Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
“If it was me that done it, Caleb, I’d fess up and take credit for gunning the skunk.
But I didn’t. Me and your dog were close to home, doing what we was supposed to be doing.
I happened to find Stubbs and his flap-jawed brother up by that creek a few days before—and sent them running—but I wasn’t nowhere near there when he was shot. ”
“I believe you.”
Trouble and Henry were on first-name basis. But it was always a fistfight, a bar brawl, a jag over women or bad cards. Caleb knew his partner would never shoot even someone as low as Frank Stubbs in the back. Nonetheless, trouble had come calling again.
Zeke wasn’t at the jail when Caleb arrived, even though the sun had been up for hours.
He figured the sheriff went out the back when he saw him coming down Main Street.
When Caleb asked when Zeke would be back, the deputy had stood with his back to the office wall, shaking his head and gripping his holstered revolver like he was afraid Caleb would take it away from him.
Last night, Doc Burnett wouldn’t let Caleb leave the house until he was washed and patched up.
And Sheila wouldn’t take no for an answer about warming some food for him.
By that time, there was no question that the jail would be locked up tight for the night.
There’d be no seeing Henry until morning.
So Caleb accepted Doc’s offer to sleep for a couple of hours and go down there fresh in the morning.
When Caleb opened his eyes, the sun was shining in.
He could barely move at first from all the bruises but felt better once he managed to get his feet on the floor.
Standing was an adventure. Every muscle felt like it was held together with piano wire.
On a chair next to the door, he found his boots, all clean and dry.
And a new pair of pants and a shirt, both his size.
Someone had gone down to Wilson’s General Store to get them first thing. He had a good idea who.
When he went downstairs, Doc was in his surgery with a patient, and Sheila was nowhere to be found.
She’d left him coffee and some warm biscuits and a note though, saying she had appointments.
So Caleb went down to the jail, sore as hell but feeling reasonably alive.
By the time he reached the place, however, he was ready to bite the head off a rattler.
The deputy would only allow Caleb in to see Henry if he left his guns and talked to the prisoner through the bars.
Henry was not feeling too good about the situation.
Seated on the bench against the wall, he held his head in his hands.
Caleb had not said anything about his conversation with Doc.
No mention of what the lawyer thought. Henry already knew that Patterson prided himself on his reputation as a hanging judge.
A law-and-order man was the way the judge liked to put it.
The way Henry looked right now, he didn’t need to be reminded. Not wanting to add to his friend’s misery, Caleb said nothing about their ranch going up in smoke last night. It was bad enough sharing the news that the longhorns were long gone by the time he and the two cattlemen got to Pueblo.
Henry kicked at the dirt and raised his head, the fire back in his eyes. “You hear who’s accusing me? That fake preacher. Frank’s own brother. And you tell me, who’s gonna own Stubbs’s land now? That same no-account piker, that’s who. Don’t that sound suspicious to you?”
Caleb nodded, giving Henry room now that he’d built up a head of steam.
“You gotta help me out, partner. Doc’s been here, but nobody else is doing nothing.”
“You know I will.”
“I know it’s been snowing terrible since that shooting, but would you go and see if you can find anything up there by the creek? Zeke wasn’t looking for nothing but to haul that skunk’s carcass back to town.”
Henry was right. Zeke probably didn’t look around at all. He had a corpse, a witness who said Henry did it, and a boss who was ready to hang somebody.
“I’ll go up there first chance. Maybe there’s something.”
“You been a sheriff,” Henry urged him. “I don’t need to tell you what to do.”
“I’ll ride over there today.”
“Also, I don’t hold no faith in lawyers, but I’m thinking maybe I need one. So if you can find me a good one. Just in case.”
He could hear the anxiety in his friend’s voice. Henry was in a tough spot, and he knew it.
“I’ll see what I can do. Keep your chin up. We’ll get you out of this.”
Leaving his partner, Caleb went back into the front room of the jail. As soon as he did, the deputy jumped out of his chair like a burned hoppy toad, his hand again on the Remington holstered at his hip.
“I’m starting to think you got a bad twitch, the way you keep lighting up like that.”
The deputy cocked his head like a confused street dog. He didn’t know what Caleb was talking about, but he wasn’t about to pursue it. “You done with him back there?”
“Yup. I blasted him out. If you go in there, you’ll see there’s a hole in the wall. I’m gonna get his horse now and meet him outside.”
“You did?” He blinked. “You are?”
Caleb sighed. “Where’s Zeke?”
“He ain’t here.”
“I can see that. Where is he?”
