Ginny had come with them, to help him care for the children. The old spinster who had lived a fine life among the high society in San Francisco now lived on a ranch in Montana. She had practically raised Lura, and now was doing the same for Lura’s children.
Johnny had to wonder if things had been different, if Lura hadn’t been shot and instead they raised the children here, a few hours’ train ride north of San Francisco, would Johnny be a different man than he now was? Would he have become a fine gentleman rancher? A pillar of society here in the San Fernando valley? After all, life was much more civilized here than it was on their remote ranch in Montana.
He stood before Lura’s grave with a deeply lined face and clothing that was dusty from the trail. His jaw was covered with a white beard, and he wore a gun that was ready for use. Ginny had said once that Johnny lived in a perpetual state of warfare. Zack had said once Johnny was this way because he had been shot at one time too many, and because Lura had been shot in front of his eyes. He wondered what he would be like, now. Would he have cut his Shoshone tail? Would his face be less lined? Would he attend cattle association meetings in a jacket and tie and smoke nice cigars?
He thought of the children. Josh wore his hair long, like his father. He wore his gun tied down. He was a tracker and knew how to survive in the mountains and how to find water in the desert. He was also a gunhawk, because he had to be to survive on the rugged frontier. How different might his life have been here in California? Would he have gone to a nice school in San Francisco? Would he have become a young businessman with short, neatly cut hair and finely tailored suits?
And what about Bree? A couple of winters ago she had ridden into the mountains with Johnny and she had shot a bear with a Winchester carbine. One of the best shots he had ever seen with a rifle. He had shown her how to gut the carcass, and they brought back the fur that was now a bear-skin blanket she used against the cold Montana nights in the winter.
He thought of the lady she would have become with Lura’s tutelage. She would wear her hair all done up, and carry a parasol against the harsh California sun in the summer, and young gentleman driving a carriage would come to call on her. She would attend soirees in San Francisco with her mother and her Aunt Ginny.
He had to wonder if maybe Bree was the one shortchanged the most by all of this.
He walked over to the headstone, ducking his head under one of the far-reaching apple branches. He stood with his hat in one hand, looking at the headstone. Ginny had paid for it. Engraved on it were the words:
LURA MCCABE
BELOVED MOTHER AND WIFE
1838 – 1862
The first time he had looked at this stone, the day it was placed in the ground, Zack had been standing beside him. The apple tree had been much smaller and the grave was touched by sunlight. Johnny had been filled then with a sense of disbelief, looking at those words. Seeing Lura’s name on a headstone. He was struck with the same disbelief now, seventeen years later.
Madden had said his wife kept up the grave, and Johnny thought she was doing a good job. The stone was clean, almost polished looking. Like it had been the day it was shipped out from San Francisco and placed here. The grave was cast in perpetual shade because of the apple tree, but the ground about it was covered with little crushed rocks, and some wild flowers had been placed at the base of the headstone.
He knelt. He reached with one hand to the stone, letting his fingers trace her name. The stone felt smooth and cold to the touch. He let his hand fall away.
Touching the stone had been a way of trying to touch her, he supposed, but he had failed. The stone was simply a stone. The closest he had come to touching her had been in that vision he had while he lay in bed with his bullet wounds. It had felt so real. Maybe on some level it was. The Shoshone believed in spirits, that they can touch you while you sleep. And they believed in visions. Many tribes had rituals designed to bring on a sort of delirium so you could achieve a dream state while awake, and experience a vision. The Sioux and the Cheyenne with their Sun Dance, for one. Many people thought such rituals barbaric, but Johnny thought he understood.
The Shoshone believed the body died, but the spirit was eternal. Johnny felt in his gut that they were right. As such, he knew Lura was not really here. Only her earthly remains were in the ground.
Even still, he felt he should say some words. To come all this way, riding horseback from Montana through the Rockies, then across the deserts of Nevada and then through the Sierra Nevadas into this valley, and say nothing didn’t seem right. So he said, “Hello, Lura.”
