Chapter 6 #2
The sheriff shook his head. “You’ll have to take my word on it. That old goat already took his mule and headed back up into the mountains. We won’t see him for years, I reckon.”
“Good thing for you.”
It had been a close call for the itinerant minister on the trail up by Devil’s Claw pass.
That mountain lion had decided Preacher’s ancient mule would make a fine breakfast, and the old man had gotten in the way of the big cat.
He’d gotten chewed and scratched up some, but it was just fortunate for everyone and everything—except the cougar—that Caleb had been nearby.
He looked down at the tough boar walking beside him. It was good to have the old Zeke back.
The sheriff’s steps dragged a little as they left the saloon behind. “Listen, Marlowe. Let me give you this tin star right now and save us both a pack of trouble.”
“Not you too. Leave it go.”
“Believe me, there’d be no hard feeling between us, old man.”
“That ain’t about to happen.”
“Why you so dead set against it? It’d sure make the judge happy, and that ain’t a bad thing.”
Caleb sent him a sidelong look. “You’ve been here in Elkhorn, mining and making a living, for how long?”
Zeke scratched his beard. “About two hundred years, I reckon.”
“Well, I been here only five months. I’m not tied to Elkhorn the way you are. If Henry Jordan don’t get released soon, I’m saddling up and moving on.”
“Well, you know that is a cartload of horseshit, pure and simple,” Zeke grumbled. “You ain’t going nowhere.”
“And what would make you think that?”
Before the sheriff could answer, two boys no more than ten years old came tearing along the sidewalk behind them.
Their bare feet thumped along the wood planks.
Caleb moved to the side, but the first one still banged into Zeke and tumbled off into the street.
He rolled and sat up and brushed off his hands and elbows, cursing like an army mule driver.
“What d’you mean, cussing like that?” Zeke barked.
His young companion circled around behind him. The one on the ground hopped to his feet.
From their spiky blond hair and buck teeth, Caleb figured them for brothers. They were both dressed in filthy sack-like shirts and brown woolen pants that ended in a ragged fray just below the knees. The boys were now competing for who could direct the more scornful looks at them.
“And what in tarnation are you looking at?”
“Two old men blocking the damn way,” the first one chirped back at him. “What else would we be looking at?”
“Why, you brassy-mouthed little varmint. What this old man ought to do is come down there and give you a good thrashing.”
“You and who else, you hairy polecat?” the other boy taunted.
“Hairy polecat!” Zeke pointed at his badge, “Don’t you know who you’re talking to, you mangy street urchin? I’m the sheriff of this here town. I’ll lock you up and throw away the key.”
The first boy only snorted derisively.
“And this here is the fastest gun and the bestest scout west of the Mississippi.”
The boys’ eyes darted toward Caleb and focused on the twin Colts hanging by his hips.
“We seen him. He gunned down them shooters in the street afore.”
“Is he really Caleb Marlowe?”
“The very same,” Zeke replied.
“Is it true that you kilt a cougar with your bare hands?”
“That’s a fact, or so I hear,” Caleb said, trying to hold back the smile.
Their eyes rounded and they stepped back.
“And he’s skinned fellers bigger and tougher than you,” Zeke added. “And roasted them too.”
They edged away from them, jaws hanging.
“So…git!” The sheriff took a step toward them.
The boys turned and raced up the street.
“You and your yarns, Zeke.”
“Just relating the deeds of a legend.” He glanced at Caleb and chuckled as they started walking. “Them little devils was surely the spitting image of me and my brother when we was about their age. Dang, but the trouble we got into…and the lickings we took! You got a brother?”
“No.”
He thought of Bat Davis. There were a handful of boys back in Indiana who followed Caleb around.
Son of the headmaster. But Caleb wasn’t allowed to have friends.
He got in plenty of trouble, but the only one that took the lickings was him.
He didn’t want to even remember those years.
He’d buried them, along with the name Starr.
“Sisters? Any kin?”
“Not a one.”
They walked in silence until they turned the corner onto Doc’s street. The sheriff cocked an eyebrow and pointed it at the Burnett house, which was now in view. “That house is a fine thing, ain’t it?”
Caleb was relieved that there were no more questions about his past. People who knew him at all learned not to ask. Zeke was learning too.
“The house?” the burly little man repeated.
Caleb shot a questioning look at it. “Indeed, it is.”
Doc’s house was the only one on the street with a porch, and Caleb’s friend made good use of it on warm evenings.
A pair of rockers faced a small table just right for a chessboard whenever Caleb was in town and the weather cooperated.
At one end stood a comfortable bench with a woven seat and back.
Doc had spotted it in a catalogue and ordered it from a Shaker community back in Ohio, proud as could be when it finally arrived.
“It’s more of a home, I reckon, now that he’s got his daughter living there.”
It definitely was. But Caleb wasn't about to admit it. “If you say so.”
“Would you say that color he’s painted it looks more the shade of a yellow warbler or a goldfinch?”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“Just thinking that if I was ten years younger, I’d be thinking about building myself a house just like that one.”
“Painted the same color?”
“Tell the truth, Marlowe, I’ve always been sorta partial to a white house, but that don’t matter none. What matters is what’s inside. A good woman, a few mop-headed children, a yellow dog.”
“I got a yellow dog. Can’t beat a yellow dog.”
“Dang, I ain’t talking about no dogs. A man needs family, Marlowe.”
Zeke was an old bachelor.
“Like you have,” Caleb asked.
“A fella would be a mule-headed fool if he thought I got things right.”
“I’m fine enough as I am.”
But was he? Sheila’s face seemed etched into his mind.
Whenever he rode into Elkhorn, he found himself looking for her—walking along the boardwalk, stepping out of a shop, crossing the street with that determined stride of hers.
And if he didn't see her, he usually found some excuse to stop by Doc's house.
“Who do you think you’re fooling? Tell me there ain’t something between you and that pretty daughter of Doc’s.”
Caleb hadn’t yet sorted out what was between him and Sheila. The last thing he needed was a bunch of gossip sending things off the rails before he even understood them himself.
“All that time you spent digging silver has affected your brain, Zeke. There’s nothing going on there.”
“Pshaw! Do you deny that when you come down from Devil’s Claw, you two didn’t go riding off to that miner’s cabin to inform the widow, all cozy-like?”
They did. “Hell, no!”
“I coulda swore you was holding hands afore you even got around the bend.”
“There was no hand holding. Did somebody drag you away from a bottle this morning when the shooting started?”
“All I’m saying is that gal was fluttering her eyes at you so hard, I thought her pretty head was gonna lift clear off her shoulders.”
“You have gone plum crazy.”
“And one of them fellers with us thought he heard wedding bells coming all the way from Elkhorn.”