Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Caleb stood on the porch of his cabin and studied the mountain peaks to the south and west of the valley.
Snow in the summits gleamed like silver in the rays of the midmorning sun.
Clouds clung to the deep ravines and passes between them, looking like gray-white blankets draped over the deep green of the conifers.
Winter was coming. The cold was settling in. His breaths formed miniature versions of those clouds before disappearing into thin air.
There was no doubting that the long hard season lay just around the bend, and his gaze settled on the diminished herd grazing far down the valley.
Caleb was beginning to wonder if the herd of longhorns coming up from Texas would need to winter over somewhere to the south.
He and Henry had started supplying beef to the butchers and eating establishments in Elkhorn, but they’d need to replenish their herd soon.
Three weeks had passed since Caleb went for his father’s throat in the Silver Elk Hotel.
Doc’s influence with the judge had secured his freedom, under certain conditions.
He was to keep his distance from Elijah Starr.
Any show of violence against the new top employee of Judge Patterson, and Caleb would find himself back in the pokey and the key lost. Grudgingly, he accepted the deal.
Bear trotted up onto the porch and dropped a good-sized cock pheasant at his feet. Clearly proud of himself, he sat beside his master and leaned heavily against his leg to have his head patted. Caleb obliged.
“Good boy. Always work to do, ain’t there?” The brilliant red, green, and blue markings of the bird’s head and neck shimmered in the sunlight. “That’s a big one.”
He’d let Henry pluck and clean the bird for their supper.
Staying away from Elkhorn had shown results on the ranch.
It appeared anger and frustration only made him work harder.
He and Henry had finished digging the well, striking water last week, and the roof on the second cabin was done yesterday.
His partner could finish whatever was left to do to make his new quarters livable.
Logs he’d hauled down in the spring were sawn and ready to split for firewood. The grain storage building was next.
As it did ten times a day, the image of his father’s smirking face edged into his mind’s eye, and Caleb felt the churning feeling return in his gut.
He told himself for the hundredth time that the day would come for them to settle accounts. Doc had vouched for him, and Caleb couldn’t let his friend down. He had to wait, but he wasn’t too good at it.
In the meantime, Henry and Gabe and Paddy kept him up to date on Elijah Starr. A couple of weeks ago, Starr had taken some of Patterson’s men and gone off to Denver, supposedly to work out whatever deals and arrangements needed to be made to facilitate bringing the rail line to Elkhorn.
As Caleb had finished up his chores this morning, he’d decided he was going to town.
It wasn’t just his restlessness that was finally getting to Caleb.
Hunkering down on the ranch was grating on his nerves.
Damned if he wasn’t starting to feel like he was cowering out here like a rabbit in his burrow.
And Caleb, by nature, was no damn rabbit.
His Winchester was leaning against the porch post. He picked it up and headed toward the barn. He was going into Elkhorn to check on things himself.
Before he got himself ready, he’d told Henry he was going for flour and other supplies. That was enough reason to go, not that he needed any.
“I ain’t too sure I trust you going into Elkhorn on your own,” Henry called out as Caleb swung the saddle up onto Pirate’s back.
In spite of the chill in the air, Henry was stripped down to the waist, scraping the hide of an elk they shot yesterday. The meat would be good eating, and the skin was destined to be a winter coat for him.
“I reckon you’ll have to get over that.”
“What if Starr is back in town?”
“I’ll deal with it.”
“Don’t make me school you on how this ranch needs the two of us.”
“You. Schooling me about that.” Caleb shook his head in amusement.
Henry hadn’t asked a single question after the word got around that Elijah Starr was Caleb’s father.
If he was interested in why Caleb was set on spilling the man’s blood, he’d never once even hinted at it.
He and Henry were friends and partners, but neither pried into the other’s past. Where a man came from and what he did before was his own business.
This conversation was about the closest they’d come to talking about it.
Henry watched as Caleb slid his rifle into its saddle holster. “You got the look of a man that needs reminding.”
“We need supplies. I ain’t going in looking for a shootout. Not today, anyway.”
“Good to know.” Henry picked up his sharpening stone. “While you’re in town, you might wanna have a chat with Malachi.”
“About what?”
“About what Paddy was asking you. About moving out here.”
“I ain’t made up my mind.”
