The Long Trail (The McCabes Book 1)

by Brad Dennison

  At first, Josh wasn’t sure where he would go, as long as it was far from the McCabe kitchen. But then, as he rode, he felt a craving, a gnawing inside him, and realized he still had not yet had his morning coffee. Hunter’s, he thought. Hunter could make good trail coffee and should have a pot going.

  Damn, was he mad! He could not believe Aunt Ginny would not only invite a total stranger to sleep in the house, without even so much as consulting any of them. Sure, the house was her domain, which she was constantly throwing in everyone’s face every time anyone disagreed with her. But there was such a thing as common courtesy.

  Hell. If that gunhawk ain’t going to sleep in the bunkhouse, Josh thought, then I am. I’m not going to sleep in that house until he is out of there.

  He followed the narrow trail, at times no larger than a game trail, between two steep ridges, and then the land fell away at either side, and he found himself in McCabe Gap, the back wall of Hunter’s saloon two hundred yards before him. Josh rode around to the front of the building, dismounted, and tethered the animal to the front hitching rail.

  He strode into the barroom, pushing aside the swinging doors with his shoulders, driving his heels into the floor. He found Hunter behind the bar, wiping the dust from dry glasses with a white cloth. He looked up at the sound of the swinging doors bursting open, then did a small double-take when he found it was Josh.

  “Good morning, Josh,” he said. “I don’t usually see you or your father at this time of the morning.”

  “Any coffee left?” Josh asked.

  Hunter nodded. “Let me get you a cup.”

  He set the glass and cloth down on the bar, grabbed a couple mugs, then stepped out and to the stove at the center of the room, where the coffee pot waited. He filled the cups, and handed one to Josh.

  Josh knew Hunter realized something was wrong. Here Josh was, no hat. You almost never saw a cattleman with no hat. And the angry way he burst into the barroom. But far be it for Hunter to ask probing questions. He seemed to like approaching an issue from the side, and he did so now. “So, how’d it go, last night?”

  “What do you mean?” Josh took a sip of coffee.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “He came directly to our place from here, didn’t he?”

  Hunter nodded. “He’s a good kid, Josh.”

  Josh leveled a gaze at him as though he wanted to bore holes through Hunter with his eyes. “How can you say that? He rides in here, out of nowhere, he’s got ‘gunhawk’ written all over him, and he claims, out of the blue, to be Pa’s son.”

  “He’s also got ‘McCabe’ written all over him. Did you take a good look at him, Josh? He’s the spitting image of your father. The way he walks, even the way he carries that gun at his side.”

  Josh winced as Hunter spoke. Why did this anger him so?

  “I don’t know,” Josh said. “I guess so. Maybe. But you can find people who might resemble someone you know. Doesn’t mean they’re related.”

  Hunter shook his head. “No. Don’t necessarily mean that. But too many coincidences, I guess. The way he talks. The look in his eye. The fact that your Pa could have conceived a child at about that time, in the very town, with the very kind of woman Dusty claims to be his mother. An awful lot of coincidences, don’t you think?”

  “No. He’s just an opportunist, trying to cash in on a name. If Pa wasn’t famous, and didn’t have the biggest spread in the area, I doubt we’d ever have heard of this drifter. He would have gone somewheres else, and tried some other game.”

  “I don’t think you really believe that. He didn’t have to risk his life that night, helping Fred and me protect Aunt Ginny and Bree.”

  “And just where did he learn all that? From what I understand he seems to know an awful lot about that sort of thing.”

  “I never asked. Just like your Pa never asked me no questions.” Hunter took a swig of coffee. “What’s bothering you, Josh? Aunt Ginny’s convinced, and so is Zack and me. Take a good look at him.”

  Josh leaned against the bar, his eyes aiming straight ahead, but not really seeing. He took a swallow of coffee.

  “Even better, Josh, take a good look at yourself.”

  Now Josh turned his gaze to Hunter. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Is it that you don’t believe him, or you don’t want to believe him?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Hunter.”

  “Don’t I?”

