“If I had to be away, they’d be checkin’ on you. And besides, they’re family now, through marriage.”
“Harlan, please be careful.”
“I got my horse saddled outside, and I hitched up the wagon. I want you to go into town. Tell Marshall Falcone to get hisself out to the McCabe place.”
“Will he come? His jurisdiction ends at the town line.”
“Tell him Harlan Carter says to do it, and I’m bettin’ he’ll do it.”
She left her chores behind, and went outside and climbed into the wagon.
“But will I be safe?” she said. “With that rider around...”
“You’ll be goin’ in the opposite direction of the one he was ridin’ in.”
“Harlan, please be careful.”
“Best get goin’.”
He was tall enough that he could kiss her even while she was in the wagon seat and he was standing on the ground.
Then she clucked the horses into motion.
Harlan watched her ride away from the farm and then out to the trail and turn right.
He then saddled up, and with his scattergun held over the saddle in front of him, he started for the McCabe place.
37
In Harlan Carter’s earlier years, he had gained more skill than he was comfortable with at learning how to attack a facility. Whether that facility was a ranch or a farm, a stage depot, or a town itself. Every facility, no matter how well fortified, had points of weakness. Even now, without even really trying, he found his mind working this way with every building he saw. The Second Chance Saloon, in town. The Brewster farm, which wasn’t far from his own. Even the church. It was just something that happened in the back of his mind without him really trying to make it happen. Points of entry. Which windows gave the best visibility, which the worst. How much hurt could a sniper on a roof cause you as you approached the place?
And once he knew the people who lived there, then without even trying he evaluated the ability of each of them. Not only how well he thought they might be able to shoot, but how good they were at strategic thinking, and even how aware they were of what was going on around them.
The McCabe house would be a hard one to attack. Johnny McCabe had situated it and designed it with defense in mind. But no place was entirely attack-proof.
As Harlan understood it, Victor Falcone and his former gang of raiders had attacked from the ridge to the west, covering the quarter or so mile between there and the ranch after dark. They came in two groups and tried to use the element of surprise. They carried torches so they could see, and there was also something about a mob attacking you with torches in their hands that created a sort of primeval fear reaction. Surprise and fear were what Falcone was banking on. He had banked wrong.
From what Harlan could figure, Falcone made two mistakes. One was trying to use the element of surprise on a man like Johnny McCabe. When you have a man as battle-weary and jumpy as McCabe, you really couldn’t surprise him. He was always ready, always alert. The second mistake was trying to instill fear in him. Harlan figured McCabe was afraid of very little, and from the life he had lived and the things he had done, a group of raiders riding down on the ranch would not be one of them.
Harlan hadn’t given this a lot of thought, intentionally. Just one day when he and Emily were at the ranch, at a little reception given after Nina and Jack’s wedding, Harlan stood with a cup of coffee in hand and glanced about the ranch grounds, and these thoughts just sort of flooded into him. The way they did no matter where he was.
So as he rode toward the ranch after finding the lone set of tracks where there should be none, he didn’t even have to think about how he was going to approach the place. That strategy was formed the day Nina and Jack were married. He just never thought he would actually have to carry through with it.
McCabe had built the house near a tangle of bushes, brambles and small trees. This way he didn’t have to worry about being attacked on that side of the house. Anyone trying to get through there on foot, let alone with a horse, would be scratched up and make his fair share of noise. Anyone wanting to approach the house would have to do it from behind, where there was a large open section of valley floor where the McCabe remuda usually grazed. Or west of the house, the direction Falcone had used. Or north, where the center of the valley lay. Where Harlan and Emily had their small farm. It was south, west and north that anyone defending this house would be devoting most of their attention. They wouldn’t give much thought to the tangle of brambles east of the house. So Harlan approached the house by skirting the edge of these brambles.
He kept his horse to a quiet walk. When he was within a hundred yards, he swung out of the saddle. He turned the horse back toward the farm and gave it a slap on the rump, and the horse took off at a slow trot. It would graze and frolic its way back to its home.
With the scattergun in one hand and his pistol on his belt, he got down on all fours and crawled his way through the tall grass between here and the barn, which was in front of the house and to the left a little, if you were standing on the porch looking out.
When was directly in front of the house, about a hundred yards out, he stopped and held motionless. The house looked quiet. No sign of activity at all.
Maybe he was being foolish. Maybe he was just an old outlaw who was jumpy and overly cautious, like McCabe himself. Maybe he would knock on the door and find everything was all right, and find himself feeling foolish for being out here crawling through the grass. And he would have to borrow a horse to get back home. But he would rather feel foolish than not check on the women and have it be that they were in real trouble.
He looked at the roof. During the Falcone attack three years earlier, McCabe had positioned his son Josh up there with a rifle. A man on the roof right now would have a clear shot at Harlan—one of the risks Harlan had to take with this approach to the house. He was easily within a Winchester’s range. A man sitting on the roof with a Winchester or any good rifle would be able to just draw a bead and pick him off. But the house was too far away for Harlan’s revolver or his scattergun.
