The Legend of Caleb York

Chapter fourteen

His name was Caleb York.

He had come to Trinidad by happenstance, on his meandering way to California, where in San Diego the Pinkerton people were holding a position for him.

Well, “holding” was too strong a word — more like an open invitation, based upon his days as a Wells Fargo detective, during which time he’d made a certain reputation. As a sleuth, yes, but more so as a shootist.

That latter reputation had become a burden in some respects — particularly when crazy gunhands, young mostly, tried to make their own name by killing him. Pushing forty, he was getting old for the game, and when a shotgun-mangled body had been misidentified as him in Silver City, he had done nothing to correct the impression. He was fine with letting his “killer,” Wes Banion — whom he’d never met other than by bad reputation — bask in the glory of being the man who gunned down Caleb York.

A few people he cared about — such as his highly placed pal with the Pinkertons, and a few relations — knew the story was false. Knew that Caleb York was alive and well, just not bragging about it. He had shaved his mustache, and taken to wearing nicer clothing than he’d ever allowed himself. Sure, people called him a “dude,” but nobody bothered with drawing down on a dude.

At least not till Trinidad, New Mexico.

Before arriving in Sheriff Harry Gauge’s town, he’d been enjoying his status as a “dead” man, despite an awareness that after his “death,” his legend only grew. But ever since he’d ridden into this fear-choked town, he’d been dealing with people who either wanted to know more about him than he cared to share, or flat out wanted him truly dead.

He knew it didn’t help that he never used some other name, something common like Smith or Jones. But to him an alias was something for bad men to hide behind.

And Caleb York, however many bad men he might have gunned down in his day, did not view himself as a bad man.

In part, that simple reluctance to admit who he was, and that Caleb York still breathed, had brought him to this fateful hilltop where he bent beside a dance-hall queen who’d decked herself out in riding clothes and come looking for him. Kneeling next to him, she looked down with him upon the Brentwood Junction relay station, a stopover for stages to take on fresh horses and give thirsty passengers an opportunity for the wetting of whistles.

The woman he knew only as Lola — she had never given him a last name (but then he had never given her a name at all, so who was he to judge?). They’d had the kind of relations a man had with a woman who worked in a saloon. He’d paid her nothing but felt something — something for her as a woman who in a kinder world might have known a much better life.

She had caught up with him on the road — he’d come mostly overland, cutting over within two miles of the relay station — to warn him of what he was facing. She led him back over rough country to this hill where they had a good view of the small cluster of shabby weathered-gray structures — barn with stable wings, corral where half-a-dozen horses roamed, relay-station main building itself. Near the latter, two horses hitched to a buggy were tied up out front. On the ground between the corral and the relay station lay the crumpled form of a man, almost certainly dead.

York was using binoculars. “I count three on guard. One at the barn, another at the corral, another roaming. I think the dead man is one of Gauge’s.”

“Let me see.”

He handed her the glasses and she looked. “Yes. His name is Watters. No great loss. But that buggy — it’s Old Man Cullen’s.”

“I know.”

She handed the glasses back. “You can bet Gauge is inside, and Rhomer, too, plus another three or four. That’s six or seven men, stranger. Too many.”

“It’s always like that.”

She touched his shoulder and he looked at her looking at him.

“You can’t just ride into an armed camp,” she said sternly. “And that’s just what you would’ve done if I hadn’t caught up with you first.”

He gave her something close to a smile. “I know. Thanks. Tell me — why did you bother warning me?”

She rolled the dark, pretty eyes. “Let’s say Harry Gauge and I fell out. See where it’s red near my ear? And you saw firsthand how there’s no love lost between Vint Rhomer and me.”

“That the only reason?”

Her smile seemed sweet and wicked at once. “Maybe I’ll tell you someday.”

“Something to look forward to.”

She nodded toward the relay station. “What’s your plan?”

He gazed down there. “Take out those watchdogs, one by one.”

She frowned at him. “You start shooting and guns will come streaming out of that main building, firing back. Or cut you down from the windows.”

