Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Caleb had been pushing hard for two days, but the wall of clouds eating up the peaks to the west told him that another storm was about to hit him like a herd of runaway buffalo.
“Damn me.”
Standing on a rocky ledge with the wind whistling around him, he glanced back at Pirate, drinking contentedly from a mountain pool fifty yards away.
Ice formed over the shallow stream where it crossed a worn channel from the pool to the ledge before tumbling off and disappearing to the base of the cliff far below.
Fifty feet beneath him, Caleb could see the snow-covered tops of pines a hundred feet tall.
The mountain trail coming up here was barely wide enough for Pirate’s sure feet, but it wasn’t completely treacherous going.
The ever-present wind had at least blown the snow from the rock surface.
He’d considered taking a route that led along the thickly forested slopes below him, but he’d wanted to get a better look at the weather coming in from the west. Now that he had, Caleb wasn’t all that happy.
He’d come far since leaving Duke and Bass, but the miles he’d covered wouldn’t matter if he got buried in another few feet of snow up here and lost a week.
After they left Pueblo, the three of them had ridden north, following the train tracks that ran mostly parallel to a winding stream that Buck called Fountain Creek.
In the fading light, there was little to see on the flat, snowy plain except for the occasional farm building that looked cold and forlorn amid the unyielding emptiness.
As they rode, Caleb saw plenty of evidence of a herd being driven north, but eventually they had to stop and camp when darkness descended over them like a shroud.
They reached the rail siding by midmorning but, as Caleb feared, there was nothing left of his herd or the men who’d taken it.
Asking the lone watchman at the railroad site, he learned that a man resembling Elijah Starr, along with his band of henchmen and a thousand head of longhorns, had stopped through, but they were long gone.
Together, they’d decided that Duke and Bass would continue on with the dim hope of catching up to the cattle in the stockyards at Denver.
They had little chance of recovering the herd at this point, but they might be able to confirm who was responsible.
Caleb, however, decided to cross the mountains, staying south of Pike’s Peak, and try to cut the time it would take to reach Elkhorn.
He knew Elijah Starr would head that way, eventually. And he wanted to be there waiting.
Snow had continued to fall off and on for the next two days, slowing him down as he traversed the rugged mountain range.
On the second day, he reached the high, broad plateau he’d remembered.
The wind howled mercilessly across the treeless expanse, but the snow cover was far more forgiving.
He’d made good time across, but the deep gorges, rocky ridges, and plunging ravines that followed had taken their toll on Pirate and on Caleb.
Still, he figured he was only a full day away from the river valley that would lead him north to Elkhorn…and his father.
Studying the approaching storm, Caleb knew he and his horse needed to take shelter soon.
In his days of scouting and leading travelers across the frontier, this was the moment when he’d tell his charges to prepare to camp for a week.
But he didn’t have a week. He couldn’t afford to waste a day. He had to get back.
Caleb had no doubt that Elijah Starr was responsible for the stolen cattle. He would know from his dealings with the judge that a herd of longhorns were coming for the ranch south of the town. There were no other ranches around Elkhorn raising cattle.
Starr had known how to stab him where it would hurt him financially, and Caleb hadn’t seen the gleaming knife edge. He’d only felt it once the point had been driven deep into his flesh.
Icy barbs stung his face now as he looked out across the mountains, but he barely noticed, lost in thought about the poisoned relationship he had with his father. Some relationships between father and son seemed doomed right from the start. Caleb knew that was true of his family.
Somehow, he’d been named by his mother. Strange, considering how controlling Elijah was. However it came about, she’d called him Caleb. She told him she’d believed he would be—like his biblical namesake—brave, faithful, devoted. And Caleb was brave, faithful, and devoted…but only to her.
In his father’s warped mind, Caleb had turned out to be a fraud, faithless and disloyal, because he sided with his mother against him.
Because he stood against the violence directed at her.
Because he loathed and defied his father’s brutality.
One night, in a fit of twisted rage, Elijah told him he was no different than the Caleb trusted by Moses, but who worked in stealth only to enrich himself.
And now that father and son had been thrown together on the Colorado frontier, each was filled with the inescapable need to destroy the other.
The realization left a bitter taste in Caleb’s mouth.
Since learning that his father was still alive, revenge had seemed as natural as breathing. Now though, for the first time, he found himself wondering what it would cost him.
To reach his father, Caleb had scaled to heights ten thousand feet above the snowy plain. And though he knew that he would need to fight his way through drifts seven feet high and make his way along treacherous ledges, he still chose the most direct route to his nemesis.
But now the storm was about to hit.
Caleb’s head snapped around at the sound of Pirate’s sudden snorts. The buckskin had his head up and he was nervously pawing at the icy rock at the edge of the pool. The horse backed away from the water, his nostrils flaring, and Caleb saw the cause of his panic.
Beyond Pirate, a wide rocky meadow rose steadily for a half mile before forests again closed in around it. Only forty yards upstream, a young bear had lumbered out of the trees and now stood on his rear legs, eyeing the gelding.
That grizzly might be less than a year old, Caleb thought, but the danger he posed was lethal. And he was already moving in Pirate’s direction.
There was no way Caleb was going to get to his horse before the young grizzly. The beast was fast, and on this terrain the advantage of those huge feet and four-inch claws was insurmountable.
Caleb took a few steps forward, drawing his Colt as he shouted at Pirate to get moving. Firing his gun in the air, he startled his horse into action. The buckskin spun and bolted back the way they’d come.
Then everything got worse.
The mother bear came out of the woods with her head swinging from the cub to Caleb.
