The winter finally broke its hold, and the weather became mild. Cade was beginning to give up hope of ever finding Arabella again, though he never gave voice to such feelings, and even pushed the thought aside when it arose. In the meantime, anytime he and Hoffman ran into any other hunters or travelers, he asked the same question.
“Have you seen any buffalo hunters who have two white women with them?”
Then, in late May he got the answer he had been looking for.
“Yeah,” someone said, “they’s a couple of hunters I seen no more ‘n two weeks ago that had two women ‘n a baby with them.”
“A baby?”
“Yeah, one of ‘em’s got herself a baby ‘n it looks like the other’n’s about to drop one. ‘N I got the idea that Kilgore wasn’t none too pleased about that.”
“Kilgore?” Cade shouted the name. “Are you telling me that the man who has them is Amon Kilgore?”
“I didn’ never hear his first name. But yeah, the two men was Kilgore ‘n I think the other’n was callin’ hisself Toombs. Didn’ never learn the women’s names though. They didn’ neither one of ‘em talk much, ‘n when they did talk, they was talkin’ in some language I couldn’t understand.”
“Where!” Cade asked. “Where did you see them?”
“It was down at Potato Butte.”
Cade looked over at Hoffman.
“We could be there by tomorrow,” Hoffman said.
26
The hunt ended suddenly, and unexpectedly, when they stopped at Dunnigan’s Goods, a remote trading post on the Bent Canyon Road. While Hoffman was taking care of the team, Cade went inside.
“Hello, Mr. Dunnigan. We’ll need some bacon, and flour.”
“Cade?” a woman’s voice asked, the words hesitant and somewhat apprehensive. “Cade is that you? Is it really you?”
Whirling toward the sound of the voice, Cade saw Magnolia, sitting on a sack of cornmeal as she nursed a baby.
“Maggie!” Cade shouted.
“We prayed for you to come for us,” Magnolia said. “We prayed and we prayed, but finally we gave up hope.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“I’m here now,” he said hurrying to her side. “Where’s Arabella? Where is she?”
“She’s here,” Dunnigan said, his face somber.
“What’s wrong?” Cade demanded. “Where’s my wife?” He shouted the words.
“Take him to her,” Magnolia said.
“Come with me. She’s with my wife,” Dunnigan said, leading Cade to the back of the store. He opened the door and when Cade looked in, he saw Arabella lying in bed, with a gray-haired woman putting a damp cloth to her forehead.
“Arabella!” he said, rushing to the side of the bed.
Arabella moved her hand toward Cade as a wan smile crossed her lips.
“My darling, Cade. You’re here,” Arabella said, her voice so weak that it could scarcely be heard. “But you’re too late . . . too late.” Her eyes closed.
“No, it’s never too late,” Cade said, lifting her hand to kiss it. “I love you, Arabella, I love you, and I’ve never stopped looking. Not from the day you disappeared.”
“I’m glad I get to see you . . . one last time.”
“What do you mean, one last time? I’m not going anywhere,” Cade said, though he felt a sinking heart, because he could tell what she was saying by looking at her.
“Don’t think that, Arabella. I’ve just found you and I’m not going to let you go.”
“The baby,” Arabella said. “I know it isn’t yours but, please promise me, you’ll not abandon the baby.”
“We’ll raise the baby together.”
“No, I . . . I won’t be with you.”
“Of course you will,” Cade insisted.
Arabella closed her eyes and grimaced as she reacted to a sudden, severe spasm of pain.
“Arabella!”
“The baby’s coming,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. “Get Magnolia in here.”
Cade rushed back out into the store. “Maggie, the baby’s coming! She needs you.”
“Here,” Maggie said, handing her baby to Cade. “Her name is Arabella.”
Unsure of himself, Cade took the baby, holding it awkwardly, but securely. The store keep came over to him.
“You ain’t never been around babies before, have you?” he asked.
“This is the first one I’ve ever held,” Cade admitted.
“Hold her like this.” Dunnigan adjusted the way Cade was holding the baby so both were more comfortable.
“How long ago did Kilgore drop Arabella and Maggie off here?”
“What do you mean?”
“I expect Maggie with a baby, and Arabella pregnant, he didn’t have any use for them anymore, so that’s why he left them here.”
“Mister, this feller Kilgore you’re talkin’ about, he didn’t leave ‘em here. He left ‘em out in the middle of nowhere, with no food, no water, nothin’.”
“Then I don’t understand. How did they get here?”
“An old Arapaho injun by the name of Nartana found ‘em. Him ‘n his squaw brung ‘em in yesterday mornin’ on a couple of travois. It was a good thing they did, too, ‘cause it ain’t likely none of ‘em would ‘a lived more ‘n another couple of days. ‘Specially the baby. Her mama had near ‘bout run out of milk.”
“You mean the bastards just left them to die?”
