The Big Showdown

Chapter Three

The sun rode high over the flat, dusty expanse beyond Trinidad, providing a nice warmth to take the edge off the day’s crisp coolness as Caleb York headed out the rutted narrow road, riding hard but holding back some. Five minutes out, just past the mesquite tree-shaded cemetery called Boot Hill, despite its scrubby flatness, he had to make way for the stagecoach that he would have been on, had things gone otherwise.

He had been following the dirty cloud the fleeing bandit on horseback raised, but once the coach passed, the larger dust storm trailing it obscured that signature.

Buttes in the distance glowed a burnt red, their cliff sides wearing black scars left by wind and rain. There was a chance York’s man was hiding in the mesa above those buttes, which offered up many a hiding place — boulder formations, gorges with caverns, winding arroyos. That no-man’s-land was nowhere York cared to search for this human rattler, not when so many nonhuman ones lurked as well.

Anyway, the bandit wouldn’t likely make that dangerous choice. A masked man need only get far enough away to change horses and maybe clothes and get all that money into a hiding place, whether a hole in the ground or a cast-iron safe. Every bank around had no-questions-asked deposit boxes. All York’s man had to do was get to Ellis or Las Vegas or any number of other towns in the neighboring area, and he was home free.

Even with the Concord Coach — stirred dust, York could still keep an eye out for smaller dust storms to the left and right, which would indicate the bandit had cut off the road and gone overland, for an as-the-crow-flies route to a town or perhaps a ranch where an accomplice waited.

But York saw no indication of this all the half-hour way to the crossroads of Brentwood Junction, the relay station where stages took on fresh horses while thirsty passengers had a drink and a bite of food.

He slowed the gelding to a trot, approaching the modest cluster of weathered gray buildings — barn, corral, main building. The animal clip-clopped slowly past the wooden-fenced enclosure, where one horse stood out among the ten milling there — a black mustang.

Three such sleek black steeds had waited outside the bank as their owners made an armed withdrawal.

And this mustang, still wearing a foamy coat, its head hanging, had been ridden good and damn hard.

The rest — three chestnuts and two bays — were Morgan horses, a breed suited to stagecoaches, muscular, but not sleek like the smaller, more agile mustangs.

York pulled back the reins and climbed down from his saddle, and hitched the gelding at a corral post, rather than the hitching post across the way, outside the main relay-station building. He withdrew his .44 and moved slowly toward the shabby structure. When he stepped up onto the shallow plank porch, he did so carefully, so as not to announce himself.

But when he went through the saloon-style batwing doors, he did so quickly, gun ready, fanning it around the low-ceilinged space, short bar at left, dining tables at right, the kind of unpainted, utilitarian premises you could get away with in this part of the world.

The only person in sight was a short, skinny, mustached bartender in a black bow tie and what had once been a white apron. His hands had gone up immediately upon York’s entrance, palms out, as if proving that they were clean. Which they weren’t.

Those hands didn’t stay up long, because the bartender — Irwin Fosler — recognized York as the sheriff of Trinidad.

York stepped inside and got a wall behind him. “You alone, Irwin?”

“Just me and Maria, Sheriff.”

Maria was Irwin’s plump Mexican wife, who peeked out from the kitchen in back of the bar and smiled and waved and disappeared.

York moved to the bar. “You had a lone rider.”

“I did. Maybe fifteen minutes ago. Twenty minutes after the stage took off.”

Hell, the bastard must have run his horse half to death.

“Did he pay you for a horse?”

“What? No.”

“Then he made a trade, Irwin, and it wasn’t a fair one. There’s a mustang out there among your Morgans. How long was he here, that you know of?”

“Minutes. He had a shot of red-eye and skedaddled.” Irwin frowned and leaned both hands on the bar. “Who was he, Sheriff?”

“A son of a bitch who robbed the First Bank of Trinidad and shot Ben Wade dead. What did he look like?”

