After a time, she said, “The stars seem so big out here.”
“It’s the elevation. We’ve been climbing steadily since leaving Cheyenne. In fact, it’s really all uphill after Missouri. The grasslands east of the mountains I speak of are close to four thousand feet above sea level. That’s higher than some of the mountains in the Appalachian range. That’s why the air is a little thinner out here, and even though the days can be hot, there’s very little humidity.”
She let herself digest that thought. “Four thousand feet? That’s almost pushing a mile.”
He nodded. “Kind of staggering, when you think about it. We still have a ways to go, but we’re probably at close to three thousand feet now.”
They stood in silence again for a few moments, then a thought occurred to him. “Hey, does your father know you’re out here with me?”
“Mother does. It’ll be all right. Father’s bark is worse than his bite. Once he gets to know you, he’ll lighten up toward you. Mother and I are sure.”
The night breeze lightly touched the side of Jack’s face. Nina’s hair was tied back in a bun. Jack reached to the back of the hear head and found a pin in the bun, holding it together. He slid the pin free and worked his fingers into the bun and her hair came free. She gave her head heard a light shake and her hair fell down over her shoulders.
Jack thought that a woman’s hair was often much longer than he would have guessed from a bun, and he always wondered how long, full hair like Nina had could be compacted into such a tight bun. But it was a fleeting thought, only. He was mostly focused on how beautiful she was in the moonlight, and how her hair hanging freely gave her a look of sensuality. The wind caught her hair and caused it to sift and stir.
As Jack looked into her eyes, with his peripheral vision he caught a hint of motion from somewhere off to the side. At first he paid it little mind. Nina had a way of mesmerizing him, never less so than right now. But then he forced himself to remember that there was at least a potential for danger out here. Falcone and his men were out and about, and revenge was on their minds.
He glanced off to the side, where he thought he had seen the motion. It was now gone.
“What is it?” Nina said.
“Nothing, I guess. I thought I saw something.”
He then became aware that the crickets had stopped chirping. All was silent about them. Not a good sign. Then there was then a slight snapping sound, like something or someone trying to walk quietly had stepped on a small stick.
He looked at her again, but this time it was to try a trick his father had told him about. Your straight-on vision can pick up detail better, but your side-vision is better at detecting motion. At night, Pa would often turn his head so he could scan the darkness around their camp with his side-vision. This is what Jack was doing now. Looking at Nina while he tried to focus his attention onto his side vision.
He saw it again. Off to the side, in the darkness. Hard to tell how far away. Thirty feet. Fifty, maybe.
He brought his fingers to Nina’s lips in a gesture to encourage silence. He then brought her in for a hug, and said quietly in her ear, “Something’s out there.”
“We should go get your father and brother,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “If it is those men, it would be better to have three guns instead of one.”
“True. But if we suddenly head back to camp, it might let whoever is out there know we’re aware of them.”
He moved her around to a place behind him, and then he drew his pistol. He had only five shots, but the sound of loading in a sixth might carry in the night.
He glanced back toward the wagons. Brewster and his wife were at their fire, tending to their roasting venison. One of the Brewster’s wagons blocked his view of the Harding wagon, but he could occasionally catch the foghorn voice of Nina’s father. Beyond them would be the Ford’s wagon. He could also see Dusty and Pa, at their own fire. Dusty was turning the haunch of venison on the spit over the flames.
Jack waited, while it came closer. He could see the shape, now. To his relief, it was not a man. It was walking low, on all fours.
This far out from the camp, the light cast by the cook fires was meager, but enough that Jack could see it looked like a large dog. But it wasn’t a dog.
“What is it?” Nina said, looking over his shoulder.
“It’s a wolf.”
It continued to approach, walking toward Nina and Jack. When it was ten feet away, Jack cocked his pistol. It stopped at the sound.
Then it showed its teeth, looking a dull orange in the dim light from camp. And it growled low and throaty.
It looked like it was getting ready to charge at them. Unusual for a wolf. Despite the fear most people seemed to instinctively have for a wolf, Jack had never heard of one attacking a human. But here it was, advancing toward them.
Jack knew he would have time for one shot only. And he dared not miss.
The wolf suddenly charged and leaped. Nina let out a scream that cut through the silence of the night, and Jack’s gun went off.
22
Pa stood over the wolf carcass. Brewster was beside him, holding a lantern. Harding and Ford were there, each with a shotgun in their hands.
“The thing about wolves,” Brewster said, “they run in packs. Where there’s one, there’s bound to be more.”
Harding said, in his close-mouthed deep rumbling voice, “Never heard of a wolf attacking a man before.”
Nina stood by Jack, as close as she could possibly get. She wasn’t about to step away if there could be more wolves out there.
