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

vital in our efforts to restock. To rebuild. There’s much to do. This spread, and all of the little ones we’ve swallowed up, were hit almost as hard by the Die-Up as were we, north of here. The answer lies to the south.”

Behind her, the younger son, Pierce, said, “Mexico?”

She turned to him, cast a fond smile on the son she loved most, but knew was the least. “Mexico. You will ride with Mr. Colman. You will be his right hand.”

Pierce’s face tightened, almost crinkled, as if tears were coming; but that wasn’t the case—he just often seemed to look as if about to cry. “He should be my right hand, Mother! I’ll be the Hammond on these drives!”

She glided to him, touched his cheek with a black lace–gloved hand. “Yes, dear one, but he is older and more experienced, and you have much to learn. Your time will come. It will come.”

“You always say that, Mother, but . . .”

“It. Will. Come.”

Left unsaid was something all three of them knew, although Pierce did not like to admit it to himself: Though he, too, had been raised on their ranches, and he could follow orders, he had no real leadership skills. Nor had there been any thought of sending him east to college. Or west, for that matter.

The youngest brother, William, had been a natural when it came to ranching—he could cowboy with the best of them. And he was liked, and got listened to. But he had inherited his father’s drinking ways and certain other less than noble habits—like the randy inclinations that had gotten him killed—and her ambitions for William, her hopes, her dreams, were buried with him now.

Victoria began to slowly pace again, gesturing gently as she spoke. “The day will come, my sons, when you, Hugh, will be at the helm of businesses and banks and more, as we grow and prosper. And you, Pierce, will one day take over this ranch. Together you boys will become everything your father once was. . . .”

Everything, that is (she desperately hoped), except those dark qualities her dead youngest son had inherited.

“I won’t disappoint you, Mother,” Pierce said, on the edge of the beautiful, uncomfortable chair.

“I know you won’t, dear,” she said offhandedly.

Victoria turned to face her oldest son, who looked so much like his father had on their first meeting so many years ago. She approached him.

“Now,” she said, “as to the matter of the man who murdered your brother. Caleb York.”

Hugh’s eyebrows went up, slightly. “Murdered?”

She frowned. “Could it be called anything else?”

He shrugged. “A lawman performing his duty?”

“How can you say that!”

“My understanding, Mother, is that our rash brother raped and thrashed some poor Mexican girl, and was hiding behind another muchacha when this sheriff came round to arrest him.”

“Yes. And?”

He frowned. “There is no ‘and’ . . . York stopped William, who it very much sounds like needed stopping.”

Her nostrils flared. “Did you not hear me? I agreed it was just some Mexican girl!”

“Yes, and a puta at that. You know—like your mother once was . . . our dear departed grandmother?”

She shook a forefinger at him, as so many before her had done with a child who sassed. “You need to watch what you say to me, Hugh Hammond!”

His manner was infuriatingly casual. “I don’t much care whether our brother had his way with some tramp and beat her half to death, either. But, drunk, he was stupid. He was careless. And it’s a streak that’s in you, too, Mother dear.” His eyes landed hard on his sibling across the way. “And you, brother.”

Pierce’s mouth came open, but no words found their way out.

“That ‘streak’ you talk about,” Victoria said, leaning toward her seated older son, “is in the Hammond blood! It’s what made your father a force to be reckoned with in the cattle trade!”

Hugh looked up at her, his expression blasé. “No. That was another kind of streak—call it a talent for larceny. A gift for doing whatever ruthless damn thing it takes to get ahead. A knack for putting knives in the backs of business associates and friends. That was the streak that made him a cattle baron, Mother. It’s that other streak of his that brought Papa down—his recklessness. His arrogant thinking that he could do anything he liked, take whatever he wanted, and get away with it . . . while not getting himself killed. But of course someone managed it, nonetheless.” His eyes rose to the portrait dominating them all. “We never knew who was responsible, did we?”

Her chin lifted. “No. Whoever murdered your father was never identified.”

Hugh flipped a hand. “Well, of course, I was away at school when it happened. But I heard rumors. I heard stories.”

“Did you.”

He nodded. “I did. Whoever it was, though, I don’t blame them. Papa used to beat Pierce, you know. And he beat his women, too, when he tired of them. So the world suffered no great loss when Andrew Hammond . . . shuffled off this mortal coil, as John Wilkes Booth once said.”

“Edwin,” Pierce corrected quietly.

Victoria’s words came soft but screamed somehow. “William was just a boy.”

“Ah,” Hugh said, “but what a boy. He had Papa’s streak, all right. And you know which one.”

She spoke through her teeth. “You would let Caleb York get away with . . . with killing your own brother? However justified the law of little men might find it?”

Nodding several times, he said, “Yes, Mother. I would. I definitely would.”

Wearing a small but distinct sneer, she said, “Well, then, leave it to me. You don’t need to soil yourself with vengeance. I will handle things myself.”

Hugh gave up half a smirk. “You mean, you will, with the help of your latest . . . ramrod? I’m sure you will, Mother. As for me, I have other things to do. Other than more cattle rustling and helping you build another ‘empire. ’ ”

Her chin went back and her eyes came down. “Why did