The Big Showdown

Chapter Fourteen

Caleb York slept well, considering.

Not that the pending showdown would have hampered his ability to get some rest, but throughout the late evening, there had been the pounding of nails as boards were hammered over store windows, in anticipation of flying bullets.

This practice harked back to the days of Sheriff Harry Gauge’s reign, when cowboys were allowed to tear up the town however they pleased, as long as they left their money at the Victory, which Gauge co-owned. The fearful preparation, all up and down Main Street, had lasted well past nine P.M.

After that, York slept, and slept soundly.

He’d had the pueblo hut to himself — three small rooms with a cooking area, some handmade furnishings, a couple of cots, and a trio of pallets, for the Gomez family who lived here. They had generously given their living quarters over to him, but even in the barrio, word of what was coming had got around. Where the Papa and Mama and three kiddies had spent the night was anybody’s guess.

Outside the hole in the wall that was a window, Trinidad had not yet woken up. York, who’d slept in his clothes with his holstered gun on a stubby chair nearby, stood and stretched and smoothed his black shirt and pants. He got into his boots and vest and slung on the .44 last, tying it down.

He usually woke around six and today seemed no exception. The eastern horizon would be blushing with rising sun soon if not already, and in half an hour, dawn would be here and, any time after that, so would the Rhomers.

The morning was cold, the wind stirring the dust in the barrio’s single hard-mud street. York used the nearest outhouse, moving through wandering chickens to get to and from; a few dogs were stirring, too. Some cooking smells drifted, stovepipe chimneys promising coffee and chorizo and eggs; the “mamacitas” were up, but the “pa-pacitos” likely still snoozed. Such a peaceful time of day in so peaceful a part of Trinidad.

Yet even here something was in the air besides cooking. Something tense. Eyes were on him. Women were murmuring. Even the animals sensed the stranger among them, and the danger he brought.

York crossed in the dark to the jailhouse, unlocked the front door and went inside. In the first cell, a slumbering Tulley was on the cot on his side, knees pulled up, looking like an ancient fetus. His snoring was gentle, compared to previously. The scattergun lay on the cell floor near him.

York picked the scattergun up, and Tulley didn’t stir. It occurred to the sheriff that his deputy did not have the reflexes of a coiled cougar. He kicked the side of the cot, gently, shaking the chains that held it to the wall, and shaking Tulley, too. The old boy’s eyes popped open and he jerked himself into a sitting position.

“Morning,” York said.

Tulley snatched the scattergun from York’s arms. “Is they here?”

“No. Sun won’t be up for another fifteen, twenty minutes. Go heat up what’s left of yesterday’s coffee.”

“It’ll be strong enough to tear the bark offen a pine tree.”

“Good.”

Tulley nodded, tasted his mouth, and creaked to his feet. York let him by, then exited the cell and walked to the end of the cell block, where Rita in blouse and jeans was sitting on her cot, bare feet on the floor, rubbing a hand on her face.

“Sorry if we woke you,” he said.

“If there’s coffee,” she said, “I’ll take it.”

“There will be, of a sort. And Tulley will walk you to the privy, if need be.”

“Thanks.”

A good distance separated them — him at the bars, her still seated on the cot against the far wall.

“Listen,” he said, “you’re gonna be alone here, real soon. I’m takin’ a position elsewhere and so is my deputy. You keep that derringer handy.”

She gestured vaguely. “Won’t all the fun be going on out on the street?”

“I don’t know where it’ll be going on. But somebody might take advantage of the commotion to come in here and deal with you.”

“ ‘Deal’ with me how? Deal with me why?”

“Maybe you’d like to tell me, Rita. Then I could unlock that cell and you’d have more options.”

She shook her head. “I have nothing more to say.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Then she got quickly up and came over to the bars. She gripped a bar with one hand, reached the other hand out to touch his face. He hadn’t shaved.

“I do have something else to say,” she said. “Try not to get yourself killed.”

“See what I can do.”

She shook her head. “You must be crazy, facing down five men.”

He grinned at her. “Who said anything about facing them?”

She didn’t know what to make of that.

Tulley brought her a tin cup of coffee. She tasted it, then gulped the sip, and said, “Well. That’s an eye-opener.”