“Yes, sir, near as I can figure, that’s exactly what I mean.”
“Cade!” Maggie called, though it could better be described as a scream. “Come quick!”
“I’ll take the young’un. You go,” Dunnigan said.
Cade ran into the back room and the first thing he saw was the massive amount of blood in the bed.
“Arabella!” he screamed. “No, no, not now. I’ve just found you, you can’t go.”
He knelt by her bed, and she turned toward him, her hand reaching out to touch his face. She rubbed her finger over his lips. “The baby, is it a boy, or a girl?”
Cade looked toward Mrs. Dunnigan. “It’s a girl,” she said.
“You have . . .” Cade started, then he corrected himself. “We have a beautiful little girl. She looks just like you. Lots of dark hair. She’s beautiful.”
“What do you want to name her?”
“I know. I want to name her the most beautiful name I know, Chantal.” He moved over Arabella to kiss her. “If it wouldn’t have been for Chantal, I would never have met the most wonderful woman in the world.”
“Promise me you’ll take care of her. Chantal. I like that.”
“I told you . . . we will take care of . . .”
“I won’t be here. You’ll have to . . .”
Arabella took a couple of gasping breaths, then she stopped breathing. Cade watched the life leave her eyes.
“No!” he shouted. He buried his head onto the side of the bed and held her hand as hard as he could. “No!” he cried again, as the tears began to flow.
Magnolia knelt beside Cade, then pulled his head into her bosom, as they wept together.
“Sie ist mit Gott, Cade. Sie ist mit Gott,” Hoffman said reverently. Both he and Dunnigan, still holding Magnolia’s baby, had come into the room, and were standing, quietly.
Three months later:
Cade stood in the anteroom of the Fort Dodge Chapel, waiting with Jeter.
“I can’t believe she said she would marry me,” Jeter said. “I never thought I would get married. I’m the luckiest man in the world.”
“Magnolia is a wonderful woman, Jeter. I agree, you are a lucky man. And if you won’t get the big head with me saying so, you’re a good man, too, willing to take on an entire family.”
“I intend to raise Chantal and Arabella just as if they were sisters,” Jeter promised.
“I promised that I wouldn’t abandon Chantal, and I won’t,” Cade said. “But she’ll have to stay with Magnolia as long as she’s nursing.”
Jeter smiled. “You’re
calling her Magnolia now.”
“Yes, because that’s what Arabella called her.”
Jeter stepped to the door and looked out into the nave of the chapel. “Ma’s wearin’ the biggest grin you ever saw,” he said, speaking of Mary Hatley who was sitting in the very first row.
“She didn’t mind us selling the MW?”
“Not when I told her I was movin’ to Buffalo City. She said there was no way she intended to stay there.”
The chaplain opened the door to the anteroom. “Mr. Willis, it’s time for you to meet your bride,” he said, with a big smile.
After the wedding, Jeter and Cade built The Red House, a saloon in the town of Buffalo City, which some were already calling Dodge City. Cade was a silent partner in The Red House, silent because he had nothing to do with its day to day operation. Cade had signed on with the same freighting company as Jacob Harrison, using the mobility of the wagon travel as a way to search for Kilgore and Toombs.
It was six months after the wedding, and he was at the Lee and Reynolds Trading Station on the Cimarron down in Indian Territory, when Ron Lee stepped out to the wagon to speak to him.
“Cade, are you still looking for Kilgore and Toombs?”
“Yes.”
“I heard they have a shack over on King Fisher Creek. That’s about ten miles west of here.”
“Are you sure that’s them?”
“I’m sure. They’re making a lot of money, selling whiskey to the Indians.”
“And nobody stops them?”
“They’re paying off the Indian police, and nobody else goes that way.”
“Thanks, Ron, if you don’t mind, I’m going to leave the team and wagon with you for a few days. Do you have a horse and saddle I might use.”
Lee nodded. “I figured you’d want to go find ‘em.”
King Fisher Creek:
Kilgore walked out of the shack with an Indian who was clutching a bottle of whiskey.
“You tell your friends that there’s a lot more where this came from,” Kilgore said.
“You charge too much for whiskey,” the Indian said.
Kilgore laughed. “Well, you can always go somewhere else to get it,” he said. “Oh, wait, there isn’t any place else you can get it, is there?”
As the Indian hopped onto his pony, and rode away, Toombs came over to stand beside Kilgore.
“We’re goin’ to have to get some more whiskey, pretty soon.”
“Ahh, we got ten full bottles ‘n ten empty bottles,” Kilgore said. “We can stretch that into twenty full bottles with a little water.”
“We already done that with the full bottles we got,” Toombs said.
“They’re a bunch o’ ignert savages. They ain’t never goin’ to know the difference,” Kilgore insisted.
“You know what I miss?” Toombs asked.
“What’s that?”
Toombs grabbed his crotch and flashed a leering smile. “I miss havin’ them two women around anytime we wanted ‘em.”
