Trail Drive (The McCabes Book 5)

by Brad Dennison

  What he didn’t notice was that the man sitting on the bench had watched him ride around to the front of the saloon. He was in a black hat that had taken on a charcoal grayish color because of trail dust, and he wore his gun low and tied down. A long knife was sheathed at his left side. A cigar was clenched in his teeth. He had watched Charles swing out of the saddle and then walk into the saloon.

  The man said, “That him? That tall galoot?”

  Alton nodded. “Yessir. Thet’s him, all right. Stayin’ at the McCabe ranch while all the rest of the men are off on a trail drive.”

  “Jehosaphat Cole.”

  The old man nodded. “Goes by the name Fat, though. Some folks are takin’ to callin’ him Charles. What you lookin’ for him for? He owe you money?”

  The first man shook his head. “Been hired to find him, that’s all.”

  He got to his feet and walked into the hotel. He didn’t stride, he strolled. Like he had all the time in the world, and if the world didn’t like it, the world would just have to wait.

  He walked up the stairs the same way, taking them one at a time. At the second floor, he stopped at room 3, and knocked on the door.

  He had to knock only once. It was opened by a man with graying hair and a matching mustache that turned a corner at either side of his mouth and made its way down to his chin. He had soft hands and a round, soft belly. The look of a man who did his work behind a desk. He was in a vest that belonged to a three-piece suit, but he had taken off the jacket and the tie.

  “Mister Wellington,” he said. “I think I found him.”

  “So, he is here, then.”

  The man nodded. “Appears to be. Just walked into the saloon. A long tall kid. Looks like a cowhand.”

  “A cowhand?” Wellington shook his head. “That can’t be right. Must be the wrong man.”

  “It’s been eight years. A feller can change a lot in eight years. And one of the locals gave the name. Fat Cole.”

  Wellington nodded thoughtfully. “That’s what we were told they were calling him in Texas.”

  “So, you want me to go put a bullet in him?”

  “No, no,” Wellington said quickly, and gave a glance up and down the corridor to make sure they were alone, that no one had overheard. “We don’t want him dead. We want to find him, and present his brother’s offer to him.”

  The man took a draw on the cigar. “What if he don’t take the offer.”

  “Well, then I suppose we will have to kill him.”

  24

  Zack Johnson found a stream that Johnny and Josh had found earlier when they were scouting the area. A stream that was fed by spring run-off, and that by August would be nothing but a dry bed with sprouting weeds.

  This was where they bedded the herd down for the first night. The stream wasn’t very wide or deep, and the beeves drank it dry.

  Ches got a fire started and heated up some beans and coffee. As Johnny stood with a plate in one hand and a tin cup filled with coffee balancing on one of the wagon wheels, he saw a rider approaching.

  Josh walked up to him, a plate in his own hand. “Looks like Chuck coming.”

  Johnny nodded.

  The rider was Charles, and he swung out of the saddle and handed the reins to Ramon.

  He got a cup of coffee, then walked over to Johnny and Josh. “I talked to Hunter and then to Marshal Falcone. They said Chandler rode out this morning with two men. Hunter and Falcone both said they looked like gunfighters.”

  “They say which direction they rode in?”

  “Out toward the Gap. But that’s all. I rode back out to the valley to see if anyone had seen ‘em. That’s why I was late getting out here. I stopped at Carter Harding’s place. He doesn’t miss much that goes on around him, but he said he hadn’t seen any riders all day. I rode out to the ranch and told Fred and he said he’d watch for ‘em.”

  “It’s getting dark. You gonna bed down here for the night?”

  He shook his head. “No, sir. I told Bree I’d be back.”

  Josh grinned. “Well, if you told her something, you’d better be true to it.”

  He nodded. “Absolutely. She’d never let me forget it.”

  Dusty came strolling over, a cup of coffee in one hand.

  They chatted a bit about trail conditions, and how the first day had gone.

  “Six miles,” Josh said. “Not bad at all.”

  “Not at all,” Charles said. “I’ve seen some trail drives where they didn’t get more’n four miles the first day.”

