Dusty strolled over, a glass of scotch in one hand. He said, “What was it like back in those days, Pa?”
“Well, for one thing, the land was more open. More wild. The town of Cheyenne wasn’t here, then. None of the railheads. The only real settlement north of Texas was Fort Laramie, and there wasn’t much between the two. A few trading posts, and that was about it. The buffalo—there were so many of them. A herd could blacken the entire countryside. And the Indians. They were riding free, like they were meant to. The Lakota. The Cheyenne. The Shoshone.”
Dusty said, “Were Uncle Matt and Joe with you in the Rangers?”
Joe shook his head, and Johnny said, “No. Uncle Matt served in the Navy. And Joe..,” he looked over at Joe.
Joe said, “I was a scout for the Army out of Laramie.”
Johnny knew those were hard days for Joe, and decided to let Joe say as much or as little as he wanted to. Joe said nothing more.
And so, Johnny began talking, telling about what life was like when he was with the Rangers. Chasing down Mexican border raiders, Comanches, Kiowas, and gangs of outlaws. And then after the Rangers, he had spent a few months roaming about the border towns, drinking too much tequila and generally getting into trouble.
“And then,” he said, “I got a letter from Ma telling me Grams had died. I decided it was time to go home. Back to Pennsylvania.”
“That’s what we called our grandmother,” Joe said. “Grams. I got a letter from Ma, too. So I decided to head home for a while. Visit the family.”
“And we met up on the trail.”
And everyone sat and listened while the fire roared in the hearth, and the icy winter winds shook the window panes. They sat and listened while Johnny talked of a time long ago, when he was young and the land was wild.
PART TWO
Returning Home
8
Kansas Territory, 1856
Johnny McCabe reined up near a small gulley where a stream cut through. It was August and he found the stream to be little more than a trickle, which was what he expected. But the banks were high which told him the water ran deep in the spring.
A few small trees grew. Alder and some birch. The sun was trailing low in the sky, and Johnny thought this was a good enough place to camp for the night.
The water in the tiny stream wasn’t anything he would drink. Shallow surface water wasn’t. But it would be fine for coffee.
Johnny had ridden all the way from Texas, and he did so without a pack horse. All of his supplies were rolled up in his bedroll or tucked into his saddle bags. A shirt and an extra pair of pants and some ammunition. A coffee pot and a couple bags of coffee. Three or four extra bandanas—an old Texas Ranger he knew said always carry extra bandanas. A few other things, including two cans of beans. He didn’t need a lot of food supplies because he could shoot his supper better than any man he knew.
He was twenty years old, and his jaw was covered with sparse, fine hair. He was in a range shirt that had been blue when he first got it, but the sun and dust had turned it to a sort of desert gray. He wore a flat-brimmed, gray sombrero and cavalry pants. Holstered at each hip was a Colt .44 revolver, and an eight-shot Colt revolving rifle was tucked into the saddle boot. His guns were all Texas Ranger issue.
The horse he rode was a gray stallion that stood a little over fourteen hands. Caught wild by a mustanger a year ago, and Johnny acquired it from him in a poker game. It was only half broken and the mustanger had been glad to part with it, but Johnny liked the horse’s spirit.
He called the horse Bravo because the poker game had been in a cantina in a small town that was on the Mexican side of the border. The Mexicans called the Rio Grande the Rio Bravo.
Johnny picketed Bravo and then gathered some birch sticks from a deadfall to start a small fire. Then he rubbed down Bravo, which he was sure was Bravo’s favorite part of the day.
As it grew dark, he dug into his saddle bags for a can of beans and a skillet, and he set about cooking himself some supper.
He had taken a shot at a rabbit earlier in the day, and it was one of those rare times that he missed. Nothing he was happy about. He would have to do with beans tonight.
He sat by the fire, stirring the beans every so often and waiting for the coffee to boil. He was thinking about home, about the farmhouse back in Pennsylvania. He hadn’t seen Ma and Pa in three years. He had written letters and they had written back, but it took months to get a letter from Texas all the way to Pennsylvania.