“Thank ye, ma’am. But it was a mite better yesterday.”

York took Tulley out into the office while their guest drank her coffee.

“You walk her to the privy,” York said, “then take your post at the livery.”

Tulley gave him a one-eye-open frown. “You seem shore they’s comin’ in that way.”

“I’m not sure of anything, Tulley. But that’s where the road from Las Vegas empties, and it’ll put the sun at their backs.”

Tulley made a twirly gesture with a forefinger. “They could fool ye and circle ’round and come in from the west end of Main.”

“They could, but then I’d have the sun to my back. They may know enough to not want that.”

“Iffen you say so.”

“Tulley, the Rhomers don’t know that I’m expectin’ them. I figure them to come at me head on.”

“If I was them,” Tulley said, squinting shrewdly, “I’d spread my men around town, in the streets and alleys feedin’ Main, a man or two in a winder prob’ly, and draw you out and cut you down.”

“That’s a good plan. But they aren’t as smart as you, Tulley.”

“They ain’t?”

“No. They have guns but lack brains. Anyway, I’m counting on that. That and their desire for revenge.”

“They’s gettin’ paid, remember.”

“I haven’t forgotten that. That’s the one reason we could get surprised this morning — if they view me as a payday and not somebody they want to kill nice and slow.”

York left Tulley to tend to their guest briefly before getting himself back to the livery, and his window onto Main.

As the sheriff walked toward the barrio, the lower third of the eastern sky glowed red-orange and bright yellow as if a distant fire was encroaching upon Trinidad.

In the barrio, the chickens and stray dogs still ruled, and the smoky cooking smells had heightened. That made his belly rumble, but he ignored its demands — you don’t go into a gunfight on a full stomach. You might embarrass yourself puking at some point.

He positioned himself at the pueblo window.

Within minutes, the sun was spreading across the sky and illuminating a Main Street that might have belonged to a ghost town — not a soul in sight, no sign of waking businesses, only boarded-up windows and a street whose layer of river-sand was riffling in a too-cool breeze. No, not breeze.

Wind.

The kind that promises a storm.

And just about when he’d expected the Rhomers to ride in, black clouds rolled across the sky, churning, roiling, blotting out the sunrise, turning early morning into near midnight. Crackles of veiny lightning momentarily illuminated the sculpted, shifting forms of a burgeoning black thunderhead, billowing like smoke from some invisible conflagration.

Distant thunder shook the ceiling of the sky, and five men on horseback came riding in, harder than need be. They turned that corner past the livery, horses leaning; then their redheaded riders pulled back sharp on their reins and they assembled in front of the jail, one man on horseback moving out in front of the others.

These horses, York was pleased to see, were not the black mustangs he feared might show up under the Rhomer backsides — that type of well-trained steed of which three dead bank robbers had availed themselves. These were solid horses, all right, but as mixed a bunch as the redheaded brothers were similar. Two quarter horses, two paints, an Appaloosa.

It took the horses a while to settle, and the men on them seemed worked up, too. Grinning yellow teeth in scruffy red-bearded faces, butts moving up and down on saddles.

They weren’t interchangeable, though, these Rhomers. The one out front — positioning himself as the leader, as the men on horseback faced the adobe jailhouse — was older, and looked a lot like the late Vint Rhomer.

He’d likely be Lem.

One brother was skinny and tall, another was heavy and short, the other two medium-size, but of those two, one was obviously the youngest, just a kid in his early twenties, his beard barely filled in. All were dressed in Levi’s and shirts with sleeve garters and vests, of various colors — maybe this family shopped together. Only a variety of hats set them apart.

One thing they had in common: .45 Colts in tied-down holsters, kept in place by snap straps. They must have bought their guns together, too. They had rifles in scabbards, as well, riding with them.

The horses were settled. Each brother unsnapped his holster.

Quietly, Lem — York barely made it out, listening at his pueblo window — said to his brothers, “Second he shows, let rip.”

The sky grumbled and the horses shuffled a little.

When the animals had settled again, Lem called out, “Caleb York! Lem Rhomer. You killed my brother Vint. I mean to see you die for it.”

York wondered how many nights under the stars Lem Rhomer had spent, staring into the sky, composing those words.