“He ain’t here.”
He wondered if it was worth waiting for Zeke.
Caleb looked slowly around the room, trying to rein in his frustration with this dolt.
A dozen WANTED posters that somebody tacked up and that nobody probably looked at since.
The sheriff’s desk. A rack on the wall with four rifles.
Some dusty Colt Dragoons hanging from hooks.
A couple of spittoons that were too small even for Zeke to hide in.
“I can see he ain’t here. Where is he?”
The deputy looked completely lost. “Somewheres. But not here.”
This was going nowhere, and Caleb felt his patience about to slip.
“And you can’t wait around here, Marlowe. I don’t know when Zeke’s coming back.”
“I ain’t waiting. Let me have my guns and my knife.”
Never taking his eyes off Caleb, the deputy opened a drawer in the desk and slowly took the gun belt out. He hesitated giving them back.
“If you don’t hand them over to me right now, I’m gonna plant my fist in your ugly mug.”
The threat worked. His weapons landed on the desk in front of him.
The sound of shouting outside drew Caleb’s attention as he slid his knife into his boot and strapped on his gun belt. “What’s that?”
“Don’t know.”
That answer came as no surprise.
The deputy edged over to the window and shot a glance out. “It’s the preacher, Amos Stubbs. Frank Stubbs’s brother.”
“Be sure you patch up that hole in the cell wall back there before Zeke gets here,” he told the deputy as he went out. “If he ever does get here.”
The preacher was standing on the back of a wagon across from the jail, and he’d managed to draw a small crowd of miners.
He was wearing a black suit that looked shiny and new.
His voice kept getting louder, building up momentum.
The way he waved the Bible gave the impression that he knew what was in it.
But stories from Scripture were not his subject today, as Caleb immediately found out.
“There’s a sinner in that jail, brothers.
A sinner of the lowest kind.” Stubbs pointed with the Bible at the jail house door.
“Behind those walls lurks a beast. A monster. A man who does not deserve the appellation of man. Behind those walls is a man who does not deserve the dignity that the law in this town apparently feels he deserves.”
Hearing the crowd start to rumble in response, Caleb crossed the street that was now packed with snow. Wheel tracks had cut deep grooves and mud was starting to show in places. If it didn’t stay cold, the street would be a mire in a matter of days.
“His victim was a man from your community, my brothers—not some outsider like that shiftless ne’er-do-well resting in the sublime comfort of the town’s security offices—but a man you all know.
A man respected by you all for his upstanding nature, his decency, and his contributions to this growing metropolis. ”
“Who we talking ’bout now?” someone in the crowd called out, drawing a laugh from a few others.
“I’m talking about Frank Stubbs!” the preacher thundered, shouting the man down. “Frank Stubbs, a man of property and standing. A man cut down in the prime of his life by an evil and cowardly dog who shot him in the back. In the back, brothers!”
The rumbling among the men started again.
“But there are some in this place who would have you believe that God’s enemies deserve a velvet glove instead of the rough hemp of the hangman’s noose.
” Stubbs’s brother stared straight at Caleb.
“Some who will no doubt try to use the leniency of the law to excuse the vile actions of the serpent lying coiled in that jail across the way.”
The preacher drew a breath and laid his free hand across his heart.
“It is not for me to suggest that justice will not be served by the actions of a slippery lawyer, an easily duped jury, or a forgiving judge. Nay, and I am not suggesting that we take the law into our hands, that we drag that villain from that place and give him the punishment he so justly deserves. I would never suggest such a thing, even though God’s law has been broken.
And not just broken. The tablet of Moses has been shattered, brothers. Shattered!”
“Ain’t you Frank’s brother?” the same miner called out.
The preacher, looking as offended as he could muster, pulled back as if he’d been bitten by a rattler.
“And what of it? Don’t I have the right to grieve my brother?
And doesn’t the Good Book say we’re all brothers?
” Stubbs raised his hands to the blue sky above.
“Yea, I say to you that I would stand witness here for you, brother. For all of you. For the lowliest of you, if you were murdered in such a callous, unfeeling manner.”
Caleb looked at the men around him and read skepticism in their faces. Perhaps later in the day, after a few more drinks, Stubbs would find a more receptive mob for his lynching talk, but not right now.
As the preacher continued to hammer away, Caleb’s eye was drawn to a movement in a window above the street. In the judge’s office, H.D. Patterson himself looked down at the crowd. His gaze was fixed on him.
Leaving Amos Stubbs to his task, Caleb turned and crossed to the front of the judge’s building.
Maybe it was time for them to talk.