Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Pirate’s hooves flew over the road leading to town, and Caleb’s anger grew darker with every thundering step.
Sheila had agreed to ride back to Elkhorn later with Gabe and Paddy, but she’d still tried to reason with him as he saddled up his horse and strapped on his twin Colts. Starr was probably long gone, she said.
She had followed him all the way to the corral, unwilling to let the matter rest. When words failed, she’d taken hold of his hand.
“Think, Caleb. Think clearly about what you’re doing.”
He could still feel the warmth of her fingers wrapped around his. He could still see the fear in her eyes.
Caleb’s mother, Eliza, spent her young life trying to protect him from the unhinged violence of her monstrous husband.
Something inside of her had died long before Caleb found Starr finishing her off in their house.
For the thirteen years that followed, Caleb thought he’d killed his father.
But this summer the reality had roared back.
And with it, his burning hatred returned.
Hatred pulled him one way. Sheila pulled him another.
For months she had been teaching him there was more to life than surviving from one fight to the next. More than carrying a gun and waiting for trouble. She had shown him a glimpse of something he'd never dared imagine for himself—a home, a family, a future.
But the need to avenge his mother’s death drove him.
It was driving him now.
Approaching Elkhorn from the south, Caleb never eased up pushing his steed, even after he reached the houses and buildings at the edge of town.
He barely saw the passing faces of people afoot—miners, tradesmen, drifters, saddle slickers, men, women, dogs, and street urchins.
There was only one face he wanted to see.
Sheila had been correct in saying that Starr might not have remained in Elkhorn. More than likely, he was heading to wherever his boss, Eric Goulden, was waiting for him. Back in June, the center of their railroad operations was in Bonedale, more than a day’s ride west.
Still, Sheila had seen him this morning. He didn’t have much of a head start. Caleb would track him down.
When he steered Pirate onto the Main Street, the traffic was heavier, and he weaved through wagons and horses too fast, drawing shouts of anger and alarm from those in his path. He ignored them, urging his horse on.
Judge Patterson must have caved to pressure from Goulden. When he turned Elijah Starr over to the law, Caleb had underestimated the robber baron’s influence.
He reined in outside of the jail and vaulted from his saddle. Looping his horse’s reins over the railing, he cast his eye up and down the street. In the back of his mind, Caleb was hoping he’d catch the blackguard out here in the open.
Across the way, on the front of a large substantial building, an equally substantial sign boasted the office and courthouse of H.
D. Patterson, Justice of the Peace. In smaller letters beneath, the sign read, Land and Mine Sales, Side Door.
The end of a line of men was visible right now, disappearing around the corner to that side door, where the judge’s clerks waited to take their money in exchange for the hope of sudden wealth in the silver-rich hills around the town.
Caleb knew that his father would not be there.
A few doors up from the judge’s building, drunken miners stumbled in and out of the Belle Saloon, celebrating and spending the gleaming fruit of their labor, or drinking just as heavily as they mourned their lack of success.
He peered at the small crowd milling about and loitering on the raised wooden sidewalk, but he knew that too was a waste of time.
Elijah Starr was too arrogant to ever condescend to mixing with such “riffraff.”
Before Caleb could turn away, two cowboys were carried out the saloon’s wide doors and tossed without ceremony onto the dusty street.
The handful of miners doing the honors were backed by several of the Belle’s ladies and the bouncer, a formidable bruiser made even more formidable by the short-barreled Greener cradled in his massive arms. Laughing off the indignity of the situation and the demeaning comments heaped on them from the sidewalk, the banished pair stumbled to their feet and began working their way down Main Street, in search of other entertainments.
Caleb turned his gaze westward, scanning Elkhorn’s primary thoroughfare.
The bustling crowds that filled the street offered no glimpse of the man he came for.
Covered wagons pulled by teams of horses or mules, hand-drawn carts, buckboards laden with supplies and materials for building, and everywhere, miners.
The wooden sidewalks were equally busy. Businessmen with their posh suits and canes—some of them sporting a shiny pistol on their hip—doffed their beaver skin bowlers to well-dressed women.
The colorfully dressed women nodded and passed by them, or ignored the men and focused their attention on the shop window display.
The two cow punchers stumbled by him, smelling of tobacco and brandy. One was about to speak to him, but one glance at Caleb’s face and the hand resting on one of his twin Colts, and the two hurried on without a word.
