“There’s still so much I don’t know,” he said. “So many questions I’d like to ask her. I started out to find myself. To connect with my past. But I don’t really know much more than I ever did.”
“What kind of questions?” Lewis asked.
“Like, who my father is. What my name really is. I don’t even know my full name. I mean, what kind of name is ‘Dusty,’ for god-sake?”
Annie smiled. “Your name is Dustin. Dustin McCabe. I never heard Rosie mention a middle name. Your father is Johnny McCabe.”
Dusty blinked with surprise. “The gunfighter?”
She nodded.
Lewis said, “I see you’ve heard of him.”
“Who hasn’t?” Dusty asked. “They speak his name on a level with Hickok, Clay Allison, John Wesley Hardin.” He was going to add, Sam Patterson, but thought better of it.
Annie said, “Most of his reputation was established long before he ever rode into Carson City, which is where she, Lewis and I were at the time. But occasionally we hear something about him. He had gotten married a year or so after he rode through, and started a small ranch near ‘Frisco. His wife died, three or four years after they were married, I think. They say she caught a bullet meant for him, but you know how stories like that are. They grow as time passes. They say he now has a spread in Montana Territory. He has a couple sons, probably about your age.”
Dusty thought about that for a moment. “But how could anyone know for certain, considering..,” he glanced to Annie, “no offense, but considering the line of work she was in. All the men she must have been with.”
Lewis shrugged. “Rosie always said she somehow knew. She had a feeling. Women can tell that sort of thing sometimes. And we all saw the resemblance. Even now, looking at you, you’re the spitting image of him. He wasn’t much older than you when he swaggered into the barroom that night. The way your face is shaped, the way you walk. It’s almost like looking into the past.”
Dusty nodded slowly. “Johnny McCabe. I guess I don’t know quite what to think about that. I hadn’t been really expecting to ever find my mother, not really. I mean, it was a real long-shot. And even if I did, I figured finding my father would be out of the question. And I certainly wasn’t expecting him to be someone like Johnny McCabe.”
Lewis refilled Dusty’s glass, and Dusty took a slug, then asked, “Where did she get the name Dustin?”
Annie said, “Her father - your grandfather. You were named after him. Dustin Callahan. He was a trapper, sometimes an Army scout. He took up with a Ute woman, and they settled in a mountain cabin in the Tahoe area.”
“Did she ever mention having any brothers or sisters?”
“No. She was never one to talk much about herself, but I gathered by what she did say that she was an only child.”
“So, I’ve got Indian blood in me,” Dusty said. “And my father is Johnny McCabe.”
He then asked, “Did he know about me?”
“No,” Annie said. “He was in town just one night. He rode on the next morning. That was back when we were working out of a mining camp a couple days’ ride out of ‘Frisco.”
Lewis nodded at the memory, agreeing her account of the events. “Eighteen fifty-eight, I believe. Long before we bought this place. That was a year before the gold rush. The Comstock Lode. This was all just empty desert country, back then.”
Annie gave a weary shake of her head. “Lord, those were wild times.”
Dusty listened to the talk, but his mind was on what he was learning about his background. About his father, and how he came into the world. He was aware of the ways of the world; once he had learned his mother was a saloon whore, he knew the probability of how he had been born. But that was before he knew his father’s name. He had never met Johnny McCabe, and most of what he had heard about him was probably tall tales, but at least his father no longer seemed entirely faceless. And as the facelessness vanished, Dusty felt a touch of anger rising. Even though he knew this anger was not rational, it was still very real.
“So,” Dusty said. “He rode into town, got a little drunk, whelped a child, and rode on without even a backward glance?”
Annie said, “He didn’t just get a little drunk. He sat down at a table and began pouring the whiskey down. How he ever made it up the stairs, I’ll never know. The following morning, his brother and another man, Zack Johnson, rode in to get him. They had to practically carry him out.”
“Zack Johnson. I’ve heard of him, too. A Texas Ranger, or at least he was at one time. That name comes up around camp fires every so often.”
