Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
As the afternoon progressed, the sun had become a pale disk, eventually disappearing behind the clouds that were building in the west. With the smell of snow again in the air, Main Street was even busier than usual.
Men on horseback and wagons crowded the street, and folks rushed around, intent on getting their business finished before dusk settled in.
Caleb rode slowly down the thoroughfare. He was holding the lead of a bay pinto that trailed behind him. In the gelding’s saddle, a wounded man sat with his hands tied behind him.
They couldn’t help but attract attention, which was exactly what Caleb wanted.
Pedestrians paused on the sidewalk, conjecturing with one another about the spectacle as they gawked and pointed. Those crowding the street pulled aside to make room for Caleb, casting inquisitive eyes at him and at his captive.
Caleb glanced around just once at Mad Dog. The wounded man searched the crowds and the sidewalks fearfully. He was pale as a ghost and wore no hat. His bald head and neck were caked with dried blood.
Caleb reined in Pirate, slowing the buckskin. He wanted to be sure the news of their arrival had spread through town before they reached their destination.
One of Zeke’s deputies stood in the door of a saloon as they passed. Seeing Caleb and his prisoner, he dropped the stub of his cigar and ran up the street to notify the sheriff.
“You’re stupider than I thought you was.” Mad Dog’s growl barely cleared his throat. “If’n you think you can walk right up to him…shit, man, he’ll come right out on the street here and shoot you dead.”
Let him try, Caleb thought.
As they approached the town jail, Zeke was coming across the snow-packed street to meet them.
“Whaddya got, Marlowe?” he asked, walking alongside.
“Mad Dog McCord.”
“Dang it. If you don’t beat all! I’d a swore this varmint was down Mexico way, by now.
” Zeke eyed the outlaw and called to his deputy to run for Doc Burnett.
“You done real good work…as you always do. And the dirty desperado is still breathing. Let’s get the sonovabitch down and lock his carcass up. ”
“I ain’t handing him over yet. So step back, Zeke.”
Caleb turned his gaze to the second floor of the judge’s building. Just as he’d hoped, the commotion on the street had brought the great man to the window. And Elijah Starr was staring out from a second window.
Caleb locked eyes with his father and then swung down from his saddle. Going back to the bay pinto, he dragged Mad Dog off the horse.
The killer howled in pain as he landed on his shoulder at Caleb’s feet. He didn’t try to get up.
“Let me have him, Marlowe,” the sheriff implored, sounding worried. “You’ll get the reward for this cuss. Don’t you fret none about that.”
Caleb towered over the sheriff, and he spoke directly to him in a low voice. “Trust me, Zeke. Now, there don’t need to be no shooting. But if there is, you don’t want to get caught in the middle of it. So you just move away. I’ll hand the blackguard over to you when I’m done with him.”
Zeke’s bristly eyebrows arched as he took in the words. He looked up at the window where Starr was standing. Then, to his credit, he did exactly as he was told and hurried back up onto the sidewalk in front of the jail.
Grabbing the prisoner by the scruff of his neck, Caleb hauled him up into a kneeling position, facing the window.
“Say it.”
“I can’t. You see him there. He’ll kill me.”
“Say it.” He took hold of Mad Dog’s wounded shoulder and squeezed it.
“All right!” the killer yelped.
“Loud enough for those up there to hear.”
“Got a confession to make,” McCord yelled.
The judge slid open the window a crack.
“Now.” Caleb held onto the shoulder, feeling fresh blood. “The rest of it.”
“I…I killed Frank Stubbs.”
“Again.”
“I shot him in the back. I killed Stubbs.”
A gasp rose from the crowd of onlookers that had gathered. It looked like half the town and three-quarters of the miners in the region were there watching.
The prisoner tried to pull away, but Caleb held onto him. “You ain’t done yet.”
“There’s more,” Mad Dog called up at the window. He cast a panicked look at the window where Starr was standing like a grim statue.
“Tell him,” Caleb ordered, shaking him.
“About them double-crossers you got working for you.”
The judge abruptly disappeared from the window, as did Elijah Starr. Considering Patterson’s suspicion of everyone since the death of his former bodyguard, Caleb hoped the words were enough enticement for the judge to come down to the street.
The letter he’d received from Duke Ortiz wasn’t enough to convict Elijah Starr, but Mad Dog’s confession after the shootout this afternoon had supplied a few more nails for his coffin.
He’d been correct about Starr recruiting John Rivers while they shared a cell in Elkhorn’s jail.
Deals had been made. Plans had been set.
After escaping from his escort on the way to Denver, John Rivers and Mad Dog McCord had gathered up a new gang. Once Starr had been freed by the judge to work for him, they’d met him in Denver and traveled south to Pueblo.
That was when the fear of Starr had been driven into McCord. He said the one-eyed man had killed one of the gang in front the others, just for mouthing off about how things should be done. Mad Dog was a killer, but that day he learned he was working for the devil himself.
After hiring some no-account cowpunchers, they’d stolen the herd of longhorns coming from Texas. A bunch of Texans died, but that’s what they were paid to do.
Mad Dog told him that Starr knew everything about Caleb and Henry and their plans.
The punchers had driven the cattle up to a railroad siding north of Pueblo, where the longhorns were loaded onto waiting cattle cars. From there, Starr traveled by train to Denver, while Mad Dog and John Rivers and what remained of his new gang went back to Elkhorn.