When he got the last letter, four months ago, they told him Grams had died and he decided it was time to head back. At least for a visit.
He loved Texas. The place had taken hold of his heart and was threatening to never let go. He doubted Ma and Pa would understand, because the farm had been in the McCabe family for three generations and they couldn’t imagine calling any other piece of land home. Pa ha said once that the family was as tied to the land as the land was to the family. Pa had recommended his sons go out into the world to learn, to gain experience, but it was always with the idea that one day they would return to build their lives in Pennsylvania.
Johnny knew when he got home, Ma and Pa would want him to stay. And he wondered if it would be too easy to do what they wanted, to fall back into the life of a farmer. If once he was back on the farm, his years in Texas would begin to seem like a fading dream. As he sat with the fire crackling before him and the beans warming in a skillet and the coffee pot boiling, he wondered if he would really ever see Texas again.
He didn’t stare directly into the fire. One of the first things he had learned with the Rangers was to look away from the flames. The moment or two it would take for your eyes to adjust to the darkness was all a Comanche would need to come up on your fire and stick a knife into you.
Not that he expected to meet a Comanche here in eastern Kansas, but he didn’t want to develop careless habits.
Johnny had picketed Bravo, and the horse was standing with his head drooping. But then Bravo lifted his head quick and looked off to the darkness. Something was out there. Probably just a coyote, but Johnny had learned with the Rangers not to take chances. He slid a revolver from his holster.
Then a man called out, “Hello, the fire!”
Johnny thought he recognized the voice. A voice he hadn’t heard since he had left home. But no, it couldn’t be.
He called back, “Come on in.”
He watched as a man came in on foot, leading a horse. When the man stepped into the firelight, Johnny saw he had dark hair dropping to his shoulders and a bushy beard that swallowed the lower part of his face. He was in a buckskin shirt and a wide-brimmed cavalry hat that was faded and tattered. The buckskin shirt fell to his hips and he had a belt around his middle, and a pistol was tucked into the front of the belt. He wore cavalry pants and buckskin boots. Sticking up from the top of one boot was the hilt of a knife.
The man had changed a lot, but Johnny would know him anywhere. He knew the slope of his shoulders and the way he walked. You don’t forget a man you grew up with.
Johnny rose to his feet. He said, “Joe.”
The man stopped and squinted. “Johnny? That you?”
They ran toward each other, first shaking hands and then hugging.
Joe said, “Let me tend to my outfit, and we can talk. That coffee you got goin’ smells mighty good, too.”
After Joe had stripped off the saddle and picketed his horse, he sat down to some beans. The coffee was ready so Johnny poured him some.
“What’re the odds of meetin’ you out here?” Joe said.
Johnny shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “I wouldn’t even dare guess. What brings you here? Last I knew you were stationed up at Laramie.”
Joe said, “Left the Army a while back. Lived with the Cheyenne for a time. Then I got a letter from back home telling me Grams had died.”
“Yeah. I got one, too.”
“Thought maybe it’s time I went back and saw the folks.”
> Johnny nodded. “Been havin’ the same thoughts.”
“Look at us, though.” Joe grinned beneath his beard. “Wonder if they’ll even recognize us.”
Johnny wondered at Joe’s beard. Johnny was two years older than Joe, but Johnny’s beard was still thin and wispy.
Johnny said, “I wonder if the old farm will feel like home.”
Joe was silent a moment, then he said, “I been through some hard times. I wonder if any place’ll ever feel like home again.”
Johnny waited, but Joe said no more.
Before they had come west, Johnny’s little brother was never reluctant to confide in him. But they were no longer farm boys, and Johnny realized Joe was no longer his little brother. They were now men of the West.
Johnny was a seasoned tracker and scout, and people were calling him a gunfighter. Joe was very evidently a frontiersman, a mountain man. And it was not the way of men of the West to pester each other with questions, so Johnny asked none and Joe said no more about it.
