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

chin came up. “I did no such thing. I knew nothing of it! The first I became aware of what they’d done was when they reported my son’s murder.”

“His murder?”

Indignation now. “What would you call it?”

“Self-defense. The ranch was attacked and Willa stood her ground. That’s what we do in the Southwest.” He laughed harshly. “You expect me to believe you didn’t orchestrate that raid? After you returned yourself to launch a second assault?”

Now the dark arching eyebrows rose. “Can you prove I dispatched those men? They quite naturally developed an animosity against a rival team of gunmen. And my son, Pierce . . .” She stopped, swallowed. “. . . Pierce is the one who organized what you call a raid, or so it would seem. He must have wanted to impress his mother, the poor misguided soul.”

Her chin trembled, whether out of emotion or at her bidding for effect, he couldn’t guess.

She added, “He should have known that wasn’t necessary to win . . . win his mother’s love.”

She swallowed; tears were pooling.

York’s smile settled on one side of his face. “Mrs. Hammond, you are a rare woman indeed. Willing to sell out your own dead son, just hours after his passing, to cover your misdeeds. I’ve seen a lot in my day, lady, but never anything like this. Anything like you.”

She came to him, slowly, no sudden moves, cutting the distance in half. “I hope the Cullen girl lives. What I did was rash . . . wrong. But I think any judge, any jury, would understand a mother’s anguished, misguided act.”

“I thought Pierce was the misguided one.”

“Caleb, Caleb . . . if the Cullen girl does live,” she insisted, her expression softening, “she will return to a life much changed. Buildings burned down, cattle wasting away, her people dead . . . she’ll be so alone. Dejected and dismayed, her hopes, her dreams dashed.”

“A reasonable assumption.”

She moved even closer. “I can make it up to her, for what I did to her tonight, so . . . so impetuously. That offer of mine, that insulting offer I made for her holdings? I’ll replace it with one commensurate with the property’s actual value.”

He shook his head slowly, his smile openly bitter. “Everything that’s happened tonight, and you can think of business?”

She looked to the sky—or the ceiling, anyway. “What am I left with but business to consider? I have one remaining son—Hugh—who is himself a brilliant man of commerce . . . but he has turned away from me. If I can make the Circle G a going concern, an attractive prospect. . . and with his brothers both gone? That heart of his grown so cold may yet warm to his mother. I can bring him back into the fold. Bring him back into my loving grasp.”

Grasp is the right word, he thought.

“All you have to do,” York said, “is convince the woman you tried to kill tonight that doing business with you is a golden opportunity.”

She smiled; it tightened her eyes, and the redness of the face paint screamed at him even as her voice was soft as silk, and as slick.

“You’re the one who can do that, Caleb. If you can convince Willa Cullen to sell me the Bar-O, at a price that’s better than fair . . . after all, her cattle are dying of thirst and her ranch buildings are mostly burned out, so it’s really just the land that has any value . . .”

York glared at her. “Her property is devalued because you burned it out! Her cattle are dying because you denied the animals water, and her people are gone because your men killed them. Interesting damn way to bring the market value down, lady.”

She ignored that; her left hand gripped his right arm. Her throaty voice grew soft, seductive.

“If you can convince her, Caleb, I will make you a full partner. You don’t have to invest a dime. You won’t have to be part of a single thing to do with the business. I know you have no inclination toward being a cattleman—it’s not what you do, or who you are. So you stay sheriff and marshal and police chief and whatever badge they push your way—you can earn your keep by helping me make sure Trinidad and San Miguel County throw no obstacles in my path . . . in our path.”

The tips of their noses almost brushed now.

“Do you know how many men died tonight, woman?”

“No. Do you?” She slipped an arm around his waist, drew her body to his. “I told you before, Caleb. I can use a strong man. And I still have a few child-bearing years left. Perhaps you can give me another son.”

Damn her! She still smelled of lilacs.

Through his teeth he said, “A son to replace the one I took away from you? Or maybe the one you sent to his death tonight?”

She pushed him away, hard, her expression suddenly savage. Taking several steps back, her upper lip curling back over her teeth, she said, “Arrest me, then. Take me to a judge and see how I fare.”

“You’re facing a judge right now.”

Victoria Hammond shook her head in slow disbelief. “You’re a lawman, Caleb. You’re not some gun for hire, like the rabble who died on both sides tonight.” Very casually, she added, “And you’re certainly not a man who would kill a woman—are you?”

“Might be.”

She went for her gun, the lovely face clenched into sheer ugliness and utter evil now, but York drew so quick his bullet entered her and exited before she even had the weapon out of its fancy holster, the thunder of the .44’s report shaking things in the room.

York grunted. “Seems I am.”

She looked down at the red-rimmed hole in her belly and a trickle of red trailed down, shimmering over the black silk. Then she crumpled to the floor, a curtain that slipped off its rod, and began weeping like a little girl—likely with gut-shot