  Charles saddled a fresh mount and headed back toward the valley.

  Josh said, “Here he is, riding back at this late hour because he told Bree he would. She tells us to call him Charles, and we all start doing it just because she says so. Why is it everyone thinks I’m the demanding one?”

  Dusty said, “You’re louder.”

  Night passed easily. The first couple of nights on the trail were always a little tenuous, because the herd was accustomed to grazing lazily on almost countless acres of grass. Being pushed along for miles could make them jumpy, and a jumpy herd could start running at the slightest provocation.

  Matt and Joe rode night herd. Matt had been a fair hand with a harmonica when they were growing up, and as Johnny sat against a wagon wheel with the fire blazing a few yards away and a cup of coffee in one hand, he heard the harmonica in the distance and it made him smile.

  Come morning, Zack was gone again before first light. The drovers got the herd moving as they had the day before. They started with Old Blue, and then the others behind him. It didn’t take as long this time. Within an hour the herd was fully in motion.

  The sky overhead was clear and blue. They were now a little east of the foothills. In some places the grass was thick and other places the ground was gravely and the grass sparse. They crossed a small stream bed that was fed by spring runoff but it was late spring and the stream had been reduced to a trickle.

  They made six miles the second day, which Johnny thought wasn’t bad. By the third day, he expected the herd to be fully into the rhythm of the drive, and they were. By nightfall of the third day, he estimated they had put nine more miles behind them.

  The fourth day began with a few clouds on the southern horizon.

  “Could be rain comin’,” Ches said.

  “Maybe so,” Johnny said. “But as long as the wind keeps coming from the northwest, we should be all right.”

  The wind was strong like it usually was here in the more open lands east of the foothills. The fire was flapping and snapping in the wind as Johnny finished a cup of coffee. Josh was standing with him, a cup in his hand.

  When the coffee was finished, Ches had the team hitched to the chuckwagon.

  “All right,” Johnny said to Josh. “Let’s move ‘em out.”

  He and Josh mounted up and rode out to the herd. Ches put a few shovel-fulls of dirt onto the fire to fully smother it, then tossed the shovel into the back of the wagon and climbed up onto the seat and grabbed the reins.

  The sun climbed into the sky, and the clouds to the south drifted away. The day turned off hot like Johnny expected it to be. By mid-morning his canteen was already half empty, and he knew the water barrel in the chuck wagon was in about the same condition.

  There was a ranch maybe twelve miles south of the previous night’s camping spot. It was run by a man named Bingum, and he had a supply of water. When Johnny and Josh had been scouting earlier, they visited the place. The man had dug a well and hit a gusher, and now had enough to water a herd. Johnny had worked out a deal for water. Two cents a head.

  Johnny said to Josh, “I figure we’ll hit the Bingum ranch sometime tomorrow morning. Probably late morning.”

  Josh nodded. “Would have been nice to be there tonight. There won’t be any water for these critters between here and there.”

  Zack came riding in around noon. He rode directly for the chuck wagon. Ches pulled the team to a stop and hopped down, and Zack filled a tin cup fr
om the water barrel.

  Johnny rode over.

  Zack said, “I found a likely spot to spend the night. About four miles ahead. It’s a hollow in the ground that’s not quite a ravine but more than just a low area. I marked it with a stick and my bandana.”

  Zack had been wearing a red bandana and Johnny noticed it was missing.

  Johnny said, “Four more miles will be make for a good second day.”

  Ches was standing with them. “Takes a good two days to get a herd used to the trail. Should be making eight, ten miles a day after this. Barring anything going wrong.”

  Johnny looked at Zack with a grin. “Ever see a trail drive where nothing went wrong?”

  Zack nodded. “Once. In my dreams.”

  The three men laughed.

  Zack said, “I’m gonna fill my canteen and then flag down Dusty or Ramon and have one of them fetch me a fresh horse.”

  Johnny gave the order for the herd to push on.