He shook his head. “No shooting. I have a Bowie knife in my saddlebag.”

The lush lips worked up a smirk. “You don’t hardly seem like the type to kill a man with a blade.”

He grinned at her. “Yeah? And what was a nice girl like you doin’ working in the Victory?”

She smiled wider, moving her beauty mark up. “Fair point. But you might still attract attention. I have a better idea. First I’ll go down there. Ride in and see what they’re up to.”

He was already shaking his head. “That’s a terrible notion. They might well figure you headed out this way to warn me or, worse, the Cullens. What about falling out with Gauge?”

“Oh, I can still talk my way in. I’ll just say Harry made me mad when he hit me, and I rode off, like women in a tizzy are known to.” Her tone was arch now. “And how now I’m rushing to his side to make it up to him.”

“He won’t buy it, Lola.”

Now she looked away from him. “That isn’t all I’m going to tell him. He doesn’t know about Rhomer the other night. How Vint tried to take me, and roughed me up trying.”

“But if you and Gauge are really over...”

She shook her head. “Harry doesn’t like anybody moving in on his property... even if it’s ‘property’ he’s grown tired of.”

“And, you’ll what? Get them to fighting?”

She shrugged. “Well, there isn’t any other way, is there? If they’re distracted inside, you can do what you need to outside. It won’t be long before that stage arrives, and then where will you be?”

“No. Lola, no...”

She got up and scurried toward the little nearby cluster of bushes where they’d left their two horses. He followed her, protesting, but she kept batting it away.

“When you see me go in there,” she said, ready to place boot in stirrup and mount, “you can make your move.”

“You don’t need to do this.”

A lovely smile blossomed. “What, and stay up here and watch you go to work with a knife? Don’t you know I’m squeamish?”

She kissed him on the mouth lightly, turning toward her horse, and he swung her around by the arms and returned the kiss, only harder, with the kind of passion they’d briefly ignited the one afternoon they’d spent together.

Then they stood near each other, catching their breath.

Finally she said, “Thanks, stranger.” Something melancholy swam in her eyes. “Even though I know who your kisses really are for. But maybe she won’t miss just that one.”

And she mounted and rode off.

Back on the rutted road to Brentwood Junction — as the juncture of this and the one to Las Vegas was called — Lola passed by a hill from behind which a figure on horseback rode out to fall in alongside her.

Gauge’s man Cole Colton, in his oversized sugar-loaf sombrero, gave her a sideways glance and a lazy, thin-mustached grin. “Afternoon, Lola.”

“Somethin’ I can do for you, Cole?”

“Nope.” He nodded toward the relay station. “You’re doin’ fine. Just keep on ridin’.”

Maybe she couldn’t do anything for him, but Colton had done something for her — he’d left his post and made it easier for the stranger to work his way down to the relay station’s buildings.

They rode in past the posted guards — barn and corral — as well as the fallen Gauge underling, Watters, who’d apparently been killed when Old Man Cullen’s buggy rolled in and got waylaid. But she didn’t ask. Another guard was walking the grounds, rifle over his arm. They had all been part of the outlaw bunch that Gauge headed up in the old days — “deputies” now.

She and Colton hitched their horses by the buggy outside the modest building with its saloon-style batwing doors. She’d been there before and knew what to expect — short bar to the left, open area straight ahead, dining tables at right. Tucked back behind the bar was an excuse for a kitchen. This low-ceilinged way station was unpainted and functional, and might be called “rustic,” if you were generous of spirit.

What greeted her within, however, was an unexpected, unnerving tableau.

She was barely inside, Colton close behind her, when she froze at the sight of a slumped George Cullen on the floor, shoved up against a table and chairs, his legs out in front of him, upper right thigh soaked scarlet, his face battered and swollen, clothes badly mussed, the unseeing eyes puffed near shut, his thinning white hair a tangle. To one side of him a man appeared to be resting his head in Cullen’s lap. But this was the shot-up corpse of a ranch hand, whose hair his employer stroked like a slumbering cat. Soothing the dead man, whose torso was riddled with bullets.

