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

bartenders, in back of whom nestled bottle upon bottle of bourbon along room-expanding mirrors. Cowboys and clerks lined up at the bar, with its hanging towels ready to remove foam from mustaches and a brass foot rail interrupted by occasional spittoons for the deposit of tobacco juice.

Mostly, though, the Victory was a casino, complete with dice, roulette, chuck-a-luck, and wheel of fortune. At the far end on a platform, a piano player contributed lively honky-tonk for a tiny dance floor, where grimy cowboys pawed powdered dance hall girls, but didn’t get very far, not since Rita shut down the foofaraw house upstairs.

Up front, opposite the bar, were the tables where customers sat drinking, a pair of gaming tables beyond that. House dealer Yancy Cole, in his standard riverboat gambler attire, dealt faro, as he often did. At the other table, Caleb York and several City Council members were playing stud poker without a house dealer, as was their wont, and with no cut to the Victory either—a harmless payoff to the city fathers. These tables were positioned near the stairway to the second floor, which had been remodeled strictly into Rita’s private quarters.

Rita had never imagined this life for herself. She’d grown up in Houston, where she’d done the books for her father’s modest blacksmith shop. On her papa’s death, her sister, Lola, inherited the smithy, which she sold, then came to Trinidad and opened the Victory in partnership with the notorious Sheriff Harry Gauge. That had left Rita in Houston to eke out an existence as a waitress in bars and cantinas. Lola had promised to send for her little sis, but months passed without that happening.

That Rita might inherit a business so fine and profitable as the Victory had come as a surprise. But following as it had upon her sister Lola’s tragic murder at Gauge’s hands was a shock. Not long before her death, Lola had written her about Caleb York and it was clear her older sister had an interest in the man.

And now the younger sister did.

York had shown plenty of interest in Rita, too, but not the marrying kind, or even the one-woman variety that Willa Cullen had inspired in the man, which fed marriage rumors around town. What Rita and York had was more a friendship, the kind that included trips upstairs to her private quarters that sometimes lasted overnight.

Those nights had tended to come when York and the Cullen girl had fallen out over something or other, which had occurred several times, if not often enough for the saloon owner to think one of these interludes might turn into a concerto.

Tonight something was different with Caleb. For one thing, he’d already been drinking when he came around. He was not a man to drink heavily. She’d even queried about his caution with drink.

“Is it something that was a problem once?” she’d asked him upstairs, a while back. “Something you had to get shy of?”

“No. I like a drink. But it’s like smoking.”

Smoking he also avoided, only rarely rolling one or lighting up a cigar. Not never. Yet rare.

“How is it like smoking?” she asked.

“Smokers whose pouch runs empty—or are in circumstances where they shouldn’t partake, like on a stagecoach with ladies present—can get nervous-like. Get the shakes, the way drinking men do, if they can’t lay hands on the stuff.”

“Some feel it’s a price to pay for the enjoyment.”

“They aren’t men with my reputation. They aren’t in my line of work. I need to be steady of eye and hand, Rita, if I aim to stay alive.”

But right now, York—who almost always won at poker and when he didn’t seemed at least easily able to break even—was losing. Not hand over fist, but getting money taken by the likes of Mayor Hardy, banker Burnell, druggist Davis, and even Harris, mediocre players all.

She had strolled over a couple of times and perceived the problem. He was betting recklessly—not betting big, just not paying attention. Few men she’d ever known had the focus of the tall legend that was Caleb York. Right now the only thing legendary about him was the way he seemed able to put away whiskey without falling off that chair.

The game broke up just after midnight, but Caleb was still sitting there, shuffling the cards. That he was able to do so after all that drink was impressive, but after a time he stopped shuffling and just sat and stared.

She took the chair next to him. “Caleb, why don’t you come upstairs with me?”

His eyes went to her. He smiled. “Best offer I had all night.”

He got up and she took his arm, just to be sure, and he took the rail with one hand and let her guide him by holding on to him at right. She was impressed by how steady he seemed.

She walked him to her bathroom—she had indoor plumbing (the customers got the privies out back)—and he stumbled in, and when the door closed, it sounded like a horse relieving himself in there.

Then, in the bedroom of her suite, with furnishings she’d had shipped in from Denver, she helped him out of his coat, gun belt, and boots, and onto the big brass canopied bed with satin spread, flounces, and pillows. He was already half asleep, and an anomaly in this determinedly feminine room with its walnut furnishings, velvet curtains, and loomed rugs with flowery designs.

The bed was big enough for two and she got undressed and put on her nightgown and curled up beside him. He smelled like whiskey. Generally, he smelled bad.

But here he was, and she had him all to herself.

And yet she had heard the rumors about the conflict between Victoria Hammond and Willa Cullen. Somehow that played into this. Was he in this condition, and here in her bedroom, because things were again amiss between him and Willa?

She didn’t care. She just didn’t care. She had him. And this time she would keep him. She fell asleep, filled with an oddly