He was slumped forward enough that she could see the back of his head, crushed in, a bloody mess, a jagged, irregular window on a brain that no longer thought. On the wood two or three feet above her broken father was a smear of red.
Had the chestnut thrown him?
Had Papa been tossed against the broad multiple trunk of the tree by the animal, spooked possibly by a rattler or some other creature? Possible. But at this moment, the horse seemed docile, munching idly on the grass, unconcerned about the fate of its rider.
She let go of the stiff, cold hand.
Got to her feet.
Did not cry.
She would not do that in front of her father — he had wanted a son and had settled for a strong daughter, and she would not let him down at this late date. Crying could wait till she was home and shut inside her room, the room where she had slept from childhood on, where one of the few times she had previously cried there had been when her mother passed.
Now her father, too, had passed. George Cullen, who had carved out the Bar-O in the face of Indian attacks, bad weather, smallpox, cowpox, and predatory animals of all stripes, including rustlers and marauders. He had taken all that head-on and had triumphed over it, displaying the kind of courage and determination that weren’t seen much these days.
Pounding hoofbeats announced that she and her father would not be alone much longer.
In a way that a much younger man might have envied, Burt O’Malley — blue shirt, red bandana, Levi’s, Boss of the Plains hat — brought his borrowed dun quarter horse to an abrupt stop and leapt off, then came at Willa at a run, which he brought to just as abrupt a stop upon seeing his dead friend.
“Sweet Jesus, no,” O’Malley said as he came up next to Willa and slipped an arm around her shoulder, then hugged her side to his, turning her face away from a sight she had already seen and was seared into her soul.
“Uncle Burt,” she said, looking up at him, confused. “However did you find me here?”
He stroked blond tendrils from her face. “Whit told me you’d gone out looking for your papa. Said this was one of a couple places he’d likely be. Do we know what happened here?”
She nodded toward the nibbling chestnut. “Maybe got thrown somehow?”
O’Malley frowned. “Maybe.”
He let go of her and went over for a closer look at his dead partner, pushing his Stetson back, bending down. He glanced up at the smear of red. Shook his head.
“Maybe not,” he said.
Coming back over to her, O’Malley said, “One of us should go and get that sheriff friend of yours. I can do it, if you’d rather not stay here with... with him.”
She squeezed his arm. “No! I want to stay. I’ll stay with him, all right. You go get Caleb.”
He studied her for a few seconds, then nodded, snugged his hat back in place, and remounted the quarter horse. He reined the animal up, then gave her a hard look. “Sure about this?”
“I’m sure,” she said.
And he nodded and rode off as hard as if it mattered.
Hat off, jacket off, vest over a gray badge-pinned shirt, Caleb York was seated in his office, going through the latest “wanted” circulars, when Burt O’Malley blew in like a twister. The big man, usually so at ease with himself, leaned both hands against the desktop, breathing hard, shaking.
“George Cullen is dead,” he said, choking something back.
York sat forward. “Hell you say? How? When?”
O’Malley gestured vaguely. “Went out ridin’ about sunup, foreman says. Daughter found him propped up against a big old cottonwood out on the range. Place he liked to go and sit and think, I gather. But he sure as hell ain’t thinkin’ now.”
“How’d it happen?”
The big man shook his head. “Don’t rightly know. Maybe he was throwed. Not sure. Don’t quite smell right. Best you take a look.”
York got his holstered gun from where it was coiled in a desk drawer. He rose and started buckling it on. “Where’s Willa now?”
“With her daddy. That’s where she wanted to be.” His eyebrows rose. “Why, you know a way of keepin’ that girl from doin’ what she’s a mind to?”
“No, sir.”
York checked the gun’s cylinder — five bullets, an empty chamber under the hammer. Leaving the holster tie-down loose, he went back to the cell where his deputy was sleeping and kicked the cot. Tulley woke like a startled chicken and went for the scattergun propped next to him, but York yanked it away.
York said, “Fetch Doc Miller.”
“Can I use the privy first?”
“Yeah, but nothing fancy.”
The deputy, who slept in his clothes, started climbing into his boots. York left him there to complete the procedure.
Back in the office, York found O’Malley seated at the rough-hewn table that was generally the deputy’s domain; looming over him were wanted posters and a rifle rack, and next to him was the wood-burning stove. The big man seemed small suddenly, hunkered over the table, with his hands folded damn near prayerfully.
York went over to him. Leaned a hand against the table. “Hard to imagine this world without George Cullen in it.”
“He was just a blind old man,” O’Malley said, looking nowhere. “Past his prime. Good days far behind him.”
Then he began to weep.
Ill at ease, York went out onto the boardwalk just in time to see Tulley scurry out from around back, his privy trip over, to head clattering down the boardwalk to Doc Miller’s office over the bank.
“Tulley!” York called.
The deputy came to so quick a stop, he practically tumbled over himself. He turned and said, “Yes, Sheriff?”
“Tell Doc to bring his buckboard.”
“Somethin’ to haul?”
“Somethin’ to haul.”
Tulley resumed his noisy run.
York leaned against a post. He stood there, looking out at Trinidad, wondering if it was cold enough to merit his jacket. This time of day, the town was as peaceful as a Mexican village at siesta. Even the Victory was quiet. Only the occasional random rumble of a wagon or the occasional rhythmic clop of hoofs broke the silence. It was almost as if the town sensed George Cullen’s passing and was paying its respects.
The door behind him creaked open, and then O’Malley was beside him.
“An old jailbird like me,” the man said, smiling embarrassedly, “shouldn’t be so damn sentimental.”
York shrugged. “You two went way back. And I understand he treated you right.”
O’Malley nodded. “He was a good man. Hell of a man. Could have turned his back on me but instead kept me a partner in his place. Socked money away for me when he never had to. His kind won’t pass this way again. The kind that built something out of a wilderness. Kind that made the way for civilization.”
Even, York thought, if he had stood in the way of civilization coming to Trinidad by way of the Santa Fe.
York asked, “You still staying out at the Bar-O?”
O’Malley nodded. “The old boy wouldn’t have it any other way.” He frowned. “Think I should move out? Would folks talk, a man stayin’ out there with that good-lookin’ girl?”
York shook his head. “I think you should stick. She’ll need the support. How much emotion did she show?”
“Not as much as me,” O’Malley said with a wry chuckle. “Willa’s as strong as her old man.”
“No,” York said, “she isn’t. She grew up a daughter living up to her papa’s idea of a son. But she’s no pioneer. She grew up in a ranch house. Oh, she’s strong, all right... but she’ll still need a shoulder.”