The Bloody Spur

Chapter Eight

On the second floor of the formidable brick bank building, Dr. Albert Miller maintained a two-room office — waiting area and surgery — behind which were his living quarters.

Caleb York had helped the doctor up the outer stairs with the wicker-basket-laden body of George Cullen and into the smallish surgery, where they had transferred it to the heavy mahogany examination table. On its back, the stiffened corpse remained clothed, a condition the doctor began to remedy.

York, his mood melancholy, hung up his hat on the coat tree by the door, then sat and waited at a desk cluttered with books, papers, and bottles, a spittoon on the floor nearby. On the walls, framed diplomas hung crookedly, and overseeing everything from a corner was a skeleton, referred to by Miller as Hippocrates, who, York gathered, was a famous Greek doctor and whose actual skeleton this likely wasn’t.

The doctor said, “Help me turn him over.”

Caleb went and did that, not all the way over, just enough to see that Doc’s diagnosis at the scene had been right: the postmortem bruising was along Cullen’s back, from his neck down through his legs and buttocks, confirming the victim had fallen on his back, which indicated he’d been killed elsewhere.

The doc covered Cullen’s body with a sheet but for the man’s head, propping it up with a folded towel to provide a better look at that large, ragged, nasty wound. He got some tools from a cabinet and began poking. York watched. A good ten minutes passed.

Doc, bloody medical tools in his hands, gave York a steady look. “As I thought — not enough skull fragments to put Humpty Dumpty back together. You got yourself a murder, all right.”

York nodded. “Keep it to yourself for now, Doc. Don’t want it gettin’ around till I’ve talked to some folks. Any idea when he died?”

“Whit Murphy saw him ride out around sunup. The old man had been dead at least two hours before I got to him. I’d say between six thirty and nine or so?”

Harris Mercantile was doing a good business, women in calico or gingham with bonnets, often with their young children, moving through the gloomy chamber with its high-shelved walls, navigating floors crammed with boxes, barrels, and crates. They would pause to riffle through the piled clothing on the facing counters or, short of that, go looking wide-eyed through the big mail-order catalogs.

At the cash register behind the counter at right, where he could also tend the coffee grinder and scales, was Newt Harris himself, the blond, heavyset proprietor in a dark bow tie and a light-colored vest. His jaw was bruised from where a blind man had hit him.

“Sheriff,” he said with a nod, dark blue eyes wary.

“Mr. Harris,” York said, returning the nod. “Might I have a word?”

“Certainly, if you can tolerate the occasional interruption.” His smile tried to be pleasant but came off forced. “These are business hours.”

“I’m workin’, too,” York said cheerfully. “I was wondering if you and George Cullen had patched things up. I know you been friends for years, and it’s too bad about that dustup between you two... and that it spilled over between your boy Lem and that friend of Mr. Cullen’s.”

Bristling, Harris said, “You should arrest that O’Malley galoot. Picking on a kid like Lem!”

Lem could have lifted a horse and tossed it down the street, but York let that pass.

“How about it?” York asked. “Where do things stand with you and George Cullen?”

Big shoulders shrugged. “Well, the same, I’d have to say. I haven’t spoken to him since that unpleasantness. If anybody’s owed an apology, it’s me, and, anyway, I have no use for that stubborn coot. Standing in the way of progress. He’s a fool!”

“If so,” York said, “he’s a dead one.”

Harris reared back a shade, his eyes so wide, there was white all around.

Quietly, so as not to be overheard, York briefly told the merchant what had happened — that apparently, what was meant to be written off as an accident had really been murder.

They paused while Harris took care of a customer, a mother buying some printed cotton for a dress for her young daughter.

By the time the bell over the door rang with the mother and child’s departure, Harris’s bluster had disappeared. His face was somber; his eyes were tearing up.

“You’ve shamed me, Sheriff, but I had it comin’. George Cullen was a longtime good friend, and whatever recent disagreements we may have had, I would never wish him any harm, much less... He was a fine, fine man. If... if you’ll excuse me...”

The merchant, digging a handkerchief from his pocket, turned his back to York. Muffled sniffling, followed by a nose-blowing honk, preceded a red-eyed Harris turning back to York.

“I... I appreciate you telling me, Sheriff. But why didn’t you come right out with it? Why ask me if I had mended fences with...? Oh. Oh.”

“Yes, Mr. Harris. You had a public altercation with the deceased the day before his murder. Comes down to that.”

Stiffly, he said, “I’m not the kind of man that kills another.”

