Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Judge Patterson paced the area behind the desk in his office and listened to Zeke relate the story about the ambush, Caleb Marlowe’s intervention on their behalf, and the attack on the itinerant preacher.
His man Fredericks came in again just as the miner was telling about the killing of the cougar, which, as the story was being told, grew to the size of a buffalo.
The miner’s tale of Marlowe killing the cat with only a knife had held the big man as transfixed as a twelve-year-old at his first girlie show.
Two things ran through the judge’s mind. Maybe he did pick the right man to go after the Wells Fargo gang. And second, it was no surprise that Jacob Bell’s legendary knife had killed a mountain lion. He should have kept the damned thing.
And there was a third thought he did not care to examine too closely. Men like Caleb Marlowe were useful right up until the moment they stopped taking orders.
The judge motioned for Zeke to stop and addressed his man.
“Did you locate the sheriff?”
Fredericks, called Frissy by everyone except the judge, had proven his worth time and time again over the past few years.
Huge in proportion to most other men, he was a former head cracker at a brothel in Denver.
After killing a patron, Fredericks had come before the judge.
Seeing that the man had a half a brain to go with his muscle, he’d taken him into his personal employ as a bodyguard, an enforcer, and whatever other job needed to be done.
He was violent and quick-tempered, but he wasn’t a fool. And he followed orders to the letter.
“He ain’t at the jail, Judge.”
Zeke chuckled. “Today being the Sabbath, maybe Horner’s up at the church.”
Frissy’s shook his huge head. “He ain’t in town.”
Patterson had sent him off for the sheriff after Zeke arrived with two bodies, his wounded partner Everett, and the mauled minister. He wanted Horner to handle the arrangements with the undertaker. “He has to be in town. What about his deputies? What do they say?”
“There’s only one of them in town, and I cornered him drinking in the Belle. He says Horner rode out before dawn this morning with three other fellows.”
“Rode out?” Patterson barked. “Where to?”
“He didn’t kn—”
“That worthless sonovabitch didn’t ask my permission to go anywhere. He knows my instructions. He’s not to leave town without letting me know.”
Frissy stood with his hands hanging at his sides, his head tilted, as attentive as a hunting dog waiting for his master’s command.
“What else did the deputy say?”
“Nothing. He didn’t know nothing more than that.”
Patterson was beginning to feel the heat rising under his starched collar. “Did you ask anyone else?”
“I stopped in at the hardware store to see if Lewis had seen him. With his store being close to Rogers’s livery, I figured he might have seen something when the sheriff and his men fetched their horses.”
“And…?”
“Lewis ain’t seen nothing. But his wife had plenty to say.”
The judge motioned impatiently for Fredericks to continue.
“Mrs. Lewis says she stopped at Doc Burnett’s house this morning. You know, to check on the daughter.”
“This had better be relevant,” Patterson warned.
“She’s gone missing too. The daughter, that is.”
At that, something cold tightened in the judge’s gut. A missing doctor was troublesome. A missing young woman with connections to Doc Burnett—and now to Caleb Marlowe—was something else entirely.
“Now, coming from the East Coast,” Zeke put in, “she definitely could be up at the church.”
The judge ignored him, and Frissy again shook his head. “She…Mrs. Lewis, I mean, says she looked in at Doc’s house again at noon. The girl still wasn’t there. And when she checked Doc’s things, it looks like someone went through his cabinets and took some stuff. Medicine and such.”
“Why would Doc’s daughter go off with his medicine?”
“Maybe she didn’t go off on her own,” Zeke suggested.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Doc’s off somewheres. If he’s tending to someone, maybe run out of his medicine. So he sends someone after getting his things, and that someone finds the daughter there.”
Frissy bobbed his head. “The only thing making sense to me is that the sheriff’s gone after Doc Burnett’s daughter.”
“How would he know the daughter’s gone missing? Did Mrs. Lewis tell him?”
“No, Judge. She says I’m the first one she told.”
“Did the girl scream bloody murder as they dragged her by the sheriff’s office?”
“I don’t think so.”
Zeke butted in. “But like I said, maybe she didn’t get dragged off, at all.”
Patterson felt his temper beginning to slip. He waved Zeke off and continued to question Frissy. “Did you speak to Rogers at the livery? Did she take Doc’s horse?”
“Malachi ain’t around either. Nor his boy, Gabriel. Just some little whelp who said Malachi was out looking for something around town. He wouldn’t say what, though. I reckoned it was better not to wait, so I came back here instead.”
“You go back to the livery and get some answers,” the judge barked. “I want to know what Malachi and his son know. If she took a horse, and when. If anyone was with her. If the sheriff asked about her. Everything. Do you hear me?”
Frissy moved with surprising speed considering his size. The door closed behind him a moment later.
Patterson wasn’t happy with all these complications. Nothing was getting accomplished. In fact, the situation was getting worse.
These damned road agents who were robbing the stagecoaches were creating havoc.
The governor was getting it with both barrels from Wells Fargo, and the arrogant bastard wasn’t being shy about turning the guns on Patterson.
And with all he had in the works for this coming summer and the dignitaries who’d be arriving in Elkhorn, he couldn’t allow this lawlessness to continue.
The fact that nobody was showing any success in catching these outlaws was as aggravating as it was surprising.
Road agents rarely had a brain to speak of.
With the right people on their trail, they always got caught.
This outfit that had been robbing only the Wells Fargo stages was different.
And that was troubling. But now he had Marlowe to take care of them.
If anyone could track a ghost through those mountains, it was Caleb Marlowe. Patterson disliked relying on another man’s talents so completely, but necessity made uncomfortable partners of them all.
His mind turned to the sheriff. What in the blazes was he doing? From the moment he handed Horner the tin star, he didn’t trust the man. But they needed someone wearing the badge in Elkhorn. And it was not too comforting that he was the only candidate to present himself.
“Did you see anyone else on your way back to Elkhorn?” he asked Zeke. “Like Sheriff Horner, for instance?”
“No sign of him, Judge. Or anybody else, neither. But you know there’s more than one way to get out to Devil’s Claw from here…if that’s where he was heading.”
“I know. I know.”
It occurred to him that maybe this preacher Zeke spoke of might be of some help. These men went everywhere, saw everything.
“What about this reverend that you found roaming the mountainside?” he asked. “Does he know anything of value?”
“Preacher’s full of stories. Couldn’t shut him up riding back to Elkhorn. But nothing that’d be any help.”
And then there was Caleb Marlowe. The letter he’d promised to send to the governor was sitting in the drawer of his desk.
He’d stopped his secretary from sending the thing off until the gunslinger did his part.
Patterson wasn’t about to use any political capital getting Henry Jordan out of jail until he saw results.
“About Marlowe,” he said. He already pretty much had the answer to the question he was asking, but he trusted Zeke’s judgment. “What do you think? Does he have it in him to take down this gang of road agents on his own?”
Zeke leaned back in the chair, his thick brows lifting beneath the brim of his battered hat.
“Don’t think I want to be cut out of any of the cash you been paying me, Judge. But whatever you think of Caleb Marlowe and what that man can do…” He snorted and reached down for the rolled-up skin on the floor by his chair. “Let me show you the cat he took down all by his self.”
There was no boasting in Zeke’s voice now. Only rough admiration. The kind hard men reserved for another man who had walked into danger when anyone else would’ve backed away.