After they ate, Joe climbed into his bedroll and was soon asleep. Johnny unrolled his own blankets. Johnny had seen some men use a saddle for a pillow, but he seldom did. He pulled a jacket from his saddle bags and rolled it up, and he would use it as a pillow.
He left his boots on, something he had learned down in the border country. The last thing you wanted was to step into a boot in the morning and find a scorpion there waiting for you. You could always shake your boots out first, if you remembered. But he knew a Ranger who had forgotten to, and paid the price. The man couldn’t step down on his foot for days, and he had cramping in his stomach and spent a full day in the outhouse, unloading from both ends.
Johnny unbuckled his gunbelt and set it on the ground beside his blankets, and then crawled in.
Then he drew a pistol and held it in one hand as he rested his head back on his jacket.
He looked up at the stars, and as he waited for sleep to take him, he wondered about Joe. How different he was from the last time Johnny had seen him. And how different he himself probably was now. How different they would seem to Ma and Pa.
And he thought about the girl he had left behind, and wondered if she would still be there.
9
Johnny and Joe rode overland, not taking any trails. Sometimes they rode in silence, and other times they chatted.
Johnny told him of his time with the Texas Rangers. Chasing Mexican border raiders, and how he one time made an impossible shot with his Colt rifle, ricocheting a bullet off a rock to plug a raider who thought he was safely behind cover.
“Naw, you didn’t,” Joe said.
Johnny nodded. “Like playing pool.”
“And you got him?”
“Plugged him in the back of the head.”
Joe shook his head. “If that don’t beat all.”
And Johnny talked of his life after the Rangers, drifting from one border town to another. One particular gunfight he got into.
“I knew he could clear leather faster than I could, so as he began drawing, I jumped to one side and did a headfirst somersault. He missed, and I came up shooting. Got covered in mud, but I plugged him.”
Joe chuckled. “People talk about that kind of thing, though. A story like that grows, from one saloon to another. Among cattle camps and Army posts. I heard talk of you, you know, all the way to Laramie.”
Johnny blinked with surprise.
Joe said, “Oh, yeah. People asked me if I was the Johnny McCabe’s brother. They were calling you the Gunman of the Rio Grande.”
“They weren’t.”
Joe nodded. “Yes, sir. Gunman of the Rio Grande. That’s you.”
Johnny rode along in silence for a while, then said, “I don’t know if I like the idea of people talking about me, especially all the way off in Nebraska Territory. What I did was what I did at the time, but I like to think what I’m doing affects only me and the people involved.”
Joe shook his head. “Life is like a still pond. You drop a stone in the water, you don’t know how far the ripples will reach.”
Johnny gave his brother a look. When they were kids, it wasn’t unusual for their brother Matt to launch into poetry or philosophy. Matt was always the silver-tongued one. But Joe was quiet, and when he spoke it was usually with few words.
Joe saw Johnny’s look and chuckled. “I got that from an old Cheyenne shaman I knew.”
They came out of the woods a hundred miles south of the farm, and onto a trail that cut through a pass between two hills. The hills were wooded with maples, birch and alders.
“Might as well follow this along for a while,” Johnny said. “Normally I like to travel overland and not by trails. Makes me feel more free, I guess. But now I’m thinkin’ I’d like to get to the farm. See Ma and Pa. We’ll travel faster if we take the trail.”
Joe nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”
The trail took them to a stretch of land where the hills were clear-cut and grassy. Cows were grazing and two silos stood tall in the distance.
Johnny said, “This land is so different than Texas. I had almost forgotten.”
Joe nodded. “More humid.”
He had already pulled off his buckskin shirt and was riding in a range shirt that was a faded gray.
The trail topped a hill, and down below and a little ways ahead, they saw a man walking. He was tall and thin and was in dark clothes, and carrying some sort of heavy looking pack over his shoulder.
