Back in Trinidad, while Morgan and the proprietor’s slow-witted son Lem piled the sacks in back of the buckboard outside Harris Mercantile, Willa had headed up the boardwalk to the sheriff’s office, hoping to find Caleb at his desk.
Instead she’d found Deputy Jonathan P. Tulley sitting at his “desk”—a rough-hewn table overseen by wanted posters and a rifle rack near the wood-burning stove, which was going just enough to keep a pot of coffee warm. She helped herself to the chair behind the absent Caleb’s desk—the familiarity had been earned.
“Sleeping in, is he?” she said.
“Not hardly. Coffee, miss?”
“No thanks.” She’d experienced Tulley’s coffee before.
The deputy was saying, “He’s out to the Circle G.”
She sat up. “What business has he there?”
“Callin’ on the Hammond woman. Kilt her boy last night.”
Now she really sat up. “What?”
Tulley told the tale, in a colorful way almost worth sharing.
When he wrapped up his account, Tulley asked, “Have ye met the widow Hammond yet?”
“No.”
Tulley clicked in his cheek. “I hear she’s a fine figger of a female. Word is she’s buyin’ up all them small spreads in your neck of the woods.”
“So I hear. But I also hear she’s taken on some rough cowboys.”
“. . . Cowboys like them that rode with the Clantons and McLauries?”
“That’s right.” She sighed. “I hope Caleb knows what he’s doing.”
“Generally does. He only kilt that boy ’cause that’s what you do with mad dogs. How is things out to the Bar-O, since the Die-Up?”
“Taxing. Ugly.”
“Sheriff’s gettin’ a house, I hear.” He looked at her with a twinkle. “Mayhap ye should move to town. Cattle ranchin’ is no fit trade for the gentler sex.”
She got up and went over and grabbed him by his suspenders and yanked him bug-eyed to his feet. “ ‘Mayhap’ you should mind your own business, Deputy Tulley.”
She let go of him and the sounds of his suspenders snapping and him sitting hard in his wooden chair foreshadowed her slamming of the jailhouse door.
Looking back on that, in the buckboard, she felt foolish. Tulley hadn’t meant any harm—he seldom did, unless wielding a shotgun at the sheriff’s behest.
And now here Caleb was, on her literal doorstep! Tulley had been wrong—the sheriff had ridden out to see her, not the high-and-mighty Victoria Hammond.
Caleb came over and helped her down from the buckboard—she didn’t need the help, of course, but it was gentlemanly of him. The jangle of harness announced Lou was heading over to the cookhouse to start unloading the cookie’s share of supplies.
“Willa,” he said, smiling.
“Caleb,” she said, smiling back. “Why am I honored with this visit? Your deputy said you were going out to see the Hammond woman.”
His gaze lowered. “I was. I needed to convey my sympathies.”
“For killing her son?”
“Yes. For killing her son.”
The buckboard was whining under the unloading down at the cookhouse, Harmon, the plump white-bearded cook, lending a hand.
“From what Tulley told me,” she said, “the boy had it coming.... Care to sit for a while? I made lemonade this morning.”
“Best offer I’ve had today.”
She was glad to hear that.
When they were inside, with the door shut, Caleb put his hat and coat on the wall pegs, then took her in his arms and kissed her. The kiss, and the embrace that went with it, lasted a while. They were alone in the house—she had no servant, unless you counted Caleb York. Then she took him by the hand and walked him into and across the living room.
The narrowness of the room made it seem longer and larger than it was, the fittings a mix of her late parents—her mother’s finely carved Spanish-style furnishings and her father’s hand-hewn, bark-and-all carpentry that went well with the hides on the floor and mounted antler heads. An imposing stone fireplace seemed protected by a pair of Winchesters—a Model 1866 and a Model 1855—working relics from her papa’s pioneer past, each supported by mounted upturned deer hoofs.
In front of the unlit fireplace were positioned twin homemade chairs, good size, with folded-over Indian blankets serving as cushions; Caleb sat. She fetched him a mason jar of lemonade, and one for herself as well, and settled into the other chair. A rough-hewn table fashioned by George Cullen separated them.
“How did she take it?” Willa asked him.
“I don’t really know.”
“You . . . ?”
He shrugged, sipped lemonade. “She has a bookkeeper and . . . ‘factotum’ he calls himself, name of Byers, who came by last night and got the particulars. Took the word out to her.”
“I’ve met Byers. He seems too nice to trust.”
Caleb twitched a smile. “I sensed that myself. The clean man who does the dirty work.”
“Then you went there, strictly to . . .”
“Pay my respects.” He sipped more lemonade. “You make a mean glass of this stuff. Very nice. Tart.”
“She’s a very nice tart, you say? Victoria Hammond?”
That made him outright smile, but he said, “Don’t be unkind. She lost her son.”
“Word is he was a drunken lout and, after all, he ravaged and thrashed that poor girl, if Tulley’s to be believed.”
“He’s generally reliable. The whelp forced me into killing him, so I won’t lose sleep. Still. Sitting across from the deceased’s mother was unsettling.”
“She gave you what for?”
“Not at all.” He told her how the mother had spoken openly of her son’s failings and even those of her late husband. “She was very frank.”
“It may have been a device.”
“How so?”
Willa sipped her lemonade; she felt she hadn’t made it sweet enough, but it would have to do. “My understanding is the woman has taken on some of the lowest-down cowhands in the Southwest. Brigands and gunfighters, rabble left over from Tombstone days.”
“I’ve heard that too,” he admitted.
“And the way her husband made himself a cattle baron was by buying beef rustled from Mexico.” She rolled her eyes. “Situated here, all the closer to the border, I can well imagine we’ll have a cattle baroness soon, doing much the same.”
His eyebrows flicked
