“No. It’s just one.”
Trammel shook his head and gave up a rumpled, somewhat toothless grin. “Sheriff, that ain’t the way things worked with the Preacherman. He never told us where the money come from. He was kinda like... protectin’ the client... That’s what he called them types, the client... And, hell, he didn’t tell us jack about who the target was till a day or two afore.”
“Why?”
Trammel shrugged. “I dunno. Said somethin’ a time or two about... well, about idiots always runnin’ at the mouth.”
“Meaning you and Landrum.”
“Meanin’ us two. He was always funnin’ like that.”
“Yeah,” York said. “I noticed his sense of humor. And I believe you when you say he wanted to protect his clients. That you would not be privy to that piece of information. In most cases.”
The slits returned. “What do you mean, Sheriff... ‘in most cases’?”
York dug out the telegram from his breast pocket. “Can you read, Lafe?”
His stubbly chin came up defensively. “I had near two year of schoolin’. Enough to make out what I need to.”
York held up the telegram, and Trammel pushed his face between the bars and read, moving his lips. Slowly.
Then the prisoner said, “The Kansas State Pen, huh? Warden hisself.”
York gave the man a slow, easy grin. “You want another crack at my question, Lafe? Since I think we both know the answer.”
Trammel sighed, nodded, and talked.
In his usual Earp brothers black, York tied up the gray gelding at the hitching post in front of the Bar-O ranch house. Mid-morning now, things were quiet, all the hands out in the continuing preparation for even colder weather than today’s, which was plenty nippy and unusually overcast for New Mexico.
He went up the short flight of stairs to the porch, spurs ajangle. Toward the far end, down from the fancy carved front door, he began examining the rough bark-and-all overhang posts. What he had in mind was a piece of overdue detective work, based upon his reflections on the nature of George Cullen’s head wound.
And there it was.
On the second post from the end, at a height perhaps a head shorter than Cullen, perfect for if the man had been shoved back and knocked hard into it, leaving a smear of what had now long since dried and gone crusty maroon...
Blood.
Almost certainly human. Short of a bird flying straight into it, how might this post have come in contact with any other kind?
The front door opened, and York turned to see Burt O’Malley step out and regard him quizzically. The fiftyish Bar-O cofounder wore the same apparel he’d shown up in — blue shirt, brown vest, red bandana. Hatless, though. He again wore Levi’s, and his hip bore no holstered weapon. The oblong face with its dark blue eyes, trim salt-and-pepper beard, and easygoing smile seemed friendly as ever.
“Caleb? If you’re here to see Willa, she went out for a ride. She’s been doing that purt’ near every morning since her pa died.”
“Come take a look at this, Burt.”
The big man loped down and had a gander where York was pointing.
York asked, “What’s that look like to you?”
“Can’t say. Some kind of dirt. Food spill from the other day, when half the world was out here, could be.”
“Blood maybe?”
O’Malley shrugged. “Maybe.”
The two men were only a couple of feet apart.
York said, “I told you that you were seen arguing with the old man out here. That it got physical. Maybe you grabbed him and knocked his head against that post — hard enough to really make your point. An accident, possibly... or possibly not an accident.”
O’Malley smiled in strained patience. “Don’t talk nonsense. Anyhow, that argument was the night before and wasn’t even really an argument a’tall. Nothin’ that came to blows.”
“So you said.”
“I was just trying to make the old boy see that maybe he should give a little more thought to taking advantage of that spur goin’ in, since if he didn’t cooperate, it would go in without him all the same.”
York raised an eyebrow. “If he didn’t go along with it, that branchline would still go in, all right... but the cost to the Santa Fe would be much higher, having to skirt this spread and hopscotch through the small independent ranchers.”
O’Malley shrugged. “Exactly right. That’s why George could’ve got even more money out of the railroad than they was offerin’. Come on now, Caleb... Sheriff... you can’t be serious that I’d ever harm that man. I owed him plenty. And besides that, I loved that stubborn old soul.”
“You may have loved him once upon a time... only maybe all those years behind bars changed you. It can do that to a man. And at your age, an opportunity to, well, make a killing? That don’t come along every day.”
The friendliness was out of O’Malley’s face now, but only a weariness had taken its place — not the rage York had expected.
“Let’s get in out of the cold,” the big man said with a sigh that was visible in the late-autumn air. “There’s a fire going. Let’s sit and talk this out like civilized men.”
York didn’t have a hell of a lot to go on where the Cullen murder was concerned. That dried maroon smear. The potential testimony of the foreman, Whit Murphy, who really hadn’t seen much. But on another matter, he had plenty.
“All right,” York said. “Let’s go inside.”
The fire was going, providing a nice warmth to the long, narrow room, which would have seemed cozy under other circumstances. Each man took one of the rough-wood chairs that long ago George Cullen had fashioned.
O’Malley said, “There’s coffee on the stove.”
“No thanks.”
“Maybe somethin’ stronger?”
“Too early.”
“Mind if I get something for myself, Sheriff?”
“I do. Just stay put. I don’t mind getting in out of the cold, but I have no intention of letting you go off and arm yourself.”
“You’re still suspicious.”
“More than just suspicious.”
York removed the folded telegram from his breast pocket and handed it over, then watched as O’Malley opened it up and read. His face fell as he did; then a smile formed, but not that easygoing one that all who’d encountered him of late had come to know.
York said, his voice quiet and businesslike, “The warden at the Kansas State Pen at Lansing confirms that you shared a cell with Lafe Trammel for two years. He was released a few months before you.”
“This doesn’t prove a damn thing.”
“Not about George Cullen’s murder. But it suggests that you were the one who hired Alver Hollis to come to Trinidad and blow a hole or two through this hide of mine.”
The smile settled on one side of O’Malley’s face. “And why would I do that?”
“I admit that took me a while. That’s the kind of thing that can keep a man up at night, thinkin’. I mean, what threat did I pose to you?”
“Exactly.”
“Then it came to me. You were sent here by agents of the Santa Fe Railroad. They had done their research and learned that one of the original three owners of the Bar-O was serving a sentence for manslaughter. They looked you up and got you out and signed you on. Your job was to come to the Bar-O and get back in the old man’s good graces. That fight you had with that big lug Lem, sticking up for Cullen, that was a nice touch.”
The half smile lingered. “Let’s say that’s so, Sheriff... for the sake of argument. How does that make you somebody I’d want dead?”
“Like I said, the Santa Fe folks had done their research. Their man Prescott in particular was thick with the local Citizens Committee. Prescott learned that I was close to both George and Willa Cullen.”