Lem wasn’t through: “Come out and face me like a man, and we’ll have it out. My brothers been told, if the fight is fair, they is to ride off. Caleb York! You hear me?”

The sky alone answered with a faint, murmuring rumble. The horses danced a little. Settled again.

“York, come out here and meet me in the street. They say you’re fast! Well so am I. Let’s see who’s the better man!”

Tulley burst out the barnlike doors of the livery and fired both barrels of the scattergun into the sky. The thunder of it, here on the ground before God could have his say, spooked the horses bad. Every one of the animals got up on its hind legs and shrieked in terror and then bucked and circled and danced and kicked, and one by one, each redheaded Rhomer got tossed from his saddle onto the sandy street.

York came out of the pueblo hut as the two closest to him were trying to scramble to their feet, guns in hand but wholly flummoxed.

Somebody yelled, “He’s over there!”

The two — the medium-sized pair, one of whom was the youngest brother — wheeled toward York, but their guns weren’t even raised when a bullet blew through the eye of the older of the pair, and a second slug cracked the younger one’s head like an eggshell. They stood momentarily, staring with three blank eyes, then flopped back onto the street and leaked blood and brains.

Tulley scurried back inside the livery, while the other three Rhomers, Lem included, realized they’d been ambushed, and been abandoned by their spooked horses, who had gone off this way and that, and the remaining three brothers ran down deserted Main Street, looking for cover.

Like a delayed echo of Tulley’s scattergun blasts, the sky ruptured with thunder and rain sheeted down. York ran to the boardwalk opposite the jail and, with his back to the building facades, moved down slow. The rain came almost straight down, making a translucent curtain. York barely made out the heavyset Rhomer cut around the corner of First Street, down to the right, and the skinny one do the same, on the other side of the street.

Lem Rhomer, who York guessed was the most dangerous of this bunch, he’d lost track of. That probably meant the man had ducked into one of the few buildings whose doors weren’t locked — that would be the hotel or the Victory and maybe the café.

First things first.

The rain drummed incessantly on the roof over the boardwalk as York moved cautiously down. Whip cracks of lightning momentarily lit up the night this morning had become, but no Rhomers were in sight. Skinny was around one corner, Fatty the other, the one York was inching toward. At some point he might become a good target for the former, although either man, or both, might not be waiting — they may have splashed through back alleys to either flee or find a better position.

At least he knew neither man was tucked into a recession of the buildings he was edging past — although, come to think of it, Lem could be. At each one, York peeked around, ready to blast, finding nothing but closed doors. As the angry sky roared and the rain pelted the boardwalk awning, he slid along and, finally, made it to the corner.

Peeking around, he saw nothing but a street between buildings that was turning into a soup of sand and mud, as Main Street’s businesses trailed off into residences.

He stepped off the boardwalk onto ground already gone spongy and the rain pummeled and drenched him, gathering in his curl-brimmed hat and overflowing, as he moved toward the rear alley. Again, recessions of doorways presented danger, and he took care with the two doors between him and the alley.

When at last he rounded the corner into the alley — which bordered fenced-off residence yards at left — he saw nothing, though at right a rear exterior stairway to living quarters above a store had a landing that presented a platform for a shooter. But in the dense downpour, York couldn’t see anybody up there.

He decided to go up and make sure.

With the .44 in his right hand, York couldn’t make use of the wooden railing, so his left hand supported him against the side of the clapboard building. The rain was pounding into his face, but his hat brim was protecting his eyes somewhat, as he went up one step — one slow step — at a time.

He was halfway up when a roar came not from the sky but from a small bear of a man, a redheaded bearded bear, who had been prone on that landing and now lumbered to his feet and pointed down with his .45, though the dripping monstrosity was just a blur before York’s rain-streaked eyes.

York’s two .44 slugs made their own thunder, punching the fat Rhomer in the chest, shaking him, rocking him, making him stumble backward and he went over the far side of the landing, taking some crunching wood with him. He must already have been dead, because he didn’t scream on the trip down, though when he landed on the muddy-topped ground, he hit hard enough to send plenty of moisture momentarily back into the sky, the whump of it competing with a halfhearted growl of thunder.

