Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
In the darkness and the rain, Caleb scrambled for solid footing along the muddy riverbank.
His enemy was everywhere, darting this way and that.
Coming through the trees and brush. Rising and swaying and rearing back.
Constantly looking for an opening to strike.
The creature had the gleaming yellow eyes of a snake.
Caleb had been fighting for hours. His arms were so tired, he could barely lift them. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold off his vile foe.
Behind him in the churning shallows, Sheila was holding Caleb’s mother and struggling to stay upright. If she slipped, if the waters took them, they’d be gone forever. Both of them were shouting to him, but he couldn’t hear their words above the piercing hiss of the creature.
He had to protect them. But his guns were gone, his knife was missing. He’d fight with his bare hands if he had to. Moonlight broke through the clouds for only a moment, but it was enough to reveal the monster. Half man, half snake, it had the face of his father with the eyes of a viper.
Caleb was soaked in sweat and shivering as the dream receded and awareness gradually seeped into his brain.
Slowly, he became more and more conscious of the real world.
The snake creature’s threatening sound gave way to the homely hiss and crackle of a fire.
The swaying monster was a hanging pine bow.
Soft hushed voices surrounded him. He couldn’t understand the words.
He didn’t know the language being spoken.
But he heard the unmistakable note of concern in every utterance.
Keeping his eyes open took effort, but Caleb forced them to focus. Sparks curled and danced in their upward climb. The dark points of treetops framed the starry night sky.
He arched his back, trying to stretch, but every inch of his body was stiff. Still, Caleb decided he was more alive than dead. He had no idea how long he’d been lying here, except that it had to be a while. His stomach growled fiercely.
The voices went silent.
Out of the long habit of self-preservation, his fingers felt for his Colts, but his gun belt was gone.
The last clear thought he recalled was riding into an encampment, but finding no one around.
Someone had heard him coming. They must have hidden in the trees and only come out when he’d fallen from Pirate’s back.
But they hadn’t killed him.
Caleb ran his palms over the coarse texture of the blanket he was lying on. Whoever had saved him had also decided not to bother tying him up.
At the sound of someone approaching, he opened his eyes again.
A shadowed face appeared. A steady hand used a cloth to wipe the sweat from Caleb’s face and neck.
Cool, callused fingers touched his forehead and the side of his face.
He heard whispers from a few feet away. The one leaning over him replied.
The voice was quiet, but abrupt and commanding.
He was giving an order. Footsteps retreated.
Caleb tried to lift his head. The world blurred dizzily around him. His head landed back on the blanket with a thump.
He struggled to focus on the face of the person kneeling over him.
The fog thinned a little, and the man’s features emerged.
Gray beard, dark eyes deeply etched with wrinkles at the corners.
He was wearing the familiar black cloth cap Caleb had seen Chinese laborers wearing as they worked laying railroad lines.
The fellows he’d come across spoke their own language.
They didn’t want to have much to do with the white workers or overseers.
They stuck close to each other for safety.
Caleb couldn’t blame them. He had seen the harsh treatment the Chinese endured.
If it didn’t come from the other workers, the senseless violence was directed at them by the locals.
“Zhāng kāi zuǐ.”
Caleb stared, not comprehending what he was being told.
The elder man repeated the words. Understanding came quick when he pulled down on Caleb’s chin.
“What are you giving me? Medicine?”
A bitter liquid was poured down his throat. He coughed and gagged but swallowed it. It warmed his throat all the way down.
Whatever was said to him next sounded like an order. He had no idea what he was being told to do, but because of what these people had done for him already, he trusted that it was for his own good. The man stood up nimbly and carried the bottle to a large bag by the fire.
Caleb lifted his head. Thankfully, the spinning sensation was gone.
The fellow tending to him was solid looking and approaching middle age, wearing an immaculately clean black coat with wide full sleeves over a black vest. A white woolen shirt was fastened with cloth buttons all the way to his neck and extended out from the bottom of the vest and coat and ended just below the knees.
Slits ran up the sides of the long shirt.
