Salvation in the Rancher's Arms

Caleb nodded. Sutter had been dead wrong about his wife. In the few short hours Caleb had known her, she’d proven herself capable of withstanding tragedy and facing ugly truths. This was a woman who knew the harsh realities of life. A sense of reluctant kinship filled him. He knew what it was like to have your life destroyed.

He pulled a rickety chair out from a corner, lowering his aching body into it. It had been a long few days.

“You got a name, son?”

“Ethan.”

Caleb nodded and scanned the room. “Where’s the other boy?”

Ethan crawled up onto the bed and laid his head down on the pillow next to Mrs. Sutter. It bothered Caleb how motionless she was. He didn’t have much experience with fainting, but he found it worrisome she still hadn’t woken. He watched her expressionless face. Beneath the black wool dress, the gentle swell of her small breasts rose and fell. Relief made him breathe easier.

A minute had passed since he’d asked his last question. The boy, Ethan, stared at him over the top of the rabbit’s head. He tried again.

“Where’s your brother?”

“Brody ain’t my brother, he’s hers.” A small finger released its hold on the rabbit and pointed at Mrs. Sutter. Another mystery solved.

“Where is Mrs. Sutter’s brother, then?” Caleb knew when someone was evading a question, and this boy was doing a brilliant job of dancing around its edges.

Silence.

“Son?”

The boy’s gaze met Caleb’s then slid away. Unease itched at the back of Caleb’s neck and he rubbed at the spot. He did not want to get involved with these people any more than he already was.

“Ethan, tell me where he is.”

“Brody told me not to. He made me promise.”

Caleb pursed his lips. If Brody made this kid promise not to give up his whereabouts it was a sure sign he was up to no good. He glanced at Mrs. Sutter. She’d been through enough today without someone else adding to her misery.

He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “Ethan, if your ma was awake right now—”

“She ain’t my ma. My ma’s dead.”

Caleb hung his head. This was one convoluted family tree. He straightened and took a breath. “If Mrs. Sutter was awake right now, what would she ask you to do?”

Ethan hesitated then scowled. “Tell the truth.”

Caleb raised an eyebrow at the boy and waited. After a minute of ruminating, Ethan let out a frustrated huff then lowered the rabbit from his mouth, as if that’s what kept the secret in.

“Brody said he was gonna go to the Seahorse Saloon to win some money to pay off Mr. Kirkpatrick.”

Caleb cursed under his breath. Great.

The pimply faced boy from the lobby arrived with the doctor. Caleb explained what had happened—well, at least the fainting part. He kept what had led up to it to himself. The deed was no one else’s business, at least until he determined what he planned to do about it.

All the way back from the funeral, Caleb had mulled over his prospects, none of which left him satisfied. His original plan of signing it over and walking away had been knocked about good with the insertion of Kirkpatrick. If what he’d heard was correct, signing over the deed to Mrs. Sutter would only result in her losing the property to Kirkpatrick in payment of her dead husband’s debts.

He rubbed a hand over his face and took one last look down at the woman unconscious on the bed. When had this become so complicated?

Caleb left Mrs. Sutter in the doctor’s capable hands and slipped out of the room.

It seemed he had to go collect a boy from a saloon.

It was easy enough to find, as the Pagget was at the same end of town. Caleb followed the sound of the tinny piano. There were three saloons in all. The Seahorse had a faded sign hanging from the second-floor balcony. The slight breeze made its hinges creak as it swayed back and forth. Caleb pushed through the swinging doors where the stench of watered-down whiskey, sweat and cheap perfume rose up and assaulted his nostrils. Desperation permeated the sawdust strewn about the floor and soaked into every crack in the wall.

He hated places like this. They brought a man to his lowest then dug the hole a little deeper. The patrons here wouldn’t think twice about letting a kid buy his way into a game. Hell, they’d probably encourage it, seeing him as an easy mark.

Brody wasn’t hard to find. The room was small, the crowd sparse. One back table had a game going. A few others were occupied by solitary drinkers who looked as though they’d taken root in their seats with no intention of leaving any time soon.

