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

“He was just a suspect in that robbery,” York said. “I hardly ever shoot suspects.”

“You do have your standards.”

“Is that what you intend to do? Rib me?”

The serving girl came in with a tray of glasses and a carafe of red wine. Poured for them both and York thanked her, while the mistress of the Circle G did not. The girl went out.

“No,” Victoria Hammond said. “It’s just that . . . some things are just so terribly sad that sometimes a person simply has to laugh or go mad. Don’t you find that to be the case?”

“Not particularly. Why would your son help Colman set me up if he wasn’t doing your bidding?”

Now she did seem closer to tears than laughter.

She sipped her wine. Said, “He’s a young, impetuous boy. He loved his brother, so he would obviously resent you for taking William away from him . . . and he wants to impress me. Wants to show his mother that he’s a man, capable of . . .”

“Murder?”

“No. He wasn’t there, at the cemetery, was he? No, he’s fallen under Clay Colman’s spell, I’m afraid. Ever since I assigned him to ride at Colman’s side, he’s tried to be one of them, those men. Strong like them.”

“Well, nobody’s under Colman’s spell now.” York had some wine. Not bad. “Victoria, you have to put a stop to this. If your men take part in this water-rights war, I will start arresting them.”

She frowned in frustration. “But we’re in the right.”

“No. It’s clear you have assembled a band of cutthroats to do your dirty work. You want a war. You lied to me, or led me astray anyway, by indicating you planned to make a good offer to Willa Cullen for the Bar-O. Then you offered her peanuts. You didn’t even salt the damn things.”

“It was . . . a tactic.”

He looked at her, stern. “Let this play out legally. This is your land. You’ll likely come out on top. If you don’t, and you recklessly kill your neighbor’s cowhands, and cause her stock to die of thirst, you may face legal and certainly civil ramifications.”

Her expression now was thoughtful. “What would you suggest?”

“Just take a step back. Turn down the heat. You should limit this to a couple of campsites on the Sugar Creek banks, keeping watch. If the Bar-O roars back with a passel of men, you have a right to defend yourself.”

“You’re suggesting that if I make an effort to curtail the violence, it will look better. In court. And to the Trinidad citizens.”

He shook his head. “I’m suggesting you do it because it’s the right thing. If you don’t, I might have to raise a posse and wade in and stop people on each side. Fill my jail with both your crew and Willa’s.”

“The ones you don’t kill.”

“I’ve never killed a man who didn’t pull on me first.”

“Not that you’ll admit to.”

They were looking right at each other, close enough to touch noses.

“Not that I admit to, no,” he said. “Can you give me one good reason not to haul your son in for aiding and abetting attempted murder? My attempted murder?”

She kissed him.

It was warm and slow and seemed to tell him things. No, did tell him things. He hadn’t pulled away, at first as startled as if she’d slapped him, but then he just got caught up in it, in the sensuousness of it, the lilac scent of her.

She moved herself up to where she was sitting in his lap and kissed him again and, without any sense that he’d willed it, his arms went around her and he held her to him and the kiss went on and on....

Finally it ended, but her face was still near his when she said, “I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you, Caleb. I knew of you, I’d heard of you, but it seemed . . . it had to be an exaggeration. Men like you just don’t exist. Men so strong.” She moved her bottom as if trying to find a more comfortable place in his lap.

Not that he was comfortable.

Then he got hold of himself, and of her, and lifted her by her narrow waist above the sweep of her hips and set her down gently but firmly beside him on the love seat.

He said, “I need you to reduce your men’s presence on Sugar Creek.”

She nodded, breathing hard. “Two campsites. Two men per campsite. I promise.”

“Good. Good.” He stood.

Her husband glowered down.

She rose, took his arm, led him slowly to the door, as if sending her man off to serve in a war somewhere. And wasn’t she?

“When this is over,” she said, “I will need someone strong by my side at this place.”

He told her what he’d told Willa so many times: “I’m no cattleman.”

“I don’t want a man to head up a cattle drive or fix a fence and rope a calf. I want a man with sand who can stand up to challenges. A man smart enough to make hard decisions, who understands that business is a perilous but oh so profitable affair. I can offer you so much, Caleb . . . so much.”

She deposited him in the hallway and shut the door softly on him, sealing herself in the library. Byers was nowhere to be seen. York found his way to the door.

As he stood near the gelding, like a man who’d fallen down a flight of stairs but didn’t seem to be damaged in particular, he nonetheless felt shaken.

And suspicious.

But all the way out to the main road, he wondered.

Wondered what a night with that woman would be like.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

With a full moon and a starry sky lighting the way, Caleb York, on his way back to Trinidad, paused at the mouth of the Circle G lane at the irregular excuse for a main road, where telegraph poles, post-blizzard, still tilted at awkward angles. The pole closest pointed in the opposite direction of town—to the fairly