“Nobody is till it happens. Where were you around sunup?”

His nod indicated the apartment above. “Upstairs with my wife and my two boys. Lem and Luke are working out back. You can talk to them. Lucille is at her prayer group at the church. You can talk to them all. But I’d appreciate you doing so discreetly. My family needn’t know that I’m a...”

“Suspect, no. They needn’t know that. Anyone not in your family who might back you up?”

Harris frowned. “You don’t trust me, Sheriff?”

York gave him an easy grin. “I trust myself and no one else when there’s a murder and no clear culprit.”

The merchant swallowed thickly. “Well... we opened at nine. We’ve had a nice steady flow of customers. I could probably make you a list, if need be. I know them all.”

“Why don’t you do that? I’ll send Deputy Tulley around to pick it up this afternoon.”

York tugged his hat in good-bye and left. That list wouldn’t be necessary, most likely, but he didn’t mind putting the man out one bit.

The Davis Apothecary, with its big jars of brightly colored liquid in the window, was perhaps a third the size of the Mercantile, though no less impressive with its elaborate dark-oaken cabinetry of wall-to-wall drawers and shelving, the latter displaying gold rim — labeled, glass-stoppered bottles of various sizes and colors — dark blue, amber, clear — as well as tins and jars.

The local druggist was something of a master of his craft, growing medicinal herbs out back, including sassafras and Virginia snakeroot. Those added to the distinctive spicy aroma in the air. Along a waist-high shelf were fine tools and trays used to make pills; on the counter at right, a brass pestle and mortar. Behind the counter was Clement Davis.

The skinny, bug-eyed, weak-jawed druggist wore a white apron over his vest with a bow tie, above which a prominent Adam’s apple bobbed as he said, “Good morning, Sheriff. Something I can help you with?”

No customers were on hand to slow the interview down, so York got right to it. He pushed his hat back on his head and, in a friendly but professional way, asked, “Just how ticked are you with George Cullen, Clem?”

The bluntness of that brought the druggist’s natural nervousness to the fore. York had always wondered how so timid a creature was able to summon a steady hand for the making of pills with their rigorous recipes.

“I, uh, well, I have no problem with Mr. Cullen,” Davis said, wiggling his fingers. “He has a right to his opinion, however much I might disagree with him.”

“You were part of that Citizens Committee group that confronted him last night.”

“Well, as a member of the committee, I, uh, certainly needed to be there... to represent the town’s interests and, uh, well, my own. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Nothing a’tall,” York agreed. “But there was pressure bein’ applied.”

The chin came up, and the Adam’s apple followed. “I don’t see any reason why there shouldn’t be friendly discussion with the old man. No reason not to, uh, show him gentle like the error of his thinking. That spur will mean the world to this town!”

York nodded. “Your business would surely benefit.”

The bug eyes blinked and blinked. “And what would be wrong with that?”

“Nothing.” York leaned an elbow on the counter. “Have you had any private conversations with George Cullen on the subject?”

His chin was quivering, like that of a child about to burst into tears. “No. No, but I’m confident he will come around.”

York’s half smirk had no humor in it. “Why would you think that, Clem?”

Eyebrows rose. “Well, I, uh... don’t know if I should say, exactly. It’s something the mayor told me in confidence.”

“Okay, then. I’ll check with him. Wouldn’t want you to break a confidence. What time did you open up this morning, Clem?”

Knobby shoulders shrugged. “A tad late. I had to run some morphine pills out to the McLaughlin place. Got the dysentery out there.”

“When was that?”

“First thing. I rode out there around seven. By the time I got back and opened up, it was past nine thirty.”

The McLaughlin place was in the opposite direction of the Bar-O.

“They’ll back you up, the McLaughlins?”

More blinking. “Of course. But... but why should they have to?”

“Because George Cullen was murdered this morning, sometime between sunup and nine.”

York nodded and went out, leaving the druggist frozen behind him, Adam’s apple in mid-rise.

York’s next stop was the smallest of the storefronts, with its red-and-white pole and window painted with bold white letters:

Within, York found the undersized mayor in his typical white jacket with black bow tie, his slicked-back black hair and perfect handlebar mustache his own best advertising. Right now he was brushing clippings off the cape of his latest patron, telegraph manager Ralph Parsons, a scrawny, bespectacled soul for whom good grooming could do only a limited amount.

