The Long Trail (The McCabes Book 1)

by Brad Dennison

  The window latch turned, and the window swung open.

  “Dusty,” Josh called up. “Get down here. But make it seem like you’re just coming down on your own to get some air.”

  A few minutes later, Dusty stepped onto the porch. His hat was missing, and his shirt tails were flying free, but his gun was belted about his hips. “What’s going on?”

  Josh quickly explained. “I feel like such a goddamned fool. I was the one who hired him.”

  “Don’t feel bad,” Dusty said. “We’re all goddamned fools more often than we’d like to admit.”

  Josh allowed himself a small grin. “Thanks, but I seem to be playing the part a lot lately.”

  “Let’s go check the stable. See if any of the saddles are missing.”

  Josh, Dusty and Fred headed for the stable. Josh struck a match and lighted a lantern, lighting the windows regardless of caution, and they indeed found Long’s saddle missing.

  “Y’know,” Dusty said, “this might be for the best. Now, they’ll know for certain how many armed men we have. It might discourage them.”

  Josh said, “If he comes back, he’s gonna have to answer to me. And he ain’t going to like it.”

  “He won’t be back,” Dusty said. “At least, not alone.”

  After the cup of tea, Ginny had lied down in her room to see if sleep would take her, but it proved elusive. After a half hour, she gave up and went into the kitchen for maybe another cup of tea. She found Johnny sitting at the table. He had taken his pistols apart and was tamping a load into the sixth chamber of each cylinder. With one cylinder now completely loaded, he locked it in place, then with his finger hooking the trigger guard, twirled the pistol almost absently and slapped it into the holster at his right side. This had developed into a habit with him throughout the years – the easier you can juggle your pistols, he felt, the lighter and more natural they will seem in your hands. Your life can depend on that.

  Ginny said, “Zack, Hunter, your brother Josiah, they all have said that you were the best they have ever seen with one of those things. I am grateful for your skills with a gun, because they have protected us more than once. But somehow, the way you carry them about, as naturally as though they are a part of your body, has always struck me as a little unnerving.”

  Johnny nodded, locking the cylinder of his second pistol into place. “Lura used to say the same thing.”

  “All the men out here walk about with those things strapped to their belts. Even Josh, now. It’s a necessary evil, I suppose.”

  “We live on the frontier. About as close to living with nature as you can get. In nature, there are animals who will kill to eat, and others that will kill to protect themselves. A mountain lion will kill to eat, because it’s a predator. It knows no other way. An elk won’t kill to eat, because that’s not its way. But if a mountain lion tries to catch it, then it’ll use its antlers to protect itself. The antlers aren’t evil, they just help the elk to take its part in a cycle that has existed long before men arrived on the face of this earth.”

  “I still think killing is wrong.”

  “Is the mountain lion wrong for being what God made it to be? A predator? For that matter, you could compare the mountain lion to those men up in the ridges.”

  “A mountain lion is a dumb animal. Those raiders are responsible for their actions. God did not make them to kill.”

  “Circumstances did, or they wouldn’t be doing it. Whatever they once were, they’re now predators and they no longer know any other way. To us, they’re evil, like the mountain lion is to the elk. The elk has what the lion can only gain through force. The raiders probably look at us in the same way.”

  “I find that hard to fathom.”

  “I’ve known many an outlaw in my time. Men who would be considered evil by most standards. But each of them was a human being, like you or me, with dreams and hopes and who felt love and sadness, given the situation. But somewhere along the way, something happened to turn them into predators. And you know what I always found interesting? Not one of them ever looked at himself as evil.”

  Johnny rose to his feet, and was about to spin his second pistol as he had the first before shifting it to his left hand and holstering it, but with the disconcerting effect it had had on Aunt Ginny fresh in his mind, he simply transferred the gun to his left and slid it into his holster.

  “Are you telling me,” she said, “that you don’t feel some sort of animosity toward those men out there? Those men who might ride in here and try to burn and kill everything in your life?”

