The Bloody Spur

Chapter Nine

Willa Cullen — in the same plaid shirt, jeans, and boots in which she’d found her dead father under a tree a few hours before — led her calico, Daisy, to the grooming stall in the horse barn. Daisy was good about not wandering away, but Willa tied the animal up, anyway.

The barn was cool but not cold, and she had it to herself — stable hand Lou Morgan was off exercising her papa’s buggy ponies, which didn’t get used every day. She supposed the stable smell would have put some females off, but she rather relished the unique aroma of various parts leather, hay, grain, manure, urine, mud, grass, wood, and tack polish.

She filled her mind with nothing but tending to her tri-colored pinto, white with black and brown spots, white mane, brown tail. A curry brush, moved in a circular manner, loosened up the dirt on Daisy’s coat, but the brush was too coarse for the animal’s face.

The loping jangle of spurs and the crunch of boots on hay announced the approach of unwanted company. The last thing she needed right now was sympathy or talk of what next. But she understood that wish was unrealistic, and smiled back at Whit Murphy, hoping it didn’t look forced.

“Morning, Whit,” she said. “It is still morning, isn’t it?”

The foreman, high-beamed Carlsbad hat in hand, came to a stop a respectful distance away and stood outside the stall, slumped, head hanging, his whole face, his whole body as droopy as his mustache. The work shirt, bandana, and shotgun chaps seemed to hang on him like laundry on a line.

“You needn’t trouble yourself with such work, time like this, Miss Willa. I can give Lou a holler. He’ll give that little pinto any attention she might crave.”

Willa smiled faintly as she continued brushing. “I’m not troubling myself, Whit. I’m keeping my mind off things. Keeping busy.”

He took a tentative step forward. “I just want you to know, Miss Willa, that iffen there’s any way I can help... anything a’tall I can do...”

People always said such things at times like this. But what could Whit Murphy do to help? What was there that anyone could do?

Still, she knew Whit wasn’t just another friendly acquaintance, trying to say the right thing — Whit had almost been like a son to her daddy. She and Papa couldn’t have run the ranch half as well without him after the rancher’s eyesight failed.

Nor was she unaware that the shy cowpoke was sweet on her.

“Just keep things runnin’ nice and smooth, Whit,” she told him. “The way Papa would want it.”

She used a dandy brush to remove dirt from Daisy’s coat in quick, short strokes in the direction of the hair, flicking off dirt from the calico’s coat. Daisy just stood there, basking in the attention, giving up not a whinny, just the occasional proud shake of the head.

When Whit spoke again, she was almost surprised he was still there.

He said, “Would you like me to ride into town, Miss Willa, and talk to Reverend Caldwell? Make arrangements and all?”

That almost irritated her. In what world did such things fall to a ranch foreman? But she knew he only wanted to help.

“No,” she said. “This afternoon I’ll ride in and see the reverend myself. Not looking to have a service at Missionary Baptist, just a graveside gathering.”

It would have to be soon. Undertaker Perkins did not have embalming available, like some Civil War — trained members of his trade. She shivered at the thought of her father being just so much meat that would soon spoil.

“Thank you, though, Whit. You’re kind.”

She smiled at him again and nodded in a way that tried to tell him nicely that this conversation was over. But he lingered, turning the hat in his hands like a wheel.

“Don’t you worry yourself none,” he told her. “I’ll keep the Bar-O runnin’ steady till, uh... till you get around to makin’ your mind up.”

She frowned at Daisy’s side, but any crossness was gone when she glanced back at the cowhand again. “Make it up about what, Whit?”

His head remained lowered, but his eyes gazed up at her, like those of a dog fearing a swat from its mistress. “Whether or not to sell the Santa Fe right of passage for that there branchline.”

She kept brushing. “You have an opinion?”

“Is it my place to?”

“You as much as anybody.”

His chin came off his chest. “I say stick with what your daddy wanted. You know what his wishes was. Otherwise the Santa Fe wins.”

