Trail Drive (The McCabes Book 5)

by Brad Dennison

  Aunt Ginny invited Charles to sleep on the sofa in the parlor, that night. He was the only occupant of the bunkhouse at the moment, until the rest of the men came back from the trail drive, and the bunkhouse roof was in need of repair. The following morning, Charles found some rotted timbers had given way and part of the bunkhouse roof had caved in. The hail had also cracked some wooden shingles on the roof of the main house. He had some work to do.

  A sawmill was now set up at the edge of town, so he took the buckboard in and got two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, and some bundles of shingles. He had it all added to the ranch’s tab. It would be paid back once Mister McCabe and the boys were back from the trail drive with the money the herd was sure to fetch in Cheyenne. He rebuilt the bunkhouse roof and then reshingled part of the roof of the main house.

  The sun was riding low in the western sky as he was climbing down the ladder he had braced against the side of the house. He heard a rider coming, and looked off toward the trail, and he brought his hand to his gun as he did so.

  Before the incident with the man Harlan Carter had killed, Charles wouldn’t have worn his gun when working on a roof. Now it was with him constantly.

  He saw it was Carter riding up.

  Carter said, “They keepin’ you busy enough?”

  Charles nodded with a tired grin. “And then some.”

  “Come on out to the house tomorrow morning. It’s time to learn scrappin’.”

  Charles stepped down from the ladder to the grass. “You gonna show me them two or three ways we talked about?”

  Carter shook his head. “I’m passable good with my fists, but I’m not the best there is around here. I tell Jack that he only beat me because I was drunk, but between you and me, he would’ve beat me anyway. I need someone better’n me to teach you. He’ll be at the ranch tomorrow.”

  “All right. I have some morning chores to do here, then I’ll be right out.”

  Carter nodded and turned his horse back toward his farm.

  The sun was peeking over the ridge to the east when Charles rode onto the Carter farm. He swung out of the saddle. Scout was barking, not the angry warning bark he used to give when Charles showed up, but a happy welcoming bark. His tail was wagging, and Charles reached down to scratch the dog’s head.

  Harlan Carter stepped out of the house. “Easy on the dog,” he said. “I don’t want anyone makin’ him soft. It’s bad enough the way Emily and Nina coddle him.”

  “So,” Charles said. “That man you mentioned. Is he here?”

  Carter nodded. “He’s in the kitchen. The most dangerous man I know. Come on inside.”

  At the table with a cup of tea in front of him was the old Chinese man, Chen. The swamper at the Second Chance.

  “Mister Chen,” Charles said, a little surprised. Charles knew the old man was a little clever at wrestling, but what could he possibly know about actual hand-to-hand combat that Carter didn’t?

  “Morning, Charles,” Chen said.

  Mrs. Carter was at the kitchen counter. “Charles, have you eaten?”

  Charles pulled off his hat. “Yes’m. But thanks for asking.”

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  He couldn’t turn that down. Emily poured him a cup, then excused herself to go outside. Today was laundry day.

  When she was gone, Carter said, “The real reason she went outside was to give us room to talk. She don’t like this business. What I’m teachin’ you. She understands it has to be done, but it don’t mean she likes it.”

  Charles nodded. He understood.

  Chen glanced at Charles, then looked at Carter. “You want him to try and push me down?”

  Carter shook his head. “I want you teach him how to kill a man.”

  That was when Charles saw it. A look in Chen’s eye. He had the same look Carter did. Charles had never noticed it before. Often Chen seemed like nothing more than a jolly old man. Quick with a smile. But now Charles saw the look of the gunhawk in his eye.

  Chen said, “We start as soon as I finish my tea.”

  56

  Chen worked Charles hard. How to position his feet, how to keep his weight centered. The importance of keeping his elbows close to the body.

  Chen said, “You let your arms swing out like chicken wings, and this can happen.”

  He snapped an open finger to the side of Charles’ ribs. Charles was surprised by how much it hurt.

  “Ow,” he said.

