Chapter 10 #2
“The thing is, we don’t know who that shooter in there is or where he’s from. But men like that tend to have friends.”
“True. They always have friends,” Doc repeated, never lifting his eyes off the game.
“If they decided to bust him out of here, I wouldn’t want to rely on the deputy sleeping out there on your front step to handle any trouble.”
“You’re worried about my father,” Sheila said.
Caleb looked at her over the rim of his coffee cup. “Sure.”
The answer was technically true. It simply wasn't the whole truth.
Doc took a cup from his daughter. “I see your point, Marlowe. So far my patient hasn’t been well enough to move, but I think we can safely do it now. I’ll have a chat with Zeke when he comes in tomorrow. I can look in on the man at the jailhouse.”
Caleb glanced toward the front window. The storm wasn’t easing up. He’d be happier if the gunman were down in that jail tonight, but there wasn’t much chance of that happening.
“There you go, Mr. Marlowe,” Sheila said. “No need to worry. Now you’ll be able to sleep soundly.”
“I haven’t slept soundly since…” he cut his words short.
“Since when?”
Since she’d showed up at his ranch in the middle of night looking for her father. But he wasn’t going to admit nothing about how her pretty smiles and blue eyes robbed him of shuteye.
“I started that wrong. I sleep like the dead.”
“You? Never?”
“How would you know that?”
“Because you’re here and there and everywhere at all hours of the day and night.” She scoffed. “The judge needs you and the sheriff needs you. My father needs you—”
Doc made a motion to leave him out of this.
“I don’t know that’s true.”
“For all I know, the man who lights the streetlamps in town probably needs you too.”
“Think you might be stretching things a little, Miss Burnett?”
“And,” she said coyly, “I suppose I ask your opinion occasionally. But I believe you enjoy the meddling, Mr. Marlowe.”
“That so?”
“All I know is, for a man who gives the impression that he’d rather be riding the range with his dog and his cattle, you’re about the busiest man in Elkhorn.”
Caleb grumbled and stared at the chess board, suddenly feeling like she’d tied a knot in his tongue.
Her teasing hit home. He had tough time to say no when people needed help, but that was not meddling.
Sheila Burnett was different than everyone else.
In a thousand years, he wouldn’t say it, but he did care what happened to her.
He worried about how ill-prepared she was to carry on in Elkhorn.
And he had no damn right to be thinking about it at all.
She was Doc’s daughter. She was no responsibility of his. Never would be.
Caleb realized she was holding out a plate of cookies in his direction like a peace offering. He didn’t hesitate and took two, stuffing one in his mouth.
Sugar cookie. Damned if that wasn’t his favorite. And there was some other flavor to it that he recognized.
He had to fight back a groan of pleasure. “Don’t recall Mrs. Lewis ever baking these before.”
“She didn’t. I baked them.” Sheila’s smug smile was his answer.
“What’s that spice in them?”
“Cinnamon.”
“That’s right,” Caleb said, remembering an apple pie a neighbor used to make when he was a boy.
“You’re becoming quite accomplished in the kitchen, Sheila,” Doc said. “Your move, Marlowe.”
She held out the plate to him again. “I made a batch yesterday, but I gave them to Imala. By the way, she sends her regards to you.”
Caleb moved a piece and looked up at her. “You went all the way out there…alone?”
“Is there something wrong with me visiting her?”
Imala was an Arapaho woman who’d been married to a miner name Smith. She lived in a cabin on their claim, about two hours outside of town.
“That Denver road ain’t exactly safe. You could meet up with all kinds of rogues and blackguards out there.”
The words came out sharper than he'd intended. So much for minding his own business.
“He’s right, Sheila. You need to be careful, my love,” Doc put in. “Though after spending the day riding around the countryside and going out to Mr. Marlowe’s ranch, I suspect caution wasn't high on your list of priorities.”
“Today? I was with Gabe and Paddy, and we were perfectly careful,” Sheila replied.
“Of course you were,” Doc said, in a tone suggesting he believed no such thing.
“And Imala isn't exactly living in the wilderness alone,” Sheila continued. “Half the miners in that district would come running if she needed help.”
Imala’s husband was killed by the same road agents who’d taken Doc last month. There were too many lowlife dogs out there who would be only too happy to come upon a woman like Sheila Burnett.
“I like and respect Imala greatly,” Sheila continued. “And she likes me. We enjoy each other’s company. She’s teaching me so many important skills about frontier life.”
She looked at Caleb. “I’m very careful.”
“As careful as you were when we met the first time?”
