The Long Trail (The McCabes Book 1)

by Brad Dennison

  As Dusty spoke, his eye caught sudden motion in the tall grass of a meadow that began at the edge of the spring and stretched away for a couple hundred yards.

  “What’s wrong?” Josh asked, kneeling by the spring, filling his final canteen.

  “I saw something.”

  Josh rose to his feet. “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Blades of grass suddenly moved, and a gray furry head with long ears popped suddenly into view.

  Dusty smiled. “How would you like something other than beans tonight? Not that the beans were bad, but they ain’t my first choice.”

  “Good luck,” Josh said. “I had two chances to avoid eating beans, and missed both of ‘em.”

  “How far away do you think he is?”

  Josh shrugged. “Maybe a hundred feet. You’d better get the rifle. He’s close enough for a good head shot.”

  “Nope. He’s looking right at me. If I move, he’s gonna skitter away.”

  “You’re gonna try a pistol shot?”

  Dusty nodded.

  Josh snorted a chuckle. “Like I said, good luck.”

  Dusty drew a breath and slowly let it out, trying to remember everything Pa had told him a few days ago about pistol shooting. To try for a smooth motion more than speed, cocking the pistol as you grab it, to bring your arm to full extension, to use one well-placed shot rather than scattering three or four.

  Dusty’s pistol leaped into his hand. The rabbit bolted. With his arm at full extension, he fired. The rabbit dropped.

  “I don’t believe it!” Josh exclaimed with a grin.

  Dusty holstered the smoking pistol, and he and Josh ran into the grass beyond the spring. They found the bullet had shattered the rabbit’s skull, but spared all of the meat.

  “What a shot!” Josh said.

  “Not many men can say they outdrew a rabbit.”

  They camped in a wooded ravine ten miles southwest of the valley where Dusty had shot the rabbit. The horses were picketed where they could graze, but still be within the glow of firelight. Josh reclined against an old lightning struck trunk, chewing a roasted rabbit leg to the bone. Dusty rested back on his rolled out bedding, his saddle used as a pillow.

  “Roasted rabbit,” Josh said with relish, “does indeed beat a can of beans.”

  “Pretty good shooting, eh?”

  Josh tossed the rabbit bone over his shoulder. That was the last of the rabbit meat, and his belly, like Dusty’s, was full. “I’ve got to admit, you’re faster’n I’ll ever be.”

  “You’ve got to be fast,” Dusty said, suddenly serious, “if you plan on shooting Patterson. I don’t believe bushwacking a man is your style, which means you’ll have to face him if you’re going to shoot him. I’ve seen him draw on a man before, and he’s mighty fast.”

  “Faster’n you?”

  Dusty shook his head. “No.” He said it not like he was bragging, but simply stating a fact. “I’ve met only one man faster’n me, and that’s Pa. Even though Pa doesn’t want to admit it. That shooting he did when we were target practicing, that border shift he pulled off, it was the best I’ve ever seen.”

  “Is Patterson faster than me?” Josh asked.

  Dusty nodded. “I ain’t seen him in a few years, and a lot can happen in that time, but he was really fast with a gun.”

  Josh shrugged. “Well, I’ve still got’ta face him. No matter how fast he is.”

  “No, you don’t. Let me face him. I want to take him down for this as much as you do. Maybe even more.”

  Josh shook his head. “Nope. He’s mine. It’s something I’ve got’ta do. I understand how you feel, but this goes deeper than just being mad at him.”

  Dusty sat up. “What is it, then?”

  “You don’t know what it was like growing up in that man’s shadow. I’m not just anyone’s son, I’m Johnny McCabe’s. The man was as well known as Wild Bill Hickok even before I was old enough to walk. How can I ever expect to match up to a legend that’s even bigger than the man himself?”

  “Why do you feel you have to?”

  “Because if I’m ever going to be anything in this life, if I’m ever going to be my own man, then I’ve got to come out from the shadow. And he casts a mighty big one.”

  “How about our other brother? Jack? Does he feel the same way?”

