Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Leaving his ranch behind, Caleb followed the river north into the high country west of Elkhorn.
For the first hour, he found himself reaching unconsciously toward the pocket where he'd tucked Sheila's handkerchief. The white linen remained neatly folded. Clean. Just as she'd ordered.
Bring it back clean.
A man would think she'd handed him military instructions instead of a handkerchief.
The memory of her standing beside his horse lingered stubbornly in his thoughts. The kiss. The concern in her eyes. The way she'd looked at him as if coming back mattered.
He nudged Pirate onward.
That kiss.
The river wound through meadows and stands of pine as it climbed steadily toward the mountains. As he got closer to its headwaters, it became little more than a swift-moving stream tumbling over rocks and fallen timber.
Once, while he and Jake Bell followed the same watercourse downriver on their way toward Santa Fe, the old scout had claimed that river eventually joined the Mississippi and flowed all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
Jake insisted he'd seen swamps so vast a man could wander lost in them for days. He also swore there were alligators big enough to swallow a steer.
Caleb had never believed that part. Jake had been full of stories.
Sheila would have liked him.
The thought appeared unexpectedly.
He could almost hear her peppering the old scout with questions until Jake finally surrendered and told her every tale he knew. A smile tugged briefly at Caleb's mouth.
Then he felt Elijah Starr's knife shift inside his boot.
The smile vanished. Whatever future Sheila Burnett imagined for him, it would have to wait.
First, he had a ghost to bury.
Caleb skirted the southern edge of a mountain lake for most of the day, nudging Pirate through heavy brush and thick pine forests and catching occasional glimpses of the turquoise blue water.
It was slow going, and he saw no one. But he’d expected as much.
The terrain was too rugged for any cart or wagon, and anyone traveling west from Denver would be more apt to take the much longer but less arduous way far to the north, past Ten Mile Peak and Bald Mountain before descending to the Eagle River valley.
For the past year or so, stagecoaches had even begun to use that route.
The solitude usually suited him. Today, however, he found himself missing conversation.
Not just any conversation.
Sheila's.
He could almost hear her asking questions about the mountain peaks and streams they passed, demanding to know who named them and why. The woman possessed a curiosity that never seemed to rest.
By the time he’d climbed up through the twisting passes and finally reached the top of the ridges of gray rock, Caleb was exhausted from his wound. For the past few hours, he’d felt unable to fight off a numbing weariness that threatened to overwhelm him. A fog crowded the edges of his vision.
Resting himself and Pirate by a mountain spring, he drank deeply and decided against stopping here for the night.
He wanted to put in a few more hours on the trail.
Caleb didn’t want to make the two-day journey any longer.
Below him, he could see a small spring-fed lake that disappeared into thick forest and the winding ravine.
Somewhere to the west, he’d find Bonedale.
And somewhere back in Elkhorn, Sheila would probably be telling Doc he was being a fool. The irritating thing was that she would be right.
He reached into his vest pocket and touched the folded handkerchief. Still clean.
So far.
“All right, big fella,” he said to his buckskin as he slowly pushed to his feet. “Let’s put in a few more miles.”
As Pirate picked his way downward through the chunks and shards of sharp rock, Caleb’s head was getting increasingly heavier and the ache in his side sharper. The descending sun became a blinding glare of yellow gold.
At one point, while they were following a narrow trail above the white froth stream that roiled through an endless stretch of gray boulders, the color of the rock rising steeply to his right changed. As Caleb admired the layers of deep red, he realized he wasn’t entirely alone.
On a ledge not fifty feet above him, half hidden by a sturdy pine tree that had pushed up through the rugged terrain, a mountain lion was eyeing him steadily.
Tawny and sleek, she was close enough that Caleb could have hit her with a rock.
She didn’t have that poised, muscled look of a big cat about to pounce.
Her tail twitched as they stared at each other.
She simply appeared to be curious, but he knew how quickly that could change. Watching carefully, Caleb slowly drew his Winchester from its scabbard.
“We’re passing through, miss,” he called out loudly. “We ain’t looking to disturb you. So how about you just go about your business and we’ll go about ours.”