“Apparently he’s a friend of your father’s.”
Lewis said, “Don’t fault him none for that night, getting drunk like that. He had a powerful hurt riding with him. You could see the pain in his eyes the moment he stepped into the barroom. I was tending bar, and the look in his eyes, the pain, caught my attention even more than the way he wore his guns. He ordered a bottle of whiskey, dropped a fistful of silver dollars on the bar, enough to pay for a week’s stay in the best hotel in town, and said to keep bringing the whiskey to him until he fell over.
“He didn’t say what was behind the pain he was feeling, that he was trying to numb with all that whiskey. And if he ever told Rosie, she never told us. But like I said, you could see it in his eyes.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Annie said, “I don’t think paying for a saloon woman was the usual way he conducted himself. You work the saloons enough years, you develop a sort of feeling about people.”
“He didn’t buy Rosie, either, if that’s any consolation. Rosie told us she never took any money from him. And when those two men came in to fetch him, I called one of them over to the bar and gave him back the cash your father had dropped on the bar. I never could bring myself to even take out enough for the three bottles of whiskey he poured down.”
“My God,” Dusty said, his sudden anger now fading. “Three bottles?”
Lewis nodded. “I’ve known men who drank themselves to death on less than that.”
“What do you suppose? What do you suppose could have driven a man to that kind of hurt?”
“I don’t know. But the look in his eyes kind of haunted me. For a little while afterward, I’d have nightmares about it.”
Dusty finished his whiskey. Since taking something for free went against his grain, he insisted on sweeping up. Lewis and Annie told him he was welcome to remain as long as he was of a mind to. They considered any child of Rosie’s to be family.
Dusty took a room upstairs, and Lewis paid to have his clothes washed at a laundry a few buildings down the street, and Dusty scrubbed away the trail dust and the sweat in an iron tub out back. He also took a straight razor to the whiskers that had been growing on his chin and upper lip since he had left Arizona.
He insisted on working about the saloon every day to pay for his keep, sweeping the floor and scooping up empty glasses and bottles, and after a time, pouring beer.
He would check in on Rosie, hoping to find her awake, but she never was. The town doctor, a thin old man in a jacket that sort of bagged on his bony frame, and with a bowler perched atop his head, would visit twice daily, use a stethoscope to listen to her breathing and her rapid, shallow heartbeat, and stare at his watch as he checked the pace of her pulse. Then, he would simply shake his head sadly.
Four days after Dusty had ridden into town, his mother died, without having regained consciousness. Dusty never had the opportunity he had ridden so far to find. To talk to his mother, to get to know her.
During her final moments, her face now deeply yellowed and her abdomen swollen with liver disease, she would utter words he couldn’t make out, and her eyelids would occasionally flutter. The old doctor sat at one side of the bed, and Dusty at the other, holding her small, bony hand in his.
“I’m here, Ma,” he said. “It’s been a lot of years, but I’m here.”
Annie, standing behind him, placed a hand on his shoulder. “We’re all here,
Rosie.”
Lewis stood by the foot of the bed saying nothing, his eyes glistening with wetness.
Finally, Rosie took one shuddering breath, then another, and then she breathed no more.
“She’s gone,” the doctor said.
Lewis and Dusty buried Rosie behind the saloon. There was a small cemetery outside of town. Nothing more than a few graves dug into the dirt, with wooden crosses or headmarkers. Lewis and Annie wanted her buried behind the only home Rosie had known since the cabin she had been raised in. Dusty had insisted on doing all of the shovel work himself, and then using an iron poker heated in the saloon’s wood stove, he burned his mother’s name into a wooden plank. Her exact birth date was unknown, so below her name he simply burned, D.1878.
“You’re welcome to remain with us as long as you like,” Lewis said that night, they shared a supper of beans and steak. “You’ll always have a home here with us.”
