Far north of New Mexico—in the territories of Montana, Wyoming, and the black hills of Dakota—the snow started in November, light and cooling after a blazing hell of a summer. But as that snow fell harder and gathered itself deeper, and the temperature dropped to fifty below, livestock was soon starving in the whiplash wind. What stubby, scant grass there was lay hidden beneath drifting snow that would thaw only to freeze and then provide a platform for more snow to pile onto.
And in early January, when snowfall became a blizzard, the white stuff coating plateaus and filling river bottoms, the cattle began to starve and die by the thousands as their owners—who had not stored away nearly enough hay for such circumstances—stood defenseless against a winter worse than the blazing summer they’d just somehow survived. No spring roundup this year—not after this big die-up, as some wag lost to history put it.But in Trinidad, New Mexico, that killing blizzard the ranchers and town folk were hearing about was a world away, up north. Surely the conflagration of white would never reach as far as their Territory, much less Texas beyond.
Jonathan P. Tulley, the first snowflakes kissing his grizzled face, paused to stick his tongue out to taste a few.
At a little after ten p.m., the old desert rat turned deputy—a transition that had included Tulley’s status as town drunk and resident character—was just starting his nightly rounds. As it happened, the stretch of boardwalk down which he patrolled right now was where he once had tucked himself under and away each night. His former home, you might say.
Now he lived in the adobe-walled jail, sleeping in a cell. Incarceration might well seem a questionable step up, but unlike the prisoners—of which currently there were none—his quarters went unlocked. Since he worked a good share of the night, finding lodgings elsewhere had not been high on his list. Anyway, he preferred the comfy cot of his cell to the stall at the livery stable where for a time he’d worked and slept. That was before Caleb York had come to town, not yet a year ago, and changed everything around for Jonathan P. Tulley.
No more did the bony, bandy-legged figure wear a frayed BVD shirt and baggy, high-water, canvas trousers. Now, at Sheriff York’s prodding, Tulley was strictly store-bought attired, from his dark flannel shirt to his gray woolen pants, sporting crisp red suspenders and work boots with nary a speck of horse manure top nor bottom. Once a month the town barber (who was also the town mayor) spruced the deputy up, trimming Tulley’s white, wispy hair and combing over the bald spot, the deputy’s beard full but not so damn bushy no more. The only remnant of his prior wardrobe was a shapeless canvas thing that claimed to be a hat.
He began his rounds with the little barrio across from the sheriff’s office with jail. The low-riding adobe buildings were mostly quiet in the gentle but steady snowfall, hardly a light burning, with the exception of the always lively Cantina de Toro Rojo at the dead end of the shabby smattering of dwellings. He didn’t bother going into the cantina, just peeked in the windows.
The fat owner, also his own bartender, was polishing unwashed glasses behind the counter while the usual hombre seated in one corner was smoking a cigarette of his own making and playing fancy guitar while a girl twirly danced and tried to attract customers. She was one of the fallen angels who worked on the second floor of the two-story cantina. Now that the Victory Saloon had shut down its brothel business, this was the only place you could buy a little love in Trinidad. The señorita wasn’t getting any real interest from the mix of town people and cowboys mingling with a few local Mexicanos.
That’s how cold and quiet this night was.
As he walked along, checking the doors of Trinidad’s various storefronts (Harris Mercantile, Davis Apothecary, Mathers and Sons Hardware), with all but the Victory Saloon closed for business at this hour, Tulley was thinking how it was too bad this snowfall, light as it was, hadn’t arrived in time for an old-fashioned Christmas. How nice that would’ve been for the kiddies, toy soldiers for the boys and pretty dollies for the girls, a tree inside with glass ornaments and tiny candles burning.
Years ago, before his wife died of the yellow fever, when he hadn’t yet left his now motherless daughter with her aunt and lit out, looking for gold and silver that he never quite found, Jonathan P. Tulley had lived a normal life that included such things as Christmas, right down to a little pine tree taken indoors and all decked out. Where he once lived, there’d been Yuletide snow, too. Now there was snow, some anyway, but Christmas was over and gone.
Not that Christmas had missed Trinidad entirely. There’d been doings at Missionary Baptist and at the Victory Saloon, too (rather different in nature). Some red ribbons and bunting got strung up along Main Street. But lots of folks went by wagon over to Las Vegas, the biggest little town in this part of New Mexico, for celebrating, whether the family variety or the whooping it up kind.
