“I seen ya go in there,” Tulley said in the good-natured rasp that was what was left of a voice ravaged by years of smoke and drink. “You don’t think I’d let ya leave town without an adios, do you, Sheriff?”
The unlikely friendship between the two men had grown out of Tulley befriending the stranger who’d ridden into town and into the middle of nasty doings.
“I’m not the sheriff anymore,” York reminded him.
“And a damn shame! Damn shame all around. You had a good thing goin’ in this here hamlet, Sheriff. Good pay, respect, folks looked up to ye... and then there’s that yellow-haired gal. You know when ol’ Cullen finally up and croaks, that ranch’ll be hers. You do know what you’re walkin’ out on, don’t you?”
“I know, Tulley.”
“And friends like Jonathan R. Tulley don’t grow on trees neither, you know.”
“I suppose not.”
Tulley’s face clenched like a fist. “Then to hell with you, Caleb York. I may jus’ go back to drinkin’, jus’ find me a bottle and crawl back in, and whose fault will it be?”
“Mine?”
“Yours! Your and yours alone. So to hell with you, you selfish son of a bitch.”
Then Tulley gave York a big, startling hug, and almost ran back to the stable. He might have been crying.
York was laughing, gently. Who’d ever have thought that that old reprobate would be one of the things he’d miss most about Trinidad?
He walked back to the hotel where he checked out and left his packed carpetbag with Wilson, the weak-chinned, pince-nez-sporting clerk who’d given him a register to sign, all those months ago. The .44 in its holster with cartridge-laden gun belt was tucked in the bag, right on top. No need for a weapon on his hip, riding on a stage or a train, not in these times. Why not be comfortable?
At eleven A.M., the hotel dining room, with its dark wood, fancy chairs, and linen tablecloths, was all but empty. A pair of business types were having a late breakfast of bacon and eggs, and a young lovey-dovey couple just passing through were having an early lunch of oyster stew, a specialty of the Trinidad House Hotel.
Willa was seated by the window, a vision in a mote-floating shaft of soft sunlight, looking not at all the tomboy or cowgirl, but the lovely young woman she was. No plaid shirt or Levi’s today — she was in that navy-and-white calico dress that he liked so well on her. Nothing fancy, just a simple, feminine frock. That yellow hair was piled high with little curls decorating her smooth forehead.
Nothing of last night’s girl holding back tears and anger could be seen in today’s self-composed young woman. She even smiled when she saw him enter the dining room. He left his hat on a hook near the entry and joined her.
“Thank you, Willa,” he said.
“For...?”
“For meeting me. For seeing me off. I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
Her smile was a pursed thing, like a kiss she was about to throw. “Neither was I. But I felt I should apologize for my behavior last night.”
“Nothing to apologize about.”
She shook her head and all that glorious hair moved a little. “You never lied to me. You made it clear you would be leaving one day. One day soon. I had no right to think otherwise.”
“Willa, this frontier life... it’s going to be over one of these days. And I want something else. I haven’t asked you to come with me because I knew you wouldn’t.”
Her eyebrows rose. “That’s a little presumptuous, isn’t it?”
“No. I know you’re going to stick by your father. As well you should. Long as he’s alive, and the Bar-O is chugging along, you need to be at his side. Perhaps some day, after he’s gone... perhaps you’ll decide running a ranch isn’t for you.”
Her eyebrows were back down, but the eyes themselves were half-lidded. “What else might I do with my life, Caleb?”
“You could join me in San Diego.”
“Why — is there another position open with the Pinkertons?”
She was teasing him, but in a way that said, behind her adult attitude, the angry child still lurked.
“There’s an opening for you, all right. As my wife.”
A tiny laugh. “You’re proposing marriage, minutes before boarding the stage out of town?”
He nodded. “I’m not offering you a ring. I’m not asking for a commitment. You are free to live your life.”
She flushed a little. “Well, that’s very generous of you, Caleb.”
He reached across the table and touched her hand. That she did not draw it away from his was a relief.
“Sweetheart,” he said, “if your feeling for me cools, if someone comes along who fits better into your life... is the right kind of man to run the Bar-O with you... I would never stand in your way.”
She laughed just a little. Her eyes were sad but not tearing. “You have a peculiar way of telling a girl you love her, Caleb York.”
“Well, I do, Willa. But the time has to be right. And the situation has to suit us both. Or we’ll just be another one of these unhappy couples, hitched to each other like mules to a buckboard.”
“No one sweet-talks like you, Caleb.”
He shook his head. “I just can’t ask you to wait for me. I won’t be coming back to Trinidad.”
“Not even to visit?”
“Well... maybe then. And maybe you could take a trip to San Diego on occasion. Very beautiful. Lots of ocean. Will you write me, Willa?”
“Will you write me?”
“Sure. With my well-known line of sweet talk.”
They were smiling at each other now.
So they ordered lunch, both having the oyster stew — amazing what the cook back there could do with tins of those things — and Willa took tea, York coffee. They chatted, mostly about Willa’s plans for the ranch. The buyers had paid well for the herd last spring and things were looking up.
“I’m a bit surprised,” she said, “that you’re leaving before Zachary Gauge gets to town.”
Zachary was Harry Gauge’s cousin, from somewhere back East, and word around Trinidad was that he’d inherited the late sheriff’s property. Much speculation had been bandied about as to the cousin’s intentions, since the sheriff had bought over half-a-dozen spreads in his efforts to secure the area’s cattle trade, and had owned half-interests in many of the town businesses.
York said, “I thought it best he and I not meet.”
“Because you’re the man who killed his cousin? Maybe he’ll shake your hand — you’re also the man who made him rich.”
“Not so rich,” York said.
The meal was done, dishes cleared, and they were on their respective second cups of tea and coffee.
“But he owns all of those spreads,” Willa said. “That Harry Gauge made a powerful big landgrab, after all.”
“Yeah, but the new owner will be cattle poor. The beeves were all destroyed, remember, because of the pox. And the business owners have hired a lawyer from Albuquerque to represent them in getting back control of their shops.”
“Could they do that?”
York sipped coffee, nodded. “Our late, unlamented sheriff was running an extortion scheme. The shopkeepers of Trinidad were coerced into partnerships and then bullied into repaying ‘loans’ for the money Harry Gauge put up. They have a good case.”
Willa sipped her tea, shrugged. “Well, any way you look at it, Zachary Gauge is going to own a lot of land. Control more of the range than the Bar-O and the remaining smaller spreads put together.”
“Let’s hope Zachary is a better man than his cousin.”
She sat forward. Nothing but earnestness colored her voice now. “Don’t you think you should stay, and find out? Wouldn’t it depress you terribly to learn everything you and I and Papa and everyone went through, last year, was for naught?”