The smell of gun smoke still hung in the air, but that didn’t deter her one bit.
She was not just looking at him as a threat to her young one.
She was clearly thinking about how tasty a meal he’d make for the two of them.
She had to be five hundred pounds, Caleb reckoned, and when she stood up for a better look, he figured she stood more than seven feet tall. Her coat was light brown and her head had to be close to three feet from ear to ear.
She stared at him. He stared back.
“You look full and happy,” he called out to her. “I’m just traveling through. Ain’t much meat on these bones.”
He knew that this bear had no fear of him. Hell, she’d probably never even seen a human before.
One thing he was sure of, she’d be impossible to kill with his revolver.
He’d heard stories of hunters shooting one of these monsters with a Winchester ’73 thirty times before it died.
Even a Sharps with a .50-90 cartridge was no sure thing.
That rifle could drop a buffalo at a thousand yards, but unless you got the grizzly in the eye or right behind the ear, you weren’t going to kill it.
That was how he’d gotten the one whose skin he was wearing right now.
Old Jake was impressed, but Caleb felt that luck had been on his side.
He thought about the Colt in his hand. If he shot her with it, he’d only make her mad. Then she’d maul him a few times, toss him up and down to break a few more bones, bury him under a rock for a few days to make him good and tender, and come back when she was really hungry.
Right now, though, she already looked mad. As she took a few steps toward him, he instinctively backed away. He stopped at the edge of the cliff. It didn’t matter that this beast could outrun him, Caleb had nowhere to go.
Sometimes the sudden movement of a strange object would frighten a wild animal. It occurred to him that the report of his pistol hadn’t done anything but draw the attention and the ire of the mama bear, and it hadn’t done anything but stop the advance of the cub for a moment.
Waving the pistol in the air, Caleb let out a wild whoop, and then fired two rounds that raised sparks from the rocks between him and the grizz.
The sight of her teeth told him that idea wasn’t going to work here. She came at him with surprising speed.
Knowing he had no chance reasoning with her any further, he pouched his iron, turned, and leapt as far as he could off the ledge.
As the tops of the tall pines raced up to greet him, Caleb wondered if this is what a hawk felt like as it plummeted toward its prey in the forest or meadow. When he hit the first branch, however, he felt more like a rock tossed from the edge of a precipice into a canyon.
Then he didn’t do any more thinking.
Branches tore at him, ripping at his hands and face and sending him tumbling end over end. His back hit something, knocking the wind out of him, but he was still falling. The next jarring blow glanced off his shoulder and head, bringing bright lights into his brain before quickly going out.
When Caleb opened his eyes, he was lying on his back on a soft, cold bed of pine needles.
It was dark beneath the trees, and he couldn’t move and could barely draw a breath.
He heard the sound of falling water somewhere nearby.
His head was pointed down a slope and he turned it to the side.
His hat lay brim up a few feet away. Lucky.
He bent his knees slightly and heard a moan come from somewhere nearby. When he moved an arm, he heard the groan again and realized the sound came from him. His left arm had no feeling in it, and his whole left side was numb.
Caleb decided that he’d done enough today and closed his eyes to rest a while.
When awareness returned, snow was filtering down through the pine boughs, coating his face.
He blinked and reached up with his hand to wipe away the flakes.
It took a moment to realize he’d used his left hand.
He didn’t know how long he’d been lying there, but if he didn’t do something, some wolf or cougar…
or bear…was going to have a frozen feast.
He forced a breath into his lungs. Better. He tried moving his limbs again. Shockingly, everything was working, more or less.
His fingers brushed the breast pocket of his coat.
For one ridiculous moment, he found himself checking to see if Sheila’s handkerchief was still there. It was. The thought made him smile despite the pain.
“Still got it, Miss Burnett,” he muttered.
Bracing himself against the pain, he rolled to his right and pulled his legs around until his head was pointed uphill.
He was short of breath, but he didn’t want to stop now. Using his right arm, he pushed himself into a sitting position. His head spun for a moment, and he felt a lump on the side of his head the size of his fist.
“Well, Marlowe,” he muttered. “At least, you’re alive.”
And surprisingly grateful to be so. There had been a time when he'd have accepted death with a shrug and a curse.
Not anymore.
These days, there were things he still wanted to do. Promises to keep. People to come home to.
Reaching for his hat was painful, as well, but he pulled it gingerly onto his head.
The lowest branches above him were twenty feet above the forest floor, a fact that filled him with sense of awe that he was alive.
Carefully, he reached for the trunk of the tree that had ushered him not so gently to the ground. Taking another deep breath, he used his right hand to pull himself to one knee and then to his feet. Then he just hung on until the world stopped going in circles.
When he was sure his legs would support his weight, he slowly started down the slope, moving from tree to tree and using each one for support.
When he reached a break in the pines, he realized the snow was falling heavily, and the treetops far above seemed to be shuddering in the wind.
A stream ran across one end of the opening, and he staggered toward it.
Following the running water, he moved back into the shelter of the tree limbs and continued his slow trek downward.
After what seemed like a year of half-walking, half-dragging himself, he felt the terrain begin to level out.
A few moments later, he emerged from the trees to find a large, partially frozen lake spread out in front of him.
The snow was falling hard, whipping into swirling clouds across the surface.
Caleb raked his eyes along the shoreline and stopped suddenly. Drawing breath, he whistled as loudly as he could manage.
The buckskin raised his handsome face from the water, his ears and eyes searching for the source of the sound. Caleb whistled again, and that was enough.
Pirate came at a gallop around the end of the lake, not stopping until he reached his master’s outstretched hand.