  “See? Don’t flap your arms like chicken wings. Keep elbows in and tight.”

  Harlan grinned, as close as he ever came to laughing. He was leaning against a fence rail, a cup of coffee in one hand.

  Charles was taking a stance the way Chen showed him. Or at least, as close as he could get to the way Chen showed him. One foot forward, the other a little ways back. Weight evenly balanced between them. Facing an imaginary opponent at a three-quarter angle.

  Charles shot out a jab. Then another.

  “No,” Chen said. “You not doing what I said.”

  Charles was getting a little exasperated. “I’m doing exactly what you said.”

  Chen shook his head. “You leaning into the punch. Must hold weight even, and turn body into punch. Lean into punch, and you too easy to take down.”

  Charles looked at Carter, who just shook his head.

  “All right,” Chen said. “You take jab at me.”

  Chen stood in front of Charles. Charles took a half-hearted jab with his fist, and Chen swatted it aside.

  “No,” Chen said. “Take real punch.”

  “I can’t do that,” Charles said. “You’re old enough to be my great-grandfather. I can’t just punch you in the face.”

  “Not that you can’t. That you won’t.”

  Charles looked at Carter again.

  Carter said, “Go ahead. Try to knock him down.”

  This was getting Charles’ dander up a little. Maybe he wasn’t an expert at boxing or wrestling, but he had been in a scrap or two since he had come west, and he had held his own.

  All right, he thought. If this old man wants to get knocked down, then Charles was going to oblige.

  He took the stance. What Chen was calling a fifty-fifty stance. Charles shot out a jab, and Chen side-stepped it, grabbed him by the wrist and elbow with hands that were impossibly fast, and turned and threw Charles over his back. Charles landed hard on the dirt.

  He lay there, gasping for air. After a couple of moments, he said, “How’d you do that?”

  Chen said, “You did that. I just helped you along.”

  Carter took a sip of coffee. He was still leaning against the fence. He said, “The way you lean your weight into your punches, all Chen had to do was grab your arm and give you a little pull. Your own weight and strength worked against you.”

  Chen gave his hands a good hard clap. “Exactly! I’m glad someone paying attention. You threw yourself to the ground. I just helped.”

  Charles rolled over slowly, making sure nothing was broken, and sat up. He said, “How can I get all my strength into a punch if I don’t lean into it?”

  “You don’t put all strength into punch. You just put most. Not all. You keep in fifty-fifty stance, and turn body for more power. Better to put most but not all into a punch, than put all in punch and end up on ground.”

  Charles nodded. It was making sense.

  He said, “How will I ever get as good as you?”

  “Take years and years.”

  “I don’t have years and years. There are men trying to kill me. I have to learn now.”

  “Can’t teach you all I know. But maybe I can teach you enough so you can keep them from killing you.”

  Charles nodded, and started to get to his feet, but then staggered and went down again. He had hit the ground hard.

  Chen looked at Carter. “Maybe I should have shown him how to fall first.”

  57

  Fred’s recovery was coming along slowly. Every day there was progress, but not much
. After two weeks, he was able to sit up, but if he tried to stand, he blanched and had to sit back down.

  He said to Aunt Ginny, “I guess I have to face it. It may be a long time until I can get back to my wrangler duties.”

  Ginny said, “You let it take time. You’re not just the wrangler, here. You’re family. Charles is handling the wrangler duties, and once Johnny and the boys are back, they’ll figure out what to do until you’re back on your feet.”

  He shook his head. He had a plaid robe tied about him, and he was sitting in a wooden upright chair by the bed. He hadn’t been downstairs since before he was shot. He struck Ginny as looking ten years older.

  He said, “I might never be back to my duties. It’s been over three weeks, and I still can’t stand up for more than a few seconds. I can’t take a full breath.”

  “That’s because Granny Tate said the bullet broke your breast bone, and snapped some ribs.”

  He nodded. “That’s what she said. I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever be able to get back fully to where I was. I’m not a young man.”

