Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
“You stay here, Bear.” Caleb patted the massive head of his yellow dog. The brown eyes in his black face were attentive and responsive. “I am relying on you to help Gabriel run the ranch. We don’t want nobody sneaking up on this young fella.”
The dog cocked his head, turned and looked at Gabe, and then trotted over and flopped down next to him.
Caleb had had a number of dogs travel with him over the years, but this golden-furred creature was, without a doubt, the smartest. The animal understood every word spoken to him, and Caleb suspected he could find his way home from a hundred miles off.
But he never tested him on it. It didn’t pay to give a dog too big a head.
Leaving Bear behind sat poorly with him. But leaving Gabriel here without the dog would sit worse.
The shadows were growing long, and he clapped on his broad-brimmed black hat as he strode to his horse.
Beneath his dark oilskin duster, he wore a plain, brown woolen shirt, an elk-leather vest, and buckskin pants tucked into his boots.
While he’d been waiting for Gabe to arrive, he’d packed up his trail gear.
Rolled up with his bedding was a bearskin coat he’d made from a grizzly he shot while riding with Jacob Bell.
It could get cold in the high mountains, even at this time of year.
Caleb wanted to be prepared for spending some time up there.
That wild country beyond the Devil’s Claw had never been tamed, despite the few hardy gold seekers throwing up shacks there, digging their yellow treasure, and carrying it out.
The land was rugged and vast. He’d hunted up there with Old Jake eight or ten years ago, but trails changed and disappeared.
It was a place that challenged even a man who knew what he was doing.
Still, these gangs of road agents wouldn’t want to be so far out that they couldn’t get to the Denver road in a day or two of traveling.
That would limit the area he’d need to search, but not by much.
Even though Caleb had no doubt he could find them, there were dozens of deserted mining camps where they could be holed up.
And they’d surely pick one where they could see anyone coming and defend themselves without a great deal of trouble.
He picked up his saddlebags and slung them over the gelding’s back.
He’d taken the time to clean his Winchester and his pistols and run a stone over the long blade of his knife till it could shave the whiskers off a baby rattler.
He made sure the leather thongs were fastened over the hammers of the Colts at his hips, and he double-checked his ammunition.
He had enough to take down a whole company of desperados, if need be.
He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Once, he might have looked at the preparation and felt nothing but readiness. Now he felt the pull of the ranch at his back and the old trail opening in front of him, and neither feeling sat easy.
He swung up onto the saddle. “Your father will be checking on you if I am not back in a few days.”
“We’ll be fine, Mr. Marlowe,” Gabriel called, standing tall and looking as serious as he could muster. “Don’t you worry.”
“I ain’t worried.” Caleb could see the young man was proud to be given the responsibility.
“But don’t forget what I told you. If any unsavory types show up looking to put their hands on that cattle, you throw a rope around that dog’s neck and skedaddle into the pine forest. I don’t want nothing happening to either of you. ”
“I won’t forget.”
“Even if someone drives off that whole herd, I can track them down when I get back.”
Cattle could be replaced. A good boy and a loyal dog could not.
And even if his cattle were long gone, Caleb thought as he rode off, he’d earn enough bringing in these outlaws to replace the herd with twice the number he lost.
Dusk was giving way to night by the time he reached the place where the road agents had hit the Wells Fargo stagecoach.
Caleb had no trouble finding it. Even in the waning light, chunks of splintered wood showed white on the ground. At the edge of the road, bark had been blasted off a couple of trees by errant shots.
Whoever was running the gang had a working brain and showed cunning in choosing this spot.
The road here descended for at least a quarter mile until it reached this gulley, where it made a slight bend and then ran up the next hill.
The way Caleb saw it, the driver would have had to slow way down to navigate the turn safely before starting up the slope.
The outlaws simply waited around the bend where the pines and low brush provided good additional cover.
Those fellows riding on top never stood a chance.
He stood there a moment longer than necessary, letting the scene arrange itself in his mind. The shots. The frightened horses. Men realizing too late that the trap had already closed.
Caleb crouched in the near darkness and frowned at the piles of shit in the road.
After the attack, the road agents had left a perfectly good team of horses for hours, by the looks of things.
He didn’t particularly like that. It was one thing fighting other men, but leaving harnessed horses to the violence of wolves and other predators was another.
It was fortunate that someone had come upon the coach and the dead men.
But a passenger inside the coach had been shot and taken, the judge said, possibly for ransom.
Whoever it was, they needed a doctor to keep him alive.
So they cleared out quickly, taking only the wounded passenger and the strongboxes.
