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

the dining room was otherwise empty—too late for breakfast, too early for lunch—but a frantic pair came rushing in nonetheless, as if desperate to find seating.

In reality, they were looking to see where York might be seated: Rita Filley, mussed but lovely in a shirt and riding dress, her revolver in hand, and Tulley, shotgun in his hand, store-bought clothes looking so rumpled the old boy might have slept under the boardwalk last night, like the not-so-good-old-days.

Of course, York knew damn well where Tulley had spent the previous night, and Rita as well. The sheriff had woken to find the latter in a chair, asleep, facing the window, a revolver in her lap; and York had slipped around the former, asleep in a chair in front of the hotel room door, shotgun cradled, as if the deputy were in the Land of Nod with a lovely wench he was wooing.

Well, anybody can dream.

They charged over and fixed themselves side by side before him, looking down with alarm and accusation.

“Good morning,” York managed to say, between sips of coffee.

“Thank God,” Rita said. “We didn’t know where you’d gone off to!”

“Caleb York,” Tulley said, trembling, “ye put a right scare in the two of us!”

York winced and raised a hand. “No need to shout,” he said gently. “Pull up a chair. Both of you.”

They did.

“Coffee?” he asked them. Place settings with cups were before them, and the waiter had left York a steaming pot of Arbuckle’s.

“No thank ye,” Tulley said. “I prefer my own.”

York and Rita exchanged raised-eyebrow looks, but let the opinion stand.

Then York said, “I dreamed someone shot at me last night.”

“Tweren’t no dream,” Tulley said.

York grunted, and it hurt. “Suspected as much.”

“Ye got yore gun out of its scabbard,” his deputy said, “but that be about all. Had sense enough to duck in a doorway, anyways.”

“Did you see who, Tulley?”

“No. Come from across the street. Feller lit out like his tail was afire. Heard his horse sweepin’ him off to hell and gone. Pardon the language, Miss Rita.”

York looked from one to the other. “And you two stood guard on me? All night?”

Rita’s nod was barely perceptible. Tulley’s was so enthusiastic York could barely watch, the deputy adding, “Sat, not stood. And might be dropped off a second or two.”

The Victory’s hostess, frowning in thought, asked, “Who would want you dead, Caleb?”

“It’s a long list.” He sipped. “Going back fifteen years, leastways.”

She leaned forward. Even with her hair a tangle, and not a lick of face paint, she was a lovely, dark-eyed creature, almost enough to make a man not want to crawl off somewhere and die.

“Caleb,” she said quietly, “let me amend that—who would want you dead right now?”

He thought about it. That took effort, as the throbbing headache just didn’t want to make room.

“Rita,” he said, “best candidate would be one of Willa’s hired guns. You’ve heard about them?”

She nodded. “Cowboys like to talk almost as much as they like to drink. And word’s around you shot and killed one of the Circle G riders.”

He nodded back. “Wes Hardin’s cousin.”

Tulley’s eyes popped. “Heaven’s bells! Now you got John Wesley Hardin out to get ye!”

York smiled, just a little. Bigger would have hurt.

“I doubt that,” he said. “News doesn’t travel that fast. Anyway, Hardin doesn’t give a damn about anybody but himself, and he prefers facing down men slower and less dangerous.”

Rita was frowning. “I can’t imagine Willa Cullen would . . . no, that’s out of the question.”

“She wouldn’t,” York said confidently. “We’ve had a . . . falling-out, it’s true. But, no. Somebody in her crew who wanted to get back at me—one of the other guns—maybe.”

Rita’s chin lifted. “Victoria Hammond hired on guns, too. Maybe one of them would want you out of the picture.”

“That makes more sense, only . . .”

“Only?”

“I was on her side of the creek. When I fired across and killed that man.”

“On her side of the creek? On her side of the war, you mean!”

“I’m on the county’s side, Rita. The law’s side.”

She shook her head slowly. “But that’s not how Willa sees it, I would guess.”

“No,” he admitted. “It’s not.”

His food came, the steak sizzling. When the waiter had left, York summoned a smile.

“Would you two be willin’ to do me another favor? One apiece?”

Tulley and Rita just listened.

“Rita,” York said, “go back to the Victory and keep your eyes and ears open. Either Tulley or I will be by from time to time to see what, if anything, you’ve picked up.”

“All right,” she said. “And if it’s urgent . . . ?”

“I’ll likely be at my office. I need to recover a bit before I take any kind of action.”

“And,” Tulley advised, “what kinder action needs takin’.”

“Truer words,” York said with a smile that came more easy now. “Deputy, go get yourself some sleep in your favorite cell. I imagine you only caught a few hours last night. I’ll rouse you if you’re needed.”

Tulley’s eyes narrowed. “Anything else, Caleb York?”

“Yes. You two let me try to eat this dead animal in peace. I might get it down, but it may come up again, and that won’t be pretty.”

They rose to go, but York found himself somehow rising, too. He reached a hand out and touched Rita’s cheek, momentarily, and her eyes got big and wet.

York looked at her, then at Tulley.

“No drunken son of a bitch,” he said, “ever had better friends.”

Tulley’s smile was endless, but Rita’s smile was tight and her chin was crinkled. She swallowed and was gone, Tulley trailing.

It did not occur to York that calling her a friend might not strike her as enough.

He ate slowly, chewing the beef thoroughly before sending it down his gullet, washing everything down with hot coffee. When he had finished, he pushed the plate away and just sat there, letting his stomach deal with the problem.

The dishes had been cleared away and York was considering whether to risk getting to his feet again when another individual entered the