The boy was facing away from the door. Dumb move. A man should never leave himself exposed in such a manner, especially in a place like this. Fastest way to take one in the back. A motley crew of men flanked the edges of the table. They paid scant attention to him, save for one old-timer who glanced up long enough to down a shot of whiskey before pouring another and returning to the game.

The pot in the center of the table was meager by most standards, but he guessed the high stakes games didn’t happen in a place like this. The Seahorse appeared to cater to the dregs, picking up whatever the other two saloons had cast out.

Caleb sauntered up to the table and stood at the boy’s shoulder. It didn’t take long for the kid to glance up as the game came to a stop.

“You lookin’ to git in?” the old-timer asked, his voice thin and reedy. What few teeth he had left were nothing more than tobacco-stained stumps.

Caleb gave his head a slow shake. “Come to take the boy home.”

Brody stiffened and threw Caleb a hostile glare before turning back to the cards. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I got me a game here and—”

Caleb’s hand came down firm and heavy on the boy’s scrawny shoulder. “The game’s over.”

Showing more balls—or stupidity—than most men, Brody tried to shrug his hand off, but Caleb held firm.

“I don’t know you, and I sure as shootin’ ain’t leavin’ here with you, mister.”

Caleb applied more pressure, gripping the ill-fitting wool coat with his fingers. Brody flinched beneath his hold. “Your sister is ill and needs you,” Caleb said in a low voice.

The boy’s stiff posture registered his shock. Caleb didn’t hesitate. He hooked his foot around the leg of the chair and pulled it back, hauling Brody to his feet in one swift movement. The boy grabbed what few coins were in front of him. It went against Caleb’s instinct to get involved like this, but responsibility for Mrs. Sutter’s current predicament weighed on him. He might be a lot of things, but he wasn’t the type of man who shrugged off his honor when it became inconvenient. Much as he would have liked to.

“Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse us.” He tipped his hat to the men sitting down. No one made a move to stop him.

He led Brody through the saloon, pushing him past the swinging doors and dragging him down the steps. Once they hit the street, the boy turned surly again and yanked his arm from Caleb’s hold.

“Get your hands off me! I was winning. You had no right!”

“You were losing,” Caleb told him. “You think for one second the pair of twos you were holding would stand up against the set of jacks the old timer had ready to play? You think every man at that table wasn’t markin’ you to take a fall?”

“I knew what I was doing.” But the telltale surprise widening his eyes told Caleb different. The bravado was all for show. The kid didn’t have a clue he was being played.

Caleb shook his head. “You don’t know nothin’, kid. You’re so wet behind the ears you might as well have just had a bath in the creek. You don’t think your sister’s got enough to worry about without you gallivanting around acting the fool?”

“We need the money. I’m the man of the family now. It’s my responsibility to watch out for us.”

“There’s better ways to put bread on the table—” Caleb stepped down off the sidewalk, his boots landing in a pile of muck and horse dung. “Aw, crud!”

“It ain’t about bread, mister.” Brody rounded on Caleb while he stomped the dung from his boot. “Maybe my sister believes Robert was in Laramie buying cattle, but I know better. He went to gamble and he lost. It ain’t the first time he’s done it, either.”

“I’m guessin’ it’s the first time he got himself shot dead.” Caleb stepped around the kid and kept walking, heading across the street. He could feel the rain coming. The moisture sank deep into his bones. He didn’t care to be out in it, even if it meant sleeping at the Pagget, a lousy excuse for a hotel. At least the rooms were big enough so that he didn’t feel the walls closing in on him. He’d pass the night under a dry roof and worry about everything else tomorrow.

Brody caught up with him. “We owe money. And if we don’t pay it we’re gonna lose everything. Kirkpatrick bought up Robert’s gambling debts and he was pressing him to pay off the markers or sign over our land for payment. Why do you think Robert went to Laramie? Figured he could make a big strike at the tables and come back and save the day. Instead he got himself shot.”

“And you think you can walk into some hole of a saloon and make all your problems go away?”

“Ain’t none of your business!”

“You got that right.” He didn’t want to hear anything else about their problems. He had enough of his own. All he wanted was to go back to his room and sleep this day off. Although having to face Widow Sutter again tomorrow to iron out the news he had dropped on her tonight didn’t bode well for things improving any time soon.

