Trail Drive (The McCabes Book 5)

by Brad Dennison

  “Sometimes change comes in little bits, here and there. Other times it descends on you all at once. I was thinking maybe I’d get started on the house after the trail drive.”

  Dusty nodded. Josh and Johnny had been talking throughout the winter about a cattle drive. The railroad would be in Montana in another year, they figured, but they didn’t want to wait. They had already been too long without any major beef sales and the ranch’s cash reserve was running low. Since Josh was now the ramrod, Johnny let him ride point on this. Josh contacted a buyer in Cheyenne who represented a firm back east. As soon as winter had passed and the trails cleared, Josh had taken the stage south to Cheyenne to meet with the man personally and negotiate a price.

  “One thing,” Dusty said. “We’ll build it. McCabes stick together, right?”

  Johnny clapped a hand to his shoulder. “That’s right, son. We stick together.”

  That night at the dinner table, the talk was mainly about the house Jessica and Johnny planned to build. Jessica was aglow talking about how the master bedroom would have a window facing east and the morning sun would light it up.

  And they would have a front porch that overlooked the canyon.

  “That’s as it should be,” Ginny said and looked at Johnny. “You standing out there first thing in the morning and the last thing in the evening, having a cup of coffee or smoking your pipe.”

  Johnny was a little concerned about Ginny’s place in all of this. Not so long ago, she had been the woman of the house. When Johnny had first brought her and the children to Montana, the arrangement they had struck was that he ran the ranch but she ran the household and helped raise the children. But now the children were grown, Johnny would be moving out, and Temperance seemed to taking over her duties of household management.

  Johnny voiced these concerns later in the evening. The sun had set and he was standing on the front porch with a tin cup filled with trail coffee. He had very quietly left his gunbelt in the bedroom. If anyone had noticed, no one was saying anything.

  Ginny came out onto the porch, a shawl draped around her shoulders. She was balancing a cup of tea on a saucer and making it look easy, like it was second nature. If Johnny had tried that, the tea would have been all over the floor or all over him.

  He voiced his concerns, and she said, “I appreciate the concern, but there is no need. Things change and this is as it should be.”

  “I just know what it feels like to have someone come in to territory that belongs to you. Like Temperance taking over the household.”

  She chuckled. “Oh, John. Thank you for the concern, but I’m fine. I always knew this day would come. I had at one time thought it might be Bree taking over the household, but as the years went by, I realized it wouldn’t be. She’s a girl who belongs on a horse, riding through the hills. Hunting alongside you and the boys. When I got her that pistol a couple of Christmases ago and saw how natural it looked on her, I realized she would never be the one to take over this household.”

  “Are you disappointed?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. I want each of these children to be who they need to be. A desire apparently neither of us had much success teaching Jack, at least in his early years. Temperance is a good girl. She’s going to be a fine wife to Joshua, and a fine woman of the ranch.”

  “But what about you?”

  She smiled. “I was here when I was needed. And maybe I needed to be here for myself, too. These children are my only link to my beloved Lura. But they are grown. It is my time to move on to my next step in life.”

  She took a sip of tea. “I have the saloon in town. I intend to take my half-ownership in that venture very seriously?”

  Johnny couldn’t help but smile. “You? A saloon keeper?”

  “Hardly. But I don’t see the saloon remaining as such for very long. The town is growing. The snows had only receded for maybe a week when wagon-loads of emigrants started filing in. Mister Franklin estimates that the town might double again in size this very summer. No, I don’t see a rustic, cowpoke saloon as fitting the needs of this changing market. I’ve talked it over with Hunter, and what we see for the future of his venture is a restaurant with a saloon attached.”

  “You’ve talked this over with Hunter, already?”

  “Indeed. Our plans are to keep the barroom very much like it is, but to expand the building, possibly doubling it in size. It’ll be a fully functioning restaurant. Johansen’s is full to capacity almost every night. Sometimes there is a half-hour wait. On the weekends, it can be a full hour. And the meals at the hotel aren’t enough to fill the need. We plan to call it the Second Chance Restaurant and Saloon.

  “And of course,” she hesitated a moment, taking another sip of tea and letting her gaze fall out toward the night, “I’ll be waiting for Addison. He’ll be returning one day.”

  Johnny nodded. “He will. Along with Zack and Joe.”

  They stood in silence for a while, then she headed into the house. It was getting cold outside. Dusty had built a fire in the hearth in the parlor. Johnny would be going in shortly, to sit by the fire with the family.

  But for the moment, he stood on the porch and looked off into the darkness. And he again had the unmistakable feeling that someone was out there in the night, watching the ranch.

  5

  In the morning, he went out and fetched Thunder. Normally, you had to throw a loop on a horse, but when he talked to Dusty the day before about Thunder coming to his whistle, he had been serious.

  The morning was chilly and the springtime grass was already tall, and it was wet with dew. The remuda was frolicking about. Thirty-two horses. Johnny’s eyes were on the coffee-brown stallion. The animal stood nearly seventeen hands and was easily the biggest animal in the herd. These were all mountain mustangs, and usually a mountain horse didn’t grow to be much more than fifteen hands.

