She folded her arms. “I don’t have anything more to say.”
He gestured with open palms. “Then you’re not a guest. You are a prisoner.”
She grabbed the bars and tried to shake them. “Damn you, Caleb York! Your killer killed himself! Can’t you be satisfied with that?”
“I would have been,” he said, standing, getting ready to haul his chair away from here, “if Doc Miller hadn’t agreed with my diagnosis.”
“What diagnosis?”
He sauntered off. “Good night, Rita. Sleep well. Let us know if you need the privy. Or you can make use of that chamber pot.”
“What diagnosis?”
With a glance over his shoulder, he said, “That a man who shot himself in the head ought to have powder burns at the wound.”
York left her stewing there.
In the meantime, he needed to catch some sleep, across the street in that pueblo, where a pallet awaited him. Morning would come soon enough, and with it the Rhomers.
Chapter Fourteen
Caleb York slept well, considering.
Not that the pending showdown would have hampered his ability to get some rest, but throughout the late evening, there had been the pounding of nails as boards were hammered over store windows, in anticipation of flying bullets.
This practice harked back to the days of Sheriff Harry Gauge’s reign, when cowboys were allowed to tear up the town however they pleased, as long as they left their money at the Victory, which Gauge co-owned. The fearful preparation, all up and down Main Street, had lasted well past nine P.M.
After that, York slept, and slept soundly.
He’d had the pueblo hut to himself — three small rooms with a cooking area, some handmade furnishings, a couple of cots, and a trio of pallets, for the Gomez family who lived here. They had generously given their living quarters over to him, but even in the barrio, word of what was coming had got around. Where the Papa and Mama and three kiddies had spent the night was anybody’s guess.
Outside the hole in the wall that was a window, Trinidad had not yet woken up. York, who’d slept in his clothes with his holstered gun on a stubby chair nearby, stood and stretched and smoothed his black shirt and pants. He got into his boots and vest and slung on the .44 last, tying it down.
He usually woke around six and today seemed no exception. The eastern horizon would be blushing with rising sun soon if not already, and in half an hour, dawn would be here and, any time after that, so would the Rhomers.
The morning was cold, the wind stirring the dust in the barrio’s single hard-mud street. York used the nearest outhouse, moving through wandering chickens to get to and from; a few dogs were stirring, too. Some cooking smells drifted, stovepipe chimneys promising coffee and chorizo and eggs; the “mamacitas” were up, but the “pa-pacitos” likely still snoozed. Such a peaceful time of day in so peaceful a part of Trinidad.
Yet even here something was in the air besides cooking. Something tense. Eyes were on him. Women were murmuring. Even the animals sensed the stranger among them, and the danger he brought.
York crossed in the dark to the jailhouse, unlocked the front door and went inside. In the first cell, a slumbering Tulley was on the cot on his side, knees pulled up, looking like an ancient fetus. His snoring was gentle, compared to previously. The scattergun lay on the cell floor near him.
York picked the scattergun up, and Tulley didn’t stir. It occurred to the sheriff that his deputy did not have the reflexes of a coiled cougar. He kicked the side of the cot, gently, shaking the chains that held it to the wall, and shaking Tulley, too. The old boy’s eyes popped open and he jerked himself into a sitting position.
“Morning,” York said.
Tulley snatched the scattergun from York’s arms. “Is they here?”
“No. Sun won’t be up for another fifteen, twenty minutes. Go heat up what’s left of yesterday’s coffee.”
“It’ll be strong enough to tear the bark offen a pine tree.”
“Good.”
Tulley nodded, tasted his mouth, and creaked to his feet. York let him by, then exited the cell and walked to the end of the cell block, where Rita in blouse and jeans was sitting on her cot, bare feet on the floor, rubbing a hand on her face.
“Sorry if we woke you,” he said.
“If there’s coffee,” she said, “I’ll take it.”
“There will be, of a sort. And Tulley will walk you to the privy, if need be.”
“Thanks.”
A good distance separated them — him at the bars, her still seated on the cot against the far wall.
“Listen,” he said, “you’re gonna be alone here, real soon. I’m takin’ a position elsewhere and so is my deputy. You keep that derringer handy.”
She gestured vaguely. “Won’t all the fun be going on out on the street?”
“I don’t know where it’ll be going on. But somebody might take advantage of the commotion to come in here and deal with you.”
“ ‘Deal’ with me how? Deal with me why?”
“Maybe you’d like to tell me, Rita. Then I could unlock that cell and you’d have more options.”
She shook her head. “I have nothing more to say.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
Then she got quickly up and came over to the bars. She gripped a bar with one hand, reached the other hand out to touch his face. He hadn’t shaved.
“I do have something else to say,” she said. “Try not to get yourself killed.”
“See what I can do.”
She shook her head. “You must be crazy, facing down five men.”
He grinned at her. “Who said anything about facing them?”
She didn’t know what to make of that.
Tulley brought her a tin cup of coffee. She tasted it, then gulped the sip, and said, “Well. That’s an eye-opener.”
“Thank ye, ma’am. But it was a mite better yesterday.”
York took Tulley out into the office while their guest drank her coffee.
“You walk her to the privy,” York said, “then take your post at the livery.”
Tulley gave him a one-eye-open frown. “You seem shore they’s comin’ in that way.”
“I’m not sure of anything, Tulley. But that’s where the road from Las Vegas empties, and it’ll put the sun at their backs.”
Tulley made a twirly gesture with a forefinger. “They could fool ye and circle ’round and come in from the west end of Main.”
“They could, but then I’d have the sun to my back. They may know enough to not want that.”
“Iffen you say so.”
“Tulley, the Rhomers don’t know that I’m expectin’ them. I figure them to come at me head on.”
“If I was them,” Tulley said, squinting shrewdly, “I’d spread my men around town, in the streets and alleys feedin’ Main, a man or two in a winder prob’ly, and draw you out and cut you down.”
“That’s a good plan. But they aren’t as smart as you, Tulley.”
“They ain’t?”
“No. They have guns but lack brains. Anyway, I’m counting on that. That and their desire for revenge.”
“They’s gettin’ paid, remember.”
“I haven’t forgotten that. That’s the one reason we could get surprised this morning — if they view me as a payday and not somebody they want to kill nice and slow.”
York left Tulley to tend to their guest briefly before getting himself back to the livery, and his window onto Main.
As the sheriff walked toward the barrio, the lower third of the eastern sky glowed red-orange and bright yellow as if a distant fire was encroaching upon Trinidad.