Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Caleb held his hand firmly over her mouth. The last thing he wanted was to frighten Doc’s daughter, but he didn’t want to alert whoever was down in that camp.
He didn’t expect the warmest of greetings, but the knife flashing toward his face didn’t exactly say, Mighty glad you happened by, Marlowe.
Catching her wrist, he stopped the blade about an inch from his eye.
He pulled his hand from Sheila Burnett’s mouth, still holding her knife hand with the other, and she spun away. As she turned, her other hand was diving into the pocket of the duster for something else.
“Hold on there,” he ordered in a low voice.
A derringer appeared, and he managed to get his hand around it before the thing went off and she put a hole in his hide.
Her eyes were flashing fire in the moonlight, and she looked fiercer than that cougar he faced earlier today.
Thankfully, she recognized him immediately, and her mouth dropped open.
“Marlowe!” she exclaimed as he let go of her.
“Keep your…” His words were cut off as she threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his waist. Her face was pressed against his chest, and he could feel the butt of the knife and the little pistol against his back. He didn’t know if she was going to accidentally stab him or shoot him.
For one startled heartbeat, Caleb forgot the camp below them, the dead man behind the rocks, and every danger waiting in the darkness. She was alive. Trembling, furious, brave, and alive.
“Keep your voice down, Miss Burnett,” he said in a gruff whisper.
Before Caleb could say anything more, or even pat her on the back to comfort her, she jumped away from him with the speed of a bobcat.
He looked over the edge at the camp and the men around the fire. They were far enough away that her outcry hadn’t drawn their attention.
“You’re here,” she whispered. “I can’t believe my luck.”
“Never mind that.” He nodded to the derringer that was waving in his general direction. “Why don’t you let me hold that cannon of yours before you put a bullet in me and let them boys down there know we’re here.”
“There’s no need, Mr. Marlowe.” She slipped the pistol back into her pocket. Pulling a leather sheath from the other, she slid the knife in and pocketed that as well.
“All right. Then why don’t you tell me what the devil you’re doing out here?”
She was wearing her father’s duster, buttoned up all the way to the throat. At the bottom, a skirt protruded, as well as the boots that left the prints he’d been tracking. Her hair was hanging down her back in a thick braid, and a wide-brimmed hat was lying on the ground.
She shook her head. “I barely know where to start.”
“Hold on, miss.” He put a hand on her arm and had her crouch down next to him as he peered down at the camp.
It was plenty dark out, but he didn’t want that moon reflecting anything that would make them a target.
Reaching back, he picked up the hat and put it on her head.
“Try to keep your face in shadow. It’s mighty bright out here. ”
He’d seen a woman climbing the hill. Before he spotted her, he’d been smelling smoke, and he knew he was close to a camp. So he tied Pirate off the trail and followed her up here.
For some reason, he wasn’t all that surprised to find Sheila Burnett on this overlook. But Caleb was feeling something that sat too close to relief for comfort.
“Honestly, I never thought anyone would come after me. Come after us.” She was frowning. “I thought I’d die here, right here on this rock. After everything that’s happened, I’d never get to my father. That vile sheriff would kill him down there, and no one would ever know what happened to us.”
“Horner is here?” Caleb wondered what the hell he was doing here and what he was up to. The judge said he was keeping the sheriff in Elkhorn.
“He came today.” She looked over the edge. “He’s down there now. But he’s not a good lawman. He’s only wearing that badge to…to…I don’t know why he’s wearing it. But I can tell you, he’s no better than the ones who have my father. He doesn’t care that men kill each other in cold blood.”
This came as no shock to Caleb.
She was staring at one of the shacks. “I haven’t seen my father yet, but I’m praying he’s still alive.”
“Before we figure out what we need to do, Miss Burnett, why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me how you got here?”
“Sheila. Please call me Sheila. I’ve been through too much today to deal with formality.”
“Fine, Sheila. How’d you get here?”
“It started this morning. Actually, it was before dawn. I woke up to hear two people downstairs in my father’s house, going through his things.”
“Let me guess. You went down there and confronted them.”
She jabbed her elbow into a rib still sore from his wrestling match with that cougar.
“Give me more credit, Mr. Marlowe.”
He didn’t know why he should. She’d come out to his ranch in the middle of the night, trailing after a half dozen rustlers. But he decided this wasn’t the time to rile her. She was right. She’d been through the wringer today, and he wanted the story.
“Go on.”
“One of the men must have heard me. He came up and found me. Then the second one came up, and they tricked me into going downstairs with them. They said my father sent them, which I suppose was technically true. They were in Elkhorn to refill my father’s medicine bottles and bring his surgical case back with them.
When they had everything, they forced me to go along. ”
“Did you know them?”
She shook her head.
“Was the sheriff one of them?” he asked.
“No. One of them was a man named Wendell. The other was called Dodger.”
At the miner’s cabin, Imala had mentioned Dodger’s name. These had to be the same two who forced Smith to go and get Doc.
“Was Dodger young and big?” he asked. “A nasty sorta fella?”
