One gunshot cracked through the air behind them. That was followed by more shots as the posse’s horses gained momentum.
“As much as I love our debates,” Doc hollered, “we don’t have the time.”
Nodding once, Caleb looked over at Doc and said, “Then we go with our first plan and pay our families a visit.”
It took Doc a moment, but another gunshot from his pursuers seemed to jog his memory. “You mean split up?”
“I doubt those men will want to let either one of us go. If they do all gang up on one of us, the other can circle around to draw some off.”
“Since you’re the one with the run of bad luck, that sounds fine to me,” Doc replied. “There’s just one more thing to settle.”
“What?”
“The bet. I wasn’t the one to stir up this commotion, so I won the bet.”
“Jesus,” Caleb grunted as he dug into his jacket pocket to retrieve his bag of gold. He tossed the pouch to Doc and shouted, “Take it! I don’t care if I see that damned gold again.”
Doc grabbed the pouch from the air and used that same hand to tip his hat. “Off to the families, then. I’ll send word to you once things settle down around here.”
“You’re coming back?”
“Not for long,” Doc said with a shrug. “I need to check on Alice and then I’ll just have to see how my luck holds up from there.” And before Caleb could say a word to talk him out of it, Doc snapped his reins and steered off to the right.
Even though the gunshots were being fired at shorter intervals, Caleb took a moment to glance over his shoulder and watch Doc ride away. Part of him was checking to see if the posse would split up. Another part wondered if it would be the last time he’d ever see Doc alive. Rather than dwell on such a gloomy matter, Caleb tapped his heels against his horse’s sides and pulled his reins to the left.
The animal had already been running close to its limit and the sudden incentive combined with the gunshots was enough to put a fright into it. Sensing the panic churning in the animal’s belly, Caleb hung on and let the horse bolt. As long as it bolted in the proper direction, he wasn’t about to complain.
Before too long, Caleb’s horse settled into a gallop and worked off some of the steam it had built up in its initial panic. The gunshots weren’t having much of an effect any longer, since they were already fading away.
Caleb shifted once more in his saddle to get a look behind him. Rather than check on Doc, he searched for the men that were pursuing him. Sure enough, the posse had split up and only a few of them were chasing him. Since Doc was nowhere to be found, the rest of the posse members had more or less disappeared. The terrain was fairly open for the moment, but there was a mess of rocks and trees straight ahead.
In fact, those trees were a little closer than Caleb had expected. When he faced forward once more, he sucked in a quick breath and pulled sharply on his reins in hopes of avoiding the rocks that were only a few paces in front of him. His horse wasn’t quite ready to break its legs just yet, because it jumped a heartbeat before Caleb could give the command.
Letting out a bellowing breath, Caleb’s horse leapt over the rocks and landed upon the cold ground. Almost immediately, its hooves skidded against the frozen dirt and the horse scrambled to right itself.
This time, Caleb was prepared. He shifted his weight in the opposite direction to the horse’s momentum and tugged on the reins in short, strong pulls. That was enough to get the animal’s attention and guide it back around so it could regain its footing. For a moment, the horse and rider were a mass of flailing limbs. Once that moment passed, both were upright and moving forward.
Caleb didn’t waste time in checking behind him again. Instead, he picked the spot he wanted to go and snapped his reins. After rounding a bend, he pulled back hard and fought to convince the horse to come to a stop. Caleb jumped from the saddle as soon as he could do so without breaking his neck. The instant his boots hit the ground, he ducked low and pulled his horse with him to a thick bunch of dead bushes clustered around some rocks.
It took plenty of muscle and a good amount of sweet-talking to get the horse to follow him, but Caleb eventually got the animal behind those bushes. Unfortunately, the animal wasn’t so keen on hunkering down.
The posse members were getting closer. Caleb could hear the rumble of those hooves getting louder by the second.
His horse was more nervous than ever. Not only did it fight against the reins, but it seemed close to biting at his hand.
Fearing that he may already be too late, Caleb dropped himself straight down while pulling on the reins hard enough to strain most of the muscles in his back, shoulders, and arms. Whether he’d imposed his will upon the horse or some divinity had stepped in to do the job, Caleb somehow got the horse to lie with its side upon the ground.
As the posse closed in on him, Caleb pressed himself flat against the rocks and held his breath. He also clenched his eyes shut. If that posse was truly on Rudabaugh’s side, Caleb just didn’t want to see what was coming before it got there.
The hooves thumped against the ground to send a rumble through every one of Caleb’s bones.
The ground shook. Even the rocks and bushes trembled with their approach.
The posse came at him like a storm.
It snapped branches and kicked up plenty of cold gravel that rained back down to pelt upon Caleb’s face. And then the storm was gone.
Even as the sound of those hooves faded, Caleb was slow to open his eyes. When he did, it was like peeling his eyelids away from where they’d been glued to his face.
But he wasn’t greeted by the sight of angry faces looking down at him. There were no gun barrels aimed in his direction. There was just the swirling dust several yards away to mark where the storm had passed him by.
