Last Stage to Hell Junction

Chapter Two

That Caleb York had come to see the stage off pleased Willa Cullen no end.

The twenty-three-year-old young woman sported a brand-new, catalogue-ordered, dark-blue dress with a gathered waist and white lace trim at the neckline and elbow-length sleeves — with a matching jacket to take the edge off a chilly February morning.

Yellow hair braided up in back, she was a tallish Viking of a girl with an hourglass figure, who — despite delicately pretty features and long-lashed, cornflower-blue eyes — looked just about perfect for childbearing or helping with crops. But she was not married and her ranch — and it was her ranch now, since her father’s death a month ago — was strictly cattle. That spread, the Bar-O, was the biggest in the surrounding area.

She had watched as heavy-set, bristle-bearded Gus Gullett, the shotgun guard, had loaded her luggage up into the boot at the rear of the stage. Then when she turned back toward the hotel, where out front the stage was waiting for its passengers, she’d drawn in an unbidden breath upon seeing the sheriff on the boardwalk above. Though it was only a handful of steps up from the street, he fairly loomed.

She felt irritated at herself for that giddy girlish reaction.

Yet could any woman blame her? Caleb York stood tall, broad-shouldered but lean, his jaw near jutting, his temples touched with gray but his hair, including that close-trimmed beard he’d taken to wearing of late, was otherwise a rich reddish brown. His face was a contradictory thing, sharp bones home to pleasant, even easygoing features, his eyes as light blue as denim that had seen too many washdays.

Caleb’s general appearance was contradictory as well. That low-slung revolver, tied down on his thigh, said gunfighter; but his black attire — hat and coat and cotton pants and boots — said professional man. Going on a year ago, when Caleb York rode into town a nameless stranger, many had taken him for a dude. Men beaten senseless and others who fell dead under his gunfire learned otherwise.

Events had stranded Caleb, who’d been on his way to San Diego and a job with Pinkerton’s, and during his unintended stay, Willa and Caleb had become something of a... couple. She’d been well aware he had taken on the sheriff’s job “only temporary” — the position had been vacated when its previous corrupt occupant had become one of those men who fell under Caleb’s gunfire. Yet the rancher’s daughter felt they’d grown close enough for him to change his mind and stay around.

Before long, though, she and Caleb broke apart like cheap china when he insisted he was heading for that San Diego job after his fill-in sheriffing was done.

Only now Caleb appeared to be settling into that post, the Trinidad city fathers having lavished him with money and perquisites enough to convince him to stay on. But Willa and this man she still loved — though she would not admit that to anyone, herself included — had no real reason not to fit the broken pieces of their relationship back together.

Other than her pride.

And maybe his.

Her immediate thought upon seeing him this morning was that he had come to see her off. She was only going to nearby Las Vegas, New Mexico, to catch the train to Denver; it wasn’t like she was leaving for good — a few weeks at the most. But him saying good-bye would mean something.

Then from out of the hotel, carrying a carpetbag, emerged Raymond L. Parker. The tall, white-haired, white-mustached businessman, about fifty, looked typically distinguished in his double-breasted, gray-trimmed-black Newmarket coat, lighter gray waistcoat, and darker gray trousers. That’s what he’d worn to Willa’s father’s funeral, she recalled, though with a white top hat and not today’s western touch of an uncreased, broad-brimmed gray Stetson.

Raymond Parker had been partner to George Cullen, her late father, in establishing the Bar-O. But Parker had cashed out after a time, looking for big-city challenges that he’d handily met. Mr. Parker had established businesses all across the Southwest — Kansas City, Omaha, Denver — owning restaurants, hotels, and even several banks, including the one here in Trinidad, where lately he’d been spending a good deal of time, during which he and Caleb had become good friends.

And that seemed to be who Caleb had come to see off. They were smiling and chatting.

Willa heard the approach of heavy footsteps and turned to witness a slender yet full-bosomed woman of perhaps twenty-five making her way toward the stage. Those heavy footfalls were not this young woman’s, of course — they belonged to Deputy Tulley, who was making his bandy-legged way along sand-covered Main Street, hauling two carpetbags.

He was following after the lovely, dark-haired Rita Filley, proprietress of the Victory Saloon. She was attired in what struck Willa as just about what a saloon-owning female would consider appropriate travel wear — a yellow-gold dress with a floral brocade bodice, puffed sleeves, fitted waist, crinkled satin underskirt, ruffled overskirt, with touches of black fringe, silk flowers, and feathers.

