cattle. You hunt men. I would not ask you to raise beef any more than you would ask me to wear a badge.”
He smiled a little.
“Don’t laugh at me, Caleb York.”
“I’m not laughing. I was just picturing you dressed like Jonathan P. Tulley, though a badge on your chest would hang different.”
Now she smiled, then didn’t. “You know what I’m saying to you. Neither of us should expect the other to change their way of life. I don’t know that either of us could.”
They sat there saying nothing for a while.
He sipped coffee. “Temperature’s come up considerable, out there. Thaw is setting in.”
“It is.”
“How hard hit is the Bar-O?”
“Too early to say. Three men gone, found next to their frozen ponies. The herd down by a third, at least. My foreman tells me he came upon thousands of beeves bunched against fencing. He snipped the fences to let them roam and maybe find shelter, but . . . but some were so bad off, their skin split open and their hoofs dropped off. Dozens of young steers drifted on stumps, tails cracked like broken branches. In one spot, the bodies got stacked up so high, latecomers could scale over them, just to head deeper into white death. The moans of suffering cattle . . . Colson said he’d seen plenty as a soldier, but nothing the like of this. He said it would melt the heart of a man colder than the storm itself.”
She covered her face with one hand, then both. He got up and bent beside her, slipping an arm around her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Nothing to apologize for,” he said. “Even a strong woman cries. Men too, sometimes.”
She lowered her hands and looked at him, her face streaked with tears, her sorrow not quite defeating her beauty. “How can I ask you to be part of this, Caleb? The Bar-O may not even exist a year from now.”
“You don’t need me to run the Bar-O.”
She swallowed.
“We’ll find some other way,” he said. “I can give you comfort and loyalty. You can hire men who know the cattle business. You don’t need one for your husband. For that all you need is a man who understands and loves you.”
Her eyes narrowed, the cornflowers floating in a red setting. “That’s what you would be to me? Husband?”
“If you’ll have me.”
“How . . . how would it work?”
“We’ll figure that out.”
York stood, let out a breath, and stretched his arms high.
“Do you think I’m fit to head back to town?” he asked. “Or do I need another night’s rest here?”
She reached out and took his hand. “Another night’s rest, for certain. But those covers of yours . . . they’re anything but fresh. Let’s see if there’s another bed around here you might get
into.”
She found one.
Now York was in Trinidad, strolling the boardwalk. Town folk greeted him and, seeing him coming or going, talked about him admiringly. The legend called Caleb York was back in town, tipping his hat to them. If they only knew how tired he felt, and how patches of skin on his face near his eyes burned from the frostbite.
He’d already checked in with his deputy, who he found seated at the jailhouse desk, as if Tulley were the sheriff. The old desert rat had scurried from behind there and settled back at his beat-up table near the potbellied stove, which was lit only enough to provide heat for the liquid the deputy insisted was coffee.
“Caleb York,” Jonathan P. Tulley said, “the winder at the undertaker’s is just cram full of dead men you made. Ye should be proud.”
“I’ll be proud for the bounties to come in,” the sheriff said. “I’ll give you whatever Warlow brings, and split Fender with you.”
“Sounds right fair! Looks like I’ll have me some real money, won’t I? Buy me some more of them proper clothes, fit for a deputy.” His eyes narrowed. “Tell me, Sheriff—is it true what they be sayin’?”
“What are they saying?”
“That ye knocked out the biggest steer on the Bar-O with one dang punch, cut him from his throat to his stud works, then crawled inside and took a nice winter’s nap . . . ?”
“Not true.”
“No?”
“Had to punch him twice.”
Tulley thought about that, then went “hee-hee” with laughter.
York got up, put on his hat, and started out the door, saying, as he so often did to the deputy, “Hold down the fort.”
“Where ye be off to?”
“Victory. Like to see how Miss Filley made out during the blizzard.”
“I bet ye would!” Tulley cackled. “I bet ye would!”
Soon York was seated at a table in the Victory. The saloon, doing modest business, was serving its free lunch. The sheriff helped himself to sandwich makings—corned beef, yellow cheese, and rye bread, plus some smoked herring and a dill pickle.
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