Leaning against the bar, with a bottle of whiskey between them on the counter, were a bug-eyed, shaggy-mustached Clovis Maxwell and a grinning, redheaded Rhomer, blood spattered on his buckskin vest and his gray shirt, too, where his deputy badge was pinned as if in defiance. Both were laughing and loose in that drunken way that led so easily to violence among this breed. Each had his hat pushed back on his head and his revolver tied down and slung low on his hip.

No sign of a bartender or whoever ran the way station. Was he or any helper dead in the kitchen? Tied up or huddled there? Or had they been run off? Who knew?

“Well, now!” Rhomer said, yellow teeth peeking out of bristly red. “The lovely Lola! What an honor! Such a fine lady. Might I tempt you with a libation?”

He said this while sloshing more whiskey into his own glass.

She stepped deeper into the grubby space, dirty floor whining under her boots. Pools of clotting blood were here and there, like some terrible dish had been spilled on its way to the dining tables.

She met Rhomer’s sneering gaze with a blank one. Kept her tone business-like. “Where’s Harry?”

The deputy gestured with his glass toward the outside, spilling a little. “He went on up the road to meet the stage. Y’see, when we seen you ridin’ off, we figured maybe you heard us talkin’ about comin’ out here to greet the buyers. Well, Gauge didn’t want to take no chances... She come alone, Cole?”

Colton nodded. “Yep. All by her lonesome.”

Drink still in his right hand, Rhomer curled the forefinger of his left, wiggling it, as if summoning a child. “Come here, lovely Lola. Have that drink.”

She just looked at him.

“Come on, darlin’. I won’t bite. Have a drink.”

Not caring to rile him, she came over slowly. “No thanks. I’ll wait for Harry and have one then.”

“No. Have it now.”

He splashed the drink in her face.

The whiskey burning her eyes, she barely saw the hand that came around to slap her, viciously. She went down on her knees, the flooring crying out when she didn’t.

Eyes wild, he loomed over her. “What did you do, Lola? Ride out and try to find the others to warn ’em? But you couldn’t, could you? They’s all out on the range. You know, honey — ‘where the deer and the antelope play’?”

He slapped her again and her mouth filled with the coppery taste of blood.

Hovering over her, he said, “No, it’s just you and me now, honey. Not even Harry’s around to have an opinion.”

“Keep... keep away from me.”

“I don’t think I will. See, if I see somethin’ in the street that somebody tossed away, like it was garbage? Sometimes I think I can still see some use in that somethin’.”

“Harry will kill you.”

Rhomer shook his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he gives a diddle-doodle damn about you, no more, sweet thing. And, anyway, like I said — Harry ain’t here.”

She tried to kick him between the legs, but he blocked it, and came in and began to beat her with his fists. The blows and pain that followed seemed to come from everywhere. She began to reel from it, and soon was praying for unconsciousness.

“No, no, no... now don’t you go to sleep, honey. Daddy’s not through tucking you in yet.”

Not far away, from where he slumped, Cullen cried out, “What are you doing to her? Leave her alone, you miserable bastard! If I could see, I’d... I’d...”

“Who knows?” Rhomer cackled, taking off his gun belt and tossing it on the bar. “You might just enjoy what you’d see, old man. Might bring back memories.”

The old man’s voice was a whisper, but a whisper with spine in it. “Leave her alone. If you are any kind of man, Rhomer... leave her alone.”

“Sorry, no can do. But along them lines, Mr. Cullen, sir, I’m about to show this ravin’ beauty what kind of man I am. But first I got to... kind of pound on her a mite more. You know, like when you’re making a tough piece of beef more tender?”

He leaned down and hit her, again and again. She became groggy with pain, then began to grow numb from it and to it. Then he rose and began to unbutton his pants.

Colton was grinning wetly, eyes bright. “Give it to her, Rhomer!”