“Don’t look like no farmer,” Joe said.
Johnny shrugged. “I’m not sure what he looks like.”
They rode ahead, and as they drew closer, Johnny realized he recognized the man’s gait and the set of his shoulders.
“Could it be?” Johnny said.
“Cain’t be. But I think it is.”
They reined up beside the man afoot. He looked up at them. He was taller than either of them would be, were they standing on the ground. His shoulders were narrower, but not frail. He was in a dark blue navy shirt and matching pants that flared wide at the cuffs. He wore a dark cap, and the pack over his shoulder turned out to be a duffel bag.
“Matt?” Johnny said.
Matt squinted up at them, not sure just what he was seeing for a moment.
Then he said, “Johnny? Joe? Is that you?”
Joe was grinning beneath his beard, and tossed a glance at Johnny.
Joe said, “You never know what you might happen upon, on the trail.”
Matt was giving a wide grin. “Why, I don’t suppose you do. You two look like hooligans from the Wild West.”
“Well,” Johnny said, “I suppose that’s just what we are.”
Johnny and Joe swung out of the saddle and gave Matt hugs and handshakes and slaps on the back.
Matt said, “What are you both doing here?”
“We both got letters sayin’ Grams died,” Johnny said. “Decided it was time to visit home.”
Matt nodded, now a little somber. “Yeah. I got a letter like that from Ma.”
Johnny said, “So, we decided it was time to come east and visit the family.”
Johnny looked at Joe. “Well, we can’t just leave this Navy swabby on foot here in these hills. This ain’t really a frontier anymore, but it’s still some pretty remote country.”
Joe squinted one eye and rubbed his beard. “Do you suppose a swabby might be able to sit on the back of a horse without falling off?”
Johnny said. “We’ve got to try, I suppose. We can’t just leave him out here.”
Matt said, “Funny, you two. I should be able to sit a horse just fine. I’ve been out at sea for the past three years. You ever hear of sea legs?”
He handed his duffel bag up to Joe. Johnny then pulled a foot out of the stirrup and Matt pushed a foot in, and then took Johnny’s hand and swung up and onto the back of the horse, behind the saddle.
To Matt’s credit, he knew which foot to push into the stirrup so he wouldn’t spin around as he swung into the saddle and wind up si
tting backwards on the horse. Johnny had seen it done before.
Johnny looked back at him but didn’t realize he was grinning until Matt said, “What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing. I’m just glad to see you know which end the head is on.”
“Hey, don’t you laugh at me until you can tell me which end of a ship is the bow and which the stern.”
Joe said, “Come on. Let’s ride. We got us a lot of miles ahead of us.”
10
They camped for the night off the trail, near the edge of the woods.
Matt said, “Elizabethville is only a few more miles down the road. I wish we had money for a room.”
“Not me,” Johnny said as he unrolled his blankets. “I haven’t slept in a bedroom for three years. Every single night has been under the open sky. Or when it was raining, in a tent or under a wagon. I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable with a roof over my head.”
Joe nodded. “Same here. I think a room would make me feel all closed in.”
With the fire crackling low and stars coming to life overhead, Johnny walked off to the edge of the camp and stood, looking off toward the road.
Matt walked up to stand beside him. He had rolled a cigarette and the smoke wafted gently past Johnny.
Matt said, “Anything wrong?”
Johnny shook his head. “Not really. It’s just that this would be a terrible place to camp, back in Texas. We got probably five hundred feet to the road, and then it’s open all the way back another couple hundred yards to some woods out yonder. We’re wide open here. People will be able to see our fire for miles.”
Matt slapped Johnny on the back of the shoulder. “We’re not in the Wild West anymore, little brother.”
Johnny nodded. “Ain’t that the truth. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, or not.”
Johnny turned and walked back into the camp. Matt stood looking at him, wondering exactly what Johnny meant. It wasn’t his words, but his tone of voice.
Johnny McCabe (The McCabes Book 6) Page 3