The space was home to a single, if fancy chair — carved oak with padded red-leather upholstery — and a big walnut-framed mirror over a marble counter lined with colorful blown-glass tonic bottles. The floor was bare wood planking; the side wall bore a Winchester hunting-scene calendar, a doorless cupboard of shaving mugs, and an assortment of nicely hand-lettered signs (SHAVING, LEECHING, BLEEDING and HOT & COLD BATHS). A few empty chairs along the rear wall waited for further customers.

York traded nods with Parsons on his way out, while the barber beamed at this potential customer.

“What’s your pleasure this morning, Sheriff?”

York settled into the chair as the barber/mayor covered him with a fresh cape. “Just a shave, Your Honor. The hair can wait till next week.”

Hardy was a pretty fair barber, and York just sat and enjoyed the ritual for a while, the hot towel, the brush whipping in its cup, and the lather applied. Not until Hardy was actually scraping the straight razor across his face did York risk a question between strokes.

“When did you open up this morning, Jasper?” No “Your Honor” this time.

The blade rose expertly up York’s right cheek.

“Right at eight, Sheriff. Always have a few customers who want a fresh shave before their shops open.”

Which was 9:00 a.m. in most cases, earlier for the Mercantile and the hardware store.

In the next pause, York asked, “And before that?”

The mayor, who was unmarried, usually took his breakfast at the hotel or at the café, and York, who had eaten at the former this morning, hadn’t seen him there.

Another stroke of the blade. He was starting on York’s throat now, his customer’s chin up. “Breakfast at the café. Why do you ask, Sheriff?”

At the next pause, York said, “I’ll get to that. How have you been getting along with Old Man Cullen lately?”

The barber continued the tender work — he rarely nicked a client. “We’ve always been friendly. I like the man. I believe he likes me. This current disagreement is just a passing thing. He’ll come around.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I just know he will, that’s all.” Hardy smiled to himself. “Anyway, I have a good idea he will.”

York said nothing more till the cape was whipped off and he’d given the barber a nickel and a grin. “Sure like to know the reason you’re so sure George Cullen will come to his senses ’bout Trinidad’s future and all.”

Hardy hesitated, then gestured to his fancy chair. “Well, it’s something the old man told me, seated right there. He said his own daughter was against him in the fight. I know the old boy well enough to figure he’ll buckle under to her. She’s all but running the ranch now herself, and he damn well knows it.”

“Jasper, I happen to know Willa hasn’t said a word to her papa about the way she really feels where the branchline is concerned.”

A big smile blossomed under the elaborate mustache. “That’s how he knows! Normally, she’d be fighting at his side. She kept mum, and that spoke volumes. What’s going on, Sheriff? What’s this about?”

York told him.

The news of Cullen’s death staggered the barber, who stumbled back into his own chair and sat, mouth hanging open, as if his jaw were broken.

“I... I can’t believe it,” he said softly. “Such a great man. There wouldn’t be a Trinidad without him. It’s a tragedy, Sheriff. It’s a goddamned tragedy! You’ll find the one who did this. I know you will.”

“I know it, too,” York said, stroking his chin. “Nice and smooth. Thanks, Your Honor.”

Mathers & Sons Hardware was similar in size and layout to the Mercantile, its windows promising seeds, farm implements, and household supplies. Floor-to-ceiling ladders ran on rails on either side for the higher shelves. You could buy nails by the pound here or a single nut and bolt. You could order a buggy from Denver and, out in back, purchase harnesses, hay, and grain. Buckets and pails and small barrels hung from the ceiling, as if gravity had changed its mind.

The scent of the place made York smile — oiled metal, tobacco, mineral spirits, and wood. It smelled like men getting things done. Still, though this was Mathers & Sons, the fleshy, fifty-some proprietor had only one son, and, in fact, his daughter Margaret, in her late teens, did the books and helped with the ordering.

From behind the counter, where his boy was running the register, the bald but lavishly mutton-chopped Clarence Mathers, an apron over his gray suit, greeted the sheriff with a smile and an extended hand. York reached over the counter to accept it. The clientele, running to ranchers and their employees and, of course, some town folk, was just thick enough in here that York suggested he and Mathers step out onto the boardwalk.

This they did, taking two of the waiting chairs lined up in front of the store; no others were taken.

“Had any words with George Cullen,” York said, “over this spur wrangle?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it a wrangle,” the good-humored merchant said. “Difference of opinion. And I understand it. George sees things through his end of the telescope, and we see them through ours.”

“But you think he’s mistaken.”

