Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Caleb reined in his big buckskin on the rocky rise and looked back at his two traveling companions. Their sturdy, Texas-bred horses were trudging through the snow, kicking up powder as they came.
Duke and Bass were tough fellas and used to hard travel, but they weren’t accustomed to pushing along this fast in winter conditions.
On the trail, driving their cattle, they were lucky to make ten or twelve miles a day.
And if they happened to be caught north of the Arkansas River when the heavy snows came, they just hunkered down and wintered with their herd until spring.
The three of them had been on the road for the past day and a half, and the Texans were doing a fair job of keeping up, but Caleb had hoped to be farther along than they were, at present.
Back in Elkhorn, he’d been anxious to get on the trail as soon as possible. As it was, the rustlers already had a huge jump on them. But too many things seemed to be conspiring against him.
Of course, part of him was grateful for the delay. The extra days had given him time with Sheila. Time he hadn't expected to have.
By late Thursday afternoon, the snow had begun to fall. Very soon, every alley and thoroughfare was covered. Riding back to the ranch after speaking with Sheila, Caleb began to doubt that they’d be leaving the following day.
Not that he was in any hurry to ride away after that kiss. The memory of it had followed him through the storm. More than once, he'd caught himself grinning like a fool.
Henry had noticed too.
Friday morning, the snow was nearly a foot deep—not enough to stop them from going—but he’d arrived at Doc’s house to find it was still a question as to whether Tex would survive. The fever had not eased its grip on the young cowboy, and Ortiz was hesitant to leave him until he had better news.
By noon, it didn’t matter. A second onslaught of snow roared in from the west with winds that battered the walls of the Burnett house.
Caleb could barely see ten feet in front of Pirate’s nose as he struggled home through the near darkness of midafternoon.
He had the directional sense of a hound dog, but he was still relieved to see the blurred shapes of the ranch buildings loom ahead.
Over the years, Caleb had seen quite a few situations similar to this where men had become confused by the swirling snow and wind, only to be found frozen to death within yards of their cabin or destination.
By the next morning, the storm had blown itself out.
The snow had eased and then tapered off to nothing during the night.
Caleb rode into town through powder that the wind had, in some places, heaped up into drifts taller than he was, leaving wide swaths of almost bare earth in other spots.
The sky was swept clear, a brilliant shade of blue.
Without the wind, the cold didn’t have the same bite, and good news greeted him at Doc’s house.
During the night, the cowboy’s fever had broken.
In Elkhorn, at least, things were falling into place.
After his conversation with Sheila, she’d spoken to Belle Constant.
The tough, enterprising saloon owner had no problem with renting rooms to paying customers, regardless of where they came from or the color of their skin.
Duke and Bass had stayed in the boarding house for two nights already.
And Tex would be moved over whenever Doc Burnett decided the young man was ready.
Sheila had also promised to speak with Miss Kaufman about Paddy's schooling.
The more Caleb thought about it, the more right the decision felt. For years he'd drifted from one place to another. Now he found himself making plans that stretched months into the future.
Caleb looked behind him. His companions were closing the distance.
Pirate tossed his head and shook snow off his dark brown mane. He was eyeing the spring-fed pool just ahead. The pool was dark, the edges fringed white with ice, and the water spilled into a narrow ravine that dropped off to Caleb’s right.
“That’s why we stopped, fella. Go get yourself a drink.”
Leaving Pirate by the pool, Caleb walked to the edge of the bluff.
Where normally he could have seen five miles in either direction along the river below him, today the sight was very different.
Two separate snow squalls to the north and another to the south limited his view of the valley.
The expanse of whiteness blanketing the normally grass-covered ground was broken sporadically by scrubby spruce standing alone or in clumps and frost-killed brush huddled along the edge of icy river.
At the moment, between here and the western foothills that should have been directly across, dozens of tributary streams and small rivers formed a web of draws and gulches.
Even as he looked at them, though, they floated in and out of sight, like ghostly veins on the back of an old man’s hand.
They’d been following the eastern ridge to avoid that terrain. Caleb didn’t mind getting wet fording the streams—even though it was getting steadily colder—but the steep embankments alongside many of them made for slow going. He was looking for the fastest route possible.
Heavier snow began to fall, and Caleb looked up at the sky. Steel gray clouds covered the wide expanse. The peaks to the east and west had been completely snow-covered, and they were invisible now.
He figured they had another four or five hours of riding before the dark lid of night clamped down hard over them. With luck, they’d reach the point where the river swung hard to the east before then.
Once they made that turn, the wide valley would narrow, and the spruce covered mountains would rise sharply on either side for a long, winding stretch. Depending on his companions, it would take them a day or two to reach the place where the rustlers bushwhacked Duke and his men.
The two cattlemen pulled up beside him. They’d used the days before leaving Elkhorn to clean up, rest their horses, and outfit themselves for the trip. Both men were sporting new woolen coats beneath their leather dusters, and Bass had needed a new shirt to replace his torn and bloodied one.
Leading their mounts to the water, they got down, knocked the snow off their hats, and came to stand beside Caleb.
“When we came along here with Tex,” Duke said, gesturing down into the valley, “we didn’t think of moving up and away from the river.”
Bass frowned, tentatively stretching his injured arm. “Woulda been easier going.”
“No way you woulda known,” Caleb said.
In the distance, a low-hanging cloud thinned and a herd of pronghorns came into view, their striped faces foraging in the snow for grass. Their snow-dusted brown backs, white bellies and rumps made them nearly invisible, but Caleb’s eye had long ago been trained to spot game.
“We’ll give the horses a few minutes to rest,” he said, turning his attention back to the other men. “But then we got to keep moving.”
Duke nodded and started to say something. But before a word left his mouth, a far-off sound stopped them.
Gunfire, muffled by the falling snow.
“Hear that?” Bass asked.
“Sounds like trouble,” Duke added.
“We oughta find out,” Caleb added. It was better to know who was on the warpath instead of getting caught unawares.
In a moment, they were on their horses and moving as quickly as they could along the ridge.
The snow, heavy at times, cut their ability to see to just a few yards, but the sound of rifles, mixed with the sporadic bark of a pistol, led them on.
By a pile of frost-whitened rock, the three men reined in and peered down into the valley.
Caleb breathed in the mingled smell of gun smoke and cooking fire. He had a bird’s eye view of the fight.
The river wound along like a great black snake below, and rocks showed above the surface of the wide bend closest to their vantage point.
Almost directly below them, five horses were tied behind a grove of spruce.
From the shelter of the trees, men were firing across the river at four wagons that had been pulled into a circle.
From the trampled snow and the smoky fires by each wagon, Caleb judged that the travelers must have been there for a while, waiting out the storm before continuing their journey.
He counted seven men, five women, and a passel of young ones.
Three of the women were huddled with the children on the far side of the encampment.
Mules and a couple of sturdy-looking horses were tethered nearby.
The shooting was accompanied by threats and shouts from the travelers, and taunts from the gang on this side.
“What do you think is going on?” Ortiz said in a low voice.
“Looks to me like these fellas over here found some homesteaders they thought would make for easy pickings.”
Bass nodded. “If they run out of ammunition first, they probably will be exactly that.”
Caleb kept telling himself that he didn’t need to get involved in fights that didn’t involve him, but there were children here. He was starting to think there was a soft side of him that would probably get him killed one day.
But maybe today wasn’t that day.
He looked at his two companions. “What do you fellas say we lend them homesteaders a hand?”