One Man's Shadow (The McCabes Book 2)

by Brad Dennison

  “For a time. I really don’t think they’ll try anything while we’re there. They won’t want any witnesses.”

  “What is their beef with you? I understand they might be a little miffed because of the way you and the marshal pulled Jessica out of their camp. But to follow us like this strikes me as a little obsessive.”

  “It seems Falcone, their leader, feels there is some sort of unfinished business between himself and my brothers, and Marshal Kincaid thinks he might want to take it out on me. Or try to strike at my brothers through me.

  “There’s also a gunfighter who might be with them. By the name of Two-Finger Walker. He’s an old enemy of my father. They don’t come much worse than Walker.

  “There’s also Cade, one of his men. He challenged me back in town and came out the worse for it. He might want another try at me. And Cade has taken a liking to your daughter.”

  “Harding might blame you for our troubles, but I wonder if this Cade would have been coming for Jessica, anyway.”

  Jack said, “Especially since she went willingly to their camp. Out here in this land, Mister Brewster, with women of marrying age so rare, a woman is seldom abused. She will often be safe even in the company of ruthless men. Even though we have two women of marrying age in our party, Falcone and his men would likely have never tried to take them by force.”

  “Marrying age?” Brewster said. “Jessica is only sixteen.”

  “Marrying age out here might be considerably younger than what it is in Vermont. If a girl is old enough to bear a child, she’s of marrying age.”

  “And,” Brewster said, “Jessica went with them willingly.”

  Jack nodded. “She opened a door when she did that. She voluntarily entered their world. There were women at their camp, but they were all saloon women. Jessica is not one of them, and is presumably untouched. A treasure, in their eyes, who would normally be beyond reach. But she went to them willingly, and I doubt they are going to let it go.”

  “But she’s just a child. She didn’t know what she was getting herself into.”

  “My father told me once one of the most difficult aspects of being a parent is trying to remember how old your child is becoming. He said he would see me in his mind’s eye as being five or six, when in reality I was ten. By the time he got used to the idea that I was ten, I was fifteen. You need to take a strong look at your daughter, Mister Brewster. She is young, yes, and maybe less schooled in the ways of the world than she realizes. But she is no child.”

  Brewster was silent a moment, looking off into the night. Then he said, “You are wise beyond your years, my friend.”

  “Get some rest. I’ll take first watch. I’ll come get you in four hours.”

  Brewster clapped his hand onto Jack’s shoulder and ambled off to his family’s tent.

  Jack had gotten off to a bad start with Brewster – admittedly his own fault – but that was now apparently behind them. Brewster seemed to be warming up to him, and Ford had liked him from the start. Now, if only Jack could break through the icy exterior of Carter Harding.

  Not that Jack needed people to like him to feel good about himself. Pa had taught him it’s not so important what people think of you, because they will think what they want no matter what you do. The truly important thing is what you think of yourself.

  Except, things were not quite so simple with Harding. It so happened the stubborn, tight-lipped farmer, with his narrow mind and unbending opinions, was also the father of a girl Jack was finding himself growing fond of.

  It was not simply her looks that appealed to Jack, though she was quite breathtaking in a subtle sort of way. It was her heart, her mind, the way she moved, the look in her eye when she glanced at him. The way her smile seemed to light him up inside.

  One thing about college life in Massachussetts – unlike the west, there was no shortage of marrying-age women. Especially for college men. Jack had known a few. Sure, he had gotten more intimate with them than Aunt Ginny would have approved of. But none caught his attention quite like Nina Harding.

  Jack took a sip of coffee from his tin cup, looking off into the darkness as he did so. He kept his gaze away from the dwindling fire because he wanted his eyes fully adjusted to the night. His holster was now empty as he had given his revolver to Brewster. He thought about unbuckling his gunbelt and tossing it onto his bedroll, then decided against it. There were twenty cartridge loops in his belt, every one of them filled. Cartridges that fit his pistol would also fit his rifle.

  He took a final gulp of coffee, emptying his tin cup when he heard the heard a sound of motion behind him. A boot or shoe sole scuffing ever so slightly against the gravel underfoot. He turned quickly, tossing away his cup and grabbing the rifle with both hands, his finger on the trigger.

  It was Nina. She gasped and took a step backward at the sudden motion. “Jack. It’s me.”

  Jack stood down. “Nina. You could get yourself shot, sneaking around out here like that.”

  “I just wanted to say hi,” she said, a little sheepishly.

  He smiled. He was glad she did. He fetched his cup from the grass, and snatched the kettle for a refill of coffee. “Does your father know you’re out here?”

  “Of course not. I’m forbidden to speak with you.”

  “I really don’t want you in trouble with him.”

  “Do you want me to go away?”

  “No,” he found himself saying. “That’s one thing I truly do not want.

  She smiled, and stepped toward the fire. She held her hands out to the heat. “It’s a little chilly tonight.”

  “In all honesty, I was just thinking about you.”

  “Nothing bad, I hope.”

  “Just the opposite.”

  He found her a place to sit, on an upended wooden basket that came from Brewster’s camp.

