“Well, I need to be going.Thank you again for the food.”
“Be careful as you search.These men are killers.Their hearts are cold.Watch out for the one called Dodger, especially.”
He hadn’t talked about the stagecoach robbery with her, but she was correct about them being murderers.The driver and the guard that rode with him were dead—quite possibly the passenger was, as well.Caleb didn’t want to say it, but he had little hope of bringing Smith back alive.The miner would have been of little use to the outlaws once he fetched Doc for them.
“Do not worry, Marlowe,” she said, as if reading his thoughts.“I will survive if Smith is gone.”
He held her gaze.He wouldn’t share his doubts with Imala, but this was not a woman to be coddled or lied to.
“How’ll you make do?”
She drove the shovel deeper into the dirt.“Maybe I’ll carry things from my garden down into Elkhorn.Or catch fish to bring to the town.They could fetch a good price.”
“You’re right.Your fish and your produce would pay steadier than prospecting.”
But even as he said the words, his thoughts were already running to how Smith felt about her safety.A passel of decent folks lived in Elkhorn, Caleb supposed, but there was also plenty of lowlife scum.
“Before you start developing a market trade in town, will you wait to hear word of your husband?”
“Who will bring me word?”
“I’ll do it.”
Imala left her shovel and came out of the garden.“You worry.”
Damn right, he worried.Here on the frontier, it took a strong person to live alone.He needed no one, but he knew other men who had been beaten down and broken by the solitary life.It was a choice they made, mostly, and they were free to make it.But he’d worry about any woman out here alone.What if she got hurt or fell sick?What if some knothead decided he wanted an unworked claim with a comfortable cabin?She’d be out here on her own, fighting for her life.
Caleb thought about his mother.She had him to protect her, and he still hadn’t been able to keep her from harm.He felt the old familiar ache.Some guilt never went away.What happened if he’d stayed at the house that day?How would life have been different if he came back in from the barn sooner?
That was the wound he never spoke of.The one no bullet had made and no doctor could stitch closed.
“I am Arapaho, Marlowe.”
Imala’s words yanked away the iron fist squeezing his windpipe.
“My connections with the earth and the sky are strong.Smith thinks he protects me—I let him think it—but it is not that way.”She pointed at the garden.“I grow roots and vegetables and herbs that my people have gathered for all time.I take what the trees and bushes provide.I hunt for meat.I cook and feed him.Who takes care of who?”
Caleb nodded in respect.He knew every word she spoke was the truth.
There was power in her that had nothing to do with guns.A steadier sort, maybe.The kind that kept a home standing when the world tried to tear it down.
“I’ll be going, then.”
She walked to the cabin and picked up some things by the door.She handed him the larger bundle.It was buckskin tied with a leather thong.
“Food for your journey,” she said.
She held out a second bag, smaller and stitched together from buffalo hide.
“A medicine pouch.Do you know what it is?”
“I know what it is.”He didn’t need to open it.It contained items representing sacred animal spirits.It would bring him good luck, protection, and strength in battle.
“I will carry it with me.”
After securing her gifts in his saddlebags, Caleb led his horse down the trail toward the Denver road.She was still watching him as he made his way around a bend and out of sight of the cabin.
Before he reached the main road, he found signs of the visitors.It had been about a week since they had rain here.Now, in broad daylight, it was easy to see the tracks of the six who rode in and rode out together.He found the single track of Smith’s horse going out from the cabin.Eliminating all of those, he distinguished which hoofprints belonged to the road agents’ horses.The shoes were badly worn from being ridden over rocky terrain, and one had a particularly distinctive gash on the right side of the front shoe.
