Dorothy Garlock by Leaving Whiskey Bend Read Free Book Online Page A

bastard responsible for killing him!”
    Eli’s jaw hung as if on broken hinges. “Wh-what are you saying? They never caught Caleb’s killer? In all this time, in all the years I’ve been gone, they never found the son of a bitch that did it?”
    “Oh, they thought they had, at least at first,” she explained. “’Bout the same time you became settled in your new life, the sheriff saw fit to arrest Will Jenkins for the crime.”
    Will Jenkins was a fixture in Bison City. Whenever there was a bar fight, a drunken episode, or any other occasion that required the sheriff’s attention, Will was almost certain to be there. To hear his name now was of no surprise to Eli.
    “What happened?” he asked, a lump in his throat.
    “A couple of days after Caleb’s murder, there was Will, stumbling into one of the saloons wearing Caleb’s hat. To make things worse, when the sheriff questioned him, he couldn’t remember what he’d been doing the night Caleb was shot. Your father and I, we both thought that justice had been done and that Will would hang for the crime.”
    “Why didn’t he?”
    “It wasn’t him,” his mother said matter-of-factly.
    “What?”
    “A gal in the rooming house said that he was with her the whole evening,” Mrs. Morgan explained. “When he was spotted coming out of the alley, he’d been leaving her room. He said that he found the hat just laying there, slipped it on, and that was that. There wasn’t anything for the sheriff to do but to let him go on his way.”
    “Then who did it?”
    “If you hadn’t walked away from us, if you hadn’t left your father and me here alone, then maybe you could have looked into it, asked around—but there was no one to do it. Not your father, with his heart broken and all, and then Abe had his spell soon after. You were Caleb’s only hope, but you let him down just like you did the rest of us!”
    Eli had no answer to give his mother. Everything that he thought he knew about life in Colorado was dumped on its ear! His father’s death, Abe’s bizarre slide into a kind of madness, and Caleb’s unsolved murder shook his very being.
    “Things have changed, Elijah,” she said coldly, “with or without you.”
    When his mother turned on her heel and made her way back toward the house, the cold scowl still etched across her rigid face, there was nothing for Eli to do but watch her go.
    Eli leaned against the large barn door and watched the fading summer sun streak the horizon in deep crimson and purple hues. A pair of eagles turned in lazy circles, their sharp eyes still looking for unwary prey. Sweat trickled down the sides of Eli’s face as he watched the birds hunt; the hot summer day had begun to slowly slide into night, but there still wasn’t much of a breeze and the early evening was humid.
    Ever since he was a small boy, Eli had felt at ease among the ranching tools that lined the barn walls. Leather straps, cattle brands, hammers, and saws filled the large space. In one corner lay a fire pit and anvil that was used to repair broken clasps and hooks, as well as to shoe horses. Drawing in the rich and musky smells, Eli could still see his father bent over his labors, beads of sweat and streaks of grime lining his face.
    And now all of that is gone . . .
    With his father’s passing, Eli realized that life would never be the same. As much as it pained him, there would be no going back to those simpler times before the fighting, before the harsh words that he’d give anything to take back. First Caleb; then his father; and then, in a sense, he’d also lost Abe.
What more do I have to give?
    “I reckon you’d like to slug me one.” Hank had come up behind him.
    Eli turned to look at his uncle. Hank ducked his head sheepishly, his hat in his hand like a man who’d stepped inside a church. In many ways, Eli knew that that was exactly what the barn was to the old cowhand; ranching was in Hank’s blood as deeply as a tick’s grasp on a mangy