Trail Drive (The McCabes Book 5)

by Brad Dennison

  “That’s it?” Dolph said. “I agree to this, and you’ll never come for the money?”

  “That’s it.”

  Dolph looked to Hollingsworth.

  The old man said to Dolph, “The problem would be if you pass on untimely, while your brother is still alive. But as long as he doesn’t challenge the estate in probate, then your heirs will inherit it all.”

  Charles said, “I won’t make any challenge.”

  Dolph shifted his feet, and rubbed his chin with one hand. “You have to understand, I’ve never done business this way.”

  “There’s a first time for everything.”

  Dolph said, “So, you just ride back to your little backwater town in the West, and I return to New York, and that’s the end of it?”

  Charles nodded. “That’s the end of it. Except...”

  Charles was thinking fast. He said, “I want a thousand dollars. In cash. Right now. And then that’ll be the end of it.”

  Dolph said, “The estate is worth many, many more times that.”

  “A thousand is all I want. I just realized I do have use for that amount of money.”

  Dusty and Josh were looking at Charles with a question in their eyes.

  Dolph said, “I don’t see as how I have much choice. All right, Jehosaphat, I agree.”

  He reached to a pocket inside his jacket and came out with his wallet, and pulled out some bills. He counted them off to Charles. Twenties and hundreds.

  Charles was a little startled. He had lived in the West so long, where cowhands were lucky to make fifteen dollars a month, he had forgotten how the extremely rich lived. To Dolph, a thousand dollars was pocket money.

  Charles folded the bills and put them in a vest pocket.

  “Now you leave,” Dolph said. “And I’ll never hear from you again.”

  Charles nodded. “I expect it to be mutual.”

  Dolph looked at him long and hard. Charles returned the gaze. Then he turned and he and Dusty and Josh left the room.

  They stepped back out onto the sidewalk. St. Louis traffic was moving past them. A carriage pulled by a fine team of horses. A couple of riders who looked like trail hands. Another carriage, this one more of a coach with an enclosed back seat. The driver was in a top hat and tails.

  Charles said, “Not the family you boys have, is it?”

  Josh shook his head. “I can’t imagine wanting to kill one of my own brothers.”

  “My family was family in name only.”

  Dusty let that one sink in for a moment. Then he said, “I rode a thousand miles to find my family, three summers ago. I can’t imagine a family like yours.”

  Charles started walking along the boardwalk. Josh and Dusty fell into place beside him.

  “If you don’t mind my saying,” Josh said. “You don’t seem anything like that. We’ve all seen how well you treat Bree.”

  Dusty said, “You seem to know what family is all about.”

  Charles nodded. “I used to have some friends, sons of laborers. Irishmen in New York back then were considered second class citizens. Probably still are. But I was friends with a number of them. I ate at their tables more than once. This horrified my father and Dolph, but I wouldn’t be the man I am today if not for them. It was among those families that I learned what family was all about. I saw in them what was missing in my own. And I see that in your family.”

  “A family you’re part of,” Josh said, and slapped a hand to Charles’s back. “I hope you know we consider you family.”

  Charles nodded. “You’ll never know how much that means to me.”

  Dusty grinned. “I think I do.”

  “So,” Josh said. “You ready to saddle up and get out of here? I’ve had about enough of civilized life as I can take for a while.”

  “Got a little shopping to do, first. That thousand I got from Dolph? I wasn’t gonna ask for any money at all, but then I thought of something. Bree is a girl who’s more happy riding through the mountains with a pistol at her side than she ever would be with all the finery and lace some of these rich St. Louis girls have. But a girl should have at least one piece of finery in her life. Even a mountain girl. I plan to ask her to marry me, and I want to give her a ring that would be fit for a princess.”

