Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Lucas Fields was staring into the fire. “I don’t think you need to worry much about Dodger.”
Caleb studied him. The road agent’s face was pale, and he’d obviously taken a pretty good beating, but he was trying to tough it out.
He’d done what he was told and been polite to Doc and Sheila.
He certainly was not the killer that Caleb had expected to find when he left Elkhorn.
Lucas was more like the way the preacher described this gang of outlaws.
And he kept frowning anxiously at the shack where his mother was being operated on.
Caleb stretched and flexed his sore arm again. This had been a full day, starting with that tussle with the cougar.
Once Doc went to work on Mrs. Fields, with Sheila at his side helping him, Caleb had gone out to bring Pirate in.
He’d climbed the hill to that ledge overlooking the camp and the trail.
When he looked down on the camp, the moon was setting, and he decided it was too far for a clear shot with the breeze that had picked up.
Piling some rocks on the dead outlaw up there, he retraced his steps to Pirate.
After riding the buckskin back to camp, Caleb fed him, watered him, and left him in the corral.
Dead men were scattered hither and yon, so he took out one of the other horses.
Throwing a rope around each of the bodies, he dragged them off to where the sheriff lay next to a gravel pile.
He lined them up and covered them with stone and dust, thinking that was more than Horner would have done for him and Doc and Sheila.
After gathering up all the weapons and stacking them together, Caleb put their horses in the corral and came back to the fire.
He sat with his back to the shack, a Winchester ’73 that had formerly belonged to one of the deputies across his lap. He’d seen no sign of Dodger, but if the gunslinger came riding into the camp, unaware that there had been a fight, he’d be ready for him.
“What makes you think Dodger won’t come back?” he asked Lucas.
“I think he’ll smell trouble and hightail it. I’ve seen the way he handles himself, and he ain’t one to face trouble on his own or head-on. He thinks he’s smart, but he needs someone else telling him what to do. Don’t get me wrong, though. If he’s got a grudge, he’ll gladly shoot you in the back.”
Caleb thought of the man he’d found by the stream with his throat cut. Wendell. He was attacked from behind. And how appropriate that Dodger should work for Horner. Another backstabber.
“If he thinks there’s trouble waiting for him here, where do you think he’ll go?” He was still a killer, and Caleb wouldn’t mind bringing him in to face justice.
“North, probably. He already got what he was owed after this last robbery. He’ll look for another outfit to join up with.”
Doc already told him Mrs. Fields would need some time to recuperate before she could move again. If she survived the operation.
Caleb glanced across the open space at the place where the trail came into the camp. If the killer didn’t stumble in here unawares tonight or tomorrow, he’d feel a little easier about believing Lucas was right.
“You know all this, but you kept him on in your gang. Why?”
“Not kept him on. He was new to our outfit. We’d lost a gun, and we thought it best to bring on somebody for the one last stage we wanted to hit.”
Lucas moved slightly, holding his arm gingerly. Blood had soaked through the bandana wrapped around it.
“Ma had a bad feeling about him as soon as she met him, but we didn’t listen to her. She did the planning things. Me and Wendell ran the men. He was gonna keep an eye on Dodger.”
“From what I heard, your outfit never was big on gunning down drivers and stagecoach guards. Dodger is a killer.”
“I know that now. By the time we figured out we shouldn’t have hired him on, the bodies were dropping.”
Caleb hesitated. He had something he needed to find out. “The miner they took to get Doc from town. What happened to him?”
The young man stared into the fire. “Friend of yours?”
“It makes no difference. Did you kill him?”
“Not me. Not Wendell neither. Dodger shot him when they were bringing Doc up to the camp. It was all his doing. Doc can tell you.”
Caleb thought about the miner’s wife. He owed Imala an answer. He knew she was plenty capable of living alone. Still, he worried about the trouble she could butt up against coming to Elkhorn on her own to sell her things.
“What happened to his body?”
“They left him where he fell,” Lucas said. “Wendell said out on the Denver road somewhere. I’m really sorry about that. I’m sorry about them two dead Wells Fargo men too. That ain’t our way.”
There was no excuse in the young man’s voice. Only grief, shame, and a weariness Caleb understood better than he wanted to.
Caleb was still trying to figure out what kind of people these were. Before he could ask another question, Lucas put in one of his own.
“Who was this sheriff? He was wearing a badge, but he was definitely working for himself.”