  “Fred, you have to be optimistic.”

  “With all due respect, Aunt Ginny, I have to be realistic, too.”

  He was silent a minute.

  She said, “What are you thinking?”

  “I have a son, Jeff. He has a small ranch a day’s ride south of San Francisco. Has a wife and kids.”

  She nodded. He had talked about Jeff more than once. She said, “I sent him a letter, a couple of weeks ago, to let him know what happened.’

  “Maybe I’d be better off there. Maybe it’s time I got to know my grandchildren a little better. Maybe this is God’s way of arranging things so I can spend some time with them.”

  Fred drew a shallow breath. It hurt to breathe.

  He said, “I didn’t spend the time with Jeff when he was growing up that I would have liked to. His mother died when he was young. I was a cowhand, then. The only life I knew. Couldn’t raise a boy like that. He went east to stay with my wife’s sister and her husband.”

  Ginny nodded. She knew the story.

  He said, “Maybe now I have the chance to spend some time with him. I have a small savings account, thanks to you and Johnny. This ranch has paid me real well over the years. If it would be no bother, I’d like to write a letter to Jeff. Ask him if he’d like his father underfoot for a little while”

  Ginny smiled. She couldn’t imagine this ranch without Fred. She felt a tear forming, but wiped it away before it could begin trailing down her face. But then it was followed by another one, and she found she couldn’t keep up with them.

  “We’ll miss you, Fred. But we understand. And I hope you know, you’ll always have a home here.”

  He nodded. “Means a lot to me. This place has been a home to me for a lot of years. The only home I’ve ever known since I left the home of my Ma and Pa, back in South Carolina when I was about Bree’s age. But I need to spend some time with my boy. To get to know him. To let his children get to know their grandfather. If you could get me a pen and some paper, I’d be obliged.”

  Ginny got to her feet and wiped her tears away. “We fully understand. There’s nothing more important than family. I’ll go downstairs and get you that pen and paper.”

  58

  It was night. Dinner was done, and Charles and Bree were standing on the back porch. Aunt Ginny had offered Bree a glass of wine, and she had accepted. They had eaten pork, which Ginny considered a meal that called for a white wine.

  “It is often debated,” she had said over dinner, “whether pork should be served with white wine or red. I’ve always leaned toward the white-wine side of that argument. But then, I’ve never been much for red wine.”

  Even though Charles was a hired hand, and the hands took their meals in the bunkhouse, Charles had been eating with the family in recent weeks. Partly because of his relationship with Bree, and partly because Aunt Ginny felt he shouldn’t be eating his meals alone.

  As he ate and Aunt Ginny talked, he was only half-listening. There was tension between him and Bree and he didn’t like it, but he thought he was right in the matter and was not going to back down.

  Once dinner was done, Charles and Bree found themselves on the back porch. Bree held in her hand a glass that was now half-filled with wine. Aunt Ginny had offered him some of Johnny’s scotch, and he had accepted.

  They stood on the porch saying nothing. The moon wasn’t yet up, and stars were scattered across the night sky. Frogs were chirping from the stream off beyond the house.

  Charles said, “I’d like to do something to thank Mister Carter. I’ve been training with him for weeks now. Maybe we could have him and Mrs. Carter here for dinner some night.”

  She said, “Right now, I don’t want that man in this house. I’m grateful for what he did, helping us against that man. But I don’t like him training you.”

  “I can’t just be a cowhand, anymore.”

  “I love you, Charles. But I liked it better when you were just a cowhand. When you weren’t wearing that gun like you’re ready to use it.”

  “Why’s it so wrong for me? Your Pa and brothers all wear their guns like they know how to use ‘em.”

  “But they were always that way. I don’t like seeing you become like that.”

  “Well, I can’t be just a cowhand. Not anymore. Not after what almost happened to you and the other ladies here.”

  She turned to look at him, though he could hardly see her in the darkness.

  She said, “It takes more than being able to kill to be a man. I thought you understood that.”

