“I was lucky gettin’ the doc to patch me up, middle of the night, is how I took it.”
What body would the doc and the stranger feel the need to bury, right now, right this instant, under cover of night?
Troubled, the sheriff rose. “Catch yourself some more sleep, Vint. We may have a busy day tomorrow. Likely an early start.”
Gauge decided to go over to the hotel to get a decent bed — maybe a few hours would help him think straighter, to cipher through this conundrum of bodies buried in the wee hours But as he passed his desk, he noticed something: an envelope with Sheriff Gauge written neatly there. He went around to sit and saw that it was a telegraph office envelope.
He tore it open and read:
To Sheriff Harry Gauge, Trinidad, N.M. Wesley C. Banion killed by deputies this city two months prior. R. Bishop, Marshal, Ellis, Colorado
“When did this come?” he demanded of the deputy in the jail cell.
Rhomer, already half-asleep again, sat up like a man out of a bad dream. “Don’t rightly know, Harry. Saw it on the desk when I come in. Door was open. Somebody dropped it off, I guess.”
The telegraph clerk Parsons. Gauge had told him to deliver anything that came in, whenever it came in...
“And Banion’s over at the hotel?” Gauge asked.
“Far as I know,” Rhomer said, touching his sore ear, then flopping back down on the cot, hurting side up, and turning to put his back to his boss.
A few minutes later, Gauge found Lola, in a dressing gown, standing at the check-in desk. She turned to him with surprise, maybe even alarm, showing in her features. The same could be said of the scrawny, near-hairless clerk, eyes wide and blinking behind spectacles that pinched his nose.
Lola, rather breathlessly, said, “Harry!... I was just coming to find you.”
“What are you doin’ up?”
Her smile seemed nervous to him, as she said, “Oh, some damn kid threw a rock through my window. Now there’s a mess up there, and I was inquiring after another room for tonight.”
The chinless clerk was nodding and smiling in a sickly fashion, backing her up.
Gauge frowned. This didn’t sound right. But he had bigger things on his mind.
“Let me see that register,” he said to the clerk, gesturing impatiently at the tall, narrow volume.
The clerk swallowed, making his bow tie bobble, and said, “Just so you know, I was going to send somebody over to your office first thing in the morning, Sheriff.”
“Give it here.”
The clerk turned the register around and pushed it across. “I mean, it’s plain that this stranger was playing me for a fool. Just the same, I thought you should see this... Like I said, I was going to bring it over first thing...”
Gauge was looking at the name that the stranger had signed into the book.
Caleb York.
Lola, at his side, was looking, too. “It’s a joke. Has to be. Caleb York is long dead. A year or more. Wes Banion shot him.”
“Two years ago,” Gauge said.
She looked at him with wide eyes in a pretty face still wearing evening paint. “Then... he is Banion.”
“No. Just some fool.” His gaze bore into the clerk. “Is he here?”
“No!” The quavery man pointed to the upstairs. “He took a room” — and then to the entry doors — “but he went back out some time ago.”
Gauge nodded, shut the register hard, shoved it back at the clerk, and turned to head out. Lola’s hand at his arm stopped him.
“Harry... what now?”
“Now I’m gonna rouse Rhomer out of his dainty slumber and have him round up every man I got in this town. Then I’m gonna send them out lookin’ for this would-be Caleb York, and have them—”
“Kill him?”
What did she care?
“No. Have them bring him to me.” He stopped just before he went out to add, “I’m going to kill him myself.”
Dawn was just a yellow-orange threat, like a distant fire hovering over distant buttes, as Willa brought more coffee to her father, their breakfast over, the dining table otherwise cleared. Both were in red plaid flannel shirts and denims, a blind man and his daughter, well-matched and ready for a working day.
Her blond hair ribboned back in a ponytail, Willa filled her own cup, then joined Papa at one end of the big table. There was so much to talk about... yet neither seemed able to find a word.
When a wall of stones is about to fall on you, she thought, which rock do you discuss?
Hoofbeats out in front of the ranch house caught the attention of both, and Willa got up and went to see who might be calling so early. Her father followed, moving every bit as quickly as his sighted daughter. She cracked the front door, saw who it was, then opened it wider.
Behind her, her father said hopefully, “Is it him? It’s him, isn’t it?”
The stranger in black was climbing down off his foam-flecked mount — both man and beast had been riding hard.
“It’s him, Papa.”
Their visitor was tying up the dark-maned dappled animal now. His expression she found unreadable.
She stepped out onto the porch and so did her father, moving around her to lean against the rough post there. The guilty hope in his voice was a terrible thing for her to hear. “Is it... done, then?”
The stranger walked over and stopped at the foot of the steps. “If you mean is Harry Gauge dead, no.”
Softly, bitterly, she said, “Yet you took our money.”
“Did I?”
Her chin came up. “Why are you here, then?”
He took off his hat. “I have other news. May I come in? Might there be coffee?”
Hesitating only a moment, she nodded assent to both, and soon the three were seated at one end of the big carved Spanish table.
Before even taking a sip of the steaming black liquid, the stranger asked, “How far is the Swenson spread from here?”
She said, perhaps a tad snippy, “There is no Swenson spread anymore. It’s all Harry Gauge’s land now.”
Her father said, “About twelve miles.”
The stranger asked, “Your herd — it’s separated from his?”
Willa, frowning in curiosity now, said, “A draw divides the area. Why?”
He looked from father to daughter and back. “His cattle ever mix with yours?”
Papa shook his head. “We’re barbwired in. Most of our herd stays on the north section, where the water is. The Swenson water is on the other side of what was his spread. What’s this about, friend?”
Ignoring that, their guest asked, “What about the other spreads?”
Willa laughed hollowly. “What other spreads? Harry Gauge has most of them now. Only four independents left, counting us. As my father said — what’s this all about... ‘friend’?”
That he ignored, as well, asking, “Does Gauge mix his herds?”
“I understand so,” her father said. “Tore out the wire, I’m told, to make a single spread out of all of those he latched onto.”
The stranger’s eyebrows went quickly up and down. “Then just maybe... maybe you’re lucky.”
Finally he took a sip of coffee while Willa, infuriated by his obtuse manner, sat forward and demanded, “What in blazes is this about?”
He met her eyes. “Somebody murdered old Swenson last night.”
“No!” her father blurted.
She sucked in a breath. “Murdered...”
He nodded. “Pistol-whipped to death. Found out near the relay station. Been camped out there awhile.”