“Grat Horner.”
“Was he the sheriff in Elkhorn, or are you?” He nodded toward the tin star on Caleb’s shirt.
“He was sheriff. But you’re right about him working for himself. I don’t think he planned on going back there.”
Lucas started to say something but stopped. Caleb wondered what it was. Instead, the outlaw rubbed dried blood from the corner of his swollen mouth and touched his broken nose.
“From what I heard them say tonight,” Lucas continued, “he and Dodger went way back. There’s no way Horner could have found his way out here if that rat didn’t lead him to us.”
Caleb didn’t want to sit out here all night and talk about Dodger and Horner, but there was one question that burned on his tongue.
“Where’s your father?”
“Dead and buried out in Montana. Alongside my brother.”
When Preacher told Caleb about them, he mentioned no names. He also said nothing about this being a family outfit. He only talked about the father.
“I’m listening.”
Lucas peered toward the door of the shack. “Why do you want to know?”
“I was hired to come up here and bust up your gang. I’m supposed to bring you all in. But I don’t think the authorities in Elkhorn know a woman is running this outfit.”
Or if they knew, they weren’t telling. He thought of Preacher again and how insistent he was that Caleb knew these were not bad people.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked again. “Why do you care?”
“Curious, I guess. I want to know whose necks I’m sticking in a hangman’s noose.”
Lucas shrugged. “If I tell you what you wanna know, how about you take me back and leave her to go her way?”
The young man was willing to die to save his mother. Lucas didn’t have many chips to bargain with, but Caleb’s respect for him grew, anyway.
“Well, let’s just see.”
“Do you know anything about us?”
“Only what I heard from a tough old fella who calls himself Preacher.”
Lucas brightened at first, obviously remembering the man, but suspicion immediately darkened his face. “He didn’t show you the way out here, did he?”
“I asked him, but he wouldn’t say.”
“I didn’t think so.” A smile tugged on his mouth. “But I don’t know why I’m complaining. If it weren’t for you gunning us out of this, that sheriff would have killed me and my mother, and Doc too. There wouldn’t have been no trial and no hanging.”
“I’m still waiting.”
“I’ll tell you everything,” Lucas replied. “But don’t forget, you promised only to take me in.”
He scoffed. “I ain’t made no promises.”
“I know. But a man can hope.”
Caleb took notice of the sadness in the way he said the words. Lucas was begging for his mother’s life. The young outlaw looked again at the light spilling out of the shack before turning to Caleb.
“The preacher told you something of my pa?”
“Said he was a brave fella who ran into trouble with some Wells Fargo men out in the gold fields.”
“And did he tell you that he took his wife and children with him out to Montana?”
“He said nothing about family.”
“Well, it was four of us children out there. And it wasn’t just prospecting, though he did that too. He bought himself some land for a ranch and sent for Ma and us to go out there right after he was settled.”
The muscles in the young man’s jaw tightened as he tried to keep a hold on his emotions.
“When those Wells Fargo agents came out to the ranch, it was the middle of the night, and they came with a gang of gunmen carrying torches. My pa and my brother were shot down before a word was spoken. I was only twelve then. But what we never talk about outside of family is that my two younger sisters died that night too.”
Caleb felt sick, not wanting to imagine what might have happened. Whatever it was, the husband and three children belonging to the woman in that shack had been murdered.
“After killing my father and brother, them animals went after the rest of us. They couldn’t find us. My ma and me were out in the fields beyond the barn. My sisters must’ve gone to hide in the root cellar. When the bastards set fire to the house, me and my ma couldn’t get my sisters out.”
Lucas covered his eyes with his hand, and Caleb looked away. He knew what it was like to lose everyone you care for overnight. But he locked down his own childhood memories, burying them deep in the back of his mind.
There were some losses no man could speak over. Caleb let the silence stand.
The sighing of the evergreens in the soft night wind and the crackle of the fire were the only sounds, and he doubted they offered much comfort. No words could soothe a grief like that.
They sat in silence for a few moments. Finally, the high-pitched yelp of a coyote close by in the hills came to them, and then the distant answering note of a trailing mate. It roused Caleb, and he stood up.
“I got things to do,” he said.
“Tell me what I can do to help,” Lucas replied.
“You can wait inside with Doc.”
The two of them went to the door of the shack. Doc turned his head to them. He was working on the woman’s shoulder, and Sheila was holding the lamp for him.