Chapter 3
Chapter Three
“Caleb Starr! This damn world gets smaller all the time.”
Caleb peered into the room and his stomach clenched.
Bat Davis. The name leapt from the past.
The faces of some folks never changed. Bat Davis had the same whitish cast in one eye and the same ears that stuck out like sails on a river scow. It had been thirteen years since he’d looked at that face, and it was one he had no desire to see now.
“Caleb, I never thought I’d see you again.”
He was standing up, his six-shooter pointed not at Caleb but only in the general direction of the door. He had a grin pasted across his stupid face, and he looked like he was genuinely happy to find Caleb here.
“Damn me,” he said. “But I heard you run clear to Mexico to get free of the law. What you doing here?”
Caleb was a few years older than him, but this ghost from the past knew the truth that he’d worked hard to keep buried since he ran off. Bat knew everything about the first decade and half of his life. He knew about the crime that drove him to the anonymity of the open road and the frontier.
For thirteen years, Caleb had been telling folks that he was born under a rock and raised by wolves, but that was no good now. Cold sweat beaded up along his spine.
Since the last time he saw Bat, a lot of hard miles had separated him from Indiana.
For three years, Caleb drifted along a road filled with more trouble than he’d ever expected.
It was a time of dark deeds, dark companions, and a savage fight to survive every day.
It was a journey that nearly killed him.
Nearly.
Then, one winter day over a decade ago, Jacob Bell— mountain man, trapper, wilderness guide, legend—found a half-frozen nineteen-year-old on the snowy bank of the Keya Paha River up in the Dakota Territory. Beaten, robbed, and left for dead, Caleb had reached the end of the line.
But he didn’t die on that riverbank. The old man picked him up, thawed him out, and tucked him under his wing.
Old Jake showed him how to make a man of himself.
In the six years that followed, the two of them crossed the frontier from the Missouri to the Wind River, and from the Big Horn Mountains to the Calabasas.
And when he finally told the old scout the truth about his past—of what he’d done—it had been Jake’s suggestion that Caleb Starr become Caleb Marlowe.
“Don’t matter what I’m doing here,” he now said coolly. “Why don’t you put that gun down nice and easy. Then we’ll talk.”
“So, you’re on the side of the law now? After what you done?” Bat scoffed, still waving his pistol in Caleb’s direction. “Don’t recall hearing nothing about you paying your dues, as the man likes to say.”
What did Bat Davis know about the dues he’d paid?
Caleb had spent years serving what folks back East thought of as civilization.
Alongside Old Jake, he’d made a name for himself exploring and opening the frontier to homesteaders pushing ever westward.
He’d blazed trails to the Montana gold fields.
Even the army sought him out, conscripting him for his skills as a scout.
When he was through with that, he’d somehow found himself wearing a badge up north.
Caleb had paid plenty of dues, and all for a crime he felt not one twinge of guilt about committing. Hell, he’d do it again.
And for all these years, not once had he come close to being found out…until today.
“Lay your iron down now.”
“Shit, man,” Bat wheedled, acting like he hadn’t heard.
“I can’t see you settling here, pretending you’re part of this.
Don’t try to tell me you done opened up a shop along this street.
I won’t believe it. Even when you was a kid, you never fit into no follow the rules, go quietly along thing. I know that. I looked up to you.”
He was not about to admit it to this knothead, but there was a lot of truth in what Bat was saying.
For his whole life, Caleb had felt…apart from things. On the fringes of ‘decent’ folks. Looking on, crouched in the shadows beyond the light and warmth of the fire. Never getting more than a whiff of the shared meal simmering in the pot.
He was a loner by choice. After leaving Indiana, he’d chosen his path. Towns and cities were not for him. He was drawn to the open spaces of the frontier. It was out in the wilderness, beyond the corrupt laws of corrupt men, that Caleb could follow his own code of right and wrong.
And now, here he was, holding a gun on a man from his past, a fella who could put a noose around his neck.
“I can’t let you do no more shooting, Bat. Too many innocent folk on the street could get hurt.”
“I got to admit, I came here intending for somebody to get hurt.” He glanced out the window beside him. “But it wasn’t nobody innocent. And it wasn’t you neither.”
Bat stretched his shoulders and moved his gun to his free hand.
He tugged down on the black wool vest he wore over a checked brown and white shirt.
He’d shed a light-colored duster that lay in the corner with a dusty blue derby.
His brown hair was slicked down, and he looked like he spent more time drinking at card tables than he did in the saddle.