Maxwell was next to him, buggy eyes even bigger than usual. He said nothing, but was licking his lips.

Rhomer frowned at them, as if he’d forgotten they were there; maybe he had. “Get the hell out, you two. Nobody needs to be lookin’ at me but that blind man, okay? Anyway, you birds go out there and get that body buried, before the stage rolls in. Plant it out back.”

“Awww,” they said as one, and went sullenly out through the swinging doors.

Then Rhomer grinned down at her. “Bet you wish you was dead about now.”

“So... so much,” she said.

“You know what they say — ‘if wishes was horses, beggars would ride.’ ”

And he began ripping at her clothes.

The guard on the barn was heavyset but sturdy, tall, clean-shaven, in a tan Stetson and a black shirt with denims tucked in tooled boots. He stood with his hand on the butt of a Colt dragoon revolver, alert, not missing a thing passing in front of him.

But he didn’t see — or hear for that matter — Caleb York enter through the barn’s rear doors and come up behind him, where the guard stood with his back to the front ones. York pulled him quickly inside, nudging the doors shut again with a foot, then he drew the Bowie blade across the man’s throat, sending a stream of blood across barnwood.

From experience York knew the blood would spray forward, so it was no surprise that there wasn’t a drop of the stuff on the tan Stetson that he borrowed from the dead man, tossing his own aside.

York had been lucky — the guard on the barn was the easiest to come up behind, and on top of that wore a black shirt and bore a superficial resemblance to the man who’d just killed him — clean-shaven, tall, a revolver low on his right hip. Everything but the pearl buttons and gray collar and cuff trim.

In the tan Stetson now — leaving his shotgun behind, too, since the guard hadn’t been holding one — he eased over to the corral and the man posted there. This guard was short but burly, wearing typical cowhand garb down to the leather chaps, and cradling a double-barreled shotgun — a twelve-gauge, like York’s own back in the barn.

That might prove lucky as well, since the cartridges in his pocket would work in that weapon as well.

Strolling over to the cowboy, York kept his head slightly lowered — the resemblance didn’t carry that far — and the man asked, “What is it, Sam? Somethin’ up?”

York raised a forefinger of his left hand as if to say, “Just a minute,” and when he got close enough, put that left over the guard’s mouth as with his right he shoved the Bowie deep into the man’s belly. Stepping slightly to one side, York made a circular motion with the inserted blade, opening him up, then let the dead man fall onto what had emptied out of him.

York started dragging the gutted figure on its belly by the elbows to hide him behind a nearby trough, leaving a snail-like trail.

When the final watchdog, the one who roamed, came around from in back of the relay station building, he saw York, who was only halfway to the trough with his cargo. With much of the relay station frontage between them, the man contorted his face as he raised his Winchester, taking aim.

But York’s swift sideways throw of the Bowie caught the guard in the chest and rocked him back, rifle fumbling from his fingers and clunking to the ground. Still on his feet, the guard wavered, his mouth dropping open and his eyes popping wide, though he had nothing to say and nothing to see. He fell backward with the knife extended from him like a handle.

York moved quickly to him, not running, because the hard-packed earth of the apron where stages pulled up might give heavy footfall away. He removed the knife and dragged the body behind some barrels, leaving it there. Then — hearing conversation and something else... digging? — he crept around the near side of the weathered gray building, keeping low, knife in his fist.

Plastering his back to the sidewall, he peeked around and saw two men, each with a shovel, digging a grave. The ground appeared fairly hard and they were only two feet down or so. Nearby, on its back like a drunk after a very hard night, lay the corpse of one of their own — identified by Lola as Watters.

York considered: Two at once with a knife? Both men with tied-down sidearms?

How could he manage that?

Maybe he should go back for one of the shotguns, either his own in the barn or the dead guard’s at the corral. While he tried to come up with something, they made the hole a little deeper and one of the men, a bug-eyed character in a low-crowned plainsman hat, threw his shovel down.

