One Man's Shadow (The McCabes Book 2)

by Brad Dennison

  “No man is that good.”

  Two-Finger said, “You don’t know his father.”

  Falcone said, “Both of you, stand down.”

  Jack said, “Now that we’re all out here, tell me. Just what do you want from me? Revenge of some sort?”

  Falcone said, “Not against you personally. The goal was to use you as a hostage, to give me an edge on a man I have a grudge against.”

  “My brother. And let me guess – you were going to use Nina as insurance against me.”

  “Such go the best laid schemes of mice and men.”

  Two-Finger turned to look at Falcone, as if to say what are you possibly talking about? Lane was looking at him curiously, too. Lane said,

  Jack said, “Robert Burns.”

  Falcone nodded his head. “It’s so indeed a pleasure to meet another literate man.”

  “And I was supposed to be the mouse, I suppose.”

  Falcone shrugged. “I was hoping.”

  Jessica called out from somewhere in the darkness, in the direction of the camp. She was calling Nina’s name, her voice dwarfed by distance.

  Jack said to Falcone, “You remind me of a literature professor I had a couple years ago.”

  “How so?”

  “He was a pompous fool, too.”

  Falcone smirked. “I concede the point to you. After all, you have the gun.”

  “And now it’s time for you three to drop yours to the ground. Don’t think for a second I won’t shoot you where you stand if you don’t.”

  In the moonlight, they could see Jessica approaching. “There you are,” she called to them. “Have you found Nina?”

  “It would seem so,” Falcone called back to her. “And her knight has found us.”

  Jessica walked up. “He’s alive.”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” Jack said.

  “Not disappointed, cowboy. Just a little amazed.”

  “Now,” Jack looked to Falcone. “How about dropping those guns? Last chance”

  Falcone shrugged. “You’re the one in command at the moment.”

  He unbuckled his gunbelt and let it drop to the ground. Lane did the same.

  As Two-Finger was unbuckling his gunbelt, he said to Jack, “Don’t think this is over, boy. Now I got a beef with you, too.”

  “I’m shaking in my shoes,” Jack said.

  Jack looked to Falcone. “You boys start walking in that direction toward your camp. I’m leaving with the girls and going in the opposite direction. Let’s hope we don’t meet again.”

  Falcone said, “This is the mistake with all of you noble types. There’s nothing to keep us from coming back and snatching our guns and coming after you. Or retrieving rifles from the camp and coming after you.”

  “That’ll be your funeral. You’re down to only two reliable gunhands, now. That one with the broken wrist is not going to be any good to anyone, and I notice my old friend Cade isn’t with you at all. Must be too shot up.”

  Two-Finger said, “I don’t need no help in bringing you down.”

  “You’re not doing so well proving that tonight. Now, start walking.”

  “Come on,” Falcone said. “This battle is lost.”

  He turned and began away. Lane did the same. Two-Finger did his best to give a menacing gaze at Jack, then followed the other two.

  Jessica said, “Look, Jack. I’m glad you’re not dead. Really. When Two-Finger shot you, I thought you were gone. I don’t want anyone killed. Believe me. But I’m not going back. I would die a slow death as a wife to some sodbuster, off in the woods of Montana. No offense, Nina, because I know that’s the life you want. But it’s just not for me.”

  Jack said, “I promised your father I would bring both of you back.”

  Falcone was still within hearing distance. He turned to them and said, “Now, Mister McCabe. I know you apparently fancy yourself a noble latter-day knight, but I do believe the lady has spoken. It’s her desire to stay with us.”

  “All right,” Jack said, looking to Jessica. “If this is truly what you want.”

  “It is,” she said.

  He shrugged. He looked at Nina, who grasped his arm. She gave the sort of multi-layered look only a woman can do. She was concerned about Jessica, but she also believed Jessica should be free to make up her own mind. She was concerned about the reception Jack would get back at camp for not bringing back both girls. And she was afraid that sooner or later a fight between Jack and Two-Finger would be unavoidable. She believed they had not seen the last of Two-Finger or Falcone. Jack agreed with her on that one.