Next year might be different. By this time next calendar, the Santa Fe Railroad spur would have likely got itself finished up, linking Trinidad to Las Vegas. Trinidad would have grown some by then. Several new businesses were already in—most recent, Maxwell Boots, Saddle, and Harness Depot, a leather-works store down past the new newspaper, the Trinidad Enterprise. More houses were going up every day, seemed like. Hammering and sawing was damn near nonstop. Caleb York called it progress. Tulley never knew progress was so loud before.
As he walked along the boardwalk—with his shotgun cradled in his arms, which was fitting as he thought of the scattergun as his baby—Tulley found himself suddenly shivering. Then his teeth began to chatter.
He had realized the night was a mite nippy, but he didn’t own a coat at this juncture—just hadn’t got around to it, and anyway, New Mexico winters were brisk but never bitter, in his experience. Just like the summers around Trinidad never got so hot a man hardly ever noticed he was sweating.
The general darkness of the night—the blackness of the sky somehow giving off white flakes—was broken only by the glow of the Victory Saloon’s windows. Tulley knew his boss was in that cheery den of iniquity right now, playing cards with the town fathers. The deputy picked up the pace, heading over there.
It was cold enough tonight that the inner doors of the saloon were shut over the batwing ones that normally welcomed in the weather as well as customers. Tulley got himself through this barrier and into the town’s lone water hole, though before long, as Trinidad’s population increased from three-hundred-some to who-knew-how-many, that would likely change.
As for the Victory, what with so many ranches around, and thirsty wayfarers passing through, few small-town slopshops had more to offer. The ceilings were high embossed tin with kerosene chandeliers, the walls fancy gold-and-black brocade decorated by saddles and spurs hung up like trophies. The oak bar went on forever, with white-shirt, black-bowtie bartenders ready to slake your thirst from a row of bourbon and rye bottles imported all the way from Denver.
As for Tulley, he was reformed of such temptation. He came in only for sarsaparilla or to see Sheriff York, who spent many an off-hour here—mostly for poker and faro, though some said he spent time upstairs with Miss Rita, too. This Tulley did not consider his business.
Not that he’d have blamed the sheriff. Rita Filley was one fine-looking, dark-eyed specimen of the female species, hair as black as a raven’s wing, piled up on top of her pretty head, her full bosom about half on display in that green-and-black silk gown, waist tiny but hips flaring out. Birthing a child would have come natural to that one, iffen she wasn’t already looking after the dusty cowboys at the bar, each with one foot on the rail and a spittoon nearby to feed.
Miss Rita—who’d inherited the place from her late sister, Lola, another fine-looking female, but who’d got herself killed by a snake whose rattle Caleb York silenced once and for all—was standing with her arms folded on that natural shelf she carried around with her, looking on with a smile you couldn’t read as she stood peeking at the sheriff’s poker hand.
Business was slow, no surprise midweek like this. The roulette, chuck-a-luck, and wheel-of-fortune stations were all quiet, the piano silent on its little stage by the teeny dance floor, vacant right now. A few dance hall gals, in their fancy silk and feathers, sat bored. These were not soiled doves, at least not no more. Miss Rita had ended that practice not long after she took over for her dead sister.
House dealer Yancy Cole, a mustached, fancy-hat riverboat gambler working on dry land now, had a poker game going, too—cowhands and clerks. Next table over, near the stairs up to Miss Rita’s quarters, was where Caleb York sat playing poker with six members of the Citizens Committee: portly, bespectacled Dr. Albert Miller; skinny, pop-eyed druggist Clem Davis; bulky, blond, mustached mercantile man Newt Harris; slight and slicked-up Mayor Jasper Hardy (Tulley’s barber); bald but mutton-chopped Clarence Mathers, hardware store owner; and the new bank president, smallish, white-haired Peter Godfrey, who’d been installed in the position by Raymond L. Parker of Denver, who had holdings in Trinidad.
Caleb York himself, known throughout the Southwest as both a former Wells Fargo detective and a deadly gun-hand, was big and lean and rawboned, clean-shaved with light blue eyes that had a lazy look that belied the man. His hair was brown with some red in it, and his jaw jutted some, as if daring some fool to take a poke at it.
When Tulley had first seen Caleb York ride in, with no idea who this was, the man seemed a dude with his citified duds, not so much the new-looking black coat and trousers, but them hand-tooled boots and the shirt with pockets on the front. And pearl buttons all the way down!
