One Man's Shadow (The McCabes Book 2)

by Brad Dennison

  “Can you give me a straight answer to a question?”

  She smiled. “I can try.”

  “I agreed to ride along with you and these families, to see that you all reach Montana safely. Can you promise me you won’t cause any trouble? No more wandering off?”

  “I can promise I won’t cause any trouble on our way to Montana. Cross my heart,” she said with a smirk, making a crossing motion with one hand at her chest.

  “Why is it that doesn’t make me feel any better?”

  “Come on, Mister McCabe. Jack. Are you going to tell me you don’t like a little adventure? I can tell you do. I can see it in your eyes. And you’re agreeing to ride along, knowing Cade will probably follow us, because he wants me and he wants to kill you. You could just ride away on the stage and never look back. And once you reach Montana, your daddy’s ranch, you know Cade will leave you alone. It would take a fool to ride onto the ranch of Johnny McCabe, looking to gun down his son.

  “But admit it. You’re riding along with us to make yourself a more tempting target for Cade. You want to face him, but you’re not the kind who can just gun down a man. You have to let him make the first move.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh? Don’t I?”

  “I’m riding along partly because your father asked me to, and partly for my own reasons.”

  “Whatever you say, Jack. But let me tell you something.” She took a step closer. “Adventure is a lot closer than you might think it is. If you want it to be.”

  “Jessica!” her father barked, striding toward her from the tent. “Come help your mother with breakfast.”

  “Yes, Daddy. We were just talking.” She turned and walked away, the hem of her dress swishing through the knee-high grass.

  She cast a backward glance toward Jack as she walked.

  That girl is indeed going to be trouble, Jack thought. As dangerous as he thought Falcone and his men might be, the real danger to the settlers was right here in their camp.

  6

  Jack returned to his hotel room, finding his trunk undisturbed. He dug into and found a vest that belonged to a three-piece suit he often wore to class. He would be putting a lot of hours in the saddle over the next two or three weeks, and would need the vest.

  He tucked Aunt Ginny’s letter into a vest pocket, and then, with his trunk fastened shut and hefted onto one shoulder, he went downstairs to the front desk.

  “I’m checking out,” he said.

  “Might I give you our card?”

  “I really don’t think I’ll be back this way. At least, not for a long time.”

  With that explanation, which really was no explanation at all yet was no more than Jack cared to give, he stepped out onto the street holding his trunk on one shoulder.

  He needed a place where this would be safe, he decided, while he made the purchases he needed.

  The marshal’s office, he thought. Kincaid seemed like a stand-up sort of man. Like Pa often said about men he respected, Kincaid seemed like a man to ride the river with.

  Jack crossed the street, which was dry and dusty in some places and muddy in others, and stepped into Kincaid’s office.

  Kincaid was seated behind his desk. He glanced up at Jack. “Good morning, McCabe.”

  “Morning, Marshal.”

  “Heading out? The stage isn’t due for a few more hours.”

  Jack set the trunk down. “Heading out, yes. But I won’t be taking the stage.”

  Jack accepted a cup of coffee, and took a wooden, wing-back chair across the desk from Kincaid. He explained he would be accompanying the wagons when they left in the morning. Serving as guide.

  Kincaid sat back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk, crossing his ankles. His riding boots were worn and scuffed. They had seen a lot of miles.

  “That takes care of one of my concerns,” he said. “Those folks, out there alone, with possibly the likes of Cade dogging them.”

  He took a sip of his own coffee. “Many think folks from the east are unprepared for life out here. Tenderfoots, they call them. Green. But those folks are farmers. Brewster, Harding, and the other man. Ford. They’ve worked their lives trying to coax a living from the land. There’s nothing soft about ‘em. They know how to use an axe, a shovel. They’re strong, hardy men. Even Brewster, with just one hand. But when it comes to men like Cade and Falcone, they’re out of their league.”

  “Well, I’ll be along to keep them out of trouble.”

  “Trouble there may very well be, son.”

