“Positive of that, señorita?”
She swallowed and nodded again.
“Cesar,” York said, turning to the proprietor, who remained nearby. “You weren’t sure what happened. Are you sure now?”
The big mustachioed head bobbed up and down, then nodded toward the Preacherman. “It was as that one said — as fair a fight as ever I saw. As ever anyone saw.”
York’s grin came slow. “Well, that’s good to hear. But I’m afraid we’re going to have to close the cantina down for the night. Sorry for the loss of business, Cesar, but somebody’s gotta pay for this killing.”
Cesar shrugged. A man who ran this kind of place had known for a long time that life was not fair.
“You two,” York said, pointing at Hollis and Landrum, “stay put. Need a word. Join your friends, Mr. Trammel. You just leave the gun on the floor there. Everybody else, out!”
Tulley stepped outside, and one by one, the patrons piled through. Some went off on foot; others claimed their horses, though a few steeds remained, their owners upstairs with wenches. Others up there had probably fled at the gunshot.
Heading back inside again, Tulley and his double-barrel took their position in the doorway and watched as York strode casually over to the three seated men.
“Mr. Trammel,” York said pleasantly, “you seem to have a propensity for trouble.”
The bulgy eyes blinked. “A what-sity?”
“A bent toward gettin’ yourself in a fix. This is two incidents in one night. Now, it would appear there’s no one to stand against you in this shooting.”
“He drew on me!”
“So you say. Of course, his gun was in his holster, nice and snug. But he may have made a move. He may. Anyway, I know when I’m buffaloed. You’re walkin’ out of here a free man.”
Hollis said softly, “It was self-defense, Sheriff.”
“Yeah, I heard you the first time, back when you were directing the choral group in this place in the hymn you wanted sung. Here’s the thing. You want to hang around my quiet little town up to and till after the big poker game, fine and dandy. But none of you boys better so much as pass wind, or I’ll jail the lot of you. Or worse.”
Hollis said, “Is that a threat, Sheriff?”
“Call it a covenant, Preacherman. Now you and your brethren get the hell out of here.”
They departed.
York came over to Tulley and said, “Fine job, Deputy. Now go tell Doc Miller to bring a wicker basket for the body.”
Chapter Seven
Early morning sun fell on Willa Cullen’s pillow and, when she rolled into it, awoke her from a dream about Caleb York, which vanished, as if scurrying off in embarrassment. She slipped from the comfortable bed, her bare feet kissing the cool wood floor, and went to the dresser to pour water into a basin and wash up.
The bedroom had plenty of windows for sunshine to creep in around the red-and-cream-striped curtains, which were all that remained from her childhood here. Back when her late mother was in charge, this space had been all sweetness and light, ruffles and frills and light colors. What remained was a metal-post double bedstead with a faintly floral spread, a small corner dresser with a water pitcher and lavatory bowl, a hard chair to its left, and a framed desert picture hanging above the bed.
She traded her nightgown for a chemise with drawers, over which her jeans and a green plaid shirt fitted nicely, then — still barefoot — padded out into the kitchen to start breakfast.
Normally, by now, her father would be up and dressed and fixing his own coffee — his blindness had come on gradually enough that certain routines of daily life had carried over without strain. Such things gave Papa a much-needed, if not entirely real, sense of independence. He would be at the small wooden table they usually shared for the morning meal. Today she had in mind eggs and potatoes and bacon and, making use of the cornmeal picked up yesterday at the Mercantile, corn bread.
But there was no sign of him.
She thought perhaps he’d gone off somewhere with Uncle Burt, but their houseguest was still asleep in the extra bedroom. Straw-colored hair loose at her shoulders, she tugged on some boots and went out into the crisp, nearly cold morning air, where she found Whit Murphy sitting on the steps outside the bunkhouse, having a smoke.
On her approach, the lanky foreman got to his feet, tossed his cigarette, and came down to meet her. As he so often did in her presence, Whit took off his hat.
She tried not to be irritable at the man’s usual nervousness with her, though she was very tired of it. “Have you seen Papa this morning?”
“Sure did. Saddled up his chestnut and went out ridin’ round sunup.”
“By himself?”
The droopy-mustached face lengthened. “I know you don’t like it when he does that, Miss Willa, but I learned a long time ago not to argue with your daddy about such things. He does have his pride.”
“You call it pride, Whit, but I call it stubbornness.” She drew a deep breath in, let it out slow. “Don’t suppose he told you where he was off to...?”
Murphy shook his head. “Just said he cottoned a ride. But they’s only a few places he goes off to alone. You know that, Miss Willa. Uh... you need my help?”
“No. No. I’ll have a little breakfast, and if he isn’t back by then, I’ll saddle Daisy up and go out for a ride myself.”
She did all that, and when her father still hadn’t returned, she set out to find him. Whit was right that there were only a few spots that Papa went off to when he wanted to think and be alone. For a blind man, Papa could take care of himself well enough, but she couldn’t countenance his riding off alone.
The banks of the Purgatory River, a tributary of the Pecos, were bordered with lush conifers, and though Papa could no longer see the cold, clear water flowing down from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, he could surely hear it and smell it and feel it. This was perhaps the most likely place that she would find him.
She hadn’t been out this way since she and her late fiancé last picnicked here, and she worried that perhaps her recent reluctance to revisit the spot had encouraged Papa to come out here on his own. But the grassy slope above the sandy, rocky shore where he so often paused on horseback to take the river in showed no signs of him. She rode away from the bittersweet memories as quickly as she could.
The grassy mesas and valleys of the Bar-O were not friendly to a sightless man, even one who owned them. So her next thought was to try the less rolling land where a lone Patriarch Tree ruled, a ways away from a stand of cottonwoods bordering the stream that gave them life.
This magnificent, lonely monarch, its trunk five feet across, nearly one hundred feet tall, had always been a marvel her father relished taking in. He’d been known to dismount and sit beneath the wide branches — as gnarled and reaching as a witch’s grasp in winter, yet wearing an autumn shimmer of gold now — and contemplate.
She saw the chestnut first, milling around the tree, nibbling grass, staying in the cooling shade of the cottonwood’s spreading crown of bristlecone pine.
As she brought Daisy around, Willa finally spotted her father, sitting as he had so often done with his back to the tree’s thick trunk, sitting peacefully, chin on his chest, napping apparently. But as she rode toward him, easily at first, then picking up speed, she realized this was something else.
Something terrible.
When she reached the edge of the golden umbrella of shade, she hopped off Daisy and ran to her father’s side and knelt there. She took his hand and squeezed it and said to him, “Papa, Papa, oh, Papa,” but her father had nothing to say to his daughter, because he was gone, leaving behind only this small, somewhat sunken version of the big man he’d once been.