Gotta get me a rifle one of these days, he thought.
The strategy he had mapped out the day of Nina and Jack’s reception was really designed for night-time approach. Wouldn’t even matter if McCabe and his sons were all armed and waiting. Give him five good men crawling toward the house this way, he thought. Torches, but not lit up. Harlan would have two men at the parlor windows on the east side of the house and one at the kitchen windows. Light the torches and throw them in the windows. All sorts of chaos breaks out when a house is bursting into flames. While the people inside are trying to put the fires out, his men would pick them off. While other men McCabe might have positioned outside came running, Harlan’s two remaining men would pick them off as they approached the house. Five men and five minutes, Harlan thought, was all he would have needed to do what Victor Falcone hadn’t been able to do with more than twice that number of men.
He continued on, working his way through the grass. Eventually he reached a point where the barn obscured his view of the house, which meant anyone inside would find their view of him obscured, also. He stood and ran toward the back side of the barn.
Harlan flattened against the back wall of the barn and peered around the corner toward the house. He now had a clear view of the kitchen door and the stretch of ground between the kitchen door and the corral.
That was when he saw the man lying on his back in the grass. Fred Mitchum, he realized. The wrangler. This confirmed to Harlan that he wasn’t being foolish. There was real danger, here.
A horse was standing idly by the outside of the corral. Looked to be ground-hitched. Cowboy talk for when a rider leaves a horse with a rein trailing on the ground. A horse will act like he’s been tied to something, and will tend not to roam. This horse seemed contented to stand with his head down and chew at the grass.
The saddle had saddlebags and a soogan. Harlan didn’t recognize the horse
but he recognized the look of a man traveling. This could very well be the horse that made the tracks he had seen.
He decided to abandon his plan of stealth. Fred was dead and the women were probably in real danger. He decided speed was now what was needed.
Holding his scattergun in both hands, ready to snap off a shot if necessary, he began a hard run from the barn toward the house. When he walked his gait was long, and when he ran it was even moreso. Long striding steps. He expected a shot to be fired at him at any moment, but there was none and he made it to the wall of the house. He was now at the west side, and the kitchen door was ahead of him.
He went to a kitchen window and allowed himself a quick look.
Miss Brackston, Bree McCabe, Johnny’s wife Jessica and Josh’s new bride Temperence were all tied to kitchen chairs. A man sat in a chair with a gun in his hand. The girl Haley was kneeling on the floor and the two young’uns were in the playpen McCabe had made over the winter.
Harlan had never seen the man before, but he knew the look. He actually had the look, himself. Trail weary, and with some of the light gone from his soul because of all the killing he had done. And this man had the look of a man who was willing to kill again.
Harlan had no idea why the man was here, and had little interest. A man like McCabe makes enemies. Dusty, too. Even Josh and Jack. Harlan’s main concern was ending the threat without any of the women or the two young’uns getting hurt.
He had promised the Lord he would never kill again. He had broken that promise a couple summers earlier, when he helped Jack defend the town against outlaws. He had again promised the Lord no more killing.
“Lord forgive me,” he said quietly.
He reached over and knocked on the kitchen door, and then turn and ran toward the barn.
38
Sitting and waiting has a way of lulling your mind into a sort of awake-but-not-really state, and that was what the man was falling into as he sat with his gun in his hand. The women tied to the chairs looked scared and a little restless. The one kneeling on the floor was focusing on the children.
But then the knock at the kitchen door jarred him back to full awareness.
“Huh?” he said.
The girl on the floor looked toward the door.
“Don’t you even think about it, missy,” the man said and got to his feet.
The ones who were tied to the chairs were looking at the door, and then at each other.
The man said, “Don’t none of you make a sound. Not one of you. I don’t like to kill a woman, but I’ll put a bullet in you if’n I have to, and won’t lose a minute of sleep over it.”
The door had a window with curtains, and he pushed one curtain back for a look at the side yard. No one was there.
“What in tarnation,” he muttered.
He opened the door, gun ready. The steps leading up to the door were empty.
He stepped out, looking toward the corral where his horse stood, idly grazing. Then he looked toward the barn and saw a man running from the house.
The man raised his gun, cocking it as he did so, and fired off a shot toward the man who was running, but his target pushed in through the barn doors at the last second and the shot missed him.
Who could that feller be, the man asked himself. He thought he had accounted for everyone. But he had forgotten about the wrangler, so he might have missed someone else. When you’re observing a house from a distance through a spyglass, you don’t always get a totally complete picture.
Then it occurred to him who this man he was. He hadn’t seen him in a number of years—he had lost count.
He ran for the barn, keeping his gun ready. If the man tried to step out and snap off a shot at him, he would be ready.
But there were no shots fired.
He stepped into the barn. It was dark in there, but not so dark he couldn’t see. Not like a nighttime dark. More like a room that’s been closed up and the curtains drawn.
There were stalls at the far wall, and a couple sawhorses with saddles draped across them. The place smelled like horses and hay, the way barns usually did.
