Page 17 of Calder Strong (The Calder Brand #5)

T HREE DAYS HAD PASSED SINCE J OSEPH ’ S FATEFUL TRIP TO M ILES C ITY .

So far, Forrest seemed to be doing all right.

Joseph had him working around the house—cleaning, helping in the kitchen, weeding the yard and garden, and raking the chicken coop.

Next week he would introduce the boy to the horses and start him cleaning the tack and shoveling out the stalls.

Forrest slept on a mat in the storeroom and took his meals in the kitchen with the cook, a crusty former cowpuncher called Patches.

The boy was never locked up or guarded, but Joseph had no worries about his running away.

The young fugitive had fair treatment, good food, and the lure of becoming a cowboy—and he had nowhere else to go.

Blake had grumbled about having a thief under his roof and admonished Joseph to keep the cashbox locked away.

But he hadn’t gone so far as to have Forrest thrown out.

Joseph could only hope that, over time, his father might warm to the boy.

It could be good for Blake, having a young person around.

But meanwhile, Forrest was staying out of his way.

Now it was past midnight. The great log house was quiet inside except for the creak of settling timbers and the steady tick of the mantel clock.

Joseph had lain awake for hours, hearing the cry of a great horned owl in the ancient ponderosa pine outside his window, the brush of windblown branches against the glass, and the scampering sound of a small animal running across the roof.

Finally, too restless to sleep, he’d rolled out of bed, pulled on his clothes, and gone through the motions of checking the house.

Blake had been known to pull himself into his wheelchair and roam the main floor at all hours.

Tonight Joseph found him in bed, snoring in deep sleep.

Forrest was asleep in the room where supplies for the house were stacked in boxes and burlap bags.

He had rearranged some of them to surround the space where he slumbered on his bedroll, curled like an exhausted puppy.

Tomorrow he was due for his first reading lesson with Francine.

Joseph was looking forward to the lesson as well.

Any excuse to spend time with Francine was worth the effort.

No one else was in the house. Patches lived in a cabin out back. Oliver, the young orderly, had judged Blake fit to care for himself with help from the household. He had returned to his duties at the hospital.

Go back to bed , Joseph told himself. But he knew he wouldn’t sleep. Not with the restless churning inside him, the questions, the worries, and the premonition that something was about to happen—something unforeseen and life-changing.

Needing to move, he wandered outside and around the house.

The family graveyard was laid out in a grove of pines and surrounded by a low, wrought iron fence.

As he paused outside the gate, the night wind stirred his hair and carried the aroma of fresh-cut sawdust from the mill below the bluff.

The shrill cry of a nighthawk pierced the darkness.

Joseph glimpsed the white bars on its wings as the bird darted after insects.

There were only four graves inside the fence, although plenty of room had been left for more.

Two of them were older—Joe Dollarhide and his beloved Sarah.

The other two were so fresh that the headstones were still on order.

An ache tightened like an iron band around Joseph’s heart.

He missed his mother, Hannah, and his lively young sister, Elsa.

And in a way, he’d lost his father, too.

Blake’s life, as he’d known it, had ended with that terrible accident.

Blake was already talking about how, when his time came, he would lie in the earth beside them.

Not all the Dollarhides would end up here.

Blake’s sister, Kristin, would want to be buried with her family on their ranch.

As for Mason, Blake’s half-brother and Joseph’s biological father, that wild, law-breaking rebel had inherited his mother’s ranch and settled down with a wife and young daughter to become a solid citizen.

Joseph had no love for Mason. But there was no way he could deny the man—not when, every time he looked in a mirror, Mason’s green eyes looked back at him. And now there was Lucas, with those same eyes.

Joseph had sworn that he would never be like Mason, but now he’d done the same thing—fathered a child by an innocent girl and left her to marry another man. Was he like Mason in other ways? Was that why being tied to his duties at the ranch and the sawmill felt like a lifelong prison sentence?

Turning away from the graves, Joseph rounded the side of the house and climbed the front steps to the porch. With his thoughts churning, he leaned on the log railing and gazed out into the darkness, which was faintly lit by the waning moon.