  He said, “Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, thanks. It would keep me up all night. And from what I heard of you and Mister Brewster talking, we will be up and moving quite early.”

  “You were back there listening.”

  She nodded. “Yes, I was. I couldn’t hear everything you said. I wasn’t trying to eaves-drop, really. I was just waiting for Mister Brewster to leave so we could maybe talk for a might. I know you must think me brazen. Approaching a man alone at night is more like something Jessica would do.”

  “No, not at all. I could never think badly of you.”

  She smiled again. She was not looking away shyly now.

  “Coffee helps me think, sometimes,” he said, “At school, I would often pour a cup and sit outside on the steps at night and look up at the night sky.”

  “And what would you think about on those nights?”

  “Where I wanted to be.”

  “And where did you want to be?”

  Jack looked upward at the stars overhead. “In a place like this. With a campfire burning, and a cup of trail coffee in my hand. A gun at my side.”

  She looked down at his holster, seeing it was empty. “Where’s your gun now?”

  “I gave it to Mister Brewster for the night, for when it’s his turn to stand guard.”

  “Do you really think we’re in danger from those men?”

  “I hope not. But my father always said in a situation like this, prepare for the worst. I’d rather be prepared and have those men leave us alone, than not be expecting them and be taken by surprise.” He took a sip of his coffee.

  “You and Mister Brewster were talking about unfinished business their leader has with your brothers. I heard that much. But I also overheard Father and Mister Brewster talking, back when we were camped outside of town. They spoke of what they had heard of your father. Apparently he’s something of a living legend.”

  He shrugged. “So it would seem. They talk about him sometimes around campfires, or in cattle camps or saloons. He’s done some pretty incredible things, and those things tend to grow with the retelling. A writer from New York approached him three or
four years ago to write a dime novel about him. Pa refused, but the man wrote one anyway. Now he’s written a second. Though, the Johnny McCabe in those novels has little to do with the real man.”

  “They said that your family has a ranch in Montana Territory, and they spoke of a sister. They only spoke of one brother.”

  Jack looked away from her, to the darkness beyond the edge of camp. “Didn’t know I had second one myself, till about six months ago.”

  “Really? I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry.”

  “No. It’s all right. Really.” He wasn’t simply being polite. He found this girl made him want to share himself. To tell her things he had never even shared with Darby, back at school.

  He took a drink of coffee and said, “Six months ago, I got a letter. A long one from my Aunt Ginny, catching me up to date on some of the goings-on with the family. I hadn’t returned home last summer, because I was helping some professors with some projects for extra credit. One of them is writing a book and needed help with some research.”

  “That sounds exciting.”

  “It was interesting. And I was focused on doing the best I possibly could. Push my grade-point average as far upward as it could possibly go. I had graduated high school two years earlier than most. I finished undergraduate school in two and a half years, where most students need four. And I wanted to excel at medical school the same way. Then, with that letter, it all came crashing down.”

  She was silent, waiting for him. As though she sensed there are times you just need to be still and let someone continue at their own pace.

  “I never really wanted medical school. I always just wanted to do what my father had done. To build a home for myself out here. To build a cabin in the mountains. Run some cattle. Maybe raise a family. But I ignored all of that. I pushed it away from my center and focused only on excelling academically. I knew Pa wanted what was best for me, and what he believed was best was school back east. Medical school or law school. And I wanted his respect so badly, I guess just pushed myself and what I wanted aside to try to be everything he wanted.”

  She said, “And then, you got that letter.”

  He nodded. “And then I got that letter.”

  The letter had told him of the attack on the ranch by raiders the summer before. How his father had been shot and nearly killed.

  As he spoke, he knelt by the coffee pot, which was now nearly empty. He tossed out the remains, and then began scooping in coffee grounds.

  She didn’t mean to interrupt, but she had to say something about what he was doing. “Pardon my saying, but that’s an awful lot of coffee for that pot.”

  “This is what we call trail coffee. Pa says it can take the rust off a nail, and he’s probably right. The very thought of it makes Aunt Ginny cringe. I developed a taste for it over the years, on my visits home. The coffee has to boil over three times, then it’s ready.”

  “But what about the grounds? Mother drops an egg in to collect them.”

  He chuckled. “We just spit ‘em out.”

  She sort of grimaced. “I think I agree with your Aunt Ginny.”

  He started laughing. Within a few moments, she was too. She said, “I suppose any wife of yours will have to learn to make this trail coffee.”

  He found himself smiling at her. “Yeah. I suppose she would.”

  “So, you were telling me about the attack on your family’s ranch last summer. The whole thing sounds dreadful.”

  “Yeah. Pa was shot bad, but he survived. He’s doing well. Fully recovered. But it turns out apparently some of the men following us might have been involved.”

  “There’s more,” she said. It was not a question. “I can see it in your eyes. There’s something troubling you. And it’s more than the attack on your home, and it’s more than just whether or not you want to go back to medical school.”

  She was perceptive. Such a thing would be annoying if it was anyone else other than Nina.

  “Yeah,” he said. “There’s more.”

