Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
The man’s eyes widened for only an instant. The look was unmistakable, though, confirming what Caleb knew. And it passed as quickly as it came.
“He’d never part with it,” Caleb hissed into the assailant’s face. “You stole it.”
“I don’t give a shit what you think.”
Caleb held the weapon up. “Starr. This knife. Bat Davis. They came from the same corner of Indiana.”
“How would you know that?”
“Bat and I were friends.”
Suspicion clouded the features of the blackguard. “Good for you.”
He wasn’t giving any information freely.
“We grew up in the same town. We…we both knew Elijah Starr.”
“Didn’t stop you from killing Bat.”
“I didn’t kill him. I was as surprised as him when we faced off. I was ready to let him walk. He was gunned from the street by the sheriff.”
Caleb heard some commotion and more shouting coming from the front of the house. People from Main Street were answering Doc’s calls for help.
They’d only have a few minutes before they’d be swarmed by townspeople. Whatever answer he got had to come before everyone else reached them.
“If you’re such good old friends, why ain’t you working for us?”
Caleb motioned with his head toward the house. “Cuz falling short costs a man.”
The killer scoffed. “No sinners in heaven; no forgiveness in hell.”
The words were sharper than his blade and cut Caleb deeper.
No sinners in heaven; no forgiveness in hell!
Those words. They’d haunted him every day of his life. As a child, he’d heard them often, usually as the rod striped his flesh.
No sinners in heaven. And the blows fell.
The cane. The punch. The kick. No forgiveness in hell!
The hard, unbending hickory on his shoulders and back.
The huge fist to his face. The boot driven into his stomach, robbing him of breath, leaving Caleb a bloody and gasping lump as his mother cried, unable to stop the beating, often taking the abuse herself to save him, her only child.
Elijah Starr was fond of the words, used them, believed them.
In the eyes of Caleb’s father, sin was branded on people’s souls. Everyone except himself. He was one of the elite, one of the chosen few. He was the self-ordained hand of some twisted god, sent to punish human frailty, to lay the lash and the cane across on the backs of the weak and the fallen.
The pain of the past drove its pointed end straight into Caleb’s brain.
He let go of the man’s coat and staggered to his feet. He’d stood over his father’s dead body.
Caleb pressed a hand to his side, where blood continued to pulse from the wound.
The man tried to roll and get himself up, but he fell back, clutching his shoulder.
The downpour had eased, and a steady rain now fell, spattering in pools between clumps of grass. To the south and the east, bolts of lightning continued to flash, and distant thunder rumbled along the huddled ridges and blackened escarpments.
Could it be that he’d left that bloody kitchen too soon? Had Elijah Starr actually survived?
A chill, cold as the grave, washed down his back, and Caleb wiped rain from his eyes.
Doc’s voice drew his attention toward the front of the house. He was shouting directions. “…and tell the sheriff his deputy is dead. We need him here right now.”
Caleb ran his thumb across the insignia on the handle. Thirteen years ago, after finding his mother dead at the house, he beat his father to death with his bare hands. And then he ran away with nothing but the bloody shirt on his back.
He had no money. He had no destination. Caleb carried nothing but his swollen fists to remind him of where he’d been or what he’d done. And a soul scarred with memories that would never fade.
He glared at the man lying at his feet. The blackguard was breathing hard and squirming from the pain. Caleb thought of what Bat said only a moment before dying: I’d think you would wanna know who sent me.
How could this cutthroat know his father?
His face did not belong to one of the Shawnee or Kickapoo children taken from their people and transported to the training institute.
There were others who worked on the Indiana farm where Elijah Starr had set up his school, as well.
Laborers like Bat Davis’s father and uncle.
Many came and went. He didn’t remember all of the faces, and he didn’t recall this one.
Once again, the image of his father, lifeless on the kitchen floor, flooded his brain. How could this outlaw come to possess his knife?
Sudden, sharp, white-hot pain raked through Caleb’s side. He bore down on it as a brilliant flash stretched jagged fingers across the sky to the north. A deafening crack accompanied it immediately.
“Help me get out of here.” The wounded man’s voice was strained.
Caleb leaned over him again. “You ain’t in no shape to ride.”
“I can make it.”
“Too risky.”
“I can pay. Some now. More later.”
Caleb could see no horse nearby, but the man no doubt had a mount waiting somewhere beyond the line of the trees. “You ain’t got time. But maybe your people can get you out later. Where can I send word?”
