“In my official capacity,” York said, with a shrug, “I will do what I can to help.”
“That I am glad to hear. But you may be wondering why, under these grave circumstances, I might subject you to a lecture on the subject of the future of the Hammond family cattle business.”
“Meaning no disrespect,” York said, “I think you might feel you have me at a disadvantage. If there would ever be a time I’d be beholden to you, this would be it.”
She smiled again. She made a sound that was almost a laugh and not quite a grunt. “You are not wrong. But what I mostly want to do is make sure—despite the tragic circumstance—that we do not . . . get off on the wrong foot.”
York wondered how much farther on the wrong foot one might get than to shoot and kill someone’s son.
“I had already,” she said, head back, “made something of a study of you, from a distance. Mr. Byers made some inquiries—discreetly.”
That straightened him. “In what regard?”
“You were a close confidant of the late George Cullen. And you are friendly with his daughter.”
“Yes.” He chose not to explore the precise meaning of “friendly” in this context.
“Willa Cullen is young, I understand. Twenty-three, twenty-four?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Very young to be running a cattle ranch, and right now she—like so many others, after the blizzard—is in a most precarious position.”
“She’s a strong young woman.”
The Hammond woman leaned on her elbows. “So I understand. But I hope to buy her out. With the Bar-O merging with the Circle G, and all of the smaller ranches I’ve acquired, mine will be the biggest operation in the Territory.”
Not would be—will be.
“Miss Cullen,” York said, “grew up on that ranch. She was George Cullen’s only child. She views herself as the equivalent of her father’s son. I do know her well, and I doubt you could tempt her.”
She seemed to take no offense. “As I say, I had some discreet inquiries around Trinidad made about you, Caleb. If anyone could . . . tempt her . . . it might well be you.”
That didn’t sit well with him. He rose. “Again, Mrs. Hammond, you have my sympathies.”
The throaty voice grew just a little louder. “She grew up in that house, you say—well, she could have it. She could stay there. Perhaps we might set aside some farmland. My sole interest is in cattle.”
More so than her dead son, it would seem.
“If you feel I’m owed any debt,” she said coolly, “in the tragedy that brought you here, perhaps you would consider speaking to Miss Cullen on my behalf. Who knows? Perhaps Caleb York could persuade her to sell—that doing so would be in her best interests.”
Was he reading a threat in that?
His hostess rose, came around the desk, and took him by the arm—this seemed her way of dismissing him, benignly. She was taller than he’d figured, and as graceful as he’d imagined, and the black dress hugged her rather curvaceous figure like an overeager suitor. This woman of perhaps forty could have made a much younger man drunk with her beauty.
“We won’t be adversaries, Sheriff York,” she said. “You’re the most famous man in the New Mexico Territory, after all.”
And would she soon be the most famous woman? York wondered. Was that her implication?
She deposited him in the hall, sealed herself back in her chamber, and Byers materialized to show him out.
“Remarkable woman, don’t you think?” the bookkeeper asked.
“Well, I’ll say one thing.”
“Yes?”
“She’s holding up.”
CHAPTER THREE
Willa Cullen guided the buckboard drawn by two quarter horses under the log arch with the chain-hung plaque boldly bearing a big burnt O—echoing the Bar-O brand.
The lovely young woman looked tomboyish in her red-and-black plaid shirt and denims and boots, but no less feminine for it. The tall, shapely girl wore her straw-yellow hair up and braided in back, which went well with her long-lashed, cornflower-blue eyes.
This late morning she was accompanied by lanky, weathered stockman Lou Morgan, who had helped her on the supply run into Trinidad for flour, sugar, beans, lard, molasses, coffee, and rice, plus bacon packed in bran and eggs in cornmeal. Even with a reduced number of cowhands, it took a lot to keep a ranch going like the one she’d inherited not so long ago.
The largest spread around, the Bar-O boasted a corral, two barns, rat-proof grain crib, log bunkhouse, and cookhouse with hand pump, wooden bench, and row of tin wash basins along an awning-shaded porch. The ranch house was a rambling log-and-stone affair that had been added onto several times, the central wooden structure with its plank-wood front porch erected by her late father in pioneering days.
But for a swirl of smoke from the cookhouse, things looked deserted, with the herders out on their grim duties—for weeks now, about half of Willa’s buckaroos were keeping watch on the skinny few thousand surviving beeves, the other hands still gathering bloated carcasses to pile up in ghastly barbecues, fighting off buzzards and wolves to do so.
About half of her hands had moved on—some had up and quit; a few had died in the last brutal blizzard. She had been impressed by how many of the colored cowboys and Mexican vaqueros had stuck despite hard going. Her current foreman, Bill Jackson, was an ex-slave from Mississippi, and didn’t seem easily thrown by anything life threw at him. Help like that in times like these was priceless.
Willa’s visitor might have been lost in the rustic landscape, but she picked him out at once—Caleb York, sitting on the front steps, hat in his hand, looking in his usual black like a handsome, rawboned preacher come calling. His dappled gray gelding, with its distinctive black mane, was hitched nearby, black tail twitching.
As she approached, guiding the buckboard toward the house, Caleb rose and smiled shyly and waved. Seeing him sent something leaping in her—that often happened, but because she’d