Willa didn’t know whether to be horrified, amused, or pitying. But annoyed said it best, Willa knowing this creature would be accompanying her on the Las Vegas run. In Miss Cullen’s defense, it must be said that she was not generally a snob. But Willa had heard the rumors that Caleb York occasionally called on Miss Filley in her upstairs suite of rooms.

In her more generous moments, Willa might admit that she was pleased the new owner of the Victory (Rita Filley had inherited it from her late sister, Lola, about whom similar rumors concerning Caleb York’s upstairs visits were bandied in town) had shut down the brothel aspect of the saloon. Now the girls who worked there were strictly available for dances and main-floor company, for the cost of a drink or two. What had been the tiny bordello bedrooms had been opened up into lavish living quarters for the mistress (so to speak) on the place’s half an upper floor.

Hearing spurs and footsteps coming down the stairs from the boardwalk, Willa turned and was pleased to see Caleb approaching. She showed no reaction, not wanting to appear forward. He tipped his hat — or rather touched his hat brim — and moved past her to help his deputy with the saloon owner’s bags.

Feeling a red flush come to her cheeks, Willa turned away, not wanting Caleb to see her response. She heard Caleb and Rita talking, though not making any of it out, and then Caleb was just behind Willa, passing the Filley woman’s bags up to Gus, the plump guard’s face showing strain under his floppy, shapeless hat.

“Pleasant journey, Miss Filley,” Caleb said, and Willa heard him opening the door for her. He was probably helping her up and in, too, but Willa didn’t turn to give him the satisfaction of her noticing.

Parker was coming down those hotel stairs. He gave Willa a big smile, tipped his hat — really tipped it — and said, “Well, what a pleasure it will be, traveling with two such lovely ladies.”

Willa managed a smile as he slipped past her, to hand up his own bag to Gus. Then she realized Caleb was standing beside her. He had a funny little smile going. What the dickens did he have to smile about?

He touched his hat brim again, nodding.

“Ma’am,” he said to her.

Then he joined Tulley, and they headed to the sheriff’s office.

Ma’am!

What kind of insulting nonsense was that?

Parker was waiting for her. His interest in her was strictly fatherly, and with her real father gone, that was comforting. He helped her up into the stage next to Rita Filley. Then he got up and in himself, sitting in the middle of the bench-like, leather-covered seat opposite. He took off his hat and set it next to him.

“We’ll ride in comfort today,” he said.

“These Concord coaches,” the Filley woman said, “are much smoother than the Overlands.”

“They are,” Parker agreed, “but I was referring to the roominess this ride will provide. Even this smaller coach can accommodate six passengers, and there will be only four of us, I understand.”

A gravelly voice from the window on the hotel side said, “Only three.”

It was Norval Bratcher talking, the stagecoach driver. Parker looked out at the whip, who was checking his pocket watch.

Bratcher was a man of average height and build in a gray flat-brim hat that had once been white, and a gray handlebar mustache that had once been brown. He wore an ancient leather jacket over a dingy red-and-black-plaid shirt; his denims were faded into no color at all.

“Just the three of us?” Parker asked the driver.

“Jest you three. Fourth ticket belongs to that feller that the sheriff shot the toes off of last night. Him and his six or seven toes remainin’ are languishin’ in a cell at the jail. So stretch out and relax, folks. You’re the whole shebang.”

Bratcher smiled brownly and spit tobacco.

This crudity barely registered on Willa, who had been around cowboys and their ilk as far back as her memory went. And Rita Filley likely knew even more about men and their disgusting ways.

Willa did not recall ever having spoken to the Filley woman, though she’d seen her on occasion. The woman and some of her girls had even come to Willa’s papa’s funeral, which she thought was a respectful thing for them to do, if something of an embarrassment. So when Rita turned to her and nodded, well, Willa nodded right back. It was the Christian thing.

“Miss Filley,” Parker said, his smile big but not so big as to seem flirtatious, “where is it you’re off to? Las Vegas itself or points north?”

“Denver,” she said. Her voice was femininely high-pitched with something of an affected purr, at least to Willa’s ears. “A shopping expedition. I need to pick up some things for myself, and my girls.”

“Denver is where we are headed, as well,” Parker said, with a nod toward Willa.

The big brown eyes in the somewhat dark-complected oval face got even bigger, as they swung toward Willa. “Oh, are you and Miss Cullen traveling together?”

“Not exactly,” Parker said quickly, apparently realizing he might have given the wrong impression. “The branch line that will be going in this spring, connecting Trinidad and Las Vegas...? I’m sure you’re aware that Miss Cullen is negotiating with the Sante Fe Railroad to provide the necessary passage through the Bar-O for that spur.”

