Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Caleb swung down from his saddle and let Pirate amble over to the lake to drink. He’d been going hard since leaving Red Annie with Sing Lee and his people.
“You’re a good fella,” he told his horse. “We got no more than eight, ten miles to Elkhorn. Once we’re done with our business there, you can graze to your heart’s content out at our place.”
He’d stopped at the edge of a wide grassy meadow that ended at the water’s edge.
Groves of aspen and pine bordered the rising grassland and lined the curving shore of the turquoise lake.
For as far as he could, only a few breaks of rock-studded meadow land broke up the woodland across the way.
Above the lake to the north, a line of high gray stone peaks, dotted with patches of evergreen, nearly pierced the heavens.
The sky itself was fading into the lighter blue of midday, and the only clouds were behind him, far to the south.
Caleb had been pushing Pirate and himself, and both of them were tired. His side was still sore but appeared to be mending, and the last time he looked—which was in the dim predawn light this morning—the swelling around the snakebite and his ankle was going down.
But it wouldn’t matter if the hole in his side opened up wide or if his damn leg fell off. He had things to do that couldn’t wait.
Caleb stretched his back and thought about what he had ahead of him in Elkhorn. Killing. Pure and simple.
It made no difference what Judge Patterson wanted. Putting Elijah Starr on trial was an impossibility. Caleb had already decided what no judge or jury would be called on to consider. His father needed to be stopped, and he wasn’t going to give him another chance to escape justice.
Starr’s crimes probably went back to before Caleb was even born.
The beatings and the eventual murder of his mother.
The cruelties he had inflicted on the children he’d been entrusted with when he was headmaster of the Indian training school.
The cold-blooded killing of Mrs. Caswell’s husband.
How many other crimes had he committed? How many others had been carried out on his orders?
His father could not continue committing such atrocities. His days were numbered. If all went well, Caleb thought grimly, Elijah Starr wouldn’t live to see another sun rise.
Behind him, the forest was cool and dark. The brush was heavy and the going was slow, but he’d be in Elkhorn soon.
As he stood by the edge of the water, an osprey that had been circling suddenly dove close to the shoreline, not a hundred yards to the west of where Caleb was standing.
With the white undersides of its wide brown wings flashing, it hit the water with tremendous speed, snatching a swimming fish in its deadly claws.
It lay on the surface for a moment, wings spread wide, as the fish struggled beneath it.
Finally, with a show of awesome power, the bird lifted up off the water and skimmed along carrying a writhing trout that probably matched it in weight.
When the osprey was nearly opposite Caleb, it was so close that he could see the golden yellow eye of the bird.
Then, the predator climbed in a curving motion until it was high enough to disappear over the tops of the pines.
That was the way to hunt, Caleb thought.
While Pirate sauntered off to graze on the meadow grass, Caleb knelt at the edge of the water and submerged his head into the lake. Scrubbing the miles from his face and hands and neck, he told himself he needed to be sharp when he reached Elkhorn.
The prickling feeling rose on his neck, but too late.
“Keep your hands where I can see them, Marlowe.”
Sharper than he was right now, Caleb thought.
Frank Stubbs.
How he ever let the likes of Stubbs get the drop on him was a bitter testament to how exhausted he must be.
“I could shoot you right there, and no one would ever know what came of yer sorry ass carcass.”
“But I guess you ain’t gonna, since a lowdown dog like you woulda already done it,” he replied.
“I wouldn’t be so all fired sure.” Silence followed, but he could hear his neighbor coming closer.
Caleb ran a tired hand down his wet face and pushed up to his feet. He’d been so focused on what he needed to be doing in Elkhorn that he’d forgotten to pay attention to where he was now. He looked around. Stubbs came to a stop ten yards away, pointing his Henry Repeating rifle at him.
“Now, that wouldn’t be too neighborly, would it? Shooting me in the back?”
“I ain’t looking at your back.”
Caleb measured up the man. Even with the muzzle of the rifle pointed at him, he knew he could sidestep, draw, and punch a hole in Stubbs before his neighbor could pull the trigger.
Stubbs had the look of a man who’d been filling up his time in the saddle nursing a bottle of brandy. He wasn’t a fella who was too concerned with the time of day to be doing his drinking either. Caleb had a sense that he was rarely sober from one end of the week to the other.
There was something else there too. A sourness. The look of a man who had been stewing over a grievance and feeding it until it became bigger than the original insult.
All in all, his appearance wasn’t all that different from the last time Caleb had seen him.
The same lean face and long brown mustache.
The same small, dark eyes and greasy hair that hung to his shoulders.
He was wearing the same dark brown coat and black vest, but he’d exchanged his bowler for a wide-brimmed black hat that threw his face in shadow.
Behind him, a hundred yards along the edge of the meadow, his chestnut gelding was tied to a tree.
“You look like hell, Stubbs.”
“And you look like a dead man walking.”
Caleb shrugged. “Fair enough.”
Stubbs spat. “You think you're mighty clever, don't you?”
“Depends on the day.”
“Sending those boys all over the place. Having folks come and go from your ranch like they own it.”
So he'd been watching. Watching Gabe and Paddy. Watching who came out to the ranch.
Watching Sheila.
He didn't care for that thought one bit.
Caleb's eyes narrowed slightly. But he wasn’t willing to pick up a fight with his neighbor now. He had much bigger fish to fry.
“I’m thinking we got off on the wrong foot,” Caleb said, interrupting the man before he got too wound up feeling sorry for himself. “But I talked to them boys. They know they’ve got to respect your property. They’ll never be fishing anywhere near your claim. And I’ll make sure of it.”
The rifle was still pointed in the general direction of Caleb’s chest while the man fussed over whether to shoot him or not.
“Now, I got to be going, Stubbs,” he said. Another thought occurred to him. “What are you doing out here? Looking for a new place to set up a claim?”
A guarded look clouded the grizzled face. “Don’t know why you’d say that.”
“You know, about three hours west of here, there’s a stream that comes out of that mountain there.” He pointed it out. “I got no interest in prospecting, but I’d swear there was color in the gravel bed.”
Stubbs’s eyes lit up. “You don’t say?”
“Might be worth a look.”
The cautious look returned, but he couldn’t help but glance back toward the place Caleb indicated.
“So, we done here?”
“I s’pose so.” Stubbs lowered his weapon and then hesitated. “Listen, Marlowe, if you’re selling your land, why not sell it to me? Or lease them mineral rights. I could work that ridge for silver and split it with you.”
Caleb could think of few things less attractive than being in business with this hound. “I ain’t selling.”
“You ain’t selling to them railroad people?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw them in Elkhorn last month, putting up posters, saying they pay cash for land in the way of their tracks. After they left, Judge Patterson had all of them taken down.”
Eric Goulden’s people.
“The ranch ain’t all mine to sell. I got a partner. But even if it was all mine, I wouldn’t be selling it to them.”
“Then why was a bunch of them heading toward your ranch today?”
“When?”
“This morning.”
A cold feeling formed in Caleb’s gut. “Do you recall how many?”
“Dunno. Maybe seven or eight. There was a big fella with one eye leading the way. Difficult to miss with the patch and the scars on the side of his face. It was the same fella that come through Elkhorn last month.”