Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
The boy wasn’t alone. The shadow of another spilled across the packed dirt floor from the open doors leading to the corral.
Caleb instantly judged that the wheezing breaths coming from behind him were about three paces back and from someone less than five feet tall.
It was the sound of a child’s breathing, and nervous, at that.
From the shadow, Caleb could tell there was something in his hand—an iron rod, a baling hook, a horse shoe.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t a gun. He never took his eyes off the young fella with the old long-barreled revolver, but he knew he was dealing with two children.
The boy in front of him was on the edge of tears, and the gun shook a little in his hand.
He was clearly angry and hurting in a way that only came with grieving.
His brown felt hat, far too big and hanging over his ears, had to be twenty years old if it was a day.
It was missing a big chunk out of the brim on the left side and had a bullet hole in the crown near the top.
The worn wool coat must have been of a definable color when it was new, but that would have been back when this fella’s grandpappy was a boy.
Now, it was the color of scorched prairie with a smattering of mud and straw clinging to the shredded sleeves.
From what Caleb could see of the cotton shirt, it was little more than a rag, and beneath the boy’s tattered woolen trousers, bare toes stuck out of broken shoes.
The sight tightened something deep inside him. He knew this kind of hungry, ragged loneliness too well.
Caleb considered his two choices. First, he could take that old Dragoon away from the kid right now and kick him and his half-pint friend in the doorway halfway across Main Street.
That wouldn’t be difficult. A simple distraction, two steps, and this confrontation—if you wanted to call it that—was over.
Or, second, he could find out what they wanted and deal with it.
Maybe the would-be gunslick would learn something.
And maybe the boy wouldn’t walk away from this carrying one more hard thing. After all, guns like the one he was holding did go off.
“What’s your name, fella?”
“Why you wanna know? You’re gonna be dead.”
“The Code of the Gunslinger requires that—as a courtesy—a man knows who shot him.”
The young face darkened as he ran that through his mind. “What Code of the Gunslinger?”
Caleb saw the puzzled eyes flicker toward the twin Colts at his hips.
He raised his eyebrows in a look of surprise. “I thought all gunhawks knew the Code.”
“Of course I know it.” The gun dipped a little. “My name is Paddy.”
“Good to meet you, Paddy. I’m Caleb Marlowe.”
“I know who you are.”
“Paddy, tell your friend behind me,” he said casually, “that according to the Code, only a coward shoots a man in the back.”
“I ain’t no coward,” the wheezy back-up cried. “And I got no gun. But I’m Dusty.”
Caleb was right. Dusty couldn’t be more than eight years old.
“How old are you, Paddy?” he asked sharply.
“Twelve.” From the look on his face, it was clear he was angry he’d answered so quickly. “It don’t matter none if I’m twenty. You’re still about to die.”
Dusty moved slightly around to the side, and Caleb turned his head a little until he caught sight of the baling hook he was holding.
“Dusty, if that hook is getting heavy,” he said, “you don’t need to be holding it up like that. I ain’t going to make a run for it.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw the tool being lowered.
“And even though you ain’t no coward, you’d best get out of the line of fire of your friend here. Cuz, being this close, that bullet will tear clear through me and more ’n likely hit you. If he don’t miss me, that is.”
“I ain’t gonna miss.”
“You won’t miss because that old cannon you’re carrying will more likely misfire.”
“It won’t misfire.”
“Pretty sure of yourself.” Caleb nodded toward the Dragoon. “But those cartridges are notorious for not firing once they get wet. You been out in the rain at all?”
A shadow of doubt flickered across Paddy’s dirty face.
“But let’s get things straight between you and me before the shooting starts.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“What makes you think I killed your brother?”
“I seen him laid out by the undertaker’s. They was making boxes for him and his…well, for them other fellas.” Paddy ran a quick sleeve across his face and then pointed at a mount in a stall. “And that there’s our horse. Right there. The dun.”
Caleb thought again about the best way to proceed.
He was not about to throw down on this young fella.
He’d already had four separate opportunities to draw and shoot, but he’d decided right off that he wasn’t going to hurt him.
The best thing would be to get Paddy to decide for himself that shooting wouldn’t be the best way to go.
“Why do you think it was me that killed him?”
“I heard the deputy tell the undertaker that Marlowe done ’em all, and they had you in the pokey. That’s you. Don’t deny it.”
