The Long Trail (The McCabes Book 1)

by Brad Dennison

  “Oh, Pa,” she said softly, and felt a tear making its was down her cheek. She quickly reached up to wipe it away. Can’t have any of that. Not now. We all have to be strong for each other.

  She stood and walked to the open doorway, and looked across the corridor and through another open doorway. The guest room, which Dusty was using. Through the doorway, she could see the window that looked down onto the front yard.

  “Dusty,” she said, as though her brother could hear her. “Hurry.”

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Ginny went to the wooden bread box John had made for her, and took a muffin left over from that morning’s breakfast. As she did so, she found herself thinking that while she was proud of the strength Bree was showing, she hoped Bree was not too independent and strong. Ginny felt she herself took those qualities to excess, and often thought they were part of the reason she had never married. Many a man is afraid of those qualities in a woman – in fact, she had met only one who was able to love her in spite of them, and maybe even because of them. Most men, she was convinced, would rather have a woman they could believe is a little helpless, so they can take care of her, and be continually reassured of their masculinity. Ginny thought a man with such insecurities would not be the kind of man she would want to spend her life with, but there were times at night when loneliness would creep in on her, and she would start longing for the husband and family she would never have.

  True, John and Lura’s children were as her own now, as she had helped raise them, but only because sadistic fate had deprived the children of their mother.

  She was tired. Her mind was racing as it often did when she was fighting exhaustion. To look at Josh and Bree, and Dusty, who were seeing their father possibly mortally wounded, made her wonder about a conversation she had had earlier with John on the front porch. If he had taken the children to Pennsylvania to farm, rather than to this valley in Montana, he would not be lying upstairs near death.

  She had tried to discourage such regrets in him, but she now wondered herself. The sleepy little farming towns of Pennsylvania never saw guerrilla raiders descending upon them, or saw women hiding in a root cellar, ready to kill themselves rather than be taken captive. They never saw men swaggering about with death buckled about their hips because failure to do so might be to invite violence, an odd sort of paradox in which the ability and willingness to commit violence actually prevented the threat of it. Usually.

  She realized she was standing at the bread box, stale muffin in hand. But she did not move.

  Oh, John. Why did you have to go and get yourself shot? When you get better, am I going to give you a tongue lashing! All those times you rode off into the mountains, and I thought you were going to get yourself killed and never return. But then, you go and get yourself shot under your own roof.

  Who was she kidding? Was he going to get better? Could even Granny Tate, that mysterious little woman who had learned a mixture of home remedies, practical medicines and even a little voodoo on a plantation in Georgia save him now? Even her skill had its limits.

  She sat at the table, and thought maybe she should go out to John’s desk, and grab some paper and a pen. Jackson would need to be informed of what had happened. This might seem an odd time to be writing a letter, but she needed to keep herself busy. Simply sitting and waiting might driver her mad.

  And yet, what was she to tell in the letter? She decided she might want to wait a day or two. To see if John was going to live. Which, she had to admit, was looking doubtful.

  Pessimism was something Ginny did not believe in. Her dear father had preached against it endlessly, and she had always resisted it. Yet now, she found her strength withering, felt herself caving in. Tears began rolling down her cheekbones, and her shoulders shook with sobs, and she did not fight them.

  Josh, Hunter and Zack sat on the front porch. Josh was in Aunt Ginny’s rocker, and Zack and Fred simply sat on the floor of the porch with their backs against the wall. Zack’s left arm was now in a bed sheet Hunter had fashioned into a sling, and another bed sheet had been wrapped about his shoulder, under his shirt. The bleeding seemed to have stopped.

  Hunter had seen bullet wounds in the War Between the States, and in his years working for Johnny. No need to bother Aunt Ginny with this, he thought. She and Bree were busy working on Johnny. Hunter would see if he could do something about Zack’s wound. To his surprise, the wound wasn’t deep at all. Sometimes, an older model gun that took a lead ball rather than a bullet didn’t do the damage you would think. Apparently, it had been one of these Zack had been shot with. The bullet, or ball, had torn him up, but bruised him more than anything, and had seemed to bounce away. He was cut up fairly bad, but Hunter did not think any bones had been broken

  With Ramon and Koller holding Zack down on the floor, Hunter had poured whiskey into the wound to clean it – the old Texas Ranger captain Zack and Johnny had served under had always kept a bottle for specifically this purpose, and Johnny followed suit. The science of infections was still largely unknown, but trial-and-error had shown that if you clean a wound with alcohol, the chances of infection seemed to be cut down considerably.