The bartender’s eyes widened. “You’re lookin’ for him and you don’t know?”

“I know he was wearing a light blue work shirt and denims. But he also wore a mask. Anything distinctive under that mask?”

Irwin frowned in thought. “His nose was kind of on the flat side. Like it got busted more times than was helpful. He was unshaved, not like he was growin’ a beard, more just scruffy-like, and there was a white scar here...” The bartender pointed just past and below his nose and above his lip. “...ran all the way down to here.” He ran the finger down to just above his chin. “Knife, most probably.”

“How tall?”

“How tall are you, Sheriff?”

“Six-one.”

“Three inches shorter, maybe?”

“How heavy?”

“Slim. Wiry.”

“Dark or pale?”

“Pale. That boyo don’t work outdoors. But he was dark, far as his hair goes. And his eyes. They had a kind of sleepy look, come to think of it.”

“Anything else?”

“His gun. Wore it low on the hip. So low his hand brushed it. Gunslinger maybe?”

“Bank robber surely. Thanks, Irwin.”

“Don’t mention it, Sheriff.”

“Irwin?”

“Yes, Sheriff?”

“If you sold him a horse, say so now.”

The hands came up, in dirty-palmed surrender. “I didn’t, Sheriff! God is my witness! You can ask Maria. I don’t own them horses, the stage company does.”

A man not owning a horse didn’t mean he hadn’t sold it; but York didn’t press the matter.

“Do they wear a brand, the stage company’s horses?”

Nodding emphatically, the bartender said, “They do — BC. Bain Company.”

York nodded toward the outside. “Those horses out there. Any of them fresh?”

“Team of four left by the stagecoach, anything but. The rest are daisies, Sheriff. If he unbeknownst swapped me for one, he’d have took one of them fresh ones. If he’s smart at all.”

“He’s that smart, anyway. Thanks, Irwin.”

But before he left, York held up a hand to keep the bartender back and silent, and slipped into the kitchen, gun in hand, where Maria, big breasts overflowing her peasant dress, was at the stove stirring something that smelled like a brush fire. She grinned at him, the gun not bothering her.

“You stay, señor? You stay and eat?”

“No thanks, Maria. Next time.”

York holstered his weapon and rejoined the bartender. Dry from the ride, he took time for a beer, paying with a quarter, letting Irwin keep the change of a dime.

Outside, in the dusty courtyard between the main building and the corral, York stood with hands on hips surveying the world and his options.

With a crossroads like Brentwood Junction, there was no way to know which direction his man had gone, dust currently stirred in all four possibilities — the best of which might be Las Vegas, New Mexico, a forty-mile ride. With a train in Las Vegas, York’s quarry could be long gone real soon.

He shook his head and sighed, then walked to his horse, not as ridden-out as the bandit’s but foam-flecked just the same, meaning it had been overworked. He went to the water trough, found a sponge, and took time to cool the steed down.

In fifteen minutes, man and beast were back on the rutted road, at an easy pace, heading in the direction of town.

Not all was lost. He had three ways to track the bandit now — the man was dark-haired, in his thirties, about five foot ten inches tall, with a rough beard and a scar cutting vertically through his lips; he was riding a stolen horse with a Bain stage company brand; and he had a lot of cash, which he’d likely start spending like payday at the end of a cattle drive. That smart he probably wasn’t.

The scar was likely the best lead. The horse might be got rid of, and the bastard could always shave. And maybe he would know enough not to start throwing money around too damn free.

Maybe.

What York had in mind for tracking the bank robber was not a manhunt in the mountains, nor was it riding hard to Ellis and Las Vegas and every town in the territory, till his gelding dropped dead.

People thought of him as a gunfighter, and he supposed that wasn’t wrong, but Caleb York viewed himself first and foremost as a detective. He had been a Wells Fargo agent long enough to know damn well that actual investigative work wasn’t exciting or glamorous.