  Josh drained the cup, and set the cup down on the bar. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  “It’s on the house, like always.”

  “Thanks for that, at least.”

  “Look, Josh. You’re like a son to me. How could you not be, after all we’ve been through? Your family and me? I don’t look lightly at any of this. I had a chance to work with him for a while, and I got to know him. Take the time to get to know him, yourself.”

  Josh wanted to inform Hunter just how wrong the big man was. But he found the words eluded him. Instead, he just turned, and walked out.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Johnny McCabe stood on the porch, his stetson now pulled tightly down over his temples. The chocolate colored stallion was tied to the front hitching rail. In the scabbard was Johnny’s Sharps rifle.

  Aunt Ginny and Dusty stood beside him.

  “I still wish you’d let me ride with you, sir,” Dusty said. “Two’s better than one, considering the number of them raiders.”

  “Someone has to stay here with Aunt Ginny and Bree. Fred’s a good man, but he’s no gunhawk.”

  “And I am.”

  “It’s no insult. That word applies to me, too. And to Zack.”

  Johnny stepped down from the porch, and swung into the saddle. “When Josh comes back, don’t let him come riding after me. If I don’t come back, don’t come looking for me. Stay here, defend this place, and keep the women safe.”

  “I’ll take care of things, sir.”

  Johnny sat in the saddle, looking at him. Really looking at him. It was unbelievable, but the way he stood, the way he wore his gun. Even the look on his face. The set of his jaw. And there was no denying he believed what he said, Johnny realized. He had been ready to defend this place with Hunter and Fred – if the raiders had struck, this place would have been transformed into a battlefield. No con man would risk his life like that, considering that Johnny had so little to offer him materially. This ranch was the largest in the immediate area, and they were comfortable, but they were by no means wealthy. There were cattle barons in Texas and California that made the McCabes look like pikers.

  My son, Johnny thought. The son I never got a chance to know. And here I am, riding off into the mountains to scout those raiders. One man, one tired old man, against all of them. I may not come back.

  “Don’t call me ‘sir,’” Johnny found himself saying. “Any son of mine calls me Pa.”

  “Yessir,” Dusty said, then amended that. “Yes, Pa.”

  Ginny was smiling, and her eyes were glistening a bit. “Be safe, John. And do come back.”

  He said, “Keep tonight’s coffee hot for me.”

  And he turned Thunder and was away.

  On the return ride from Hunter’s, Josh had found himself still not ready to confront anyone at the house. So, he had turned off the trail, and through the woods toward a little creek he knew of. Rabbit now grazed contentedly in the tall grass growing beside the water. Josh had picked a few handfuls of raspberries, as he had had no breakfast, and now, judging by the almost overhead position of the sun above, he was overdue for lunch. However, filling your belly with only wild fruit can have an unsettling effect. A few cramps just below his rib cage had told him to slow down, so he followed the berries with a couple mouthfuls of cold mountain water, then lied down in the grass.

  He had discovered this little creek when he was eleven years old, out riding about when he could escape from Aunt Ginny and her studies. Pa probably knew about it. Pa knew every square foot o
f this valley. But Josh had never mentioned it to anyone because he wanted it to be his secret place. Back then, he had sat in the grass overlooking the water and talked to Ma, and imagined in his mind maybe she could hear him. And who knew? Maybe it was like Pa said, the body can die away, but the spirit continues. Maybe she really did hear him.

  As the years went by, and Aunt Ginny turned the responsibilities of his education over to Pa, Josh found less time to visit this little creek, and he began to dismiss his visits with Ma as little more than sentiment and imagination.

  He had brought a girl here once, when he was seventeen. The daughter of one of the farmers who were plowing the earth on the other side of McCabe Gap. May Beth Harrington. She was fifteen, and knew how to ride a horse well, which surprised Josh. He had little respect for farming as a rule, or any work you couldn’t do from the back of a horse, but she rode almost as well as Bree.

