Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Caleb muscled another log into place on the barn wall, stretched his back, and cast an eye in the general direction of Elkhorn.
Yesterday had been one thing after another. The shooting on Main Street. Bat Davis. The judge. Zeke. Doc.
Sheila.
Especially Sheila.
By the time he'd ridden back to the ranch last evening, he was more than ready to put the whole mess behind him.
He told himself he was glad to be back where things made sense. The barn needed raising. The cattle needed tending. There was always honest work waiting on a ranch.
This morning, with the sun climbing bright over the ridgelines, he set himself to it. He worked for hours without stopping, fitting timbers, hauling logs, and putting his back into the kind of labor that usually left no room for thinking.
It didn’t help much.
Sheila Burnett had a way of slipping into a man's thoughts, whether he invited her there or not.
And today, Caleb's helpers were late. But what else was he to expect from a twelve-year-old and a fourteen-year-old?
When he finally spotted riders coming along the trail from Elkhorn, he straightened up from the unfinished barn wall and wiped the sweat from his brow.
Not just the two boys. There were three horses coming.
Gabriel and Paddy were in the lead, moving fast and jostling each other as they rode. The third rider followed at a steadier pace.
For a moment, Caleb thought it was Doc Burnett. The horse was Doc’s, to be sure. He knew the animal by its gait and the way it tossed its head.
Then he realized the rider wasn’t his old friend.
It was Sheila.
Something shifted in Caleb’s chest before he had time to stop it.
By the time Gabriel and Paddy reached him, Caleb saw they were carrying two strings of good-sized trout and a pair of fishing poles.
“Look what we caught.” Paddy, the younger boy, held his catch up proudly. “Good-looking fish, don’t you think, Mr. Marlowe?”
Caleb nodded appreciatively. “Where’d you catch them rainbows?”
“Gabe knew a good spot on a creek up that away.”
“Up this side of the ridge. There’s a good creek runs through a gulch.”
Standing, Caleb turned his gaze toward the rising woodland in the direction Gabe pointed.
Located about three miles south of town, the ranch he and Henry owned largely consisted of the grass-covered valley between two parallel ridgelines running north and south. It was about eight miles long and maybe three miles wide, as the crow flies.
The land deed listed the western boundary as the Denver road, which ran through Elkhorn before turning south toward Santa Fe in the New Mexico Territory.
The eastern boundary was the top of a pine-covered ridge.
Beyond that point, his neighbor was a fellow by the name of Frank Stubbs. The boys had come from that direction.
He’d only seen Stubbs at a distance. According to Zeke, the man had a profitable silver mining concern over there, but he had few friends in town. He was well known as a mean drunk. Every dollar Stubbs took out of the ground, he spent in the saloons, often abusing the women who worked there.
It was better not crossing paths with some people, and Stubbs was one of them.
Sheila reined in Doc’s horse near the cabin and swung down with more ease than Caleb would have expected from a city woman. Then again, he was beginning to learn that Sheila Burnett rarely did anything the way he expected.
“You’re late,” Caleb said to the boys.
“We ain’t late,” Paddy protested.
“You’re half a day late.”
“We brought fish.”
“That don’t make you less late.”
Sheila brushed dust from her skirt. “In fairness, Mr. Marlowe, they did feel honor-bound to show me every creek, rock, rabbit trail, and fishing hole within a mile of your ranch.”
Gabe looked offended. “Not every rock.”
“No,” she agreed. “I believe we missed two.”
Caleb found himself smiling before he could help it.
He wasn't about to ask what she was doing out here. Nor was he inclined to lecture her about riding across the countryside with two boys who would be hard-pressed to protect anyone. He already knew Sheila Burnett was not a woman who welcomed advice she hadn't asked for.
Still, he was glad she'd come.
Out of all the places she might have ridden that morning, she'd chosen his ranch. He tried not to think too hard about how much that pleased him.
Instead, he looked out across the valley that spread out beneath the summer sun. The ranch wasn't much yet—a cabin, a half-built barn, and miles of grass—but every day it felt a little more like something worth holding on to.
When they were purchasing the ranch land, there had been some talk that there could be mineral deposits on this side of the ridge and an old lost mine up there somewhere as well.
He had very little interest in digging for silver, though his partner’s sentiments differed.
Henry believed silver would be the making of them.
Caleb had done enough prospecting for gold with Old Jake out in Montana to know that he was not cut out to be a dedicated miner.