The words seemed to ring a little artificial. She wasn’t really here. And yet he felt that somehow maybe her spirit was. He even thought he caught the scent of peach blossoms on the breeze.
He said, “The kids are fine. Bree’s fine. Ginny’s fine. Josh is growing to be a strappin’ young man. He’ll be runnin’ the ranch on his own, soon. And Jack’s doing great at medical school.”
He almost said, he won’t be the first doctor in the family. After all, Lura’s father was a doctor. But he wouldn’t have said such a thing to her face, so he wouldn’t say it now. Lura’s parents had turned their backs on her when she married Johnny, and this had been a sore spot with her for the rest of her short life. It still angered Johnny a little. They wanted her to go to finishing school back east, and marry a lawyer or a doctor or a college professor. Instead she married a gunhawk.
Johnny was many things, he supposed, besides a gunhawk. A cattleman. Maybe even a business leader of sorts, in the remote little section of Montana where they lived. He was a tracker, a scout. Had even been an outlaw once—he chuckled at the memory of that.
When he had first met her parents he was in a range shirt and riding boots, and his twin Remingtons were tied down low. Didn’t matter that he had his hat in hand, was freshly bathed and had brushed all the trail dust from his clothes. He was clean shaven and hadn’t taken to wearing his hair long yet. He looked downright civilized compared to how he looked now, he supposed. And yet they were horrified and refused to give their approval. They didn’t attend the wedding, and stayed away from the funeral, and to this day had never even seen their grandchildren. He wondered what they would think of Dusty, and again chuckled.
The preacher had stood here and read a passage from the good book. Johnny couldn’t remember what it was, just the sound of the man’s words droning on while Johnny stared down at the pine box lying in the grave. Zack was standing beside him. Somehow, one way or another, Zack always seemed to be standing beside him through the hard times. Joe was there, and Matt and Verna, and Ginny, and some of the neighbors. But Lura’s parents were nowhere to be seen.
He drew a long breath and let it out slowly. In his vision, Lura had said to him he needed to live. He needed to stop grieving for her. She had said he needed to love again. When he woke up from that vision, much of the pain of her loss that he had been carrying all these years seemed to be gone. And it was still gone as he knelt on the crushed rocks and looked at her name on the stone.
He smiled. “We didn’t have long together, but we had a hell of a ride.”
He could imagine her smiling at that.
“I’ve gotta be going. Gonna be dark soon. I’m gonna ride out and visit Matt and his family. Might stop in Greenville on the way. According to Matt’s letters it’s changed a lot since the old days. Then I’ll be heading back home.”
He knelt silently for a few moments. Then he said, “I’ll always love you. And I know you’re waiting for me.”
Even though most of the pain was now gone, he still felt a tear welling up in one eye and reached up to wipe it away. He didn’t want his visit here to be a sad one. He wanted to remember the good times. He wanted her love to be alive in him, not the sorrow or the darkness he felt when she was taken away.
He rose to his feet. One knee was a little stiff and caught him in mid motion.
“Getting a little old, I guess,” he said to Lura with a smile.
/> He had intended to head back around to the front of the house where Thunder was waiting, but he stopped and looked down at the grave one more time. “I wonder sometimes what you’d be like today. I suppose you would have stepped into middle-age as gracefully as you did everything else.”
There was so much to say. He could have stood here for hours and not gotten it all out. But if it was true what the Shoshone say, that the spirit is eternal, then he was sure that wherever she was, she knew what was in his heart.
So he simply gave a silent nod of his head, turned away and pulled his hat down over his temples. He was much older now, and yet in so many ways the same man he had been when he married her. Still Johnny McCabe. Still a cattleman, still a scout and a tracker. And still a gunhawk.
3
He gathered up Thunder’s rein. He intended to find a spot somewhere off the main trail, maybe near some trees where he could find some dead falls to use for firewood. He had ridden near a thousand miles since leaving home back in July, and hadn’t spent one night under a roof. He had camped with the stars overhead, sitting by a campfire. Much of his food he had shot himself. He had stopped in a small town along the way to replenish his supply of coffee and buy a few cans of beans, but then continued on.