  “I don’t think so. Cade is a coward. He wouldn’t dare face me like a man. Not again. Not after I whupped him so solidly in the saloon yesterday. And Falcone wouldn’t have any interest in robbing those folks. Men like him set their sights a might higher than that.”

  Interesting, Jack noted. Here he was, back in the west, in levis and riding boots and with a gun strapped to his side, and his college speech with polysyllabic words was sort of fading into talk that included things like whupped, and a might higher.

  Yet, despite the fact that he was two years younger than the rest of his class in medical school, and yet was near the top of his class and viewed as some sort of a potential intellectual giant, he was from the west. This was where his heart was, and its ways were within him, never far from the surface.

  “Normally, I would agree with you,” Kincaid said. “Vic Falcone was Sam Patterson’s right-hand-man for a long time. Word has it Patterson might be dead, and Falcone is now running his own gang. They hit stagecoaches, especially when there might be a payroll on board. And they hit trains and banks.”

  “As I recall, Sam Patterson usually confined his operations to Texas and New Mexico Territory.”

  Kincaid nodded. “Falcone is a might further north than might be expected, but he’s not Patterson. He might have different ways, different ideas. He was far enough north to hit your father’s ranch a year ago. Word is he shot up your Pa pretty bad.”

  Jack nodded. “The word is correct. My Pa is alive and well. Shot up bad, but he recovered.”

  “Word is also that your brothers rode after Falcone and his gang, and shot them up pretty bad.”

  “You know more about that than I do. I’ve been living back east. I’ve been out of touch.”

  “I have to admit, I never knew Johnny McCabe had more than two sons.”

  “I have to admit,” Jack said darkly, staring into his coffee, “neither did I until a few months ago.”

  Kincaid nodded, studying the boy, deciding not to pursue it. “A man like Falcone might not have financial motivation to rob three covered wagons filled with farmers, but there is more than one kind of motivation. And Falcone is very human. Considering he attacked the McCabe Ranch last year and was driven back, a number of his men killed, and then your brothers rode after him. Sounds like he might have reason to have a beef with the McCabes. Revenge can be a stronger motive than money, sometimes. And then, there’s the girl. For whatever reason, she has her hooks at least partly set into Falcone’s man, Cade. Coward or not, he’s not likely to forget her.”

  Jack nodded. He hadn’t considered any of these ideas. “Well, Marshal, you’ve given me something to think about.”

  “I wish I could ride along with you, but I can’t. I got me a job to do here.”

  “Any help would, of course, be appreciated, but I do understand. A man cannot be in two places at once.” Jack took another sip of his coffee and set the cup down on the edge of the marshal’s desk.

  “How are you fixed for guns?”

  Jack shrugged. “Aside from whatever squirrel guns those farmers might have with them, I have this Colt at my side. And that’s about it. I wasn’t expecting this kind of trouble.”

  Kincaid nodded, sitting in silence while he thought a moment.

  He got to his feet and went to a rifle rack mounted on one wall. Standing in the rack were four Winchesters and the scatter gun he had taken with him the night before.<
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  He pulled a Winchester and tossed it to Jack, who caught it with practiced hands.

  “Take it,” Kincaid said. “I have three others, all provided for me by the town. No one will miss one rifle.”

  “Much obliged,” Jack said, working the action, chambering a round.

  “I keep them all well oiled and in good working order.”

  “Apparently,” Jack said, admiring the weapon. It was a 44-40, holding eighteen rounds. It would take the same cartridges his pistol did.

  “I got a box of ammunition you can have, too. I would give you my scatter gun, but I need that for use here.”

  “The rifle will surely be a big help. Thank you.”

  “Watch your back trail, son. And at the same time, watch the trail ahead. Don’t let your guard down. Not once.”

  7

  Vic Falcone stretched out in on his bedroll blankets. The fire beside him had dwindled down to nothing more than charred cinders, with a trail of smoke drifting skyward.

  It was morning, and he had finished a cup of coffee, which hadn’t been enough to fully do away with the headache he had from the whiskey the night before.

