Return of the Gunhawk (The McCabes Book 3)

by Brad Dennison

  A woman began screaming as she was dragged into the alley in front of Johnny and Joe. The man hadn’t seen them. The woman’s neckline was cut low, and from what Johnny could see in the firelight her makeup was a little heavy. Probably worked in the saloon.

  She was screaming, “No! Let me go!”

  The man shook her and slammed her backward into the wall. “Shut up,” he hissed at her through closed teeth.

  Johnny tapped him on the shoulder. The man turned around.

  “Hi,” Johnny said and drove his fist into the man’s face.

  The man’s feet went out from under him and he landed on his back on the ground, and remained there unconscious. The smell of whiskey was radiating from him. Johnny didn’t know if it was the punch that put him out, or the whiskey.

  “Thank you so much,” the woman said, then she looked Johnny squarely in the face. “Mister McCabe. I didn’t realize it was you. My name’s Rose.”

  Johnny was shaking his hand in the air. Punching a man in the face can bruise up your knuckles. “I’d like it if you didn’t tell anyone I was here.”

  She shook her head. “I won’t. I’ll do anything to help you. I know for a fact you didn’t kill Belle.”

  Joe stepped forward. “How?”

  “Because I saw who done it.”

  Johnny said, “Who?”

  “It was that boy. The son of the man who owns the mine. It was that man, the butler who died in that fire. They called him Timmons.”

  Matt stood by the stone wall, the Swan house behind him. The moon was only one quarter tonight and the canyon floor below was a void of blackness. He had a cup of coffee in one hand.

  As he took a sip, Ches ambled up to him.

  “Thought you’d have climbed into a bunk by now,” Matt said.

  Ches shook his head. “Tried. Couldn’t sleep. Somethin’s wrong.”

  “Wrong? Where?”

  “I don’t rightly know. Just a feelin’ that somethin’ ain’t right. Call it a gut feelin’, I guess.”

  Matt gave him a long look. One thing Matt had learned over the years was when you have an old scout or an old cattle hand available and he tells you something like this, you take it seriously.

  Matt said, “You think something’s happened to Johnny and Joe?”

  Ches shook his head and shrugged his shoulders at the same time. “I don’t rightly know. But you know that feelin’ you get right before a battle? Right before the shootin’ starts? You can feel the hairs on the back of yer neck just sort of start standin’ up?”

  Matt nodded. “I know the feeling.”

  “Well, I got it right now.”

  Matt looked back to the canyon floor. Then he glanced at the house. He turned his gaze up toward the rock wall that stood tall and sheer beyond the house. The wall was a sheet of blackness, but he knew it was there and he knew it was impossible to climb.

  He said, “Who’s standing guard down at the canyon entrance?”

  “Wolf and Hatch.”

  “I think I might head down and check on things.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  Matt thought a moment. He wasn’t the tactician his brother was, so he asked himself what his brother might do. “No, maybe you should stay here. Check the house. Are Ben and Price still at the bunkhouse?”

  Price was the man who had ridden in with Ben and Hatch.

  Ches nodded. “They’re both sawin’ ‘em off in there.”

  “Wake them up and tell them to stand ready. Just in case.”

  Matt went to the corral and threw a loop on his horse and then saddled it. It was not even a quarter mile down to the canyon entrance, but no self-respecting cattleman would walk when he could ride. And Matt was getting back his self-respect. Discovering pieces of himself he didn’t realize he had let slip away over the years.

  In some ways, he was losing everything. The ranch, and his son Hiram. And he realized he wasn’t actually losing Verna because he never really had her in the first place. The woman he thought she was had never existed. But in a way, with these realizations, he felt more alive than he had in a long time.

  He led his horse out of the barn and then drew his revolver and checked the loads, then swung into the saddle and rode down to the rocks at the canyon entrance.

  He found the horses Wolf and Price had ridden. They were both saddled, but the cinches had been loosened. The horses were where they should have been. Probably nothing was wrong at all, he thought. Ches was just being jumpy. Easy to get jumpy, though, standing around day after day and waiting for men hired by Verna to attack.

