O’Malley gave him a long, careful look. “I, uh, somehow gather that maybe you might be the shoulder she’d druther lean on.”
“At one time.” York shrugged. “But I got on her bad side.”
The big man looked at him curiously. “How’d you manage that?”
“Shot and killed her fiancé.”
O’Malley’s eyebrows rose. “That’ll do it,” he admitted.
Offering no further explanation, York said, “I know the spot you’re talking about, that big old Patriarch Tree. You head back to the Bar-O and hold down the fort there... Here’s the Doc now! We can all ride together till you make the turn.”
Caleb arrived riding alongside the town doctor, who was at the reins of a rattling buckboard drawn by a single horse, a Missouri Fox Trotter. Half a length ahead of the buckboard, and in much the same way as Uncle Burt had, Caleb brought his gelding to a quick stop and was off the horse in a flash. He went directly to Willa and held her out by the arms and looked at her hard and careful.
His eyes asked her if she was all right, and she nodded. Meanwhile, the pear-shaped doc in the rumpled brown suit got the Gladstone bag off the seat next to him and climbed down from the buckboard in no hurry to make his way to a patient who would never be cured.
Jerking a thumb at the calmly waiting Daisy, Caleb said to Willa, “Maybe you should ride back to the Bar-O. Mr. O’Malley is waitin’ there.”
She shook her head, and the untended hair was all over the place; she brushed it from her face. “No. I’d like to hear what your thoughts are. And Dr. Miller’s.”
“Might be a hard thing for you to hear.”
Her chin came up. “I have a right. It’s my land, and he’s my father.”
He nodded just a little. “It is. He is. But stay back here a ways. We need to look around a bit. All right?”
“All right.”
She went over and stood with Daisy, stroking the horse’s snout, while Caleb joined the doctor. They spoke softly, but the breeze carried their voices as the men leaned, one on each side, over her father’s remains.
The doctor’s voice was gentle, but his words were not. “Rigor mortis has set in. That means two hours, anyway, since he died.”
“Could he have been thrown?”
Doc Miller nodded toward the nearby grazing horse. “That chestnut over there is no bronco, but it might be possible. An animal can get spooked. But the bruising on the body here says otherwise.”
“That right? Dead bodies talkin’ now?”
The doc chuckled grimly. “We’ve run into this before, Caleb. Look at the purple rising above his collar. I’ll wager when I get Mr. Cullen back to my surgery, we’ll find his back and backside and the rear of his legs all bruised where the blood settled. If he’d wound up here, sittin’ up like this, the blood would’ve settled only down below.”
“You’re saying he was moved.”
The doc shrugged. “If my assumptions are correct, yes. I don’t imagine you want me to strip this gentleman of his clothing and make an examination in the back of my buckboard, just to make sure... while his daughter’s still in sight.”
Caleb said nothing to that. He pointed to the tree trunk overhead. “What about the blood smear?”
“Well, with Mr. Cullen deceased, the blood wouldn’t have been flowing... but if the corpse was held upright and the head knocked against the tree, some blood would have got there, all right. And, Caleb, that wound does indicate the head took more than one blow.”
The doctor leaned her father’s head forward a bit for the sheriff to see.
“The death blow,” Caleb said, “and then another blow or two, to produce the blood smear?”
“That’s right. To make it appear that George Cullen died accidentally. And take a look around. See anything missing?”
“What am I looking for?”
“Pieces of bone. Chunks, even. That’s a mighty big hole in the back of that head, Caleb. Now, when I go to digging in my surgery, I’ll find shards and such... but that leaves a hell of a nasty jigsaw puzzle, one missin’ some big pieces.”
Caleb sighed. Rose. The flat leaves of the Patriarch were twisting in the breeze, rustling, fluttering, as if tiny birds were hiding in the gnarled branches under their golden covering. He had a look around on the ground where his own footsteps and those of Willa, O’Malley, and the doctor had broken twigs and left impressions.
But there were also signs of something having been dragged across the grass — consistent with the doctor’s thoughts on the body having been moved, brought here to this lonely place to provide an accidental explanation for what must have occurred...
“Murder, then,” Caleb said.
A chill went through Willa, far colder than the breeze riffling the leaves.
Pointing out the flattened area where the body might have been dragged to the tree and propped up, Caleb said, “It may have been brought in a wagon.”
He followed the path of the pressed-down grass and found the impressions of wagon wheels at the edge of the shaded area. The doctor came over and joined him.
“Murder,” Caleb said again.
“That’s my preliminary diagnosis, Sheriff,” Doc Miller said. “And it’s not like you’re gonna be shy of motives.”
Caleb shook his head. “Not hardly. Refusing to sell land to the railroad for their branchline as he did? Standing in the way of fortunes being made? George Cullen had no shortage of enemies.”
And with her father gone, Willa realized, that left her in charge of the Bar-O... and the decision making where accommodating the railroad was concerned.
Caleb came over to her, hat in hand. “You were listening, of course.”
“I was listening, of course.”
“Burt O’Malley and me are in agreement that it’s best he stay on at the Bar-O for now. You might need some help in the days ahead, and like they say, he’s the O in the Bar-O.”
“I’m the Bar-O,” she said.
His smile came gentle. “I know you are... now. But your father was the Bar-O till somebody killed him — probably somebody who wants to see that branchline go in, meaning you are going to get leaned on in ways you can’t begin to picture.”
Again, her chin came up. “I can take of myself.”
“Your father thought that, too, but he was wrong. People in this part of the country like to say they can stand alone. Take care of things all by themselves. But the truth of it is, we can’t. All of us need somebody.”
Was he saying he needed her?
“Anyway,” he said, snugging on the cavalry pinch hat, “it’s up to you. Your ranch, your land, hell, your cows. Throw the old boy out on his tail if you like.”
With a shrug, she said, “Uncle Burt can stay awhile.”
“Good. But you need to head back there long about now. The doc and I have to deal with your late father. He’s evidence now, and I need him and the doc’s help to find the bastard that did this to somebody we both loved.”
He tipped his hat, nodded, and went back to help the doctor. Framed by the massive tree trunk, the two men stood beside her seated father and waited for her to go so she didn’t have to see Papa hauled to the buckboard like a sack of grain and flung in.
She got on Daisy and rode at a good clip, but her mind was racing even faster, thinking about how she’d kept from her father how she really felt about the spur.
But whom had she shared it with?
And was she indirectly responsible for her father’s death?
Chapter Eight
On the second floor of the formidable brick bank building, Dr. Albert Miller maintained a two-room office — waiting area and surgery — behind which were his living quarters.
Caleb York had helped the doctor up the outer stairs with the wicker-basket-laden body of George Cullen and into the smallish surgery, where they had transferred it to the heavy mahogany examination table. On its back, the stiffened corpse remained clothed, a condition the doctor began to remedy.