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

Cullen my help in restocking the Bar-O. It will require her letting me back in as a partner, but it will save the ranch and her holdings.”

York was slowly nodding. “She would go along with that, I think. Have you talked to her?”

“Not yet. It’s not solid. When I get back, with a deal, then I will approach Willa. But even so, that doesn’t solve her water rights problem.”

York grunted. “What does?”

“Stalling for time might. Once I have my investors, and Willa says yes to me as a partner, I will bring in the best lawyers in the Southwest and we will shut Victoria Hammond down. My legal advisors tell me the handshake deal of the prior owners for shared water right of way is as good as a contract, and the responsibility will carry over to the new owner—Victoria Hammond—unless the deed says otherwise.”

“How long will that take?”

“Not long. Not more than a week.”

York let out something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Raymond, a week is an eternity when two armed camps are facing each other over a narrow strip of water. And how long can cattle go without water?”

“I may have a way around that.” The businessman’s eyes grew shrewd. “For now, suppose you inform both sides that you will view any gunplay—any shooting, particularly any fatal shooting . . . other than by yourself, of course—as assault or murder or, hell, disturbing the peace. But shut it down!”

“. . . You have a lot of confidence in one man, Raymond.”

“Actually, I do. But I’m thinking you might have an easier time of it with a posse.”

York’s eyebrows rose. “A posse? What, of the barber and druggist and undertaker and a bunch of clerks?”

Parker’s upper lip curled nastily. “No. More like hard men out of Las Vegas. Those women aren’t the only ones who can hire guns.” He reached into the same inside pocket where he deposited the cigar case and came back with a thick fold of cash.

“Here’s fifty brownbacks,” Parker told York. “That’s a thousand dollars in United States currency. Twenty-dollar bills.”

York took them, feeling a little dazed doing so.

“Go hire yourself a posse,” Parker said, “and shut this war down.”

“By declaring war on both sides?”

“One way to look at it. Have you a better idea, Caleb?”

York shook his head and pocketed the lump of cash.

Parker stood. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to join you for lunch. My stage leaves at noon.”

York found a smile. “That’s all right. I’m still working at keeping breakfast down.”

Parker laughed. “I’ll wire you with any news.”

“If things go to hell,” York said, “I won’t have to wire you. The newspapers will cover it.”

The dining room still wasn’t busy, although a few tables were taken by now. York sat with his elbows on the linen cloth and his hands on his chin, leaning forward in thought. Parker had left him with plenty to chew on, now that the steak was gone, in particular the notion of putting together yet another crew of gun handlers.

A boyish young man in a brown suit and limp black bow tie wandered in, looking a bit lost; he was clutching a derby in his hands. Though York did not recognize him, the boy picked the sheriff out in his quiet corner and came over quickly but carefully, threading through the mostly empty tables.

Only when the young man—twenty, perhaps?—deposited himself before York did the resemblance to Victoria Hammond come through—chiefly the large, dark eyes, and feminine lashes that would not help the boy out West.

“Caleb York?” he whispered.

“Yes. You’re a Hammond, aren’t you?”

The boy swallowed, nodded, clutched the hat to a suit coat that hadn’t come cheap. “Yes—Pierce. My mother is Victoria.”

York gestured. “Have a seat, Pierce.”

He shook his head, a firm no. “My mother asked me to arrange a private meeting for her with you.”

“All right. I’ll ride out this afternoon, if that’s acceptable.”

His eyes popped. “It isn’t! Can you be at the cemetery at dusk? That would be around seven.”

“I can.”

“Mother will be visiting my brother’s grave. Making sure they did right by him, till the stone arrives.”

“All right.”

The boy swallowed. “She told me not to linger. Best the Hammonds not be seen talking to you at any length, Sheriff.”

“Okay. Till seven, then.”

The boy didn’t even bother to nod before he turned and went out, even quicker than he’d come.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The cool blue touch of dusk was just threatening to darken into night as Caleb York, on the dappled gray gelding, drew near Boot Hill, the slight slope of which made its name such an exaggeration. His destination, just half a mile out of town, was to the right as he rode up, and a buckboard with a single Morgan horse was waiting on the other side of the rutted road, tied up to one of two hitching posts that served the cemetery.

Apparently Victoria Hammond had beaten him here. The buckboard suggested she wasn’t alone—perhaps Pierce, her son, who’d brought York’s invitation to this meeting, was with her.

But there was no sign of the woman in the neatly rowed-off collection of wooden crosses and flat grave markers, some wood, a few stone. He slowed the horse to a stop and then climbed down and tied the steed up at the other hitching post, the one near the resilient mesquite tree, whose color and shade were likely the reason this otherwise desolate spot had been chosen as the resting place for departed citizens of Trinidad, New Mexico.

Right now the sprawling tree that stood watch on this place was just an abstract silhouette, providing no color at all, and its shade was merely one jagged shadow throwing a pool of darkness. The sky was purple, edged streaky orange at the west, and to the north scarred buttes were like towering tombstones, as if perhaps Indian gods had been buried in the sandy earth below.

Standing at the edge of this field with its crop of dead gave even a brave man like Caleb York pause.

No, not