Verna was at one end of the table, and Matt at the other. The two boys sat across from each other, and Johnny sat to Matt’s right.
They ate and talked and somewhere along the line, Verna mentioned their cook was called Pierre, and was all the way from Paris, and my goodness he could do a thing or two with a duck. Johnny wanted to say one of the wives of the war chief of the Shoshone he had wintered with once was an artist with herbs and such things, and could make a venison stew that would leave you talking about it a week later. But he decided not to. The whole show Verna was putting on was about impressing people, and Johnny doubted the ways of the Shoshone would interest her much. Her people tended to think of the Indian as savage. The Indian tended to think people like Verna foolish. Johnny tended toward the opinion of the Indian.
Johnny noticed the dynamics around the table. Much of the conversation was actually between Verna and Hiram, just like in the parlor. They talked of conditions at the mine, and the problem they were having with some squatters in a canyon. Geologists believed a vein of gold ran through the cliffs of that canyon, and since no one had ever filed a proper claim on the land, Hiram had gone and done so. Hiram intended to expand the McCabe mining operation there. The squatters were trying to hang onto the canyon, but they had to be moved out before mining could begin. Matt would offer a word or two, which they would either politely respond to or ignore entirely. Dan sat and simply watched and listened, as though he was in awe of his mother and older brother.
Johnny wondered how Matt could have possibly fallen into this life. He had never been quite the man of the outdoors that Johnny was. Matt had always been more at home among civilization. But this whole situation, with all of the fineries, struck Johnny as artificial. Matt had never seemed artificial to him. And to sit by, eating his dinner and sipping his wine while his wife and son talked callously of moving people out of their home, seemed so unlike the Matt Johnny remembered.
“Johnny,” Verna said from her end of the table. “You’re not saying much.”
She gave him a firm gaze which was anything but friendly, though her lips were spread in a polite smile. He gave the gaze back. Don’t mess with me, lady. You’ve met your match and then some. But he figured she already knew that.
What he said was, “Not much to say, really.”
Matt decided to chime in. “Johnny, there’s talk of the railroad swinging up your way. To Montana. Have you heard anything of that?”
He shook his head. “Only idle speculation. Seems to be inevitable, though. There’s gold and cattle in Montana. A fortune to be made.”
“Really?” Verna said, feigning surprise. “Do you think it might be another California?”
Johnny shook his head. “The winters are too harsh. It takes a certain type to survive up there. But the gold is there, and cattle can be raised. Right now we sell beef to townfolk in places like Bozeman and Helena and Virginia City. Sell quite a lot to the Army, too. We pushed a herd down to Cheyenne to meet the railroad four summers ago. Josh was only seventeen. It was his first cattle drive. Zack Johnson was along, pooling his herd in with ours. That was before the war between the Army and the Lakota ended. That was an interesting cattle drive. A little tense at times.”
Matt was grinning. Suddenly Johnny could see the old Matt in his eyes. “I bet it was.”
Hiram spoke up. “What, pray tell, is a Lakota?”
Matt looked at him. “The Sioux. They’ve always called themselves the Lakota.”
Johnny said, “They come from the Great Lakes country. Some bands of them moved west around seventy years ago to escape wars in that area, and others remained behind. It’s said,” he looked at Matt with a grin, “that the ones that stayed behind for some reason can’t pronounce the letter D. So they call themselves Dakota.”
Matt returned the grin. The other three were looking at them straight-faced. Matt said to them, “An old Indian joke.”
Verna said, “I see.”
Matt said to Johnny, “Remember where we first heard that?”
“That old Cheyenne scout we shared a campfire with. Utah Territory.”
Matt shook his head. “That whiskey was raw, but it sure was good.”
“He wouldn’t have even taken us into his camp but Joe could speak Cheyenne.”
Matt nodded with a grin and reached for his wine. “That’s right. Joe had spent time among the Cheyenne.”
Verna was giving Matt a silent stare that Johnny figured meant shut up. Matt caught the look and did just that. He tossed Johnny a barely perceptible apologetic shrug, and went back to eating.
Johnny shook his head, again wondering how Matt could have possible allowed himself to be caught up in something like this. How could a son of their parents have allowed this?
He could just imagine their father, with his gray eyes and square jaw and his graying hair swept back, pipe in hand, saying, Son, we’ve gotta talk.
After dinner, Johnny went out to the stable to tend to Thunder. Make sure the horse was all right. Diego probably knew how to tend horses well enough, but Johnny had ridden a long way on Thunder, and had a long ride home. One of the first lessons he had learned as a young man was a frontiersman takes good care of his horse.
This wasn’t the same stable that had been here years ago. This one was bigger. Longer. Attached to one side was a series of carriage bays.
Johnny found Thunder in a stall.
“They treating you okay, boy?” he said.
Thunder raised his head to look at him. Thunder didn’t look happy, penned in. Back at the ranch in Montana, Fred usually allowed Thunder to run freely in the open meadow behind the house that served as a pasture. The meadow was bordered by thickets and a convoluted mass of underbrush on three sides, which served as natural fencing. Thunder wasn’t used to being kept in a stall.