  “I understand them, Ginny. That does not mean that I feel sorry for them. If they should come riding down here, I’ll do everything I can to stop them. They might be the mountain lion, but they will find that this elk has mighty sharp antlers, and knows how to use them.”

  She shook her head slowly, and when she spoke it was barely above a whisper. “It is a goddamned savage world we live in sometimes, isn’t it?”

  “A man I once knew said everyone kills. And not just on the frontier, and not just in the direct, more obvious way. Bankers kill, when they foreclose on a home because the family’s not able to pay the debt. A business owner who successfully drives out a competitor is, in a sense, trying to destroy someone. People kill, Ginny. Some kill to take what they don’t have, others kill to keep it. And some, just because they enjoy it.”

  “You make it sound so cold. Like life is so empty. It’s not. Living is so much more than that. Much more than simply killing.”

  “Yes, it is. But you have to be willing to take the bad with the good. The wilderness can be a mighty beautiful place, as long as you can tolerate its savage side. Life can be mighty fulfilling, but you sometimes have to be willing to kill to keep from being killed, or your family from being killed.”

  There was suddenly a thump at the back door, like it had been struck with a fist, and Josh called from outside, “Here they come!”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Ginny felt the breath catch in her lungs, and her heart leap into her throat. Bree had been in the parlor, lying down on the sofa, but she now ran into the kitchen. Johnny grabbed one corner of the table with both hands and gave it a shove, sending it sliding and overturning, then grabbed a loop of rawhide nailed into place on one floorboard and pulled upward, and a trapdoor opened. “Into the root cellar, both of you.”

  Johnny’s sudden burst of action caused some of the fear to drain from Ginny. It’s harder to be afraid when you’re in motion, dealing with a situation. She said hurriedly, “You first, Sabrina. Go!”

  Bree climbed down a ladder into the darkness below, then struck a match and brought a lantern to life.

  “Do you have the gun?” Johnny asked.

  Bree glanced at a shelf built against the earthen wall, and the bundle wrapped in burlap. She quickly unwrapped it. A small caliber Colt Navy revolver. She looked up at her father, and nodded.

  “You know what to do with it,” he said, more of a statement than a question.

  She nodded, her eyes wide with fear, yet with a steadiness he admired. After all, she was a McCabe. “They won’t take us alive, Daddy.”

  Bree’s instructions hadn’t been to use the gun to shoot at attackers. The gun was to make certain she and Aunt Ginny were not alive to be taken. Sometimes death is not the worst alternative.

  “Can you do it?”

  She nodded. “If I have to.”

  He could see it in her eyes. The gunhawk spirit. He knew she could do what had to be done.

  “Wait until the last possible moment, and use your judgment.” He then looked to Aunt Ginny. “Get going. I’ll close the door behind you.”

  Despite her entry into middle age, she handled the ladder quite nimbly, and Johnny allowed himself one final glance to the women in his life, the daughter he loved dearly and the woman who was like a mother to him, who had left behind her life in San Francisco to help with the children when his precious Lura had been killed. Then, he dropped the trap door shu
t, and with his foot on the door to hold it shut, he grabbed the rawhide loop and pulled it free. He wanted nothing to indicate to any raiders that this was a trap door. He then uprighted the table and set it back in place over the door.

  He had not heard the back door open, but Josh was now standing in the doorway. “They all set?”

  Johnny nodded. “How many?”

  “Eight, at least” Josh spoke quickly, urgently. “Maybe ten. They got the jump on us. Rode in quietly, and didn’t light torches until they were half across the valley. They’re crossing the bridge now, and moving at a full gallop. They’ll be here in minutes.”

  “All right,” Johnny said. “Get everyone into position.”

  And Josh was out the door, his gravely voice roaring into the night as he called out orders.