“And my sister ain’t ill. She don’t get ill. Says she doesn’t—”

“—have the time. So I’ve heard. But she passed out cold in front of me, so I guess she found a few spare minutes.”

Brody stopped, the last of his bravado falling away. “You ain’t foolin’?”

“You ever say anything other than ain’t?” Caleb shot the kid a glare and kept walking. Let him figure it out on his own whether he wanted to follow or not. He’d done his part. He got the kid out of the game before he lost money the family didn’t have. He was done with it. He’d deal with the rest tomorrow. Maybe between now and then he’d be hit with some brilliant epiphany showing him a quick way out of this mess that wouldn’t stress his conscience.

Brody hurried to keep up. “Is she okay?”

Fear edged the boy’s voice, erasing his earlier anger. “Doc came over. I suspect she’s fine. Shock and exhaustion, is all.”

At least he hoped it was nothing more. It sure would be a terrible thing if she were to find herself in the family way now, with no husband to provide for her. His honor might have dictated that he drag her fool brother out of a saloon, but it didn’t extend so far that he’d be taking on the responsibility for a dead man’s family by offering up marriage.

He wasn’t anybody’s idea of a good husband.

He wasn’t anybody’s idea of a good man.

When they reached the hotel, Brody bolted up the stairs ahead of him and ran down the hall, bursting into Room 205, letting the door slam against the wall. Caleb followed at a slower pace, feeling every last one of his thirty years. The life he’d been living all these years was starting to catch up with him. Sooner or later the time would come when he’d have to stop drifting and start thinking about settling somewhere.

But now was not the time.

And Salvation Falls wasn’t the place.

Chapter Four

Rachel cracked open her lids. Warm sunlight pierced her eyes and sent a sharp shooting pain straight through her brain. She bit down on her back teeth to keep from cursing. She sensed Ethan hovering nearby.

“Rachel?”

The mattress depressed and his small body crawled onto the bed. She moved her arm and let him nestle into her side.

“I’m all right, sweetheart. Don’t fret. It was a bad day, is all.” Dr. Bolger had come by and given her the once-over and announced the same thing. She’d decided not to contradict him. She didn’t know how many people Caleb Beckett had spoken to since arriving in Salvation Falls, but it only took one person to spread the word. The news that she and her family were homeless and penniless would travel like wildfire.

Then what? Would they expect her to behave as her mother had, bartering herself to make life easier? The idea made bile burn at the back of her throat. It would be a cold day in July before she ever stooped that low, prostituting herself in such a way. And to what end? Her mother’s actions had done nothing more than make their situation worse, wrecking her father and destroying their family beyond repair. Were the pretty baubles she’d earned worth that?

Rachel pulled her mind away from the dark memories. She was not her mother. Every decision she made, every action she took was painstakingly made to ensure that.

But what could she do now to improve her perilous situation? Her land, the land her father had left her, belonged to a man she didn’t know. Who knew what he would decide to do with it? She’d had no time to ask and he’d given no indication.

The man possessed an enigmatic edge and an even more dangerous touch. Through the haze of last night, the memory of her body pressed against his survived in her memory. The touch of his hand against her face had almost been enough to rouse her from the darkness she’d fallen into.

None of which answered the critical question: What would happen to her family now? The ranch hands—Len, Stump and Everett—could find work on another spread. No doubt Shamus would take them on if Mr. Beckett didn’t see fit to. Maybe she could even convince Shamus to hang on to Foster, though he had grown too old to do more than load up the chuck wagon and be a general nuisance.

And Freedom. Well, no doubt she’d pack it in and follow Rachel wherever she went with the boys. Question was, where would they go? She didn’t have a cent to call her own without the land. She had no family left to turn to. She owed money all over town, and even if the stores were willing to float her for a little while longer out of respect for her current situation, they wouldn’t do it forever. Eventually she’d have to pay the piper.

But how?

There were few ways a woman could make an income in this town and, short of marrying, fewer still were respectable. Her mother had taught her that.

“Can we go home?”

Rachel hugged Ethan tighter and kissed his tawny hair. “Sure, sweetheart. I have some business to take care of first and then we’ll go home.”

Unless Caleb Beckett had other ideas on the matter.

