Max Collins - The Legend of Caleb York

“Somethin’ I can do for you, Cole?”

“Nope.” He nodded toward the relay station. “You’re doin’ fine. Just keep on ridin’.”

Maybe she couldn’t do anything for him, but Colton had done something for her — he’d left his post and made it easier for the stranger to work his way down to the relay station’s buildings.

They rode in past the posted guards — barn and corral — as well as the fallen Gauge underling, Watters, who’d apparently been killed when Old Man Cullen’s buggy rolled in and got waylaid. But she didn’t ask. Another guard was walking the grounds, rifle over his arm. They had all been part of the outlaw bunch that Gauge headed up in the old days — “deputies” now.

She and Colton hitched their horses by the buggy outside the modest building with its saloon-style batwing doors. She’d been there before and knew what to expect — short bar to the left, open area straight ahead, dining tables at right. Tucked back behind the bar was an excuse for a kitchen. This low-ceilinged way station was unpainted and functional, and might be called “rustic,” if you were generous of spirit.

What greeted her within, however, was an unexpected, unnerving tableau.

She was barely inside, Colton close behind her, when she froze at the sight of a slumped George Cullen on the floor, shoved up against a table and chairs, his legs out in front of him, upper right thigh soaked scarlet, his face battered and swollen, clothes badly mussed, the unseeing eyes puffed near shut, his thinning white hair a tangle. To one side of him a man appeared to be resting his head in Cullen’s lap. But this was the shot-up corpse of a ranch hand, whose hair his employer stroked like a slumbering cat. Soothing the dead man, whose torso was riddled with bullets.

Leaning against the bar, with a bottle of whiskey between them on the counter, were a bug-eyed, shaggy-mustached Clovis Maxwell and a grinning, redheaded Rhomer, blood spattered on his buckskin vest and his gray shirt, too, where his deputy badge was pinned as if in defiance. Both were laughing and loose in that drunken way that led so easily to violence among this breed. Each had his hat pushed back on his head and his revolver tied down and slung low on his hip.

No sign of a bartender or whoever ran the way station. Was he or any helper dead in the kitchen? Tied up or huddled there? Or had they been run off? Who knew?

“Well, now!” Rhomer said, yellow teeth peeking out of bristly red. “The lovely Lola! What an honor! Such a fine lady. Might I tempt you with a libation?”

He said this while sloshing more whiskey into his own glass.

She stepped deeper into the grubby space, dirty floor whining under her boots. Pools of clotting blood were here and there, like some terrible dish had been spilled on its way to the dining tables.

She met Rhomer’s sneering gaze with a blank one. Kept her tone business-like. “Where’s Harry?”

The deputy gestured with his glass toward the outside, spilling a little. “He went on up the road to meet the stage. Y’see, when we seen you ridin’ off, we figured maybe you heard us talkin’ about comin’ out here to greet the buyers. Well, Gauge didn’t want to take no chances... She come alone, Cole?”

Colton nodded. “Yep. All by her lonesome.”

Drink still in his right hand, Rhomer curled the forefinger of his left, wiggling it, as if summoning a child. “Come here, lovely Lola. Have that drink.”

She just looked at him.

“Come on, darlin’. I won’t bite. Have a drink.”

Not caring to rile him, she came over slowly. “No thanks. I’ll wait for Harry and have one then.”

“No. Have it now.”

He splashed the drink in her face.

The whiskey burning her eyes, she barely saw the hand that came around to slap her, viciously. She went down on her knees, the flooring crying out when she didn’t.

Eyes wild, he loomed over her. “What did you do, Lola? Ride out and try to find the others to warn ’em? But you couldn’t, could you? They’s all out on the range. You know, honey — ‘where the deer and the antelope play’?”

He slapped her again and her mouth filled with the coppery taste of blood.

Hovering over her, he said, “No, it’s just you and me now, honey. Not even Harry’s around to have an opinion.”

“Keep... keep away from me.”

“I don’t think I will. See, if I see somethin’ in the street that somebody tossed away, like it was garbage? Sometimes I think I can still see some use in that somethin’.”

“Harry will kill you.”

Rhomer shook his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he gives a diddle-doodle damn about you, no more, sweet thing. And, anyway, like I said — Harry ain’t here.”

She tried to kick him between the legs, but he blocked it, and came in and began to beat her with his fists. The blows and pain that followed seemed to come from everywhere. She began to reel from it, and soon was praying for unconsciousness.

“No, no, no... now don’t you go to sleep, honey. Daddy’s not through tucking you in yet.”

Not far away, from where he slumped, Cullen cried out, “What are you doing to her? Leave her alone, you miserable bastard! If I could see, I’d... I’d...”

“Who knows?” Rhomer cackled, taking off his gun belt and tossing it on the bar. “You might just enjoy what you’d see, old man. Might bring back memories.”

The old man’s voice was a whisper, but a whisper with spine in it. “Leave her alone. If you are any kind of man, Rhomer... leave her alone.”

“Sorry, no can do. But along them lines, Mr. Cullen, sir, I’m about to show this ravin’ beauty what kind of man I am. But first I got to... kind of pound on her a mite more. You know, like when you’re making a tough piece of beef more tender?”

He leaned down and hit her, again and again. She became groggy with pain, then began to grow numb from it and to it. Then he rose and began to unbutton his pants.

Colton was grinning wetly, eyes bright. “ Give it to her, Rhomer!”

Maxwell was next to him, buggy eyes even bigger than usual. He said nothing, but was licking his lips.

Rhomer frowned at them, as if he’d forgotten they were there; maybe he had. “Get the hell out, you two. Nobody needs to be lookin’ at me but that blind man, okay? Anyway, you birds go out there and get that body buried, before the stage rolls in. Plant it out back.”

“Awww,” they said as one, and went sullenly out through the swinging doors.

Then Rhomer grinned down at her. “Bet you wish you was dead about now.”

“So... so much,” she said.

“You know what they say — ‘if wishes was horses, beggars would ride.’ ”

And he began ripping at her clothes.

The guard on the barn was heavyset but sturdy, tall, clean-shaven, in a tan Stetson and a black shirt with denims tucked in tooled boots. He stood with his hand on the butt of a Colt dragoon revolver, alert, not missing a thing passing in front of him.

But he didn’t see — or hear for that matter — Caleb York enter through the barn’s rear doors and come up behind him, where the guard stood with his back to the front ones. York pulled him quickly inside, nudging the doors shut again with a foot, then he drew the Bowie blade across the man’s throat, sending a stream of blood across barnwood.

From experience York knew the blood would spray forward, so it was no surprise that there wasn’t a drop of the stuff on the tan Stetson that he borrowed from the dead man, tossing his own aside.

York had been lucky — the guard on the barn was the easiest to come up behind, and on top of that wore a black shirt and bore a superficial resemblance to the man who’d just killed him — clean-shaven, tall, a revolver low on his right hip. Everything but the pearl buttons and gray collar and cuff trim.