“Yes,” the Filley woman said, nodding. Her eyes again sought Willa. “Your father was against it, I understand. He was a lovely man, they say, one of the founders of the town. But you seem forward-looking enough to see the future can’t be avoided.”

Willa smiled a little. “Mr. Parker is funding the train station that will be built in Trinidad.”

“On land that your father left to Caleb York.”

Willa swallowed. “That’s right.”

“The station will be named after your father, I hear.”

“That’s correct.”

The saloon woman’s head tilted and she frowned just a touch. “I wonder if he would appreciate that, as strongly opposed as he was to the railroad coming in.”

Parker, perhaps sensing an undercurrent of tension between the women, said, “I think George would in time have come around. I believe Willa would have made him see the sense of it. And I would have been at her side, helping convince him.”

The Filley woman smiled and said, “I’m sure you’re right. Of course, we’ll never know.”

Willa thought that deserved a sharp reply, but before she could summon one, Bratcher’s “Yahhh! Yahhh!” came from above, announcing their departure, mingled with the jangle of reins and the building clop of the horses’ hooves, the wooden wheels turning and cut by the occasional whinny. Citizens on the boardwalk, especially children, waved and hollered. A stagecoach leaving town, even after all these years, was still something to see — including a smaller coach like this one, with just four horses.

The Filley woman again addressed Parker. “Are you a lawyer as well as a businessman, sir?”

“Why, no. Why would you think that?”

She shrugged. “Sounds like you’re representing Miss Cullen in the Santa Fe matter.”

They were outside town now, stirring dust on the narrow road through nothing much. The stagecoach’s continuous motion had them swaying already, with hanging leather straps to provide support if need be.

“I’m providing her with an attorney,” Parker said, just a bit stiffly, “with whom I regularly do business. And as her father’s onetime partner, I’m here to advise and help in any way I can. It’s a privilege of age.”

The saloon woman smiled. “You don’t look particularly aged to me, Mr. Parker. Are you a married man?”

The question surprised him. “I was. I’m a widower.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. Is it a recent one?”

“No. Over ten years past.”

“And you’ve never re-married?”

“I never found the right... one.”

“Well, you know what they say.”

Willa asked, “What do they say, Miss Filley?”

Her smile was pursed, as if she were about to blow a kiss. “It’s never too late.”

The road out of Trinidad was rutted and narrow through a flat expanse broken at left by the burnt-red buttes along the horizon, their scarred black cliffs the work of rain and wind. Off to the right were the hills that grew into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and their canyons, one of which fed the Purgatory River, so vital to Trinidad.

An awkward silence had followed the Filley woman’s last remark, and finally Parker broke it, saying, “We’re riding into history, you know.”

Both women looked at him curiously.

He said, “Rides like this will be confined to memory, before long. When the railroad comes in, there’ll be no need for a stage line between Las Vegas and Trinidad. Little or no need in the Southwest for any stages at all. Change is of course inevitable, but I feel somewhat sad about it.”

Willa asked, “Why is that, Mr. Parker?”

“Please call me Raymond. Both of you ladies. The West is changing. Trinidad is changing. They have telephones in Tombstone, you know.”

The Filley woman nodded. “I’ve heard that.”

“Don’t take me wrong, Miss Cullen, Miss Filley.”

Neither took the opportunity to suggest he use their first names.

“I approve of change,” he said. “I seek it out. But not without an awareness that something has been lost. That as we become more civilized, with a new century ahead, a way of life will soon fade from view.”

The Filley woman, frowning in thought, asked, “Is that a bad thing?”

“Not bad or good. Just reality.”

The coach began to come to a jerky stop. The three passengers, surprised and somewhat alarmed, were jostled fairly hard by it.

Parker leaned out his window, then said to the women, “There’s a young man in the road, waving us down. Appears to be in trouble...”

Willa leaned out her window. Just up ahead, off to the right, was Boot Hill, the name reflecting tradition and not landscape, as it was as flat as the rest of the dusty ground. The difference was a massive mesquite tree that made for shade and provided color enough to make a suitable home for the nest of wooden crosses and the occasional tombstone.

Right now the cemetery was fairly obscured by the dust the stopping stage had stirred.

Up top, Norval Bratcher was calling out, “Ye need a ride, son?”

“Be obliged,” the young man said. “Iffen you can’t take me back to Trinidad, might be I could tag along to the Brentwood crossroads.”

Willa, leaning out, could see the slender male form in his ready-made gray shirt with arm garters and tight-waisted, loose-legged California pants of buckskin-color wool. He was clean-shaven and generally clean-looking with a big smile and friendly eyes, his blond hair short. He wore no gun belt as he moved easily, steadily toward the stage.

