Staring into the milky eyes, Rhomer said, “That’s another reason why I oughta let you send this cockeyed thing.”
“What is?”
“Caleb York is dead.” Rhomer laughed in the old man’s face. “Wes Banion killed him two years ago in Silver City! You are way behind the times, old man.”
Cullen swallowed, then shrugged. “Then we’ll send for Wes Banion.”
Rhomer gave the old boy another horselaugh. “Gauge has taken down faster guns than Banion!”
“That right?”
The deputy pointed toward the front windows. “Jack Reno stood down Banion, winged him and walked away. Two months ago, Reno died right out on that street there, bullet in the heart, courtesy of our sheriff. You could’ve said hello to Reno out at Boot Hill.”
Cullen appeared unimpressed. “Then let me send my wire. Willa, take that form from the deputy here, and revise it — cross out ‘Caleb York’ and make it ‘Wesley Banion.’ ”
Rhomer sputtered, “Just because Banion wouldn’t bother Gauge none don’t mean I’m lettin’ you send this thing! No, sir. You and your pretty daughter need to go back out to the Bar-O and milk a damn cow or somethin’.”
Cullen leaned even closer and now the two men’s noses did indeed touch. “Give that to my daughter.”
“Old man, you best—”
Then Rhomer felt something nudge him in the belly.
“Look down, Deputy,” the old man said, teeth bared in an awful grin.
Rhomer glanced down at the derringer shoved in his gut.
“Even a blind man can’t miss at this range,” Cullen said casually. “Daughter, revise that wire! Deputy Rhomer, if you don’t mind...?”
Shaken, Rhomer handed the piece of paper to the girl, who seemed half-terrified, half-amused. At the counter, she found a pencil and did as her father bade.
Rhomer and the blind man stared at each other.
“Done, Papa!”
“Ralph — send that.”
The operator said, “Mr. Cullen, really...”
Willa said, “You heard the man, Ralph. That derringer has two barrels, you know.”
Ralph sighed. “Yes, ma’am.”
They stood while the operator keyed in the message.
Cullen said, “I don’t think we’ll be needing your assistance any longer, Deputy. Thanks for being such a fine servant of the public.”
Face red under his red beard, Rhomer backed away.
As the deputy opened the door, jangling its bell, the old man said, “Maybe you’d better tell Sheriff Gauge that Wes Banion is coming to town. Or... someone like him.”
From the doorway, Rhomer said, “Oh, I’ll tell him, all right, Cullen.”
The blind man swung the small deadly gun toward right where Rhomer stood. “Make that Mister Cullen. My taxes help pay your salary, Deputy. Something to keep in mind. You will tell Gauge?”
“I’ll tell him, Mr. Cullen,” Rhomer said.
Outside, heart pounding, the deputy considered going back in, 44 in hand, and arresting that old buzzard and maybe that roll-in-the-hay daughter of his, too.
But the wire had been sent, the damage done, and the sheriff needed to be told.
And anyway, Rhomer rarely killed anybody without the sheriff’s say-so.
Chapter two
Just before noon, Willa and her father made it back home without further incident, riding in under the log arch from which hung a chain-hung plaque bearing a bold line above a big O — the carved brand of the Bar-O.
Their spread was no empire, though the largest of those remaining ranches not yet swallowed up in Sheriff Gauge’s landgrab. Washed in bright sunshine were corrals left and right, two barns, a rat-proof grain crib, a log bunkhouse, and a cookhouse with hand pump out front, a long wooden bench lined with tin washbasins on its awning-shaded porch. The main building was a sprawling log-and-stone affair, added onto several times, the only really impressive structure among the scattering of ranch buildings. The cowhands were off working the beeves, giving the place a deserted look, with only the plume of smoke from the cookhouse chimney indicating otherwise.
Willa twirled Daisy’s reins around the hitch rail in front of the house, and when she turned, lanky Whit Murphy was there, helping her father down from the buggy. She was not surprised that their foreman stayed behind to help them in and see if there had been trouble in town.
“I’ll tend to this,” Whit said, indicating he’d drive the rig over to the barn and get the horses into their stalls.
“Come inside, Whit,” Papa said, “when you’re done. Something you need to know about.”
Whit nodded, and began walking the horses and buggy toward the barn. He glanced back at Willa with a searching look and she responded with one that told the foreman, He’s gone and done it now.
Papa needed no help up the broad wooden steps to cross the plank porch to the elaborate cut-glass and carved-wood front door that her mother had bought in Mexico a decade or more ago. They entered a living room, where only occasional touches of the late Kate Cullen lingered, finely carved Spanish-style furniture sharing space with rustic carpentry by her father’s hand. This chamber remained overwhelmingly a male domain — beam-ceilinged with hides on the floor and mounted deer heads on the walls. A formidable stone fireplace had a Sharps rifle on one side and a Winchester on the other, each cradled in mortar-mounted upturned deer hooves turned gun racks.
Her father had come west with a horse and that Sharps rifle, and buffalo hunting had made him the seed money from which the Bar-O grew.
Soon Papa and Whit, sipping at china cups of coffee she’d gotten them, sat in the twin Indian-blanket cushioned rough-wood chairs that faced the fireplace as if it were roaring and not unlit since February. This, of course, allowed Willa to sit on the hearth between the two men, able to face either.
She knew very well that they did not consider her their equal. But she also knew they would tolerate her presence, and even give consideration to any opinion of hers, as the sole heir to this ranch. That she still wore the morning’s riding apparel somehow strengthened her position.
And she knew, though she did not encourage it, that Whit had notions of his own about Willa and the ranch — not the gross ambitions of a Harry Gauge, but the dreams of a ranch hand who had risen to foreman.
Whit said nothing as her father described sending his telegram, the old man in funereal black relishing relating the confrontation with Deputy Vint Rhomer. But the foreman’s long expression spoke volumes, as he sat there in knotted neck bandana, work shirt and Levi’s, bowed legs akimbo, turning his tan high-beamed Carlsbad hat in his hands like a wheel.
When Papa stopped speaking, Whit said, “All due respect, Mr. Cullen, but you don’t know what you’re gettin’ yourself into.”
Papa was bareheaded, too, his white hair as thin as grass that cattle had finished with. He frowned at his foreman, and you would swear he could see the man.
“I paid you the respect of sharing this with you, Whit. Now you do me the service of sparing me any disapprovin’ comments. You can just stay out of it. It’s done.”
Whit shook his head, hat turning in his hands more quickly now. “You’re beggin’ for a wide-open range war, Mr. Cullen... and that puts me in it already. You know how outnumbered we are? Gauge has all them deputies — outlaws to the man — and his ranch hands look like he emptied out a hoosegow to hire ’em.”
Her father snorted a laugh. “You think you’re telling me something new? Ever since Gauge shouldered his way into that town, we’ve been at war. For how long? Near two years now!”