“Yeah, well, when they started sproutin’ babies, they was more trouble ‘n they was worth,” Kilgore said.
“We could’a killed the babies just like a tomcat does,” Toombs said. “What’a you reckon happened to ‘em? I mean, when we went back they warn’t there no more.”
“I expect the wolves et ‘em,” Kilgore said.
“Maybe we could get us a couple o’ injun squaws ‘n . . .” that was as far as Toombs got, before the side of his head burst open with blood, brain, and bone detritus spewing forth.
Kilgore stood for a long moment, so shocked by what he had just seen that he didn’t have time to be afraid. He never knew when the second .50 caliber bullet smashed into his head, dropping his body on top of Toombs.
Five hundred yards away, Cade rose from the prone position, slipped the Sharps Buffalo rifle back into the saddle sheath, and returned to the Lee and Reynold’s Trading Post. He needed to get the wagon back to Fort Dodge.
Epilogue
Twin Creek Ranch, Howard County, Texas – 1927:
“I know, I know,” Cade said, “you’re wondering why I didn’t face them down, instead of shooting them from more than a quarter mile away. Well, I thought about it, and there’s no doubt in my mind that I could have taken both of them fairly easily.”
“Then why didn’t you?” Owen Wister asked. “I mean, it seems to me like you would have had more personal satisfaction from letting them know that you caught up with them, and that they were paying for their misdeeds.”
Cade shook his head. “They’re just as dead. During the war I killed a lot of men who never saw the shot coming, and I killed them only because they were on the other side, and that was the nature of war. If good men could be killed in such a way, I felt no compunction about killing Kilgore and Toombs like that.”
“Were there ever any repercussions from you shooting them?” Owen Wister asked.
“No. I told Lee that I couldn’t find them. The only people I ever told were Jacob Harrison and Jeter, and, of course, Magnolia. I felt like she should know.”
“How did she take it?”
Cade smiled. “She kissed me. Right in front of Jeter, she kissed me. Then she explained, to both of us, that the kiss was from Arabella.”
“You still miss Arabella, don’t you? After all these years.”
“Yeah, Dan, I miss her, just as I know Molly misses Jacob. I think one of the things that has strengthened our marriage over the years, more than half a century now, is that we’ve been able to share our love with Jacob and Arabella.”
“Speaking of Arabella, and Chantal, too. Where are they, today?”
“I’m really proud of Chantal. She’s the head mistress of Irvinson Girls’ School in Laramie, Wyoming. Of course, since she went into teaching, she never got married, but she says the school girls are her family.”
“And Arabella?”
“She’s a grandmother in Ft. Worth, and Magnolia lives with her now that Jeter has passed.”
From out front, they heard a car horn honking.
Amanda stuck her head into the library.
“Grandpa, Mr. Wister, my boyfriend is here. He wants to drive us all into Big Spring for dinner. I told him I could talk you into it. Will you please come with us?”
“Wait a minute, Amanda, are you telling me you want two old geezers like Dan and me to come along on your date?”
“You’re not old, Grandpa,” Amanda said as she grabbed his hand. “And yes, I want you to come.
“All right,” Cade said, with a chuckle. “But promise me there won’t be any spooning or anything.”
“Grandpa, don’t say that,” Amanda said as she helped to pull him to his feet. “So, tell me, Mr. Wister, did grandpa tell you everything?”
“No, darlin’,” Wister replied. “I have a feeling this saga is just getting started.”
III
Cade’s Redemption
Cade’s Redemption
The Western Adventures of Cade McCall, Book III
Kindle Edition
© Copyright 2017 by Robert Vaughan
Wolfpack Publishing
6032 Wheat Penny Avenue
Las Vegas, NV 89122
wolfpackpublishing.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used ficticiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.
ISBN: 978-1-62918-660-3
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
C
hapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Prologue
Twin Creek Ranch, Howard County, Texas – 1927
Cade McCall had pinned a target to a large oak tree and he and Owen Wister were standing thirty feet from it. Owen grasped a knife by its point, then threw it at the target. It hit handle-first, bounced off the tree, then stuck up in the ground just below the target.
“Well at least I hit the target,” Owen said.
“Yeah, and you might have even given him a bruise,” Cade teased as he raised his own knife for the toss. Whipping his hand forward, the knife rotated
once, then hit the target, stabbing almost an inch deep into the tree. “Now, that would have stopped him.”
“I’ll say it would.” Owen walked up to the tree to retrieve the two knives.
Owen Wister, well known as the author of The Virginian, among other stories, had come to Twin Creek Ranch, Cade McCall’s 60,000 acre cattle ranch in Central Texas, to interview the man about whom more than a few books had been written. Because of his storied past, he had been portrayed on the movie screen by such actors as Gary Cooper and William S. Hart.
The Western Adventures of Cade McCall Box Set Page 41