  Fred Mitchum grabbed the Sharps rifle and a Winchester, and charged up the stairs to the guest room window which overlooked the ranch yard. Josh, as agile as the best Shoshone warrior Johnny had ever seen, climbed onto the front porch roof and leaped upward, curling his fingers around the roof edge, and pulled himself up. From the guest room window, Fred handed the Sharps out and up to him. Josh then positioned himself behind the peak of the roof.

  Dusty took his designated place at one parlor window, Johnny at the other, both looking out at the front yard. Hunter went into the extension that served as Aunt Ginny’s bedroom, and a window that faced out toward the corral. Others took to the windows of the bunkhouse.

  From the rooftop, Josh could make out eight dancing, flickering lights from the direction of the wooden bridge. The riders were advancing. Almost within rifle range. But he could also see seven more approaching from the woods to the west. They were attacking from two directions. Josh called out, “Riders to the west, also! Seven of them!”

  “I see ‘em!” Fred called back, then ran out to the corridor, and the top of the stairs. “Riders to the west, too. Josh counts seven torches. Eight coming straight on from the bridge.”

  “Seven to the west,” Johnny relayed the call to the others on the ground floor, and those outside who could hear him. “Eight coming straight on.”

  One of the men in the bunkhouse echoed the call. “Seven to the west, eight straight on!”

  The riders were still not close enough for Josh to make them out as anything more than globs of darkness beneath each flickering torch. At their speed, he figured they wouldn’t be in range of Fred’s Winchester for maybe another ten seconds. However, a Sharps had more range than any other rifle Josh knew of.

  Josh used the peak of the roof to steady his left arm as he held the forestock of the Sharps, and he pushed the butt of the rifle into his right shoulder and drew a bead on a spot of darkness beneath one of the dancing points of flame. Pa was better than any man alive with a pistol, but with a shoulder arm, Josh had developed skills that stood on Pa’s level. A fleeting thought occurred to him as he tightened his finger on the trigger – if they all lived through this, Josh would have to challenge Dusty to a marksmanship contest with rifles, and see if the show-off could keep up with him, then.

  The Sharps thundered and bucked against Josh’s shoulder. The tiny dancing flame dropped and became stationary, then disappeared as it was extinguished beneath the hooves of other riders.

  The rider had either fallen from the saddle, or was at least wounded and had dropped the torch. Either way, Josh could spare no time wondering about it. He swung the trigger guard down, which dropped the block and exposed the chamber. He pulled the empty metallic cartridge from the chamber and tossed it away, then pushed in a fresh round and pulled the trigger guard back into position again, closing the breach. The rifle had been originally designed for use with paper cartridges and a percussion cap, but Pa had taken it to a gunsmith in Wichita who retooled it so it could fire metallic cartridges.

  Josh now shifted his attention to riders coming from the west. They were now close enough so the low rumble of their hooves on the sod could be heard. With the chilly mountain wind striking his right cheekbone and ear, he drew aim on the lead rider, and fired.

  He saw no reaction. He must have missed. He reloaded the rifle to try again. Guns now started firing from both groups of riders, tiny spots of flame that erupted and then were followed by the report, as sound traveled more slowly than light.

  He could now make out the dark silhouette of each rider. He fired at the one at the head of the pack approaching from the bridge. The heavy caliber bullet took the rider squarely in the chest. The man fell backward and out of his saddle, and was trampled by the riders who were behind him.

  Josh reloaded again, as the riders descended onto the ranch.

  Zack Johnson had been standing by the firepit, holding his hands out toward it, palms out, to catch some of the heat. Three other men stood by him, doing the same. One muttered, “Damn, it’s cold.”

  “Won’t be long,” Zack said. “Another hour or so, and Johnny will be out with Hunter and a couple others for the second shift.”

  Zack and Hunter had been sharing a cigar with Johnny earlier in the evening when Johnny told them of his idea about posting some men out here by this stand of alders.

  “Actually,” Johnny had said, “the idea wasn’t mine. It was Dusty’s. He has a good mind for guerrilla warfare.”

  Hunter said, “Like father, like son.”