“Nasty? He’s a heartless killer and a pig. I was terrified what he’d do to me without Wendell there.”
“I take it that was Wendell laid out by a creek a ways back?”
“You found him.”
Her eyes welled up, glistening. Caleb saw a surprising mix of sadness and pity flit across her face. It set him back some. Then her lips thinned, and her face hardened a little.
“Dodger killed him,” she said in a voice like ice. “He stood behind Wendell and cut his throat. When Sheriff Horner arrived only a minute or so later, I saw that Dodger was working with him. He was leading the sheriff out here.”
She faced the camp, and Caleb saw the derringer appear in her hand. “Oh, how I would enjoy seeing him get a taste of his own poison.”
He didn’t think he’d mention it while she was holding that gun, but Miss Sheila Burnett of the New York Spencers had changed quite a bit since giving him hell about dead rustlers.
And damned if he didn’t admire the change. Danger had forced it. But her courage made it happen.
“How come the sheriff and them other fellas didn’t get you at the creek?”
“I was out of sight, attending to private business. That was when Dodger murdered him. I just hid until they all rode off.”
“That was a brave thing, hiding that way. And smart.”
She shivered. “Wolves and bears are far less frightening than Dodger and the rest.”
“Why follow them, then?”
“Wendell had said it was about ten miles to this camp. It was much farther to Elkhorn. I found they hadn’t taken his gun and knife, so I decided to try to find my way here. I thought perhaps my father could use my help. But once I got here, I wasn’t sure what to do next. And then you arrived.”
Caleb thought about what it meant, Horner being out here.
There was always a chance that the sheriff was doing what he was paid to do—stopping these Wells Fargo robberies.
And it was possible that he somehow got this Dodger fella to turn on his own gang and lead him out here.
Horner would be within his rights to overlook the killing of outlaws like Wendell and the man on the hill here.
But Caleb knew Horner, and nothing smelled right about any of this.
And from the way the judge spoke, he didn’t trust the sheriff either.
Even so, he’d need to be sure what Horner was up to. And Caleb was glad Doc’s daughter had showed enough sense not to walk right into that camp.
He stole a glance at her profile. Sheila was wearing the look of a soldier ready to go into battle. She had more of her father in her than he he’d thought a few days ago.
She pointed to the only shack they looked to be using. Light was spilling out the open door, and smoke was coming from a stovepipe. “I think that’s where my father is being kept…and maybe the passenger who was injured in the stagecoach robbery.”
“How many were with Horner?”
“Three armed men and Dodger.”
He looked down into the camp. He hadn’t seen anyone go in or out of that shack since he got here. Caleb counted three men around the fire. They looked like Horner’s deputies. And if his eyes weren’t deceiving him, there was a lifeless body stretched out over by a water trough.
“I tripped over a dead man on the other side of these boulders. This is his hat.” She tapped the brim.
“Saw him. He ain’t gonna be needing it.”
Preacher mentioned five gang members plus the leader of the outfit. There were at least that many horses in the corral.
He looked around at the surrounding hills, wondering whether they might have posted another guard to watch for trouble. If there was, he was sure to be as dead as this one.
“Anyone left the camp since you got here?”
“One person rode out just before you scared the daylights out of me. I couldn’t see who it was, but he went that way.”
If Caleb had come a few minutes later, he would have run head-on into the fella.
He was willing to wager that the Wells Fargo gang was all dead, with the exception of the one Sheila saw leaving.
And the chances were that man was Dodger, because if Horner was up to something—and Caleb’s instincts said he was—then the sheriff was not about to let any of the other gang members go free.
He thought for a moment and then decided.
“This is the plan,” he told her. “Whoever’s in that shack—and I’m guessing it’s Horner and the gang leader, at least—I want to get them out in the open. If I don’t, as soon as the bullets start flying, they could use your father as a hostage.”
She nodded. “So how are we going to do it?”
“There ain’t no we. You’ll stay here and hide. And whatever happens, don’t let nobody see you. If it all goes bad, my horse, Pirate, is down at the bottom of the hill that you come up. As soon as it’s light enough, you ride—”
“No, Marlowe,” she said with an edge sharp enough to cut stone. “That’s my father down there. I intend to help. Now, you can give me a job to do, or I’ll have to think of how I can make myself useful.”
One stubborn woman, Caleb thought. Well, there wasn’t time for arguing with her.
As he looked into her determined face, it struck him that maybe she had a right to be.
The woman had been through hell in one day.
Kidnapping. Witnessing a murder. Tramping ten miles at least through unfamiliar wilderness.
Smart enough to find this place and smart enough not to get caught by killers.
Surviving all of that took more than just luck.
It took grit. It took heart. And, though Caleb knew better than to say it aloud, it made her beautiful in a way no fine dress or fancy New York parlor party ever could.
“All right. I have a job for you. But you have to follow it every step of the way.”
“Absolutely. I’m excellent at following directions.”
Caleb doubted it, but he was willing to give it a try.