Starr had more jobs waiting for them back in Elkhorn. The money was good. They’d had to shoot a miserable mine owner and torch Caleb’s ranch. Other than that, as long as Rivers stayed clear of the sheriff and his deputies, cards and drinking were the order of the day.
The confession was no good unless the right man heard it all. Mad Dog was doing the job the judge had tried to hire Caleb to do...work for Starr. The question was, how much of all this was Patterson aware of?
The door in front of them opened. A half dozen of Patterson’s armed guards came out. Four of them were carrying rifles. The two buffalos he’d met before were standing at the end of the line, smirking and displaying the pistols under their coats.
McCord glanced up at Caleb. “I’m putting my money on one of them big fellas that’re eyeballing you, there on the right.”
Caleb let go of Mad Dog and unfastened the thongs over the hammers of his twin Colts. He’d take at least half of them down before they got him. More people were gathering on the street by the minute. Behind him, he heard folks scattering to get out of the line of fire.
Doc Burnett, with his surgical bag in hand, pushed through the crowd near the sidewalk.
“Stay right there, Doc,” Caleb called out. His friend stopped. Beside him, Sheila and Red Annie appeared. He recalled they were all supposed to have dinner tonight. Red pushed her coat back. She was ready to fight, should the need arise.
Behind the line of bodyguards, Elijah Starr came out of the building, and behind him, the judge himself.
The two men pushed past the guards. Starr stood next to the judge.
Patterson shot a quick glance around at the crowd. “Marlowe, you surely know how to make an entrance. What’s this all about?”
Caleb’s eyes remained on his father. The older man’s pistols were loose in the holsters. Starr’s face might have been carved from granite. His expression was one of absolute contempt.
Elijah Starr had good reason for his barely contained rage.
He’d dug a hole for Caleb, but he hadn’t buried him in it quickly enough.
Mad Dog was supposed to be his gunslinging right-hand man.
But right now, with McCord in custody and singing like a meadowlark, the one-eyed man standing beside the judge had to know he was going down.
Not even Patterson could save him. This change of fortune had to come as a hard blow.
Caleb hoped so. But he also knew there was one person Elijah Starr would be sure to take with him once the shooting started.
“What is it, Marlowe?” the judge’s voice rang out. “You say this man has some information for me?”
Mad Dog, still on his knees, tried to edge away from Marlowe.
“You chopped the head off one snake…and then hired another.”
The day Starr had been released from jail, Caleb had gone to the Silver Elk Hotel to confront him, to face his father. After all the years and the miles, their day had come.
But Caleb wouldn’t draw first.
“You’re saying my men are disloyal?” Patterson asked.
“Don’t know nothing about these other fellas. But I’ve brought you enough proof today about one man, the devil standing beside you.”
Elijah Starr’s right hand inched toward his Colt.
Caleb looked into his father’s face, and years melted away.
They were back in Indiana. Back in the silent, gloomy rooms of the house where he kept Caleb’s mother a prisoner.
No one allowed to come into the house. No one allowed to visit her when she showed the cuts and bruises she’d received at her husband’s hand.
He recalled all the times he’d wanted to hide when he saw that look come into his father’s face. For Caleb knew his old man would start on him just to provoke her anguished and protective maternal response. Elijah Starr used the son to get to the mother. He was the devil.
Caleb’s heart raced, but he felt the familiar coolness take over his head. He was at peace with who he was and what he had to do. His hands were still and ready.
Like pages of a book, pushed by a breeze, the years flipped by. He was sixteen. The horror of his mother’s bloody body on the floor. He’d arrived at the house, only to find her beaten to death, and Elijah Starr standing over her, the stout cane in his fists.
The memory of hammering away at his father’s face—again and again and again until he couldn’t strike him even one more time—was right there in his mind, as vivid as if it happened yesterday. He fell. And Caleb left his father lifeless on the kitchen floor, or so he thought.
But Elijah Starr lived. He lived. And now, he stood glaring at Caleb, his hand a whisper away from his shooting iron.
“What’s Starr done?” Patterson asked, he voice carrying over the crowd that was fallen silent as the dead.
“He’s still working for Eric Goulden. He’s gonna take you down, Judge.”
Starr went for his gun, clearing leather in the blink of an owl’s eye.
Caleb realized at that second that his whole life had led him to this day, to this moment.
All the innocent people that he’d stepped up to protect over the years had only been replacements for the mother he hadn’t been able to protect.
All the lives of killers that he’d cut short had only been replacements for the man he hadn’t killed soon enough.
But, in the end, it all came back to this man…and to the mother who had given her life to keep him safe. To the mother who, in her unhappy time on earth, had never rested easy while this man lived.
To the untrained ear, it sounded as if the shots had been fired as one. But he knew better.
His father's pistol flashed. So did his own.
For the briefest instant, Elijah Starr stood frozen, the years of hatred and cruelty etched into his scarred face. Then the pistol slipped from his hand.
Slowly, almost as if he could no longer bear the weight of himself, Elijah Starr sank to his knees and collapsed into the snow. It was over.
Silence swept across Main Street.
No one moved. No one spoke.
Caleb’s eyes shifted, moving along the line of people until he found the faces of the ones he called his friends. Doc. Red Annie.
Sheila.
And there, beside Sheila, he saw his mother. She was standing and watching him, her face smiling gently as it did in their quietest moments so long ago.
As he returned her gaze, soft snow began to fall. And then, she was gone.
“Rest now, Mama. You can rest now.”