  Zack’s shoulder had gone numb from being hit by the bullet, but the whiskey drove the numbness away damn quick, and Zack had screamed and kicked as the fluid worked its way into the torn skin of his shoulder.

  The bleeding had pretty much stopped, but should it start again, Zack knew of another remedy. One time with the Rangers, he had caught an arrowhead in one thigh. After it was cut out, a gaping gash remained, and it was sealed shut with a hot iron. It hurt no worse than the whiskey. If he needed, Hunter could hold him down again, and Josh was pretty good with a branding iron.

  Zack had gone upstairs to check on Johnny. Bree was there, and Ginny came in with the bottle of whiskey, and she and Bree cleaned Johnny’s wounds with it. Johnny hadn’t even flinched once. That was an indication of just how bad Johnny was hurt.

  Zack sat outside in silence, along with Josh and Hunter. Crickets were chirping away in the night. A whippoorwill gave a call from somewhere out in the dark woods. The smell of gunsmoke was still in the air. Soon, Zack knew, the eastern sky would begin to lighten to a sort of gray glow with predawn.

  “Do you think he’s going to make it, Zack?” Josh asked.

  Zack drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “If he was any other man, I’d say no. I’ve seen other men die from wounds that aren’t so bad. But I’ve seen your father do some mighty impossible stunts. If anyone has a fighting chance of living through being shot up like that, it’s your Pa.”

  Josh nodded, trying to feel convinced, yet not succeeding.

  THIRTY

  Dusty’s horse was running hard. It was almost as though the animal understood the gravity of the situation. It knew the terrain, and Dusty let it have its head. It had not slowed as it neared the wooden bridge, but rather charged across it, its iron shoes rapping loudly like gunshots against the wooden planks.

  The horse ran until it was winded. Dusty reined up, and dismounted and loosened the cinch for a few minutes while he let the horse blow, then he tightened the cinch, stepped back into the saddle, and they were off again.

  The horse was starting to show fatigue as they approached the end of the third mile. It slowed to a shambling trot as it carried Dusty up a low hill, and onto a plateau in a gap between two ridges that rimmed this corner of the valley. It was on that plateau that the little town stood.

  By using the position of the constellations as a gauge, Dusty figured the time to be somewhere between two and three in the morning. He was not surprised to find the all of the windows in town dark.

  He followed along the street, and then left the buildings behind, heading north. A half mile north beyond town, Josh had told him. The trouble was, he had never ridden over this particular stretch of land and in the darkness, he may not be able to see something like a building and might ride on past it.

  He rode along, the horse now slowing its pa
ce a bit more. Its coat was lathered from running so hard. He gave the rein a little tug to slow it to a fast walk. It wouldn’t do for the horse to exhaust itself before they could return to the ranch.

  They had been gone from the town’s lone street maybe five minutes when he caught a scent of smoke mixed in with the balsam-rich mountain air. Wood smoke. Maybe a stove. The house must be near. And at the brisk walking pace the horse was keeping, Dusty estimated they had covered maybe a half mile. Then, a dog began barking, off to the right of the trail. A watch dog, which meant a house. Thank you, Lord.

  Dusty rode until the barking of the dog grew louder. Then, at a point where the barking seemed to be no more than maybe fifty yards away, and off to the dead right, he reined up, and called out, “Hello, the house!”

  There was no response, so he called out again.

  A window glowed to life, flickering at first, then becoming a steady, pale yellow. Someone had lighted a lamp. He nudged the buckskin forward, aiming at what he thought must be the front yard.

  The gelding turned to their left, stepping around something Dusty couldn’t see in the darkness, but he decided to trust the animal’s ability eyesight over his own.

  A second window lighted, then a long, thin vertical shaft of light appeared as a door opened.

