Thad aimed his gun at another can standing on the rail, squinting one eye as he aligned the pistol’s sight with the can.
“There’s plenty of gold right here, Thad,” Matt said. “In the soil. You won’t find soil richer than this anywhere. And your home is here.”
“I don’t consider trying to beg a living from the land to be the same as gold. I’m seeing my father grow old doing it, and it’s not for me. The west is practically awash in gold.”
Matt said to Johnny, “You ever see any gold in Texas?”
Johnny shook his head. “Met a man who had a gold watch once. That’s all I ever saw.”
Thad said, “And in the West, mainly in California, communities are growing. They need leadership. Men to run for office.”
Johnny said, “I should’ve figured that would be in there somewhere.”
Thad ignored him. “I figure maybe that’s where my gold truly lies.”
Thad squeezed the trigger for emphasis, the gun cracked, and one more can leaped from the fence rail.
Thad looked to Johnny and to Joe. Thad said, “You boys were out West. You know why I want to go back there.”
Joe plucked a long stem of brown grass and gripped it with his teeth. “Beautiful country.”
“Come on. There’s Indians. And outlaws.”
Joe said, “Didn’t see too many outlaws.”
“I saw a few,” Johnny said. “None of ‘em were much to write home about.”
Thad ignored Johnny and focused on Joe. “What are the Indians like?”
Matt said, “I thought you fought a bunch of them. Called them red devils, as I recall.”
“That was just talk. Those boys wanted to be entertained, and I did the entertaining. Sometimes you have to give the people what they want.”
“At least you have to appear to, especially if you’re going to run for office,” Matt said.
Thad ignored him, too. He focused on Joe. “What were they like? The Indians?”
Joe shrugged his shoulders. He was wearing his buckskin jacket and his wide, floppy hat. He hadn’t shaved in weeks, and his beard was back.
He said, “Indians are people, that’s all. From a different way of life, so they don’t talk the same or have the same customs. But people are people. They laugh and they cry and they love and they fight. I think people are people, the world over.”
Thad looked to Johnny. Thad said, “All right. You really think you can out shoot me? I’ve been practicing all summer. Show me what you can do.”
Johnny hadn’t shot his guns since before he had come home. But when he faced the cans, it felt like he had last shot them just yesterday. It seemed a natural thing to him, as natural as breathing.
He pulled the right-hand gun, cocking it as he did so, and brought his arm to full extension. All in less than a second. He squeezed the trigger and a can flew into the air.”
“Wow!” Luke shouted. “Incredible!”
Joe said quietly, “The stuff legends are made of.”
Johnny hooked his finger into the trigger guard, spun the gun and slapped it back into his holster. “Pick a can.”
Eleven cans still stood on the fence. Matt said, “Second from the left.”
Johnny’s gun leaped into his hand and he fired, and the second can from the left went flying into the air.
Johnny said, “Here’s an old trick I used to do, when I was practicing as a kid. Let’s see if I can still do it.”
Johnny shot a third can from the fence, and then he fired another shot at it. This shot missed, however, and the can fell to the grass.
He said, “When I was a kid and practicing all the time, I used to be able to shoot a can in the air and then keep it in the air until my gun was empty. I’m a little rusty at it, now. Powder and bullets are expensive, out West. You don’t want to waste any of ‘em target practicing.”
Thad said, “Too much showing off is not good for the soul.”
Johnny found his ire rising, maybe because Thad shouldn’t be one to make comments like that.
Johnny said, “I’m not done, yet.”
He fired again, catching the can near where it touched the ground and made it spring up into the air again. And he fired another shot through it before it could begin its return trip downward. The can went spinning away and landed fifty feet behind the fence.
“Now, that’s what I call shootin’!” Luke said.
“It ain’t showing off,” Johnny said, “if all you’re doing is showing the people what you can do.”
Johnny was smiling, Matt realized. Truly smiling. He didn’t think Johnny had truly smiled since coming home. He might have grinned once or twice, but nothing like this.
Thad said, “I heard Becky Drummond’s getting married.”
Matt looked at him with disbelief. It was a crappy thing to say. Johnny was showing up Thad, and Thad couldn’t be a man about it so he tried to throw a dagger at him.
Johnny said, “That she is. To a good man, too.”
“That doesn’t gall you at all?”
Johnny shook his head. “Nope. I encouraged it. Becky and I are good friends and always will be. Trip Hawley’s a good man.”
Matt decided it was time to change the subject or he was going to drive a fist into their cousin’s face. Matt said to Johnny, “Let’s see that border shift we’ve heard so much about.”
Johnny popped the cylinder out of his gun and pulled a fresh one from a jacket pocket.
“All right,” Johnny said. “A border shift.”
With a fresh cylinder in place, he began firing. One after another, so close together they were almost a continuous roar. The cans leaped off the fence. When the right-hand gun was empty, Johnny pulled the left one, then tossed both into the air, catching the left-hand gun with his right and continued shooting before the roar of his previous shot had fully faded. He slid the empty gun into his left holster while he plucked five more cans from the fence.
He stood with the empty gun in his hand, a cloud of powder smoke enveloping him like land fog.