  Epilogue

  Josh and Dusty headed for town. A cold beer at the Second Chance sounded good. Life since returning from St. Louis had been almost as hard as the trail drive. Fred had gone to live with his son, so Dusty was handling the wrangler duties. Josh and Charles spent time at the line cabin, and with the help of Kennedy and Taggart they moved the brood stock and the calves to fresher grazing. They were also helping Pa with the building of his new cabin.

  They would have asked Charles to join them for the cold beer today, but Charles had already asked Bree to join him on a picnic lunch out in the mountains. There was a little grassy area at the edge of a ridge that overlooked the valley, and he had said that was where he wanted to present her with the ring. He would have done so at the fine-dining restaurant in town, but he knew she was happier in the mountains.

  Josh and Dusty were riding along the trail that came out behind the Second Chance.

  Josh glanced at a pine-covered ridge that rode up to their right. He said, “You know, that grassy area Chuck was talking about is up at the side of this ridge. Wouldn’t take us long to get there.”

  “We couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t be right.”

  Josh shook his head. “Wouldn’t be.”

  “A dollar says he chickens out of asking her.”

  Josh shook his head. “I might have taken that bet at one time, but since we’ve been gone, he’s different.”

  “He went through a lot while we were gone.”

  Josh glanced at that ridge again. “Wouldn’t take us twenty minutes to reach a little cliff that would give us a view of that grassy spot.”

  “Wouldn’t be right.”

  “Nope.”

  They both turned their horses off the trail and up the ridge.

  They reined up at the cliff that looked down toward the grassy area. A blanket was spread out and Bree and Charles were sitting there. This grassy area was at the edge of a small shelf, and a view of the valley opened up below them.

  Josh said, “Kind of glad we didn’t catch ‘em doing anything too personal. Might have made me blush.”

  “I do so hate it when you blush.”

  They watched while Bree and Charles got to their feet and looked off to the valley below. They could see Bree and Charles were talking, as they would move their heads a little or shift their feet, the way people do when they’re talking.

  Then Charles reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out the ring box. He opened it and dropped to one knee. Bree covered her mouth with her hands.

  Josh said, “Even kneeling down, he’s still almost as tall as she is.”

  “Long drink of water, that’s for sure.”

  She nodded and he placed the ring on her finger and then he rose to his feet and she jumped up and at him and they took each other in a long hug and a deep kiss.

  “Well,” Dusty said. “We’ve seen enough.”

  “Yep. That personal stuff is gonna start up. I don’t want to blush.”

  “I do so hate it when you blush.”

  They turned their horses and started down the side of the ridge, and on to the Second Chance.

  Josh and Dusty found Aunt Ginny in the barroom. Now that she was a part owner, she spent most of her days there. She was sitting at a table with a blueprint spread out in front of her. The place was going to be expanded, which would double its size. One half was going to be the saloon and the other half a restaurant. The framework for the restaurant part was already up. Aunt Ginny hoped to have the restaurant open by August.

  Hunter was there, too. He went down to the root cellar and came back with three mugs of cold beer.

  He said to Josh and Dusty, “I wouldn’t have you drink alone.”

  The three join
ed Ginny at a table and they talked about the farms that were going to be built at the center of the valley. Two thousand acres of grassy bottomland that had been sold to a land prospector, who in turn broke it up into four sections and was selling to farmers.

  The buyer was from California, a vice-president of a land outfit called The Singleton Group. He had arrived in town not long after the boys had been back from the trail. His name was Edward Singleton, and he proudly talked about how his father had started their company back in ’49, during the big gold rush.

  When the boys left, Hunter said, “Do you think they’ll ever find out?”

  “I hope not. Johnny is a man of pride, and if he were to find out, that pride would be wounded. It was a lot for him to accept my funding of Jack’s education.”

  What Johnny and the boys didn’t know, and in fact only Ginny and Hunter knew, was that Brackston Shipping owned forty-nine percent of the Singleton Group and was a silent partner. Since Ginny was the sole owner of Brackston Shipping, this meant she essentially owned almost half of Singleton. So it was partly Brackston money used to buy the acreage in the valley.