Rachel looked across the room to the chair where Brody still slept. He’d come rushing into the room a few minutes after she’d come to. She didn’t know where he’d been and he hadn’t offered up the information. She would deal with him later.

“Where’d the man go?”

Rachel pulled her attention away from Brody’s quietly snoring form. “What man?”

“The man that brung you upstairs when you fainted. He was nice. I liked him.”

“Brought me upstairs,” she corrected. “And you like everybody.” The poor boy had spent the first four years of his life in a brothel. By the time Rachel took him in, he’d been starved for male influence.

“Is he comin’ back?”

“I’m not sure where Mr. Beckett is, Ethan. I expect he’s going about his business.” Or her business.

Resentment toward her situation and the man who had turned her life upside down boiled in her veins. She pushed it away. She needed to conserve her energy for what was to come.

“He told me you weren’t bad sick.” Ethan smiled up at her with an innocence she didn’t remember possessing at his age. “He was right, too. You’re all better now, right?”

She hugged him close. “I’m all better now.”

At least for the moment.

* * *

“Mr. Beckett? A moment of your time?” On the planked sidewalk outside of his office, Sheriff Donovan stood, hands on his hips. The fact that he used Caleb’s name, the one he’d given to Mrs. Sutter, made him wary.

He halted and looked toward the livery at the end of the street. The day was just getting started and the sun had barely had time to creep up from the horizon. What was the sheriff doing up so early? Did he sleep in his office?

“I won’t keep you long,” the sheriff promised, as if sensing Caleb’s hesitation.

Caleb scowled. He didn’t know what the sheriff wanted and he didn’t like walking into things blind. It made his stomach work itself into knots and raised his guard. But he guessed there was no avoiding the conversation. Donovan struck him as the determined type. Letting out a sigh, he stepped out of the street and up onto the dryer sidewalk. It had rained overnight and the streets had turned to muck.

The sheriff motioned to his office and Caleb followed. Probably better to not have this conversation outside, even though only a few souls had started milling about. Inside, warmth radiated from the potbellied stove, hitting him full force. The sheriff went over to it and stirred at a pot of beans and bacon.

Caleb hadn’t eaten since sunrise the day before. With all the commotion of yesterday, he’d simply not had the time to find a decent meal and Mrs. Beckett’s fainting kept him from his supper. The scent of the bacon made the knots in his stomach twist tighter. Hunger gnawed at his backbone.

Sheriff Donovan scooped a helping onto his plate. “You hungry?” He didn’t sound enamored of the prospect of sharing his breakfast.

Caleb lied and shook his head. He wasn’t sure breaking bread with a lawman would start his day off on the right foot, and given the run of bad luck he’d had of late, he didn’t want to do anything to keep the string going.

The sheriff appeared relieved. He walked back to his scarred oak desk and dropped down into the chair behind it, motioning for Caleb to take an empty seat in front. Then he reached inside his desk drawer and produced a basket covered with a checkered napkin. Beneath it, the comforting smell of freshly baked biscuits rose up and assaulted Caleb’s senses.

Donovan shrugged. “Minnie from the bakery brings these over every mornin’, but if I leave them out my deputy makes short work of them. You sure you don’t want one?”

Caleb shook his head, clenching his back teeth. He wondered what the penalty was for knocking a sheriff out cold and stealing his meal. “You want something in particular?”

Donovan tucked the cloth napkin into his collar and glanced across the desk. “Got your name off the hotel register,” he said, explaining how he knew Caleb’s name. “Signed it yourself, so I take it you can read and write?”

“You takin’ a survey?”

The sheriff shrugged and spoke around a mouthful of beans. “I find it a bit curious, is all. Not many drifters can.”

“What makes you so sure I’m a drifter?”

Donovan glanced up from plate. “Got that look about you.”

“That a fact?” Caleb couldn’t fault the sheriff for his powers of observation, though they hardly told the whole story. But looking at the surface of a man rarely did. Most of what he was lived deeper than that, hiding out in the places people couldn’t see.

“I believe so. But given you can read and write, I’m guessin’ there’s more to you than meets the eye.”