The citizens of Trinidad expected blazing guns from him, and things might well come to that; but his weapon right now was the telegraph. He would get back to town to the Western Union office and fire off not rounds from his guns, rather telegrams to every lawman in the territory, with the particulars, from scarred lip to big spending.

But he had a hunch to play first. He didn’t like losing the time, but he felt the risk was worth it.

The trail that veered off to the Circle G was so narrow and rough as to make the rutted main road seem a generous ribbon of silk. The land it cut through began unpromisingly — clumped bunch grass, spiny shrubs, assorted cacti — and seemed just another stretch of desert pretending it was worth living on.

But things began to green up after a mile or so, and by the time York rode under the squared-off, fence-post gateway — a G in a circle burned in the wood overhang — his eyes were filled by a luxuriant stand of looming evergreens that lent an unlikely rustic charm to the scattering of frame structures (barn, bunkhouse, water tower, ranch house) that nestled in and around the firs. Their abundance was thanks to a nearby stream, an offshoot of the Purgatory River, which more than anything made this property desirable.

The ranch had but a single corral, though a good size one of rough-hewn fencing that looked slapped together but did the job. Within was a herd of wild horses — he counted thirteen — and four cowhands in battered hats, neck-knotted kerchiefs, and chaps over denims, trying to get a handle on their reluctant guests. Three more cowboys were on the other side of the fence, observing and offering suggestions and spitting tobacco and laughing.

The horses were running in a circle, mocking their would-be masters, two of whom had roped the same chestnut mustang and were doing everything they could to stay on their feet. Dust hung as heavy as forest-fire smoke, and the cowhands yelling at the horses and each other were all but drowned out by whinnying and neighing and pounding hooves.

Not wanting the gelding to get excitable due to all this equine activity — not that the animal had enough pep left to do anything about it — York guided it to the hitching post outside the ranch house. He twirled the reins around the post.

Somebody called out, “York!”

His back was to whoever had yelled. With a private smile, he plucked the sheriff’s badge off his shirt and slipped it in his pants pocket.

Through the smoky fog that the horses were raising came one of the cowboys who’d been leaning against the fence on the safe side, giving pointers to those in the thick of it.

York didn’t meet the man halfway — why get nearer to all that stirred dust? — and just waited until the figure became clear.

The Circle G’s ramrod, Gil Willart, an average-size man with an above-average-size mustache, was heading over to him. The man wore a shapeless cowpuncher’s hat with not much brim, dusty chaps over Levi’s, and a brown silk shirt of the weave that kept the wind out or tried to. His eyes were green, his face oval, his skin leathery, his expression suspicious.

“Somethin’ I can do for you, York?” It was a mid-range voice as rough as barnwood, with a speech impediment caused by a cheekful of chaw.

“What say we go inside,” York said pleasantly, “where we don’t have to swallow dirt? Or listen to those fools tryin’ to be cowboys?”

Willart thought about it, then shook his head. “No, out here’ll have to do. We’re keepin’ the house spick-and-span for the new owner. Be here any day, y’know.”

York nodded in the opposite direction of the corral. “Then let’s take a walk.”

Willart thought about that, too, then shrugged.

“Why not?” the ramrod said, and chewed tobacco as he fell in alongside his visitor.

They wound up near the water tower. A wooden bench gave them a place to sit. Now the noise of the men and horses was just far enough away to talk over.

“Quite a bunch of mustangs,” York said.

“You come to jaw or is there a point?”

“Be nice, Gil. You owe me.”

Willart turned his head and spat a foul brown stream. “Don’t recall that I do.”

York gave him an easygoing grin. “After your old boss stopped breathing, and I wore a badge for a time? I could have rounded up a posse and run all of you Gauge boys out of New Mexico.”

He grunted something like a laugh. “You didn’t have nothin’ on us.”

