The Big Showdown is that sequel.
Again, picturing John Wayne as Caleb York is permitted but not required. I lean a little to Randolph Scott myself. Barb pictures Joel McCrea. And I bet Mickey wasn’t picturing Wayne, either.
He was likely seeing, in his mind’s eye, a guy named Spillane.
— Max Allan Collins
Chapter One
Caleb York was getting out of town on the noon stage. Despite his reputation as a deadly gunfighter, York was not being run out of Trinidad, New Mexico, by the sheriff. After all, until very recently, York had been the sheriff here himself, a position he’d held down for six months until a replacement could be found for the previous holder of that office.
It was the least York could do for the dusty little community, considering he’d killed the man.
Not that Sheriff Harry Gauge hadn’t needed killing — a petty tyrant seeking to become a cattle baron, a ruthless murderer that the West was well rid of. But removing Gauge from the Trinidad scene, on the heels of a cowpox epidemic, had left the town in something of a topsy-turvy mess. The Trinidad Citizens Committee had asked York to pick up Gauge’s badge, wipe the filth from it, and pin it on. At least for a while.
This York had done.
But now he’d found a suitable replacement in his old friend Ben Wade, who’d been a lawman in Kansas and Arizona, working alongside the likes of the Earp brothers and Bat Masterson. Even at fifty-some, Wade was twice the man of most anyone he was likely to come up against.
Right now York was walking down the boardwalk, its awning shading him from morning sun, mercilessly bright in a clear sky, though the temperature on this dry, lightly breezy September morning was around sixty degrees. He was on his way to the office that had been his till he turned it over to Wade last week.
Townspeople nodded at York, and he nodded back, casting smiles at the men, tipping his hat to the ladies. He was unaware that many of the latter turned to look at him as he passed, with wistful smiles and the occasional girlish giggle. Even from the older ones.
York indeed made a fine figure of a man, long of leg, broad of shoulder, firm of jaw, his hair reddish brown, his face clean-shaven, his features pleasant, rawboned, with washed-out blue eyes that peered out a permanent squint. He had settled easily into that vague space between thirty and forty when a man was at his best and, in the case of a Caleb York, his most dangerous. His Colt Single Action Army .44 rode his right thigh at pocket level, the holster tie loose and dangling; his spurs sang an easygoing, jingling song.
When he’d ridden into town last year, those who didn’t know how to look at a man saw only a dude, and York still dressed in a manner unlike either the cowhands of the surrounding ranches that Trinidad served, or the shopkeepers who did the serving. York considered his somewhat citified attire professional, and it reflected the time he’d spent in big cities like Denver and Tucson.
But even Trinidad’s few professional men — Doc Miller, the bankers, the lawyers — did not approach the sartorial flair of Caleb York, who wore black as did they, only with touches of style — gray trim on collars and cuffs, gray string tie, twin breast pockets, pearl buttons down his shirt, black cotton pants tucked into hand-tooled black boots, curl-brimmed black hat with cavalry pinch, gray kerchief knotted at the neck.
But ever since Caleb York had gunned down Gauge and half a dozen of his hardcase deputies, no one in Trinidad had called him “dude.”
If pressed, he’d have admitted that he would miss this prospering little town of three hundred, and the surrounding ranchers and their families and hands who kept it thriving. Not that there was anything particularly special about the place.
One end of Main Street — the dust kept down by a layer of sand brought in from the nearby Purgatory River — was home to a white wooden church, the other end a bare-wood livery stable, steeple and high-peaked hayloft mirroring each other. Between them was a typical collection of businesses — hardware store, apothecary, barber, hotel with restaurant, telegraph, saloon, café — false-fronted clapboards and now and then a brick building, like the bank.
As he neared the livery stable, York felt a twinge — his black-maned, dappled gray gelding was in a stall within that homely structure. The blacksmith, Clem Wiggins, would sell the steed and wire the proceeds to him in San Diego. It might take a while, because the animal was worth a small fortune — less than five hundred would be horse theft. But even twice that couldn’t make up for the loss of a loyal steed like that.
He doubted he’d even need a horse in San Diego. That would likely be a city where you either walked or hopped an electric streetcar. Where the only horses you saw were attached to buggies or milk wagons. A different world, but a world he needed to learn to live in.
He was nearing the scarred, bullet-pocked adobe building that wore a high-up sign saying SHERIFF’S OFFICE AND JAIL. Across the way was a handful of smaller adobes, the homes and businesses of the town’s modest Mexican population. He took the few steps up to the wooden porch, sheltered by an awning, and knocked at the rough-wood door, a solid thing that could help make the office a fortress when need be.
“It’s open!” a deep voice boomed.
York went in and took off his hat.
The office was a plank-floored space with two barred windows onto the street, a wood-burning stove, and a rough-hewn table overseen by a wall of wanted posters and a rack of rifles. This was at left; at right was a big dark wooden desk with a chair behind it and a man in the chair.
Ben Wade was white-haired and white-mustached and wore his white flat-brim, Canadian-creased hat indoors as well as out, probably to hide where he was balding. Wade was a mite touchy about his age, since most gunfighters didn’t live as long as he had. The lawman had a well-fed look that replaced the leanness York had first known in him, when Wade was a deputy marshal in Dodge City.
Wade, in a light blue shirt and tan cowhide vest, was making a cigarette. “Find a chair, Caleb,” he said.
York pulled one up and sat down. “Nice to see a geezer like you with such a steady hand.”
The sheriff licked the paper, finished making the smoke, and fired it up with a kitchen match. Waved it out. “You’re not that young yourself, friend.”
“No. I’m not. That’s why I’m headed to the big town.”
Wade shuddered. “Exactly where I don’t want to be. Six years in Denver, working as a hotel house dick. You don’t want to know the horrors I seen.”
“Pay was good.”
“Costs plenty living in a big town. You’ll see. But your loss is my gain.”
York gestured toward a window. “It’s a decent little town, Ben. Your biggest worry is the handful of Gauge’s men who’re still out there. Gunnies pretendin’ they’re ranch hands.”
He nodded. “You told me such enough times that I’m startin’ to pay attention. But ex-gunnies have to make an honest living, too. Times have changed. Times are changing.”
“Not that much, Ben, not in Trinidad. Maybe over in Las Vegas, since the train come in. But this little town — could be twenty years ago, and you’d never know it.”
“Cowboys still get drunk on payday,” Ben said, with a deep chuckle and nod of agreement, “and kids who read too many dime novels will always try to play gunfighter. And die young like those who went before them.”
“Old gunfighters who hang on too long, they die, too. Don’t forget that, Ben.”
“Judas Priest, Caleb,” the sheriff said, letting out blue smoke, leaning forward. “You got in touch with me. You got sudden second thoughts about leavin’ this little slice of heaven? You tryin’ to talk me out of this job? You want this badge, son, you’ll have to rip it off my shirt. Because I am right where I want to be.”