Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
He had his Colt Frontier trained on her as well. Because she hadn’t blasted him as he came onto the threshold, they appeared to be at a standoff. Dark eyes, shining in the spill of moonlight, watched him intently. They each knew that if those guns started blazing, they’d both be dead.
How many times had he stood in a doorway where the next breath might be his last? Too many.
Fringed buckskin, cinched at the waist with a belt of dark leather, hung to below her knees, where a brown-and-yellow wool skirt was visible above elk-hide shoes.
Long, thick, black braids had been thrown back over her shoulders.
A modest string of elk teeth lay on her breast, and silver earrings glinted in the light of the moon.
“My name is Caleb Marlowe. I mean you no harm,” he said in Cheyenne.
From her clothing, he thought she might be Arapaho, but he knew there were strong similarities between her language and Cheyenne. He hoped she’d realize he was making a peaceful effort to communicate.
He slowly lowered his weapon. She didn’t move a muscle.
His eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness inside the cabin.
He was surprised by the orderliness and comfort of the place.
He’d seen plenty of mining claims, and the men who worked them generally had little interest in the civilized upkeep of their living quarters.
Prospecting was a rough life, and all their energy was directed at one thing: drawing gold or silver from the ground and streams.
Smith’s cabin was different. The place was…
well, homelike. A big bed, raised off the ground.
Bearskin covered it, and elk skins had been tacked up on the walls to keep the winter winds out.
Baskets hung from the beams, alongside dried meat and herbs.
There was a potbellied stove and a rustic table fashioned from split pine and cottonwood.
Two stumps served as chairs. There was no fire going, but inside the cabin, the smell of stew hung in the air.
A man and woman had made this place together. Caleb could feel it in the careful order of things, in the hung herbs, in the patched hides, in the quiet usefulness of every object. It was not just shelter. It was a life.
She lived here with Smith.
Caleb understood why the fire was out. Being here alone, she didn’t want the smell of it to draw attention.
Never mind that she was a woman, she was a native.
It wasn’t even two years since the Lakota and Cheyenne wiped out that fool Custer near the Little Big Horn River.
It didn’t matter to most of the white folks pushing west that Indians had been living on the land they wanted.
To them, they were all savage and barbaric and deserved to be wiped out.
Ugly words from Caleb’s childhood echoed in his mind. The words of the missionary. For those who are spared, it went, kill the Indian in them and save the man. He bristled at the memory of the man who said it.
Caleb forced back the recollection and focused on the woman pointing the gun at his chest. She had to be cautious. Unless she was married and protected by her white husband, men could abuse and even murder her, and no law would provide justice.
The thought sat hard in him. He knew too much about men who believed power gave them permission.
“I mean you no harm,” he repeated in Cheyenne.
“What are you doing here? What do you want?” she responded in English. She spoke the language with the ease of someone who had been using it for years.
Caleb didn’t blame her for not trusting him. A few words in Cheyenne weren’t enough. “Looking for Smith, the miner who owns this claim.”
“Why?”
He had no problem answering her question if it would put the woman’s mind at ease. She still hadn’t moved at all. She was standing, feet braced, finger on the trigger.
“He came to Elkhorn two days ago. He left there with my friend, Doc Burnett. The doctor has not returned, and people suspect foul play.”
“Smith is guilty of no foul play.”
“I believe you are correct in that, ma’am. But I need to find him.”
“Slowly, put your gun in the holster, Marlowe.”
Caleb pouched his iron and felt the woman immediately relax.
She had no way of knowing, but there had been many times in the past where men thought themselves in a position of power just because his pistols were holstered.
On more than a few occasions, those men had paid dearly for their error.
He could still cut her down if he had to.
He had no wish to.
“I know of you, Marlowe.”
Caleb was surprised.
“My people knew and respected the one they call Old Jake. I saw him once when I was very young. He came and traded in my village. People say you are like a son to him.”
“I rode with him for a long time.”
She lowered the shotgun but didn’t decock the hammers. She still hadn’t decided to completely trust him. Knowing of a man only goes so far.
“What are you to Smith?” he asked.
“I am his wife. My name is Imala.”
