Chapter 21 #2
The deputy’s face paled. “I ain’t interfering with nothing. But why didn’t you say right off that you’re after a killer?”
He lowered his hands slowly and pushed to his feet. Standing, he was nearly as tall as Caleb.
“Tell you what. You set right here. I’ll go and ask around for Mr. Starr. Someone should know where he is.”
“I’ll do my own asking. Tell me where to start.”
“That ain’t no easy question. We got a few saloons here in…”
Caleb planted his left hand in the man’s chest and shoved him back down on to the chair. “I’m done with this. You’re going back with me.”
“Try the Dry Bottom. It’s the saloon halfway down the street.”
“Much obliged.” Caleb backed toward the door. “Don’t come after me. It wouldn’t be too healthy for you.”
Once he was on the street and certain the deputy wasn’t trying to get the drop on him, he pouched his iron. A dusky gloom was settling in over the town, but there was no rain yet.
Caleb didn’t for a minute think he’d find Elijah Starr spending a convivial evening at a place called the Dry Bottom Saloon. He couldn’t recall his father ever drinking in a bar. And he didn’t trust Deputy Grasshopper back there.
He went down the street, scanning every face for a tall broad man with an eye patch.
No luck. He passed the hotel and looked in the door, wondering if Elijah Starr might have a room there.
Just then, a bespectacled black man carrying a lamp and a newspaper crossed the cramped lobby and went behind the counter.
He didn’t glance toward the door, but Caleb sensed that he saw him.
The town was beginning to wind itself up for a wild night, by the looks of things.
Lamps were being lit in the saloons and brothels.
A trio of rail workers who’d started early came weaving down the center of the street, arm in arm, shouting at others they knew.
Even before he reached the entrance to the Dry Bottom Saloon, he heard the sound of a harmonica and the loud, off-key voices of men singing:
Oh! give the stranger happy cheer,
When, o'er his cheek the teardrops start,
The balm that flows from one kind word
May heal the wound in a broken heart.
Oh! Give the stranger…
Caleb stood by the open double doors, peering in. A dozen fellows in wooden chairs crowded around the harmonica player by the front window. He doubted Stephen Foster would have recognized the song as his own.
Lighted lamps hanging on the walls lit a score of card tables, mostly filled with laborers, cowpunchers, and a few miners.
Others stood around watching the games. Almost everyone in the place wore a gun belt.
A long bar ran along the left side of the saloon, where men stood two deep, talking and joking with each other.
Waiters ferried drinks to tables, and a handful of women circulated, advertising their wares in colorful, lowcut dresses that were slit up the leg to the hip.
The laughter was raucous and loud. Just the regular Sunday crowd, he figured.
Nowhere did he see Elijah Starr, but that didn’t mean someone here couldn’t tell him where the man was.
As Caleb entered and strode toward the bar, the harmonica player stopped in the middle of a verse. The singers trailed off, and a strange and awkward hush spread through the place. He received stares and a few curt nods from men he passed, who backed away from him like he had yellow fever.
On the wall by the end of the bar closest to the street, a display of posters drew his eye.
He stopped in front of them as the talk and the harmonica player started up again.
Wells Fargo Overland stagecoach advertising.
Wanted posters offering reward money for the capture of various men and women for murder, robbery, horse stealing, and cattle rustling.
The rewards were generous and enticing. Two hundred dollars.
Five hundred dollars. Dead or alive. A man could make a lucrative career for himself chasing after these desperados.
Caleb’s thoughts flickered to Mrs. Fields, the leader of the gang of road agents who had operated between Elkhorn and Denver up until a month or so ago.
He’d let her go free, and her secret would remain safe with him and Doc and Sheila.
He wondered if she and her son were already settled in California.
He hoped so. There was no way he wanted to see their names on one of these posters.
One notice in particular caught Caleb’s attention:
MANY POSITIONS AVAILABLE
for
EXPERIENCED MEN
Ex-Army. Ex-Pinkertons. Ex-Lawmen.
To aid in the PROTECTION of company property
and in the capture of TRAIN ROBBERS.
Inquire at Dry Bottom Saloon
Mr. Elijah Starr
Caleb stared at the name at the bottom and then reread every line. Every word.
His heart raced. His hand fisted. The image of his mother’s bloody body on the floor flashed behind his eyelids. Memories rushed back of beating the man’s face, again and again.
He’d kill him this time.
He pulled the sheet off the wall and read the notice again.
Many Positions Available. His father was raising his own army.
And train robbers were not the reason for it.
His men were hired to harass, to bully, to keep disgruntled workers in line.
And to show up in towns like Elkhorn to murder whoever stood in the way of railroad expansion.
He looked up and caught the flash of a bright green coat and a large black bowler going out a back door. The deputy had taken the back route to the saloon. He’d come to warn someone, and Caleb had a pretty good idea who it was.
At the far end of the bar, a group of six men had their heads together, and Caleb started toward them.
He was about fifteen feet from them when they broke up and began to move far too casually away from one another, spreading out as they ambled across the saloon.
One of the men, who’d been facing him the whole time, remained by the bar and ordered another drink.
Caleb stopped, bellied up to the gleaming wood of the bar. There was a large looking glass behind the bottles lined up against the wall, and he watched the men disperse to their assigned places. He unobtrusively loosened the thongs on his twin Colts.
The one who’d remained by the bar was dressed in a charcoal gray suit with a shiny silver vest. His wide brimmed black hat cast a shadow over his face, but Caleb could see his eyes tracking the progress of his friends.
He was wearing a fine-looking brace of walnut handled Remingtons.
When the others came to a stop behind tables of card players, they angled their bodies so their holsters were shielded from view.
They stood and pretended to be looking at the hands being played.
Caleb waited for the signal that he knew was coming. He had his back to five of them. The man at the bar, still looking in the mirror, nonchalantly stroked his moustache, reached for his glass with his left hand, and picked it up.
The others immediately drew their weapons.
The saloon exploded with the sound of gunfire. Caleb moved forward and to his right a step, and the looking glass behind him shattered. Men and women were diving for cover and tables were upended, with cards and cash going flying.
His Colts spit fire. The leader down the way shot a rail worker standing between them in the shoulder before taking a bullet himself in the eye. He was still falling when Caleb, moving, unleashed a barrage of shots at the others.
Bullets whizzed by his head, splintering what was left of the mirror and the bottles on the shelf, and tearing up the bar to his right and left with splintering cracks.
Caleb thought of the folded handkerchief in his vest pocket.
Not today, Sheila.
Not today.
Smoke filled the air, and in seconds it was over.
Caleb’s eyes raked the saloon for more assailants, but no one made a move for their gun. No one moved at all. He counted the bodies.
Blood spattered the far walls, and unseeing eyes of the dead stared into oblivion. Four bodies were stretched out on the floor in a variety of positions, and one was sitting against an overturned table, clutching his throat as his life ebbed away.
Caleb straightened up and slid one of his pistols into its holster. He was still holding one of the Colts in his hand and watching the room when a woman’s voice came from just inside the saloon door.
“Put that gun down nice and easy. Do it now.”