Beneath wide, calf length black trouser legs, he wore high-topped leather moccasins with Shoshone beadwork.
He was unarmed, except for an ivory handled knife sheathed in his right boot.
He looked as healthy as a man half his age, and the dark eyes in his bearded face were as clear and alert as an eagle’s. When he bent over the large bag by the fire, Caleb saw that his black braid draped halfway down his back.
Caleb tried to assess the situation. He’d sustained some damage over the past few days, and he knew he was lucky to be alive after that rattler took a bite out of him.
A blue-and-green striped blanket covered him from knee to waist. His left ankle and calf had been bandaged.
They’d removed his vest and his shirt, but draped a thinner blue cloth over his chest. He touched the stab wound in his side.
The dressing was gone and the stitching had been left open to the air.
It was still tender but seemed to be mending.
He spotted his boots and wool socks standing against a nearby rock.
He knew that in removing them, they must have taken his knives.
His hand immediately went to the pocket of his trousers. Empty. A flicker of concern ran through him. Not for the knives. For the handkerchief. He had carried it tucked safely inside his vest.
When the Chinese travelers stripped off his wet clothes and treated the snakebite, they must have found it.
He glanced around the camp, searching for any sign of the folded square of cloth. It felt foolish to worry about a handkerchief after nearly dying. Still, he found himself hoping it hadn't been lost.
He tried to flex his knee and his foot. The ankle hurt like the blazes, and his leg felt swollen and stiff. At least the sweating and shivering were easing up.
Over to his left, a fire crackled, holding off the chill of the night. Two large pots hung suspended over the flames, and tin plates with food on them were scattered about on the ground, as well as on a number of woven mats.
The camp was neat and organized. The clearing was fairly level and ringed by scrub pine and cottonwood trees that had already begun to open their leaves.
The grass had been matted down by the travelers, and it had the same reddish rocks protruding here and there from the ground.
Packs for the mules sat in a line by a grove of wavyleaf oaks on the far side of the clearing, and Caleb heard Pirate nicker from somewhere beyond the trees.
Blanket rolls had been set out at the heads of the woven mats, along with walking sticks and neatly folded garments.
More awake now, Caleb had a clearer recollection of others leaning over him, helping the elder man. From the amount of gear he could see, there had to be half a dozen people lurking in the shadows beyond the edge of the clearing.
Two small carved horses lay on their sides on one of the mats. He guessed that at least one of the travelers was a child.
His host came back, carrying Doc Burnett’s bag, several clean white cloths, and a tin wash basin partly filled with water.
Folded neatly on top of the medical bag was Sheila's handkerchief. Relief washed through Caleb out of all proportion to the thing itself. He grabbed the cloth and put it in his pocket.
The man watched. Then he said something and pointed to the stab wound. When Caleb made no reply, he knelt down and dipped a cloth into the basin.
“Thank you. You saved my life, I reckon.”
The Chinese fella worked with the sure-handed, competent air of a professional medical man. The wound was washed with care and precision, just as Caleb had seen Doc treat his patients.
“Lucky to find your camp.”
The traveler made no answer. He was looking closely at the stab wound and concentrating on his task.
“Where are your other people?” He motioned toward the dishes and the fire. “I won’t cause you no harm.”
Tired, aging eyes met his. “White man.”
Caleb paused a moment and then nodded. He understood what the old man was saying. Life wasn’t too easy in the West for people with skin that was different from his.
He supposed it was the same everywhere, but he’d seen it out here clear as a water in a mountain lake.
Frontier law meant keeping what a man thought was his own, even if he’d fought dirty to take it from someone else.
Men could be pretty damn brutal about getting what they wanted.
Land. Gold and silver. Power. That was at the heart of it all, as far as Caleb could see.
It was what folks pushing west called ‘progress’.
The US Army had been pushing the Sioux north, and the Cheyenne and the Arapaho and others west into land that belonged to other tribes.
There were plenty of Mexican and black cowboys riding the range and driving cattle, but fellas like Malachi Rogers who wanted to settle in the growing frontier towns faced too many stiff-necked white men like Frank Stubbs.