An explosion silenced the crowd noises for only a moment. Glancing northward at the hills that ringed the town, Caleb saw a cloud of black smoke rising above the buildings lining Main Street. A logging camp and countless mining claims were being worked in the rugged landscape up there.
Caleb turned his eye on the door of the jail house, and a short, boar-like fellow in gray wool shrank back into the building out of sight. There was no sign of the deputy Sheila had seen before.
Caleb climbed onto the sidewalk and strode into the jail, the fire in his blood no cooler than when he left the ranch.
The memory of Sheila’s hand wrapped around his lingered stubbornly in his mind.
Think, Caleb.
He’d promised only that he would try. At the moment, trying felt a whole lot harder than riding to town with murder on his mind.
Zeke was alone in the sheriff’s office, standing by his desk, his back hard against a rack of rifles and a line of hooks holding dusty Colt Dragoons.
He was frowning nervously through his bushy whiskers and eyebrows and had his hands raised, far above the cross-holstered pistol on his gun belt.
Caleb supposed it was intended to be a placating gesture.
“Afore you shoot me dead, Marlowe, let me just say I ain’t had nothing to do with it.”
Zeke might not have known about his relationship with Starr, but he, the judge, and everyone else knew there was bad blood between Caleb and the man.
No one in Elkhorn was more eager than Caleb to sit in the courthouse for that trial.
And though he wasn’t partial to hangings, he’d decided long ago this was one he’d attend.
“You let him go.”
“I ain’t nothing more than the sheriff. You know that. You know me. I just follow orders. It was the judge’s decision.”
Caleb glared at him. “Did Goulden’s men come to town? Is that it?”
“Not that I know of.”
Zeke glanced in the direction of a front door as if to make sure. Either that or he was hoping for reinforcements.
“Then how? Why? There was enough against Starr to hang him a dozen times over. The judge himself was a victim. How could he let that miserable bastard go?”
“I don’t know!” Zeke pleaded. “All I know is that the two of them been sending messages back and forth for a couple of weeks. Starr started it. He asked for paper and a pencil, and next thing I know, he’s sent a note to the judge.
Then Patterson is sending a message back.
And on it goes. Nobody never told me nothing about what was being said between them. ”
Elijah Starr was a snake who regularly shed his skin.
From soldier to headmaster at a training school in Indiana to eliminating obstacles in the way of Goulden’s railroad construction, it never mattered what skin he was wearing.
His venom was the same. Caleb grew up listening to him twist the passages of scripture to serve himself and his own vile desires.
In the Good Book, Satan was the Great Deceiver. And Starr was the devil incarnate.
“So yesterday, Judge Patterson sent two fellas over to get Starr and bring him to his office. He was gone for a couple of hours afore they brought him back.”
“Why didn’t you go with him?”
“They said no.” Zeke shook his head. “Personal business between Starr and the judge, they said. And them new fellas Patterson hired to work for him ain’t to be trifled with.”
Frissy Fredericks, Patterson’s former bodyguard, had sold out to Starr.
The pig-faced giant had been gunned down at Caleb’s ranch the day hell broke loose, and that betrayal had nearly cost the judge his life.
Since then, there’d been no single bodyguard.
Patterson’s back was watched by men who were watched by other men.
And, according to Zeke, they were being regularly replaced.
“What happened this morning?”
“Patterson called me into his office and made me stand at his desk like a schoolboy. He said as of now, Starr is a free man. Any charge against him was dropped. No trial. No hanging. Free.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Zeke squirmed and lowered his hands. “And that ain’t the worst of it.”
“Starr is staying in Elkhorn.”
The sheriff’s eyes widened. “How’d you figure that?”
Caleb shook his head, disgusted. “The judge told you Eric Goulden is running his railroad through town. And Starr is going to stay here and build it for him?”
“You’re half right.” Zeke ran a hand down his face. “Starr’s gonna manage the construction of the rails. But he’s doing it for Judge Patterson. Not Goulden.”
Caleb felt the ground opening up beneath him. “So this snake will be working for the man he tried to kill not even three months ago.”
The sheriff nodded grimly. “And the worst of the worst. The judge told me if Starr told me to shit or cut bait, I’d best be shitting and cutting.”