“I ain’t going to deny it, Paddy, but I got a few things to say about that.” Caleb glanced over at Dusty. “Are you another brother?”
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head slowly. “A friend.”
“Good to know. You two been friends a long time?”
“Since last night.”
Caleb looked back at Paddy. “You and your brother just passing through Elkhorn?”
“Going to Montana. My brother says there’s gold fields there where folks can still strike it rich. We’re gonna do just that. And then we’re gonna get ourselves a ranch and raise cattle. We’re gonna have it made…”
His words tapered off, and a tear ran a streak through the dirt on his cheek.
The boy was talking about his brother as if he were still alive.
Caleb knew how that went. He’d been there.
It took a long time to sort out losing someone.
You kept hearing their voice, but when you looked around, it was someone else.
You thought you saw them down the road, so you hurried.
But when you got there, it was some stranger who turned and stared.
It was a bad feeling.
“We had a plan. Him and me. But we ran out of money. When them other fellas talked to him, they made it sound easy. Cattle just sitting there and waiting to get took. But you stopped ’em. And now he’s gone.”
Caleb heard the pain of the loss in every word. He was sixteen when he ran away from his home. And he’d had nothing. No brother. No plan. There had been so many nights when he was out on the prairie, miles from any other person. And when he was around others, he was too afraid of getting caught.
Sometimes, even now, when he looked up at the flickering stars glowing in a blue-black sky, that lost and empty feeling came trailing back. Like a nightmare that wouldn’t quit. He never forgot being so bone-tired and lonesome and ripped up inside.
Maybe that was why he couldn’t bring himself to cut down the young fella standing here now. Only a scared boy trying hard not to fall apart.
Twelve years old was a mite young to be facing the world on your own. The place was big and cold and as unconcerned as the stars in the night sky. And a frontier town was an especially hard and dangerous place.
“I ain’t gonna ask you the name of your brother.”
“Why not?”
Caleb knew from the way the muzzle of that old Colt Dragoon kept dipping lower and lower that the iron was getting heavy.
If he kept Paddy talking, pretty soon that gun was going to be pointed right at the ground between them.
He wasn’t worried. He knew men, and he knew there was no way this boy was going to shoot him.
If he were going to do it, he’d have opened fire before they exchanged even one word.
But he still wanted Paddy to talk himself down.
“Cuz he and his friends could not be bothered to introduce themselves before trying to put a hole in me.” Caleb tapped his chest in the general proximity of his heart.
“But you killed Billy, and I gotta vengeance him.”
Billy. Caleb heard no names spoken, but he doubted the boy’s brother was the one who’d entrusted him with the letter to his mother. The one he was still carrying. The dying rustler had made no mention of Paddy being in town.
“Getting revenge ain’t something a man jumps into. You got to think it through.”
“I don’t see that there’s no thinking that needs doing.”
“Was he a good brother?”
“He was my kin. My only kin.”
The boy’s eyes were wide and misting, his hand shaking. It was tough enough being alone in the world, but having bad kin didn’t make things any easier.
He wasn’t going sit in judgment on that brother, though. True, he’d shot Billy dead in the act of rustling his cattle. But when he himself was not much older than Paddy, he’d done bad things. Still, Caleb never had any kid brother relying on him.
His instincts already told him that this young fella had better sense than his brother.
“How come he didn’t bring you along with him to my spread when he and his fellas went out there?”
“He wanted me to go.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Cuz…cuz I had things to do.”
“What things?”
He glanced at the boy with the baling hook. The tool was hanging loose as his side. He was more interested in hearing the conversation.
“Just…things.”
Caleb turned his attention back to Paddy. “You knew they were up to no good, didn’t you?”
There was a slight shrug.
“I’d be willing to bet you told him not to go, but he went anyway.”
Another shrug.
“Tell me this, Paddy. If I corner you in an alleyway and start shooting, what do you do?”
“I shoot back.”
“But what if I have a brother? A wife? A couple of kids? Will that give you pause?”
“You started it.”
“Your brother and his friends started that trouble on my ranch. They shot first.”
Paddy’s face was pale under the dirt, and his thin shoulders shook.
“You got no call for vengeance. I didn’t go looking to kill your brother or any of them other fellas. They made a bad choice. You made the right choice not going with them. So what’s your choice now?”
“I don’t know!” he cried.