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

But York plucked it away and pocketed it. “We’ll settle up after. If they kill me, you know where to find it.”

Duffy said, “What if we kill you?”

“What good,” Tulley said, feeding shells into his shotgun, broken open over his arm, “is spendin’ money when your head is blowed off?”

As they were saddling up, a figure in a satin gown moved through the moonlight up the boardwalk, hurriedly, and the worry on Rita Filley’s face made it no less lovely.

She took York aside. “What are you preparing to do, Caleb?”

“What do you think?”

“Are you a lawman tonight, or some unholy avenger?”

“What would you have me be?”

She touched his face. “Alive when it’s over.”

Her kiss was sudden and brief but no less passionate.

Then she was gone, and shortly so was York and his small, expensive posse.

* * *

In a world washed ivory by moonlight, as stars kept silent vigil, York and his posse of three left their horses tied to scrawny trees among the spiny shrubs and bunch grass off the narrow lane to the Circle G. A short walk led to the fence-post archway to the handful of frame buildings and the single impressive structure among them, the one-story hacienda-like ranch house.

The sheriff led the way, handguns drawn and Tully lugging his shotgun, moving into the compound, keeping low and slow. A slight breeze stirred brush and leaves, and a nocturnal songbird chimed in now and then. No sign presented itself of anyone standing guard among the structures, including the hacienda, where a window glowed with yellow lamplight. The bunkhouse with a cookhouse nearby was off to the right. No lights were on in either structure.

The four men headed that way.

Colt at the ready, York stepped to the door of the bunkhouse, a glorified shack much as the Bar-O’s had been. He tried the door and found it unlocked. He opened it and went in fast, .44 moving right and then left, with the other three poised to follow him in and back him up.

The bunks were empty. The sitting area with potbellied stove was similarly unpopulated.

He closed the door, quietly.

Moving low and quick, he led his men to the left and the sheltering cottonwood. They were just tucking in back of its massive trunk when a guard revealed himself, coming around one side of the big adobe house.

They waited a few seconds. Then, peeking out, York snatched a look. The guard had positioned himself in front of the several steps to the porch; he was rolling a cigarette—a burly character with a cavalry shirt and a yellow bandanna knotted loose at his throat, his short-crowned hat bearing a telltale genuine rattlesnake band.

As the four huddled behind the broad cottonwood trunk, Duffy raised his left hand in a “hold on” motion, then with his right plucked a knife from a sheath on his left hip—the blade’s blued finish gleaming in the moonlight. Duffy held the eight-inch throwing knife near the tip, exposing its leather-wrapped grip.

York gave him a look that said, Are you sure?

And Duffy gave him back a look that said, Don’t insult me.

The watchdog, pleased with himself, was just lighting up a well-made cigarette when the blade thunked into the left side of his chest. He grunted, as if he’d been struck a blow with a fist. His legs gave away and he toppled hard on his back.

Duffy and O’Fallon scurried over and—after the tall knife thrower had retrieved his blade—dragged the dead man off, one on each arm, to some bushes on the far side of the cottonwood, where he’d not likely attract any attention.

Reporting back for duty, the two shootists paused as York raised a cautionary hand, and his expression told them to listen. From the direction of the creek came the echoey sound of rowdy carousing, muffled but distinct with raucous laughs occasionally rising above an overall murmuring clamor.

York smiled. He looked from face to face, and they knew the Circle G raiders were—as the sheriff had predicted—celebrating their victorious attack.

As they’d been instructed, Duffy and O’Fallon moved left and right, respectively, the former between the water tower and barn, the latter circling the cookhouse and bunkhouse. Duffy was heading upstream, O’Fallon down, with the idea being that York and Tulley would move through the towering trees beyond the hacienda. The sheriff and deputy would then position themselves at the edge of the stand of firs and York would fire the first shot.

There would be no callout for surrender, no “You’re under arrest.” The raiders would get no more warning than the Bar-O bunkhouse got.

With .44 in hand, York sent the shotgun-toting Tulley to the left while he headed right, both into the pines, and it was a trickier journey than the other time he’d moved through the stand of firs as, despite the moonlight, the lack of sun shining down through high branches made getting through this forest of no paths truly a case of making your way in the dark. Add to that the need to make as little noise as possible, with the crushing of dry leaves and needles underfoot a dead (in several senses) giveaway, should any watcher be posted in these trees.

That smell of loam and grass and resin was the same, but the rest was some new nightmare he was slogging through. No animals were scurrying, but an owl wanted to know who the hell he was. The only thing keeping York from getting turned around and winding up back where he started or off to one side or the other was the echoing of drunken revelry bouncing off the nearby stream.

He was nearing the far edge of the fir stand when an arm looped around his neck and the flash of a blade not unlike the one that had killed that cigarette-rolling guard minutes ago came swiftly down seeking similar purchase when York brought his right elbow up, hard, and knocked into the wrist of his attacker and sent the knife flying God knew where in this