“I know how you feel, boy,” Johnny said.
He reached up to loosen his tie, then said the hell with it and pulled the tie off and crammed it into a vest pocket, and loosened the top button of his shirt. He took Thunder by the hackamore and backed him out of the stall and then grabbed a brush from where it hung by a nail and began to work at the horse’s back and shoulders.
“I don’t know,” Johnny said to him. “We’re like fish out of water here. There’s still some daylight left. Maybe we’re better off just saddling up and riding on.”
Verna spoke from the doorway to the stable. “He’s not what you remember, is he?”
Johnny looked to the doorway. She was the last person he wanted to see. He decided to say nothing.
“Matt, I mean,” she said. She came into the barn. She glanced toward the floor as she stepped along, as though there might be something on the floor that would get her shoes dirty. The stable was quite clean. Apparently Diego swept it regularly.
She said, “He’s not the same as you remember him.”
Johnny shrugged and went back to brushing his horse. “People change.”
“Do they really?”
He looked back at her. “No, not really. A person might learn a thing or two over the years and change how they do things. But their nature doesn’t change. Not really. There might be a certain aspect of their nature that becomes more pronounced as they get older, but it was usually already there. At least to some extent.”
She had a shawl wrapped about her shoulders. It was a little cool. Hardly the weather they were probably getting back in Montana about now, Johnny figured, but cool by the standards of weather here in the great California valley.
Again Johnny was struck by how old she seemed. She was actually a little younger than Matt, but could easily have been ten years his senior. She stood with her shoulders a little bent, and she pulled the shawl tightly as though she was catching a chill.
But though she was looking more frail than a woman of her years should, her voice was strong and firm. She said, “I’m a hard woman, Johnny. I always was. I was taught early on to take care of myself. You have to take care of yourself because no
one else will.”
“Don’t you believe in family taking care of each other?”
She shrugged. “Maybe to some degree. Maybe on the surface. It’s a quaint notion. But in the long run, all you have is yourself. I play the game to win, Johnny. My father began building a small empire, here. I took what he built and I’m building it into a larger one. One of my sons will be a senator. Probably Hiram. He has the brains. I’m very disappointed in Tom. He could have had it all but walked away from it. And Hiram will have a son who could be president.”
“Is there any limit?”
She shook her head. “The only limits are within ourselves.”
“Maybe.” He returned to brushing down Thunder.
“I could have had you, you know.”
He hadn’t expected her to say that. He turned to face her again, not even trying to hide his look of disbelief. “You really think so?”
“I know so. You can have anything you want, as long as you’re willing to pay the price. I could have had any one of you three. Josiah...I dismissed him immediately. He didn’t want anything but to ride his horse along a mountainside. He had no ambition. In you, I could see a potential king. You could have it all, if you wanted it. But you have this sense of nobility. This sense of trying to do the right thing. Trying to be everyone’s hero. You never learned a basic lesson that I had already learned before you ever rode in.”
“And what is that?”
“People don’t want to be saved. When you step and in and try to help, you’re just ultimately wasting your time. And sometimes you incur their resentment. So, no, I knew I could never build an empire with you at my side.”
“I take that as a compliment. Not that you had the choice you might think you did.”
She ignored him. “Matt was the one. He spoke well, he had charm and charisma. And he was easily manipulated. Well, maybe not too easily. It would take time, but I was young and time was one thing I had.”
“I take it you’ll do whatever you have to, to protect your so-called empire.”
She gave him a smirk. “Absolutely anything.”
“And Matt doesn’t know all that goes on around here.” It was more of a statement than a question.
Her smirk grew larger. “He knows what he needs to.”
Johnny gave her a long look, then returned to his horse.
She said, “You’re trying to think of how to help your brother. How to right the incredible wrong you see being done here. Stay out of it, Johnny. Ride on. You have no place here. Your brother doesn’t want to be saved. He wants to hide in his scotch and swim in oblivion.”
Johnny kept silent.
She said, “Think about it. When you’re in your old age, what’ll you have? A drafty old log cabin in some remote section of the mountains? Your quaint Indian philosophies? A man of Matt’s financial standing will be well cared for. He’ll have the best, most comfortable housing money can buy. Silk sheets. A warm bedroom. The best doctors, if need be. Give it some thought, Johnny. Maybe he’s not the one who needs saving. Maybe you are.”
The brush Johnny was using on Thunder grew still, but he didn’t turn to look at her.
“It’s been nice having you here. Matt has liked it. But you don’t belong here. You’ll be trying to interfere in things that are none of your concern.”
“What things? Like the things I heard in town?”
“Ride on, Johnny. Ride on right now. This evening. There’s still maybe a half hour of daylight left. You prefer to sleep by a campfire, anyway.”
She turned and headed for the door, still stepping gingerly along the stable floor.
She stopped in the doorway and looked back at him. “You have no place here. And you’ll just make things harder for anyone who does. You’ll make things harder for your brother. He’s where he wants to be. He doesn’t want to be saved. Ride on. Return to your mountains.”