And then they escorted that miner into Elkhorn to fetch Doc Burnett.
They needed him. Which meant the chances were good that Doc was still alive. Caleb held on to that. For Sheila’s sake as much as his own.
It was too dark to track the killers into the hills. But Smith’s claim was nearby. Somehow, the road agents must have known about it.
Caleb swung up onto his mount. He’d spend the night there, see if he could find anything of the gunslingers who took the miner to town, and start out at first light.
A light breeze was drifting out of the northwest, and he caught no scent of any cooking fire. So he rode east. The stars were appearing in the black velvet sky, and a soft bulge of white was forming above the ridge of mountains ahead of him. A few minutes later, the silvery moon showed her face.
He could have found the trail leading off the main road even without the light of the rising moon.
The judge told him his men had been out here already and found nothing of Smith or the road agents.
They’d come through like a troop of cavalry, a half dozen sets of hooves obliterating any telltale signs of the outlaws.
He dismounted and led his Pirate along the trail.
From the wear of the brush on either side, he could see the miner had once used a wagon, but not lately.
The forest pines grew higher as he made his way along, with occasional groves of cottonwood, and the darkness was vast and deep.
He moved silently and carefully, wary and attentive.
He didn’t expect to find any of the road agents, but if they turned Smith loose after fetching Doc, he could be back here.
The trail followed a creek for some time before entering a gulch. Here, the moon barely filtered through the sighing boughs of the trees. A mile or so from the Denver road, he reached a stump-filled clearing surrounding a log cabin.
Caleb paused, studying the place. With the exception of the burbling sound of water running fast and smooth in the nearby creek, a stern and heavy silence weighed down the cool air. There was no movement that he could see. No smoke rose from a stovepipe above the cabin.
The side of the cabin in front of him was facing north, with no door and no windows showing. Beyond it, he could see a grassy meadow and a gradual slope down toward the creek.
Tying his mount to a branch at the edge of the clearing, he shrugged out of his duster, unfastened the thongs over his Colts, and loosened the iron in their holsters.
“I’ll be back and tend to you shortly,” he murmured, running his hand over the buckskin’s neck.
Pirate flicked an ear, as if answering. Caleb almost wished Bear had come along, after all. A dog had a way of making lonely country feel less empty.
He knew Smith had been working this claim for a couple of years—a long time for a single miner to work it alone.
If a place was profitable, it would pay off fairly quickly, and the prospector would expand the effort to mine it properly.
Hire extra hands. Bring in machinery. But if it wasn’t profitable or the vein pinched out, a miner would leave everything and move on.
As Caleb treaded softly toward the south side of the cabin, it seemed to him that neither of those things applied.
Most miners went to town for provisions rather than take the time and effort of growing anything.
But in the moonlit meadow beyond the cabin, a good-sized garden had been planted.
A weave of pine branches formed a perimeter border fence, and neat raised rows ran side by side.
Smith had an established garden, and it wasn’t the first year he’d raised crops in it.
That garden changed how Caleb looked at the place. Smith hadn’t merely been scratching silver from the earth. He’d been trying to live here. Settle. Hold on.
Halfway along the cabin, a small window had been cut into the timber wall. Caleb carefully peered in, but the inside was dark as the grave. There was no movement. No fire showing. The hackles on his neck rose, however, and his instincts told him he wasn’t alone.
Near the corner of the building, an axe, a maul, and a cross-cut saw leaned against a half year’s stack of firewood.
By it, the ground was soft, covered with sawdust, and a fresh footprint caught his eye.
Beside it, there were black spots that trailed toward the south side.
He crouched and pressed his fingers to it, rubbing it between thumb and fingertips before raising it to his nose.
It was blood, but not human blood. Maybe rabbit or squirrel, but more likely grouse. And from the scent and texture, he knew it was fresh. No more than an hour or two old.
It would be someone’s supper. And that someone wasn’t too far away.
He slid one of his pistols from its holster, moved stealthily to the corner, and peeked around it. The moon was nearly full and high enough to light everything clearly. Two more windows had been cut on this side, but they were shuttered. A door sat between them, but it too was shut.
Caleb scanned the blackness beneath the line of trees bordering the meadow. Everything was quiet, but again he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. Whoever or whatever it was, they were either waiting to see what he intended, or they were waiting to get a clear shot at him.
Out here, he decided, he was too exposed. Moving in a low crouch, he ran to the cabin door and eased it open.
As the light of the moon spilled across the floor, Caleb saw two things. First, a native woman standing as poised and still as a cougar on the hunt. Second, the gleaming barrel of the shotgun in her hands pointed directly at his chest.