  She knew how much the ranch meant to Johnny and the children. She wanted to make sure they got top dollar for the sale of the acreage. The only way to ensure this was to buy it herself, but she had to do so in a way that wouldn’t hurt Johnny’s pride.

  Hunter said, “For years, you were always there to take care of us. To pull bullets out of us when got ourselves shot up and to set broken bones, in those years before Granny Tate moved in. You helped Johnny raise the children and you provided all of us with meals. You’ve done so much for us over the years. You bought half of this saloon so you could have a seat on the Town Council and keep us all safe from Aloysius Randall, but you also did it to help me out. Don’t think I don’t know that.”

  “Well, Hunter, you’re family too.”

  “Johnny is the heart of the family, but you’ve always been the rock. And in a way, you just pulled a bullet out of Johnny again.”

  Bertram Reed knocked on a hotel door in Bozeman. Room Seventeen.

  The door opened. Aloysius Randall stood there. “Reed. Do come in.”

  He stepped aside and Reed walked into the room.

  Randall had removed his jacket and tie and unbuttoned his vest. He had a cigar smoldering away in one hand, and a bottle of whiskey and a glass were on a small table.

  Randall said, “Would you like a drink?”

  “Thank you, but no. I have to report some unpleasant news. I failed, Mister Randall. The herd arrived in Cheyenne. Not all of it. In fact, not even half of it. There won’t be enough for them to make the sale they needed, and I estimated they would have to sell off some land to avoid bankruptcy.”

  “Well, then we’ll just buy the land they’re selling. That is at least one step closer to our goal.”

  Reed shook his head. “We can’t even do that. A buyer swooped in from California and gave them more than I ever would have offered. The sale was completed before I even knew it was happening. There won’t be any way to force them to sell their ranch.”

  Randall took a puff off of his cigar. “What happened with the herd?”

  Reed shrugged. “Sometimes plans just don’t work out, I supposed. My man Chandler was found dead out on the range the McCabes use. I have to presume they were the ones who killed him, but I can’t know for sure. The doctor in town said it looked like a knife wound in his chest. The other two men I hired, Jenkins and Lawson, are nowhere to be found. For all I know, they took the salary and rode off. If not for a hard storm that hit and scattered the herd, then my effort would have been an entire failure. I’m so incredibly sorry.”

  Randall nodded. “All right. We’ll just have to try again. I hate to resort to this, but their ranch house is made of wood. A judiciously placed match could change the game entirely.”

  “Arson?”

  “I am not fond of the idea. I had plans of living in that house. But now I’m forced to more drastic measures.”

  Reed held his hands up in a stopping motion. “Mister Randall, I can’t.”

  Randall looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance. “What do you mean you can’t?”

  “I mean, I can’t be a part of this anymore. That’s also what I came up here to tell you. Chandler was killed. Who knows—I could be next. Those people are rough. It feels like I’m playing with dynamite when dealing with them. I came here to tell you I’m resigning. I’m catching the first stage to Cheyenne, and then I’m going back to Chicago.”

  Randall nodded. He was silent a moment letting it all toss itself around in his mind. “I suppose there’s nothing I can say to talk you out of it?”

  Reed shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

  Reed stood waiting for Randall to offer his hand and to say something like, You’re a good man. I’m going to miss you. Or, You’re going to be a hard man to replace. The normal things you expect your employer to say when you are resigning. But Randall just stood silently, looking at him. His cigar was smoldering in one hand.

  “Well, then,” Reed said. “I’d best be going.”

  He turned toward the door, and Randall sprang into motion, stepping up behind him and at the same time pulling a small derringer from his vest pocket. He cocked it and while Reed was beginning to turn back to him, realizing Randall was scampering up behind him and hearing the gun cock, Randall shot him.

  Reed’s mouth opened as though he had been punched in the stomach. He took a staggering step backward and then fell to his knees.