York turned over a hand. “Maybe not. But getting something wouldn’t have been hard. All I needed was a couple of hands willin’ to testify to save their skins. In that case, you would’ve got off easy, just gettin’ run out of the territory. You and your boys rustled cattle, Gil. You mixed poxed cows with healthy ones. You were one bad hombre, my friend.”

The cowboy spat more brown juice. “Then why didn’t you come after us?”

York shrugged. “Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘live and let live’?”

That grunt of a laugh again. “I heared it. But I ain’t never figured it was Caleb York’s favorite sayin’.”

“Most of the outright outlaws and gunslingers — not all, but most — got out when the getting was good. Those of you who were real cowboys, and just went astray some, I figured you might wind up back on the right path.” He shrugged. “This country needs good cowhands.”

Willart leaned toward him, frowning, some indignation in it. “Listen, York. A cowhand’s all I ever was. I had no part of what Harry Gauge was up to. I wasn’t wise to any of it. Just did my job.”

“Gil. You expect me to buy that?”

The bulge in his cheek was like half of him had the mumps. “How about we just say I turned over a new leaf? And leave it be?”

York pretended to consider that. “Well, maybe before, we could have. But the problem is, Gil... things have changed some.”

Willart frowned again. No indignation this time. “How’s that?”

“Seems we had a little trouble in town this morning.”

His eyebrows went way up. “If so, word ain’t got to us out here. What kind of trouble?”

“Three men stuck up the Trinidad bank.”

Willart shot more tobacco juice to one side. “Damn shame,” he said, not looking like he cared one way or the other. “What’s it got to do with me?”

“Two of them got shot.”

“Shot dead?”

“That’s right.”

His smirk was barely visible under the thick oversized mustache. “Who by? That old-time tin star you brought in to take your place? What’s his name?”

“Ben Wade.”

“Right. Kind of famous in his day, I hear. So... he shot two of ’em, huh?”

“No. They shot him.”

Willart froze just as he was about to spit. He coughed and swallowed some of the foul stuff, and made a face. But he said nothing.

“Well,” York added, correcting himself, “one of them shot him. The one who got away. With all the money, as it happens.”

Some panic came into the leathery face. “If you’re lookin’ for that one here — is that what you’re doin’, York? Lookin’ for him out here?”

“Let’s just say I’m looking for him.”

Willart gestured toward the corral, where the horses were still ahead in the game.

“Well, take a look around,” the ramrod said. “You see any familiar faces? Those are all top hands I hired on my own. None of ’em was even here six months back. They’re a damn good bunch, and to a man straight as a dye. Anyways, what are you out doin’ the lookin’ for? You break off from the posse or somethin’?”

“I am the posse, Gil.”

He frowned. “What the hell. I didn’t even know you was still in town! What the hell’s any of it to you, anyways? Ain’t you headed to San Francisco or somewheres?”

“San Diego. But I decided to put that off.” He reached in his pocket, got the badge out, and took his time pinning it back on.

His jaw loose, some nasty dark liquid dribbling out, Willart just stared at the tin star, like he expected it to speak.

“Thing is,” York said, “those two sons of bitches I killed? Did I mention I was the one shot them? They used to work for Harry Gauge. Both of ’em. One used to work here at the Circle G, Gil. With you.”

“Hell you say.”

“The hell I do say. Clay Peterson. The other, Len Cormack, bunked in at the Running C. Another of your old boss’s spreads.”

He spat tobacco. “Well, they ain’t been workin’ here lately, nor at the C, neither. I knowed them two, and neither one could tell a cow from a bull. I wouldn’t have ’em.”

York was studying him. “You had Peterson when Harry Gauge was running the place.”

“Now I’m runnin’ the place.”

“For your new boss. Another Gauge. Met him yet?”

Willart shook his head. “No. It’s all been letters and Western Union. But he’s comin’ any day now, and I got high hopes. Appears to be a real straight shooter. This ain’t Harry come back from the grave or nothin’. This is an honest businessman from back East, lookin’ to make somethin’ of the place, but who is smart enough to leave the runnin’ of it to me.”

