She thought about that. “Well, perhaps he’ll do the same with the rest of the Trinidad shopkeepers. That hardly seems an indication of ruthlessness.”
“I’m afraid,” Mathers said, “we don’t view it that way. The Gauge cousin could have shut down the place entirely. Instead he turns it over to... forgive me, child... yet another trollop. And perhaps remains a silent partner.”
“A town like Trinidad,” she said, “will always have a saloon. We’re lucky there’s only the one.”
Some frowned; others nodded.
She shrugged. “These do not seem like concerns that would sway Caleb York into staying. You should discuss all of this with him, of course, and that would be a better path to take than using me as a... conduit, shall we say?”
She rose.
So did all the men.
“Gentlemen, you need to do your own bidding. I can’t help you.”
Still on their feet, the men began to murmur among themselves, much as they’d done out in the street where blood met sand.
“However,” she said, speaking up, all eyes turning to her, “I can think of one possibility.”
Seven men, all at once, with some overlapping, said, “Yes?”
“Caleb York has been offered a position with Pinkerton, in San Diego,” she said in a matter-of-fact manner. “I would imagine many, perhaps all, of you know as much.”
Nodding, they returned to their chairs and listened.
“Well,” she said, “negotiate with the man. Ask him what they’re offering, and top it. He wants respectability. Assure him you are forward-looking, that Trinidad isn’t an outpost on the past, but the promise of tomorrow. They have telephones in Tombstone, did you know that? They say before long, we’ll have horseless carriages. Offer Caleb York a nice house in town, as opposed to that dreary hotel room you gave him. Make the job attractive to him. Use your... masculine wiles.”
The banker spoke up. “Miss Cullen, that will cost a small fortune!”
“If he brings back your money,” she said, “you’ll be able to afford it.”
And she nodded, bid the gentlemen good day, and took her leave.
Chapter Three
The sun rode high over the flat, dusty expanse beyond Trinidad, providing a nice warmth to take the edge off the day’s crisp coolness as Caleb York headed out the rutted narrow road, riding hard but holding back some. Five minutes out, just past the mesquite tree-shaded cemetery called Boot Hill, despite its scrubby flatness, he had to make way for the stagecoach that he would have been on, had things gone otherwise.
He had been following the dirty cloud the fleeing bandit on horseback raised, but once the coach passed, the larger dust storm trailing it obscured that signature.
Buttes in the distance glowed a burnt red, their cliff sides wearing black scars left by wind and rain. There was a chance York’s man was hiding in the mesa above those buttes, which offered up many a hiding place — boulder formations, gorges with caverns, winding arroyos. That no-man’s-land was nowhere York cared to search for this human rattler, not when so many nonhuman ones lurked as well.
Anyway, the bandit wouldn’t likely make that dangerous choice. A masked man need only get far enough away to change horses and maybe clothes and get all that money into a hiding place, whether a hole in the ground or a cast-iron safe. Every bank around had no-questions-asked deposit boxes. All York’s man had to do was get to Ellis or Las Vegas or any number of other towns in the neighboring area, and he was home free.
Even with the Concord Coach — stirred dust, York could still keep an eye out for smaller dust storms to the left and right, which would indicate the bandit had cut off the road and gone overland, for an as-the-crow-flies route to a town or perhaps a ranch where an accomplice waited.
But York saw no indication of this all the half-hour way to the crossroads of Brentwood Junction, the relay station where stages took on fresh horses while thirsty passengers had a drink and a bite of food.
He slowed the gelding to a trot, approaching the modest cluster of weathered gray buildings — barn, corral, main building. The animal clip-clopped slowly past the wooden-fenced enclosure, where one horse stood out among the ten milling there — a black mustang.
Three such sleek black steeds had waited outside the bank as their owners made an armed withdrawal.
And this mustang, still wearing a foamy coat, its head hanging, had been ridden good and damn hard.
The rest — three chestnuts and two bays — were Morgan horses, a breed suited to stagecoaches, muscular, but not sleek like the smaller, more agile mustangs.
York pulled back the reins and climbed down from his saddle, and hitched the gelding at a corral post, rather than the hitching post across the way, outside the main relay-station building. He withdrew his .44 and moved slowly toward the shabby structure. When he stepped up onto the shallow plank porch, he did so carefully, so as not to announce himself.
But when he went through the saloon-style batwing doors, he did so quickly, gun ready, fanning it around the low-ceilinged space, short bar at left, dining tables at right, the kind of unpainted, utilitarian premises you could get away with in this part of the world.
The only person in sight was a short, skinny, mustached bartender in a black bow tie and what had once been a white apron. His hands had gone up immediately upon York’s entrance, palms out, as if proving that they were clean. Which they weren’t.
Those hands didn’t stay up long, because the bartender — Irwin Fosler — recognized York as the sheriff of Trinidad.
York stepped inside and got a wall behind him. “You alone, Irwin?”
“Just me and Maria, Sheriff.”
Maria was Irwin’s plump Mexican wife, who peeked out from the kitchen in back of the bar and smiled and waved and disappeared.
York moved to the bar. “You had a lone rider.”
“I did. Maybe fifteen minutes ago. Twenty minutes after the stage took off.”
Hell, the bastard must have run his horse half to death.
“Did he pay you for a horse?”
“What? No.”
“Then he made a trade, Irwin, and it wasn’t a fair one. There’s a mustang out there among your Morgans. How long was he here, that you know of?”
“Minutes. He had a shot of red-eye and skedaddled.” Irwin frowned and leaned both hands on the bar. “Who was he, Sheriff?”
“A son of a bitch who robbed the First Bank of Trinidad and shot Ben Wade dead. What did he look like?”
The bartender’s eyes widened. “You’re lookin’ for him and you don’t know?”
“I know he was wearing a light blue work shirt and denims. But he also wore a mask. Anything distinctive under that mask?”
Irwin frowned in thought. “His nose was kind of on the flat side. Like it got busted more times than was helpful. He was unshaved, not like he was growin’ a beard, more just scruffy-like, and there was a white scar here...” The bartender pointed just past and below his nose and above his lip. “...ran all the way down to here.” He ran the finger down to just above his chin. “Knife, most probably.”
“How tall?”
“How tall are you, Sheriff?”
“Six-one.”
“Three inches shorter, maybe?”
“How heavy?”
“Slim. Wiry.”
“Dark or pale?”
“Pale. That boyo don’t work outdoors. But he was dark, far as his hair goes. And his eyes. They had a kind of sleepy look, come to think of it.”
“Anything else?”
“His gun. Wore it low on the hip. So low his hand brushed it. Gunslinger maybe?”