  “Hello, the house!” Dusty repeated again.

  “Who’s there?” a voice called out. A man.

  “My name’s Dusty,” he said. He wasn’t accustomed to having a full name to give when people asked that question, but then decided he now had one, so he was going to use it. “Dusty McCabe. Johnny’s son. We’ve had a shooting out at the ranch, and he’s been hurt bad.”

  “Ah didn’t know Johnny had a son named Dusty.” It was a man’s voice, rich with a Georgian drawl.

  “It’s a long story. Aunt Ginny fetched me to bring back someone named Granny Tate.”

  A woman spoke. A voice that was old, like cracked leather. “Land sakes, Henry, step aside. Invite the poor boy in.”

  “Come on in,” the man said.

  Dusty stepped down from the saddle, leaving the rein trailing, or ground-hitched, and approached the house.

  The door opened wide, and Dusty stepped into a small kitchen. A stove pipe protruded from one wall, and connected to it was a cast iron stove. A dry sink was built into a cupboard at another wall. The floor was earthen.

  The old woman rose only to Dusty’s shoulder in height. She wore a kerchief over white, wiry hair. Her face, a chestnut brown, was deeply lined with years. She squinted up at him through a pair of metal rimmed spectacles, and rested her weight on a cane.

  She said, “You say you’re Johnny’s boy?”

  “Yes’m.” He had no hat to remove, as he had left it at the ranch.

  She gave him a long look, then nodded. “I can see him in you. And you say, he’s been shot?”

  Dusty nodded quickly. “Twice.”

  “It must be quite bad if Ginny can’t handle it herself.”

  She looked to the man. “Henry, go harness up a buckboard. Be quick about it.”

  Within five minutes, a team was hitched to the wagon, and Dusty was on his way to the McCabe ranch, with Granny Tate at his side. Dusty sat on the hard, wooden seat, holding the reins between the middle and ring fingers of each hand as the wagon creaked and bumped its way along the trail. Henry had offered Dusty some stable space for the buckskin, and to tend it while it rested up. The old woman looked like she had the durability of a dried and brittle leaf shaking in a autumn wind, but she held to the seat with a steadiness that belied her years, the number of which Dusty would not even dare venture a guess at.

  “You folks live here long, Mrs. Tate?”

  “Ain’t no need to call me Mrs. I’m Granny to everyone. Been so since I was about your age. Been a granny doctor most of my life. But in answer to your question, we been here about two years, now.”

  “What’s a granny doctor?”

  “Someone who treats the ills of folks what can’t afford some college-trained white man to come and do the same thing and charge ‘em money for it. Why, I’ve birthed more babies than I could ever count. Set broken bones, fed medicine to the sick. Even dug out a bullet or two. And never charged a cent for it.”

  “What brought you folks here? This is pretty good cattle country, but you folks don’t look like ranchers. And the gold fields are east of here, and you don’t see too many farmers in these parts.”

  She chuckled. “You young folks always think of gold as though it can move mountains or change the weather. It’s nothing more than a rock, and neither Henry nor I are going to waste our time digging it out of the ground, where the Good Lord put it.”

  “But why here? Why McCabe Town?”

  “Because I’m needed here. A granny doctor goes where she’s needed. Henry, he’s my grandson. We was born into slavery, working for Mas’sa Tate until the war ended and Mista’ Lincoln set us all free. That’s when Henry changed his name to Freeman, ‘cause that’s what he be. A free man. He’s proud, and wanted me to change mine, too, but I been Granny Tate for too long. Granny Tate’s who I still be.

  “We come west to get away from the white sheets. Henry thought we could start over here, where they ain’t a lot of folks, and everyone is too concerned with just surviving too care much about who’s colored and who’s white.

  “Your Pa, he’s a good man. He does a lot of good for Henry. Brings him a lot of business. Henry does all the smithy work for your Pa’s ranch. But you know what means more to Henry than all the work?”

  Dusty shook his head.

  “Your Pa looks him square in the eye, and never calls him ‘boy.’ And when your Pa looks at him, he doesn’t see color. He just sees a man.”

