Mountain man, trapper, wilderness guide, Jake was sixty years old when he found a half-frozen nineteen-year-old on the snowy banks of the Keya Paha River up in the Dakota Territory.Beaten, robbed, and left for dead, Caleb had reached the bitter end.Looking back, he had nothing much to be proud of in those early years.They were times better off forgotten.
But he didn’t die on that riverbank.The old man picked him up and tucked him under his wing.In their time traveling together, the two of them crossed the frontier from Missouri to the Wind River and from the Big Horn Mountains to the Calabasas.
Old Jake taught him how to survive blizzards, track wounded game, and read danger before it showed its face.But more than that, he taught Caleb that a man could choose what sort of life he wanted to build.
“Is it true that you rode with Jacob Bell when he opened the new route to the Montana gold fields?”
Caleb was fine sharing that piece of his history.“I was with him.”
“And you were with him up north during the Indian Wars?They say you saved more men’s lives with your scouting than you can count.Is that legend or true?”
It seemed to Caleb that the judge had done a little more scratching into the past than was called for.And he didn’t particularly like it.
Whatwastrue was that his time traveling with Old Jake had made a man of him.Jake taught Caleb to hunt and track and shoot as well as any man alive.By the time they were done, he could find a lamb in a Montana blizzard or follow a rattlesnake across solid rock.Together, they guided expeditions, worked in the gold fields, traded amicably with different native peoples, and got conscripted into scouting for the army.Jake had been married to a Shoshone woman when he was a young man, and through him, Caleb learned to understand the character, peculiarities, superstitions, and beliefs of many tribes.And he found out along the way that those stories in the papers back East only told one side of things.
And he’d learned something else too.Violence always left scars, no matter which side claimed victory afterward.
All that aside, Caleb didn’t feel too comfortable singing his own praises.“You know what you know, Judge.”
Andhewanted to know exactly what the man was after.Caleb was pretty good at reading fellas, and Patterson didn’t strike him as one to waste his own time.
“How is it you’ve come to have Old Jake’s knife?”
“A parting gift when he went back to his farm in Missouri.”The frontier life had gotten to be too much for his creaky, old bones.This knife had been lucky for him for over thirty years, he said, and he wanted Caleb to have it.
“I’ll pay you five hundred dollars for it.”
He took the sheathed knife out of the judge’s hand and slid it into his boot.
“It ain’t for sale.”
The judge shrugged.“Pretty much what I expected.You strike me as a man who knows the value of what he’s got.”
That gave Caleb pause, because lately he’d begun realizing the ranch might be the first thing in years he truly valued enough to fight for.
And right now, he had a ranch to get back to.“Are we done here?”
“Almost.”
Patterson sat back in his chair and folded his hands over his waistcoat.“I heard you wore a badge up by Greeley.”
He’d read the man right after all.The knife wasn’t what interested him.It was Caleb himself.
Whatever Elkhorn’s snake of a sheriff had told the judge about Caleb, it looked like it had backfired.
“I’m a mite surprised Horner shared that with you.”
“He didn’t.I have other sources of information.”
Of course he would.
From what Caleb had seen since he bought his land, the judge ran everything in Elkhorn.He and a few men who followed his lead.This was nothing new or different.He’d seen the same thing across the frontier.As soon as news spread of gold or silver being discovered, men like Patterson arrived.Ordinary fellas might pan or dig for it, but businessmen and politicians like the judge wanted to make sure they had a piece of every dollar.And to make that happen, they needed control.So they brought law and order where none had existed.Their own version of law and order.
“The town put the word out that we were looking for a sheriff.You didn’t apply.”
“Wasn’t interested then.Ain’t interested now.”
“You’ve been here four months, Mr.Marlowe.You’ve seen what’s happening in this town.”