  Ramon was taking a stroll to where the horses were tethered by the alders, while Zack stood by the small fire.

  “Zack,” Ramon said, “here they come, I think.”

  Zack hurried over. He could see the pinpoints of firelight dancing atop torches as riders approached the house. He could also see another set of torches, off to another side.

  “Two groups of riders,” he said. “One coming straight at the house from the north, and the other from the west. Mount up!”

  They swung into the saddles and turned their horses toward the ranch, riding hard. A rifle would be useless from the back of a galloping horse, so Zack and the men were armed with pistols only, and they would not be shooting until they were within close range. Zack held one in his right hand and at his left was holstered another.

  “Hold your fire,” he called out, “until I say so.”

  As they rode, they could hear the report of the Sharps cutting through the night. Josh, from the rooftop, Zack figured. Then another. It looked like one rider fell.

  The two groups of raiders converged one hundred yards from the ranch house and charged in as one large mass, and the night exploded with gunfire, from the raiders and the house and bunkhouse.

  “Fire!” Zack called out, and with pistols blazing, he and his men charged into the right flank of the raiders.

  Fred had repositioned himself at the kitchen doorway, with orders to open fire on any riders who managed to escape Zack and his men. Of course, once the raiders lost their torches, distinguishing them from the others would be impossible in the darkness, so Fred had orders to simply shoot anyone approaching the kitchen doorway. Johnny had instructed everyone to avoid the back of the house, so Fred would know anyone he saw would be a raider.

  Johnny and his men were returning fire as bullets from the raiders struck the front wall of the house and the porch, and a couple parlor windows shattered, scattering glass across the floor. Johnny was crouching behind a window beside the door, from which he could see Zack and his men charging into the raiders. The night was alight with dancing torches, the flashing of guns discharging, and he could hear the gunfire, and the screams of men dying.

  Dusty was at a window to the other side of the door, and Johnny called over to him, “Don’t scatter your shots. Make each one count. Save your ammo.”

  Raiders who had escaped the attack from Zack and his men charged into the ranch yard between the bunkhouse and the main house. Johnny had positioned a couple of Zack’s men in the bunkhouse windows, along with the hand who had ridden to the line camp with Josh and Long. In the main house, Johnny and Dusty were firing from the parlor windows, and Hunter from Ginny�
�s bedroom. They all caught the raiders in a crossfire. Johnny held a Winchester in his hands, firing rapidly and jacking away the empties, and Dusty had his Spencer.

  One man’s horse reared out of panic, but he stood to full height in the stirrups regardless and brought his torch back to throw it onto the house roof. Josh already had the Sharps to his shoulder with the hammer cocked back, searching for a target in the melee below, and found the man with the torch. Josh fired, and the man fell backward, rolling over the rump of his horse and to the ground.

  A bullet burned the side of Josh’s left shoulder – he was not sure which direction it had come from. He turned quickly, then realized he was over-compensating and tried to adjust, but was too late to keep from toppling over the front of the peak. He reached out wildly for a handhold, but to no avail. The rifle clattered away from him along the roof and disappeared below. Josh rolled onto his back and scrambled madly with his feet, trying to dig his heels into the shingles and slow his descent. But he managed to slow it only slightly.

  He went over the edge of the roof, and landed with bone-jarring severity on the hard packed earth below, rolling in an attempt to break his fall, but still finding the wind knocked from him.

  He lied still for a moment, trying to force air back into his lungs. He had a mouthful of dust, and his hat was gone. It apparently had separated itself from him somewhere between the roof’s peak and the ground. His ears were filled with the roar of gunfire, and a riderless horse raced past him.

  He could feel both arms and legs, and there seemed to be no real pain – he had broken an arm once and knew how an injury like that felt. He decided any further checking for injuries would have to wait, and forced himself to his feet and moved at a limping sprint for the corner of the house by Aunt Ginny’s bedroom, discovering sharp pain in his left knee as he ran.