Max Collins - The Legend of Caleb York

Rhomer, arms folded, said, “Well, at least we know who’s comin’.”

The big blond sheriff said, “Banion, you mean.”

“Yeah. Who else?” Then a thought made it through to the front of his head and the deputy leaned forward. “But suppose it ain’t Banion? Old Man Cullen sent word asking his buddy to send Banion or some other shootist!”

“Most likely be Banion.” Gauge poured tobacco from his pouch into a waiting curve of paper. “Not that it makes much never-mind. I’ll know him when I see him.”

“So you’ve seen Banion, then?”

Gauge licked the paper’s edge. “Nope.”

Rhomer got some more thoughts going. “Remember Jake?”

“I remember Jake.”

“ Jake knew Banion. They pulled some jobs together.”

“This would be more helpful,” Gauge said lazily, rolling the cigarette, “if Jake wasn’t dead.”

Jake Farrow had been killed on a bank job Gauge and his boys had pulled about six months before taking over Trinidad and — the thought making Gauge smile — going straight.

“Talked about him enough, Jake did,” Rhomer said, still on his thinking jag. “Said Banion’s meaner than an Apache and fights twice as dirty. They say, in Tombstone? Even the Earps steered clear of him. And in Ellis, Reg Toomey turned his badge in, second he saw Banion ride into town.”

Gauge lit a match off a boot heel. “That right.”

“Jake saw him burn out the Casaway bunch. Set fire to their house with their women in it, too. Banion and his crew left half of that town dead, and all they got for their trouble was a few hundred greenbacks.”

Gauge had his cigarette going now. “Do tell.”

“Anybody who wasn’t part of his gang got shot dead. By Banion hisself. Didn’t like havin’ his face seen.”

“That ugly, huh?”

“No! Didn’t want to be identified... You yankin’ my leg, Gauge?”

“Mebbe. You say Jake saw him face-to-face. Well, Banion didn’t kill Jake. What, was Jake lucky? Makes him a lucky dead man, don’t it?”

“Well, Jake was part of his gang. Banion’s a bad egg, but he don’t kill his friends without good reason.”

“Ah. That would explain it. Say, Vint — who was it again, outdrew Banion? Remind me.”

“Gill Peterson.”

“Whatever happened to Peterson, anyway?”

Rhomer smiled. Chuckled. “He pulled on you and you gunned him down. Last month it was.”

“Where was it I got him? Remind me.”

“Front of the Victory.”

“No, I mean where ?”

“Oh. ’Tween the eyes. Dead center.” Rhomer grinned. “He did have kinda wide-set eyes, though.”

“Still in all,” the sheriff said, with a shrug.

“Still in all,” Rhomer allowed.

Gauge tamped cigarette ash on the floor. “And who was it shot Jack Reno through the heart?”

“That was you, Gauge.”

Gauge took in smoke, held it, let it out. “So tell me — why is it again, I should worry about Banion?”

Rhomer leaned in. “Because we got dark alleys in this town, Harry. And you got a big ol’ back ’tween them shoulders.”

Gauge nodded, unconcerned. “And that’s what I got you fellas for. So’s nobody gets the chance to back-shoot me.”

“You mean, ’cause we walk behind you.”

“Well, that’s part of it. But what else do I mean?”

Rhomer frowned. “Not sure I follow, Harry.”

“There’s more than one way to watch a man’s back.”

“Is there?”

“You can keep track of anybody new in town. Somebody don’t smell right... well, there’s plenty more room in that bone orchard outside town. And lots of range out there to bury strangers in.”

Rhomer thought about that. “But what about the Bar-O boys? We already planted our share of them. Even in this town, there’s only so far we can go, nippin’ trouble in the bud.”

“They ain’t gonna be a problem much longer.”

“That right?”

Gauge nodded. “I hear pretty soon it’s going to get real warm out there. Hotter days’re comin’, you know. And that long grass burns real damn hot. And fast.”

Rhomer grinned. “Takin’ a page out of Banion’s book?”

“Now you are thinking, Vint. We kill Banion and let him take the blame.”

“How does that stack up?”

Gauge shrugged, let out more smoke. “It’s got all around town by now, that wire Old Man Cullen sent. Banion comes to Trinidad, things get warm out at the Bar-O, Banion shows up dead.”

“Okay...”

“How’s it look, Vint? Like a fallin’-out between employer and employee, windin’ up bad for all concerned. Anybody left still breathin’ out at the Bar-O, that’s what we got these cells for.”

Rhomer squinted at his boss. “What about the pretty filly?”

“We make sure she don’t get burned. I’ll sweet-talk her how Banion was responsible for the bad things that happened at the ranch — pity. And then she’ll need a man to help her rebuild that spread, won’t she?”

The deputy had been smiling through that, but now was staring out the window, distracted by movement and sounds out there. “Harry — somethin’ goin’ on out there.”

Both men got up and went out into the dry, warm afternoon. The sheriff and deputy stood on the porch and watched. Men and women were on the opposing boardwalks, but weren’t going anywhere, just clustered talking, often in an animated fashion, some pointing toward the sheriff’s office.

“What are all them people doin’ on the street?” Rhomer wondered aloud. “I don’t like it. It’s like they’s waitin’ for a parade to go by or somethin’.”

“They’re waiting for something to happen.”

“ What to happen?”

“For me to react to that telegram Cullen sent. Only I ain’t gonna react just yet.” Gauge nodded toward the gossiping citizens. “But get used to that, Vint, over the next week or so. You’ll see the good folks of Trinidad out watchin’, talkin’, every damn time they hear a horse ride in or a stage roll up.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah. They want to get a good, long look at this bad man Banion.”

“ If it’s Banion.”

Gauge pitched his cigarette sparking into the street. “I hope it is. Killing him will make me look pretty damn good. Show this town just what kind of sheriff they got for themselves.”

The two men went back in the office, smiling.

Beneath their porch, in one of his favorite hiding places, a white-bearded, skinny old desert rat known only as Tulley was smiling, too. Grinning to himself as if the sheriff and his deputy had been telling jokes. A fairly new addition to the Trinidad populace, Tulley was well on his way to becoming the town drunk.

Sipping at his latest bottle, then grinning stupidly to no one in particular, he cackled out loud. “ Banion! That’s a good one. Banion...”

Then he took another sip, curled up, and went back to sleep.

When Sheriff Harry Gauge pushed open the telegraph office door, he hadn’t intended to startle operator Ralph Parsons. But the skinny, four-eyed Parsons was always on the skittish side, and plainly the wire Old Man Cullen had sent earlier today — now the talk of Trinidad — had the pip-squeak well and truly spooked.

Faintly amused, Gauge leaned an elbow at the counter and gave Parsons a small, calm smile in exchange for the operator’s big, nervous one.

The sheriff asked, “Any message for Cullen come in yet, Ralph?”

The nervous smile disappeared and a rush of words squawked out: “Oh, uh, oh no, sir, Sheriff.” The man’s expression was gravely serious now. “And, uh, look... about the wire Mr. Cullen sent this morning? I didn’t want to do it. No, sir, I didn’t. But that old man had a gun, and—”