  They had bays and there was an appaloosa among them. One horse that was almost jet black, and Bree called him Midnight. No paint horses, though. Johnny believed a paint horse was the result of some sort of inbreeding. He never allowed them in the remuda.

  Thunder was trotting about in the morning air, his mane flying in the morning breeze. Then he saw Johnny and stopped and looked at him.

  Johnny had never been the whistler his pa was. His pa could sit and strum a parlor guitar and whistle a song. But Johnny could make a call like a morning bird. He had learned it from that Shoshone shaman. He gave the call now, and Thunder left the herd and started walking toward him.

  “Mornin,’ old boy,” Johnny said, and rubbed his nose. “Come on. We’ve got us a little riding to do.”

  Johnny started back toward the corral and Thunder fell into place beside him.

  Johnny had already left his saddle across the top rail of the corral. He slid Thunder’s bridle in place and was about to start on the saddle when Bree came walking out.

  “Hey, Pa, where’re you goin’?”

  She was in a split skirt she used for riding, and black boots. Her pistol was riding at one hip. She was in a white shirt and a waist-length jacket that was a sort of neutral tan, and her dark hair was tied into a long braid. A wide-brimmed hat was pulled down tight.

  “Just goin’ for a little ride,” he said.

  “Want some company?”

  They rode along at a leisurely pace. Thunder liked to move with a high-stepping sort of gate, so Johnny let him have his head. They were aiming toward the pine forest at the edge of the valley floor, moving sort of diagonally toward it from the house.

  Bree was riding Midnight, a smaller horse with a sort of quick-stepping gate. Bree was letting him have his rein, too. Johnny had noticed over the years that a true horseman doesn’t try so much to control his horse, as he moves with the horse. Almost like a team. Bree was as natural on a horse as any he had ever seen.

  “So, Pa,” she said. “Where are we going?”

  “Just riding,” he said. He tried to make it sound casual, but she wasn’t bu
ying it.

  “Pa, you never are just riding. That’s one thing I’ve learned about you. You’re never just wandering. You’re always going one place or another.”

  “All right,” he said. “I suppose I should tell you.”

  And so he told her about how it was, being a man who had been shot at as much as he had. How he lived forever on edge.

  “I’ll admit,” she said, “I’ve worried about you over the years. Having to sleep with that gun so close by your bed. When you wake up in the night at the slightest sound and have to check out the entire house before you can go back to sleep. When you’re outside and you’re always checking the trees, watching for snipers. In fact, you’re doing it right now.”

  Johnny realized he had let his gaze drift to a pine that stood a little apart from the others, and was noticing how long the branches were and how easy it would be to climb and to find a perch up there. You would have a clear view of the trail that cut across the valley. If you were going to take a shot at someone riding along that trail, this tree would be the perfect one.

  He had been aware of this tree before today. He had watched it grow over the years. He was aware of every tree on this side of the valley that would be good for a sniper to use.

  “I see your point,” he said.

  They reached the edge of the pine forest, and Johnny gave Thunder a nudge to their left, and the horse turned in that direction and began to move along at a walk. Johnny would swear this horse knew what he was thinking. He seemed to know when they were just riding with a destination in mind, and when they were scouting. And scouting was what they were doing now.

  Johnny said to her, “Yesterday morning, when I first stepped outside, I had this feeling that I was being watched. That someone was out here watching the house. I had that feeling again last night when I was standing on the porch. I’m sure it’s nothing. Just an old gunfighter feeling danger where there isn’t any. But I just thought I should check it out. Just to put my mind to rest.”

  She said, “You know, Pa, we live in a land that’s beautiful and wonderful, but you have to be careful. You’ve said that, yourself.”

  Johnny nodded. “True. But there are times when you can take it too far.”

  He gave Thunder’s reins a slight tug to tell him to stop, but the horse was already stopping. Again, the horse seemed to know what Johnny wanted.

  The morning was growing warm and Johnny thought he might take off his jacket. He thought Thunder could use a little breather and maybe a few minutes to graze. He swung out of the saddle and then loosened the girth. Bree was doing the same with Midnight.

  Johnny said, “I suppose it’s about balance. I want balance in my life. Right now, I feel like my life’s not in the balance that I want it to be.”

  Bree was strolling ahead. Some wildflowers were standing tall. Some with long thin yellow petals that kind of opened up like a star. Ginny called them glacier lilies. Just beyond them were some pines that were the beginning of the forest that covered the ridges.

  Johnny had seen more than one place where mountain slopes were covered with pines, but at the base of the mountain the forest just ended and a long grassy meadow began. That’s the way it was here. The meadow covered the entire valley floor, and then the forest began again on the ridges at the far side of the valley.

  Johnny looked off at the grass. It was spring and the grass was supple and green. Come August, there would be a lot of brown among it. Right now it stood about eighteen inches tall. His thoughts went briefly to how a man with a rifle could crawl through grass and sneak up on an enemy camp. It had been done more than once. But this grass wasn’t quite tall enough for that, yet.