  Jessica said, “I’m sorry. Tell my family I love them.”

  And she turned to follow the outlaws. Lane, White-Eye and Two-Finger were now almost lost in the darkness. Falcone, however, stood and waited for her. Then the two walked off together.

  “What do we do now?” Nina said.

  “Give them a few minutes. Make sure none of them get the idea to try and double back on us. We take those guns, too. It wouldn’t hurt for your father and Brewster and Ford to be a little better armed.”

  “Stealing?”

  He shook his head with a smile. “Spoils of war.”

  They waited a few minutes, then Jack said, “I think we should be safe, now. I left my horse about a quarter-mile back. Are you up to walking?”

  She nodded. “After that run, I would be more than pleased just to walk for a little while.”

  Jack buckled one gunbelt and slung it over his good shoulder. He handed the other two to her.

  She looked at the torn sleeve on his left side. “That’s where the bullet got you.”

  He nodded. “Mildred Brewster and Elizabeth Ford doctored me up as well as they could. It looks worse than it is.”

  They found his horse where he had left it. Ground hitched and waiting. Normally, Jack had noticed, a horse won’t graze at night, but this one was chewing away at the grass in the moonlight. They slung the gunbelts over the saddle horn, then Jack climbed into the saddle and reached one hand down to pull Nina up. She had to do this on the right side of the horse, because his left shoulder was now so sore he could barely move the arm. Many horses are a bit skittish about having a rider mount from the right side, but this one seemed not to mind.

  Nina settled into place behind him, wrapping her arms around his ribs.

  She said, “Jessica was wrong about one thing.”

  “And what might that be?” he asked as he touched his heels lightly to the sides of the horse, and the horse started forward at a spirited walk.

  “She said I wanted to be a farmer’s wife. If may be so bold, now I don’t think I could ever settle for anything less than a cattleman’s wife.”

  Jack smiled. “I’m finding I kind of like boldness.”

  17

  The settlers heard the sound of the horse approaching before they could clearly see the riders in the faint moonlight. As such, Jack and Nina were met with three shotguns aimed at them as they rode into camp.

  Nina’s mother and father rushed to the horse and Harding pulled Nina from the saddle and both he and his wife wrapped their arms around her.

  Abel Brewster walked over to the horse. He looked up at Jack, questions in his eyes, though he knew the answers couldn’t be good.

  “She wouldn’t come,” Jack said.

  “She’s not being held prisoner,” Brewster said. It was more of a statement than a question.

  “No. She’s staying of her own free will. I’m so sorry.”

  Jack swung wearily out of the saddle.

  Mildred approached her husband and he took her in a long, sad hug. Then Mildred drew a deep breath to sort of shore up her strength, and said to Jack, “Come. Let’s have a look at that arm.”

  The wound was holding together well and had stopped bleeding. Mildred washed the surface of it, using water this time and not Jack’s whiskey. She then wrapped it in a fresh linen bandage. Jack then pulled on a fresh range shirt from his saddle bags. He hated to put on a
clean shirt when he was covered with a few days’ worth of sweat and trail dust, but the shirt he had been in was torn at the shoulder and streaked with dirt.

  Ford walked over while Jack was buttoning his shirt. Jack moved carefully because his shoulder was now so stiff it hurt to bend his arm. According to his father, when you dump raw whiskey into a wound, the pain can cause stiffening like that. Also, a bullet doesn’t just tear into you, it can bruise you up. His father had said a shot of whiskey can sometimes ease off the pain, but Jack thought it might not be the best idea for these farmers to see him tipping a bottle.

  Ford said, “I just wanted to check on you. You’ve been through a lot tonight. Taking a bullet like that, you should be in bed, not gallivanting around the countryside. Even though it couldn’t be helped.”

  Jack said, “Sunrise is still a couple of hours away, but I think we should hitch the teams now and get moving. They let us go without a fight because I had the drop on them. But that doesn’t mean they won’t change their minds.”

