Chapter 32 #2
Bear began to bark, pulling at the rope that bound him. Riders were coming across the meadow. Caleb drew his knife and cut the animal free. Bear immediately went to stand by Sheila and Paddy in the doorway.
Caleb retrieved the table and the bench and set them on the porch. He hauled Starr upright and plunked him on the seat. His battered head sank onto the table, landing in the exact spot where Judge Patterson’s blood was staining the wood.
A moment later, horses thundered up to the cabin, and the rise was crowded with riders. Caleb moved off the porch to greet them.
Gabe jumped down from Pirate’s back and ran to him, eyeing the dead bodies lying everywhere. “You done them all, Mr. Marlowe. You didn’t need help.”
“You done real good, Gabe. I’m proud of you.”
Doc Burnett went directly to his daughter and held her in his arms for a moment before going over to tend to the judge. Malachi Rogers strode up, and the boys and the dog went off together, their mouths running.
Caleb directed one of the deputies to see to it that Elijah Starr was bound securely and readied for the ride into town.
“A dark day,” Malachi said grimly. “But it could have been darker.”
Caleb nodded. The men from town began dragging the bodies of the dead toward the cabin and laying them out in line near the end of the porch. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
Malachi filled him in on what had transpired in town.
Apparently, Frissy had given Zeke an order that supposedly came from the judge, directing him to go to the governor’s office in Denver.
When Gabe arrived, however, and told them what was happening at the ranch, Malachi and Doc managed to collar two of the sheriff’s deputies and crib together a dozen men.
Caleb and Malachi walked over to where Doc was looking at the judge’s shoulder and hand.
“Doc says I should live,” Patterson said to him, a look of grim satisfaction on his face. “Well done, Marlowe. You kept the son of a bitch alive. Pardon the language, Miss Burnett.”
Elijah Starr, bound and guarded, seemed to have withdrawn into himself.
The fact that he was still breathing was only due to Sheila.
Caleb studied his father for a moment and realized that the anger and guilt that had been weighing him down for years seemed to be less of a burden now.
But it was still there. His mother was dead.
Nothing would ever change that. He wondered if he’d ever be free of that weight.
There was an old saying about vengeance being double-edged. He didn’t know what the future would bring or how he’d meet his own end. But he knew one thing: today he laid down the sword he’d been carrying for a long time.
Patterson broke into his thoughts. “I won’t forget what you did, Marlowe. And you can be assured, Starr is going to hang. For all his crimes.”
Caleb said nothing, wondering how much Patterson had heard of the words that were exchanged inside.
This was a man he would never trust, no matter how much sweet talking he did now.
He knew there could easily come a time when the judge would want something from him.
And he would use Caleb’s past against him, sure as hell. If he knew it.
So Elijah Starr would hang. But his blood flowed in Caleb’s veins. The sins of the fathers…
Whatever bond connected them had been severed because of the abuse this man had used to destroy Caleb’s mother. And he recalled another line from his youth, one that he’d paid little attention to in the past decade. Nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers.
Still, as he glanced at Sheila, now standing behind Doc, the words gave him little comfort.
Her eyes were fixed on the bodies of the men he'd killed. Her face was pale, one hand pressed against her lips.
For a moment, Caleb misunderstood what he was seeing. He thought she was looking at the dead. Then he realized she was looking at him.
The bodies were simply in the way.
He recalled the night they first met, when she'd been horrified by the violence that she’d seen. Back then, she had seen only the aftermath of the bloodshed. Now she had seen the reason for it.
She had seen what kind of men Elijah Starr and his followers truly were.
She had seen what would have happened to Paddy, to Judge Patterson, and to herself if Caleb had not come.
Yet, that did not mean she liked it.
It did not mean she would ever be comfortable with death.
And strangely, Caleb found that he admired her all the more for it
The frontier had a way of hardening people. It demanded compromises. Excuses. Justifications.
Sheila Burnett refused to surrender the part of herself that still grieved when a life was lost. He hoped she never would.
He remembered thinking that first night that it must have been the first time she'd ever seen men lying dead on the ground. This time, there was no darkness to hide the carnage. Here, in plain sight, was death beneath a bright Colorado sky.
Caleb looked at the men stretched out near the porch. They had chosen their path. They had followed Elijah Starr. That didn't make their deaths any less final.
Next to Frissy lay men whose names Caleb would never know. Men who had once been boys. Men who had likely carried hopes and ambitions of their own
Now they were gone. Blood darkened the ground where they had fallen. Blood he had spilled.
He looked back at Sheila.
She hadn't moved, but he saw tears gathering in her eyes.
You are not him. You're better than him. You are a far better man.
How much better? Caleb wasn't sure.
He knew there would be other fights. Other men who would need stopping. That was the world he lived in.
But Sheila reminded him there was another world too. One worth protecting.
He moved closer to her. He took her hand in his. Her palm was cold as ice, and he felt the tremors in her flesh. She didn't pull away.
He had so much he wanted to tell her. About his past. About the uncertainty of his future. About how seeing her standing alive in that cabin had mattered more than revenge. And most of all, he wanted to tell her she deserved better than a man like him.
The trouble was, for the first time in his life, he wasn't entirely certain he could let her go.