Chapter 5
Chapter Five
“What happened up there?”
Zeke Vernon met Caleb at the bottom of the stairs.
Built like a battery mortar with whiskers, the former miner was short, solid, as wide as he was tall.
He was also as explosive as the old artillery gun.
He wore gray wool—jacket, waistcoat, and pants.
Since becoming sheriff, he’d acquired a new pair of black boots that shone even in the murky light of the saloon.
They went with his new stovepipe hat. He was holding his Winchester in one hand.
“He’s dead.”
“When I saw you come to the window, I figured as much.”
“You didn’t have to shoot. I could have handled it.”
“I know that,” Zeke blurted. He leaned his rifle against the wall and wiped his hands on his coat and pants. “Ain’t no doubt in my mind that you could handle everything. There’s no better gun in Elkhorn.”
The saloon customers had mostly returned to their tables. The room was quiet as a Quaker meeting, but with more glasses of brandy scattered around. A few men leaned against the serving counter. They’d retrieved their gun belts, and the proprietor had stowed his shotgun.
And every eye and ear in the place was on Caleb and the sheriff.
The deputy thumped down the stairs and stopped at the bottom, drawing a glare from Zeke.
“Don’t you be lollygagging here,” the sheriff snapped, scowling fiercely beneath the thick bush of beard, moustache, and eyebrows that obscured most of his flushed face. “Go tell the undertaker to come fetch this one too.”
The deputy slouched out, muttering under his breath.
“Let’s go,” Caleb said, steering Zeke toward the door.
“Don’t let nobody go up there till they come for him,” the sheriff barked at the barman.
As they went out, a number of patrons clapped them on the back and congratulated them.
Zeke nodded, but Caleb ignored the attention.
He was still feeling the cold chill down his back that came on the moment he laid eyes on the gunman.
Bat Davis was dead, but the unsettled feeling continued to linger.
When they reached the street, it was obvious Zeke was still a bit rattled. “There weren’t no way to tell if you was in that room or not. All I saw was him yapping and waving his pistol around.”
Caleb nodded, reminding himself that being sheriff wasn’t an easy job.
Zeke gestured toward the retreating back of the deputy. “Right after I done it, this mangy dog come dancing up, telling me the judge don’t want the man dead.”
“A little late.”
“And how was I to know?” The former miner was rolling. “I come in after the shooting in the street was over, and there was no saying that the gunman didn’t have a hostage up in that room.”
Caleb scanned the street. Wagons and men on horseback moved past them.
The thoroughfare had returned to its usual bustle of activity.
The three shooters had already been carried away.
Spilled blood still marked the places where they’d fallen, but people were ignoring it and going about their business.
It was as if there’d been no shooting only minutes ago. As if no men had died.
“Your deputy said one of them survived.”
“So far. But he ain’t in good shape.”
Caleb wanted to see Bat Davis’s partner in the ambush. “Did they take him over to the jail?”
“The judge told them to carry him straight to Doc Burnett’s house.”
Like Caleb, Bat hadn’t any brothers that might have come out West with him. But it was still possible that he was traveling with someone else from their town. From the man’s dying words, Caleb couldn’t help but think that he wasn’t done running from the past.
He needed to get a good look at the wounded bushwhacker’s face. He had to make sure it wasn’t someone he knew. Someone who could pull the rug out from under him here.
“Frissy says they was after the judge,” Zeke said. “And I’m not surprised. Patterson puts men away and loops a rope around the neck of others.”
It was easy to see someone like the judge having enemies.
“He wants to see us back at his office.”
“You go and talk to the judge. I’m going over to Doc’s.”
“You do that, and I’ll just be coming after you. You know he thinks of me as a glorified message runner. ‘Tell Marlowe this or tell Marlowe that. Get Marlowe. Send for Marlowe. Where is Marlowe?’” Zeke tapped the star on his chest. “It ain’t no secret that he wants you wearing this tin star.”
“This town got the right man.”
“I don’t know. I’m thinking that taking this job was a mistake. I never should have let you talk me into it.”
“You are the right man.”
They started down the street. Judge Patterson’s office was on the way to Doc’s house.
“That was the first fella I’ve killed since the war.” Zeke took a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face. “Was he ready to throw his gun down? Did I shoot too fast?”