His attitude was as breezy as if they were standing around jawing about the price of beans in China, but Caleb wasn’t about to be gulled. Bat still had the same eye and the same jug head, but he was far different from the young fella he remembered.
The boy he’d known had grown up to be a killer. The Remington in his hand could spit fire at any moment. And Caleb had no intention of getting hurt.
He kept an eye on the weapon. He didn’t particularly want to kill this ghost from his childhood, but Bat Davis presented a serious problem.
This was a new kind of life for Caleb. When his friend Henry Jordan had first suggested buying land for a ranch, Elkhorn was still young enough that a man could build something lasting.
Putting down roots, raising cattle, building a home of his own—it had sounded right from the beginning.
It was the kind of stable life he’d never known.
And now, whenever he thought about that future, Sheila was part of that thinking. Whether she knew it or not.
Now, he stood to lose it.
Caleb shifted uneasily in the doorway, feeling the knot tightening around his throat and not liking it one damned bit.
“You know, when I took this job, Caleb, I had no idea I’d be running into an old friend.”
Friend? The way he remembered it, Bat had been more of a thorn in his side.
His boyish hero worship never really seemed to be real, considering how he was constantly telling on Caleb and getting him into trouble.
He was an annoying brat who never failed to snitch for any misdeed.
And then he’d stand by and watch with obvious enjoyment while Caleb took a beating from his father.
They were definitely not friends. But this was not a point he wanted to bring up right now.
“It’s mighty quiet out there in the street. Your Judge Patterson must put a lot of faith in you.”
Caleb shook his head. “He ain’t my Judge Patterson.”
“Well, that’s just fine, then.” Bat cocked his head. “Cuz if that’s the case, why don’t you let me walk right out that door so I can finish the job I was sent here to do.”
“That ain’t about to happen. Them fellas you’re riding with are all dead. You’re the last one.”
“So you’re a hired gun backing the law now?”
“Never mind what I do.”
The muzzle of the Remington floated a little closer toward Caleb, but Bat’s finger was relaxed on the trigger.
“You was always smart as a whip, Caleb, so you must know that crooked sumbitch of a judge deserves to die.” He took another quick look toward the window.
Every time he turned his head, it was another chance to finish him. Caleb felt his finger tightening on the trigger.
A bullet between the eyes would solve a lot of problems. Regardless of what the judge said about keeping this one alive, he’d still owe Caleb for saving his life.
Damn, he cursed inwardly. A man had the right to protect himself, but how far did that right go? He was no murderer.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” Caleb said. “The judge will wanna know who hired you to take him out. You tell me who sent you, and I’ll let you go right out the back way.”
“Who sent me?” The gunman laughed out loud. He waved his pistol toward the window. “Never mind what this damn judge wants to know. Brother, I’d think you would wanna know who sent me.”
“Why would I care who—?”
Before he could finish, a shot rang out. Bat’s body lurched sideways, and he hit the floor like a bag of rocks.
“Damn.”
Caleb holstered his pistol and moved quickly to the window. Zeke Vernon stood in the middle of Main Street, looking like a hairy gray boar in a stovepipe hat. His smoking Winchester was still pressed to his shoulder.
Caleb waved the man off and then crouched next to Bat, who was lying on his side.
The bullet had caught him high in the back. Blood darkened his shirt and spread across the floor beneath him.
He rolled the man onto his back, knowing there wasn’t much Doc Burnett or anyone else could do for him.
“Caleb,” Bat gasped. “Feels like a hot poker run through me.”
“Save your breath.”
“Ain’t it funny…” His face clenched with pain.
His left hand clutched at Caleb, taking hold of his vest. He was trying to say something, but his time was running out.
“Never believed him…”
“Never believed who?”
Bat’s jaw clenched once and then relaxed. He let out one last breath and lay still. The light faded from his eyes.
The sound of boots thundering up the stairs preceded the appearance of the deputy who’d steered the celebrating miner back into the saloon earlier.
“Dead?” he asked, breathing heavily.
Caleb nodded.
The deputy frowned and holstered his pistol.
“I would have wagered a week’s pay old Zeke couldn’t make that shot,” the man said, going to the window and looking down at the street.
Caleb rose to his feet, gazing down at the fella he’d known forever. Maybe not the way he should have died, but men often choose the way they die by the way they live.
“The judge is waiting to talk to you. One of them gunslicks down there is alive. They already sent for Doc.”
As Caleb started for the door, he thought about Bat’s last words: Never believed him…
Believed who? What was he talking about?
Stepping out, he wondered if the wounded man in the street might also be someone from his past, as well.