  At that moment, the coffee kettle began to hiss and roar, and the brownish water boiled up and out of it, hissing into the fire. With a bandanna wrapped around his hand, he grabbed the kettle by the handle and lifted it from the heat.

  “So, that’s one,” she said. “It has to boil over three times?”

  “Three times,” he said. He held the kettle out to let it cool until the roaring from inside the pot had stopped, then he put it back on the fire.

  He then stood up to stretch his legs a little while he waited for the coffee to boil a second time.

  “In that letter from home,” he said, “I found out I have a brother. A second one. Just like that. In a letter.”

  “That strikes me as a rather abrupt way to learn something so important and personal.”

  “Apparently they all found out just as abruptly. He just rode in and announced who he was, according to Aunt Ginny’s letter. Pa never knew about him. None of us did. Pa’s life was kind of complicated when he was younger.”

  “So I see.”

  “Turns out this boy, just about the age of my brother Josh, which makes him a year older than I am, is called Dusty.”

  The pot began to make noise like it was about to boil. He waited a moment, and then the coffee came slurping up and over and hissed into the fire. Jack removed the kettle so the contents could again settle down.

  “So, did she tell you much about Dusty in the letter?”

  Jack nodded. “Aunt Ginny should have been a writer. She expresses herself on paper in such vivid detail. It seems Dusty is the spitting image of Pa, except Dusty’s eyes are darker. His Indian heritage, she presumes.

  “She said that watching Dusty is like looking into the past. She said Dusty walks like Pa. Wears his gun the same way. Sits a horse the same way. She said watching him walk across the parlor floor in the evening, when the only light is from the fireplace, you would think it was Pa.”

  The pot boiled a third time. Jack lifted the kettle from the fire. “Sure you don’t want some?”

  She gave a facial expression that Jack could only describe as a smiling grimace. “No thanks. I’ll keep it in mind, though, the next time I need to take rust off a nail.”

  Jack refilled his tin cup. “I’m going to be standing guard a while. I might need this to keep me awake.”

  “Oh?” she said playfully. “Am I boring you?”

  He smiled at her. “Hardly. At the risk of being inappropriate, you are the least boring person I have ever met.”

  It might have been the firelight dancing on her face, but he thought he saw a little blush.

  She said, “So, your brother Dusty looks like a younger version of your father, right down to the way he moves.”

  Jack nodded.

  Nina said, “And yet, Mister McCabe, something tells me the root of all of this lies even deeper than that.”

  He sighed, taking a long look out into the darkness. “How is it you can see me so clearly, when others who have known me so much longer don’t? My own father, my brother and sister, Aunt Ginny. Even Darby. I’ve roomed with him for two years, now. You could say he’s my closest friend there, which probably makes him my closest friend anywhere. And yet, he looks but doesn’t really see me. But you, a girl I’ve known not even a week, and you seem to see me so clearly.”

  “Maybe it’s because I’m taking the time to really look. Of course, it may not be necessarily that the others haven’t, but sometimes, I think, when you raise a child it’s easy to get notions of who that child is and what’s best for him. Then as the child grows it might go in a different direction than anyone figured on, but you’re blinded by preconceived notions.

  “Even your friend from school might be a little blinded. You swagger in there, the dashing man from the west with a famous father, and already an image forms in the mind before they really get to know you.”

  He grinned. “So, I swagger?”

  She shrugged and returned the grin. “I plead the fifth.”
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  “So, how is it you’re so wise for someone so young?”

  “It’s not that I’m all that wise. It’s just that, from the first time I saw you, I found myself wanting to know absolutely everything about you.”

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Your favorite color. Your favorite holiday. Your favorite piece of music.”

  He walked over to her. “Blue, like the sky. Christmas. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

  She cocked her head a little. “I’m not familiar with that one.”

  “It’s a Negro spiritual. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard it sung by Henry Freeman. He’s a former slave who does a lot of the blacksmith work for the ranch. Got an incredibly rich baritone. He said he picked up the song in Texas, where he and his family lived for a little while before they went to Montana.”

  “You are a fascinating, multi-layered man.”

  “That’s me.”

  “So, Mister McCabe.”

  “Jack.”

  She smiled. “Jack. Despite your incredible accomplishments at school, what you really want is to live out here. Build a cabin. Raise children and cattle.”

  “Actually,” he said, kneeling beside her and setting his coffee cup on the ground, “what I really want at the moment is this.”

  He touched her cheek gently, his fingers sliding to her chin. Then he drew her closer and their lips met.

  “You see,” he said, “from the first time I’ve seen you, I’ve been watching you, too. Wondering about you. Hoping to get to know you.”

  They kissed again. Longer. His hand touched hers and she gripped his tightly. He realized his rifle was lying in the grass beside him. He didn’t remember letting it go, it simply was there.

  They suddenly heard a woman’s voice, from one of the other wagons. “Nina?”

  Nina jumped to her feet. “That’s mother. I have to go.”

  “Good night,” he said. “Thanks for the company.”

  She gave him a quick smile, and hurried away to the Harding camp. Jake snatched his rifle and followed along. A gentleman didn’t let a lady wander around alone at night.

  Nina’s mother was in a robe. Her hair was tied into a long, graying braid.