  He said, “I made some major steps over the past couple of years in finding balance. Finding a way to finally put the death of your mother behind me. The guilt I felt, because of a bullet that was probably meant for me.”

  Bree said, “Aren’t you always the one to say we pass on when it’s our time? Isn’t that what the Shoshone always said? It seems to me it was Ma’s time or the bullet wouldn’t have found her. If the bullet hadn’t been there, it would have been some other thing that took her.”

  “It’s often kind of hard to live by your own advice. You’ll find that out as the years go by. But I’m trying to do that. To accept that it was your Ma’s time and to let the guilt fade away. And I’m finding balance with Jessica and Cora.”

  Bree walked toward a grouping of three pines. One tall one and two shorter ones. Johnny thought quickly about snipers—the tall one would be difficult to climb because there were no branches close to the ground. A man would have to wrap his arms and legs around a tree and work his way up. And the branches, once you got to them, were thin and grew close together. Not the best place for a sniper to make his perch and wait. The other two pines were much smaller and wouldn’t hold a man’s weight well.

  “Want some advice?” she said.

  Johnny grinned. Bree was seventeen. She apparently felt old enough to be giving her old man advice.

  He said, “Sure.”

  “I can see how you want to lay all of the edginess to rest. But don’t stop trusting your instinct.”

  As she spoke, she was looking at the ground near the big pine. The springtime grass grew right up to the base of the trunk. He walked on over to see what she was looking at.

  He saw two distinct boot prints, and a few others. Scattered about were some crimped butts of hand-rolled smokes.

  “A man stood here,” she said. “And from here..,” she turned her back to the forest, “you get a pretty good view of the house. The tracks are recent. Maybe as recent as this morning.”

  Johnny stood beside her and looked at the house.

  “Someone’s been watching the house,” she said.

  He found himself grinning again as he realized maybe he wasn’t too old to take advice from his daughter, after all.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go do some back-tracking.”

  6

  Ginny stood in the parlor, facing so the hearth was in front of her and off to one side and the kitchen doorway was off to the other. To her far right were the stairs, and on the wall directly to her right was the door to her bedroom. The only bedroom on the first floor.

  Josh came in from the kitchen with a cup of coffee in one hand. He and Charles had been off at the new house, putting on the finishing touches, and had come back to the main house for some lunch.

  Josh said, “There’s a lot to running a ranch. More than I ever realized, I guess. Negotiating a price with that buyer in Cheyenne. We’ve gotta get the herd ready to go. This means a second roundup to separate off the brood stock from the steers. I might have to hire a couple more men.”

  He took a sip of coffee. “It’ll sure be nice when the railroad runs a line up this way. Pa says it’ll be coming soon, and he thinks this will be our last long overland trail drive. I think he’s probably right. A trail drive is the kind of thing that’s great to sit by the fire and tell stories about, but it sure is one long hardship when you’re actually doing one.”

  Josh was walking across the room as he spoke and set his cup down on the desk. He was going to take a quick look at the ledgers before he and Charles went back to the new house. He then realized his aunt wasn’t responding to anything he said, and he looked over at her and he saw she was just standing, letting her gaze travel over everything. From her rocker to the hearth to the stairs.

  He walked over to her.

  “Well, Joshua,” she said. “This is your house, now. As soon as your father gets his new cabin built.”

  She looked at him. In her eyes was pride, and he thought he saw some tears forming.

  She said, “You earned it. You’re a fine young man, and you’ll do good things with this ranch. I really believe running this place is what you were meant to do.”

  He put an arm around his aunt’s shoulders. “Have I ever thanked you properly for everything you’ve done for us? Everything you gave up to move
in with us and help Pa raise us?”

  She nodded. “Every single day.”

  He gave her a curious glance.

  She said, “Even without realizing it, just by being the fine young man you are, you’re thanking me. Bree too, and Jack. Even Dusty, though he’s been here only a short time. Just being the family you all are.”

  “I want you to know, you’ll always have a place here. Your bedroom will always be right where it is. Even if you move off somewhere, your room will be right here waiting for you.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Joshua.”

  “You did more than fill in for Ma. I want you to know you’ve made your own place in this family. And we’re all grateful.”

  He gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  She began blinking away tears. “Joshua, you’re going to make an old woman cry.”

  7

  It looked to Johnny like the man hadn’t made any attempt to hide his trail. He had stood beneath a tree at the edge of the woods and watched the ranch, probably using binoculars or a spyglass. He had paced about sometimes, and rolled cigarettes and then thrown the butts on the ground. He had left a clear foot trail to where he left his horse, back a ways in the trees, and then left a clear trail as he rode away up the slope.

  Some of the tracks he had made while standing or pacing about looked old and faded, and others were clearly defined. This told Johnny the man had been out here watching the ranch more than once.

  As Johnny and Bree rode along, following the man’s back trail, Johnny decided to trust his instincts and he pulled his rifle and rode with it across the saddle in front of him. Bree did the same.

  The trail swung north and then down the side of a ridge, and came out in the mountain pass that led into the valley. The pass Johnny had started calling McCabe Gap when they first settled this valley.

  The dirt on the trail was too hard packed to follow any particular set of tracks.