Although he’d become unfamiliar with good luck, Caleb knew better than to question it. He got to his feet and urged his horse to do the same. From there, he rode west simply because the posse had been moving south. As long as he was headed that way, he kicked around the notion of racing through Deadwood to check on Alice.
And after that, it was onward to Texas.
The other half of the posse broke through a thin row of trees and thundered ahead. A few of them fired shots at the horse in the distance in front of them, but they knew they were well outside of pistol range. Bullock was at the head of the group and he reached around to draw the rifle from the boot hanging from his saddle without taking his eyes from his target.
Having ridden onto a relatively flat stretch of trail, Bullock adjusted himself to his horse’s movements and brought his rifle to his shoulder. He narrowed his eyes to fix upon the horse ahead of him, but paused before squeezing the trigger.
“Goddamn,” Bullock muttered as his aim bobbled uncontrollably with the horse’s motions. Lowering the rifle, he leaned forward and stared even harder at the horse in the distance. “Goddamn!”
“What is it?” one of the other men asked.
“There’s nobody on that horse!”
“Then we hit him already?”
Rather than answer that question, Bullock signaled for the others to come to a stop. His men gathered around him, but not all of them were too happy about it.
“What the hell are we stopping for?” another member of the posse groused. “He’s getting away!”
“He already got away!” Bullock snapped. “Or he’s already dead. Spread out and start looking for a body. I’ll head back to see if that bastard circled around the other way.”
Even though his men scattered as they were supposed to, Bullock kept swearing under his breath. The profanities he let fly only got more colorful before he finally made it back to the group of tents where the chase had begun. Spotting Brad propped up against a barrel, Bullock looked around at the locals who’d stepped outside.
“Has anyone seen the men who did this?” Bullock asked as he pointed down to Brad.
The merchants as well as a few folks who’d
just arrived that morning all looked at each other and shook their heads.
“What about the men who rode out of here?” Bullock asked. “The ones we were chasing. Anyone seen them?”
More blank stares.
Bullock looked around, but there wasn’t much to see. The collection of wood-framed tents creaked in the breeze. Although he could hear folks talking or coughing inside those tents, Bullock didn’t find any hint that Doc or Caleb had made it back to that spot. In fact, the longer he thought about it, the madder he got for wasting the time it had taken to ride back there.
“Shit,” Bullock muttered as he brought his horse around and rode back toward his men.
Once Bullock was out of sight, the other folks went right back to their own business. One of the folks who’d poked a head from inside a tent was an old woman who ran the trading post.
“Whatever they wanted, I guess they didn’t find it,” she grumbled as she pulled her head back into the store. “You sure you don’t need a doctor?”
The man she was addressing had stumbled into the tent less than a minute before Bullock had arrived. His face was chalky white and coated in sweat. He was dressed like a dandy, but those clothes were rumpled, filthy, and torn. As ragged as he looked, he still had a smile that was just friendly enough to charm the old woman. He showed that smile to her now and shook his head.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” Doc replied in his warm Southern drawl. “I’m just a bit winded.”
“Would you like some water?”
“You are a godsend.”
She scooped up some water from a barrel and handed the dented ladle over to Doc. After taking a few sips, he coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Aren’t you one of those fellows who rented a room from my husband?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Wincing a bit, she added, “He told me you sounded kind of sick.”
“I’m sure I did.”
Since Doc’s appearance pretty much spoke for him on that subject, the woman found another one. “What happened to you?” she asked.
“My horse threw me when those gunmen raced out of here,” Doc lied.
“You mean those boys that Mr. Bullock is after?”
“That posse might have spooked my horse even more than the outlaws. Either way, I had to walk back here.”
Even though Doc had only walked a short distance from where he’d jumped off his horse, his appearance was more than enough to sell his story.
The old woman nodded and showed him a motherly smile.
“My horse also made off with my belongings,” Doc said. “I’ll need to buy a few things.”
“I can help you there.”
Doc smiled and nodded slowly. “How fortunate.”
16
Alice turned out to be just fine.
After sneaking into Deadwood just long enough to spot her inside the Bella Union, Caleb rode south in as much of a straight line as he could manage. Since he barely had more than a few dollars to scrape together, his plan was to get to a good-sized town, sell his horse, and use that money to buy a train ticket to Texas.
More than once in the next few days, he was forced to bolt from one camp or another on account of a stranger looking at him for too long or a group of horses riding at him in too straight of a line. He wasn’t certain if any of those men had been Bullock or associates of Dave Rudabaugh, but Caleb wasn’t about to take that chance. Since his intention was to keep moving, that’s precisely what he did.
He kept riding and kept pushing that horse until he thought the animal would keel over from sheer exhaustion. But the horse kept going. If Caleb needed to get up from a dead sleep and run because of a strange noise he’d heard, that horse would carry him. That horse outran the posse that had chased him out of the Dakotas. It had gotten him through a few close scrapes in Indian country and it didn’t even fuss when it was forced to eat dead grass sprouting up from frozen ground.
