Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek (A Caleb York Western Book 6) - Mickey Spillane (classic novels .TXT) 📗

both the Santa Fe and the city of Trinidad. And among your options . . . if I may delicately tread into your personal business . . .”

“Can I stop you?”

“You can. I do not mean to intrude in your . . . affairs.”

York didn’t like the sound of that, but he said, “Go on.”

“One option is to bolster that young woman of yours in rebuilding her father’s ranching business. You’ll have money to help her, after all.” He poked the air with the cigar. “You told me once that you came from farming stock, but also that you’d sooner be dead than plow. But you could plow money into her spread, and help run the place, without fixing a fence post or punching a cow or digging up a turnip out of the ground, for that matter.”

“Turn in my badge and gun for a ledger book.”

Parker tossed a hand in the air. “Frankly, yes. You’ll be in a position to invest in businesses here in town, and you’ll want to keep an eye on them. You’ll learn about every one of them and soon be advising the proprietors as to what they’re buying and what they’re selling.”

“Sounds like a dream. The kind you wake up from in a cold sweat.”

Parker shrugged. “Or . . . you can hang onto that badge and gun. I happen to know the mayor will be trying to convince you of doing just that. Now, times are changing. There’s no doubt of that. And in some respects, the Wild West will soon exist only in memory and in Buffalo Bill Cody’s circus.”

“Which is why,” York reminded the banker, “I was on my way to San Diego.”

“A big modern city, yes, where your detective skills would be needed no matter what changes God and Man might visit upon us. But you, Caleb, are in a unique situation.”

“Am I.” He had the distinct feeling he was being sold something—snake oil perhaps—though he wasn’t sure just what that something might be. But Parker had never been one to take advantage—even giving advice came rare from the man.

“In the next few years,” Parker said, glancing out the window between hazy curtains at a dusty street, “this town will be inundated not only with new business but the old businesses that come with it: saloons, brothels, thieving, killing. The Victory will have rivals, and Miss Rita Filley’s good efforts to drive prostitution out from under her roof will come up against the efforts of far less scrupulous entrepreneurs. Men with guns and badges will most definitely still be needed.”

“That’s more of the same, not changin’ times.”

Parker raised a palm, as if balancing some invisible object. “Times will change for the better and for the worse, Caleb. If you stay a lawman, in a town that booms, you’ll be more of a police chief than a sheriff or marshal, whatever term they may hang on you. And you’ll have a staff consisting of far more than the redoubtable Deputy Tulley.”

The waiter came over and refilled their coffee cups.

York drank from his. “If I am to keep at the lawing, Raymond, I mean to make of it a profession—like a doctor, a lawyer.”

“And well you should. After all, think of the business you bring to both!” A grin bristled the white mustache. “Caleb, I have no opinion in this other than a desire for what’s best for my business partner . . . my friend.”

“I appreciate that.”

Again the banker shrugged. “You will soon be a man of means. If you choose to join that sweet girl on her ranch with her dream of making her dead father happy, God bless you. If you choose to retire from enforcing the law and lean back and count the money coming in, there’s no shame in that either—it will bring its own responsibilities.”

Now Parker leaned in, eyes narrowing shrewdly.

“But if you stay a lawman, Caleb, in this part of the country? You may be able to practice your profession and even manage not to get killed doing it.”

“Doesn’t that sound promising.”

“You’ll have a staff of your own experienced men, probably in blue uniforms with nightsticks, to take the chances for you. You can sit at your desk. You can ride in parades and cut the ribbons on businesses, as the famous Southwestern lawman who helped tame the West.”

York frowned. “A tourist attraction.”

“Yes, and why not? It would be a small but important part of who you are. Who you’ll be. Bill Cody goes around playing himself in a show. That’s fine for him—he was always something of a fraud anyway. But Caleb York? People can point to him and say, ‘That’s him! That’s the legend!’ ”

“Do you really think I care about that?”

Parker shook his head soundly. “No. In New Orleans they call it a lagniappe. It’s just something you bring along, something extra—the way those who hire you throw in perquisites.”

In the double doorway between the lobby and the dining room, the mayor of Trinidad appeared. Jasper Hardy was also the town barber and York suspected the man’s good grooming had encouraged his appointment by the Citizens Committee—elections weren’t being held yet in Trinidad.

The mayor, perhaps forty, was small and slight but dignified in his gray frock coat, his black slicked-back hair and elaborate handlebar mustache a splendid advertisement for his tonsorial parlor. He hung up his derby on a wall peg and paused to nod at the rest of his already seated party at the table by the window.

They nodded back, and the mayor sat next to the banker. The waiter materialized and took their order—everyone had oyster stew, the specialty of the house.

“I have something for you, Sheriff,” the mayor said in his reedy tenor, “which I hope will please you. Which I hope you will accept.”

Parker was watching the barber with faint amusement; clearly he knew what was coming.

Hardy dipped his hand into a coat pocket and placed what he’d withdrawn on the linen tablecloth, near York—a shield-type badge.

“Thank you,