The stalls were empty, but the man he saw had to be here.
He called out. “Harlan? Harlan Carter? That you?”
There was no response. As if there was no one else in the barn.
He started forward, and checked the first stall. No one was there.
Had he been seeing things? The way the man had run. The way he moved. Not to mention how tall he was. It had to be Carter.
“Harlan,” he called out. “I thought you was dead all these years. Come on out so we can talk.”
He tried the next stall. It was empty.
It couldn’t be Harlan Carter, he decided. It had to have been ten years since Carter had disappeared. Maybe fifteen. No one had heard from him in all that time. Many assumed he had to be dead. But the resemblance was startling.
And what would Harlan Carter be doing here? Was he working for Johnny McCabe? Maybe McCabe had hired him to protect the women while all the men were gone on their cattle drive?
There were very few in the world as dangerous as Harlan Carter. He would be the ideal man to hire for such a job. And yet, the man with the gun couldn’t imagine the Harlan Carter he remembered taking a job like that. Carter had been the leader of their gang of raiders and outlaws. He didn’t take orders from any man. He gave them.
He checked the third stall. It was empty.
He checked the other stalls one by one, and found they were the same. The man he thought might be Harlan Carter wasn’t there.
Then he found the second door. It wasn’t like the double doors at the other side of the barn. The double doors most barns had. This was a single door, like what you would find in a house. And it was hanging open.
The man let out a curse, then charged through the door and ran back to the house. He had left the women unattended in there, and he had been in the barn long enough to allow the man he was hunting to have made his way back to the house. A good piece of strategy, keeping him preoccupied with the barn. Something the Harlan Carter he remembered might have thought up.
The kitchen door was hanging open, also. He had left it that way. He took the three steps in one leaping stride and charged into the kitchen, and found Harlan Carter standing alone in the middle of the kitchen, facing the door. A gun was in his hand.
“Howdy,” Harlan said, and pulled the trigger.
The gun went off like a cannon, belching flame and smoke. The man felt an impact like a strong punch in his chest, and was driven back through the doorway. He landed hard on the ground beyond the back steps.
Harlan followed the man outside, his gun ready in case his shot hadn’t been as good as he thought it was. In case the man was outside waiting with his own gun ready. But Harlan found his shot had been true. The man was lying on his back in the dirt, and a dark blood stain was growing on the front of his shirt.
Harlan kicked the gun out of the man’s grip, then knelt down by him. That was when he realized he had seen this man before.
“Moody?” Harlan said.
The man was dying. His eyes were fixed toward the sky and had the haunted look of a man whose spirit was about to leave his body. But he was still breathing, and he heard what Harlan said, and he nodded his head.
“What’re you doing here?” Harlan said. “What did you want with these women?”
Harlan heard the scuff of a boot sole on the dirt and saw motion with his side vision. He glanced over and up to see Bree was there. And Jessica. Harlan had come into the kitchen to find Haley already cutting the others loose from where Moody had tied them to chairs, and he had them all take the young’uns and get into the parlor. Less likely to be hit by stray bullets, in case there was a gunfight. But now Bree and Jessica had followed him outside.
“Who is he?” Jessica said.
“A man who used to ride with me. A long time ago.”
Bree was a little incredulous at this. She said, “A friend of
yours?”
Harlan shook his head. “No, ma’am. The life I led back then—I didn’t have no friends.”
Moody was still breathing, but barely. Raspy, shallow breaths. Harlan wished he had shot a little lower. Gut shot him, maybe. He would have lasted longer. As it was, with the bullet dead center in his chest, Moody didn’t have more than another minute or two left on this Earth.
“Moody,” Harlan said. “What do you want here? What do you want with these women?”
Bree said, “Why do you want to kill Charles Cole?”
Moody said, “Carter. You ever thought it would end like this?”
Harlan nodded. “I’m surprised you and I both lived this long.”
Then Moody took one rasping breath, and he breathed no more.
Harlan rose to his feet. He said, “Now we’ll never know who sent him.”
Jessica stood with one arm folded over her stomach, and the other arm across her chest and her hand on her shoulder. Covering herself in a sort of defensive way Harlan had seen women do over the years when they were afraid.
She said, “What makes you think someone sent him?”
“Man like Moody, he didn’t kill just for the sake of killin’. In a way, he was one of the least violent men I ever met. Never saw him raise a hand or fire a shot in anger. But if he was paid to kill, then it was a whole different thing. He wasn’t the best I ever seen, but he was good. He wouldn’t have done this, holdin’ you ladies at gunpoint, unless he was paid to. And now we’ll never know who hired him.”
Jessica said, “He was waiting for Charles, and said he intended to put a bullet in him. I don’t think we’re going to get any answers until Charles gets home. Maybe he’ll have some idea as to who would hire a man to kill him.”
Harlan’s gaze drifted over to the body of Fred Mitchum, lying on the dirt. And he noticed something. Fred’s foot was twitching. Could just be death spasms, he thought. Depending on how long he had been laying there.
Trail Drive (The McCabes Book 5) Page 17