He thought for a moment that the weasel was going to tell him. But the man’s eyes fixed on his face and he scoffed. “My mama raised no fool. And even if you was telling the truth, he’d kill me if I spilled anything.”
“You mean Elijah Starr.”
The rogue said nothing but winced as he turned his pinched face toward the sound of voices coming from the direction of the house.
Caleb saw a muddled line of dark shapes approaching. Light from swinging lamps they carried gleamed off ruddy faces and gun barrels.
In all the years he’d been on the road, Caleb had never gone back to Indiana.
Never sought out information. He’d wanted to sever all ties to that past. If his true identity were revealed, if the connection were made between him and the dead schoolmaster, a noose would fit snugly around his neck. But what if his father was still alive?
“Caleb.”
Sheila’s voice came from behind him.
His heart gave a hard thump.
He turned to her and squinted through the rain. She’d come from the back of the house, and he didn’t know how long she’d been standing here, what she’d heard and seen.
Her clothes were soaked. Her hair, dark and wet, lay plastered to her head. The water ran down her face and dripped from her chin. She still carried the knife she’d been holding in the kitchen.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I was worried. I came after you.”
A hard thought ran through his head.
She should have stayed in the house. What if he hadn’t bested this scoundrel? She could have been hurt or killed at the house, or here. Still, she’d come after him alone. Prepared to fight.
Just like she’d walked miles through the mountains to try and save her father.
Just like she'd ridden out to the ranch that morning without hesitation.
Just like she'd stood her ground against Frank Stubbs.
“What would you have done if I was already dead?”
“I’d go after him,” she whispered fiercely. “I’d make him suffer.”
She had no fear. Like his own mother, her instinct was to protect, regardless of any danger to herself. The comparison struck him with surprising force.
Another emotion was suddenly running through him, and it was raw. What if his mother’s death had never been avenged?
Keeping an eye on the dog at his feet, Caleb opened his arms to her. Suddenly, she was wrapped around him, and it felt right to hold her. More right than anything had in a very long time.
His arms tightened around her. Her hair smelled like lavender in summer.
She was shivering badly. For one reckless moment, he wanted the storm, the killer, and the gathering crowd to disappear.
He wanted to hold her and never let go. He wanted to kiss her.
He wanted to believe there could be evenings spent beside a fire, a home filled with laughter, and Sheila Burnett at the center of it all.
But dreams like that belonged to better men than him.
She touched the side of his shirt. “This is warm. It’s blood.”
She pulled away, staring at his side. He again pressed his hand against the wound.
“Just a scratch.”
“He stabbed you?”
“It ain’t nothing some catgut and a knot or two can’t fix.”
“Let me see,” she said, trying to pull his hand away. The fear in her voice affected him more than the knife wound.
He slipped the knife into his boot and motioned to the man lying at their feet. “We gotta see to him first. We need him alive.”
Caleb wasn’t done with him. There was plenty more the sonovabitch needed to say.
“What do I care about him?” She kicked angrily at the cutthroat’s feet. “He can die in the mud. Let the lightning and the devil take him.”
Despite everything, Caleb almost smiled.
Why he’d ever thought she wasn’t tough enough to make it in these parts was beyond him. She had a backbone of steel and a fire in her belly.
“That’s a lot of blood. I have to get you back to the house.”
She didn’t need to take him anywhere. Doc and his party of miners and townspeople arrived, forming a circle around them.
“Marlowe’s bleeding,” she immediately announced.
The doctor didn’t ask permission, but held up a lamp and peered and poked at Caleb’s side. “The wound looks bad. We have to get you inside.”
“I’m alive.”
“Damn right,” Doc said. “And we’re making sure that you stay that way. Can you walk?”
“To Denver, if I have to.”
Beside him, Sheila made a sound that suggested she was not impressed by his bravery.
More folks appeared, coming from every direction. Neighbors and customers fresh from drinking in the Belle Saloon running, slogging through the mud. They must have heard the call for the sheriff.
“I need two men to haul a dead body out of my surgery,” Doc ordered the men around him. “Put him on the front porch with the deputy. You fellows, help me carry this one in.”
As the hired assassin moaned with pain, Doc motioned to Sheila.
“Make sure Marlowe comes in.”
The injured man was lifted and carried, none too gently, toward the house. As they moved off, he cursed and bellyached with every step.