Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Caleb watched Amos Stubbs ride back down the trail toward town. It wasn’t that he was sorry to see him go. He wanted to make sure the knothead didn’t try to circle around and warn the five killers hiding in his late brother’s cabin.
He didn’t think he really needed to worry. After nervously showing Caleb where the killers were holed up, the preacher had been visibly relieved and vocally grateful at being turned loose. It took Stubbs only a few moments to descend the hill, cross the creek, and disappear around a wooded bend.
A cold white sun had been hanging high in a sky of washed-out blue when they left Mariah at the Belle and rode out of town together.
The trail took them through groves of aspen that had shed the last of their golden leaves in the storms and dense forests of conifer.
It led them close to the ridge that served as the border with his own property, and they splashed across icy streams, occasionally dammed up into ice covered ponds by industrious beavers.
Satisfied that the preacher was long gone, Caleb turned his attention back to the cabin. It was still early in the afternoon.
Frank Stubbs’s place was little more than a mile from town.
Smoke was rising from the chimney of the low log cabin.
Near it stood a stable that was little more than a log lean-to with a small corral.
Not far from the cabin, two dilapidated mining shacks stood, forming a U-shape with the house and the stable.
The shacks were three-sided affairs, constructed of weathered gray planks.
Shovels and picks, barrels, buckets, and a wheelbarrow stood in the shadow against the outside walls.
Inside, he could see ladders sticking up from shafts that were topped with hand-cranked pulleys for removing earth.
Something about them gave Caleb the feeling that they were not working mines, and he wondered if the claim was pinched out.
It occurred to him that if that were the case, it would explain Frank’s interest in gold beyond the ridge on Caleb’s property.
This past summer, he’d even run into the murdered miner prospecting for gold in the hills far to the west of Elkhorn.
Mounds of dirt and rock from the mine shafts had been piled up, forming one long wall that encircled the entire group of buildings and the piles of discarded and busted mining equipment.
An old wagon tipped onto the axle of a missing wheel sat amid unstacked piles of firewood.
Gray snow covered everything, giving the place a dismal, unkempt look.
It was like a fortress built by some drunken, undisciplined reprobate. Frank Stubbs, exactly.
From behind a fallen tree that had served as the base for a snow drift, Caleb looked again at the five horses in the corral by the stable.
He’d fully expected one of them to be a bay pinto, and he wasn’t disappointed.
Not only were these the men who killed Frank Stubbs, they were also the men who set fire to Caleb’s barn.
The night of the fire, he’d seen four of them, but the tracks of a fifth horse had joined the others on the trail back to town.
Caleb considered his choices. He could drag some of the hay from the stable to the back of the cabin and set fire to it, smoking the men out.
Or he could kick open the door of the cabin and go in with his Winchester ’73 blazing.
Or he could wait patiently for them to come out and hope he didn’t freeze to death sometime during the night.
He dismissed the last option immediately and was about to dismiss the first when the door opened and all five of the killers came out, laughing at something one of them had said.
They appeared to be cleaned up for a trip to town. The identities of the first three were unknown to Caleb, but he knew the last two instantly.
John Rivers looked better than the last time Caleb saw him. He was still short and stocky and had the same scraggly wisp of beard, but he wasn’t whining or even limping from the bullet that had taken a chunk out of his hip.
The outlaw had been sitting in the Elkhorn jail until he was shipped up to Denver, but Caleb could see that he’d never made it that far. He had to assume the cause of his escape was the fifth man to exit the cabin.
It was a toss-up whether Mad Dog McCord looked any better.
He was wearing a new set of clothes, but he was still big and burly and ugly.
When he came out the door, his shaved head gleamed in the watery afternoon sun, and he immediately covered it with a new fawn-colored hat, decorated with the same ornate, beaded band at the base of the crown.
All of them were armed with six-shooters, and they were carrying rifles as they made their way toward the stable.
Cocking his Winchester, Caleb raised it to his shoulder. “Stop right there,” he shouted. “Throw down them irons. Now!”
The five men froze, but none of them dropped their weapons.
Caleb knew that this was one of those critical instances in a man’s life when he must balance the value of freedom against the chance of dying. He understood it. He’d faced it many times in his life.
He could see each of them wrestling with the choice, all the while scanning the terrain to see if Caleb was alone or if there were others ready to gun them down.
Seeing only him, they were now weighing their odds of catching the first bullet or successfully diving for cover.
If they could make it, they were thinking, they could return fire and eventually overwhelm the single gunman simply by virtue of sheer numbers.
Almost simultaneously, all five made the wrong choice.
The first two men jerked their rifles to their shoulders and opened fire, their bullets whizzing by Caleb and thumping into the log in front of him. Caleb’s Winchester barked in response. The nearest outlaw staggered backward and dropped his rifle, collapsing into the snow.
Caleb didn’t wait to see more. Swiveling the barrel a fraction, he fired again as the second man dropped into a crouch. The outlaw recoiled sharply and went down beside the stable, no longer part of the fight. Or any fight.