“Glad to have satisfied your curiosity.” Caleb’s grandfather had made sure he could read and write. He wanted his grandson to be able to recite verbatim every passage in the Bible pertaining to sin and damnation. All these years later, and Caleb was still trying to scour the words from his mind. He pushed his chair back. “If that’s all...?”

The sheriff held out a hand and motioned for him to stay put. “Not quite. You’ll forgive me, Mr. Beckett, but it isn’t every day we get a stranger riding into town with a body in the back of his buckboard. Rachel’s important to us. We want to make sure there’s nothing we need to worry about.”

We. As if the town as a collective had decided to take her under their wing, and he as the outsider was considered a threat. But where were these people when Sutter was gambling his family out of house and home? Where were they when Kirkpatrick started pressuring Sutter in the hopes of getting his land?

The threat to Rachel didn’t come from an outsider like him, it came from the inside.

“Do we need to worry?” the sheriff asked outright.

Caleb gave his head a slow shake, his eyes never leaving the sheriff, who returned the silent perusal, his beans and bacon forgotten.

“Then I expect you’re on your way out of town, Mr. Beckett?”

“Currently I’m on my way to the end of the street. Beyond that, I can’t say it’s anyone’s business but my own where I go or when I get there.”

The hard look on the sheriff’s face indicated he was not satisfied with the answer, but the man’s satisfaction, or lack thereof, was the least of Caleb’s concerns this morning.

“What were you doing in Laramie, Mr. Beckett?”

Caution invaded Caleb’s veins.

“Just passing through,” he said, searching the sheriff’s face for clues as to what the man was fishing for.

“How’d it be you came to bring Robert’s body home?”

“I was there when he was killed.” He kept his tone even, gave nothing more away.

“Who killed him?”

“Man by the name of Sinjin Drake.”

Something in the lawman’s face altered. “Sinjin Drake?”

“You know him?”

“By reputation only. Not a lawman north of Tucson who doesn’t, I expect. Man’s said to be one of the fastest draws in the west with a body count to prove it.”

“That so?”

“Did you meet the man?”

“We sat at the same table. Can’t say we shared much conversation.”

“Did they arrest him?”

“Drake? No. The law said it was self-defense. Sutter went for his gun.”

The sheriff’s gaze sharpened. “His guns weren’t on the body.”

“I said he went for his guns. I didn’t say he was wearing them at the time.”

Shock registered on Sheriff Donovan’s face. “What do you mean he wasn’t wearing them?”

“A man needed at least fifty dollars to sit at the table. Word was Sutter sold everything but the clothes on his back to raise the capital.”

“And Drake shot him anyway?”

Caleb didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Robert Sutter had come home in the back of a wagon with a hole through his heart. That was all the confirmation needed as far as he was concerned.

“We done here?”

“For now.”

Caleb headed for the door but the sheriff’s voice stopped him cold.

“You won’t mind if I wire out to Laramie and verify your story?”

Every fiber in Caleb’s body stilled. He glanced at the sheriff out of the corner of his eye. “Don’t matter none to me.”

Chances were he’d be nothing more than a fading memory in the minds of Salvation Falls residents by the time the sheriff got news back from Laramie. And that suited him just fine.

* * *

After Rachel managed to get the boys fed and Freedom tracked down, she arranged to send them back home in the wagon. She’d get back on her own after she conducted her business with Mr. Beckett and figured out where things stood. She would need the time to formulate a plan, determine what to do.

Did the man plan on kicking them off their land—his land, now? A sick sense of displacement filled her, followed by burning frustration. Her entire world had been pulled out from under her and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

Rachel took a deep breath and smoothed a hand over her skirt. She still wore her widow’s weeds, but she didn’t plan on making it a habit. She didn’t have time to dye her meager wardrobe black to mourn a man who didn’t deserve her tears.

She made her way down Main Street. When she’d inquired about Mr. Beckett this morning, Cletus at the front desk told her he’d left for the livery thirty minutes earlier. She picked up her skirts and hurried her steps. The last thing she needed was him showing up at the ranch ahead of her, announcing his ownership before she had a chance to explain it to her family herself.

She needed to talk to him, to settle this thing. She couldn’t live in a sickening limbo land wondering what would happen. She had to keeping moving. If she stopped...