“Thanks,” Dusty said. “That means a lot to me. But in the morning, I think I’ll be riding on.”
“Will you be back?”
“Probably. Eventually.”
“Where are you headed? Back to Arizona?”
But Annie knew. She said, “Montana.”
Dusty nodded.
Lewis said, “Good luck, son. I hope you find him.”
The following morning, as the eastern sky lightened to a steel gray and the stars overhead faded away, Dusty led his horse from the livery stable. He swung into the saddle, thinking to turn his horse toward the edge of town, but on an impulse, he rode instead toward the saloon, and to the small grave behind it.
He sat in the saddle, his hat in one hand as he looked down at the plank, which struck him as seeming so small against a backdrop of a barren ridge that rose to a sharp-looking edge, maybe five miles in the distance. ROSE CALLAHAN. D.1878.
He wanted to say something. If nothing else, then at least goodbye. But a spoken word would somehow seem out of place. There was a sort of solemnity, almost a reverence, to the silence this morning. A silence that did not need to be broken.
He felt, somehow, she had known he was at her bedside, and she had known who he was. And she knew he was here now. Words did not need to be spoken.
He returned his hat to his head, turned his horse away, and left the town of Baker’s Crossing behind him.
FOUR
There was one stop Dusty wanted to make before he lit out for Montana. A little way station a few hours outside of Baker’s Crossing.
Dusty did not think he knew what love was. He thought maybe the word was used too much - by women who were lost in the romance of romance, waiting for their knight-in-shining-armor to come and save them from a life of loneliness, and by men who were simply trying to satisfy their needs in bed. Somehow, amazingly when you thought about it, despite the vast difference in the needs of men and women, many would find some sort of middle ground and make a life with each other.
Dusty had never used the word love simply to gain what he wanted. And he never intended to. Dusty knew what it felt like to be an unwanted child, a bastard with no name and no sense of identity. He would be damned if he would take a chance on bringing a child like that into the world. Sure, he had known more than one girl, and gotten intimate with some of them, but only when he cared about them. Never casually, and never with a saloon whore. Never to simply release animal passions.
He was finding he cared deeply about Haley Anderson. Moreso than had ever felt about any other girl before. He had last seen Haley five days earlier, and wanted to see her again before he lit out for Montana. He wanted to tell her of his background. Not only the information he had learned at Baker’s Crossing, but also of Sam Patterson. If she would still have him, the once he had returned from Montana, they could begin making some sort of plans. He could return to Arizona, work for Mr. Cantrell for a while and save his money, and then he could start his own spread, and he and Haley could build a life together.
He had ridden away from that little way station with no knowledge of his background at all, other than his mother’s name. Now, even though he had not quite met his mother, as she had never gained consciousness, he had been there when she died and he felt she somehow knew he was there. And from Lewis and Annie he had learned much about her. He now also knew his father’s name, and for that matter, his own. Dustin McCabe. He was thinking about maybe adding Callahan as his middle name. Dustin C. McCabe. A name he could sign, like when he was homesteading the land that would be the headquarters for his cattle outfit. The place where he and Haley would raise their children, if they would have him. And he now had a name he could give his children.
The sky was covered with a thin, steely gray overcast as he drew within sight of the way station. The day was hot, but not quite as severe as it had been when he had first ridden to this place. He dismounted in the front yard, and gave the rein a couple of turns about the hitching rail.
The front door opened, and a man stepped out. A little taller than Dusty, with shaggy white hair and a beard. He wore cover-alls, and a faded plaid shirt. “Can I help you?”
Haley’s father, apparently.
“Yes, sir. Mister Anderson? I’m Dusty.” He figured she must have told her father about him.
“No, my name’s Timmons. The Andersons pulled out three days ago.”
“Pulled out?”
“Yeah. Anderson - he quit his job. He and his daughter hopped the stage east, and were gone. Me, I’m a shotgun rider for the stage line. I’m runnin’ the station until they find someone.”
