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.”