From here, he could see as far as the town. At this hour, there was no sign of life. In the ten years since the Volstead Act had shut down the saloon, there was no reason to keep the lights on. The only activity Joseph could see was a vehicle moving along the back road—a distant dot of light.

Moonshiners again, most likely. Joseph had sampled moonshine whiskey.

In his opinion, it wasn’t much better than horse piss.

But some people craved alcohol enough to tolerate the taste and put down their money.

The good stuff, bootleg liquor smuggled in from Canada, was scarce around here, especially now that the feds had rooted out the big operations such as Al Capone’s.

But moonshiners were as numerous as cockroaches in a cheap boarding house and about as hard to catch.

Joseph’s eyes followed the distant dot of light.

The vehicle was traveling at a cautious pace along the bumpy back road.

Its slow speed was a sign that it was loaded with breakable cargo—most likely bottled moonshine whiskey.

Was it going to a customer in Blue Moon, or would it turn onto the main road and head for Miles City?

Suddenly, another set of headlights appeared, coming from the opposite direction and moving fast. Were the federal agents closing in—or was the second vehicle just returning from a late-night errand? Leaning against the porch rail, Joseph watched, waiting to see what would happen.

When Silas saw the distant speck of light moving toward him, his pulse lurched. Maybe it was nothing—some farmer returning from a visit to a lady friend. But no, Silas reasoned, he couldn’t be that lucky. This was trouble.

Without waiting to find out more, he doused his headlights, swung the truck around in a cloud of dust, stomped on the gas, and headed up the back road that led to the Dollarhide mill.

He could hear the crates sliding and clinking as the wheels bounced over the ruts.

He’d been on his way to Miles City with an extra heavy payload in the back of the truck.

He’d probably broken some bottles already.

But if he got caught, he’d lose it all—all that and more.

Glancing back, he saw that the dot of light had become two headlights.

Whoever was following him, they were coming fast and getting closer.

Buck had warned him that the feds were on the prowl.

But he’d also mentioned the Chicago gang that was out to take over the eastern Montana moonshine business by wiping out the competition.

It didn’t make sense to Silas that they’d bother with small-timers like him, but maybe they had some bigger plan in mind. Right now that didn’t matter.

Whoever it was, they had a faster vehicle than Culley’s old hay truck.

But Silas knew the network of back roads and lanes like he knew the palm of his hand—and in his favor, a bank of clouds had blown in to cover the moon.

His one chance of escape lay in cutting off on a side road and losing his pursuers in the dark.

Behind him, the headlights were getting closer. The first turnoff, strewn with rocks and potholes, lay just ahead. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there. With a muttered oath, he swung the wheel hard left.

Silas felt the crunch as the front axle high centered on an imbedded boulder.

Pushed by the rear wheels, it crashed down the other side.

Had he broken something on the undercarriage?

No matter, he had to keep going. He gunned the engine.

The truck surged ahead, jarring its way over the road’s pitted surface.

He could no longer see the headlights. Maybe he was going to make it. Maybe he was going to be all right.

From somewhere behind him, he heard the deadly rat-a-tat of a Thompson submachine gun.

The first volley shredded the rear tires.

The second shattered the truck’s back window and tore into the passenger seat.

There were more shots, but after the next one, Silas neither heard nor felt them.

He was slumped over the steering wheel, blood dripping from bullet wounds in his side and the back of his head.

Distant but clear, the rattle of gunfire rang through the quiet night. Joseph recognized the report of a Thompson submachine gun, the so-called tommy gun favored by mobsters.

From where he stood, he could no longer see the first vehicle.

The driver may have turned off the headlights.

But the lights of the second vehicle had stopped moving.

Joseph could see nothing more. Was he witnessing an arrest, maybe even a murder, or was this an innocent event, overblown by his imagination?

After stopping for a few minutes, the second vehicle swung around and headed back the way it had come, toward the main road out of town. Joseph watched it until it vanished from sight. There was still no sign of the first one.