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

“He hightailed, Sheriff,” Tulley said, slipping an arm around his friend’s shoulder. “Ye ain’t hit, is ye?”

“No . . . no . . .”

“You reckon ye had enough cards and whiskey to suit you for a night?”

The sheriff nodded. His body relaxed. He seemed almost asleep, his eyelids at half-mast.

Tulley said, “Bein’ as ye is already three sheets to the wind, let’s get ye ’tween some nice clean sheets over to the hotel.”

Getting no argument, Tulley slipped his right arm around Caleb York’s waist, keeping the shotgun ready in his left fist, and walked him to the Trinidad House. The going was slow, with Tulley looking every which way in case the shooter doubled back; but they made it.

Wilson, the desk clerk, got Tulley the room key and even helped him half-drag their charge up the stairs and down the hall and to the sheriff’s door. Once inside, with a lamp lit low, they took off the now-unconscious man’s coat—his hat had been lost along the way—and his gun belt and boots, then slung him into the bed and got the covers over him.

Not an experienced hotel guest himself, Tulley knew nothing of tipping, and yet he appreciated what Wilson helped him do so much he dug a quarter eagle out of his pants and handed it over.

Wilson, who seemed to appreciate that, left and Caleb York began to snore.

Tulley shook his head. He felt sympathy, having been on more benders in a lifetime than a man should have been able to survive. But he thought he’d never see such a thing out of Caleb York, and it did disappoint him. In another sense, though, he didn’t mind seeing this man was a human after all.

Someone burst in the room and Tulley jerked the shotgun up and damn near shot a hole in Miss Rita.

He didn’t, though, and if she realized she’d almost been subject of a tragedy, she didn’t show it none. She just shut the door behind her, looking like the damnedest apparition standing there with her bosom heaving in that silk-and-satin green thing—the kind of dress that seemed befitting in a saloon but just plain strange anywheres else.

She leaned over the bed and she stroked the snoring man’s face, like he was a child of hers with a fever.

“Someone said a shot was fired,” she said, her eyes wide and almost accusative. “Someone else said they saw you hauling Caleb over here. What happened?”

Tulley told her.

She stood straight, but them creamy mounds was still heaving. Mercy sakes.

“I’ll be back,” she said. “Meantime, you stand guard.”

“I was aimin’ to sit. On a chair? In the hall?”

“That’s fine,” she said.

And that’s what he was doing, shotgun in his lap, when she returned in the light blue shirt and black riding skirt and boots. She had a small revolver in hand.

Tulley was blocking the door, so he stood and moved the chair for her to go into the room. She paused before she did, saying, “That window on the street could give someone access.”

“Ye mean they could climb up and crawl in?”

“Exactly what I mean. I’ll sit at the foot of his bed and you stay out here. Maybe by morning he’ll have come to his senses.”

“One can only hope.... Ye know how to use that peashooter, Miss Rita?”

She nodded. “A man in Houston tried to force his way on me once and I shot him.”

“Kill him?”

“I did.”

“How many shots?”

“Just the one.” She touched her forehead near the bridge of her nose.

Then she slipped inside the room.

What a female, Tulley thought, smiling to himself, as he sat back down and cradled the shotgun like a precious child.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

While hardly a teetotaler, Caleb York was not what you’d call a hard-drinking man. He could have tallied up on his fingers the times he’d been hung over in his life, with digits to spare.

The condition had afflicted him often enough, however, for him to recognize the signs: feeling tired however much sleep he’d had, a bilious stomach, and a pounding headache, not helped by the midmorning sun. That had driven York from his usual window seat in the Trinidad House Hotel’s dining room to this one in a far corner.

That window seat had been “usual” in the sense that when he took supper here (which was frequent) that spot with a view onto the street was reserved for him. And taking breakfast at the hotel was not at all usual, as he took advantage of the arrangement with the town café to feed prisoners at the jail to get himself a free morning meal, almost every day.

Not this one.

Coming down the steps in the clothes he’d slept in, and making it into the dining room, was as major an expedition as he cared to embark upon right now, particularly with that morning sun painting the world out there a painful yellow.

So he was settled, with his back to the corner where the far walls met (expanding his expedition but in an acceptable manner) so he could sit with his back unexposed. After all, he had dreamt last night of being shot at and he’d woken with a dizzy sense that maybe that had not been a nightmare at all.

Choosing the hotel dining room this morning also had to do with the superior fare—he could get a nice big steak of the best quality, and despite his lingering nausea, a slab of rare dead beef with some eggs was what had once been recommended to him as a hangover cure of sorts by a doctor. That the doctor in question was named Holliday only served to lend the prescription verity.

The food had not yet arrived but he was already on his second cup of coffee, attempting to quench what seemed to him a surprising thirst considering how much liquid he’d tossed down over the past—damn, two days was it?

And had he dreamed, too, of losing hundreds of dollars to those amateurs on the City Council?

At half-past ten,