Now she looked right at him. “It’s not a contest, is it?”

“No, ma’am, but the way I see it, it’s our way of life against theirs.”

“How so?”

“Well, like your papa said, it’d give the competition a leg up and turn little Trinidad into Sodom or Gomorrah.”

She managed not to smile. “Well, we wouldn’t want that, would be, Whit?”

“No, miss.”

He gave her a shy, respectful nod, tugged the hat on, and shuffled off, spurs jingling. Then she heard him stop, say, “Sir,” and move on. She stepped out of the stall for a look, and big Burt O’Malley was approaching, that lazy, loping way of his compromised by an expression clenched with concern.

“Uncle Burt,” she said with a nod and returned to the stall and her work.

With a body brush, Willa began applying long, even strokes to Daisy’s coat, smoothing out her hair, getting off any residue of dirt.

O’Malley was at the mouth of the stall now, arms folded, a grave expression carved into the oblong, salt-and-pepper-bearded face. “That help, child? Workin’ yourself to a frazzle like that?”

Her eyes were on her efforts. “You prefer I go cry my eyes out in my room?”

“Might,” he admitted, approaching. “Might. Bottlin’ it up won’t do you a lick of good. You don’t let sorrow out, it festers.”

Her back was to him. “I don’t see what good crying would do. If I was a son, not a daughter, would you say such things to me?”

Daisy’s coat was getting nice and shiny.

“I believe I would,” O’Malley said. “A son would cry. Behind closed doors, maybe. But grieving is natural. Not a male or female thing.”

“I’ll do it in my own way, then.”

He drew closer but didn’t crowd her. She was using a mane comb now, untangling Daisy’s tail. Such work required a gentleness, and she sometimes paused to use her fingers for untangling.

The big man said, “I overheard some of what Whit had to say.”

“Did you? Eavesdropping doesn’t become a man. More a woman’s thing, don’t you think?”

Why did she feel so angry? Why was she treating Uncle Burt like this?

But O’Malley ignored her rudeness. “You’re the Bar-O now, Willa. Your father didn’t have a son, so a daughter’ll have to do. Whit’s opinion ain’t worth spit. Mine neither. It’s all down to you, girl.”

She shifted to a dandy brush to bring further softness to Daisy’s tail, but she dropped the thing in the process. O’Malley was right there to pick it up and hand it to her, both of them on their haunches, looking right at the other.

They stood.

The irritation was out of her tone as she said, “I’m in a bad place, Uncle Burt.”

He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Of course you are, child. I ain’t in the sunshine my own self. All these years and I finally get my old partner back, and now he’s lost to me forever. Ain’t nohow easy.”

She sighed. Moved away, returning to Daisy. She kept working, and O’Malley just stood and watched. She used the brush on the animal’s mane, and the beast almost purred. Finally, she began cleaning Daisy’s hooves, standing next to her, bending, and supporting one hoof at a time. With a hoof pick, she worked out rocks and turf there, scraping away from herself, not particularly wanting any of that stuff to get flung in her face.

“You know your way around horseflesh,” O’Malley said.

“I should. I lived on this ranch all my life. Was riding before I could walk.”

“You want to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“Why it is you’re in a ‘bad place.’ I don’t mean losing your daddy. I mean the position that losin’ your daddy has put you in.”

She leaned against the side of the stall. He came over and leaned in next to her, their backs to the wood.

“I never told Papa,” she said, almost whispering, as if her late parent might overhear, “but we didn’t see eye to eye on the Santa Fe spur.”

He frowned, studying her. “You mean... you were in favor of it?”

She nodded. “No reason not to be. You can’t keep the future from your door. Times change whether you want ’em to or not.”

“No kiddin’,” the big man said with a grin and a deep chuckle. “I hardly recognized the Bar-O when that buckboard brought me out here. Trouble was, I think, once his outside vision left him, your papa’s inside vision left him, too. By which I mean his ability to see the possibilities that lay ahead.”