  “All I know is if Mister Carter hadn’t been here that day, we might all be dead.”

  He took the rest of his scotch in one gulp. Shouldn’t have done that, he realized. It burned all the way down and he suddenly couldn’t breathe. But he refused to let her know. She would laugh, and he was tired of being laughed at.

  He had always been the charming, clumsy Fat Cole. Loveable, and a man they respected, but not one they took seriously. He hadn’t minded, even when Bree fell in love with him. If he was looking in her eyes and then tripped over his own feet and she laughed, he didn’t mind. But all of that ended with the man Carter had to kill. A battle that Charles felt was his, but another man had to fight for him.

  Once the burning of the whiskey had passed and he was sure he could speak again, he said, “I’m going in for a refill.”

  He left her on the porch, and went to the bottle of scotch that was standing on the desk in the parlor.

  Aunt Ginny was in her rocker by the fire. “Please, Charles. Have another.”

  He had been about to take it, and then realized how poor his manners were to even consider it without asking.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, and poured another.

  She said, “Would you join me by the fire?”

  As much as he loved Bree, he didn’t really want to go back out onto the porch at the moment. She was even more mule-headed than Josh. Everyone seemed to cave in to her demands, like calling him Charles when he really didn’t mind Fat, but he was not going to budge. If he and Bree were to have a relationship, then he believed problems had to be worked out by a sharing of ideas. Not by out-stubborning each other. But she didn’t seem ready to share ideas at the moment.

  “I’d be glad to, ma’am.” He walked around the back of the sofa and sat at the end of it with his glass of scotch in hand.

  Bree stood looking off at the dark expanse that she knew to be the valley. Once the moon was up, then the valley floor would come alive in a shade of dull gray. In the winter, when the land was covered with snow, a full moon could reflect off the snow and bring the whole night alive in a magical show of sparkles and bluish light. She loved winter nights.

  She stood now and listened to the frogs chirp, and took a sip of wine.

  She didn’t realize Jessica was standing at the foot of the porch until Jessica said, “I really didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn�
�t help but hearing.”

  “That’s all right. Not much to hear, anyway.”

  Aunt Ginny said to Charles, “I understand you’ve been training with Mister Carter. Learning to shoot and to fight.”

  Charles nodded. “Yes’m. From Mister Chen, too.”

  She raised a brow. “There’s a lot more to that man than is readily apparent.”

  “Yes’m. He dropped me on the ground a few times. One time hard enough to knock the wind out of me.”

  “I just want you to know, I understand. The men in this family, well..,”

  He said, “They’re gunhawks, ma’am.”

  “Indeed they are. That’s the name Johnny gives to them. And do you know what that fully means when he says it?”

  He said, “It means they take care of their own. And they don’t like injustice.”

  “Quite right. But it goes even beyond that. You’ll notice, they never allow the weak to be bullied. They stand against evil.”

  She chuckled, “Oh, Johnny will say I’m reading a lot more into it than is necessary, but there’s something noble in the ways of the McCabes. I sometimes call them latter-day knights. Knights in buckskin, if you will, and carrying guns instead of swords. But the effect is the same.”

  She took a sip of tea. “Now, the love that seems to be growing between you and Bree will grow in its own time. But presuming you are to be part of this family long-term, you’ll find a man can’t be around McCabe men long without becoming one of them. I suppose what I’m saying is the training you are receiving from Mister Carter and Mister Chen was inevitable.”

  “I don’t see why Bree can’t understand that.”

  “Oh, I think she does, Charles. It’s just that sometimes being married to a gunhawk can be a little maddening. It means watching the man you love being put into danger. Sometimes it seems almost as if he goes out looking for it. Bree has seen the worry Johnny has brought me, and I’m just his late wife’s aunt. I think Bree was hoping for maybe a simpler life, married to a rancher who was simply a rancher, not a knight in buckskin, on a personal crusade to defend the weak. Whether or not he wants to admit he’s on a crusade.”