Her eyes spit fire at him. They’d made an agreement not to mention that incident in front of her father. “More careful.”
Her back was straight, her hands fisted in her lap.
“Why do you need to go out there?” Caleb was having a hard time keeping a muzzle on.
“With Imala, I’m doing things that I was never allowed to try back in New York. I’m clearing fields, planting, hunting…”
“Spending the day helping build barns,” Doc added dryly.
“I handed people tools,” Sheila corrected.
“You also spent an hour asking questions about cattle, horses, fencing, wells, and chicken houses, according to Gabe,” Doc replied.
To Caleb's annoyance, Sheila looked pleased by the accusation.
He stole a glance at Doc, who gestured impatiently at the board. Caleb moved a piece that his friend immediately pounced on.
Doc seemed perfectly fine with his daughter talking about doing manual labor. Years ago, after his wife’s death, Sheila had been left behind with Doc’s rich in-laws. She’d been educated and pampered, but things had changed since she arrived in Elkhorn.
There was nothing wrong with a woman doing the chores and working, but this one?
Just that morning, he'd watched Sheila climb over half-built barn walls, carry tools, and pepper him with questions.
But Sheila was still a high-society, city-bred girl who in her past life probably changed her kid gloves ten times a day.
“Last week, Imala showed me how to skin a beaver. I did quite well too, if I do say so myself.” Her face disappeared into her coffee cup.
It was a little bit surprising to Caleb how quickly the Arapaho woman had accepted Sheila as an acquaintance.
Before marrying Smith, she’d survived the extreme brutality of white men against her people.
Befriending a young East Coast woman raised in opulence and comfort seemed more than unlikely.
He’d have thought the two would have nothing in common, and any kind of bond between them would be out of the question.
One more reminder how little he knew about women.
“Next week, we’re making beaded leather bags for carrying tobacco.” She smiled. “Mr. Wilson at the general store has agreed to buy twenty of them from her. All the smokers in Elkhorn will be clamoring for them, I’m sure.”
“Your move, Marlowe.”
While the conversation continued, Doc was busily cutting a bloody swath across the chessboard. Caleb could already see that his game was in trouble. He moved a piece, and his opponent’s rook immediately knocked it clear off the table.
“You already know that I’m a good rider, Marlowe,” she persisted. “And a competent shot as well. I’m quite prepared to handle any situation—”
“No one is prepared to handle the killers you could run into out there.” He stared at the board. In two moves, Doc’s queen and knight would have Caleb’s king in check. Right now, much as he hated it, all he could do was run. Delay the inevitable. Hope he could lure Doc into making a mistake.
He'd spent enough years on lonely trails to know how quickly trouble could appear. A broken wagon. A lame horse. A couple of men with bad intentions. It didn't take much.
“What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t go out there alone.”
“I wasn't alone this morning.”
“We are talking about going to Imala’s. Why not take those two boys with you.”
“And endanger a fourteen-year-old? Just for my sake?” she exclaimed. “What if something happened to him? I’d never forgive myself.”
Doc was showing no mercy and took down Caleb’s queen.
“So you admit there’s danger.” He stared into her face. She was the orneriest woman he’d ever met. “Ask Mr. Lewis at the hardware store. He has a trustworthy fella who sometimes delivers supplies out to the claims. Maybe not that far, but you could ask him.”
“Your move, Marlowe.”
“All I’m saying,” Caleb repeated, “is that you shouldn’t ride alone.”
He had to put his bishop in the path of Doc’s assault. It was a quick death.
“I’ve met the man Mr. Lewis employs. He’s about a hundred years old, deaf as a stone, and blind in one eye. I’d be protecting him.”
“Your turn.”
The father and daughter were after him. Caleb realized they were working together.
“The man is my age,” Caleb replied, knowing that wasn’t the truth. But Lewis’s helper was probably not much older than fifty. Or sixty.
Her eyes rounded. “Just how old are you, Marlowe?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Your move,” Doc nudged.
She held out the plate of cookies. “Why, that’s not old. We’re closer in age than I thought. Unless you’re saying that I’m old.”
She pulled back the cookies before he could take one.
“I said no such thing.”
“I believe you did. But I don’t mind. After all, it just adds to my argument that there’s very little to worry about me going out there. Who would bother an old spinster?”
Spinster? Sheila Burnett?
She was probably the prettiest woman in Elkhorn, Denver, and everywhere in between. And she was making it her mission to rile him and distract him.
Worse, she'd spent the entire day proving she was more than a pretty face.
He had an idea she was also fishing for compliments at the moment.