That horse carried him deep into Nebraska without breaking stride. Once he got within a day’s ride of the Colorado border, Caleb thought he might be forced to eat that old horse. The weather turned even worse and nearly buried him in a storm that pounced on him quicker than a mountain lion. After a few days, the winds blew away enough of the snow for him to get moving again. Caleb led his horse a ways and then finally rode to clearer ground.
When he made it to Denver, Caleb’s plan was still to sell the horse and catch a train. But that just wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he took what little money he had left and bought the horse a warm stall in a good stable. Not only did that horse eat better than he did that night, it also got a name.
“What do you think?” Caleb asked as he patted the horse’s nose. “What name suits you best? Lucky?”
Caleb might have been tired, but he wasn’t too tired to find the humor in that.
“What about Snowball? Both of us nearly wound up as one of those before we got here.”
The stable’s owner walked up to Caleb and cleared his throat. “Looks like that left shoe is about to go. I can repair it if you like.”
Leaning into the stall, Caleb took a look at the horse’s hind leg. He couldn’t see exactly what was wrong with the shoe, but he knew all too well that the old girl had been favoring that leg for plenty of miles.
“Yeah,” Caleb said as he failed to think of one time the horse had fussed or slowed down. “How much to fix it up?”
“Depends on how bad it is,” the man replied with a shrug.
Caleb dug into his pockets and fished out the few remaining coins he had. It wasn’t much. “This is about all I’ve got,” he said as he extended his hand to display the pathetic amount he’d managed to scrape together.
The man winced and let out a slow hiss through his teeth. “I hate to say it, but I doubt that’ll be enough.”
Feeling around in his other pocket, Caleb dug one last penny from the bottom and held it out proudly. “What about now?” he asked with a smile.
The man shook his head, but laughed. “I’ll see what I can do. You must really care for that horse.”
“She’s done all right by me.”
“What’s her name?”
Caleb blinked, looked at the horse, and got a blink from the animal in return. Suddenly, he flipped that last coin he’d found into the air so it could land in his other hand with a clink. “Penny,” he announced. “Her name’s Penny.”
“Well, I’ve got a few old nags that should’a been traded long ago, so I know what it’s like to be partial to one like her,” the man said. “I can’t do anything too fancy, but I’ll see to it that she walks straight and don’t hurt herself.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Where you stayin’?”
“What?” Caleb asked.
“You staying at a hotel or do you know anyone around here?” the man asked. “I need to know where to find you to let you know when Penny’s ready to run.”
Caleb sighed and said, “I haven’t quite figured that one out yet. I’ll just check with you after a while.”
“Well, my wife has been trying for years to make me into a good Christian, so I suppose a good place to start would be to give you a place to stay.”
“I couldn’t accept that,” Caleb said.
“You wouldn’t be acceptin’ nothin’,” the man grunted. “You’d be working for it. Clean out these stalls and stack them bales of hay over there and you’ll have your room.”
“I’d need to do more work than that, wouldn’t I?”
“Not if you’re sleeping up there,” the man replied as he pointed to the stable’s loft. “There’s some old blankets up there and no holes in the roof, so it should do you just fine. If not, that’s—”
“It’ll be fine,” Caleb said quickly. “Where’s your broom?”
“Good. I suppose the both of us should get to work. What’s yer name, anyway?”
Considering the circumstances of his departure from Deadwood and
the possibility that there could still be men out to hunt him down, Caleb knew he should be keeping his head down and staying hidden whenever possible. The last time Doc had been in Denver, he’d gone by the name Tom Mackey. Unfortunately, Caleb was too damn tired to come up with anything so original.
“Mack . . . Smith.”
“Good to meet ya, Mack,” the stable’s owner said. “I’m Bob. The broom’s right over there.”
It wasn’t long before Caleb started to think his luck actually had taken a turn for the better. Not only did he have a place to sleep for the night, but Bob kept a mighty clean stable. Caleb was done with his chores in time for a bowl of hot soup and some freshly baked bread compliments of Bob’s wife.
The next day, Caleb called in a few favors he’d earned the last time he was in Denver and managed to pull together a line on some cardplayers that were having worse luck than he was. He borrowed some money and spent the next several weeks working to pay off the loans. Of course, his definition of work wasn’t exactly the same as everyone else’s.
His first few games were sloppy. Although he’d won a couple hands thanks to an old rancher’s facial tic, Caleb knew he wasn’t going to make any progress that way. The stakes weren’t high enough and his luck was still shaky at best. Since he couldn’t get decent cards dealt to him, he palmed a few good ones and saved them for later.
If any of his opponents were professionals, they would have picked up on the move right away. Fortunately, they were too drunk to make out how he was winning more than his share. At night, Caleb practiced his card handling and perfected his technique for palming chips. He started making his rounds to some of the old spots, plucking loose chips whenever he could. Thanks to the big games being held in New Mexico and California, there weren’t many familiar players to catch him scraping at the saloon’s scraps.
After another month or so, Caleb regained some of his edge at the actual game of poker and was able to hold his own in a real game. His streak was quick to end and after that, most of his victories weren’t of the honest variety. Still, they repaid his loans and filled his pockets with more than dust.
The Accomplice: The Silent Partner Page 15
