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

He rose. “Is that what this is? Home? First time I’ve seen it, yet it’s so, so familiar. Mother, I came home to say good-bye to my sad little got-himself-killed baby brother. I loved the rascal. He didn’t deserve my affection, but, as you say, it’s blood. And Pierce . . . I’ve always had a soft spot for him, too. He’s gentle underneath, he just doesn’t know it.”

“Stop this.” She bit off the words. “I’ll hear no more of it.”

“Oh, I’m done. Really done. But I came home to say good-bye to you, too, Mother . . . and to him.” He nodded up at the painting. “Of course, I have to see his damn face in the mirror every time I shave. It’s enough to make a man grow a full-face beard.”

“You’ll come back. Crawling.”

“On my hands and knees, you think? No, I’m quite capable of staying upright. You see, one of the reasons our bank is failing is that I’ve helped myself, some. Don’t bother looking for what I took, because it’s safely deposited in banks back East. That’s where you sent me for my learning, Mother. But, really, I learned quite a lot from you and Papa.... I’ll be taking a horse into town and checking into the hotel. I’ll leave it in the livery stable. You didn’t raise me to be a thief, after all.”

He went out, smiling, a lightness in his step.

Pierce was at her side. “Mother, I will never, would never do that. Never walk out on you. Never, ever let you down.”

“I know you won’t, darling.”

Of course, the boy had never done anything in his life but let her down. Still, why hurt his feelings? She was too good a mother for that.

“I’m all for killing Caleb York, Mother. All for it!”

At least, she thought, his heart’s in the right place.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Caleb York sat at his desk in his office working with a fountain pen on the ledger that recorded taxes collected and rewards paid (two separate sections of the big orange-black–spined book). He would fill the pen from time to time from an inkwell. Not yet proficient at it, he occasionally got ink on his hand, keeping a handkerchief handy, and now and then a black blob made the record book look like the work of a small child.

Keeping up with change wasn’t easy.

He was putting the ledger away in his middle desk drawer when Tulley rushed in, looking to burst.

“Sheriff!” the skinny, bandy-legged deputy said, louder than need be since the old boy was standing right in front of the desk now. “Trouble be stirrin’ out t’ Sugar Crick.”

Tulley, who had long since abandoned his desert-rat rags at the sheriff’s direction, was resplendent in navy flannel shirt, red suspenders, gray woolen pants, and work boots.

“What were you doing out that way, Tulley?”

“I weren’t out there! No sir! But it’s the God’s honest truth.”

York folded his hands, his right one sharing ink with his left. “How do you come by this?”

The deputy looked left and looked right, making sure no one in the empty office and the nearby vacant jail cell might overhear. He closed one eye and opened the other, wide. “I were bellied up to the bar, partakin’ of nothin’ stronger than a sarsaparilly, I will have ye know—ain’t fell off the wagon yet, Caleb York.”

“I know, Tulley. Admirable.”

This time the deputy looked right, and looked left, checking for eavesdroppers again. Then he cackled. “I guess I needn’t tell ye I got ears like a fox! And I keeps ’em to the ground.”

Vivid as those words were, they failed to conjure any image in York’s mind.

“To the unschooled eye,” Tulley was saying, “all I be doin’ was jest chewin’ the fat with ol’ Hub, who is gettin’ a mite portly, I come to notice. Best lay off the gravy and taters, sez I.”

The deputy referred to Hub Wainright, the burly, sparsely mustached bouncer/bartender at the saloon.

“The point, Tulley.”

He pointed a gnarled finger at the outside. “Jest down the bar, some cowboys from this spread and that ’un was jawin’ over beer. Seems the widower Hammond hired herself some guns to keep them Bar-O cowpunchers from waterin’ their beeves over to Sugar Crick.”

“You mean her cowmen are armed.” York shrugged. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

Tulley shook his head and wisps of white danced. “No, no—these ain’t your ever’day cowhands, jes’ packin’ some lead. These is kill-fighters. Murder for money boys. Is what these fellers claimed, anyways. Over suds it be, but still.”

York opened the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk and got out his bullet-studded gun belt and Colt Single Action .44.

“Best I ride out and have a look,” York said. “The grapevine’s probably just picked up on those Arizona boys who signed on. Rough customers, but not hired guns.”

Tulley leaned in. “What I heered, Caleb York, it was jest that—gunhands hired for killin’! And that ain’t the worst of it.”

York was strapping on the gun belt. “What is, then?”

Tulley pointed to the outside again. “Miz Cullen, she follered suit. She’s got herseff some gunfighters that was hired on by that colored foreman of hern. If scuttlebutt’s to be believed, them gun-toters was rounded up, up Las Vegas way. Still a mean town, that. Parts of it, anyways.”

York was heading toward the door. “You did good, Deputy. Hold down the fort.”

Tulley’s smile had a surprising number of teeth left in it. “Don’t I always? We ain’t been raided yet.”

Always a first time, York thought grimly. Especially if a range war is brewing . . .

The day was warm enough that York decided to leave his black frock coat behind, vest too, and left the office tugging his hat on and with his sheriff’s badge pinned to his gray shirt with the pearl buttons. The badge was something he wanted seen by the woman he was calling on, and by anybody working for her. Same went for his Colt revolver.

York rode the twenty minutes or