  There had been other girls before May Beth, daughters of ranchers from the area who might attend a barn dance, and Josh would do-se-do with them, and then maybe receive a kiss before the night was over. But May Beth was his first he had taken things beyond a kiss with. He smiled at the memory. They had spent the afternoon in this tall grass, two young lovers under the warmth of a late spring sun.

  As they lied in each other’s arms, Josh felt like all the world was filled with wonder, and he had never felt more centered or calm inside. This business of carrying on his shoulders the weight of being Pa’s son, for a while, seemed somehow kind of minimal. He could imagine maybe building a small cabin up here, he and May Beth, and giving Pa lots of grandchildren. And operating the ranch side-by-side with Pa, until Pa began to get on in years, then Josh would take over the operation, and this cabin he had built for May Beth and himself would become the ranch’s headquarters.

  But oddly, after that afternoon, he found his affections for May Beth began to oddly dissipate. He would think of that memorable afternoon, but he increasingly more seldom actually thought of May Beth herself. And at the next barn dance, he found her affections for him were less than might be expected, too. She was dancing with another cowboy, laughing, with eyes only for him, and Josh found he did not mind too much. He did manage one dance with her, but all she would do was smile with a hint of blush, talk about the price of corn and he talked about the price of beef, and then when the song ended, she was back with her new cowboy, and Josh’s only concern was joining some of the other men in a ride to Hunter’s for some cold beer.

  There hadn’t been a lot of girlfriends in Josh’s life. After all, on the frontier, single women of marrying age were extremely few. There was one of Alicia Summers’ girls, Jolene her name was. He had never learned her last name. They had taken something of a liking to each other, and a few times, when they were each a little too lonely, they had gotten together and she had never charged him. But he had taken no one else to this spot.

  The creek was roughly circular, about fifty feet across, but fed by two small mountain streams, and it drained into the larger stream that cut across the valley, and eventually fed a small pond east of McCabe Gap some called McCabe Lake. A perimeter of grass surrounded the creek, and was sometimes used by deer to bed down at night. Three different game trails wound their way down through the woods to converge on this creek.

  Josh sat up after a time, leaning back on one elbow, and let his gaze drift along the water of the creek. A humming bird zipped along, then darted away. A breeze kicked up, rippling through the grass and touching his hair.

  “What do I do, Ma?” he said aloud, the first time he had actually spoken to her in years. “I’m so riled at the very thought of having him in the house. That gunhawk, claiming to be my brother.”

  He was replaying his conversation with Hunter in his mind. What it amounted to, what Hunter was trying to say by suggesting he look at himself, was that here was Josh, trying so hard to be like Pa, and then this stranger walks in, a son no one had known about, who actually is like Pa, without even trying.

  And maybe Josh didn’t like the idea of no longer being the only son of Johnny McCabe. Jack was Pa’s son too, of course, but Jack was off in school, on his way to being a doctor. He would settle in some built-up place, probably, like San Franciso, or maybe he would stay east. Chicago, or Boston, or even New York. He would make his mark on the world through medicine. But it was Josh who would be riding the trails alongside Pa, and building the ranch alongside him, and eventually taking over for him. And it was Josh who lived forever in Pa’s shadow. Maybe he didn’t like the possibility of now being trapped in Dusty’s shadow, too.

  Josh did have to admit Dusty looked a lot more like Pa than Josh himself did. Josh took a lot after Ma, with the shape of his face and the color of his hair. Josh’s bone structure was narrower than Pa’s, more like Ma’s, and as such, he would never have the physique of Pa. Dusty seemed to be built more like Pa, with wider shoulders, thicker forearms and wrists. And the square jaw, the firm nose. His hair color was even similar.

  Maybe worst of all, Dusty carried his pistol as though he really knew how to use it.

  Maybe Hunter was right. Hunter hadn’t used the word jealous, but as Aunt Ginny had always said, if the shoe fits..?

  “I don’t know, Ma,” he said aloud. “I try so hard to be like him. It’s all I ever wanted. To be good enough to ride beside the man who men talk about over campfires and in saloons. And when I make a little progress, like the way I handled Reno and the boys, I meet someone like Dusty who seems to be so easily what I try so hard to be.”