  Matt swung out of the saddle and made his way along one side of the rocky canyon entrance. It was dark. It was almost like walking with his eyes shut. He knew when standing guard down here you took a position near the outside entrance, climbing up onto a rock so you had a look down at the pass itself, and had a little cover in case lead started flying.

  He walked through the pass, listening as he moved. He could hear his hard boot soles making scuffing sounds on the gravel underfoot.

  “Wolf?” he called out in a loud whisper. “Price?”

  There was no answer. Matt walked a little further on. Now he found he was having a gut feeling that something was wrong, so he drew his gun. There was no rational reason for doing so, but he knew Johnny and Joe both survived by heeding their gut feelings. So Matt decided to do the same.

  He was now near the opening. He called out again. “Wolf! Price!”

  There was no answer, except the cool wintry wind whipping past and making a little howling sound as it made its way into the canyon. Matt wore no jacket, as it was not the chill-to-the-bone cold Johnny experienced in Montana, but he pulled his shirt collar close and hunched his shoulders a little.

  He reached out with his left hand in the darkness and found the boulder Wolf liked to sit on when he was standing guard. Around to the side was an opening between the rocks and a little uphill grade that let you climb up and onto the boulder. Matt made his way slowly through this opening, his pistol with his right hand, and he held his left out in front of him so he wouldn’t crash into anything should he be wrong about where he was. He walked by reaching forward with his left foot and then shuffling his right along to catch up with it.

  He found the grade and then began climbing up, and his foot hit something. Could be a rock, he thought. He had never navigated this path in such pitch blackness. He reached down with his left, and found it was a man’s boot.

  He recoiled back, not expecting to find this. He needed light, he knew. He had a small box of matches in his vest pocket to light his cigars with. The light of a match might be visible from out beyond the canyon, but he had to risk it. He fumbled in the pocket with his left for the box and pulled it out and slid it open. Some matches tumbled to the ground but he paid them no mind. He managed to get a grip on one before it fell, then he let the box drop away and he struck the match on the side of his gunbelt.

  Before him, lying on the ground, were Wolf and Price. Their throats had been cut.

  Johnny said to Rose, “Are you sure? It was Timmons?”

  She said, “I’ve seen him enough times. Everyone in town knows what he looks like. Every time that McCabe woman came to town, he was with her.”

  Joe said, “Well, what do you make of that?”

  Johnny didn’t know what to say. A lot was going through his mind at once. He hadn’t expected to hear this. He had really thought Wells or one of his men might be the culprits. But he supposed he wasn’t surprised. After all, Timmons had tried to kill Matt.

  Johnny said to Joe, “From what Matt said about Timmons, this means Verna probably had it done.”

  Joe said, “So they could frame you for it.”

  Johnny said to Rose, “Would you be willing to testify against him if it came to that? If it came to a trial?”

  “I sure would. I want Belle’s killer to hang. But,” she chuckled, “I don’t see it going to court. That family owns the law. That woman and he
r son. And they own the local court. Money is power, and they have more than enough to rule this entire county.”

  The man Johnny had punched stirred a little.

  Johnny said to Rose, “You’d best be getting along. You don’t want to be seen talking to us.”

  “I owe you,” she said. “For taking care of Frank, here. And any help you need regarding Belle, you let me know.”

  And she was out of the alley and on her way.

  Joe said, “Come on. Let’s try the saloon. That barkeep seemed like a good hombre. Maybe he can tell us a few things. There’s probably a back door.”

  Most buildings had one, and so did the Cattleman’s Lounge. Johnny and Joe slipped in through a kitchen that was empty and into a room they figured was behind the barroom.

  When Artie Crocker left the bar and stepped out back for a moment, he found Johnny and Joe sitting at a table waiting for him.

  “Johnny,” he said. “How’d you get into town?”

  “Carefully. Believe me.”

  “Wells and his men are looking for you. They’re saying you murdered Belle.”

  “Yeah, I’m know what they’re saying. What are all these men doing here in town?”

  “Gunfighters, most of them. Some from south of the border. Matt McCabe and his son have hired them to drive out the folks holding up out at the canyon. That’s where we all thought you were.”