“You finish it, Colton. I’m headin’ back inside. I am dry as this damn hole.”

“Better stay put, Maxwell,” the other one advised, his smallness emphasized by his absurdly wide-brimmed sugar-loaf sombrero. “The show in there might not be over yet, and Vint don’t seem to want no audience.”

York did not like the sound of that.

“That’s his problem,” Maxwell said, and threw down his shovel with a clang. “I need a drink.”

York tensed, but Maxwell headed back around the other way. That meant, coming around front of the building, the ex-shoveler might notice that neither the barn nor the corral guard was at his post.

Well, York thought, one knife per one man has been working just fine...

But the bug-eyed gunman didn’t notice, moving quickly, heading through the batwing doors, single-minded in pursuit of that drink.

York went back to where the other shoveler, Colton, was still at work, his sombrero off now. The man was muttering to himself, pausing to wipe sweat from his brow with the back of a hand. Then he got back to digging.

Knife in hand, York slipped up behind the digger, who was still down in the hole — maybe three feet deep now — but Colton, pausing in his work, sensed something and whipped around, swinging the shovel. York jumped back, dirt flying, the shovel missing him but knocking into the blade and jarring the Bowie from his grasp. The big knife tumbled away and the man swung the shovel again.

But York caught it by the handle, jerked it from the man’s grasp, and swung it himself, like a bat, with the back of the shovel smashing the man’s face in, snapping teeth like brittle twigs and jamming the bones of the digger’s nose up into his brain. The little man’s close-set eyes rolled up with mostly white showing as two blood trails trickled out and curved left and right, making his mustache red, and he flopped backward into the hole he’d dug.

A perfect fit.

York leaned in to make sure the digger wasn’t breathing — he wasn’t — then dumped the shovel in with the more recent corpse before tossing the sombrero over the hideous crushed-in thing that had been a face.

Clovis Maxwell came in through the batwing doors and what he saw tightened his belly. He had seen much and laughed at things that sickened most men. Yet this turned his stomach.

The dance-hall woman, Lola, was on the floor, sobbing, her clothing torn, tattered, bloody. Her face was a mess, bruised and bleeding, eyes swollen, hair an awful witch’s tangle.

Breathing hard, Rhomer was standing over her, tucking his shirt into his pants. She was crawling away from him, apparently trying to get to the end of the bar, maybe so she could get back behind there like the wounded animal she was and die in peace.

Rhomer, a cheek scratched and trickling red, grinned over at him. “You did miss a good show, Clovis boy.”

Maxwell made a face. “I wasn’t invited, remember? Hell, looks like you didn’t leave much for me.”

He barked a laugh. “That’s more than what’s gonna be left of Cullen here, if he don’t come to his senses.”

Rhomer stepped over the broken, crawling creature that Lola had become and approached Cullen, slumped on the floor, the dead ranch hand’s head still in his lap. The old man looked dazed, his unseeing face masked in horror.

Rhomer said, “Too bad you can’t see the lovely Lola, Cullen. Then you’d know for sure what’ll happen to you unless you sign them cows over to us.”

The blind man tried to talk, but it took several tries before he got out, “It... it wouldn’t do you a damn bit of good, anyway.”

Frowning, Maxwell asked, “What’s the old man mean by that, Rhomer?”

“No idea,” Rhomer admitted. The front of his gray shirt was splotched with the woman’s blood.

From the floor, Cullen said in defiance, “Every one of my stock, every inch of my land, is in my daughter’s name. You lousy, filthy piece of scum... you and Harry Gauge and the rest won’t get one damn head of it.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that, old man.”

From the batwing doors came: “What odds would you give me, Rhomer?”

York pushed through, shotgun barrels first — weapon on loan from the late corral guard.

Rhomer lurched toward his holstered gun where it, in its belt, lay on the bar. Maxwell, standing near York’s end of the bar, had his hand on his gun, half-drawing it, when the man with the shotgun again spoke.

“Got a barrel for each of you fellas,” he said, “and I won’t even have to aim much.”

