And within a very few minutes, she found herself seated at the table in the very chair where the circuit court judge usually sat, with Mayor Hardy next to her, a gavel before him. He used it to bring the meeting to order, though that wasn’t necessary — the half-dozen men in chairs facing her in a semicircle sat as quiet as Sunday mid-sermon.
A wood-burning stove was to their backs, unlit, between them and the front two-thirds of the store, with its high shelved walls of goods, a pair of clerks doing their best to keep customers from being distracted by the important doings in back. Harmon wasn’t among the customers, so the cook must already be loaded up and waiting.
Everything seemed very formal at first, but then the well-groomed mayor turned to her and smiled. The big mustache seemed to be its own smile.
“We’d like to ask your help, Miss Cullen.”
How strange.
She said, “Anything within reason, Your Honor.”
“Uh, that designation isn’t necessary, my dear. I hope we’re all friends here. All good citizens of Trinidad.”
An edge of irritation made her shift in her wooden chair.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t live in Trinidad. I live on my father’s ranch, as you well know. But I consider Trinidad my home, in a way. We do business here. We have friends. What is it you need from the Cullens?”
Skinny, bug-eyed Clem Davis, the apothecary, chimed in, “Miss Cullen, as the mayor says, it’s your help we need. With... with Caleb York.”
Hardware-store owner Clarence Mathers, his elaborate mutton chops seeking to make up for a lack of hair on top, said, “Not meaning to speak out of turn, young lady, but it’s well-known around these parts that you carry a certain... influence... with Caleb York.”
She frowned. She did think he was speaking out of turn.
What did they want from her?
“What we’re trying to get at,” the mayor said, his smile nervous now beneath the grandiose handlebar mustache, “is that we hope you will try to convince Mr. York to stay on in Trinidad.”
She almost laughed, but managed to stifle it.
If they only knew...
“My dear,” the mayor was saying, “we would like Mr. York to take on the position of sheriff on more than a merely temporary or interim basis.”
“Right now,” their host, Harris, said, “he’s acting out of friendship and loyalty... and dare I say anger... in going after Ben Wade’s killer.”
“If anyone can succeed in doing that,” she said, “Caleb York is the man.”
“Oh, we know,” the mayor said. “It brings our little community honor and even prestige to have such a stalwart figure among us — a legend who has stepped right out of the pages of the history of the West to be tiny Trinidad’s representative of law and order.”
He might have been making a campaign speech.
“I don’t think,” Willa said, and now her smile came through, “that telling Caleb York he makes a good tourist attraction is the way to convince him to stay on.”
“Not our intention!” the mayor blurted. “Right now we need him, desperately, because... and this is not hyperbole, my dear... Trinidad’s very existence is at stake.”
Nods among the city fathers blossomed all round.
Willa was frowning. “How so?”
The men seated before her turned to the distinguished figure seated in their midst — the president of the First Bank of Trinidad, Thomas Carter.
“Miss Cullen,” he said, in a rich baritone that did not diminish the devastation his expression conveyed, “that wretched bandit today made off with almost all of the cash in our vault. It represents a sizeable portion of our institution’s worth, virtually everything but the building itself and, of course, what we’ve invested in our local businesses and the ranches around us.”
His fellow committee members were glumly shaking their heads.
Carter continued: “Frankly... and I would appreciate it if everyone here would keep this under their hats... it positions the bank at the brink of failure. It’s as if those blaggards had robbed each and every one of First Bank’s depositors at gunpoint.”
“The loss,” the mayor said, “could kill our community.”
The banker shook his head. “No, it will kill our community. There’s no coming back from this, short of a miracle. That money must be recovered.”
“Well,” Willa said, “I’m sure it’s Caleb’s intention to do just that. This isn’t merely a man seeking revenge for the death of a friend. Temporary or not, he takes that star on his chest most seriously.”
A collective sigh of relief went up.
“But,” she said, holding up a forefinger, “once that job is done, Caleb York will pack up that carpetbag of his and depart Trinidad. Of that I have little doubt.”
Apothecary Davis, who seemed to need one of his own calming powders about now, was half out of his chair. “You have to convince him, Miss Cullen! Use your feminine wiles, if needs must!”
This embarrassed everyone at the meeting, including (belatedly) Davis himself.
“Perhaps you should check at the Victory Saloon, Mr. Davis,” she said coolly. “I believe you can purchase, or least rent, feminine wiles at that establishment.”
“Apologies, ma’am,” Davis said, hanging his head now.
Calling her “ma’am” didn’t warm her to the man, either. But at least it hadn’t been “madam.”
The mayor said, “We have another concern, Miss Cullen, and surely it’s one that has occurred to you. Your mention of the Victory Saloon brings it to mind, in fact.”
She blinked at him. “It does?”
Hardy nodded.
How did that small face manage that large mustache?
He said, “We will soon have, among us, another of the Gauge clan... one Zachary, a cousin. From the East.”
“I’m aware of that,” she said. “We all are, aren’t we? There’s no reason to assume that Zachary will be the same kind of man as his late cousin. ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged.’ ”
Perhaps an ill-chosen remark, Willa thought, seated as she was in a chair often occupied by a circuit court judge.
“But he may well be of that same evil stripe,” Mathers said, shaking a finger worthy of a tent preacher. “And if he is, we face a day as dark as anything Sheriff Harry Gauge ever visited upon this town.”
The apothecary spoke up again, less excited now but no less sincere. “Every one of us, Miss Cullen... every one of us... was in business with Sheriff Gauge. We didn’t want to be...”
“You did at first,” she reminded them.
“True,” Harris put in. “True enough. But Harry Gauge was a swindler. And we will be pursuing the rightful ownership of our businesses through the courts. You may be aware we hired a legal man in Albuquerque. The thing is, law or not... if Zachary turns out to be his cousin incarnate, we might be bullied and battered into maintaining co-ownerships that were born out of extortion.”
She turned to the mayor. “Why do you mention the Victory Saloon?”
“Well,” the mayor said, choosing his words carefully, “you may recall that Harry Gauge co-owned that drinking and gambling emporium with one Lola Filley.”
Coldly she said, “Who died at the hands of Vint Rhomer, Gauge’s number two man.”
Killed by Caleb York.
“Yes,” Hardy said. “But that saloon is now wholly owned and operated by her younger sister, Rita Filley. Arrived here from Houston near a month ago. I inquired personally, and Miss Filley showed me the papers. Zachary Gauge has signed the place over to her.”