The Long Trail (The McCabes Book 1)

by Brad Dennison

  On the morning Hunter was to begin building his saloon, Pa, Josh and Zack Johnson had ridden in, and announced they were here to work. Pa said to him, “You put your sweat and blood into helping build our ranch. It’s the least we can do to help you build your saloon.”

  Hunter had never allowed them to pay for their drinks. He never would.

  Hunter had been gone only a few moments when Josh heard two sets of bootsoles on the wooden floorboards behind him. He turned to find himself facing Reno and Whitey. Tarley remained seated.

  “I’m gonna have a word with you, boy,” Reno said. “Now that you’re here, and not on your pappy’s range.”

  “My father wasn’t there yesterday. Tarley said his piece, and you’re welcome to say yours.”

  “Listen, boy. I was workin’ for your pappy when you was knee-high to a corn stalk. Been a top hand for him for a long time. We’ll just see what he says about you swaggerin’ out there and firin’ me just because you think you’re such a big man because you’re the son of Johnny McCabe.”

  “It doesn’t matter what he thinks, Reno. He left me in charge while he was gone, and it was my decision to fire you. He would have done the same thing in my place. You know how he feels about drinking on the job. Of course, if he hadn’t been away on business, you wouldn’t have been out there drinking and letting the herd stray, anyway. You knew he left me in charge, and you wanted to push and see how hard I’d push back.”

  “You might feel like a mighty big man with that McCabe name, but it don’t mean you’re the man your daddy is. And I ain’t gonna take your orders just because you got his name.”

  It was clear Reno wasn’t listening to Josh, but was talking for his own benefit only, trying to work up a fighting anger.

  The smell of Reno’s whiskey-soaked breath reached Josh. He said, “Go sit down, Reno. You’re full of whiskey.”

  “I ain’t too full to break you in half.”

  This was it, Josh thought. Part Two of the test. Reno stood six inches taller than Josh, with fists like ham hocks. There was fat at his middle, the kind of fat too much drink can bring to a man, but there was solid muscle, too.

  Reno was known as one of the best saloon brawlers in Montana, but Pa had beaten him. Now it looked like Josh was going to have his chance, whether he wanted it or not. Like with the gunfight, he would not be able to decline without creating a reputation for cowardice, a reputation which would dog him the rest of his life, or at least as long as he remained in the west. Not that Josh had any intention of backing down. Though, he was not as much interested in proving himself to anyone else, as he was to himself. “Take your best shot,” Josh said to Reno.

  Reno balled one big fist and with surprising speed, considering how much whiskey he had consumed, and how large a man he was, drove the fist upward at Josh’s head. Josh managed only to turn his head so the fist would strike his cheekbone a glancing blow. Rolling with the punch, Pa called it. Josh’s hat tumbled to the floor.

  Josh countered with a punch of his own, a right that glanced off of Reno’s head, then he buried his left in Reno’s whiskey-filled gut. Reno let loose a gush of air and sunk to his knees.

  Before Josh could turn his attention to Whitey, Whitey’s fist struck Josh’s temple, and staggered him. Josh bounced into the bar behind him, which was all that kept him from falling.

  Whitey stepped in and swung another fist, but Josh raised his arm and intercepted the punch, then swung a right hook catching Whitey at the side of the jaw. Josh’s head was swimming from Whitey’s punch, but he pressed on as he did not want to lose the sudden advantage he was gaining, and drove a left into Whitey’s eye, then a right cross that caught him on the lip.

  Reno was again on his feet, coming up quickly behind Josh and wrapping his arms about him and lifting him from the floor. Whitey was still a little too rocked from Josh’s punches to move in, so Josh took advantage of this, raising both feet and planting them on Whitey’s chest, and pushing away. Whitey fell backward, as did Reno, taking Josh down with him.

  Josh rolled free of Reno’s grasp, and sprang to his feet while he watched the heavier, less lithe Reno struggle more slowly to rise.

  The dizziness from Whitey’s punch had now cleared, and Josh found himself smiling as he readied himself for his opponents to make their next move.

  Hunter had always claimed Josh enjoyed this sort of thing. Maybe he was right. Aunt Ginny did not approve, but at the moment, Josh did not really care.