  Ford nodded. “I’ll go spread the word.”

  Jack began to roll up his bedding, but found it slow going with his left arm. He then tucked his coffee kettle into his saddle bags, and found Age had returned the bottle. He decided maybe he would take his father’s advice. He glanced around quickly. There was movement over at the Brewster’s wagon. Brewster and Age were hitching the team. They each had their back to him. Mildred was milling about somewhere out of sight.

  He pulled out the cork and took a quick gulp. It burned gloriously all the way down. Kentucky whiskey. He allowed himself a moment to appreciate the lingering taste, then he pushed the cork back in and tucked the bottle into in his saddle bags. Then with the saddle bags draped gingerly over his bad shoulder and his bedroll tucked under his good arm, he walked to where his horse was picketed.

  The horse was still saddled, but Jack had loosened the cinch. The rifle was still in its place in the scabbard.

  Motion caught his peripheral vision, and he looked over to see Carter Harding approaching. What now, Jack wondered.

  Harding said, “I suppose a word of thanks is in order for what you did. But don’t think you’re going to be getting one. If not for you, Nina would never have been taken by those men in the first place. I want you to stay away from my daughter or I’ll shoot you myself.”

  He turned to walk away, but then glanced back over his shoulder. “It appears you’re not a man of your word. You’re here, alive, but the Brewster girl is still with them.”

  Jack was weary and his shoulder hurt, and he found his patience nearly gone. He had the thought that if not for Nina, he would beat the hell out of Harding.

  Brewster came up behind Jack and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  Brewster said, “Don’t let it bother you. You did what you could.”

  Jack nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

  “I know it would be easier just to ignore his comments and his attitude if you didn’t care for his daughter. But she complicates things. Women always do.”

  “Is it that obvious? How I feel about her?”

  Brewster nodded. “It couldn’t be more obvious if you were carrying around a sign announcing it.”

  Jack gave a little chuckle. Here he thought he was discrete.

  Brewster said, “You and Nina Harding look at each other the way Mildred and I do.”

  “It’s precisely because he is Nina’s father that he gets away with talking to me like that. I wonder if he knows that?”

  “Back home, he talked to everyone in town that way, one time or another.”

  “How is it he never got the tar whupped out of him. Where I’m from, he wouldn’t have lasted three days. And since where I’m from is where we’re all going, he’s going to have to learn to water down his attitude. There are men I know of in the mountains who would take a man’s scalp for less.”

  “Harding has a lot of good points, too.”

  “I have yet to see any.”

  Brewster grinned. “Maybe it takes a while for them to show. But he can be loyal. Once he believes in you, he will stand by you, no matter what. And he’s not afraid of hard work. He’s capable of pulling his own weight and then some. Whenever there was a barn-raising, he was always one of the first ones there, and one of the last to quit work at the end of the day. If word gets around that someone needs help, he’s there without even being asked. He’s a good man to have in a community. You just have to be a little thick skinned around him.”

  Jack nodded. He said nothing. There was really nothing more to say.

  Brewster said, “We have the team hitched. Ford’s almost ready. We should be ready to get underway in maybe fifteen minutes or so.”

  Jack nodded. “Good. I’m going to ride ahead a little. See what’s ahead of us.”

  Brewster clapped Jack on the shoulder again. “Don’t worry about the Harding situation. You and Nina. Things will work out the way they are intended to.”

  Brewster seemed so sure, but Jack wasn’t. He tightened the cinch and then swung wearily into the saddle. He reined up beside the first Brewster wagon. Brewster had returned to his wagon and was helping Mildred up and into the wagon seat. Jack noticed Brewster had buckled on Two-Finger’s gunbelt. The revolver was a Peacemaker, and could be loaded one-handed.

  Jack said, “I won’t be gone long. But stay alert, just in case.”

  Mrs. Brewster said from the wagon seat, “You don’t think we’re out of trouble yet, do you?”

  “No, ma’am. Not by a long shot.”