  Falcone had a black handlebar mustache, and a week’s worth of coarse whiskers decorating his chin. He had been in his clothes for a week, and he knew he had easily three more days of riding before he could reach the little cabin in the mountains that served as his new hide-out.

  Though, he preferred the word sanctuary. The men who rode with him used words like hide-out, but Falcone was a man of education. In what seemed like an earlier lifetime, he had stood before a classroom of eager students, expounding about things such as the Roman Empire and its rise and fall and all of the politics that occurred within that time.

  Even now, he could launch into a lecture on the Empire and how its political philosophies had been the seeds from which the founding fathers of this country had put together the Constitution. He could still name the forty-one Roman emperors. In order.

  And now, here he was, leading a band of outlaws on the frontier. Bedding saloon women when he was lonely, and drinking too much whiskey. And when he could, engaging in a game of poker.

  Women, whiskey and gambling. About all life now had to offer. All because he had been on the losing effort in the late War Between the States. He had been a guerrilla raider, riding with Sam Patterson. Men like Wild Bill Hickok, who had been raiders but for the winning side, were hailed as heroes. But Falcone and Patterson had found themselves on the losing side.

  Falcone had tried to return to his previous life. He had given it the old, proverbial college try. But his involvement as a raider during the war was well known and people now saw him as something different from what he had been. No parents wanted a man like Vic Falcone teaching their children. And he found he had killed too many men and been shot at too many times to allow himself to settle back into the sedate life in a private boy’s school in Virginia.

  Before long, he tendered his resignation and rode west and joined up with Patterson again. Patterson had formed a gang and was using guerrilla war tactics to procure a living from the robbing of banks and stagecoaches, and raiding ranches and farms. Falcone found he adapted to this lifestyle all too easily.

  As these thoughts rolled their way through his head, as they often did when he woke up hurting from too much whiskey, he decided to sit up and maybe bring the fire back to life. More coffee, he decided, was what was needed.

  A woman approached. She was wearing a saloon dress with cleavage pleasingly low. She was not from one of the local saloons, but generally traveled with Falcone and had spent the night with him, in his bedroll. She had been with him a couple of years, now. She had been with him at the previous sanctuary they had been forced to vacate after the incident with Dusty the previous summer.

  She had gone to the creek to wash off the night’s sleep. And she had covered herself with enough cheap-smelling perfume that he would have known she was approaching even with his eyes shut.

  “I can’t wait to get back to the cabin,” she said, sitting on a rock at the other side of the fire. “I can’t wait to have me a good, hot bath.”

  “Soon, Flossy. We shall be leaving here, soon.”

  “You never did tell me why you brought all of us this far south. I mean, it’s not like there’s a job, or anything.”

  Whenever he had a robbery in mind, hitting a bank or a stagecoach, or even raiding a ranch for supplies and horses as he had attempted with the McCabe Ranch the summer before, he referred to it as a job.

  “No,” he said, “there’s no job. We’re not here for a job.”

  “Well, then, what?”

  He shot her an icy glance. “I didn’t realize I was in the habit of explaining myself.”

  “I don’t mean nothin’ buy it. It’s just that some of the men are startin’ to talk..,”

  “If they want to talk, tell them to talk to me directly. If any of them has the backbone for it.”

  Motion at the corner of his eye drew his attention. Cade and a man called White-Eye were approaching. White-Eye had been with him at the McCabe job the year before. A knife scar began at one cheekbone and extended upward across his eye to his brow, and the eye was a sightless milky white. Cade was new.

  Falcone, Flossy and White-Eye were the only survivors after Dusty had infiltrated their previous sanctuary. And the other girl, who had been there with Flossy. She had belonged to Loggins, who had been killed in the attack on their sanctuary by the McCabe men. The men Dusty had led to them. Falcone forgot her name. He never knew what had happened to her, but when he went back days later to survey the damage, she was not among the dead bodies.

