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

a little. “Poetically put. And I’m glad to finally meet you, Miss Cullen, since we do have business.”

“Yes. But, of course, this is not the time or place . . .”

“Fifty cents an acre.”

“. . . Pardon?”

The big dark eyes fixed upon her. Stared, really.

“For your land,” the woman said, “and the stock on it. You may keep the house and its outbuildings, barn, corrals, and such.” She tossed a black-gloved hand. “Call it half an acre.”

Willa backed up a step, almost as if she’d been slapped. “Mrs. Hammond, please don’t make me respond in these circumstances.”

“Why not?”

The younger son was smiling. The older one seemed not to be listening.

Willa frowned at the woman. “You know very well that your offer is outrageously low.”

The owner of the Circle G held up a gloved palm. “Your stock are skin and bones and their numbers greatly reduced. Without access to clean water, they will certainly die. Bloated carcasses will again pepper your range, even without another season of snow.”

Spine stiffening, chin rising, Willa said, “I have no desire to sell, Mrs. Hammond. We Cullens have been on the Bar-O since—”

“Your father stole the land from the Indians?”

Willa felt her cheeks reddening. “He did no such thing. He bought it from the Mexican government.”

“Ah. With money he made killing the buffalo and starving the savages out. In any case, they needed clearing out. Such men built this country, Miss Cullen. You should be proud.... It’s a good offer.”

“It’s an insulting offer.”

Victoria Hammond touched her bosom with splayed fingers. “Please. I’d rather not squabble with my boy lying so freshly dead in his grave.”

Tamping down her irritation, Willa said, “You are buying up the small ranches. Soon you’ll have a spread almost as large as the Bar-O. We need not be adversaries. You will require access to the Purgatory, where it runs through my land. There’s no reason for us not to be good neighbors.”

Now the dark eyes were lidded. “Without access to Sugar Creek, you will soon be bankrupt. It’s not my fault that you are a bad businesswoman.”

This time Willa didn’t rise to the bait.

“I apologize for getting into this at such a delicate time,” she said. “I understand you’re distressed.”

But Willa knew this woman wasn’t distressed in the least.

Willa turned away, looking back over her shoulder to say, “We’ll meet later, under more appropriate circumstances.”

As Willa neared the road at the cemetery’s edge, the mourning mother called out, “I note that your friend Caleb York did not honor us with his presence, despite having made this gathering today possible! At least you, my dear, have a sense of propriety.”

Willa wheeled to speak, but could find no words, and then Bill Jackson was helping her up into the carriage and they were heading back to the Bar-O with the foreman on the whip. But Willa was unnerved by the encounter, and especially by what she’d seen when she’d looked back to almost make one last remark to the woman.

Victoria Hammond had been smiling, even as the Mexicans with shovels were heading toward her son’s grave.

* * *

In the library of the Circle G ranch house, at the opposite end of the room from Victoria Hammond’s desk, mutton-chopped Andrew Hammond seemed to glower down in judgment from the imposing oil painting on the wall. Below was a love seat in the Spanish style, warm dark wood with red velvet and gold-embroidered upholstery, in which sat the late William Hammond’s mother. In matching armchairs opposite, against respective walls, were her sons.

They were dressed in the same somber black as at the cemetery. Coffee had been served by the help and three untouched cups were growing cold on a low-slung table. The older son, Hugh, was looking straight ahead, at nothing. The younger son, Pierce, her middle boy, was gazing at his mother, his expression twitchy, expectant. Her arms were extended along the upper back of the settee.

Finally she spoke.

“Hugh,” she said, turning her eyes on her older son.

He looked at her. His expression seemed less than loving, but stopped short of insolence.

“You were raised on two ranches,” she said.

He said nothing. This of course was not news to him.

“Wyoming as a boy,” she continued, “Colorado as a young man. You did well enough, but your father and I sensed other things for you. So we sent you east for schooling, and you excelled. You returned and soon evidenced a real talent for business. And you have done well as the president of the Trinidad bank.”

That was the Trinidad, Colorado, bank.

“I am proud,” she went on. “But due to no fault on your part, the bank is failing. As was the case with so many businesses, the winter did us in.”

He said nothing. This younger version of the man looming in the oil painting seemed bored by such a pointless recitation of the obvious.

“It is my intention,” she said, “to install you here at my right hand. My bookkeeper, Byers, has done well enough, in the interim . . . but he is not family. He is not blood. And he does not possess your acumen, Hugh.”

Her older son again said nothing.

She continued to level her gaze at him. “We have acquired almost all of the smaller ranches. And as you saw, this afternoon, we are moving forward with our expansion efforts.”

And now the older boy spoke: “That young woman—who owns the Bar-O?”

“Willa Cullen. Yes?”

“Don’t underestimate her.”

Victoria laughed lightly. “She’s just a child. Snip of a thing.”

Her older son shook his head. Slowly. He had his father’s gray eyes. “No. She’s strong. Men underestimate you, Mother, because you’re a beautiful woman. Don’t make the same mistake about the Cullen girl.”

Victoria rose and began to pace slowly in front of the towering portrait. “I have already taken steps to deal with her and her ragtag troops. You’ll meet my foreman, Clay Colman, soon. He has experience in such things.”

“You mean he’s a rustler and a gunfighter.”

She stopped in front of her older boy. “Yes. He’ll be