And she was gone.
Johnny stood by Thunder, leaning his elbow on the back of the horse.
Johnny said, “How about it, old boy? Do you think she’s right? Should we just ride out of here?”
The horse swung his head around to look at him. If horses could talk, Johnny thought.
He looked at the stall he had backed Thunder out of. He didn’t have the heart to return the horse to it.
His saddle was lying across a sawhorse in one corner. The bridle with it. His Sharps was in the saddle boot.
Johnny went and got the saddle and bridle, and brought them over to Thunder.
Johnny said, “The old lady’s right about one thing. There’s still some daylight left. I intend for this place to be miles behind us by nightfall.”
7
Matt stood by the mantel in the room that served as his office. Verna was sitting in a chair behind him, her hands neatly folded.
He slapped the mantel with one hand. He said, “What’d you say to him?”
“I said nothing, Matt. He just knows the reality.”
“And what reality is that?”
“That he’s out of place here, Matt. As out of place as you would be in his world of mountains and Indians and sons who are half-Indian.”
“Only one of his sons is.”
“Matt, listen to yourself.”
“I used to ride that trail. There was a time when I could have ridden right alongside him.”
“But that was many years ago. You’ve left that kind of life behind you, and reached for so much greater.”
“He’s my brother, Verna. Dammit. I haven’t seen him in seventeen years, and you just let him ride off like that.”
“I didn’t let him do anything, Matt. Since when does anyone let Johnny McCabe do anything? The man’s a free spirit. As free as the wind. He wasn’t comfortable here. I could see it, and so could you if you would open your eyes and see what’s in front of you.”
She rose to her feet and placed a hand gently on his shoulder. “Matt, you both come from the same roots, but you’re not the same man you were when you both rode in here, all those years ago. You’ve grown and become so much more than you were, where he’s stayed the same. He came, he visited a bit. You got to see him and he got to see you. But did you see how uncomfortable he looked at the table? Wearing a tie? Drinking fine wine? He’s more at home scooping water out of a watering hole. Or drinking that awful, strong coffee you all used to drink in those days. With the grounds floating all through it.”
He snickered and grinned, and looked at her. “That was pretty raw stuff, wasn’t it?”
She returned the grin. “But you’ve left all of that behind you. Look at all you’ve built. It was good to see him again. And I’m sure he enjoyed seeing you. But he needed to be moving on.”
Johnny had stepped in briefly to say goodbye to Matt. He had said he hadn’t slept under a roof for so long he wouldn’t know how to do it, really. And he had a lot of miles to be covering and winter was coming. There was probably already snow in the high passes.
“Can’t you stay?” Matt said. “Just a little longer?”
Johnny shook his head. “I’ll write once I’m home.”
Matt gave him a couple of cigars to take with him. And then Johnny swung onto the back of his stallion and clicked the horse to a canter was gone, down the driveway and through the gate and off the way he had come.
A living legend, Verna thought. She was fully aware a dime novel had been written about him. People talked about his exploits. Whether they had really happened or not was none of her concern. She had used the connection to move more than one business deal. She had instructed Hiram to do so, too.
Matt shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe he did feel a little out of place here. It’s so much grander than what it was when I first met you.”
“And you built it, Matt. You’ve done so much.”
He nodded. “It’s just that sometimes I find myself missing the old days, you know?”
She smiled. “Well, of course you do. You’ve had a full life, Matt. A life most men could o
nly dream of. You rode cross-country with your legendary brother. Lived off the land. Met wild Indians. You were even outlaws, for a while. Genuine desperados.”
He smiled. “I don’t know if we were really desperados.”
“And then you married and had three wonderful sons, and built this place. Took a prosperous ranch and turned it into an empire that is still growing.”
Matt looked at her. She could see doubt in his eyes. The whiskey was making him a little addled, but he was becoming more difficult to maneuver as he grew older.
He said, “You mean you took a prosperous ranch and made it grow.”
She sighed. There was such a rift between them now, and it seemed to be growing. They had been in separate bedrooms for some years. Not that she minded, because theirs had been a marriage of convenience only, at least as far as she was concerned. But he was so much easier to maneuver when he was young and looked at her with love in his eyes.
This was why she had come to the decision she had, the night before. That this situation with Matt had to come to an end while she still had control of it.
That was when Hiram came in. “Mother. I think Dan has lost his mind.”
She and Matt found Dan in his room. He was wearing a range shirt, and was buckling on a gunbelt.
“Dan,” she said, “what on Earth are you doing?”
“I’m riding with the men, tonight.”
She glanced to Hiram. He looked to her.
Hiram said, “I’ve been trying to talk some sense into him.”
Dan pulled his gun and checked the loads, then slid it back into his holster. He wore it high on his hip. He knew how to shoot, but was no gunman.
Dan said, “These rustlers have been hitting the smaller ranches around here. Father, you said yourself they have to be stopped. Sooner or later they’re going to start hitting our herd.”
Return of the Gunhawk (The McCabes Book 3) Page 8