  Whitey came to his feet slowly, using the bar to help pull himself up. He then turned to face Josh with a revolver in his hand. Josh reached to his side to find his holster empty – his pistol must have fallen free when he and Reno tumbled on the floor.

  “Now who’s the big man?” Whitey asked.

  Whitey suddenly felt a cold, thin blade pressed against his throat from behind, and shot his gaze downward to see a strong hand with thick fingers gripped around the handle of a bowie knife.

  “Drop that gun,” Hunter said from behind, “or I’ll cut you a new smile from ear-to-ear.”

  Whitey let the pistol fall to the floor.

  “This is between Josh and Reno,” Hunter said. “Stay out of it.”

  “That’s the way I want it,” Reno said to Josh.

  Reno unbuckled his gunbelt and dropped it onto the bar. He then retrieved Josh’s pistol and set it beside his own belt.

  Reno said, “You might be better with a gun, but it’s how good you are with your fists that shows your mark as a man. You daddy is one of the best I ever seen with his fists. Let’s see how well you stand up.”

  Josh unbuckled his own gunbelt, and set it on the bar. “You’re right about Pa, but you’re wrong about being a man. It’s not how good you are with your fists, or with a gun. It’s what you are inside. Your loyalty, and your courage. And your self-respect.”

  The two men began circling each other. Any drunkenness from Reno had by now been knocked from him, and he moved like an animal stalking his prey. He was taller, and outweighed Josh by fifty pounds. The muscles of his arms filled out his sleeves, his shoulders made his shirt pull tightly, and he had a barrel chest. But he was more of a wrestler than a puncher, and if he got hold of Josh, the fight would be over.

  Josh moved lightly on the balls of his feet, ready should Reno lunge at him, and to move in with his fists should Reno suddenly provide him an opening.

  Reno suddenly leaped at him. Josh dove to one side, and Reno landed face first on the beer-stained floorboards. Hunter burst into a hearty laugh, and Josh heard a chuckle from the doorway; apparently others were drifting into town early as well.

  Reno was slow getting to his feet. He had landed hard on the floor, and was a little unsteady as he stood, trying to regain his bearings. Josh, meanwhile had rolled to his feet, and now stepped in, and with his feet spread apart, and began planting punches into Reno’s midsection. He turned his torso and rolling his shoulders into each blow, like Pa had taught him to do, like he had during countless hours of practice on the heavy bag hanging in the barn at home.

  Reno grunted as each fist connected, but now that he was prepared, Josh found he was hitting a wall of solid muscle. He was not gaining any ground.

  After four or five futile punches, Josh then changed tactics, before Reno could decide to ignore the punches entirely and try to tackle him again, and brought a sharp uppercut into Reno’s chin, then drove a left cross into his nose, which started blood streaming down over Reno’s chin.

  Reno staggered backward to the bar. Josh moved in to finish the fight, drawing back his right fist for one final punch. Reno suddenly stepped into him, not as badly hurt as he had let on, wrapping his arms around Josh again and lifting him from the floor.

  Josh managed to pull his left arm free before Reno could fully tighten his grip, but his right was pinned to his side, and his feet were a few inches from the floor.

  Josh fought to keep the air from being squeezed from him. The pressure increased against his ribs, a
nd a couple of kinks he did not realize he had in his back snapped.

  He drove his left fist into Reno’s ear out of desperation. Reno winced, but continued to squeeze. However, Josh realized he was pursuing the proper course of action.

  With his open hand he began to slap at the Reno’s ear. Once. Twice. Reno’s eyes were clamped shut at the pain. Josh managed a third slap, then Reno loosened his grip and Josh slipped free.

  Josh dropped to one knee while Reno clasped a hand to his ear, blood from his nose now rolling down his neck and to his shirt.

  Josh rose to his feet. With a roar of rage, Reno charged at him.

  Josh ducked as Reno moved to tackle him, and Reno’s momentum carried him over Josh’s back. Josh straightened and Reno tumbled to the floor behind him.

  Reno rose to his feet once again, unsteadily, almost falling once.

  Josh ran toward him, leaped, and drove both heels into Reno’s chest. Reno’s legs went out from under him, and he landed hard on the floor again.

