“Bank robber surely. Thanks, Irwin.”
“Don’t mention it, Sheriff.”
“Irwin?”
“Yes, Sheriff?”
“If you sold him a horse, say so now.”
The hands came up, in dirty-palmed surrender. “I didn’t, Sheriff! God is my witness! You can ask Maria. I don’t own them horses, the stage company does.”
A man not owning a horse didn’t mean he hadn’t sold it; but York didn’t press the matter.
“Do they wear a brand, the stage company’s horses?”
Nodding emphatically, the bartender said, “They do — BC. Bain Company.”
York nodded toward the outside. “Those horses out there. Any of them fresh?”
“Team of four left by the stagecoach, anything but. The rest are daisies, Sheriff. If he unbeknownst swapped me for one, he’d have took one of them fresh ones. If he’s smart at all.”
“He’s that smart, anyway. Thanks, Irwin.”
But before he left, York held up a hand to keep the bartender back and silent, and slipped into the kitchen, gun in hand, where Maria, big breasts overflowing her peasant dress, was at the stove stirring something that smelled like a brush fire. She grinned at him, the gun not bothering her.
“You stay, señor? You stay and eat?”
“No thanks, Maria. Next time.”
York holstered his weapon and rejoined the bartender. Dry from the ride, he took time for a beer, paying with a quarter, letting Irwin keep the change of a dime.
Outside, in the dusty courtyard between the main building and the corral, York stood with hands on hips surveying the world and his options.
With a crossroads like Brentwood Junction, there was no way to know which direction his man had gone, dust currently stirred in all four possibilities — the best of which might be Las Vegas, New Mexico, a forty-mile ride. With a train in Las Vegas, York’s quarry could be long gone real soon.
He shook his head and sighed, then walked to his horse, not as ridden-out as the bandit’s but foam-flecked just the same, meaning it had been overworked. He went to the water trough, found a sponge, and took time to cool the steed down.
In fifteen minutes, man and beast were back on the rutted road, at an easy pace, heading in the direction of town.
Not all was lost. He had three ways to track the bandit now — the man was dark-haired, in his thirties, about five foot ten inches tall, with a rough beard and a scar cutting vertically through his lips; he was riding a stolen horse with a Bain stage company brand; and he had a lot of cash, which he’d likely start spending like payday at the end of a cattle drive. That smart he probably wasn’t.
The scar was likely the best lead. The horse might be got rid of, and the bastard could always shave. And maybe he would know enough not to start throwing money around too damn free.
Maybe.
What York had in mind for tracking the bank robber was not a manhunt in the mountains, nor was it riding hard to Ellis and Las Vegas and every town in the territory, till his gelding dropped dead.
People thought of him as a gunfighter, and he supposed that wasn’t wrong, but Caleb York viewed himself first and foremost as a detective. He had been a Wells Fargo agent long enough to know damn well that actual investigative work wasn’t exciting or glamorous.
The citizens of Trinidad expected blazing guns from him, and things might well come to that; but his weapon right now was the telegraph. He would get back to town to the Western Union office and fire off not rounds from his guns, rather telegrams to every lawman in the territory, with the particulars, from scarred lip to big spending.
But he had a hunch to play first. He didn’t like losing the time, but he felt the risk was worth it.
The trail that veered off to the Circle G was so narrow and rough as to make the rutted main road seem a generous ribbon of silk. The land it cut through began unpromisingly — clumped bunch grass, spiny shrubs, assorted cacti — and seemed just another stretch of desert pretending it was worth living on.
But things began to green up after a mile or so, and by the time York rode under the squared-off, fence-post gateway — a G in a circle burned in the wood overhang — his eyes were filled by a luxuriant stand of looming evergreens that lent an unlikely rustic charm to the scattering of frame structures (barn, bunkhouse, water tower, ranch house) that nestled in and around the firs. Their abundance was thanks to a nearby stream, an offshoot of the Purgatory River, which more than anything made this property desirable.
The ranch had but a single corral, though a good size one of rough-hewn fencing that looked slapped together but did the job. Within was a herd of wild horses — he counted thirteen — and four cowhands in battered hats, neck-knotted kerchiefs, and chaps over denims, trying to get a handle on their reluctant guests. Three more cowboys were on the other side of the fence, observing and offering suggestions and spitting tobacco and laughing.
The horses were running in a circle, mocking their would-be masters, two of whom had roped the same chestnut mustang and were doing everything they could to stay on their feet. Dust hung as heavy as forest-fire smoke, and the cowhands yelling at the horses and each other were all but drowned out by whinnying and neighing and pounding hooves.
Not wanting the gelding to get excitable due to all this equine activity — not that the animal had enough pep left to do anything about it — York guided it to the hitching post outside the ranch house. He twirled the reins around the post.
Somebody called out, “York!”
His back was to whoever had yelled. With a private smile, he plucked the sheriff’s badge off his shirt and slipped it in his pants pocket.
Through the smoky fog that the horses were raising came one of the cowboys who’d been leaning against the fence on the safe side, giving pointers to those in the thick of it.
York didn’t meet the man halfway — why get nearer to all that stirred dust? — and just waited until the figure became clear.
The Circle G’s ramrod, Gil Willart, an average-size man with an above-average-size mustache, was heading over to him. The man wore a shapeless cowpuncher’s hat with not much brim, dusty chaps over Levi’s, and a brown silk shirt of the weave that kept the wind out or tried to. His eyes were green, his face oval, his skin leathery, his expression suspicious.
“Somethin’ I can do for you, York?” It was a mid-range voice as rough as barnwood, with a speech impediment caused by a cheekful of chaw.
“What say we go inside,” York said pleasantly, “where we don’t have to swallow dirt? Or listen to those fools tryin’ to be cowboys?”
Willart thought about it, then shook his head. “No, out here’ll have to do. We’re keepin’ the house spick-and-span for the new owner. Be here any day, y’know.”
York nodded in the opposite direction of the corral. “Then let’s take a walk.”
Willart thought about that, too, then shrugged.
“Why not?” the ramrod said, and chewed tobacco as he fell in alongside his visitor.
They wound up near the water tower. A wooden bench gave them a place to sit. Now the noise of the men and horses was just far enough away to talk over.
“Quite a bunch of mustangs,” York said.
“You come to jaw or is there a point?”
“Be nice, Gil. You owe me.”
Willart turned his head and spat a foul brown stream. “Don’t recall that I do.”
York gave him an easygoing grin. “After your old boss stopped breathing, and I wore a badge for a time? I could have rounded up a posse and run all of you Gauge boys out of New Mexico.”
He grunted something like a laugh. “You didn’t have nothin’ on us.”
York turned over a hand. “Maybe not. But getting something wouldn’t have been hard. All I needed was a couple of hands willin’ to testify to save their skins. In that case, you would’ve got off easy, just gettin’ run out of the territory. You and your boys rustled cattle, Gil. You mixed poxed cows with healthy ones. You were one bad hombre, my friend.”