Chapter 5
Chapter Five
By the time the sun had risen to midmorning outside the small, barred window, Caleb was ready to kick down the door of that cell. He didn’t like waiting, and he definitely didn’t care to be at the beck and call of anyone in this town.
This wasn’t the first time he’d spent the night in a jail cell.
Far from it. As a very young man, before he got his head on straight, he’d done more than his share of drinking, fighting, and general carousing.
It was more than looking for a good time, though.
More like trying to forget where he’d come from and what he’d done.
Guilt and anger can bore a hole deep inside a man that’s difficult to fill, no matter how much brandy he pours into it.
And this morning, waking behind bars again, he could almost feel those old years reaching for him.
When one of the sheriff’s deputies unlocked the door, Caleb had to hold himself back from knocking him on his scrawny tail. He stepped onto the threshold, and the deputy backed away, his eyes open wide and one hand on the Remington holstered at his hip.
“Where’s Horner?” Caleb had it in the back of his mind that he had a score to settle.
The deputy shrugged. “Ain’t seen him. I just come on.”
“How much longer?” he barked.
“I’m to let you out. Judge Patterson is waiting for you. Right across the way.”
Caleb stalked past him. A table with a chair on either side sat by the front door, where a score of WANTED posters had been tacked up and probably forgotten.
Another desk, Horner’s, sat by a rack with four rifles and hooks for a half dozen old Colt Dragoons.
Except for a cabinet no doubt filled with ammunition, a pair of lamps, and a couple of spittoons that showed some very negligent aim, that was all there was.
Caleb gestured to the rack and the hooks. “Where are my weapons?”
“Sheriff took ’em last night.” The deputy sat in a chair and put up his feet on the table, keeping his hand on his revolver. “Judge has ’em now, I s’pose.”
Caleb considered kicking the chair out from under his lazy ass, but he didn’t think that would do anything to ease his temper. Truth was, what really gnawed at him was how quickly men like Horner tried to throw their weight around. It was his fist in Horner’s ugly face that would do that.
“Better go. The judge ain’t one to be kept waiting.”
As he strode across busy Main Street, he thought more about last night and got more wound up.
Horner had just thrown him in that cell to show him who was in charge.
There’d been no reason to keep him. He wasn’t some drifter passing through.
It was a pissing contest, nothing more. Even so, Caleb was ready to do some damage.
Under a clear Colorado sky, the town was bustling with activity, reminding him that he belonged back at his ranch.
All along the streets and alleys, miners and range riders in various states of sobriety milled about on foot or horseback.
Men wandered in and out of storefronts and saloons and brothels.
Through the open doors of the Belle, Caleb could hear the efforts of someone who clearly hadn’t seen a piano in years hammering out a tune on the saloon’s tinny instrument.
And down by the bath house, a rowdy crowd was egging on a pair of chuckleheads who were already battered and bloody and ready to give up the ghost.
Three boys ran by Caleb with a dog chasing after them, barking and nipping at their bare feet. Along the wooden sidewalks, women moved in pairs, clutching their purchases and keeping a wary eye on the men they passed. In front of the hardware store, a wagon filled with crates was being unloaded.
One thing about Elkhorn, he thought as he reached the other side, was you could find men of every size and color and quality.
Black men and Chinese. Dandified greenhorns from the East and itinerant salesmen from the devil knows where.
Tough-eyed cowhands and sharpers looking for a gull.
And homesteaders by the dozens, all wearing the same mildly dazed expression, no doubt wondering when they’d finally reach that promised farmland.
There were even a few Indians—Crow mostly—almost all of them wearing battered blue jackets and insignia that showed their army service as scouts. Not that the insignia helped them escape the more-than-occasional gibes and abuse.
Why they came to town, Caleb couldn’t fathom.
He only came to Elkhorn when he needed to.
When he did, he had a destination in mind.
Get in and get out. The hardware store for nails or tools or rope.
The butcher shop where he planned to sell his cattle.
The general store for food supplies. And he’d been to the Belle Saloon on those occasions when he felt the urge for female companionship.
Lately, though, the ranch pulled at him harder than any saloon ever had. The cabin. The river. The cattle grazing in the valley below the hills. Sometimes, standing out there at dusk, he could almost imagine he’d finally found a place where a man might stop drifting.
