Around them were the faces belonging to what must have been a third of the town, anyway... and all were shaking their heads.
The sheriff wheeled back to the man with the shotgun and pointed a finger at him like a pistol. “Who ambushed who, stranger? What I see is two of my deputies shot down like dogs in the street, and nobody but you to say how it happened.”
Willa was already heading over, dusting herself off from the fall. “I saw it, Sheriff.”
Gauge turned toward her and his smile was witheringly sarcastic, as was his tone as he said, “Now, ain’t that just nice. Ain’t that convenient and all. The little lady comes up with a story just in the nick of time to clear her father’s hired gun.”
“He’s not my father’s hired gun,” she said, almost spitting the words. “But I saw those two men try to bushwhack him. That one shot first, then the stranger defended himself, and after that, this one came out shooting and got what he asked for. Self-defense in anybody’s book. Any questions, Sheriff?”
Before Gauge could respond, the desert rat scrambled out from under the boardwalk, saying, “Wait just a minute, Sheriff! Hold your horses.”
Gauge looked with contempt at the ragged figure shambling toward him. “What is it, Tulley?”
The desert rat patted his chest, raising dust. “Maybe you better count me as a witness, too, Sheriff. I saw the whole blasted thing myself. Came about just like Miss Cullen said. Couple of back-shooters got shot front-ways. Better than they merited.”
The sheriff scowled at this second witness. “Are you drunk, old man?”
“Not presently.” Tulley pointed to the boardwalk. “That’s what I was doin’ under there — sleepin’ it off!”
Gauge gave first Tulley, and then Willa, a lingering look at his disgusted sneer.
Then he turned to the stranger and said, “Fine pair of witnesses you got here, mister. Town drunk and the daughter of a man who hates my guts. Maybe I ought to take you in, anyway.”
The stranger snapped the shotgun shut and grinned, though his eyes weren’t friendly at all. “Guess you could try, Sheriff.”
The two men faced each other for five seconds that must have seemed, to one and all, a very long time.
Deputy Rhomer stepped from the crowd — “Out of the way, out of the way!” — and took the sheriff’s arm, jerking his head to one side, indicating they should move away from their potential prisoner.
Willa could hear what Rhomer whispered: “Take it easy, Harry. Suppose he is Banion. He’ll cut you to pieces with that shotgun!”
“If he ain’t Banion,” Gauge said, “he’s a fool.”
The sheriff stepped away from his deputy, sighed deep, hitched his gun belt, and returned to the stranger, saying, “I’m not going to waste time or taxpayer money arrestin’ you. Thanks to these two witnesses, you’re free to go.”
The stranger smiled, nodded. “Right kind of you, Sheriff.”
Gauge gave him a hard look, a hand on the butt of his holstered .44. “You still claim to just be passin’ through, mister?”
“That’s my intention.”
The sheriff’s chin raised, as if begging the stranger to take a swing. “You could stand to pick up the pace a mite.”
Then the lawman went back to the milling citizens, perhaps half of whom had lost interest and gone back home and to bed already, and got somebody to go after Doc Miller. Not that pronouncing either of these two dead would take much effort. Nobody had to seek out undertaker Perkins, who always showed up, no matter what time of day, whenever there were gunshots. Just trying to serve his community.
Willa went to the stranger, who said to her, “Sorry about the rough treatment.”
“I won’t fault you,” she said. “I believe you may have saved my life.”
He nodded toward the sheriff, presently conferring with the undertaker. “You may have already returned the favor.”
“Mister!”
They turned and Tulley was walking the dappled gelding toward them. “Here’s your horse! Didn’t get far.”
“Thanks, Tulley.” He took the reins from the old man. “Sorry about borrowing your bed.”
The feed bag was no longer on the animal.
“Oh, it fell off back there a ways,” Tulley said with a good-natured grin shy a few teeth. “Broke apart where it hit. Maybe somethin’ will grow!”
“Maybe,” the stranger said, and patted the old man’s shoulder, “you can sleep at the stable tonight.”
“Didn’t earn enough of my keep over there today for that, mister.”
“You tell Hitchens I’ll pay your freight tomorrow.”
Tulley beamed. “You’re a fine human man, mister. Fine human man.”
The desert rat headed toward the livery stable with some spring in his step.
Smiling, Willa said, “I guess you do make friends everywhere you go. Where are you going tonight? You staying here, at the hotel maybe?”
“I told you,” he reminded her. “The intention was to ride out to your ranch and have a talk with your father. Wanted to wait till after dark so as not to advertise.”
“Your intention, huh? Like your intention to just pass through Trinidad?”
“Sometimes I get sidetracked.”
“I’ll lead the way, then,” she said. “Let’s ride out to the Bar-O together.”
He chuckled. “You sure you know which side I’m on in this fracas?”
“Not really,” she said. “But I’m starting to get a hunch.”
“Based on what?”
“Let’s just say that anybody who guns down four of Harry Gauge’s deputies in one day is at the very least not on the sheriff’s side.”
“How about your good side?”
“We’ll see.”
They rode out together, past Gauge and Deputy Rhomer, who grinned at her lasciviously as they went by.
She did not hear what Rhomer said to his boss: “You might have to pay a big price, Harry, if you ever want to own that one.”
Nor did she hear Gauge’s inelegant response: “Shut up,” plus a nasty name she’d never heard, even growing up on a ranch.
Chapter nine
They kept the pace brisk, if not hard, on the twenty-minute ride out to the Bar-O.
They didn’t speak, the stranger lagging just behind Willa, who after all knew the way. They brought their animals to an easy trot as they headed down the hard-packed lane under the overhang displaying the ranch’s brand. The stranger, she noted, was taking it all in with what seemed to her an almost childlike sense of wonder.
She couldn’t blame him.
In the ivory moonlight, the ranch buildings had an austere beauty that nearly brought tears to Willa’s eyes, in the midst of this struggle to hold on to what her father had carved out of the wilderness.
The stranger dismounted and tied up his dappled gelding at the post in front of the main house, where the front-room windows glowed with the muted light of kerosene lamps. She was tying up Daisy when her father came out quickly with foreman Whit Murphy tagging after.
Papa, as he stood on the porch staring out sightlessly, obviously having heard two horses arrive, called tentatively, “Willa... do we have a guest?”
“We do, Papa,” she said, approaching the stairs up to the porch. The stranger fell in behind her at a respectful distance. “I brought him with me.”
Her father walked to the edge of the stairs and rested a hand on a rough beam. “I’m guessing there’s a story to be told here, daughter. You don’t have this man at gunpoint by any chance...?”
The stranger stepped forward, came up alongside her. “No, Mr. Cullen,” he said pleasantly. “And she’s not at gunpoint, either.”
“Relieved to hear that.”