  He clicked his horse on up ahead, past the little creek they had camped by. Nina stood in the tall grass by her family’s wagon, watching him ride away into the night.

  18

  They had two hours and maybe five miles behind them when the sun began to show itself over the eastern horizon. Jack had scouted ahead and behind, and was now dismounted and walking alongside Abel Brewster to give his horse a rest. The animal had covered many miles the previous day and then again during the night, and had gotten no sleep. Like a human, an animal could be driven to exhaustion. Jack had even heard of a horse being ridden to death, to the point it would actually drop to the ground, rider and all, and simply die.

  Jack walked with the horse’s rein in his right hand. His left arm was stiff and sore, and he let it hang to his side. Though he had to admit, the shot of whiskey had broken up some of the stiffness in his shoulder. A sling would be ideal, he thought, because every time the arm moved, even a few inches, he felt it in his bullet wound. But he didn’t want to be hampered. If he was correct and Falcone decided not to give up on them, then he wanted both hands free should he need to fight or use his rifle.

  Once they got to McCabe Gap, he would let Granny Tate have a look at the shoulder. She was Henry Freeman’s mother, and what they called in the southern hill country a granny doctor. She had never attended medical school. As far as Jack knew, she had no formal education of any kind. She could read and write, but had picked it up somewhere along the way. Her entire knowledge of medicine was folk knowledge, and had been handed down to her by a granny doctor she apprenticed with when she was a young girl. But her knowledge was in some ways more thorough than that of modern doctors.

  As Jack walked, Mildred Brewster called him over to the wagon and stuck a thermometer into his mouth. She was surprised to find no sign of fever.

  “Fever is a sign of infection,” she said. “I had never heard of pouring raw whiskey into a wound to prevent infection. I don’t see how it could possibly work. The pain it causes seems inhumane, and doctors take an oath against that sort of thing.”

  “It seems barbaric,” Jack said. “but it works. Granny Tate, back home, swears by it. As does Pa.”

  “Granny Tate?”

  Jack explained about granny doctors.

  “I would like to meet her.”

  “I’ll surely see that you do.”

  Age was leading the oxen at the second wagon, which at this point required little more than to
tap lightly at them with a bull whip from time to time. His father walked beside the first wagon, nudging the oxen every so often. Jack let himself drift away from Mildred and fall back into place at Brewster’s side.

  “The day looks clear,” Brewster said. “And already it’s getting warmer. Going to be a scorcher. But the weather is so different out here. The heat is easier to take. Somehow the humidity isn’t as strong as it is back east.”

  Jack nodded. “Eighty-five degrees on a summer day in Massachussetts can seem as hot as one hundred out here.”

  “I could stand a little rain. Our water supply is getting low. We refilled at the creek back there, but that creek was rather small. It didn’t offer a lot.”

  “Rain would only slow us down, though. I want to make that way station as fast as we can. By mid-afternoon, if possible.”

  Brewster’s gaze had been ahead, but now he turned his eyes to Jack. “You think those men will leave us alone there?”

  Jack nodded. “A way station can be a busy place. Stages coming and going. Stages have shotgun riders. Generally the keeper of a way station is no lightweight, either. Men out here are often seasoned fighters. Many are veterans of the war, like yourself. I’ve seen communities where even boys as young as Age carry a gun and know how to use it.”

  “Sounds like a violent land. I’m wondering if I made the right decision to bring my family out here.”

  “There’s very little law. But men like Falcone aren’t very prominent. They’re the exception, not the rule. Most everyone carries a gun out here, but as such very few ever have to use one. A man like Falcone will only strike if he feels he can get away unharmed. He’s not looking for a contest. Back there last night, once it was clear he couldn’t take Nina without getting shot, he backed down. The idea is to take as much as he can while sustaining as little harm as possible.”

  Brewster snickered. “In a perverse sort of way, it’s almost like business. You could say he wants to keep his cost of doing business low.”

  Jack nodded with a silent laugh. “Except in his case, his cost of doing business is not in the form of money, but of blood lost.”