He pawed the air. “Oh, my, yes. Got his head up his hindquarters on this one. Sure, it’ll hurt his spread for a time, but as things expand around here, the Bar-O will thrive more than ever.”

Nothing was said for maybe half a minute.

Then York offered, “Lovely day.”

“Very nice. Little cool, but I like it crisp.”

“As do I. What time did you open up this morning, Clarence?”

The merchant smiled. “Well, actually, I didn’t. My daughter and that boy of mine in there did. They’re starting to make me feel as useless as teats on a boar. You know, that girl has an equal share in my will. I believe if she finds the right man, she’ll be the one carrying this hardware store into the next century.”

“Where were you then?”

“I took the wagon out.”

“Really? Where to?”

“I had supplies to deliver to the Circle G. Why?”

The Circle G was in the general area of the Bar-O, but not close enough to make this admission anything for York to sit up about.

York asked, “Folks out there back you up?”

“Of course. But why the hell would they need to?”

York told him.

The big fleshy man slumped in his chair. His face went bloodless, and he was shaking his head, staring at the planks underfoot.

Mathers’s voice was hushed. “Murdered, you say? Hell of a thing. Hell of a terrible thing. We wouldn’t have a town without that man! This part of the country would be Indians and wild animals without the likes of him! Who would do such a thing?”

“I was thinking maybe one of your brother merchants on the Citizens Committee.”

His eyes and nostrils flared. “Not a chance in Hades! We had a dispute, yes, but we were all friends. No one can deny that. He was on the committee, for Lord’s sake!”

“He stood in the way of progress. Of commerce.”

“He’d have come around.”

“Because his daughter would have stood against him?”

That surprised Mathers. “I... I didn’t say that. Where did you hear that?”

York didn’t answer. He stood and said, “You have any further thoughts on this subject, Clarence, I’d be obliged if you shared them.”

He left the man there, still seated in front of his storefront windows, staring bleakly at his feet and the wood beneath them — the wood of a boardwalk his nails held together.

The office of the Trinidad Enterprise was at the church end of Main, in a narrow two-story clapboard building the color of butter, brand new and nestled next to the saddle shop.

York went in and was immediately hit with the oily smell of ink. Editor Oscar Penniman, in gartered shirtsleeves and a black visor, sat at his rolltop desk against the right wall, hunkered over a torn-off sheet of foolscap, writing in pencil.

At a table at left, Penniman’s young aproned assistant, Harold Jones, a Kansas City import, whom York had spoken to only once or twice, sat arranging type by hand in little metal trays. Against the wall were four five-foot narrow-drawer typeset cabinets.

Toward the rear, and consuming much of the space, was a cast-iron and wood contraption as big as a buckboard, with a central drum, levers, gears, and springs. Silent now, the printing press looked like it could make a hell of a racket in motion, like some ancient beast that might come lumbering toward you.

No bell over the door had announced York, but the editor soon sensed his presence, anyway, and turned toward him with a guarded smile, a nod, and “Sheriff.”

“Mr. Penniman. I have a story for you.”

“Come. Take a seat.” A smile flickering under the perfectly trimmed mustache, he gestured to a nearby chair, which York went over and filled.

“I admit I’m surprised to see you, Sheriff. I rather got the impression that your opinion of me and my paper was, well, less than entirely favorable.”

“I really have no opinion either way,” York said. “But it does seem a bit on the shady side that you don’t advertise your silent partner.”

“What silent partner would that be?” the editor asked too innocently.

“The Santa Fe Railroad. But we’ve covered that. And, anyway, if I have a story that needs putting in front of the public, where else could I go but the Enterprise?”

Penniman studied the sheriff for a moment, then shrugged and grabbed a new piece of paper, pencil poised. “All right, then. What news is it you have for our readers?”

“George Cullen has been murdered.”

The editor stiffened, looking up from the as yet unwritten-upon paper. “Well, that’s a shock. Terrible to hear. You’re... you’re sure of this?”

York nodded, then gave him a superficial account, just the bare facts and none of the doctor’s medical opinions.

Penniman frowned. “But... that sounds as if he was thrown from his horse...?”

York gestured to Penniman’s paper.

Then he said, “ ‘Sheriff Caleb York, formerly a detective with Wells Fargo, considers the circumstances highly suspicious and is handling the tragedy as a murder investigation. The body apparently was moved and arranged to suggest accidental death. The deceased’s reluctance to support the Santa Fe Railroad’s proposed branchline, the sheriff says, is a possible motive.’ You get all that?”

