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

. . a woman in black with blazing black eyes and a wild mane of ebony hair and a .45 in a gloved fist.

Victoria Hammond shot Willa and the bullet tore through Willa’s upper chest at her right shoulder like a searing hot lance had gone through her. She fell to her knees as the Hammond woman fired again, but missed, only Willa dropped onto her left side, perhaps giving the shooter the sense that the second bullet had hit.

Harmon had set his shotgun against the corral fence and he was scrambling for it when Victoria shot him in the back of the head. Morgan had leaned his Winchester against the side of the house, and he ran for it, but Victoria picked him off like a bird on the fly, grinning as she did.

Willa saw this, although later she wondered if she only thought she saw it, that maybe she had conjured a memory of the shootings from what she’d heard, and only imagined seeing such a beautiful face twisted into so ugly an evil mask.

After that, she really did only hear things.

Victoria saying, “Gather him.”

In a strangely gentle voice.

The two men climbing down from the buckboard.

“Put him in back with me,” she said. “Gentle. Gentle.”

Oh, Willa thought. She’s collecting her son.

That must have distracted the grieving mother, kept her from doing what Willa knew the woman should have done, which was put a bullet in her fallen rival’s head.

But then the buckboard rattled off, again in no hurry, and the noisy hell of the burning barn was the only thing that kept Willa approaching a state of wakefulness.

Still, it took time for her to even think about getting up, though she was never sure how long she lay there. Numbness had set right in, around the wound, fore and aft. The bullet seemed to have gone straight through her, not hitting any bone, not careening around, tearing things up in her. Then the burning sensation started, and it may have helped keep her from passing out.

Finally she managed to get to her feet, as if reassembling herself from scattered parts, and stumbled over to the corral, and through the gate, where she took the first saddled horse she came to and somehow, somehow, got herself up and on.

She eased the horse out of the corral. Stopped and looked at her fallen comrades—skinny old Morgan, no man better with a horse . . . plump old Harmon, best cookie any ranch ever knew. She swallowed hard, with no sense of the tears streaking down her soot-covered face.

Then she rode back to town. At a steady pace, holding on to the reins, working every second of the way to keep her balance and stay awake and not fall off and die on the road before she could get to town.

To town and Caleb York.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

For a Saturday night, business was slow at the Victory Saloon, with no sign of the usual payday bustle. Satin-and-silk gals just sitting around, piano player entertaining himself. Chuck-a-luck and roulette with nary a taker. Only a few dusty cowhands slaking their thirst, outnumbered for once by Hub Wainwright and his quartet of white-shirt, bow-tie bartenders behind the interminable, superbly polished oak bar. Seemed all the Bar-O and Circle G hands were otherwise occupied tonight.

Caleb York, both his badges tucked away in his black frock coat’s breast pocket, was having a hair of the dog—but just a hair—as he sat at the round, green-felt-topped table with four City Council members. He had, since strolling in an hour ago, been systematically taking back the money he’d lately lost to them.

And he didn’t even seem to be thinking about his cards, just playing automatically if with his usual skill. This annoyed and frustrated the council members, who tried to strike back by playing more aggressively . . . and right into his (poker) hands.

In fact, York really wasn’t thinking about his cards. Coming back to town, he’d caught up with Tulley, who was about to start his night rounds, and told the deputy that trouble was coming. That tomorrow morning the sheriff would be riding to Las Vegas, to hire on a posse of hard cases, and Tulley would be on his own for much of the day. No time for napping.

“Cut back on your rounds tonight,” York had advised him, “if need be.”

“It’s come to shootin’?” Tully had asked.

“It will soon enough.”

York was mulling what strategy he’d use with the posse of hired guns who’d be riding with him—return to the east bank of the creek? Perhaps divide into two groups and ride into the ranch house grounds even as the other group took the shore? No, that would create a crossfire.

As he absently hauled in chips, and the mayor and other merchants traded discouraged expressions, he explored his options. He won another pot as two men burst through the batwings and into the Victory, took off their hats, and strode over to position themselves beside him, in a supplicating manner. They looked glum. Both had blood on their shirts.

York recognized them as Willa’s men, two of the Vegas gunfighters she’d brought on: Frank Duffy and Buck O’Fallon. Their reputations, while not spotless, were certainly more nearly shining than the ruthless man-killers hired by Victoria Hammond.

Tall, broad shouldered, black haired, with a tanned, weathered look about him, Duffy said, “Sheriff, you best come with us. Miss Cullen has been shot.”

York was on his feet at once, and the City Council members looked stunned, alarmed, as well they should. He said, “Not . . . ?”

“Not killed, but bad wounded.”

Former lawman O’Fallon, smallish, with an educated manner, slim where his companion was sinewy, hung on to his broad-brimmed hat with both hands. “Flaming arrows, probably the Chiricahua Kid’s doing, set the bunkhouse afire. Then the Hammond crew rode in and started shooting everybody as they came out.”

Duffy said, “There was complete mayhem ensued. Every hand shot and killed. Barn burned down. House is standing—that’s about all’s left.”

“Where