It was the meadowland and the pines and the groves of cottonwood along the river that appealed to Caleb.
There was game in the forests and fish in the river and streams. Raising cattle, their plan was to supply the ever-increasing number of miners and townsfolk that needed to be fed in and around Elkhorn.
Caleb’s thoughts turned to how he’d felt about the whole thing after seeing Bat Davis.
This was the first piece of ground he had ever owned.
Regardless of how good he had it here, yesterday he’d been ready to leave it all behind.
The mountains and deserts and open ranges to the west offered enough elbow room for any man who tried to hide.
But standing there now, with the barn half-raised, the boys jabbering over their fish, and Sheila Burnett looking around his ranch as if she were seeing a piece of him he had not meant to show her, leaving here did not sit in his mind quite the same way.
“We woulda caught more,” Paddy said. “But some miserable old man started hollering and shaking a stick at us from a way up atop a bluff.”
Caleb turned to Gabe. Most of the time, the older boy worked for his father, Malachi Rogers—a former buffalo soldier—who owned one of the two stables in Elkhorn. “Recognize him?”
“Sure I did. Mr. Frank Stubbs. He does business with the other livery in Elkhorn.” Gabe grimaced. “What’s wrong with him anyhow? Anytime I’ve seen him, he’s angry.”
“Can’t say. Never spoke to him.”
“I have,” Sheila said quietly.
Caleb looked at her.
“Not a real conversation. Just enough to know I didn't care for him.”
“What'd he do?”
“Nothing you could point to.” She shrugged. “He simply has the sort of manner a woman remembers.”
Caleb did not like the sound of that. “What manner is that?”
“The sort that makes you cross the street before he reaches you.”
Bear was circling Paddy, his tongue hanging. The scent of the fresh-caught fish was almost too much of a temptation for the dog.
“Better hang them rainbows on the wall of the cabin,” Caleb told them. “High enough where Bear won’t be helping himself to them. And hurry back.”
The boys ran off with the dog in pursuit to do as they were told.
Caleb watched them poking and trying to trip each other. Their mouths were running the entire time.
They were both good boys, to be sure, even if they were easily distracted from working. Gabriel, tall and strong for his fourteen years, was the more responsible of the two.
Paddy, two years younger, lived with the Rogers family, though he was a new addition. Gabe’s father and mother had been kind enough to take the orphan in only a few weeks ago.
It was a true kindness, too, for the boy had made an impressive entrance showing up at the livery stable one day with a loaded Colt Dragoon in hand, bent on revenge for the killing of his brother.
And that meant gunning Caleb.
The night before, Paddy’s brother—along with five buffle-headed friends—had made the ill-advised decision to rustle cattle from the ranch. Shots had been fired, and the matter had ended badly for all of them.
Helping Paddy understand that his brother had died as a consequence of doing wrong was far easier than figuring out what to do with the boy.
Even though no one would blame Caleb if he turned his back and left the lad to make his own way in the world, he couldn’t avoid feeling some responsibility for him. Paddy had no one and nowhere to go.
Matters were complicated by the fact that Caleb was on his way out to Devil’s Claw and the mountainous wilderness beyond in pursuit of the road agents who’d taken Doc. That’s when Gabe’s father stepped in.
On his return, Caleb had been able to strike a bargain with the livery owner regarding room and board for the boy.
It had nearly been a knockdown, drag-out fight getting Malachi to take anything, but the men had eventually worked it out.
Since then, the two boys came out to the ranch to help—more or less—when it was needed.
“Sorry we’re late getting here.” Gabe was the first one back from the cabin.
Caleb picked out some tools for the boys. “We got a barn to put up. I know it’s only June, but I’d like to get the thing built before the snow flies.”
“Whaddya want us to do?” Paddy stopped next to Gabe, his ginger-haired locks bobbing in the wind.
“And what am I to do?” Sheila asked.
Caleb looked at her. “You?”
“Unless you believe I rode all this way only to admire your scenery.”
That was a dangerous word. Admire. Because the way she was looking at the unfinished barn, the cabin, the valley...and then him...made Caleb suddenly aware of the shirt sticking to his back and his sleeves rolled above his elbows.
“You can supervise,” he said.
“I see.”
“You’re from New York. Hard labor must be against the law there.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Gabe made a choking sound that might have been a laugh. Paddy grinned outright.
“Hand me a hammer, Marlowe.”