  Randall said, “No one quits on me, Bertram. That’s something I thought you knew. You work for me until I dismiss you. This is a lesson I have to teach Victor Falcone, too. His day will come. But your day is here, right now.”

  The derringer was a Remington over-under, meaning it had two barrels one on top of the other, and held two shots. Randall had one bullet left, and he aimed the gun at Reed’s forehead and squeezed the trigger, and then he had no bullets left.

  A man came running in. He was a hard-muscled man and was in a white shirt, and a string tie that was a little crooked. He was wearing a holster tied down low on his right leg and a revolver was in his hand.

  “Pennock,” Randall said. “Took you long enough.”

  “Sorry. I was downstairs.”

  “No matter. Get this man out of here.”

  Reed was lying on his back, his eyes staring toward the ceiling. A bullet hole was in his forehead.

  Randall said, “Dump him in an alley.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pennock said, and slid his gun into his holster and knelt down to grab the body of Bertram Reed under the shoulders and began dragging it.

  Randall said, “Make it look like a robbery. Take the wallet. You can keep any money in there. Consider it a bonus.”

  Pennock said, “Thank you, sir.”

  A lumber mill had been set up in Jubilee and buying milled boards from them would have been convenient, but Johnny had decided it might be best to run up as little debt as possible with the merchants in town. He and Josh had paid off the men from the sale of the herd but had little money left over. Aunt Ginny had gone to Bozeman and she sent a wire to a land speculator she knew in California, and he purchased two thousand acres of McCabe land in the valley, which allowed Johnny and Josh to pay the ranch’s debts, and there was a small cash reserve left over. But rebuilding the herd would take at least two years, so money was going to be scarce for a while.

  Johnny decided he would be building his and Jessica’s new cabin the old-fashioned way. Felling the trees himself, splitting them and forming them into timbers.

  This was the way he had built the main house, and it was still standing strong.

  He was working every day on the new cabin. Josh and Dusty and Charles helped out when they could.

  Johnny and the boys had been back from the trail drive for six weeks, and the framework for the new cabin was now up. Johnny was putting the floor in, which meant laying hand
-cut boards down across the joists and then drilling holes and pounding in hand-cut wooden pegs.

  He stood up to rest his back. He found his back hurt as much as a full day in the saddle, just in different areas. He had pulled off his shirt, and his undershirt was streaked with sweat.

  His gunbelt was nearby, but the fact that he didn’t need it belted on was a sign that he was making progress. Even though he had been shot at on the trail drive, he was still able to sleep with the gunbelt slung over the foot of the bed. When he and Jessica were at the ranch house, he was able to leave his gun upstairs.

  He twisted his back first one way and then the other, snapping out a couple of kinks. He saw Jessica standing off by the edge of the floor he was building, and he figured it might be a good time for a break, so he stepped out of the framework and walked over to her.

  She looked up at him with a smile. He didn’t think he would ever grow tired of looking at her.

  He wasn’t going to actually touch her because was covered with dirt and sweat. It was now the middle of summer and the days were hot, even at this altitude. But she sort of snuggled into him, so he put his arm around her anyway.

  He said, “I should have the floor finished today. If one of the boys can help me, we’ll have the roof done in a day or two. Then I’ll start on the chimney. I’ll build it like the one at the house. Out of stones. There’s plenty of ‘em right down there on the canyon floor.”

  From where they were standing, they had an open view of the canyon floor. Thunder was down there, running about like it felt good to be alive.

  She said, “I think Thunder missed you while you were gone.”

  “I sure missed him. More’n once I wished I had him with me.”

  Old Blue was down there, too. He stood lazily chewing some grass. When Johnny and the boys had been riding back from Cheyenne, they found Blue standing on the grassy summit of a long low hill, about twenty miles from where the twisters had struck. He was standing there like he was waiting for them, so they brought him home. They found twelve additional steers with their brands on them, so they brought them home as well.