Thad was staring at the fence, then he looked at Johnny. “You ought to come west with me. Shooting like that, you’re just wasting your talent behind a plow.”
Johnny slid the gun into his holster. He looked to Matt, and Matt gave a little shrug. He looked to Joe, who still had the strand of grass in his teeth and was looking off toward the distance.
Thad said, “What?”
Matt slapped his shoulder. “Sometimes, Thad my boy, what’s not being said is something not meant for your ears.”
The next few weeks, Thomas McCabe and his sons harvested the land, taking bushels of corn and potatoes. They grew potatoes as a sort of secondary crop. Not good to put all your eggs in one basket, he had said.
The crops were sold, and the money went to paying off all the people Pa owed. Such is the way of the farmer, Johnny thought. Always had been, and probably always would be. They borrow throughout the year against their crops so they can obtain supplies for the farm. Even when the farmer goes into town for a haircut, he does so on credit. Then come harvest time, he sells his crops and pays off the loans. For a short time, money exchanges hands throughout town. And then the whole process begins again.
Some might have wondered why a farmer lived a life that would seem to be filled with constant frustration. Breaking even but seldom getting ahead. But Johnny understood. A farmer didn’t plant seed and coax his crops along through droughts and floods in hopes of profits. He did so to be close to the land, to bring life from it. The sale of a farmer’s produce simply paid his debts and kept his family’s needs paid for and allowed him to continue this lifestyle for another year. It wasn’t much different for cattle ranchers out in Texas.
Come late October, the leaves of the maple, birch, ash and alder covering the hills behind the house were turning red and gold and falling to the ground. Soon the mornings would bring a frost.
Pa and the boys began heading out into the woods by day to bring in more fir
ewood. Logs would be cut into four-foot lengths and left to age over the winter and then burned the following winter.
On days they weren’t working on the firewood, Johnny practiced with his pistols. After a time, he found he could once again keep a tin can aloft for a volley of three shots, but the fourth would always miss.
Amazing, he thought, how his trick shooting had seemed to be at its best when he was fifteen.
Joe began practicing with him. Joe could match him in accuracy, but he couldn’t shoot as fast.
Throughout it all, Johnny’s mind kept returning to the thought of going west. The idea had been fully planted the evening he had spent with Becky Drummond, and it wouldn’t leave him be.
One night, Johnny was sitting in the parlor with Joe and Matt. The night was turning off chilly and a fire was crackling away in the hearth. Ma and Pa had turned in and so had Luke.
The only light in the room came from the fireplace, creating an orange glow that flickered along the walls. It was quiet, except for the crackle and snap of the fire. The wind outside picked up, sounding cold, and rattled the window pane.
Then Joe spoke. “I’m going West with Thad in the spring.”
Matt and Johnny looked at him.
“Isn’t that kind of sudden?” Matt said.
“I been thinkin’ on it quite a while. Even before Thad said anything about it.”
“Just like that? Have you thought about how Ma and Pa are going to feel? We’ve been gone for three whole years, and now you’re heading back? Just like that?”
“It ain’t just like that. It’s something I been thinking about long and hard. I just don’t belong here anymore. I’m out of place. We been back here more’n four months, but I’m as much an outsider now as I was when we first rode in.”
Matt said, “Joe, I know how you feel. Believe me. There’s still a part of me that will always long for the sea. But this is our home. Think about what it will do to Ma and Pa.”
Matt looked to Johnny. “Talk to him, will you?”
Johnny was staring into the fire. He said, “I can’t. Because I’m going with him.”
Matt gave his brother a long look, like he hadn’t been expecting Johnny to say what he did.
Johnny got up from his chair and went over to the fire. He took a wrought iron poker and shifted the wood around a little.
He said, “You know how I feel. We’ve talked about it enough. You can’t think after all that talk I’d be staying.”
He set the poker down and looked at Matt. “If I was staying, then I’d be with Becky.”
Matt nodded. “I guess I knew that. It’s just now that decisions are being made, I’m thinking about Ma and Pa.”
“You think I’m not? If not for them, I would have ridden out the day after that dance.”
“The dance you never actually showed up at.”
“Yeah, that one.”
Joe grinned.
Johnny went back to his chair. A high-backed chair with old, beaten-down velvet upholstery.
Matt said, “So, when do you leave?”
Joe rubbed his fingers through his beard. “Thad says he’s leavin’ after Christmas.”
Johnny said, “I don’t know if I’d really want to travel with him. He’s too confident in the things he doesn’t really know. He could get a man killed.”
“We should wait a little ways after Christmas. Let the snow melt a little and the trails open up.”
“So,” Matt said. “I guess that’s it. You’ve made your decisions.”
Joe shrugged. “Guess so.”
Johnny said, “Becky and Trip are going to be married in the spring. I’d like to be long gone by then.”
Joe nodded. He said to Matt, “What about you? Are you staying?”
Matt looked like he was about to say yes. But he hesitated. He let his gaze drift from Joe to the fire.
He said, “I don’t know.”
They sat in silence for a while. The fire crackled, and the wind outside blew.
Matt said, “Well, that gives us a few months at least to figure out how to tell Ma and Pa.”