Climbing the wooden steps to the porch beneath the H. D. PATTERSON, JUSTICE OF THE PEACE sign, he stopped to scrape the street off his boots. As he did, the door swung open, and he came face-to-face with Doc’s daughter.
Sheila Burnett was dressed differently this morning than she’d been last night.
Doc’s duster had given way to a long-waisted, form-fitting dress of dark blue that was finer than any woman owned within a hundred miles of Elkhorn.
The bowler had been replaced with a ridiculous little hat sporting white silk flowers and sitting on top of a pile of knots and braids of golden-brown hair.
She would, without a doubt, be a glorious sight on the sidewalk of any fancy city back East, but in this Colorado mining town filled with too many roughnecks to count, she was… well, something else.
Too refined for Elkhorn. Too fearless for her own good. And entirely too easy to notice.
He tipped his hat. “Miss Burnett.”
She nodded. “Mr. Marlowe.”
She was easy on the eye, all right, so long as a man decided to overlook her disposition.
“Did you stay the night in Elkhorn?” Her eyes wandered toward the Belle Saloon.
“Matter of fact, I visited an old friend across the way.”
She moved slightly around him to see what he meant. As her gaze lit on the jail, one of her gloved hands rose to her lips. She glanced quickly to see if he was wearing his revolvers. He pulled one side of his jacket open to show her he was unarmed.
“Consequences, Mr. Marlowe?”
“Nothing to it, miss.”
“Well, if you need someone to testify on your behalf…”
He doubted she would make a very good witness, considering how she’d expressed her views last night. “I don’t think so.”
“I had a conversation with Judge Patterson only a few minutes ago. He appears to be a very reasonable man.”
“Not a...a violent fella, then?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Not at first glance.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Caleb had yet to meet the man, but no one on the frontier got to be as rich and powerful as Patterson without some willingness to use a heavy stick on occasion. When a fellow like the judge appeared “reasonable,” that usually meant he had other men to do the dirty work. Men like Grat Horner.
“The judge assured me he’ll do everything in his power to facilitate my father’s safe return.”
“Very obliging.”
“You sound skeptical.” Her brow furrowed, but not with annoyance. Caleb read worry in her eyes, and he reminded himself that this was a young woman concerned about her father.
“I suspect Doc’ll be back, safe and sound, in a day or two. And with no assistance from the judge.”
Three rowdy cowpunchers raced by, whooping and hollering and raising a cloud of dust. They reined in their mounts in front of the Belle.
Instinctively, Sheila stepped back from the edge of the boardwalk as the horses thundered past. Without thinking much about it, Caleb shifted slightly between her and the street until the riders settled their mounts.
“I hope you’re right about my father,” she breathed.
Sheila Burnett had spunk. Caleb had to give her that.
Riding out to his ranch to find him in the dark was proof of it.
But she didn’t look or act like any other woman he’d met here in Elkhorn, not that he’d met many.
She was a fish out of water. And that wouldn’t change when her father got back to town.
Doc lived a bachelor’s life. He worked and read and drank and gambled and lived as he pleased.
He had a woman who came in and cooked and cleaned regular.
Caleb knew nothing about having a family, but he couldn’t imagine Doc having any need for a grown daughter chirping at him if he scattered cigar ash in his own house.
Still…for all her sharp edges, there was something sort of lonely about her standing there in the middle of Elkhorn, pretending not to be frightened.
“If you hear anything before I do, Mr. Marlowe, I’ll be at my father’s house.”
He nodded and then gestured down the street. “You might stop in at the hardware store over there. Mr. Lewis’ll be working behind the counter. Ask him to have his wife pay you a visit. She’s Doc’s housekeeper. If you’d like company, she might stay at the house with you until your father gets back.”
Immediately, her eyes flashed fire, and her cheeks turned a deep shade of red. “I don’t need company, Mr. Marlowe. And I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
Lord, but she could flare up quick.
He tipped his hat again. Another reminder that he needed to stay out of the way of people.
“Good day to you, ma’am.” Caleb stepped around her, opened the door, and went in.
The lobby was three times as wide as a railroad car and about half again as long. Behind a railing on the right side, two bespectacled clerks working at high desks were eyeing him, pens poised in their hands and matching sour looks on their faces.
Caleb nodded curtly, and they went back to work.