“Cullen... a lady’s present.”
Willa said, “Don’t either of you hold back on my account.”
Gauge grinned. “A sheriff needs deputies, Mr. Cullen. I rounded up some reliable men, hard men for a hard job. No ‘bunch.’ ” He shrugged again, and his eyes went to Willa. “I seem to do all right by this town.”
Her father snorted a laugh. “Like hell.”
The sheriff shifted in his wooden chair, scraping the wooden porch. “Cullen, you’re riled because that kid worked for you. I can understand that. But you didn’t see the shooting, did you? You wasn’t even in town. And if you was, well... you wouldn’ta seen it, anyway. You don’t see anything, do you, old man?”
The insult — however true, it was an insult — hung in the air like a sour smell.
Finally her father said, “I can see that you’re trying to take over all the good grazing land around here. And so do the ‘good folks of Trinidad.’ ”
Gauge was grinning again. “And what if they do? What would any of them do about it? Storekeepers. Bankers. Cooks and barkeeps. Children all, who need a strong hand.”
Her father was trembling with anger now. “One day it will happen.”
“What will, Cullen?”
Papa’s smile had something terrible in it. “You’ll run into a real one. A man. The kind who built this country.”
“Like you, you mean?”
“Like I was. Yes, I’m an old man. A blind old man. And you are damn lucky I am, because could I see, I would find no greater pleasure than cutting you down like you did that boy.”
Gauge laughed and so did his deputy.
The sheriff spat another black stream, then said, “Old man, even with eyes, you’d be out of luck. I am just too damn fast for you or any man. You haven’t seen, but you’ve surely heard.”
“I’ve heard,” her father said. His smile remained.
“That’s why I wouldn’t bother tryin’ to face you down. Wouldn’t be worth it. Why, I’d just get you from a dark alley with a blast of buckshot.”
Gauge’s expression seemed to drip delight. “In the back, old man? Bushwhack me like that? Where’s your pride?”
“No pride or shame in killing a snake. You just kill the damn things. Blow their evil heads off.”
Gauge and his deputy laughed some more.
Then the sheriff said, “Those were the days, right, Cullen? Back before law and order came west, and men like me were around to keep the peace. But, old man — them days are over.”
“Not for you they’re not.” Now her father’s smile was gone and the cold-rage mask was back. “Not for you. For you, Sheriff? ‘Those days’ are just about to start.”
With confidence belying his sightlessness, her father shook the reins and guided the two horses around and rode back up Main. Willa smiled back at Gauge as they left, giving him a bigger nod now.
“This is good right here, Papa,” she said. “Right here is fine.”
They had stopped outside the telegraph office.
Deputy Vint Rhomer had not been a lawman long, and he might have seen the irony in having shot and killed two deputies himself, in his outlaw days, had he understood the meaning of the word.
The redheaded deputy, looking down the street where Willa Cullen was hitching her calico, said, “What the hell’s he talkin’ about, Gauge? What’s about to start?”
The sheriff spat black liquid. “No idea, Rhomer. Old coots like that never make no sense. Goin’ blind turned him loco, maybe.”
Rhomer shook his head. “He had somethin’ on his mind. You saw his face. He must’ve been a tough one, in his day.”
“Only this ain’t his day.”
Willa was helping her father down from the buggy.
“Pretty girl,” Rhomer commented. “Looks like a good time to be had.”
Gauge gave his deputy a smile with a sneer in it. “Watch what you say, son.”
Rhomer scratched his bearded cheek. “Huh?”
The sheriff put his feet back up on the railing, rocked back. “You’re talkin’ about the woman I love.”
Rhomer snorted. “You don’t love nothin’ but money, Gauge. Money and land. And if you need lovin’, there’s always Lola.”
“Maybe. But one day soon, I am going to own that Cullen filly.”
The deputy studied the sheriff. “Own her like you will the Bar-O... someday?”
The Bar-O was Old Man Cullen’s spread.
The sheriff gave a slow couple of nods. “Just like that, Rhomer. Like that and every piece of land worth havin’ around these parts.”
Horses clopped. A wagon rolled by. A fly buzzed them. Willa Cullen and her father were talking outside the telegraph office. Maybe arguing. Maybe not.
“How will you manage that, Gauge? You can’t buy that kind of female. Not like you buy an hour with a saloon gal you can’t.”
Gauge had a distant look, like he was gazing into the future. “There’s where you’re wrong, Vint. I’ll buy her and she’ll welcome it.”
“Come on, Gauge...”
“Willa Cullen was born on that ranch and she wants to stay on that ranch, and her old man can’t run it forever. He’ll just get older and sicker and pretty soon she’ll have to look after him. Day will come, she’ll be happy for me to buy the Bar-O... and her.”
The Cullen girl and her father were going into the telegraph office.
Looking that direction, Rhomer said, “Tell you, that old boy is up to something.”
Gauge spat a tobacco stream. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I know I’m right.”
“Okay, then. You’re a lawman. You’re suspicious. Do what a lawman does. Go see what he’s up to.”
Rhomer nodded, got to his feet and headed down there, leaving the man he worked for to laze in the morning sun, hat over his eyes, boots on the rail.
When the deputy stepped into the small telegraph office, Ralph Parsons, the scrawny, bespectacled operator behind the counter, was looking at a slip of paper as if it were his own death warrant. More likely, it was a form for a wire that the old man’s daughter must have written out for her father.
Nervously looking up from the paper slip, the operator said, “Mr. Cullen... this is nothing I can do, in good conscience...”
“I said send it,” the old man said, his daughter at his side. “Never mind your damn conscience.”
“Please, Mr. Cullen! There are regulations...”
Rhomer strode over and snatched the slip from the operator’s hands. “Let’s see that,” he said.
The deputy had book learning enough to decipher the wire Old Man Cullen intended to send, though he read slowly and moved his lips.
To Raymond L. Parker, it read, Kansas City, Kansas. Use the ten thousand you hold for me to hire Caleb York or other top shootist to kill Harry Gauge this city. George Cullen.
Rhomer shoved his face in the old man’s. “Are you plumb crazy, Cullen? Who’s this Parker, anyway?”
“Old business partner of mine,” Cullen said coolly. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
Rhomer was almost nose to nose with the coot now. “You wantin’ to kill the sheriff ain’t my business? I really oughta let you send this damn thing! You’d find out soon enough there ain’t any top gun who can take down Harry Gauge! The fastest around have faced him and died before a gun cleared a holster.”
The old man’s upper lip curled back over a smile. “Not Caleb York.”