The cougar watched him for another few seconds. Then she dipped her head and picked up a good-sized rabbit that was lying out of sight at her feet on the ledge. Taking one last look at Caleb, she turned and bounded effortlessly up the steep mountainside before disappearing above a tree-lined ridge.
“Smart female,” Caleb muttered.
Returning his rifle to its scabbard, he nudged his mount on until the sun dropped behind a series of peaks.
In the growing gloom, he found a grassy, fairly level space a short distance from the creek and set up camp for the night.
As he gathered wood for his fire, he inadvertently pressed a branch against the injury on his side.
A sudden sweat washed through him and he dropped to one knee until it passed. The constant ache was a nuisance.
After settling Pirate in for the night, Caleb sat by the fire and cooked up a pan of beans and dried beef and pulled a couple of biscuits out of his saddle bag.
His appetite wasn’t what it usually was, but he ate his fill and left the rest for the morning.
He cleaned up in the stream and then sat on his bedding with his back against his saddle.
The coffee was strong and hot, the way he liked it, and he held the cup in his hands as he stared into the fire. He was bone-weary from the day’s travels, and the damned knife wound wasn’t helping at all. Still, he didn’t think sleep would come easily. His mind was racing.
Tomorrow, Sheila would likely ride out to the ranch with Gabe and Paddy.
He pictured her standing beside the unfinished barn asking questions, carrying tools she had no business carrying, and arguing with Bear when the dog refused to mind.
The image brought an unexpected smile to his face. Then he thought of the kiss.
The smile faded, thoughts of Sheila replaced by something darker and far more dangerous.
He couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like when he came face-to-face with his father.
Wild images from the past rushed through his mind.
His father’s hard face, white with rage as he swung the rod at Caleb or at one of the Shawnee or Kickapoo students at the training school.
The dark moments loomed up in front of him, and hot flashes of anger wracked his tired body.
He thought of the silent, gloomy rooms of the house where he kept Caleb’s mother virtually a prisoner.
No one was allowed to come into the house and visit her when she showed the cuts and bruises she’d received at her husband’s hand.
And as Caleb got older, that was nearly all the time.
He recalled trying to hide whenever he saw that look come into his father’s face, for Caleb knew his old man would start on him just to provoke some anguished and protective maternal response.
Elijah Starr used the son to get to the mother. He was a monster.
But monsters were not invincible.
Caleb winced as he stretched out. The stab wound throbbed painfully.
His face and his eyes felt hot. Trying to clear his mind of the evil days of his past, he listened to the night sounds.
A pair of wolves called to each other in the distance.
An owl hooted in a tree not far away, no doubt hoping to get some small creature running.
A family of foxes yipped and barked farther down the creek.
He looked up at the clusters of diamonds scattered across the black velvet sky and thought again of Sheila.
Their brief kiss. Her words before he’d walked away. Take care of yourself. And come back soon.
He touched the pocket where he’d tucked her gift.
Before he knew it, the taut muscles of his face gradually softened, and the hard pumping of his heart slowed. By the time Caleb felt himself dozing off, her face was written in the stars above.
The sun had already risen above the eastern ridges when he awoke.
He sat up and took in a sharp breath of chill mountain air as pain cut through him.
He felt like he was being trampled by a dozen razor-shod mules.
He stayed where he was for a minute to wait it out, but he knew he was in rougher shape than he’d hoped to be this morning.
In his life, he’d been beaten, shot, and cut more than any other man of his acquaintance.
He’d been frozen near solid in a Wyoming blizzard, and he’d been scorched by both fire and the New Mexico sun.
He’d broken bones and dug himself out of a collapsed mine.
His hide had taken more stitches than a Dutch quilt.
So Caleb knew that the day or two after a mishap always felt worse.
Common sense said to stay put for a day or two.
Doc would have ordered it.
Sheila would have demanded it.
But he didn’t want to make this ride to Bonedale any longer than it needed to be.
“Toughen up, Marlowe,” he chided himself.
The words sounded considerably less convincing than usual.
Moving gingerly, he dropped some kindling and a few more branches on the embers of last night’s fire, stirred it all into a flame, and then sat on his saddle for a moment to catch his breath and watch the morning light chase the darkness out of the ravine.