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

pain and utter disappointment and maybe at an outcome she could not talk or scheme her way clear of.

But surely not regret.

And her dead husband looked down from his gilt-edged frame with no sympathy at all.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

When Caleb York rode into town, going on midnight, he noted the light in Doc Miller’s office window. He quickly hopped down, tied the gelding up at the hitching post in front of the bank, and hurried up the exterior stairs hugging the building. That he was exhausted made no difference at all.

As York entered, the doctor was coming into the waiting area from his surgery with a cup of coffee he’d prescribed himself. His living quarters were beyond that, including a spare bedroom used for patients needing particular care.

“Caleb,” the plump little man said pleasantly, as if this were a social call. He looked rumpled but pleased with himself.

“How is she?” York asked with urgency bursting, as he hung his coat and hat on the tree by the door.

The physician plopped himself down at the chair behind his cluttered desk. “Alive. Fever broke, and never got past one hundred degrees. Good signs.”

Looming from the wall in back of Dr. Albert Miller were framed diplomas hanging askew, as if they too had a hard night. The skeleton the doc called Hippocrates seemed to be listening intently from his corner as York stood before Miller, leaning in, a hand on the desktop.

“I’ll keep her here for a few days at least,” the doctor was saying. “If you can spare Tulley, I’ll put him on bedpan duty and he can haul food in from the café. Just soup at first.”

York sighed with relief, closed his eyes for a moment, then drew up a chair and sat, still facing the physician intently. “You’d say she’s doing well, then?”

Doc nodded. Sipped his coffee. “The bullet went in and out, so I didn’t have to go digging. I guess I don’t have to tell you that shreds of cloth getting into a wound like hers can kill you deader than any bullet. But that silk camisole she was wearing was a godsend. Didn’t tear the way that cotton shirt of hers did. Much cleaner puncture.”

“Can I see her?”

Miller yawned. “Well, she’s awake, and I’ve just given her a dose of laudanum that’ll put her out before you know it. But go on in, Caleb. Do her good to see your ugly face.”

York moved quickly into the doctor’s apartment and through to the sick room off at left, a glorified cubbyhole with a dresser and a metal bed and little else. Her head on a plump feather pillow, her hair still braided up, Willa was in a white hospital-type gown, her face bloodless but beautiful, her pale Nordic features taking on a new fragility.

The lamp on a corner table was turned low, but it—and moonlight from the window to her right as she lay there—made his presence known to her. A smile traced her lips as he drew up a chair next to her bedside and sat.

“Caleb . . . Caleb . . .”

“Shush, now. You just be quiet, woman. Doc Miller says you’re going to be fine.”

Her smooth forehead frowned a little, probably as much as she could manage. “What’s to become of me, Caleb? What’s to become of us?”

“We’ll decide that. Raymond Parker’s going to help out, and I’ll work hand in hand with him. We’ll make sure that beef of yours gets rightly watered. Don’t you worry none.”

“The ranch house is standing,” she said, brow smooth again. “I can rebuild the rest.” Her eyes welled. “But so many were . . . were slaughtered. . . .”

He took a hand of hers and held it with both of his. “Don’t you think about that now. Just know this. A whole new future lies ahead for us.”

Her eyebrows managed to lift. “Here in town? Or at the . . . the Bar-O?”

He gave her a gentle smile. “At one of them. We’ll decide together.”

Her eyes widened and she tried to sit up, but the pain—laudanum or not—stopped her. Half rising, York gently settled her back into the pillow.

“Caleb,” she said. Softer. Barely audible.

He leaned in.

She said weakly, but distinct: “What about . . . about that woman? The Hammond woman?”

“Dead.”

“Dead . . . ?”

“I killed her.”

She beamed, obviously in a narcotic haze. “Oh, Caleb! That’s . . . that’s the sweetest thing you ever did for me.”

He kissed the tip of her nose.

“We aim to please,” he said.

A TIP OF THE STETSON

In following the late Mickey Spillane’s lead—established in his various film script drafts and notes about the York character and his world—I have been more concerned with the mythic West than the real one.

The first in the series, The Legend of Caleb York (2015), based on Mickey’s unproduced screenplay, clearly takes an approach in the Hollywood tradition. This appeals to me, as I grew up on John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Audie Murphy movies, as well as American television’s Western craze of the late fifties, Maverick my personal favorite.

But I hope to present the mythic West in a framework of the real one, providing authentic underpinnings to my fanciful tales, much as a noir detective novel sets melodrama against a gritty reality. So I am of course indebted to research, and while I no doubt have overlooked some sources, I should at least acknowledge the ones that were particularly helpful.

I would guess that most (if not all) of my contemporaries in the Western fiction field use the following two sources: Everyday Life in the Wild West from 1840–1900 (1999), Candy Moulton; and The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in the 1800s (1993), Marc McCutcheon. Of the numerous books on firearms in my library, I lean upon Guns of the American West (2009), Dennis Adler. Previous novels in this series all drew upon these invaluable sources.

For this novel, depicting the aftermath of the Blizzard of 1886–1887 (the central concern of the previous Caleb York