Both men turned into statues, then each man’s eyes went to the other’s, and instinctively both sent their gaze past York to the world outside.

York shook his head, letting them stare into the twin black eyes of the shotgun — eyes that stared right back at them. “Nobody out there to come to your rescue, boys. Just a whole lot of dead men. You’re gonna want to put ’em up now.”

Rhomer, scratched face still bleeding, let out a deep sigh and his eyelids went to half-mast as his hands went up all the way. Maxwell already had hands raised.

Keeping his eyes on both men, York angled over to Cullen sitting on the floor, cradling the head of a dead friend in his lap. The old man’s upper leg was soaked red.

“How bad?” York asked him, half-kneeling.

“Not bad. Think the bleeding’s stopped.” The sightless man stroked the dead man’s hair. “Lou caught a bad one, though.” Then the milky eyes widened. “What about my daughter...? Is Willa all right?”

“Should be fine,” York said. “She’s with your men out looking for the herd.”

Cullen sighed in relief. Then he nodded toward something he couldn’t see, but where his blind man’s well-tuned hearing told him it was.

“You need to help her,” the rancher said, pointing.

Back there, tucked between the end of the bar and the wall, lay what had once been a beautiful woman. She was breathing, heavy and irregular, but nothing else indicated she might be alive. Her clothing was torn, ripped to tatters, and her flesh was patched purple with bruising, her face a mass of welts and cuts and swollen tissue, her eyes all but disappearing into puffy bulges slitted only ever so slightly. Her right arm hung at an impossible angle, loose as a broken shutter.

He went to her.

In his concern, he did not see Rhomer and Maxwell exchange glances, getting ready to find their moment...

He asked, “Rhomer do this to you?”

She managed a nod.

York stood, startling the two men, ending whatever impromptu move they might have been planning. He pointed the shotgun at Rhomer, who stood perhaps eight feet away. Maxwell was several feet beyond and to Rhomer’s left. Not far from the doors.

Gesturing with the shotgun, York indicated the gun belt on the bar. Rhomer narrowed his eyes, as if to say, You mean... get it? Put it on?

And York nodded.

The deputy had to think about that for a moment, but then, very slowly, he did it. Right down to strapping down the holster to his leg.

“Back up a little,” York said casually, still training the shotgun on him.

Rhomer did so, hand hovering over the holstered .44.

York bent at the knees, set the shotgun down, and rose, his hand above the butt of his .44. He and Rhomer were now facing each other in classic showdown stance.

Drunk enough not to be afraid, Rhomer grinned and said, “Before we end this, mister... who the hell are you, anyway?”

“The man who’s going to kill you,” York said.

Rhomer’s hand was on the butt of the .44, but the weapon was only an inch out of its holster when the sound of another .44 filled the small room like cannon fire, shaking glass, rattling chairs.

The deputy rocked on his feet, trying to maintain his balance, then glanced down and looked at the hole in his badge and the stream of red trickling out and down.

“Hell,” he said.

Then he collapsed in a pile.

“And welcome to it,” York said.

Maxwell had his hands up. “Don’t shoot! I didn’t touch her! I swear!”

“Toss the gun to one side — gentle. Don’t want it going off.”

Maxwell complied.

“Now get on the floor. Like you’re taking a nap. Do it.”

Maxwell did it.

“Stay right there.”

Cowering, Maxwell nodded his head.

Gun in hand, York returned to Lola, knelt near her. “How bad is it?”

Her mouth made something awful that might be a smile. “Can’t... can’t you see?”

“What I see might could heal. How bad?”

Tiny head shake. “All bad, stranger. He’s killed me. I’m torn up inside.”

He started to rise. “I’ll get the doctor.”

She reached for his arm, gripped as best she could, bringing him back down. “Don’t... don’t bother. It’s too late. I... I can feel it.”

That was when Harry Gauge burst in, grinning big, the barrel of his .44 dimpling the neck of a terrified Willa Cullen.