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

“All right!” York yelled. “A duel between gentlemen!”

“A duel between goddamn gentlemen! . . . We’ll go on the count of three! I’ll count, ’less you want to!”

“I trust you, Colman! You do the counting!”

Peeking out, York saw the Cowboy holster his weapon.

York stood and fired three times, each round catching the man in the head, exploding his pretty face and the things behind it into fragments. The dead man, on legs getting no signals, stumbled forward and fell over the nearest gravestone, draped there spilling brains and blood and general gore onto a ground that would not be helped by the irrigation.

“Idiot,” York said.

The residents silently agreed.

* * *

As he rode under the Circle G archway and past the water tower, barn, and other structures, York saw no sign of the hired gunmen or indeed any of the ranch hands. They must have again either been tending to stock on the range or, most likely, the bulk of them were positioned along the nearby white bank of Sugar Creek, armed to the teeth, ready and waiting.

York tied up at the hitching rail in front of the hacienda-style ranch house and went up the several steps to the porch and found the massive front door unlocked.

He went in.

Byers, the self-described factotum, appeared from somewhere and was immediately flustered. “Mr. York! Sheriff, please! You can’t just barge in like—”

York brushed the plump little bookkeeper aside and headed for the door that led to the library/study. He went in and saw, down at the far end of the chamber, Victoria Hammond behind her desk, going over documents. Contracts? Deeds? He didn’t really care.

He strode across the lengthy room and leaned over her as she sat there; his hands were flat on the wooden surface of the desktop.

“Where is your son?”

“My . . . my son?”

“Where is he, woman?”

She sighed and straightened, gathering her dignity. Lovely, long, dark hair up, she was in a simple white blouse with a few lacy touches and a black bolo tie.

“I won’t be spoken to in that manner,” she said. “Where is Byers? Why did he admit you without informing me? How dare you—”

“Your son told me you were going to meet me at Boot Hill at dusk. You weren’t there. He wasn’t there.”

She flinched. “What are you talking about?”

A male voice blurted, “Stop!”

York turned and the bookkeeper, a little revolver in a trembling hand, was at the doorway. The small man started to move unsteadily toward York, who walked over calmly, took the gun away from him, slapped him twice, grabbed him by the suit coat, and threw him into the hall, slamming the door on him.

Then the sheriff returned to the desk, where Victoria Hammond was watching this with her mouth hanging open and her dark eyes showing white all around.

“Where were we?” York asked.

“Right here,” she said, through her teeth, and her hand came up and revealed her own little revolver, apparently plucked from a nearby drawer.

He reached out and grabbed that gun, too, right out of her hand, startling her. He flung it to the floor hard enough that they were both lucky it didn’t go off.

“Now listen, woman,” he said, and he told her quietly, calmly, but with rage bubbling, about the meeting her son had arranged.

“Obviously,” she said, “I wasn’t there.”

“Obviously. But Clay Colman was.”

She frowned in apparent confusion. “What was my ramrod doing there?”

“Getting killed. By me.”

She gasped, and he told her the circumstances, including the other two gun-toting cowhands of hers that he’d also killed.

“So,” he said. “Where is your son?”

Seemingly thrown off balance, she said, “He’s with the men. He’s in charge.... Well, he was second-in-command, really, to Clay Colman. But he thinks he’s in charge.”

“You still haven’t answered me. Where?”

“With the other men, as I said. Guarding Sugar Creek.”

York turned to go.

“Caleb! Please. I knew nothing of this. Believe me.”

Without looking back at her, but not going anywhere either, he asked, “Why should I?”

He heard her heavy chair screech, being pushed back as she stood.

“Don’t go,” she said, and came around to him. “Allow me to explain, as best I can.”

The door flew open and Byers was there again, a double-barreled shotgun in hand this time; he looked unhinged, his hair, his clothes askew.

“Mr. Byers,” she said calmly, “the sheriff is my guest. Would you have the girl get us some wine, please? The Casa Madero red.”

Byers, his eyes wide, his mouth an O, had to think about that for a moment. Then he swallowed and said, “Yes, mistress.”

The factotum, shotgun lowered, closed the door gently behind him.

Victoria Hammond had York by the arm now. She looked up at him, so very beautiful, and said, “Please don’t kill Mr. Byers. He’d be terribly difficult to replace.”

“Do my best,” he said.

York allowed her to lead him to the sitting area overseen by the looming oil portrait of her dead husband, looking down at them disapprovingly, or at least so it seemed to York. She guided him onto the two-seater sofa and nestled beside him.

“And I don’t want you to kill my son Pierce, either,” she said, with an enigmatic smile, hands folded in her lap. “You’ve already taken one son from me. Do you want to make me cross?”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t even know what to think of it.

“I did not send Clay Colman to kill you,” she assured him. “Why would I?”

Because I killed your son? York thought.

“You defended my interests at Sugar Creek,” she said. “I appreciate that. You’re the law. I need the law in this.”

York said, “I know why Colman wanted me dead.”

Interested, as if he had suggested a book she might care to read, she said, “Really? Why?”

“I killed two friends of his. Stagecoach bandits. Years ago. He was one, too, but got away from me.”

“Why didn’t you bring him in, when you saw him working here for me? Isn’t that what you do? Arrest them or . . . shoot