  Josh stood on the porch alone, one hand resting on the railing. The eastern sky was awash with a gray glow, obliterating the stars. The night birds had stopped their calling, but the birds of morning hadn’t yet taken flight. A silence fell upon the land as though all were waiting with a hushed reverence for the rising of the sun.

  This was Josh’s favorite time of day. And yet, this morning, he was unable to appreciate it. Upstairs, his father lied in bed, unconscious, two bullet holes in his chest. Despite Josh’s best attempts at optimism, he had to admit to himself that his father was dying.

  Josh felt cold. The mountain air bore a chill, but that was not the cold he was thinking of. He felt cold inside.

  He thought of Jack, for the first time tonight. Jack, back east, in medical school. Jack was a year younger, and though his life was taking him in a different direction than Josh’s, they had been raised in this house, alongside Bree. Raised by Pa and Aunt Ginny. Jack usually managed to return home every year, for a few weeks every summer. But otherwise, Josh seldom saw him anymore.

  Josh figured he had the responsibility of writing the letter to Jack – the letter telling him that their father was dead. Of course, he was putting the proverbial cart before the horse, as Aunt Ginny would have said, and right now, optimistic thinking was necessary. And yet, he couldn’t keep his mind from drifting down a path he didn’t want it to go. How do you even write such a letter?

  Josh didn’t know how this family would survive without Pa. He didn’t know how he would survive without Pa.

  Just yesterday, the most important problems in Josh’s life had been that he seriously doubted his ability to live up to Pa’s growing legend. And he was having trouble trying to choke down the thought that a drifter riding onto the ranch, bearing a resemblance to Pa and claiming to be the son of a woman Pa could not even remember being with, could live up to Pa’s legend so much more easily than Josh could. Today, those problems seemed so insignificant.

  The mountain breeze brought to him a sound, a distant rattling, like iron shaking against wood in a staccato rhythm. He looked off toward the wooden bridge and saw motion. A dark shape. A wagon, crossing the bridge. It was Dusty, hopefully returning with Granny Tate.

  Josh pushed away from the railing, a
nd went to the doorway, and called out, “Dusty’s back!”

  Josh then hobbled down from the porch, his knee-cap feeling afloat, and a strange numbness present immediately below it. Dusty pulled the team to a stop, and Josh hurried to the side of the wagon to help Granny Tate down.

  “Must have been quite a fracas here,” she said. “I can still smell the powder smoke in the air.”

  Bree appeared at the doorway. She had been busying herself dusting, which had been done just two days earlier, and would not need to be for another week, but she had to do something while she waited. Aunt Ginny had returned to Pa’s bedside.

  Josh escorted Granny Tate to the porch, looping one arm so Granny could hang onto it like a handle, and she climbed the steps slowly, lifting one foot gingerly to the next step, and bringing the other up behind her. She steadied herself all the way using a hand-cut hickory stick as a cane. She climbed the stairs to the second floor as such, and Aunt Ginny stepped aside as the old woman examined Johnny.

  “Has he woken up at all?” the granny doctor asked.

  “No,” Ginny said. “He hasn’t even stirred.”

  “He’s bleedin’ inside, is what he’s doing. You have a good tight bandage here, but he’s still bleedin’ inside.”

  Bree asked, “What can be done?”

  Granny shook her head slowly. “Not much, child. Oh, them big-city doctors back east, in places like New York or Boston, they could cut him open, find the blood vessels that are torn, and maybe sew them up. And if he didn’t die from infection or the blood loss he’s already suffered, he would be all right. But out here, there ain’t much you can do. I’m awful sorry.”

  Ginny stood silently, looking at the hollow-cheeked form of Johnny McCabe.

  “Can you do the operation?” Josh asked.

  “No, child,” Granny said. “There’s a lot I can do that them big-city doctors can’t. I can look at a patch of woods and see all sorts of roots and herbs that can ease pain, or do other things. I doubt there’s all that many who know as much about bringin’ a child into the world as I do. And I can set a broken bone with the best of them. But to cut into a person, that’s beyond me. The nearest doctor is in Helena, and I doubt even he could do anything, in these conditions.