  “That’s where I was and where I’ll be going back to when I’m done in town. But that’s also where Matt is. He’s standing with us. It’s his wife and son who have hired the gunfighters.”

  Joe said, “That canyon would be really hard to attack. Just a handful of men could defend it for months. Verna and Hiram have to know that.”

  Artie said, “There’s something I’ve gotta tell you. Word’s out that they brought in Will Buck. He was in this very saloon just six hours ago, and he was seen riding out to the McCabe place. The farmhouse they’re using while they rebuild the main house.”

  “Will Buck,” Johnny said.

  Joe said, “I’ve heard the name. They don’t come any meaner.”

  “I met him once. I think he’s everything they say he is. We gotta get back to the canyon.”

  Artie said, “What could one more man make? Yes, he’s killed some men. But...”

  Johnny was sliding the chair back and getting to his feet. “It’s not just that he’s killed some men. It’s how he does it. When he was a child he spent eight or ten years with the Apache. He knows a thing or two about guerilla warfare.”

  Joe said, “A few men could hold off a small army in that canyon, but one man can sometimes accomplish what an army can’t.”

  “Come on. Let’s ride.”

  Matt took one step back from the bodies, then another, and his heel caught on a rock and he almost went over backwards. He flailed his arms out to catch his balance and the match went flying off into the darkness.

  He had to get back to the house. Ches, Ben and Hatch. Tell them what happened. He hurried back through the darkened canyon entrance and found his horse where he had left it.

  As he swung into the saddle, he saw flames glowing from up on the ledge where the house and barn stood. Something was on fire.

  He kicked his horse into a full gallop and charged up the slope, pistol in hand.

  Gunfire echoed against the canyon walls and as Matt drew closer he could see it was the barn roof that was ablaze.

  Ches was face-down on the ground, in front of the house. Ben and Hatch were standing with guns in their hands, and there was a man Matt had never seen before. Long hair and a black hat, and he had an arm around Cora’s neck pulling her toward him, and a long knife held at her throat.

  Matt hauled on the reins hard and the horse came to a sliding stop in the gravel in front of the burning barn, and he leaped out of the saddle.

  “Hold it right there, cowboy,” the man said. “Another step further and I’ll cut this little girl a new smile from one ear to the other.”

  Jessica was on the ground, propping herself up on one elbow. Blood was streaming from a gash over one eyebrow. Peddie was standing to one side, eyes wide in horror and her hands over her mouth. Matt’s son Tom and his family were with her. Lettie was holding Mercy behind her, but Mercy was peeking around her mother and staring wide-eyed at Cora and the man with the black hat.

  The man said, looking from Matt to Ben and Hatch, “I want you all to drop them guns. If’n you don’t, then I’m gonna carve up this little girl right in front of you.”

  “You do,” Matt said, “and you’ll be dead.”

  The man was grinning. “You can fill me with bullets, but she’ll be just as dead.”

  Tears were streaming down Cora’s face and she called out, “Mama!”

  Matt was trying to put together the situation as quickly as he could. He thought it looked like Jessica had been struck, not shot. This man had apparently made his way into the canyon and killed Wolf and Price, and then worked his way up to the house. Matt might have passed him on his ride down to the canyon entrance. Ches had been shot and was lying motionless, unconscious or dead.

  Matt had to admit he didn’t know what to do. His brother would probably pull off some historic stunt that would add to his growing legend, but Matt was not a legend. He was simply a man. And he knew he couldn’t have this little girl’s conscience on his hands.

  “All right,” Matt said. “We’re dropping our guns. We don’t want anyone else hurt.”

  Matt set his pistol on the ground, then looked to Ben and Hatch and they did the same.

  “Good choice,” the man said. He pushed the knife back into his sheath and then pulled his revolver. “Now, which one of you is Matt McCabe?”

  “I am,” Matt said.

  “Good. I’m being paid a good price to shoot you.”

  “No,” Ben said. “I’m Matt McCabe.”

  “Now ain’t this cute. I know one of you is tryin’ to be a hero. But this means I’m just gonna have to shoot the both of you to make sure. But before I do, where’s the other one? Johnny McCabe?”