  Josh scrambled to his feet. Reno rolled over into a sitting position, began to push himself upward, then his strength seemed to suddenly drain from him, and he collapsed to the floor to lie, huffing for breath.

  Josh turned to face Whitey, who still stood at the bar with Hunter’s knife to his throat.

  Josh’s chest was heaving for air, and sweat trickled down his cheekbones. “All right, Hunter. Turn him loose.”

  Hunter pulled back the knife, freeing Whitey.

  “How about it?” Josh said. “You next?”

  Whitey shook his head.

  Hunter said, “Then I suggest you pick your friend off the floor, and get out of here.”

  Hunter looked to the table where Tarley still sat. “That goes for you, too.”

  Whitey grabbed Reno by one arm and helped him to his feet, and half-carrying his old friend, out the door. Tarley followed them, never once even tossing a glance toward Josh.

  Josh retrieved his hat and gun, and leaned one elbow against the bar again.

  “Here’s that beer you asked for,” Hunter said, reaching for a full mug he had placed on a shelf behind the bar.

  His knuckles torn and bruised, Josh lifted the mug and tipped it, draining half of it. He then set the mug back to the bar, wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his sleeve, and brought a hand gingerly to a lump rising on his temple where Whitey’s fist had connected.

  “That was mighty good fighting,” a man said from behind him.

  Josh turned to see a clean-shaven man of about his age. Probably the one who had chuckled from the doorway when Reno fell flat during the fight. His hair was cropped short, a flat-brimmed sombrero was tipped back on his head, and he wore a big bandanna folded in a triangle over a double-breasted shirt.

  Josh said, “Don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance.”

  “Name’s Long.” The stranger extended his hand.

  “McCabe. Josh McCabe.” The grip of the stranger’s handshake was a little tight on Josh’s battered hand.

  Hunter said, “He’s new in these parts. Been in town a couple days, looking’ for work.”

  “Well,” Josh said with a smile, “it turns out I’m hiring.”

  Long chuckled. “I kind’a figured you were. Word’s been traveling pretty fast about how you fired those three, and one of ‘em drew on you. I was hoping to bump into you in town sometime before the night was over.”

  “Where’s the last outfit you worked for?”

  “Russell Hall’s spread, down in Wyoming.”

  “I’m looking for a couple of men to ride line with me. We got a few hundred steers to roundup. Them three I fired were letting them roam free over half the territory, and letting strangers passing through help themselves to them. Pay’s twelve dollars a month, and keep. The job’s yours, if you want it. We ride at sun-up.”

  “You done hired yourself a hand.”

  PART THREE

  McCABE TOWN

  SEVEN

  Dusty sat in the saddle at the edge of a grove of alders and ash, and gazed toward a house almost a quarter mile away, across a grassy meadow. The building was two floors high and made of logs, with a front door shaded by a small sloping roof upheld by pine poles. Smoke drifted lazily from a chimney made of stones. Horses frolicked in the meadow behind the house. A ranch hand moved about the stable.

  The McCabe Ranch. Home of Johnny McCabe. The man who was his father.

  Dusty knew little of the family. He knew of the many exploits attributed to Johnny McCabe, like when he was with the Texas Rangers and took down five Comanche raiders with as many shots, before switching guns in a border shift, and bringing down five more. All the while with an arrowhead in his leg, and riding a galloping horse. Another story had McCabe squaring off against three opponents in a gunfight, drawing and fanning a shot into each of them before they could even clear leather. They claim he once took two men in one shot, firing a rifle through one and into another, during a skirmish between the Texas Rangers and some Mexican border raiders. Dusty was sure most of them were gross exaggerations, and others absolute bunk. News traveled quickly on the frontier, especially exciting news, but it tended to grow as it moved along. After a time, it scarcely resembled the actual event.

  As for the man himself, Dusty knew little. He had learned a little form Lewis and Annie in Baker’s Crossing, and had asked more questions at a couple cattle camps he had passed through on his long ride from Nevada. McCabe and two of his brothers had ridden with an outlaw gang for a time when they were younger. Before that, McCabe had been a Texas Ranger. Eventually, he took a wife and started a ranch in California, near ‘Frisco. His wife was shot - some folks claimed by a bounty hunter who was aiming for McCabe himself but got his wife by mistake. McCabe then took his young children and a few loyal hands to the Montana wilderness to start anew. Actually, much of this struck Dusty as a little farfetched, too.