Gone? Old man Anderson must have been really shaken by what had happened to his daughter while he was away. But was he taking her to Oregon to farm, as was his original plan, or was he taking her back east? Either way, he would have taken the eastbound stage.
“Hey,” the old man said. “Did you say your name was ‘Dusty?’”
Dusty nodded.
“I got something in here for you. Come on in.”
Dusty followed the man into the building. Timmons took an envelope from the table and handed it to him. Written on the front of the envelope was the word Dusty, in a flowing hand.
“It’s from Miss Anderson,” the old man said.
Dusty nodded. “Thanks.”
“Well? You gonna open it?”
Dusty wanted to read it in private. He tucked it into a pocket in the front of his buckskin shirt. “Later. Right now, I need some water and oats for my horse.”
“Water’s out front. Oats are in the barn. Help yourself.”
When his horse was comfortable in a stall with a feedbag over its head, Dusty sat on the hay strewn floor, his back against the stable wall, his hat resting on the floor beside him, and pulled the envelope from his shirt.
Sam Patterson had insisted he learn how to read. “A man can’t get nowhere in life without knowing how to read and write.”
It turned out Sam had been a bank teller before becoming a guerrilla raider during the War. He was an educated man, and though he had left that life behind him, his education still remained. It no longer showed in the way he spoke, but it was still there, lying in the back reaches of his mind. He insisted on sharing it with Dusty. There were no text books to use, but using charcoal on the flat side of a board, and sometimes simply a stick in the dirt, Sam Patterson taught the orphan kid named Dusty how to read and write.
Dusty tore open the envelope. Haley had flowing, beautiful penmanship. She was as skilled and artful with a quill pen as he was with a pistol. He was not surprised.
“My Dearest Dusty,” it began. “I know not if you will ever return to the way station, and as such receive this letter. I knew you for only one night, but it was the grandest night of my life, and I feel like I have known you forever. This said, I hope you will return, and find this letter.
“I told my father about how you saved me. I told him you slept in the barn. Forgive me the lie for the sake of discretion. But my father is no fool, he knows the ways of the world, and he knows I have come to
care for you deeply in the short time I have known you.”
She did not use the word love. Dusty found himself smiling.
“My father said that he will be forever grateful to you, and hopes to one day meet you, but he cannot bear to remain at this way station a moment longer. Every moment here is one moment longer of subjecting me to danger, he said. Even had he been home when those men rode in, he would have been helpless to stop them.”
She used words well, he noticed. He liked that.
“We are bound for Oregon in the morning. We have not had the time to save the money he had wanted, but he does not care. We will settle in, probably homestead, get a cabin up before winter, and put in a crop of alfalfa.
“I do hope you come searching for me, Dusty. I cannot bear another day without you. You did not say how you feel about me, but I believe I saw it in your eyes, and felt it in your touch. I do so hope you will come to Oregon.”
She signed it, “Yours forever, Haley.”
Yours forever. He liked that. He really liked that.
He figured if he lit out now, riding hard, he would be able to overtake them. But what about Montana?
He had thought his quest would end once he found Rose Callahan, but in fact it had only begun. Could he abandon it now? He had never dared even hope that he would be able to learn his father’s name, and now he had a chance to actually meet the man. To look him square in the eye, to shake his hand. Could he simply turn away from this and ride to Oregon?
He supposed he could go to Oregon, spend some time with Haley and see if something permanent developed – he could never push a plow, but Oregon was also good cattle country, or so he had heard. Montana wasn’t going anywhere. It would always be there, for a time when he was ready to go there and find Johnny McCabe.
Yet, he had the feeling if he went to Oregon now, the opportunity to go to Montana would simply never arise. Running a ranch, especially a little one-man operation, was a seven-day-a-week job, with no time off for vacations. And if Haley would have him, they would be raising children. The years would pass. Johnny McCabe would grow old, and eventually die, and Dusty would be in Oregon, never having met the man.
The Long Trail (The McCabes Book 1) Page 4