  Josh shook his head. “I don’t think so. Jack always had a sort of independent streak in him. He took to book learning like a natural. His world will be back east, in a big city. Boston, or somewhere. He’ll be a doctor. He’ll marry, and raise kids in a town house, or somewhere like that. Nothing that happens out here will probably seem all that relevant to him.”

  “I hope to meet him too, someday.”

  “You’ll probably get your chance this summer. That is, presuming you and I live through this to return home. He usually visits for two or three weeks in July or August, before the new semester starts.”

  Dusty was silent a moment. Then he said, “You know, in trying to get out from Pa’s shadow, you might get yourself killed.”

  “Then, I’ll die like a man.”

  “You’ll still be just as dead.”

  Dusty lied back down on the bedroll, his head resting on the saddle. “It seems to me a man has enough to do in life just trying to be himself, without trying to compare himself to anyone else.”

  “Sometimes, I guess I feel like I can’t be myself, like just having the name means so much more is expected of me. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m up to it.”

  “Maybe it’s time to stop trying to be what everyone expects, and start being what you want.”

  Josh sighed. “Maybe I just don’t know what that is.”

  Shortly after sunrise, they rode down a rocky barren slope, following the trail left by the raiders. Dusty’s hat hung from the chin strap, bouncing against his shoulder blades.

  He asked, “What’s it like growing up in the McCabe household? Last night you made it sound like it wasn’t very pleasant. Like you had a lot of pressure on you as a child.”

  “No. At least, not from Pa and Aunt Ginny. I’ll never forget the look of dread on her face the first time I strapped on a gun. She knows Pa has ridden a rough trail, and knows it’s only natural for his son to do the same, but I think she was still hoping for something different for me. Like maybe school back east, like Jack. She used to talk about me maybe studying law.”

  A chuckle burst from Dusty. “You? Law?”

  Josh was smiling. He nodded.

  “With your temper? I could just see you in court, pounding the hell out of the opposing lawyer.”

  “No kidding, huh? But no, the pressure was there, but it didn’t come from them. It came from others. I don’t think Pa or Aunt Ginny were even all that aware of it. But every time I stepped into a saddle, the boys on the ranch expected me to handle the horse like I was an expert horseman, because Pa was. When I was ten and was thrown by a horse, I remember Reno, one of the men who used to work for us, saying, ‘he ain’t like his old man, is he?’”

  “I think it’s a damn lot to expect a ten-year-old to ride like a full-grown man who’s been in the saddle all his life.”

  Josh nodded. “But at ten years old, I didn’t think that way. I felt I was less than Pa, and it made me feel bad. One day, when I was twelve or thirteen, and missed a rabbit with my squirrel gun, Hunter said, ‘I guess you’re not quite the shot your old man is.’ He didn’t mean anything bad by it. Hunter is one of the finest men I’ve ever known. But still, the words stung. They hurt down deep. Even now, I find myself pushing, always trying to go the extra step, trying to be worthy of being called Johnny McCabe’s son.”

  “Is that why you lit out after these raiders alone?”

  Josh nodded. “I guess that’s part of it.”

  Josh looked to Dusty. “I ain’t never talked about any of this to anyone before. I’d appreciate it if it didn’t go any further.”

  “It won’t.”

  They rode in si
lence for a half mile. The ridge bottomed out onto a flat, grassy expanse. The tracks were very plain here, as the earth was dry. In places, entire chunks of sod had been kicked up by the pounding of hooves.

  Dusty said, “What was it like when you were growing up? What was the family life like?”

  Josh went on to paint him a picture of life in the McCabe household. Despite the pressure he felt from the outside world, the home itself was filled with the glow of love, and of the rock-solid feeling of peace that comes with knowing your mother and father, or in this case, Pa and Aunt Ginny, are there to protect you, to pick you up when you fall, to keep out the evil of the world. And most importantly, to know that they love you, not for what you do or don’t do, or say or don’t say, but simply for who you are. That might be the most important thing a parent can do for a child.