She looked at him curiously. “I thought you were on Daddy’s side of this, Uncle Burt. Heard you tell him myself how you agreed with him about blocking the spur.”

His grin wore embarrassment. “Would you think less of me, child, if I admitted I told him what he wanted to hear? Last thing I was after was to ride in and get on the wrong side of that beautiful, stubborn old man.”

“You wanted your friendship back.”

He nodded. “I wanted my friendship back. I’d have stood with him on any side of about any issue he wanted me to. Some of that was selfish. Your papa was my way into respectability after wastin’ so much of my life behind bars.”

She shook her head. “You didn’t have to play that game with him, Uncle Burt. He would have been glad to help, in any case. Like I’ll be glad to help.”

Something pixieish came into the white-beard-framed smile. “Well, then, why don’t we put that Cullen/O’Malley partnership back together, girl? Instead of sellin’ me one of them smaller spreads, let me sink all that money your daddy put away for me back into the Bar-O itself.”

“Uncle Burt...”

He raised a gentle hand. “Now hear me out. With George Cullen gone, don’t you think Willa Cullen could use a strong male right hand? And I don’t mean Whit Murphy, who makes a decent foreman, I’m sure, but is sure as hell no George Cullen, forgive my language.”

Almost irritated again, she asked, “But you are?”

He shook his head once, firmly. “No. Nobody could replace your daddy. But I could be right there beside you, with some helpful words and a strong arm... and besides which, these fools that can’t accept a woman like yourself runnin’ things? My presence might smooth things out a bit for ’em.”

She gave him an unblinking gaze. “I intend to run this ranch myself, Uncle Burt.”

“And if you want me to be a part of things, you still would be. I’d be your ramrod here at the ranch, and I don’t mean just on cattle drives. Anyway, I’m only offerin’ this as somethin’ you might consider. You don’t see me as part of the Bar-O, I’ll be more than happy with that little spread you and your daddy picked out for me.”

Of course, Burt O’Malley was the O in Bar-O...

“It’s kind of you, Uncle Burt. But let me think on it some.”

“Naturally.”

She sighed. “Papa dying means I can do what I want where that railroad right of passage goes.”

“That’s so.”

“But that troubles me most of all.”

“Why?”

She mulled it a few moments. Was it all right to talk of this before it became public? Well, it would be out there soon enough...

“Papa was murdered,” she said.

O’Malley lurched forward from where he’d been leaning beside her on the wooden stall frame. Turned to look directly at her. “So he wasn’t thrown.”

“He wasn’t thrown. We just saw something that we were supposed to take that way.”

She shared with O’Malley what she’d overheard when Caleb and Doc Miller, doing their detective work, had been talking over her father’s body.

“Murdered,” O’Malley said, tasting the word and not at all liking the flavor. “Why in hell? Because... because of his stand on the spur, you think?”

She sighed. “Must be. No one else had any grudge against him. But if he was killed to clear the path for that branchline, I can’t in good conscience go along with the Santa Fe’s efforts. Doesn’t matter that he and I were on opposite sides of the thing — I have to honor his wishes.”

Nodding slowly, O’Malley asked, “Did you tell anybody that you and your papa were on opposite sides of the spur?”

“No.”

He shrugged. “Then how can you think he was killed to put you in charge of the decision? That’s what you’re sayin’, isn’t it?”

“I guess maybe it is.”

“Could be whoever killed your daddy had some other motive entirely.”

“Possible. Possible.” She drew in a breath deep, let it out slow. “Which means I shouldn’t jump to a decision. I should wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Well, for one thing, wait for Caleb York to bring in whoever killed my father.”

Late morning, Caleb York found Trinidad’s modest barrio its usual mix of languid and lively, the dusty path between facing adobes filled with yapping dogs, clucking chickens, and squalling children. The smell of beans frying came through windows where las madres could be glimpsed, their men off doing servile work in town or perhaps tending a small patch of land behind their humble homes.