York went down the steps much quicker than he’d come up, and he slogged toward the street, knowing he had to risk crossing Main to seek the skinny brother. He would stay low and he would move as quickly as this molasses underfoot would allow. But he had barely begun the journey when he realized someone was running at him, shooting.

The skinny Rhomer!

45 slugs flying overhead, York flopped to the ground and was aiming up at the screaming, approaching scarecrow when a boom came that wasn’t from the sky. The skinny guy suddenly was a teetering headless thing with a jagged neck geysering red and getting it spewed right back.

Grinning, a thoroughly sopped Tulley came into view, his scattergun barrels smoking despite the rain.

The skinny brother wobbled, then fell headfirst onto the ground. Well, not exactly headfirst...

Tulley scurried over and helped York up.

“That stopped him,” Tulley said.

“Seemed to,” York said.

Pieces of what had once ridden the skinny one’s shoulders were scattered in the rain-swept street, looking like nothing remotely human, except for a staring eyeball, floating in a puddle.

“That leaves one,” Tulley said, over the downpour. “That Lem feller.”

“See where he went?”

The deputy pointed. “Down the block from the Victory. Think he ducked in that there doorway. Barbershop.”

They moved to the edge of the building. Behind them was the dead fat Rhomer, on his back, his mouth open and overflowing with rain. In front of them, in the street, the headless skinny Rhomer lay on his belly.

As if a switch had been thrown, the rain slowed and then stopped. Dark clouds still filled the sky, but they were moving fast, racing, a stampede headed elsewhere.

Within a minute, the only raindrops were those falling from awnings, and the sky turned a tentative blue, damn near cloudless. The soggy aftermath was everywhere, pooled in the street, dripping off storefronts.

But the storm had passed. The one in the sky, at least.

York quickly crossed the side street to take a position alongside the opposite building, the mercantile. Tulley came along, and fell in, in back of him. The old boy was reloading. So was York.

“Lem Rhomer!” the sheriff called around the corner. “Give yourself up! Your brothers are dead. You don’t have to be!”

The street was silent but for drip-drip-drips.

Then: “Why not decide this, York!”

Yes — the recession of the barbershop doorway. Just across the way and down. Well within range...

“What is there to decide, Rhomer?”

More silence punctuated by the aftermath of the deluge.

Then: “What do you think, you bastard? Who’s fastest!”

“That’s what you want, Rhomer?”

“That’s what I want! Face-to-face. I’m holstering my gun, right now. You holster yours.”

“And if I do?”

“I step out and we finish this! See just how fast Caleb York really is!”

“All right!”

Several long seconds dragged by.

Rhomer stepped out.

York stepped out.

Turned sideways, presenting smaller targets, they faced each other in, and across, the saturated street.

But Rhomer’s holster was empty, his gun already drawn and at his side, held rib-cage-high, the turn of his body meant to conceal the trick.

Then one last thunder crack came: a .44 slug from York’s gun — he’d done the same as Rhomer, been ready with holster empty and gun in hand and rib-cage-high.

The bullet punched the last redheaded brother in the belly, 45 tumbling out of his fingers, Lem Rhomer himself tumbling into the street, facedown, exposing the cavernous red-bubbling exit wound the .44 round left behind.

As York hurried to the man, Tulley tagging after, Rhomer crawled over onto his back, filling his red-bearded face with morning sun, though his clothes were filthy from the muddy street, the brown covering him leavened only by the scarlet, spreading patch over his belly where the bullet had gone in.

Rhomer looked up at York; gut-shot like that, the man was suffering, the pain excruciating. But he still said, “Damn... damn liar...”

“You know the saying,” York said blandly, looking down at the dying man. “‘Takes one to know one.’”

Tulley was at York’s side. “Put him out of his misery, Sheriff. It’ll take him a long damn time to die iffen you don’t... He be way past doctorin’.”

“No.”

Tulley took York’s sleeve. Whispering, the coot said, “Do it, Caleb. You’d shoot a dog in the head, sufferin’ like that.”

The sheriff responded to his deputy, but he was staring at the grimacing Rhomer, who glared back in pain and rage.

York said, “Dogs don’t need to think about what they done.”

Tulley scuttled off. Couldn’t stand the sight.

But Caleb York stayed and watched the man die.