“Son,” Bratcher’s voice came, “we can’t rightly head back.”

The Filley woman said to Parker, “It’s only half a mile. Surely we can—”

“Don’t mean to trouble you none,” the young man said, very near the coach now. He gestured back behind him. “My horse busted a leg and I had to put her out of her misery. Maybe they’ll sell me a new ride at the relay station.”

“Worth a try,” Bratcher said. “Gus, help him up.”

Parker leaned out and said, “The boy can ride with us.”

“Sorry, Mr. Parker,” Bratcher called down. “Company policy. He comes up top.”

The stage swayed a bit as the new passenger was hauled up onto the seat. As that was happening, a trio of horsemen rode out from behind Boot Hill’s mesquite and closed the short distance between the cemetery and the stopped coach, raising a small dust cloud. In seconds, they were three abreast, stretched out in front of the Concord, raising guns that were already drawn.

“The Hargrave bunch,” Parker whispered harshly.

Willa had heard of them. Everyone in this part of the West had — led by the notorious Blaine Hargrave, they had robbed trains, banks, and, yes, stages.

“I saw him play Hamlet,” Willa breathed, her heart beating fast.

Hargrave was an actor who’d come west from New York, traveling with his own company in the manner of Edwin Booth and Lotta Crabtree. But after he murdered a heckler in Virginia City, leaving without a curtain call, the next show he put on was a stagecoach robbery.

Was this an encore?

She looked out at the three men, recognizing Hargrave, all in black like Caleb — coat, vest, pants, boots, only his black hat was a flat-crown plantation number, and his shirt was white and ruffled, open at the neck to reveal a nest of hairy black, his well-carved, handsome face sporting a black mustache suiting his current role as villain, not hero.

Hargrave was center stage, of course. On his either side were the spear carriers — well, revolver carriers in this instance: a blue-army-shirt-clad man of thirty-some who resembled the boy who’d flagged them down (an older brother?) and a burly, bearded character in a plaid jacket who might have been a miner, though one who’d traded in his pickax for a revolver.

Parker drew back in, away from the window. He reached under his suitcoat and from somewhere withdrew a small pearl-handled, silver-hued revolver.

The Filley woman whispered, “You really think that little bordello gun will do the trick?”

Parker’s voice was harsh but soft. “I have five shots and there’s only four of them, assuming that boy is their Judas goat. Stay here and stay down.”

Parker bolted from the coach and started firing.

Willa heard but could not see what happened, which was Parker’s gunshot hitting the miner, who fell from his horse, while the boy’s apparent brother was aiming at Parker only to have Hargrave push his arm down and spit, “Would you slay our fortune?”

On saying this, Hargrave spurred his horse and charged Parker, who fired several more times but hit nothing or no one, busy backing up, a man on horseback bearing down on him; it knocked him over, the gun flying.

This of course Willa could not see; she could only sense the stage-managed chaos all around her. She, like Rita Filley, was crouched on the floor — neither one cowering, just following Parker’s directions.

Nor could she see the action atop the stage, with old Gus Gullett shoving that treacherous boy from his perch, prompting both Gus and Bratcher to grab up their shotguns. But before they could fire, Hargrave put a bullet in the stage driver’s brains, a share of which departed Bratcher’s head and filled the crown of his hat, which tumbled off his head and lay atop some luggage like a terrible bowl of soup.

At the same time, the boy, down on the rutted road now, pulled a revolver from under his shirt behind him and drilled three bullets into old Gus Gullett, two in his torso and one that traveled through his open mouth, shattering teeth the old boy couldn’t spare on its way up and in and through his brain. Willa heard all that and later saw the results, and also heard the rattle-inducing rearing and the whinnying whining of the horses reacting to the shots.

The boy was settling the horses.

“Well done, lad,” Hargrave said. He pulled his black steed to a quick stop, then stepped down as easily as a man who’d reached the bottom of a stairway.

This Willa did see, because with the shooting apparently over, she had no desire to add confusion and ignorance to her already sorry state, and was again at the window.

Parker, on the ground, appeared unconscious, his hair, his clothes, askew, his limbs as well. Hargrave, a graceful, elegant scoundrel, knelt over the businessman and looked him over.

“He sleeps, perchance to dream... Reese, see how friend Bemis is doing. He’s not yet among the dead, but if he doesn’t stop that caterwauling, I might make him so.”

The miner indeed was whimpering and occasionally yelling in pain, somewhere out of Willa’s sight.

