Микки Спиллейн - Last Stage to Hell Junction

“Poker, Sheriff?”

“Poker, Deputy.”

“T’get yore mind off unpleasantness?”

“Actually, no. I think there’s a good possibility I may learn something.”

“About poker?”

“Hardly. About something else entirely.”

Climbing into his jacket as he began his walk to the Victory several blocks down, York let the coolness of the evening soothe him, enjoying the look of the little main street at dusk. Lamps in the upstairs windows of living quarters were glowing yellow eyes in the faces of businesses, all of which were shuttered, except of course for the saloon.

Not hard to imagine Trinidad turning ghost town itself. Probably would have, if Willa Cullen hadn’t gone against her late father’s wishes and agreed to sell the right-of-way to the Santa Fe Railroad for their spur to Las Vegas. Willa had a mind of her own. She was a strong girl. A strong woman.

But as he approached the saloon, he thought of that other strong woman. Laughter and bustle floated from around the batwing doors of the Victory, whose lights were not so much yellow eyes in the twilight, as more a flickering fireplace a man could warm himself to.

For a weekend night, payday weekend, the festive nature of the Victory was almost subdued. Only a few satin-clad lasses trolled the cowboys and clerks for drinks, no piano going, no dancing. Maybe word had gotten around about their owner’s peril. Certainly the staff knew, head bartender Hub Wainwright and the rest.

Yes, Rita was a strong woman, too.

She was also a good businesswoman. That’s why she provided that special table for the city fathers to play poker without dealer Yancy Cole sitting in. Rita knew how important it was to stay on the right side of the Citizens Committee.

This was a game where York was always welcome. Tonight’s players included well-groomed, diminutive Mayor Jasper Hardy, town barber; muttonchopped hardware-store man Clarence Mathers; skinny, bug-eyed apothecary Clem Davis; and heavy-set, blond, mustached mercantile-store owner Newt Harris.

A chair was waiting for the sheriff. He was welcomed with smiles, then words of support and sympathy for the terrible doings earlier. They were between hands. They passed him the deck and York began to shuffle the cards distractedly.

The mayor said, “Have you considered raising a posse, Sheriff?”

“No.”

Harris sat forward. “But the word around town is that this is the Hargrave gang. Surely you don’t intend to go after such villains by yourself.”

York had kept under wraps that he’d killed the ransom messenger. These people didn’t need to know that. He wished he didn’t have to know that himself.

“I might gather men with guns,” he allowed, “if I had a plan of assault. But that downpour today made further tracking impossible. I lost them in the foothills. At the base of the foothills, truth be told.”

With sympathy in his voice, Mathers asked, “Nothing to go on?”

“Oh, I have something to go on, all right. Hard to follow up on, though.”

The mayor asked, “What do you have, Caleb?”

York scratched his bearded chin. “Well, my prisoner says the gang is hidden out in a ghost town around here somewheres. In the hills, the mountains. But that’s all he claims to know.”

The mercantile man and the hardware-store owner exchanged glances. What was that about?

York said, “My deputy says there are half a dozen ghost towns that are possibilities. But checking each one out would be a prolonged affair. Are you gents familiar with the ghost towns hereabouts?”

Nods came from around the table, Mathers saying, “Some, perhaps.”

“Which one would be closest to where that stagecoach was taken?”

The hardware seller frowned in thought. He glanced at Harris, who frowned back at him.

Mathers ignored his fellow merchant’s frown and said, “Hell Junction might make a starting point.”

“Hell Junction?” York said, frowning. “There was a town around here that called itself Hell Junction?”

Shifting in his chair, his smile oddly sour, Mathers said, “Well, the actual name is ‘Hale Junction.’ But everybody started calling it ‘Hell Junction,’ when things starting going, well, to hell. Silver mine went bust. What separates it from the other ghost towns in the hills is that there’s still a functioning hotel there.”

York’s frown deepened. “For what reason?”

Mathers lifted a shoulder. “I couldn’t say. But I can tell you the way to get there. Give you good directions. You see, uh... I make a run, now and then, delivering various supplies. So do several other businesses here in Trinidad. And, now and then, Mr. Wiley, the owner of the Hale Junction Inn, brings in a buckboard for a load himself. Newt here has done business with him, as well. Haven’t you, Newt?”

The smile Harris gave his fellow merchant could not have been more forced. “I have, time to time. Never been to Hell Junction, personally,” Harris said.

“Why in hell,” York said, shuffling no longer, leaning in as if he were preparing to pull in a big pot, “would a hotel stay open in a damn ghost town?”

Harris and Mathers again exchanged looks — guilty looks, and the mayor and the druggist also gave the appearance of naughty children who’d been caught at the molasses.

Mathers, keeping his voice down, barely audible above the barroom noise, said, “I can’t really say.”

“Can’t or won’t?” York’s upper teeth were showing. “Mr. Mathers, the lives of Raymond Parker, Willa Cullen, and Rita Filley hang in the balance. You do not want to know the lengths to which I would go to get this information out of you. So you damn well will give it to me. Now.”

The city fathers made one collective gulp, an almost comical sight, though it did not make York smile, much less laugh. But finally it was Mathers who made the admission.

“The hotel at Hell Junction,” he said, “is a place in this part of the world where folks can stay a while... no questions asked. If they pay the going rate. Or such is the rumor, at least.”

York, seething, got to his feet, his chair legs scraping, screeching.

“You mean to say, gentlemen, that there’s a place in this part of the world — in my county — where an outlaw can get away from it all? Where a killer can go to hell and like it? And no one thought to tell me about it?”

Sighs were followed by chagrined nods.

“I appreciate the information, gents,” he said. “You’ll have to excuse me. Not in the mood for a game this evening.”

Or their company.

And he went out into the night before he did something he’d regret. He had to cool down and he had to think.

But one thought he’d already had: the good folks of Trinidad liked doing business with Hell Junction. And as far as he was concerned, that made them accomplices in this damn thing.

Finding herself sharing a red-and-black brocade two-seater sofa with Willa Cullen was nothing Rita Filley could ever have contemplated.

That the sofa was well-worn and that the big windows to their backs onto the street were boarded over, the glass long since broken out and swept away, did not lessen the improbability of sitting with the Cullen girl in a hotel lobby. Granted, the Hale Junction Inn was in a ghost town whose silver strike had struck out; but the hotel itself was undeniably a going concern.

Rita had heard rumors of the hotel, and the words “Hell Junction” were known to her, also. But she was relatively new to the territory, having inherited the Victory Saloon from her late sister Lola, and — with the exception of Trinidad and its thriving neighbor, Las Vegas — she remained unfamiliar with much of New Mexico.