The third man dove for cover behind a stack of broken crates. Because of the mound, he had to rise to get a clear shot. As he sighted along the barrel of his Sharps carbine, Caleb fired. The man stumbled and lost his aim.
Still determined, he struggled to bring the rifle back up.
Caleb fired once more.
The outlaw dropped behind the crates and did not reappear.
He didn’t want to kill these fellas, only bring them to justice and, in so doing, free Henry.
There had been a time when he’d have accepted their deaths as good enough. Not anymore. A dead man couldn’t testify. And Henry needed witnesses more than graves.
Bullets were thupping by Caleb’s ear and raising puffs of snow as they glanced off the log or passed through the drift. He dropped down behind the log and replaced his spent cartridges.
Three down.
The two remaining killers continued to shoot, the reports from their rifles echoing off the ridge. He didn’t need the smoke from their rifles to know where they were. John Rivers had planted himself by the stack of firewood, and Mad Dog found cover behind the old wagon.
“Rivers,” Caleb shouted when there was a momentary break. “McCord.”
Mad Dog’s voice boomed across the snow. “We know that’s you, Marlowe. And you’re a dead man. We could wait you out, if we needed to. But we won’t need to. You might as well give it up now.”
“I expected you to play the fool, McCord,” Caleb shouted back. “But you, Rivers, I never took you for being as stupid as Mad Dog.”
“What do you mean by that?” Mad Dog bellowed. “Who’re you calling a fool?”
Caleb let that hang. “Rivers, I know you’re the real brains in this outfit. It probably didn’t take no time for you to figure out that your cellmate Elijah Starr was your ticket out of that date with the hangman.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the outlaw called out from the woodpile. “And I don’t know nobody named Rivers.”
Caleb chuckled. That fella never could quit.
Mad Dog couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He was not about to play second fiddle to anyone. “I’m the boss of this outfit…and the brains too. Rivers works for me. You got that, Marlowe? Now who’s stupid?”
“Shut up, Mad Dog,” Rivers barked.
Staying low, Caleb moved ten feet to his right to the end of the fallen tree. He judged that from there he could get a better angle on John Rivers.
“Who you telling to shut up?” Mad Dog growled.
“You,” the other outlaw hissed. “You ain’t got the brains of a busted axe-handle. When we get out of this, I’m cashing in my chips, and you and me are going our separate—”
Four pistol shots came from behind the wagon, cutting off the rest of Rivers’s words. Caleb peered over the top of the log, and saw the smoke hanging in the cold air above the wagon.
“Why wait, you scrawny little shit?” the burly killer spat, firing two more from his short-barreled Colt for good measure. “Cash in them chips.”
From this angle, Caleb could see where Rivers had fallen. His boots extended out beyond the edge of the woodpile. One of them moved once and then went still.
Four down, one mean sonovabitch to go. Four chances to clear Henry gone forever. Now everything rested on a confession from Mad Dog McCord.
“Brilliant,” he shouted. “Now, you’re the undisputed boss, ain’t you? Boss of nobody.”
“I don’t need nobody, Marlowe.” He fired twice at the log where Caleb had been before. “You hear me? I’m Mad Dog McCord.”
The problem was, Caleb needed this mean sonovabitch alive. He slid the barrel of his Winchester over the top of the log and waited for his shot. He didn’t have to wait long.
Mad Dog poked his head up quickly and then dropped down again. A moment later, the outlaw’s new hat appeared above the box board. He rested it there and fired another round. Almost immediately, he appeared at the front corner of the wagon, ready to blast Caleb when he shot at the decoy.
“Well, hell,” Caleb murmured to himself. “That ain’t gonna work.”
He had a clear shot at the killer. He could put one right in the middle of that big, gleaming forehead. Sighting carefully, he squeezed the trigger.
Mad Dog howled as the bullet grazed the side of his head. Dropping his rifle, he leaped back, slapping his hand against the place where his ear had been.
Suddenly realizing he was standing in the open, Mad Dog ran in panic back toward the cabin and barreled into the closed door, smashing it open and tumbling through.
“Damn me. Gotta make things difficult,” Caleb muttered. “You coulda just gave up, you know.”
Going around the log, he moved quickly and stealthily to the snow-covered mound of dirt and rock. Positioning himself where he’d have a decent shot into the door, he dropped down out of sight.
“Give it up, Mad Dog. You wanna keep shooting this out? You make that choice—smart as you are—and you ain’t getting outta this alive.”
“I can’t hear nothing! You shot my damn ear off!” The outlaw punctuated the words with six straight shots at the fallen log from his Colt.
Caleb stood up and took aim. The burly figure was only a silhouette in the doorway, hurriedly trying to reload, but that was enough time.
The bullet went through the door and caught Mad Dog high in the shoulder, spinning him away. He went down and out of sight onto the cabin floor, but Caleb was already at the door.
With his smoking Winchester pointed at the outlaw’s ugly face, he kicked a fallen pistol out of reach across the packed dirt floor.
“You got me, Marlowe.” Mad Dog was bleeding from the side of his face and from the bullet wound in his shoulder. “I’m dying, man. Shoot me and get it done with.”
“Not yet. I ain’t close to being done with you.”