Микки Спиллейн - Last Stage to Hell Junction

An awful grin appeared under the dark mustache and dark eyes glittered. “I was wondering why that son of a bitch was ‘sir-ing’ you. You’d be Caleb York.”

“I would be.”

“Heard you turned lawman somewhere in these parts. Saw your picture once. Beard kind of threw me.”

“Cold weather’s comin’ on,” York said, his spurs jangling as he stepped down. The two men were only maybe three feet apart. “Now slide off that stool nice and easy, and keep your hands up, palms outward, waist high.”

Clutter nodded, started to move slowly off his roost, then grabbed his plate and swung it into York’s wrist, the edge of the thing landing hard, and snapping into pieces.

The impact and sharp pain that went with it was enough to open York’s fingers and send the .44 tumbling from his grip. As he dove after the weapon, the man with Parker’s gold watch drew down on the sheriff and shot twice, the roar of the gun rattling everything in the room not nailed down. Bullets chewed up dirty wood flooring as York rolled toward his fallen revolver. When the .44 was again in his hand, York fired toward Clutter, body shots, not head shots, not wanting to kill the man, preferring to have him alive and talking.

But that wouldn’t be happening, as one of York’s three bullets angled up through Clutter’s throat while the other two went through him like Indian arrows, going in small but coming out bloody, splashing a wall in back of the counter that the relay man would finally have to get around to cleaning. The .45 pitched from limp fingers and clunked to a stop.

Clutter slid down the stool behind him, knocking it over flat on the filthy floor like a second victim. The little man’s eyes were very big and he was gasping and making a terrible sound, like a drowning man, only it was his own blood he was drowning in, reddish froth coloring his mouth and mustache a smeary, bubbly scarlet.

“Goddamnit!” York said, getting up.

Cordite scorched the air as the sheriff walked over in the vain hope that Clutter might have survived; but when he got there and knelt to the man, he saw the dark eyes cloud over with nothingness.

Fosler and his plump wife peered out from the kitchen doorway, her head over his, totem-pole style.

“Is it over, Sheriff?” Fosler asked, his voice small after the thunder of gunfire in the small space.

“Yes,” York said.

“Who... who was he?” Fosler came out, and glanced sideways with a frown at the red, gloppy splotches dripping down his already grimy wall.

“His name was Ned Clutter. He was one of the Hargrave bunch.”

From the kitchen doorway, Maria said, “I hear of them. Bad men.”

“Bad men,” York agreed, and stood. “One less of ’em now.”

Fosler was shaking his head. “Could you wait to settle up with my customers, Sheriff, till they settle up with me?”

“Not my intent.” He holstered his gun. “I was just trying to stop him.”

“You did that, all right. You... you still need that horse, Caleb York?”

“No.” He was pinning his badge back on now. “The one favor this dead bastard did me was spare me a long ride to Las Vegas.”

York told the relay station man that he would be going back to Trinidad and would send Doc Miller out to collect the corpse.

And York, on the gelding, headed out to do just that, knowing he’d succeeded in intercepting the ransom messenger, but not knowing how, or even if, that was any help to Raymond Parker.

Or Willa Cullen.

Or Rita Filley.

By late afternoon, York was back in his office behind his desk, sitting up. His feet were on the floor, his gun still strapped to his hip, though he’d untied the weapon. Wouldn’t do for it to fall on the floor and discharge. That would be all he needed on this damn day.

He had already dispatched Doc Miller to make a trip to the relay station, which exasperated the physician, who had put in a long hard day himself.

“Judas priest, Caleb,” Doc had said, as the sheriff helped him up onto the buckboard, “my dead patients are beginning to outnumber the living ones.”

“Good ammunition,” York said, with a salute of a wave, “for me making your case with the Citizens Committee. You deserve a salary and the official coroner title.”

“Don’t I just,” Miller said, shook the reins and got his horse’s attention, and man and beast rumbled out of town, both making unhappy noises.

Deputy Tulley was seated in a chair by the scarred table that was as close to a desk as he was ever likely to have. Like the faces on the wanted posters pinned up on the wall in back of him, Tulley was staring at the sheriff, the old desert rat leaning forward with an alertness that came with staying on the wagon for some months now.

The deputy said, “Does sound like ye got yourself in a fine fix, Sheriff.”

“I’m a trigger-happy fool. Do I have to kill everybody who takes a potshot at me?”

“Strikes me as a pretty fair policy. But that there Hargrave bunch’ll start wonderin’ in a day or two why their man ain’t come back with that ransom money.”

“Doesn’t work that way, Tulley,” York said. He took a swig of his deputy-made coffee from a tin cup; it dated to this morning, at which time it could have curled the bark off a tree. The brew had not mellowed with age.

“How would they have worked it?”

York raised an eyebrow. “Likely a drop would be set up. Some agreed-to place where the money could be exchanged for the prisoner. Somewhere that provided high lookout perches, so the law could be spotted if Parker’s people didn’t follow orders.”

“A canyon, maybe.”

“A canyon, yes. They’re up in the hills, or even the mountains. Our prisoner told us the bunch was holed up in some ghost town... How is our prisoner?”

“Oh, he sleeps deeper than that feller you shot today. The doc stopped by. Got him loaded to the gills with laudanum. Losin’ toes is pretty miserable, I reckon.”

“Losing your life is worse. Son of a bitch is lucky I didn’t kill him.”

“Shore is,” Tulley said. “Trigger-happy fool that ye be.”

York grinned and laughed, and so did Tulley.

“You lived half your life in those hills and mountains,” York reminded his deputy.

“Oh, more’n half. Why?”

“You must know every ghost town in those hills and valleys and mountainsides.”

“Purt’ near,” Tulley allowed.

“How many do you know of?”

Tulley leaned back in his chair and got to thinking. “Oh... offhand... I reckon I know of mebbe half a dozen.”

“Close to Trinidad?”

“Close enough, in most cases.”

“Close together ? So that we could go from one to another and shake the trees for those bastards?”

Tulley shook his head. “No, Caleb York, I fear that ain’t practical. They is here and there and everywhere. Got no real fix on where any of ’em is located at. I just know they’s up there, somewheres. Oh, we could do what you say but might be at it for days. And days. Be a real chore.”

York sighed. “In the meantime, Raymond Parker and those two women are in the hands of Hargrave and his outlaw rabble.”

“Outlaw rabble,” Tulley pointed out, “does not have respect for the gentler sex. If I was a beautiful woman, in cruel hands like that? Why, I’d sooner slit my throat than give up my honor to ruffians of that nature.”

Tulley meant well, but the sheriff did not care to picture a female version of the reformed desert rat, particularly being compromised. And the old boy did not seem to have any real idea where any of the ghost towns were located.

“Tulley, hold down the fort,” he said, getting to his feet. He grabbed his jacket off the wall peg, but left his holster tie-down loose. He’d be sitting again soon. The sun hadn’t set yet, but the game would be going by now.