“No.”
“Say anything worth hearing before he died, at least?”
That depended on who was listening. “Nothing. None of it made much sense.”
“Tell you his name?”
“No.” That was the truth. There was no need.
“Why didn’t you shoot him as soon as you went up there?”
“Patterson was barking at me as soon as they came after him. As your deputy told you, he wanted him alive.”
“Well, I wasn’t there for it when the trouble started,” Zeke growled defensively. “He can chew me out all he wants, I didn’t know nothing about it.”
“You said that.”
“Dang, Caleb.” He touched the star on his chest again. “I don’t reckon I’m cut out for this.”
“You’re doing fine.”
“It’s only been ten days. It feels like ten years.”
It had taken some persuading on Caleb’s part to convince Judge Patterson to trust the miner with the job.
Caleb’s intentions had been reasonable. A month ago, Grat Horner was the sheriff of Elkhorn, but that miserable snake was a thief who happily gunned down men from behind.
After Caleb and Horner finally had it out up in the mountains beyond Devil’s Claw, he thought the people of this town deserved to have an honest lawman for a change.
But seeing how troubled the older man beside him was, Caleb wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have gotten involved.
When they reached the building with the judge’s name over the door, Zeke pulled off his new hat, mopped his forehead with his handkerchief, and jammed the stovepipe back on.
The lobby was wide enough to house at least three railroad cars, side by side.
Even before the door closed out the noise and dust of Main Street, two clerks were staring at them from high desks behind a railing on the right.
Caleb had seen the pair of them plenty of times before, and they always looked like they’d just bitten into an unripe apple, only to find a worm.
They must have heard about the shooting, because they were more goggle-eyed than usual.
On the left side of the lobby, behind a closed door, was Patterson’s courtroom. When he first saw it, Caleb had been appropriately impressed by the high judge’s bench and the imposing pictures of three presidents—one alive, one fairly recently deceased, and one long dead.
He and Zeke went up the wide stairs at the far end of the lobby.
At the landing at the top, Frissy Fredericks stood in front of the judge’s office, looking like a barrel-shaped Paul Bunyan with beady black eyes. Since the shooting on the street, he had yet to brush the shards of glass off his coat sleeve.
When he saw Caleb, the judge’s bodyguard spat in the general direction of a spittoon on the floor near him.
“Don’t need you doing my job, Marlowe,” he said in his unexpectedly squeaky voice.
“Don’t want your job, Frissy.”
Fredericks was holding a short-barreled shotgun like it was a six-shooter. Because of the attack, Caleb figured. The front of his coat was pushed back, displaying a brace of short-barreled Colts in cross-draw holsters that were ready in case the coach gun didn’t do enough damage.
“I coulda took out all of them rats without no help.”
“I reckon you could have handled the three in the street,” Caleb replied coolly. “But climbing that one flight of stairs across the way would have killed you for sure.”
While Fredericks tried to decide if he was being insulted, Caleb and the sheriff started to move past him. He held out a massive arm, blocking the way.
“Judge wants to see us, Frissy,” Zeke said. “You know that.”
The bodyguard turned and knocked once. A muffled voice answered. He opened the door and stepped aside.
The judge’s personal secretary, a balding, pasty-faced man, was standing by an open inner door. He too was looking wide-eyed at Caleb. He shot a quick glance at the pistols on his hips and the rifle in Zeke’s hand. Without a word, he ushered them in.
The judge’s office was a regal affair. Entirely paneled with dark wood, it was at least as large as the barn Caleb had laid out to build at the ranch.
A long heavy table and chairs of carved oak sat at one end of the room beneath a brass and crystal chandelier that was rumored to have been stolen from some Southern governor’s mansion at the end of the war.
Heavy drapes, the color of blood, were held open with golden ropes.
He doubted that the office occupied by the late Commodore Vanderbilt could compare. But that was surely Patterson’s intention.
The judge didn’t acknowledge them as they entered. Zeke shot Caleb a look as the nervous secretary escaped, closing the door quietly but firmly behind them.
Every time Caleb had been here before, Patterson had used the arrangement of the office in the same way that he used his courtroom.