At the end of this tumbledown lane, the two-story Cantina de Toro Rojo was looking less grand by day, minus music and glowing windows and señoritas for sale, just a bigger adobe version of its neighbors. No horses were tied up out front; no one was coming in or out. The place might have been deserted.

York went through the arched doorless door and found the place empty but for the proprietor, Cesar, who was cleaning blood off the wall in the aftermath of last night’s gunfight, fading the bullfight mural further.

The sweaty, hooded-eyed fat man — halfhearted strands of black hair atop his round head, scraggly bandito mustache, and untucked cream-colored shirt with matching trousers — put down his bucket and tossed a sodden rag into it with a plop.

“You always welcome here, Sheriff,” Cesar said in a weary monotone at odds with his words, “but you know we don’t open till sundown.”

What Cesar said was not strictly true — men from the barrio might wander in here during daylight for a tequila or a beer. But the Red Bull was not the kind of place white men frequented before dark, at least not in Trinidad.

“Just looking for a word, Cesar.”

York crunched across the straw-covered floor and took a seat near the owner and his bucket.

“Those three gringos last night,” York said lazily, arms folded, leaning back, “the little group includin’ the one that messed up your wall... what became of them?”

Cesar thought about that. It was clear several answers to that question floated in the fat man’s head, perhaps even an honest one, but he seemed to be having trouble selecting one, like a child given permission to pick out a single piece of candy at Harris Mercantile.

To be helpful, York said, “I checked with the hotel. They aren’t staying there.”

Cesar trundled over and stood before the sheriff. Jerked a thumb skyward. “They upstairs. Three doors on the right side. Each got a girl. Even that Preacherman.”

“I don’t think he’s a real preacher, Cesar. Hear anything out of them this morning yet?”

“No, señor.”

“Where are their horses? The livery?”

Cesar shook his head. “Hitched out back.”

“Any of ’em go out for a ride this morning that you know of?”

“No, señor.”

“Pretty sure of that?”

A shoulder went up and down. “I only here since an hour ago, maybe. Maybe they go and get back before I get here. Who can say?”

Cesar did not live on the premises. He and his wife resided in a former hacienda outside town. Some of his girls lived out there, too — not daughters, his... girls.

York said, “You don’t generally let customers spend the night, do you, Cesar?”

An eloquent shrug. “If they got the dinero, sure they can.”

“The Preacherman’s party... They had the dinero?”

Cesar nodded. “They each got a room up there.” Then he frowned and shook a scolding finger. “Killing them one at a time, señor, that could take doing.”

“Who said anything about killing them?”

Cesar shrugged again, more matter-of-fact this time. “You go up to arrest them, there be killing, all right.”

“Who says I want to arrest them?”

Cesar frowned curiously. “You just asking about them? Really just asking?”

“Really just asking. They’re what people in my line of work call suspicious characters.”

The proprietor’s eyes widened. “They that, all right. If you go killing or arresting them, Sheriff, do me a favor? Do it in daylight. Killing at night? Bad for business.”

“See what I can do,” York said with a chuckle. He arose, tipped his hat, and left Cesar to his work.

Outside, the sun was making its climb, but the late morning remained brisk. York took a left as he exited the cantina and walked around the side of the building, past the exposed wooden staircase up to where soiled doves entertained their patrons. In back, where there was nothing much but a privy and scrubby land that extended into a desert distance, he found three quarter horses hitched up at the leather-glazed hitch rail, two grays and a buckskin.

None of the horses appeared to have been ridden hard of late. No smell of sweat from their coats or any sign of foam, wet or dry. No saddles. Those were probably upstairs with their owners and their hostesses. He supposed one or more of these animals might have been cooled down and brushed after a morning ride. Certainly, none of them seemed tired out.

A sudden hand settled hard on his shoulder, turned him around, away from the horse, and shoved him. After losing his balance, hitting the ground hard, York found himself looking up at Lafe Trammel, the Preacherman’s tall, skinny sidekick, who had killed a black cowboy the night before, just inside those adobe walls.