He was about to push his foot into the stirrup when Madden stepped out of the house.
Johnny said, “I want to thank you again.”
“Hey, listen, Mister McCabe,” Madden said. “The wife wanted me to ask if you’d eaten yet. If not, you’re more than welcome to join us for supper.”
“I’d hate to impose,” Johnny said.
“No imposition at all. Please. My son would really like to meet you. My wife makes some of the best roast beef you’ll ever taste.”
Johnny hadn’t really noticed the smell of roast on the air until Madden mentioned it. He was hungry and now the smell was starting his mouth to watering. And so he stayed for supper.
The kitchen was much the way he remembered it. The table and chairs were new, and the curtains on the windows were different. Lura had used a white, lacey sort of curtain. These were off-white, and there was no sign of lace. But the cupboards were still the ones Johnny had built for Lura all those years ago. Beneath one window was a dry sink and an iron pump. Johnny had installed this so Lura wouldn’t have to walk all the way out to the well for a bucket of water.
The wood stove was different. It was the same size, but not quite the same design. These things were made of cast iron and had a tendency to rust out if they weren’t used. The house had been closed up for a few years before the Maddens moved in. Matt had used the range for some of his cows, but the house itself had been empty. Johnny was surprised the iron pump had held up.
Johnny washed a little of the trail dust off. He hung his hat on a peg on the wall, a peg that hadn’t been there when this had been home to him and Lura. His gun stayed at his side.
Madden’s wife was a small woman, and round in the matronly way a woman gets sometimes as she approaches forty. Especially if she’s a mother. There were five children, a girl about Bree’s age and a boy named Samuel, and three younger ones, one of them still in diapers.
They all sat down to the table, and Johnny found the roast was as good as it smelled.
Johnny said, “You run this place yourself?”
Madden nodded. “I run a small herd. I hire a couple hands once in a while, to help me move some head for a buyer. We’re about twenty-five miles from the nearest railroad.”
Johnny nodded. “The ranch I have in Montana now is a little further out. We have to ride all the way to Cheyenne to find the railroad.”
While they talked, Samuel stared at Johnny. Made Johnny a little uncomfortable. He knew people talked about his exploits, expanding on them and adding to them. Jack had told him about a dime novel that featured him, written by some writer back east. The writer had wanted to meet with Jack to learn more about Johnny, and when Jack refused, the man just made up what he needed to.
As they all talked Johnny would let his gaze wander about the kitchen. He would glance toward the iron pump and see Lura standing there, cranking some water into a pitcher. Or at the stove, a coffee kettle bubbling away.
“Mister McCabe,” Samuel said. “Is it true you rode into Mexico and shot it out with the Owen Carter gang? And rescued Petunia McBride?”
Johnny gave a polite smile. He had no idea what the boy was talking about. “I really don’t know anyone by those names, son.”
Mrs. Madden said with an apologetic tone, “You’ll have to forgive him, Mister McCabe. He’s read the novel. We keep telling him not everything in it might be true.”
The boy said, “So you didn’t rescue Petunia McBride?”
Johnny said, “Never met anyone by that name. When I was with the Texas Rangers, though, we did ride into Mexico a few times. Chasing Mexican border raiders. They would hit a small ranch and take some live stock. Sometimes burn the place.”
“Would you shoot ‘em all?”
“Samuel,” Madden said.
Johnny thought it best to avoid the details. “Sometimes we’d get most of the livestock back, and sometimes we wouldn’t. But you have to understand, the Texas Rangers are a law-enforcement outfit. That’s what we were doing. Enforcing the law.”
Johnny saw a little wind let out of the boy’s sails. Apparently this novel depicted Johnny as some latter-day knight of the west. Johnny thought he might have to find a copy and see what was being said about him.
Johnny mentioned he was on his way to his brother Matt’s ranch.
“Never actually met him,” Madden said. “We bought this place from him, but like I mentioned earlier, it was actually his son Hiram did the paperwork with us.”
Johnny shook his head. “The last time I saw them, Hiram was smaller than Samuel, here.”