Sitting like a king in a throne-like chair behind the huge desk, he handed down tasks the way he handed down decisions during a trial.
This was the absolute seat of power in this part of the Rockies, and he wielded his authority like a restrained but wrathful god.
The scene unfolding before Caleb was far different from usual.
A bronze Napoleon holding down a cowering British lion watched solemnly as the older man moved across the far end of the room at a furious pace before turning sharply at the window and storming back.
The gun belt with a Remington in the holster was something Caleb had never seen before.
The ambush had apparently brought out the fight in him.
When Zeke pulled off his hat and cleared his throat, Patterson sent a sharp glance in their direction. He waved them in but didn’t tell them to sit. That suited Caleb fine. He had no interest in prolonging this meeting.
“Gentlemen, is that gunman still alive?”
“Don’t know, Judge,” Zeke replied. “Last we heard—”
“He’d better be.”
Patterson’s bark was sharp enough that Caleb expected to see lightning start flashing from his eyes.
“We was about to go to Doc’s house to check on him,” the sheriff continued.
The judge stalked in silence to the unlit fireplace, kicked at a log, and came back to them.
“You did well, Marlowe. I’d be a dead man right now if it weren’t for you. Those sons of bitches meant business.”
When the attack came, Caleb hadn’t thought about anything except stopping them. A man acted or he died. There was no hesitating.
“I didn’t see that first gunman coming,” the judge continued. “When you drove me into the wall, I thought you’d lost your mind. That bullet would have done me, for sure. But you cut him down like the dog he was.”
Once a fight was over, it was over. There was no need to drag through it again. The only thing still bothering him was Bat Davis.
Patterson stopped and slipped a hand into his waistcoat. “One of them is alive. That’s enough for my purposes.”
There was no telling if the wounded man was still alive, but Caleb decided to let that hang a bit.
The day was bleeding away, but the judge seemed to be cranking up. He stood before Caleb, a head shorter, but rocked back on his heels and looked him straight in the eye.
“How much more evidence do you need, Marlowe? I’m telling you, this is just a sample of what is to come.
Today wasn’t the first time assassins have attacked me, and it won’t be the last. Think of what the next two months will bring.
” The judge ticked them off with his fingers.
“The population swelling daily. A crowd of luminaries will be here to view the eclipse. The governor’s people coming to measure the progress we’ve made. Investors who want to see stability.”
Patterson spread his hands out as if he were addressing a crowd of thousands.
“This is the Elkhorn we want to show them? Drunken miners firing off guns at will in the streets? Gunmen sent to town to kill a judge, a leader in the community?”
Caleb felt the weight of Zeke’s gaze. All it would take was one word from Patterson. The miner-turned-sheriff was ready to drop his badge and run for the Belle Saloon.
“Is this the town we want them to see? A lawless place filled with brigands and guns for hire? How can we convince them…convince anyone…that Elkhorn has a future?”
Caleb had heard all of this before.
“You may not think the growth and prosperity of this town holds any importance for you. You’ve told me enough times that you wish to raise your cattle. But I don’t need to remind you that your partner, Henry Jordan, remains in jail.”
Now he was getting him pissed off. Henry’s release was still pending.
“I’ve done my part, Marlowe. I’ve communicated with the governor. But imagine how much stronger our case would be for freeing Jordan if his business partner was also the sheriff of Elkhorn. Think how much a situation like that would ease the governor’s mind.”
Caleb fought down the anger rising inside him. Not an hour ago, he saved the man’s life, and now the damn judge was tightening the screws on him.
“I’m willing to rely on you keeping your word,” he said coolly.
“But as you know—”
“And I’ve told you,” Caleb continued, interrupting the older man, “that I’m willing to help Zeke out. That should be good enough.”
Patterson shook his head in disappointment and walked away.
“I’ve stated my position strongly here. I admit my feelings are running high after today’s assassination attempt. But that doesn’t change the passion I harbor in my heart for Elkhorn. And it doesn’t change the fact that I need your help. I need both of you.”
Hallelujah! It was about time he acknowledged Zeke.
“I know who wants to undermine all that we’re doing here. I know, without a shadow of doubt, who is behind that cowardly, failed attack on my person. It was Eric Goulden!”