23
The store was closed, and Hector Drummond was finishing a cup of coffee before he headed home. The coffee had gone cold, but he didn’t mind.
Actually, he didn’t really care about the coffee, but wanted some time alone. Time to think. He had a lot on his mind.
He sat at his desk in the store room, with the cup of cold coffee in front of him. A lot had gone on this summer and he was trying to digest it all.
Johnny McCabe had come back into his daughter’s life, and Hector thought that after Johnny’s three-year absence, things could now be as they should be. Becky and Johnny had always seemed so incredibly linked together, from their early school years on. If Johnny was down at the stream with a fishing pole, Becky was usually with him. If there was a church picnic, you could almost bet money they would be at each other’s side. When Thomas McCabe and his sons went hunting and brought home some deer, Becky was right there in the kitchen with Mrs. McCabe, cutting up the venison.
And then when the kids got into their teens and were not so much kids anymore, a true romance blossomed. Hand-holding. Stealing kisses on the front porch. Becky and Johnny thought the old man didn’t know about that, but there wasn’t much that went on in his house or with his family he didn’t know about.
And Hector knew there had been intimate times, too. Becky and Johnny were discreet, but Hector knew his daughter. A look in her eye, a certain bounce in her step. A certain proprietary way a man and a woman have toward each other once they have been intimate.
Of course, no man wants anyone touching his daughter. It makes your hackles rise. And society had a serious taboo about anyone consummating before marriage, even though a lot more consummating went on than people wanted to admit. But Hector had at least the comfort of knowing it was Johnny. A good boy, who came from good stock. Hector had always assumed Johnny would be the father of his grandchildren.
Then Johnny and his brothers had gone off to join the military, on the advice of their father. See a little bit of the world.
The expectation was Johnny would return once his enlistment was up, and he and Becky would marry. But Johnny somehow returned a different man. Hector could see it. He figured everyone could. He knew Becky could. Johnny’s brothers were different, too. Josiah, especially. Whatever happened was not being talked about, but people were speculating. Lots of wild stories. The most popular theory was they had deserted from the military and become outlaws. Their father and their uncle Jake had a wild streak when they were younger, Jake especially, and people were thinking these boys had it, too.
Johnny hadn’t written to Becky, except for once shortly after he had left. Hector always wondered why. Becky tried to wait for him, but as one month blended into another, Becky started to wonder if Johnny would ever be coming back. Hector did, too.
Then Trip Hawley started showing interest in Becky. Hector wasn’t surprised other boys were showing interest in her. Becky was pretty as all get-out, just like her mother. Trip Hawley was a good boy. Rock solid, and also came from good stock. Hector was not disappointed with the idea of his daughter marrying him.
But then Johnny returned. The night of the dance, Johnny had been her escort, not Trip. And Johnny and Becky hadn’t arrived at the dance. Hector knew the way of folks—he knew Becky and Johnny weren’t playing checkers.
Then, a few days after the dance, Becky announced she was marrying Trip. If Trip was the man she wanted, then Hector would be supportive. But he would feel better about the whole thing if Johnny and his brothers would leave again. And this time, not come back. He didn’t think his daughter could ever fully focus on Trip with Johnny around.
Hector decided to head home. As he walked across the store to the door, a couple floorboards creaking underfoot, he thought about how he had built this store. Not only built the business, but built the actual building. It had been an empty lot before he started. He
had nailed every board in place. Becky was his only child, and one day it would go to her. Her and Trip.
They would run it, and the thought pleased him. Trip had a strong work ethic, and Becky had a good head for business. Trip had been talking about the old Wheeler place, but Hector was working at convincing Becky to let go of that idea and take the store. It would be much steadier income over the years.
He blew the lamp out behind the counter, locked up and started down the street. His and Mavis’s house was just outside of the small business section of Sheffield. It was dark, and he walked along. After being on his feet at the store all day, it felt kind of good to step along and stretch his legs a little. He was hungry, and he knew Mavis had been preparing a roast. There was nothing like her roast.
He crossed the street. The hotel ahead was active, with light in the windows. As he walked, he decided to check the time. He had told Mavis he would be home by eight. He figured he would be able to see the face of his watch in the light from the hotel.
He reached into his pocket for his watch, but the watch wasn’t there. Oh, that’s right, he thought. He had pulled it out when he was at his desk, finishing that cup of cold coffee. He wanted to see if he had time for one more cup before heading out. He had left the watch on his desk.
Getting absent-minded in his old age, he thought with a chuckle. Even though he wasn’t that old. Forty-nine.
He turned and crossed back over the street. As he approached the store, he noticed a lighted window.
Had he left a lamp burning, too? Must be really getting absent-minded. He cursed himself. No excuse for carelessness. He was always saying that to Becky, when she was growing up. Take care of business. Keep everything in order.
He unlocked the front door and stepped in. The light was coming from a kerosene lamp mounted on the wall behind the counter. He was sure he had blown that lamp out before he left, but there it was. Still burning. He stepped around the counter to blow it out. This time he would be sure he did.
Johnny McCabe (The McCabes Book 6) Page 11