  Josh had a few faint memories of the ranch house in California. It had outer walls of adobe. He remembered a parlor, off of which was a kitchen and a bedroom which was Ma and Pa’s. A loft was built over the parlor, which served as a bedroom for Josh and Jack. A small bunkhouse outside was built, and was where Zack Johnson, Uncle Josiah and Hunter slept.

  “The house itself was an old hacienda, part of an old Spanish land grant that had been abandoned back in the forties, when Mexico lost California in the war, and a lot of the Spanish deeds were ruled null and void. Ma and Pa fixed it up, and added the outbuildings.”

  “How did she die?” Dusty asked.

  “Shot in the ranch yard one afternoon. The way it was told to me, she was walking toward Pa with a basket of eggs on her arm. The shot was fired from atop a small hill beyond the barn. A large caliber rifle, like Pa’s Sharps. Or that old Hawken. She died in his arms, while whoever shot her just rode away, scott-free.

  “Pa, Zack and Uncle Joe rode after him after Ma was buried, sort of like we are now, but when they were a few days out, there was a hard rain that washed the trail clean away. They never found him.

  “It was shortly after that when Pa moved us all north, to the valley we now call home. I don’t know if we were the first white settlers in that part of Montana, but we were firmly settled in by the time of the big gold strikes at Grasshopper Creek and Alder Gulch.”

  Josh gave a sort of sad sigh. “Pa was saddened by the news of the gold strikes, and the towns of Bannock and Virginia City and Miles Town that boomed to life as settlers flooded in to pan for gold, and to dig for it. The town of Helena, which used to be Last Chance Gulch, is only a few days ride from the ranch. A couple years ago, the town at McCabe Gap began to spring to life. Only a stage stop for now, but it’s growing, and it’s only three miles from the house. Pa, he always liked the feeling of total freedom that comes with living in a stretch of wilderness far from any white settlement. He doesn’t even like McCabe Town being so close to the house. Even that little town is too big for him. He finds civilization makes him feel hemmed in. That’s where I get it, I guess.

  “One night, sitting in front of the fire, Pa said that with every settler who rides north along the Bozeman Trail into Montana, or who rides the river boats north along the Missouri up from St. Lou’, a little more of that freedom slips away. One day, he said, even here in Montana, barbed wire fences and no-trespassing signs will divide the land. People will cut the land up into sections, and the freedom to just ride through the mountains and camp where you had a mind to will be gone.”

  The trail came out onto a well-worn wagon road, where the tracks mixed with those of many others.

  “This is a stage route,” Josh said. “I’ve been through here once, with Pa. We’re about a day and a half north of Bozeman. But last I knew, there was a mining camp between here and there.”

  The tracks of the raiders seemed to disappear on the stage road, because the dirt was so hard packed.

  “I guess we can ride along the trail a ways,” Dusty said. “See if they turned off anywhere.”

  They rode in silence for a stretch. Dusty tossed a glance toward Josh, wondering at the depth of this newly revealed side of his brother. He would have guessed, by Josh’s bravado and posturing, that his interests ran no deeper than gulping mugs of beer at Hunter’s, getting into a brawl, and occasionally having a night with one of Alisha Summers’ girls.

  Dusty said, “You know, you’re not an easy guy to like, but maybe Aunt Ginny was right. You are worth getting to know.”

  Josh frowned a bit. “I don’t know if that was a compliment, or if I should be offended.”

  Dusty gave a half smirk. “Maybe a little bit of both. Come on, let’s ride.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The town was called Midas, after the name of a local mine, the shafts of which spider-webbed their through a nearby ridge. Josh and Dusty let their horses move along at a loping walk. Either side of the street was lined with canvas tents, each serving as a house for a miner and his family. Children ran and played, splashing through the muddy streets. Women worked scrubbing laundry against washboards or hanging wet clothes on a line, the face of each woman lined beyond her years from a life of too much hard work.

  “Don’t matter where you are,” Josh said. “California, Colorado, or here. Mining towns all look the same.”

  “I didn’t get to see too many down in Arizona and New Mexico Territory,” Dusty said. “Mostly ranching and farming down there. After seeing this, I count myself lucky.”