Hunkered over again, Penniman was still writing. Then he said, “I got it. Want to hear it?”

“Yes.”

The editor read it back. He had it word for word.

“You’re talking to possible suspects, I assume,” Penniman said.

“Yes. For example, where were you this morning between sunup and ten?”

The editor straightened a little. “So I’m a suspect, then?”

“You and the Santa Fe Railroad... but you don’t have to quote that if you aren’t so inclined. Where were you, Mr. Penniman? This morning?”

The editor’s dark eyes flared. “Right here! You can talk to Mr. Jones there, and he’ll confirm it. I took an early breakfast at the hotel and was at the office by seven thirty.”

“Mr. Jones might be inclined to back up his boss.”

“What, and risk being charged as a murder accomplice? Sheriff, based upon what you’ve said, I would need a buckboard to accomplish this foul deed, one of which I do not own. Here, I don’t even own a horse. And the only place I could have rented either buckboard or steed would be the livery, and you can check there and find that I didn’t.”

York nodded, rose. “I’ll do that. Add to the story, if you please, that the sheriff would appreciate any information about this possible murder that your readers might be able to share. All right, sir?”

Penniman frowned — almost scowled — but he nodded before returning to his foolscap.

The front windows of the next business Caleb York visited displayed two well-crafted mahogany caskets with brass fittings and a small dignified sign that said:

Such fancy coffins were only for those well-off citizens to whom life, if not death, had been kind. This display at times had made way for the remains of such outlaws as the late sheriff Harry Gauge and various members of the Rhomer clan, who’d had a grudge against the current sheriff.

If York ever ended up on the wrong end of a gunfight, he knew his next stop would surely be this window.

York entered into a showroom of sorts, with less ostentatious caskets at right and various cabinets, dressers, tables, and chairs at left — death on one hand, life on the other. A desk off in a corner was not for sale; this was Undertaker Perkins’s work area, though he was not seated there. Hammering from in back sent York in that direction.

The back room was a workshop, with stacked lumber, a tool-strewn workbench, and the smell of sawdust. The barn-style doors at the rear of the building allowed the storing of a funeral wagon, its black, feathery plumes and glass windows protected by a tarpaulin. Skinny, bald, mustached Perkins, without his usual Abe Lincoln high hat, looked even smaller than he usually did. But in his BVD top he showed off a surprising musculature as he hammered away at his latest creation.

On a nearly upright wooden framework — almost certainly the undertaker’s own work — the coffin in progress rested as he nailed its pieces together. This was a strictly functional pine box, a world — a lifetime — away from the brass-fitted eternal beds in the window.

Perkins had not seen him step in, and York waited for a pause in the hammering before announcing himself.

“Adding some inventory, Mr. Perkins?”

A ghost of a smile flickered on the solemn face as he looked back at York. “There could be a need.”

“Because of the Preacherman and the two sinners he rides with?”

Another ghostly smile. “A possibility, wouldn’t you say?”

“No question.”

Perkins set down his hammer on a small battered table and came over to York, who was only a few paces into the workshop. “What brings you around, Sheriff? I don’t imagine you came to window-shop.”

“No. I’d be fine with one of these pine boxes. No need for anything fancy, considerin’ the destination.”

The slight yet muscular figure shrugged. “A man of practical considerations. But I’m pleased your attitude isn’t widely held. The more civilized men become, the more they want to go out in style.”

“I stopped by to tell you that you have a new customer. He’s over in Doc Miller’s surgery.”

“Ah,” he said solemnly. “Someone I know?”

This wasn’t as facetious as it might sound: few of the many cowhands on the surrounding spreads would be familiar to the undertaker, although everyone in the town proper would.

York told Perkins about Cullen’s passing, including that he believed it to be murder and why.

“And you,” the undertaker said, “are assuming those of us who challenged him last night regarding his wrongheaded views about the Santa Fe spur are key suspects. And that would include me.”

“It would.”

Another shrug, more elaborate this time. “I have no alibi. No wife or children, and I work here alone.”

York gestured to the covered funeral wagon. “And you also have a ready means of transportation.”

“Without horses,” Perkins said with a sly smile, “I most certainly do not. And if you haven’t checked at the livery already, you’ll find when you do that I haven’t rented any horses in some weeks. Will that suffice as an alibi, Sheriff?”

“Guess it will have to,” York said and took his leave, while the undertaker returned to his hammering.

After all, even a man as brave as Caleb York didn’t find much to like about hanging around an establishment like this.