  “Mister Falcone,” Cade said. “Pike’s gone. Run off, I ‘spect.”

  Pike was the man with Cade in town the day before, and who had shared the beating at the hands of Jack McCabe.

  “Let him go,” Falcone said. “I don’t want a man here who’s not loyal.”

  “Vic,” White-Eye said. “I got me a question. Would you mind if me and Cade rode into town? Maybe hit the saloon? Had a drink? All the whiskey here is gone.”

  By gone, Falcone knew White-Eye meant it had been consumed the night before.

  “Not today,” Falcone said. “Not until those wagons are gone.”

  That drew a puzzled look from White-Eye.

  Falcone continued, “I don’t want any trouble with the McCabe boy. I doubt Cade, here, will be able to restrain himself, and I don’t want him injured any more.”

  Cade reared back with offense. “I can handle him.”

  “You face off against him in a gunfight and he’ll put you in the ground. And you’ve already shown how you fare against him with your fists. It’s written all over your face.”

  Cade had no reply, at least none he dared make. He looked away.

  “I expect the wagons will be gone tomorrow, and the McCabe boy will be with them.”

  “How do you know he’s going with them?”

  “Because, let’s just say I know the family. I know something of the way they think.”

  White-Eye nodded, and spit a load of brown tobacco juice to the grass. “That boy’s Dusty’s brother. I wouldn’t mess with him.”

  Cade said, “Just who the hell is Dusty?”

  White-Eye had been with Falcone back in the Patterson days. Before Patterson had ridden out never to be heard from again.

  White-Eye said, “He’s Johnny McCabe’s son, and he was raised by Sam Patterson.”

  Falcone said, “I think you boys can manage a day away from whiskey without developing hallucinations and the shakes. Then, tomorrow, if the wagons are gone, you can go into town.”

  Cade and White-Eye walked away.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” Flossy said, “but how much longer do you think we will have to be here?”

  “We will be here,” he said curtly, “until it is time to leave.”

  Falcone lounged the morning away. About noon, he lit up a cigar and decided that he sh
ould probably send a man into town. He could go himself, but a leader sent others to do his bidding. The art of delegation. It reinforced that he was in command.

  And yet, who to go? With Pike’s desertion, he had only three men left. There was Lane, who had a thin mustache and always seemed to be sporting a few days’ worth of stubble on his chin, who had a smile like a shark but still retained his Tennessee accent. White-Eye, who had been with him for years and seemed the most benign of the group. Of course, benign was relative – he could shoot you in the back if he was so motivated. And then there was Cade, who was probably the most efficient fighter among them, but he was two-dimensional in this thinking. When his minuscule mind got hold of an idea, no matter how idiotic it might be, he seemed unable to let it go.

  Falcone could not send Cade into town, not as long as those wagons were still there. Cade would seek out the McCabe boy and probably get himself killed, and that would make Falcone two men short. Lane, the most blood-thirsty of the group, had his name on wanted posters throughout the west and Falcone did not doubt Jubal Kincaid would hesitate to throw Lane in his jail.

  Falcone did not think it wise to do battle with Kincaid, right now. He would probably lose a couple men in the process. He had a big job planned and needed to be hiring men on, not getting them killed needlessly in a gunfight with Kincaid. You had to pick your battles, and a battle with Kincaid at the moment would simply not prove cost effective.

  White-Eye was the man, he decided. He asked Flossy to fetch him.

  White-Eye shuffled up to Falcone’s campfire, a wad of chewing tobacco in one cheek. “You call, Boss?”

  Falcone nodded. “I need you to do something for me. I need you to go into town and wait at the saloon.”

  “Sounds good to me, Boss. I’ll leave right now.”

  “Don’t you need to know what you will be waiting for?”

  White-Eye shrugged. “Don’t rightly care. I just want to get me a drink of whiskey.”

  “I want you to watch for a man. Tall, probably with long hair. Two fingers only on his right hand. Has a patch over one eye. Wears his guns like he knows how to use them. This man you won’t mistake.”