Caleb levered a cartridge into the chamber, ready to lend a hand.
The man closest to him must have been reading Caleb’s mind.Leaving the other two, he moved stealthily to his left, looking for a clear shot.When he found the place, he grinned and nodded back at the other two.
It was a good decision, but his timing was wrong.Dead wrong.When he raised his head to take his shot, Caleb fired first.
The man dropped instantly behind the rocks.
That was all it took.The other two were off and running like a pair of jack rabbits with a hungry coyote on their tail.As they scampered up that trail toward their horses, he might have taken out one or both of them, but he had a pretty good idea he wouldn’t be seeing either of them too soon.
And truth be told, he was just as glad to let them run.
The survivor down below stood and let out a whoop they probably heard back in Elkhorn.
As Caleb climbed down the slope, the man met him with a grateful look on his face.Recognition and surprise registered as well in the next instant.
“Ain’t you Marlowe?”he asked as Caleb drew closer.“Fella, I ain’t never been so happy to see a gunslinger as I am now, seeing you.Thought I was a dead man.”
Caleb had remembered him the moment he stood up looking for a truce and nearly got cut down for taking the trouble.He recalled Doc Burnett introducing them at the bar in the Belle Saloon.Doc told him later that the man worked a silver claim near Elkhorn.He was yet another soldier who’d shed his blood and watched brothers die during the war between the North and South.Like so many others, he’d come west looking to leave the past behind.
Caleb wondered what brought him so far from town now.
“Do you recall?I’m Zeke…”
The miner stopped short, remembering something obviously important.Turning on his heel, he hurried back to where he’d taken cover.
As Caleb followed him, he heard a man groan in pain.
Caleb’s stomach tightened.Too much suffering already shadowed this trail.
ChapterSeventeen
“Everett ownsthe claim next to mine,” Zeke said to Caleb as he crouched beside his friend and helped him sit up.
Zeke was the two-legged version of a wild boar, if ever Caleb saw one.Short and solid, he was as wide as he was tall.Whiskers and eyebrows nearly obscured every bit of his round, scowling face.He wore a gray wool coat over a gray wool jacket and gray wool waistcoat.Only his scuffed, dirty boots and wide-brimmed hat altered the scheme.They were black.Or, at least, they were at one time.
“How bad you hit, old man?”Zeke asked.
His friend Everett was sitting between two boulders, trying to pull himself together.Caleb had noticed he was taller than the others when they stood and tried to make peace with their ambushers.Even sitting, he appeared to be all arms and legs, and his recently shaved face was long and thin.He didn’t seem to be very old, maybe thirty, but he was nearly bald on top of his head, and stringy, brown side hair hung almost to his shoulders.
The bullet had struck him near the shoulder, sending him spinning away.The right arm hung inert at his side.But the man was feeling around on his head, just behind the ear.He groaned slightly each time he touched a tender spot.
“I’ll live, I s’pose.”
Caleb looked around him, assessing the damage.Though it could have turned out worse for these two men, the bushwhackers had exacted a heavy toll for coming along that trail.
The would-be truce maker, who’d thought a white flag might make a difference, was lying on his back, his head pointed down the hill.He was hatless now and had blond hair that was almost white.His blue eyes were open, staring sightlessly into the last golden rays of the sun.The other man—shot dead before Caleb arrived—lay sprawled out by the trail.
The lifeless sorrel blocked the trail, and there was no sign of any other horses.
Caleb tallied it up.Two dead down here.Another three up on the slope.One more, counting the fella over by the bluff.One horse.And one rattler.
One bloody evening.
And tomorrow promised no gentler mercy.
He helped Zeke sit his friend up against a rock.
Everett, the wounded miner, was watching Caleb’s face intently.“We’re much obliged to you, Mr.Marlowe.”