  Maybe you’re trying too hard to be someone you’re not, Josh. Try being yourself. You might find you, as your own man, are someone every bit as worth respecting as your father.

  How about that, he thought with a smile. He could imagine he almost heard her voice.

  He wanted to share Pa’s belief in spirits, but he knew wanting to believe wasn’t the same as actually believing.

  “Well, Rabbit,” he said to the horse, as if the horse could actually understand him, “time to mount up and ride back.”

  Josh had loosened the cinch, but now he tightened it again, pushed a foot into the stirrup, and swung into the saddle. He was twenty, and felt like a failure. He was afraid he would always be lost in the long shadow of a man whose greatness he could aspire to, but never fully achieve. Josh knew cattle and horses, and he knew he could one day take over the ranch when Pa was ready to hand its reins over to him, and he could gain respect among other ranchers. But men would never talk about him over campfires.

  Why was that so important to him? Why did he even care what other people thought of him? Pa had often said, as long as he had the respect of Josh and Jack and Bree, he didn’t care what anyone else thought about him. How do you gain that sort of confidence? That kind of independence?

  Just another way he was failing to measure up to his Pa.

  Josh turned Rabbit away from the creek, and as they moved toward the line of trees beyond the perimeter of grass, Josh cast a glance over his shoulder back to the water. “I love you, Ma.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Josh dismounted outside the stable. Fred had been stepping out of the tackle room at the side of the building, and seen him riding up. He reached for the rein. “I’ll take him, Josh.”

  “Thanks, Fred. Oh, and I’m sorry I rode off so abruptly this morning. I had a lot on my mind.”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  Oh, well. Now to go apologize to Pa and Aunt Ginny. Pa was right – manners had to be preserved. Josh had never stormed out of the house like that before, and he never intended to again. And after all, this was his home, too. He was not going to vacate it simply because of a tense situation. If anyone was going to bolt, it would have to be Dusty.

  But Josh wasn’t yet quite up to going in and facing the music. He wanted to take the edge off, first. He thought briefly of saddling another horse and riding back to Hunter’s. Nothing took the edge off like a couple cold beers. However, he didn’t feel like riding all the
way back to town. Then, he thought of another good way to take the edge off, one that had always worked for him. Target practice. He and Pa kept a box of empty cans in the tackle room just for that purpose.

  Josh carried the box out to the corral fence. He stood six cans on the top rail of the fence, then took thirty paces back. Beyond the corral was an empty expense of meadow, as the remuda was grazing off to the other side at the moment. He drew his gun, and with powder and ball and a percussion cap he took from his vest, he loaded the sixth chamber, then returned the gun to his holster.

  Josh readied himself, letting his hand hang above his pistol. He kept his fingers loose, relaxed but not limp. He drew a deep breath, then whipped his gun free of the holster, brought his arm to full extension, and fired at each can, trying to pull back the hammer and pull the trigger all in one smooth continuous motion. Like Pa had taught him.

  From the kitchen doorway, Aunt Ginny and Bree were watching. Six shots. Four cans flew from the rail. They watched as Josh shook his head with disgust at himself, then produced a second, loaded cylinder from his vest, and began removing the spent cylinder from his pistol.

  “I don’t know what we will do with that boy,” Aunt Ginny said. “Always trying to be like his Pa. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, and Josh is like his Pa in more ways than he realizes, but he’s like your mother in some ways, too. The blend of the two is part of what makes a unique individual. If only someone could tell him that.”

  “No time like the present,” Bree said, and started for the corral.

  “Bree,” Aunt Ginny said. “I’ve tried. He’s never listened to me.”

  “He’ll listen to me if he knows what’s good for him.”

  Josh lined up six more cans, then took thirty paces back, and saw Bree striding toward him. Her dark hair was tied into a tail that swung behind her as she strode, and she wore a white blouse and tan split skirt, and black riding boots. She would have lived in levis had Aunt Ginny allowed her, but her aunt was adamantly against that. A lady does not wear britches! Today’s outfit was one of Bree’s compromises.