  The men had rotated. The drag riders from the previous day were now riding swing. The rotation wasn’t quite even because there had been three riding drag, but it worked out that one rider would ride flank two days in a row.

  Matt and Joe were assisting here and there. Sort of floating from Swing to Flank to Drag. They would also have the first two-hour shift of night herd every night.

  It was late in the afternoon and Johnny was riding a little ahead of the herd. For the previous mile they had been in country where the grass was good. A dark ridge loomed off to the west, and Johnny knew the ridge was dark because of tree growth. Tall pines that reached to the sky.

  At one time, forests of tall pines had covered the east coast, from Georgia to Maine and on into Canada. The first settlers from Europe had cut the trees, needing wood for cabins and fires, and needing to clear the land for cattle and for planting crops.

  Johnny had grown up in Pennsylvania, and much of the land had been clear and open. There were fields of corn and other crops. Corn, wheat, potatoes. Johnny’s father had been a farmer, and he and Matt and Joe had grown up tending the crops alongside him. Some of the hills behind the house had been wooded, but they were maples and oaks and birches and alders. What their father had called new growth. The old pine forest had been cleared away generations earlier, and now hard wood trees were growing in its place.

  When Johnny rode through the ridges of Montana and Wyoming, riding among the tall pines with trunks straight as arrows, he wondered if the feeling was similar to what the first explorers had experienced on the east coast.

  They found the marker Zack had left, his bandana tied to a branch stuck in the ground and flapping in the wind. It was here that they bedded the herd down for the night.

  Ches got a fire blazing and started working on a beef stew. He had pulled some wild onions and was adding them in for flavoring.

  He said to Johnny, “We only got enough wood in the possum belly for another couple of fires. In the old days we could just grab buffalo chips, but there ain’t many buffalo left.”

  Johnny nodded. He said, “When Josh and I met with that rancher ahead, he said there was a source of firewood. A ridge a few miles west of his place. The land isn’t claimed and he said there was firewood. Maybe you can ride out and fill the possum belly there and I’ll send Joe and Matt along.”

  Johnny had a cup of coffee in one hand when Zack came riding in.

  Zack went for the coffee and then said to Johnny, “I met with that rancher Bingum, this afternoon. He knows we’re coming. He has a cord of firewood on hand and I worked out a deal so we can fill the possum belly. Ches told me this morning we were running low on wood.”

  Ches was grinning. “You’re a good man to have along.”

  Johnny bedded down once dinner was done. His joints were hurting and he felt tired deep down to his very soul. He heard the sad sound of Matt’s harmonica in the distance, and his thoughts were that he never would have felt this tired before he was shot, and those were the last thoughts he had until Ches woke him by clanking pots together at the morning fire. Ches was frying up some smoked bacon and boiling some coffee. The eastern horizon was beginning to lighten from black to a dull gray.

  “Hope you boys like the bacon,” Ches said, “because this is last of it. Starting tomorrow, it’s grits and bacon, without the bacon.”

  The men ate their breakfast the way hungry, working men do. Without dallying and with little conversation.

  Then they saddled up. Josh swung up and onto a bay, and the horse started bucking and jumping. These mustangs were often only half-broke. Hardly the riding stock an equestrian back east would prefer. Josh held onto the saddle while the horse spun a couple of times, then arched its back and jumped hard, landing on all four hoofs. Then it reared up and then bucked a couple of times more.

  Kennedy and Patterson were there, cheering on Josh. Zack was laughing and yelling, “Ride ‘em!”

  Johnny was grinning, a cup of coffee in hand.

  The horse then gave a couple of angry snorts and decided to give up the battle.

  By the time the sun was fully above the horizon, the men had the herd moving.

  Josh rode point, and Johnny rode further ahead. Zack rode along with Johnny because there wasn’t much scouting to do at the moment. They would be making Bingum’s place sometime mid-morning.

  Zack’s red bandana was once again tied around his neck. He wore it with the large triangle section hanging behind his back, like a cavalry rider.

  He said, “There’s something about open land like this, and moving a herd along. The hardest job on Earth, but there’s a peace to it.”

