“If it’s all right with you, Sheriff,” Murphy said, “I’d druther talk right here, with no chance of nobody over-hearin’.”
“Okay,” York said. He pointed to two chairs on the porch and Murphy took one, and York took the other. The chairs were side by side, and Murphy sat on the edge of his, turning toward the sheriff.
“You and me,” Murphy said, “any past hostilities is in the past, right?”
“That’s where past hostilities go.” He gave the edgy man an easy grin. “When push come to shove, Whit, you backed me up. I don’t forget that kind of thing.”
“Good. Because I could use a friend right about now. Particularly a friend with a badge.”
“Why so?”
Murphy took off his Texas-style Stetson and wiped his brow with the back of a wrist. While it was warmer today than yesterday, York figured the sweat wasn’t much related to the temperature.
“Come to think of it,” Murphy said, shaking his head, “it really ain’t me that needs a friend. It’s Miss Cullen.”
Now York turned sideways in his chair. This wasn’t just a bug up Murphy’s backside — it was something real. Something serious.
“What’s happened?” York asked.
“Nothin’ yet — not quite. But we’re right on the edge of the cliff lookin’ down, and the horse don’t like it one bit.”
“Less poetry, Whit. More fact.”
The foreman sighed, the big hat still in his hands, his dark hair as stringy and wet as if he’d been caught in a cloudburst.
“Sheriff,” he said, “first thing this morning, that Zachary Gauge character shows up at the ranch house. Well, shows up ain’t right. He was expected. That’s damn near the worst part. It was a meetin’ that Mr. Cullen agreed to, or maybe even set up hisself.”
“What kind of meeting?”
“A real damn official one. Zachary wasn’t alone. He had that lawyer, Arlen Curtis, with him. They had a passel of papers with them, and Mr. Cullen had rounded up a bunch of such items hisself. Deeds and titles and agreements. Miss Cullen was there — wearin’ a dress! — and everybody was all smiles. Like it was a... a occasion.”
“You saw them heading inside for this sit-down?”
York assumed this was something Murphy witnessed, while at the house on ranch business, on his way out to the herd and his cowboys.
But Murphy said, “No, sir, Mr. Cullen asked me to be there.”
York frowned, not quite following. “Were you participating in some way, Whit?”
“Yes. Oh, nobody wanted my opinion. That would be the last thing they’d want. They just wanted me there as a witness. The lawyer needed somebody that wasn’t either Mr. Cullen or Miss Cullen to sign them papers, too. Somebody who can read and write, and I fit the bill. So I sat there with them at that big table in the dining room.”
“And did you sign your name as a witness?”
His sigh had some relief in it. “No, sir. Miss Cullen said she was surprised by the... ‘extend of the documents.’”
“Extent of the documents?”
“Yeah. Could be that’s what she said. I guess she meant she didn’t expect them to be a stack of papers thicker than Ben-Hur. She wanted to read them over on her own.”
York shifted on the hard chair. “Do you think she had misgivings? This is all a little fast, isn’t it?”
Murphy shook his head, sweat flying. “Well, it’s goddamn fast, since you ask, but the Cullens sure didn’t. All they wanted out of me was my John Henry here and there, only turned out I didn’t have to give it yet. Lord knows I don’t want to.”
York tried again. “But was Willa... wary about this partnership, or whatever it is, that Zachary Gauge wants her and her father to sign up for?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t rightly know. She’s a smart gal and she don’t want to sign nothin’ that she ain’t read over good. That don’t make her suspicious.”
“Are you, Whit? Suspicious?”
“Where that Zachary Gauge is concerned? Damn right. That guy is a snake-oil salesman if ever I saw one. Ten to one he’s throwin’ dust. But I’ll give him this — he’s good at it. Slicker than a greased pig.”
“So when will they sign those papers?”
“Don’t know. Probably tomorrow.” Murphy sat forward so far, he practically fell onto the porch. “You got pull with Miss Cullen, York. You need to talk to her. She may listen to you. I tried. Didn’t get nowhere.”
York was shaking his head. “Whit, I’m afraid I don’t have much pull left with the young lady. But I’ll try. I will try.”
He extended his hand and Murphy shook it. “Thanks for the tip, Whit.”
“Don’t mention it, Sheriff. We both care about the girl. But I think she’s...” He swallowed thickly. “...think she’s under that city bastard’s spell.”
The foreman got to his feet, slung on his hat, and jangled off.
York walked down to the telegraph office, mulling what Murphy had said. What the foreman shared had only added to his own suspicions.
Inside the small office, which wasn’t much more than a counter, York filled out a form for a wire he’d intended to send even before Whit Murphy’s cautionary visit:
York handed the form to Ralph Parsons, the skinny, bespectacled operator behind the counter.
Skittish but friendly, Parsons said, “Thanks, Sheriff. You saved me a trip, stopping by — this just came in for you.”
The telegraph operator handed York a wire, which he read right there.
That meant the five outlaw brothers could be in Trinidad by this evening or early tomorrow.
York tucked the folded telegram in his breast pocket and gave the operator a two-bit tip. This pleasantly surprised Parsons, who rarely got a gratuity even when he delivered a wire, much less handed one across the counter.
But to Caleb York, the information in that particular wire was well worth paying for.
When he got back to the office, York found Tulley up and around, and making coffee. The sheriff had dispatched the erstwhile desert rat to patrol duty again last night, after which Tulley had settled in for forty winks or thereabouts on a cot in one of the cells. Sleeping in his clothes, recently store-bought though they were, gave the bearded, mussed-haired deputy a familiar disheveled look.
York got seated behind his desk and tossed the telegram casually on the desktop as Tulley delivered him a tin cup of coffee. The bandy-legged creature had learned one thing, at least, sleeping under a desert sky all those years — he made a damn decent cup of jamoka.
With company coming — even with York not knowing exactly when — cleaning and oiling his .44 seemed on the prudent side. He was seated doing that when Tulley stood across from him and demanded to know what was in the telegram. The reformed sot could not read, but he knew damn well that wires didn’t get sent “just for the merry hell of it.”
So York read it to him.
Going over the wire’s simple if disturbing contents in his mind, Tulley stumbled over to the scarred-up excuse for a table that was as close to a desk as he was likely ever to get, and plopped down. He sat brooding and sipping coffee.