The outlaw actor, still bent over the businessman, searched his victim. He checked the man’s pockets, examined a wallet, removed the folding cash from it, and tucked it away somewhere. Then he removed a gold watch from a chain on Parker’s vest. He opened the timepiece. Willa could see from her window that the inside lid of the watch was engraved.

“This will do nicely,” Hargrave said.

The outlaw actor got to his feet and whistled loudly — it was a shrill thing that cut the morning like a knife through soft butter. Then he called out, in his deeply resonant voice: “Ned!”

From Boot Hill, behind the mesquite, came another individual on horseback, leading a horse. He was in no hurry, just clip-clopping toward them. The new rider stopped his horse beside Hargrave, who handed the pocket watch up to his cohort.

“That will be all you need, friend Clutter,” Hargrave said.

“Should do the trick all right,” Ned Clutter said, a small, unremarkable-looking man in a homemade dark flannel shirt and duck trousers and a derby. He studied the watch with its open lid, which he then snapped shut, and pocketed the piece.

Clutter looked around, seeing what Willa couldn’t from her vantage point. “Got right ugly, didn’t it?”

“Are you surprised?” Hargrave asked. “Did you imagine that was fireworks you heard?”

“No. I just didn’t think there’d be any killing.”

“It’s that no-good blackguard Crawley’s fault. He wasn’t on the coach.”

“Why?”

“Not a clue. Had he been, he would have handled those passengers, including the illustrious Mr. Parker, who as it transpired was carrying a hideaway gun. One of those little spur-trigger affairs, probably just a twenty-two.”

“Seems like it put a hole enough in Bemis to get his attention.”

The miner was still whimpering, interspersed with the occasional holler.

“If he doesn’t quiet down,” Hargrave said, “I’ll get his attention all right. Now, get going. As the natives say, skedaddle!”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Hargrave.”

And the rider rode off, leaving the second horse behind, which the boy they’d “rescued” was climbing up on.

Meanwhile Parker was coming around, moaning, moving his head slowly. Hargrave got the dazed man to his feet, then walked him the few paces back to the coach and opened the door.

“Woman,” Hargrave addressed Willa. “Help him. He took rather a bad fall.”

Willa guided Parker back inside the coach and settled him where he’d been seated before.

“Thank you, child,” Hargrave said, closing the door, with a smile as handsome as the face it was set in — devilish handsome, damn him.

“I saw you,” Willa said from her window.

He seemed amused as he looked up at her, leaning a forearm against the coach. “What did you see, child?”

“Your Hamlet — in Denver. Three years ago, I think.”

“Did you like my performance?”

“Then or today?” she asked.

He laughed uproariously. She couldn’t tell if it was real or not. If he was acting, it was too much. If he wasn’t, he was crazier than that Dane he played.

The Filley woman squeezed in nearer Willa to look out the window at the highwayman.

The saloon woman snapped, “Why are you doing this? There’s no Wells Fargo strongbox on this stage. There’s nothing of value, unless you like to dress up in women’s clothing!”

“Back in the Bard’s day, I might have. But not now.”

Willa asked, “Are the driver and his guard all right?”

“No. They were foolish, and now have breathed their last.”

The two women drew back from the window.

Hargrave peeked in. “As for what we’re doing, we are indeed robbing the stage. But the item of value onboard is that disheveled character seated across from you — Raymond L. Parker.”

Parker, looking like an unmade bed, had said nothing since he’d been hauled back onto the stage. He was awake but still dazed.

The saloon woman demanded, “And what of us?”

“You continue breathing at my sufferance. And with my forbearance. It remains to see if you will annoy or amuse me. As Will Shakespeare says, ‘The quality of mercy is not strained’ — nor is my patience, should you strain that.”

He swept off his hat and bowed to them, an arch display of theatrics that did not amuse Willa.

“Ladies,” he said, tugging his hat back on.

Then he walked toward the front of the coach. “Reese! Get those carcasses down and dump them on the roadside. And clean that seat up, else you’ll get gore all over yourself.”

“Them women — they’re witnesses, Blaine.”

Hearing this, Rita clutched Willa’s arm, and Willa grasped the hand at her sleeve.

Hargrave was saying, “You’d leave two dead females on the road, you blinking idiot, to bring out all the law in the Southwest? Now get about your business. Randy!”

“Yessir?”

“Tie your horses in the back and get in. Mind our guests.”

The boy did that, then scrambled back into the coach and settled next to the unconscious Parker. He had a deadly revolver in his hand and a stupid grin on his face.

Then the ride got even rougher, as the stagecoach was driven off the road toward the mountains and canyons of the Sangre de Cristo, dust boiling in its wake.