  Johnny nodded. “For us, this is the last one. My aching bones won’t miss it at all. I’m getting a little too old for this kind of thing. But my heart’ll miss it.”

  “When the railroad comes, it’ll bring more civilization. Jubilee will grow. The railroad’ll most likely hit Bozeman first, then Jubilee.”

  Johnny thought about how life had changed in the years since he and Zack had brought Ginny and the children to Montana. If you had wanted to mail a letter in those days, you had to ride clear to Bozeman, and if you wanted to do so in the winter, you were plumb out of luck. The trail from the valley to Bozeman was often impassible from November to April. The Cheyenne and the Lakota roamed free back in those days, mostly on the grassy plains east of the mountains, and the Shoshone were to the south. Buffalo herds drifted about in massive herds, chewing on the wild grass and drinking from mountain springs and rivers.

  Nowadays, the Indians had been rounded up and were on reservations. The government had put a bounty on buffalo hides and the hunters had come in and all but decimated the herds. The town of Jubilee stood just beyond the valley and a telegraph line was being strung. The stagecoach came through almost daily, and Johnny figured Zack was right about the railroad. It was only a matter of time before a line of tracks were laid all the way to Jubilee.

  He thought about the little remote canyon where he was going to build a home, where he and Jessica would raise Cora. He wondered if the canyon would be so remote by the time Cora was marrying-age. He wondered how much longer he could retreat into the mountains to escape the oncoming civilization. He wondered if he would eventually grow too old to run anymore, and would just settle in on a front porch with a cup of coffee while civilization sprung up about him like a field of weeds.

  They had been on the trail a couple of hours when Johnny noticed a thin tendril of dark smoke to the south.

  Zack had lifted his canteen for a drink, tipping his head back. When he put the cork back in, Johnny said, “What do you suppose that is?”

  Zack followed his gaze. “Looks like smoke.”

  Johnny nodded. “But it’s the wrong time of day for a camp fire.”

  “A campfire wouldn’t be black like that, either.”

  The tendril disappeared. Then it was back, and it grew into a black cloud that stood stark against the bright blueness of the sky.

  Zack said, “Want me to r
ide ahead and see what it is?”

  Johnny nodded. “I’ll go along with you. Let’s ride back to the wagon first and get some rifles. I have a bad feeling about this.”

  They rode back. Zack got a Winchester long rifle, .44-40 caliber and it took eighteen rounds. Johnny grabbed his Sharps. His vest was in the back of the wagon, so he grabbed ten cartridges from a box of ammunition and dropped them into a shirt pocket.

  Johnny said to Josh, “Keep the herd coming. If there’s any kind of trouble, one of us will ride back and let you know. But keep your eyes open.”

  Josh nodded.

  Josh watched Johnny and Zack ride out, then pulled his pistol and checked the loads.

  Ches was on the ground. He had stopped the wagon so he could dig the rifles out of the back.

  Josh said, “Ches, grab me a Winchester, would you? And keep one close at hand yourself.”

  25

  Johnny and Zack reined up at the top of a low grassy rise and stepped out of the saddle to let the horses blow. Stopping on a rise would make them visible, but would also allow them to see further. A trade off.

  Normally you loosen the cinch so the horse could breathe a little easier, but this time they didn’t. They wanted to be able to mount and ride at a moment’s notice.

  Johnny set his rife in the grass and then drew his revolver and checked the loads. Zack was doing the same.

  Zack said, “The source of that smoke is only about a half mile ahead. It has to be the Bingum ranch.”

  Johnny nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. Josh and I rode this land about a month ago. There’s nothing for miles of the Bingum place in any direction.”

  They said nothing more. Johnny picked up his rifle and opened the action to check the load. A fifty caliber cartridge. This rifle could drop a buffalo at two hundred yards. He had once taken a man out of the saddle at a greater distance than that. He hoped there would be no gunplay, but he had a feeling that before this played out, he would be firing one of his guns. Maybe both.

  “Let’s ride,” he said, and swung into the saddle.