  “Maybe we should stop and ask some questions. The riders didn’t seem to turn off the trail at all, which means they must have ridden through here. Maybe someone saw them. Hell, maybe they’re here right now.”

  “There must be a saloon in this town.”

  “There is in most towns.”

  “Maybe we could stop there and ask some questions. Saloons are always the best clearing house for information. And I could use a beer to wash down some of this trail dust.”

  Josh and Dusty reined up before the only building made of wood, though it appeared to have been slapped together hastily, with an uneven roof line, a door jamb that was a full inch lower on one side than the other, and gaps between some of the boards on the wall large enough for a man to push a finger through. Painted above the doorway in black letters was PICK & SHOVEL SALOON.

  Compared to the brightness of the cloudless sky outside, they found the barroom dim, lighted only by two windows at the front wall and a coal lamp mounted behind the bar. The lamp emitted a foul smelling smoke, moreso than most such lamps. A man with a long, snarled beard falling over the front of a dirty undershirt stood behind the bar. Suspenders were strapped over each of his shoulders, and a soot and grease stained apron was tied about his round belly.

  “What can I get for you gents?” he asked in a thin and raspy voice, through a toothless smile.

  “Beer’s fine for me,” Josh said, and looked to Dusty.

  “Make that two,” Dusty said.

  “Got no beer. Waiting for the afternoon stage.”

  “Then, make it whiskey, I guess.”

  “Two whiskeys it is,” the barkeep said. He placed two glasses on a plank that stood on two upended beer kegs, which passed for a bar, and dumped brownish liquid into them from an unlabeled bottle.

  Josh counted eight empty tables filling the small barroom floor. The only other occupant of the place was a saloon woman standing at the bar. She looked like she was about Josh’s age, maybe a little older. It was difficult to gauge because of the war paint caked on her face. Her lips were an unnatural red, her face a chalky white, and her cheekbones were painted a rosy hue. Her brows were dark and plucked pencil thin, and some sort of shade of blue had been plastered over her eyelids. Her hair was an odd artificial sort of platinum color. Not the kind of woman Aunt Ginny would invite to a quilting bee.

  Dusty sampled his drink, and held back a grimace. If he should ask, the barkeep would probably claim this was sour mash, but Dusty would have bet it was rubbing alcohol, with a touch of kerosene to give it a kick. He decided not to ask, because he and Josh were here to pursue more impor
tant questions, and a man standing accused of selling rubbing alcohol for whiskey would not be as willing to volunteer answers.

  It was Josh who spoke first. “I suppose you see just about everybody who passes through.”

  The snarled beard bobbed up and down. “Yessir. Thet I do.”

  “You didn’t happen to see a group of riders come through town three or four days ago, did you?”

  The barkeep’s glance darted to the girl, then back again. So quick, Dusty would have missed if it he had but blinked. But he did not miss it.

  “What kind of riders?” the old man asked casually. He was trying very hard to seem casual.

  “They weren’t drifters,” Dusty said. “They would have been wearing guns like they knew how to use them. And they would have looked like they’ve been on the trail a few days.”

  “Sort of like you boys.”

  Josh glanced at Dusty. He was not sure what to make of the comparison.

  Josh took a sip of the whiskey. Dusty could see he was doing his best to hold back a grimace, also.

  “These boys might have had a woman with them, too,” Josh said, thinking of the smallish shoe print that had been found among the tracks made by the raiders. “Any chance they could have stopped here?”

  The barkeep shook his head. “Ore wagons and stage coaches have been all that’s come through in weeks. You boys are the first strangers.”

  Dusty looked down to his drink. There was no way he would be able to finish it. No matter. The need for politics was over. The barkeep had told them nothing – and yet, he had told them everything.

  The saloon girl was leaning back with her elbows propped against the bar behind her. This caused her shoulders to curve forward a bit, and her dress fell from them, adding to the inviting look she was trying to muster for Josh. She let a smile drift his way, and he returned it with a grin of his own.

  “How about you?” he asked. “You see any riders come through here? Maybe in the last day or two?”