“Of course.”
He nodded toward the horse barn. “Lou says you got company, so we could talk out here.”
“Nonsense. Come on in. Have you eaten?”
He stepped inside, spurs jangling. “No, but Cookie’s savin’ me some barbecue beef. Are you sure I ain’t intrudin’?”
“I’m sure,” she said and took him by the arm and guided him to the dining room, where O’Malley stood with a smile to greet the newcomer.
Willa said, “Burt O’Malley, Whit Murphy. Best ranch foreman you could hope to meet. Whit, Mr. O’Malley here is the O in Bar-O — used to be partners with Papa.”
Whit nodded as the two men shook hands. “I heard you spoke of,” he said to O’Malley, which struck Willa as about as ambiguous a greeting as she’d ever heard.
“Sit with us, Whit,” Papa said.
The foreman did.
Willa cleared the dessert dishes as Whit reported in on the day’s work: the bulls had been herded and placed in an isolated pasture for winter, and the calves born since the spring roundup had all been branded. She smiled to herself when Whit raised his voice so she could still hear him when she stepped into the kitchen — the foreman knew who the real boss around the Bar-O was these days.
Willa’s father asked her to fetch the brandy, and the three men enjoyed a drink and a cigar while she tended to the dishes. She was just putting things away when another knock came to the door, as loud and sure of itself as Whit’s had been tentative.
This time she found a taller man on the Bar-O doorstep, one as unsullied as Whit Murphy had been dusty, all in black but for his light gray shirt with its pearl buttons and the matching kerchief at his throat. The Colt .44 on his hip hung low, though its tie was loose for riding. Down at the hitching post, his dappled gray gelding was tied next to Daisy, the former shaking its black mane as if to attract the latter... as if that would do either of them any good.
The last time Caleb York had come around, months ago, had been to tell her he had shot and killed the man she was engaged to.
“I do apologize,” he’d said, hat in hand, “but he drew down on me. Just a pocket revolver, but I could’ve died of it.”
Only later did she hear that Caleb had killed her fiancé with a nasty little knife called a Smoky Mountain toothpick. Somehow that had added insult to injury.
Still, she had come to know that her fiancé indeed had earned his fate, that he was a dastard whose scheming might have intended her own death — though she still found that difficult to believe — and there were those who said Caleb York had done her a favor, even a service.
But when the ex-beau kills the current fiancé, things are bound to get a touch tense, and the two had spoken little since that day.
He removed his cavalry pinch hat and faced her with an embarrassed smile; he would have to be so damned handsome, all reddish-brown locks and high cheekbones and sky-blue eyes squinting out at her.
“Miss Cullen,” he said with a nod. “Might I have a word with your father?”
She stood framed in the doorway. “Whatever’s happened between us, Caleb York, you still have the right to call me Willa. In fact, it would annoy me greatly if you didn’t.”
“Annoying you is not my intention,” he said, risking another smile. “Is this a bad time? I know your father was worked up some after that Citizens Committee meeting.”
“You’ll find him in a much better mood now,” she said, stepping aside and gesturing for him to come in. “Ever hear of Burt O’Malley?”
He hung his hat next to several others, on a wall peg. “One of your father’s original partners, I believe? The O in—”
“Bar-O, yes. Just got out of prison. Killed a man. Some men have to pay for that, you know.”
Caleb, who wasn’t having any, said, “Not when they wear badges and who they killed drew down on them.”
He took her by the shoulders and straightened her around to face him. They were a few steps into the living room now but far away enough from the dining room to speak without being heard.
“That man was a damned scoundrel,” he said, “and I’m done apologizing for ridding the world, and you, of him. Now, if we’re going to be enemies over it, say so, and I’ll go back to ‘Miss Cullen’ and we will keep our distance.”
She drew breath in through her nostrils and scowled up at him. Then the scowl dissolved and she touched his face gently, “You’re forgiven, Caleb.”
“I don’t believe I require forgiving.”
“Well, you are, anyway.”
He swallowed thickly. “May I suggest something, Willa?”
“Suggest away.”
“Let’s start with friends and see how that goes.”
She nodded. “Fine idea.”
So in a very friendly way, she took him by the arm as she walked him to the dining room. If her daddy were sighted, she wasn’t sure she’d have done that. But he wasn’t.
At the big dining-room table, introductions were made, and Papa invited Caleb to take a seat, which he did, to the right of Whit, who sat next to Papa and just down and across from O’Malley.
Caleb was offered brandy, and he took it, and a cigar, which he declined. Wordlessly, Willa sat at the table, a few chairs down from the men. In most houses, a woman dared not join the men for such a session. This was not most houses, and Willa was not most women.
O’Malley had a lopsided smile going as he studied Caleb. “So you’re the sheriff of Trinidad.”
“I am for now.”
“Why just for now?”
“I have a job offer I’m considering, with the Pinkertons in San Diego.”
O’Malley whistled. “That has to pay better than a small-town badge.”
“They pay me well, and they’re trying to tempt me into staying.”
“Will that work, Mr. York?”
“It’s Caleb. May I call you Burt?”
“Wish you would. So, Caleb, will it? Work?”
“That may depend on our host.”
Papa, at the head of the table, almost choked on a sip of brandy. “Why would it depend on me, Caleb?”
“Well, sir, the local muckety-mucks, such as they are, are dangling a handsome raise and all sorts of extras before me — house of my own, among other things.”
Willa, her voice small but clear from her end of the table, asked, “On what conditions?”
“On the condition,” Caleb said to her, not quite smiling, “that I talk your stubborn old man here into selling the Santa Fe Railroad that right of passage they so crave.”
Papa’s face reddened.
O’Malley said, “Heard something about that in town. A spur, a branchline, is it? To Las Vegas?”
Caleb nodded, then added for her blind papa’s benefit, “That’s right, Burt. The city fathers see it as the future... and I agree with them.”
Astounded, Papa said, “Caleb! You challenged them at their meeting! Talked of outlaws and harlots — excuse me, my dear — and the riffraff that would follow!”
“When a bump in the road,” Caleb said, “turns into a railhead, many such bad things come, sure. But so do many good things. Saloons, yes... but also churches. Brothels, too... and schools.”
“Trinidad is not my concern,” Papa said, waving it off. “My only lookout is the Bar-O. Far as I see it, that town’s just a place to buy supplies and do banking. When I helped bring it into existence, it was for my own convenience. What advantage is it to me, turnin’ that ‘bump in the road’ into a railhead? A railhead that can serve my competitors.”
“Maybe nothing,” Caleb admitted. “But one way or the other, the railroad will find a way to build their branchline. Maybe they’ll cobble together passage from the independent small ranches. Or possibly they’ll take their branchline idea to Ellis or Roswell or maybe Clovis, and you’ll still lose your market advantage. If it’s coming, why not be a profitable part of it?”