  “Not here,” Matt said.

  “When will he be back?”

  Matt didn’t answer. The man leveled his gun at him again.

  That was when they heard hoof beats coming. Two riders. Thank the good Lord, Matt thought. Johnny and Joe, coming back.

  “Well now,” the man said. “That could be him comin’ right now.”

  But it was two riders Matt didn’t recognize. But then he realized he did know one of them, though it had been a lot of years since he had seen him. Zack Johnson, who had worked for Johnny at the little ranch he and Lura had owned. He had gone to Montana with Johnny and the others. Seventeen years older, and now with a mustache, but it was Zack. Matt didn’t know the other rider, though. Young, about Dan’s age. Long hair, a buckskin shirt, and he wore his gun like he knew how to use it.

  They both swung out of the saddle and Zack said, “What’s going on here?”

  The man holding Cora said, “You two don’t make another move or this little girl won’t see another sunrise. One of you Johnny McCabe?”

  Matt had to admit, the younger one did look a lot like Johnny. Or rather like Johnny had years ago, when they made their ride from Texas to California.

  Zack took one look at the man.

  “I know what you’re thinkin’,” the man said. “But a stray bullet could hit this little girl.”

  The man hiked her up until her feet were off the ground, and the top of her head was level with his chin.

  Zack said to the younger one, “Can you make the shot?”

  “In my sleep,” he said, drawing his gun as he spoke.

  He brought his arm out to full length, cocking the pistol as he did so, and squeezed the trigger. The man’s head cocked back and Cora screamed and as he fell backward, she dropped to the ground.

  Matt and the others ran to her. Matt scooped her up and she wrapped her arms around his neck and was sobbing. Matt looked to J
essica and saw she was now sitting up but just barely. Peddie was at her side, kneeling down in the dirt.

  Zack walked over to Matt and said, “Are there any more?”

  Matt said, “I don’t know.”

  The young one was standing over the man he had shot, smoke still drifting from his pistol, and kicked his shoulder. The man didn’t respond.

  He said, “This is the one who won’t be seeing another sunrise.”

  Zack extended his hand. “Matt. Good to see you again, after all these years.”

  Matt, still holding Cora, shook Zack’s hand. “Good to see you too. You both came along at just the right time.” He looked to the younger one. “That was a hell of a shot.”

  Zack nodded. “Matt, let me introduce you to your nephew, Dusty.”

  26

  FOUR WEEKS EARLIER

  Ginny stood on the porch. The autumn winds were whipping past her with more fury than she thought was necessary. She was in a coat and had a scarf pulled about her neck. There was no snow on the ground, even though it was the second week of November. Kind of unusual for this part of the world. Ginny had seen winters where there was a foot of it on the ground before now. Not that it was in any way unseasonably warm. For the past couple of weeks the boys had found themselves having to break the ice on the watering troughs every morning. But the sky was clear. The sort of cold, wintry blue you got this time of year.

  She looked off toward the other end of the valley. Not that she could see the other end from here. But she could see clearly down to the wooden bridge that crossed a stream a quarter mile away, and easily a mile of brown, grassy hills beyond that.

  She could see a rider approaching from beyond the bridge. Even at this distance, she could see it looked like Zack Johnson. The way he sat in the saddle and moved with the horse. The set of his shoulders. Though she was no horse woman, and had somehow managed to live all these years in Montana without actually sitting on the back of one, she knew each rider moved with his horse in a way that was as individual as the way a person walked.

  The house was striking her as feeling empty this morning. She supposed it was rather empty at the moment. John was off to California, Josh and Temperance had ridden into town to have lunch with Jack and Haley and Darby and Jessica. Bree was home but wouldn’t be long, as she was in a mood to go on a ride through the hills. Something about riding through the pines and the bare, leafless trees in temperatures cold enough to freeze water made Bree feel alive. The very thought of it made Ginny want to wrap up in a quilt by a warm fire. But Bree was her father’s daughter. Dusty was home, though. He had gone out back to fetch a horse and saddle it for Bree.