“Still, that boy is their family right now. They got a say about where he goes.”
Caleb nodded. His partner was right. Before he got himself all worked up about whether Henry and him were ready to have a twelve-year-old boy move onto the ranch, he needed to talk to the Rogers family.
The yellow dog had carried his hunting trophy over to Henry.
“That’s our supper,” Caleb said. “Along with some of that elk.”
His partner had something else on his mind. “That a clean shirt under that vest and coat?”
“What of it?”
“Hell, boy. You washed up and shaved too. What gives? As if I don’t know.”
“I ain’t stopping at the Belle, if that’s what you’re asking.”
A grin tugged at the corner of Henry’s mouth. Damned, if that dog wasn’t wearing the same expression.
“I wouldn’t be going to the Belle, neither, if I’d been invited in for sugar cookies with Doc’s daughter.”
Caleb shook his head. He should never have mentioned that Sheila occasionally baked sugar cookies for him and Doc on their chess nights.
“And I ain’t planning on stopping at Doc’s.”
“’Course not,” Henry scoffed. “But you cleaned up anyway, thinking you just might.”
“I need to be getting along.”
“I admit, three weeks of not seeing Miss Sheila’s pretty face is a helluva long time.”
Caleb checked the cinch on his saddle.
Henry addressed the dog. “Bear, don’t you reckon it’s a good idea if this miserable old cuss stops and sees the lady? Didn’t you tell me yesterday that Caleb’s been ornery as hell one minute and mooning like a schoolboy the next?”
Bear wagged his tail.
“That’s it. I ain’t gonna waste my day shooting the shit with you two. I’d say there’s plenty of work waiting to be done.”
Pirate pawed the dirt in agreement. Caleb swung up into the saddle.
“Give my regards to Miss Sheila,” his pain-in-the-ass partner called out as Caleb nudged the buckskin into motion. “And be sure to tell her we’d be honored to have her Christmas gala here at the ranch.”
As Caleb started off across the meadow toward town, he could hear Henry still talking to Bear.
Caleb crossed the river at a shallow stretch, and he noted that the water was even lower than it had been.
The lack of rain during the summer and fall was showing.
He looked again at the dark green slopes of spruce and pine, rising to gray cliffs in the west. Soon the snow would reach here too, the thaw eventually filling the lakes and streams for the coming year.
For now, there was enough water for his cattle and the herd on the way. That’s what mattered.
Caleb kept his eyes on the trail as he rode along, but his mind kept turning to Sheila.
It was true. He did miss seeing her pretty face.
The last time they’d seen each other, she was standing on the other side of the bars in Elkhorn’s jail, staring at him with the weight of the world on her shoulders. He hated having done that to her.
The fact was that Caleb had taken on a life that brought cares and responsibilities he never had before.
When he was off tracking and hunting and scouting with Old Jake and afterwards, he’d pretty much had no one to worry about but himself.
All he needed was his horse and his gun.
The frontier provided the rest. And if he had something that needed to be done, he went out and did it.
There was no waiting or hunkering down, and very little worrying how his actions would affect someone else.
His life was all different now.
The ranch had something to do with that. So did Henry and the boys. But when he was honest with himself, he knew who had changed him most.
Sheila.
Somewhere between searching for her father, evenings around Doc Burnett's table, long conversations, and the quiet certainty of her presence, she'd become woven into every part of Caleb’s thinking.
He caught himself measuring improvements on the ranch by whether she'd like them. Wondering what she'd think of the cabin. Imagining her laughter drifting across the meadow on summer evenings.
And somehow, without quite noticing when it happened, he'd begun thinking of home and thinking of Sheila as if the two belonged together.
He knew that his father walked free and his mother lay in her grave unavenged.
That needed to be taken care of. The work on the ranch tired his body and occupied his mind, but it was a distraction from what he needed to do.
He had no control over whether to face the wind or put his back to it.
For the first time since he was a boy, he had his doubts if he’d even survive the coming storm.
That uncertainty had never bothered him before. A man who rode alone could afford to gamble with his life.
Now there were people who would mourn him. One person in particular.
One thing he was sure of, he wanted Sheila far from the danger that was looming ahead. Starr knew she was important to Caleb. He’d used her once before to try to get at him. Caleb couldn’t allow that to happen again.