He was not taken aback by her answer. Many men out here, including Jacob Bell, were known to take a native wife.
It was curious, though, that the judge didn’t seem to know about her.
Unlike other miners and settlers who had an Indian wife, Smith apparently wasn’t one to parade her around like some peculiar possession.
The way Imala dressed, however, told Caleb she was not one to abandon her ways. Maybe that was why Smith kept her out of Elkhorn.
Or maybe Smith loved her enough not to ask her to trade herself away in order to make white folks more comfortable.
“You are mining now, Marlowe?” she asked.
“I have a silver claim and a ranch I bought with a partner a few miles south of Elkhorn. So far, I ain’t worked the mine, though. I raise cattle.”
She stood for a moment, watching him and considering until she reached a decision. She uncocked the shotgun and crossed the room. Rows of pegs had been driven into the logs above a line of barrels, and she set the Greener up with three other rifles.
They were quite a collection for a miner.
A Springfield .45-caliber single shot that made Caleb think Smith had served in the Indian Wars.
An old .50-caliber Hawken that could bring down a charging grizzly.
Above them all was a .47-caliber Lancaster flintlock with a gleaming maple stock.
Old Jake always held that the Lancaster was the best rifle he ever carried.
“Are you hungry?”
“I don’t want to cause you any bother, ma’am.”
“Sit there.” She gestured to the table and then lit a fire in the stove.
He removed his wide-brimmed hat, hung it on a peg by the door, and sat at the table. She lit a candle and placed it in front of him.
Caleb watched her go wordlessly to the line of barrels along the wall and come back carrying an iron pot that she put on the stove. When she lifted the lid to stir it, he smelled stewed pheasant, and his stomach rumbled.
“I apologize for busting in through the door and surprising you like that.”
She put a basket of biscuits and a spoon on the table for him. “You didn’t surprise me. I knew you were coming from the time you left the main road.”
Of course she did. She was waiting with a shotgun aimed at his chest the moment he walked in.
“I was told Smith lived alone. I didn’t expect to find him or anyone. But coming up to the cabin, I knew someone else was here. I just didn’t know who.”
“You are more alert than the six men who came looking yesterday.”
Caleb figured she was speaking about the judge’s men.
“You didn’t show yourself to them.”
He didn’t mean it as a question, but the side look she sent him reminded Caleb of the dangers she faced. A native woman alone in an isolated cabin. It was best to hide.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You were right.”
She stood by the table. “Smith does not drink spirits, but there is a jug filled with water from the creek. And I can make coffee for you, if you want it.”
“Thank you. I wasn’t expecting any of this, but I’d love coffee, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“No trouble. Smith drinks coffee morning and night.”
She took a tin bowl down from a shelf by the stove and filled it with stew. She placed it in front of him. “Eat, Marlowe.”
“How about you? Ain’t you eating?”
“I ate before.”
The stew had large pieces of pheasant, potatoes, parsnips, and herbs he couldn’t identify.
The food was savory and filling. He finished it quicker than was polite.
She filled his bowl a second time, and he sopped up the gravy with the biscuits.
It was a better meal than any other he’d had in the four months since he arrived in Elkhorn.
And that included several of the “best steaks in town.”
It had the taste of a home, which made it stranger still to be eating it while hunting the man who belonged here.
When he told her how much he was enjoying the food, she made no response.
As she went back to the stove for his coffee, he decided he should get down to business.
“When did you last see your husband, Imala?”
“Three nights ago. They came and took him away.”
“How many men?”
“Two.”
She sat across the table from him. In the candlelight, Caleb could see the web of lines spreading out from the corners of Imala’s eyes.
Gray strands were beginning to streak the black hair.
He guessed her to be in her thirties, maybe older.
It was tough to judge the age of some women, and those who lived out on the frontier tended to age faster than the women he recollected from back East. Except for Caleb’s mother.
He believed that she began aging the day she married.
“Tell me what happened when they came for him,” he said.
She looked toward the door, remembering. “The moon was still high enough that the light was good. I woke Smith when I heard them. He pulled on his coat and boots and was waiting outside for them. They rode up to the cabin like they owned it.”
“Where were you?” he asked.