“Let’s finish what we started over at the Victory, Sheriff,” the lanky Trammel said, fists balled, shoulders hunched, his grin made even more terrible courtesy of the wide space where his two front teeth presumably once had been.

The looming saddle tramp was in his BVD tops and trousers and bare feet, no weapon at his hip. This put York in a perfect position to kick the idiot in the balls, which was what he did, the hard toe of his boot sinking deep. A howl went up that rivaled any wolf and any moon.

Back on his feet, York appraised his opponent, who was doubled over, even more bowlegged than usual, clutching himself, mouth open, eyes bulging like balloons about to burst.

“Ain’t... ain’t fair,” Trammel sputtered.

“Neither is this,” York said and whipped out his Colt. 44 and slapped Trammel across the right cheek with a downward motion, tearing the flesh and leaving a long jagged streak of glistening red behind. The blow dropped the man, who was down on his side on the dusty earth, blubbering like a baby.

Kneeling, York wiped the blood off the barrel of his. 44 on Trammel’s BVD sleeve and slipped it back into its holster. He was barely to his feet when he realized company was coming.

Moving from around the building came the Preacherman, already in his flapping black coat and hat, accompanied by the pudgy Landrum, who, like the fallen Trammel, was in BVD top and trousers and bare feet, no weapon on his hip.

But Alver Hollis, the Preacherman, surely wore one — a Colt Single Action Army .45, nickel plated, ivory gripped. Legend had it an angel was carved out of either side of those grips, but York hadn’t got a close enough look yet to check that out.

Right now the Preacherman’s hand hovered over the low-slung handle as he approached as inexorably as a mountain storm.

Perhaps five feet separated York and Hollis — the buck-toothed, piggy sidekick was hanging back another five or more.

The Preacherman, in his deep, mellow voice, asked, “What have you done to my friend, Sheriff?”

He met the man’s eyes. “He wanted a fair fight. He came to the wrong place.”

Trammel, off to York’s right now, was still down in the dust, whimpering, a pile of limbs tossed here and there.

The Preacherman said, “ ‘An angry person starts fights; a hot-tempered person commits all kinds of sin.’ Proverbs twenty-nine, twenty-two.”

“I know the one about turning the other cheek, and if your friend gets up, encourage him to do so and see what happens. You fellas sleep in?”

Pausing briefly to process that, Hollis said, “We did. We made a rather late, raucous night of it.”

York grinned. “Well, gunning a man down, like your friend here did, that’ll take it out of you. So... you weren’t out riding this morning?”

The Preacherman’s hard eyes narrowed. “No. Is there a reason why you’re asking? Is that why you’re poking around our horses?”

“A man was murdered out on the Bar-O range.”

“How tragic. ‘No murderer has eternal life abiding in him. John three, fifteen.’ ”

York turned his grin sideways. “Well, I guess you’d know. This particular murder? Wasn’t really your style.”

“That so?”

“This was a faked accident. A man supposedly throwed off his horse. You like to take care of your victims in public. Like them to go for their guns first, with plenty of eyes on ’em.”

“I have no victims, Sheriff.” The shoulders beneath the black suit coat lifted and lowered. “I live in a dangerous world, however, as do you. And at times I must defend myself.”

York nodded. “You see, that’s why I know you won’t draw on me right now. No one to see it but your two gutter ride-alongs. And their kind of testimony might not stand up when the circuit judge comes around.”

The Preacherman’s smile seemed beneficent. “Why would I want to shoot you, Sheriff? My friend Trammel here... Get up! Get on your feet...! He picked a fight, and he lost. ‘For each will have to bear his own load.’ Galatians six-five.”

“You didn’t ask who was killed.”

“I don’t know many folks around these parts. But do pass along my sympathies to the family of the departed. Afraid I don’t read over the dead no more. They’ll need someone local.”

With a nod, the Preacherman gathered his flock, and they departed, no doubt back to the loft where the ladies of the choir awaited them.