When they were finished, Johnny was invited to stay. Samuel volunteered to give up his bed and would eagerly sleep on the sofa. But Johnny wanted to be moving on. He wanted to sleep under the open sky. He was generally not happy sleeping under a roof, unless it was the home he had built in Montana. Somehow that place was different. But generally sleeping under a roof made him feel hemmed in.
He thanked Madden’s wife for keeping up Lura’s grave.
She said, “If there’s anything you’d like done differently...”
“No, ma’am. It looks mighty fine just the way it is.”
He stepped into the saddle, and gave a nod to Samuel. The boy was trying to hold his gleaming smile in, but you could see it in his eyes. Johnny doubted the boy’s disappointment at finding Johnny had really not rescued some damsel-in-distress by the name of Petunia something-or-other would not last long. At the first opportunity he would be telling his friends he had met the Johnny McCabe. Larger than life and tougher’n a bear.
Johnny started away down the trail. Evening shadows now covered the land and the sky overhead had faded to a steel gray. The sun had long gone down. He doubted he would get more than a mile.
As he rode, he cast a look back at the house. Not his and Lura’s house anymore. It was now home to another good family, one that seemed strong and filled with love. He thought Lura might give a little smile at that.
The trail followed a curve and ahead was a low ridge. Before he was taken beyond the view of the house, Johnny looked back for a final gaze at the old place, standing tall and sort of gray in the fading daylight. Madden and his wife and Samuel were still standing outside the house, watching him ride away. Johnny threw a final wave at them, which they returned, then he rode up and over the ridge, and the house was gone from sight. He wondered if he would ever see it again.
Madden’s gaze was still on the darkening trail that was now empty.
His wife said, “Samuel, it’s nigh time for bed.”
“Yes’m,” Samuel said with the same disappointment every boy of his age feels when it’s time for the day to end, and he headed into the house.
Once the boy was inside, Madden said,
“So, what’d you think? Not quite what we expected, was he?”
“Shorter’n I thought he would be,” she said.
Madden nodded. “But much different from Hiram McCabe.”
She said, “Hiram frightened me. I was glad when our business with him was done. There was something dark in his eye.”
“They say Hiram McCabe shot a man in cold blood a few years ago. They say his father paid good money to cover it up.”
“You believe that?”
He shrugged. “Never met Matt McCabe, but after meeting Hiram, after sitting with him while we signed the papers for this place, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s just a gut feeling. The look in his eye. Something about his manner. I had the feeling there wasn’t much he wouldn’t be capable of.”
4
Johnny McCabe had spent most of his life on the frontier. He had ridden with the Texas Rangers, fought Mexican border raiders and renegade Comanches. He had run from the law for about a year, because of a misunderstanding in Kansas that led to a man being killed. He had punched cows and caught and broke wild mustangs. He had been shot at and shot back. He had poured down too much tequila in Mexican border towns and whiskey in cattle towns and bunkhouses, and he had endured hard winters. He had scouted and tracked. He had built a home for himself and his family in the harsh Montana wilderness. But never in all of his years in the west had he seen a cattle town transform into a mining town. Not until he rode into Greenville, California.
Greenville was the little town where he had met Lura, all those years ago. It had been a sleepy cow town back then. Population maybe two hundred. He knew from the letters he got from Matt that gold had been found in the foothills near town, and mines had been built, and Matt and his wife had bought one of the mines, and Greenville was now a sort of combination cattle town and mining town. Yet, somehow, the way the human mind works, Johnny still visualized Greenville as looking the way it had. Wide streets with wooden buildings lining either side. An occasional rider working his way down the street toward the saloon in search of a glass of whiskey. An old-timer sitting on a bench chewing tobacco and enjoying the morning air. A shopkeeper sweeping off the boardwalk by his front door. Sleepy and quiet, except on the first Saturday after payday, when the local cowhands came in hooting and screaming and firing their guns into the air, intending to spend an entire month’s salary on pharo, whiskey and women. He shouldn’t have been shocked by the changes to Greenville. Yet he was.
Return of the Gunhawk (The McCabes Book 3) Page 3