York was wearing that very shirt right now, and also the same curled-brim, cavalry-pinch, black hat, pushed back on his head as if not to put pressure on his brain whilst he was concentrating on his cards. In such wintery weather as this, the sheriff—though a county man, he handled the marshal tasks in town at the Citizens Committee’s direction—left his shorter frock coat behind and went out in a rifle-length frock woolen coat. That coat was hanging on a wall peg just inside the Victory’s door.
As Tulley approached the table where York and them city muckety-mucks was playing, Miss Rita noticed the deputy and met him a few feet away.
“I’m going to guess,” the lovely saloon owner said with a smile like she was being lightly tickled, “that you would prefer coffee to sarsaparilla tonight, Mr. Tulley.”
He liked the way she put “mister” in front of his name. He dusted snow from his shoulder, like dandruff got out of hand, and said, “I surely would like some of that there java you be known for, far and wide.”
The smile settled in one pretty cheek, dimpling it. “Well, I don’t think my fame for making coffee has reached much beyond our city limits. But I will be glad to summon you a cup.”
“Thank ye kindly, ma’am.”
The sheriff had heard Tulley’s voice and, as druggist Davis shuffled the cards in preparation for dealing them, Caleb York said, “Cold night out there, Deputy?”
Tulley shuffled over, his misshapen excuse for a hat in his hands. “Mite nippy, yessir.”
“Coffee’s a good idea.” York gathered his cards, looked at them. Tulley hovered. The sheriff added, “Is there something else, Deputy?”
“I wonder iffen I might ask a favor of ye.”
“If you make it quick you might.”
“It be colder than a witch’s teats out there, as you likely gathered, walkin’ over. I wondered . . . could I borrow that frock coat of yorn?”
“Why, are you shivering out there?”
“Indeed I am. Teeth chatterin’ like that girl Carmen’s god-darn castanets over at the cantina.”
“Your teeth don’t seem to be chattering now.”
“No, sir. Miss Rita keeps it nice and cozy-warm in here. But inside the Victory ain’t where I make my nightly rounds.”
“Open for a dollar,” Caleb York said, and tossed some chips in, then turned to Tulley. “Go ahead and take the coat. I guess I can make it back to the office in my shirtsleeves without freezing, when I’m done here.”
“Thank ye kindly, Sheriff!”
Miss Rita called to Tulley and he met her over at the bar, where he drank the coffee between two boys from the Bar-O, who were not having coffee. When he put the cup down and started to dig in a pocket for a coin, burly bartender Hub Wainwright waved that off as unnecessary. Tulley never paid for sarsaparilla either, but he always tried. Seemed impolite not to.
He was helping himself to the frock coat from its wall peg when the sheriff—someone was dealing again—called out, “Tulley! Come back over here.”
Tulley in the coat—oversize on him, particularly the broad shoulders, getting him some smiles from bystanders that he chose to ignore—went over to see what Caleb York wanted. The garment almost touched the ground (whereas on York it would only barely meet midcalf).
The sheriff took off his black, cavalry-pinched hat and handed it to his deputy. “Here,” he said. “Wear this. That thing you call a hat will blow away in that wind.”
“Thank ye, Sheriff!” Tulley put the black hat on with one hand and stuffed the wadded-up headgear he’d been wearing into a pocket of the frock coat.
This evoked more amusement on the faces of the other patrons of the Victory, but no outright laughter. Say what you will about Tulley, he was now a man all in black with a shotgun in his arms.
Tulley exited the Victory and continued on his rounds. Before long he was checking on the street of facing houses that had grown up behind the businesses on this side of Main Street. Nothing had gone in on the other side of Main yet. That would come, with the railroad.
The houses back here were all quiet and no lamps glowed in windows. In the sheriff’s long black frock coat, Tulley blended right in with the snow-flecked dark. He still had the other side of Main Street to check, but first he would traverse the alley behind the businesses. On the other side of the alley were houses as well as businesses of a sort that didn’t require a storefront. This included a rooming house like the one where Miss Rita had her saloon gals stay, ever since the Victory closed its second-floor bordello. There were also privies back there, one of which he used to divest himself of that cup of coffee, careful the sheriff’s coat did not drag and get itself unclean.
When he emerged from that privy in the alley, he found himself right behind the Victory. On his way around to the front of the saloon, to go in and report to the sheriff and wangle hims. . .
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