  As for the family, he had heard there were two sons who were fully grown, and a daughter. Their names, Dusty did not know. But they were his relatives. A couple of brothers and a sister.

  Dusty watched as the ranch hand stepped into the stable, then emerged with a rope in his grip. The man ambled to the open meadow behind the house and dropped a loop on a palomino. The man led the horse to the corral, and then went back into the stable to emerge moments later with a saddle. Once the saddle was firmly strapped to the back of the palomino, the man led the horse to a hitching rail, then a dark-haired girl stepped out the front door of the house, flitted down the three steps from the porch to the ground, and nimbly climbed into the saddle. She exchanged a couple quick words with the ranch hand and then was off across the valley floor, her hair flying wildly behind her. His sister, Dusty figured.

  He backed his horse further into the trees. He did not want to be caught watching the house. If even half of what he had heard about the man who was his father was true, to be caught spying on his home could have deadly results.

  Dusty did not know quite how to feel, as he sat in the saddle, the home of his father before him. He felt a touch of anger at the thought that this home, quite impressive by frontier standards, should have been partly his, too. While McCabe and his other children were sitting at night under a dry roof and by a warm fire, Dusty had been in a bunkhouse in Arizona, unaware of even where he came from. And before that, he had spent many an evening with the Sam Patterson gang, making dry camp because the light of a fire might have alerted a pursuing posse as to their whereabouts. A little boy, huddled in a damp smelling woolen blanket, chewing on a strip of jerky for his supper, and his actual family did not even know of his existence.

  He was angry, but a tear darted its way down along his cheekbone, and he realized the anger was little more than a cover for the loneliness and the down-to-the-bone sadness had ridden with him for as long as he could remember. He reached up with the back of a fist to wipe away the tears, ashamed. Never allow weakness, Patterson had said. When you have a weakness, then your enemies have
a way in which to strike at you. And every man is potentially your enemy.

  A sad way of looking at life, maybe. But Patterson’s lifestyle was such that trust in the wrong man could be fatal.

  He wanted to ride over to the ranch house and announce who he was, and tell them he wanted to belong. It was his right to belong. McCabe and his children may have had no knowledge of Dusty’s existence, and he supposed he could not really fault them for that, but he did exist, and he wanted to belong. He needed to, like anyone else.

  But what could he actually do? Knock on the door and say, “Hi, Mister McCabe. I’m your son, from when you spent a night with a whore named Rosie twenty years ago. What’s for supper?”

  Hardly.

  He simply did not know what to do. But he knew he could not continue sitting here, staring at the house from this grove of trees.

  “Come on, horse,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Dusty rode in the general direction of the pass, beyond which he had found was a small town. He had ridden past it two days earlier, skirting it widely as he figured that after all these weeks of traveling he probably looked more like a saddle bum than a drifting cowhand and vagrants tended to attract attention.

  Where was he to go? What was he to do now that he was actually here? How could he approach his father? Should he approach his father? Or, should he simply leave well enough alone, and start for Oregon?

  Maybe this made some sort of sense. Find Haley. Then find work and start saving money so he could maybe buy a few head of cattle.

  Why remain here, confront McCabe and possibly open a can of worms better left closed? After all, maybe McCabe would not welcome him with open arms. Maybe McCabe wouldn’t want a bastard son coming out of nowhere and disrupting his life. Maybe McCabe would tell him to get the hell off his land and never come back.

  Dusty had been on the trail for more than a month. His hair had been long to start with, but now he was beyond simply needing a shave. His beard was fine with youth, but was coming in fully and covering his chin, and streaking upward to form the beginning of sideburns. A fairly full mustache crawled along his upper lip. His trousers now sported a hole in one knee, and he needed a needle and thread to patch it up. Hell, he could have used a new pair of levis. A hot bath would be nice, and a bed and hot meal would be his first since leaving Nevada, except for the two cattle camps he had happened upon. Yet, he had spent his final five cents at Lewis’s saloon.