York took that all in. “Businessman from back East, huh? What kind of business?”

“Not cattle!” Willart snorted a laugh. Then glumly he said, “Not that he’s in the cattle business here, neither. Sheriff, we’re in a sorry state at the Circle G, ever since every head of ours got destroyed ’cause of the cowpox epidemic. We got a whole lot of range and not a single damn cow.”

York shrugged. “I figure you hope to buy a starter herd, maybe from George Cullen.”

“We do. After the new Mr. Gauge gets here, we’ll be restocking for sure. Meantime, we go out and round up them wild horses. It’s somethin’ to do.”

“Funny coincidence.”

“What is?”

“All three of those bank robbers today were riding mustangs. Handsome black devils.”

Willart frowned and shook his head. “Well, them mustangs didn’t come out of that wild bunch! That’s for damn sure.”

“No. They didn’t. These were well-trained animals. Gunshots didn’t rear ’em. That is damned unusual. This the first mustang band you rounded up?”

Willart shook his head. “Second. Sold the first off at Las Vegas. But don’t get no ideas — that was just a couple weeks back, and you don’t train a mustang to behave hisself in that time.”

“No you don’t.” York locked eyes with the man. “Now about the man I didn’t shoot, Gil. The one who got away with all that money?”

“What about him?”

“He’s five-ten, dark-haired, flat-nosed, unshaved, pale, with a scar running through his mouth here.” York indicated where. “Sound like anyone you know?”

Willart shifted uneasily on the bench. “Not someone I know. More like know of.”

“That’s a start. One of Gauge’s bunch?”

The ramrod nodded. “From back in the old days, when Harry Gauge was just another outlaw.”

“Don’t suppose he has a name.”

“Not much of one. Bill Johnson. Kinda handle a wanted man hides behind.”

No argument there, York thought.

“Gil, when Gauge was still sheriff, was this Johnson playing cowhand on some spread, or maybe deputy in Trinidad?”

Willart shook his head. “No, not neither. More of a hired gun Gauge used, time to time. What I understand, the boss brought the man in when some rancher wouldn’t sell out and needed persuadin’.”

York’s eyes narrowed; then he nodded. Patted his thighs. “Okay, Gil. That helps.”

Then he rose and started back to where his gelding waited before Willart realized they were done. The cowboy caught up with York and walked along, but said nothing.

Just as York was ready to mount the horse, Willart gave him a tobacco-stained grin.

“Look, Sheriff. Way I understand it, this Zachary Gauge is foursquare. I’d be obliged if, when you meet the man, you don’t say nothin’ about my, uh, past... bad judgments.”

“Isn’t he aware you worked for his cousin?”

“Course he is. But I was foreman out here and he needed somebody who knew ranching and I guess I just fit the bill. But should he hear bad things, he might think twice.”

York mulled it. “All right, Gil. But you need to do me a favor in return.”

The ramrod spat a tobacco stream, then grinned brownly at York. Very friendly now. “I sure as hell will try, Sheriff.”

York gestured vaguely. “There are still a handful of your old boss’s outlaw cronies scattered around on the spreads he left behind. I assume all of the small ranches that Harry Gauge swallowed up are going to be consolidated into one big spread, under Zachary Gauge.”

Willart was frowning. “What word was that? Con-solla what?”

“Merged. Put together. Become one big ranch.”

The smaller man nodded emphatically. “Oh, yeah. That’s gonna happen. That is gonna happen.”

“You figure you’ll be ramrod of that big spread?”

“I surely hope so.”

“If you are, Gil, you need to fire those men left over from the previous regime. Those gunnies who don’t know a bull from a cow? Then I’ll take your new boss serious. And you.”

Willart was thinking about that as York gave him a polite tip of his curl-brimmed black hat and rode off, past the corral, where the horses were still running the cowboys ragged.