Dusty had disappeared into the night to scout, a Winchester in his hands.
Johnny said, “This wolf is rabid.”
That sent a chill throughout everyone there.
Harding said, “That would explain it, then.”
Johnny nodded. “A wolf is normally as afraid of people as people are of it. And they’re afraid of fire. A real hungry wolf might hang near a camp beyond the firelight, and wait for any scraps that might be left behind. They can sneak into a camp after everyone’s asleep and the fires are burning low.”
Jack said, “I’ve seen a rabid wolf before. They kind of sway when they walk. This one was walking steady, and charged right at us.”
“I remember that wolf you’re talking about. Back when you were maybe ten.”
Jack could remember it vividly. Pa had taken Josh and him on an overnight camping venture into the ridges that surround their valley. Bree was only six and had stayed behind with Aunt Ginny. They had happened upon a wolf, in broad daylight, staggering about and making a sort of wailing sound that sounded like no wolf Jack had ever heard. Foamy saliva had been dripping from its mouth.
“You put a bullet in it,” Jack said.
Pa nodded. “This wolf wasn’t as far along. But probably would have been within a few days.”
“What should we do with the carcass?” Brewster said.
“Nothing. Leave it right here. Nobody even touch it.”
Dusty materialized from the darkness off to one side. He said, “There don’t seem to be any others. Is this one rabid?”
Pa nodded. “I don’t expect there will be another wolf within miles. They know enough to avoid a rabid animal.”
They returned to the camp. Mildred poured a cup of coffee for Johnny and Abel. Dusty had left his venison unattended when he heard Jack’s gunshot, so he went to the spit and gave the chunk of meat a turn.
Mildred said to Johnny, “A rabid wolf.”
He nodded. “Men like Victor Falcone aren’t the only dangers out here.”
Harding was standing nearby, near enough to hear what was said. He shook his head. “We shouldn’t have come out here. I should’ve known better.”
His wife was at his side. “Carter,” she said, keeping her voice low, “we had no choice. Remember that.”
He nodded gravely. They started back for the campfire.
Jack had taken Nina’s hand as they w
alked back to camp. He had retrieved his tin coffee cup from the grass where he had dropped it.
Jack said to her, “I guess life with me is always an adventure, isn’t it?”
She smiled. “I would have it no other way. I’m so glad you shot that wolf, though. Rabid.” She shuddered. “I hate to think what would have happened had you missed.”
He found himself returning her smile. “Good thing I didn’t, then, isn’t it?”
Harding called out to her, his voice breaking the silence of the night like a loud tuba sounding off. “Nina!”
“I believe you’re being hailed,” Jack said to her with a smile.
“Good night.”
“I’m sorry if being with me tonight causes you grief with your father.”
She smiled again. She seemed to smile a lot when she was with Jack. “I’ll be all right. I promise. He’s really a good man.”
If you say so, Jack thought. But what he said was, “Good night.”
He watched her walk away, toward her family’s camp. Her hair was still down, falling in full dark waves almost to her hips.
“Mister McCabe,” Mildred Brewster called out. It took a moment for Jack to realize she was talking to him. “Would you like some coffee?”
Pa was standing by their fire. He had a cup in his hand, and Abel Brewster had a cup in his one hand. Jack strolled over and held his cup while Mrs. Brewster filled it.
“Much obliged,” he said. “But I’ve asked you to call me Jack.”
She put the pot down, and then gave the venison a prod with a stick. “I believe our dinner is about ready.”
Pa said, “And I’m sure ours is, too. This is our cue to excuse ourselves. Thanks again for the coffee.”
The McCabes returned to their own fire. Dusty had removed the haunch of deer meat from the spit and was slicing off steaks with his bowie knife. Not the technique of the finer chefs in Boston, Jack thought with a smile, but there was something more earnest about frontier cooking.
The steak was served up on tin plates. Jack sat in the grass and set his cup of coffee beside him. He sat cross-legged, what he called Indian style, and balanced the plate on his lap. Pa was doing the same. Pa’s coffee cup was also tin, and was battered and scratched up. It had been with him many years.
Jack cut into his steak with his own knife, and then brought a chunk to his mouth to chew it off the knife point. Aunt Ginny would have shuddered at the thought of it.
There was something about venison roasted over a camp fire under God’s open sky. Jack had eaten at some of the finer restaurants in Boston, but none of those gourmet meals could compare to the supper he was having now.
When they were finished eating, Jack took a sip of coffee. Pa said, “Let’s try something a little stronger than coffee.”
He went to his saddle bags and produced a tin flask.
“For medicinal purposes,” he said with a grin. “Every bit as useful as Granny Tate’s corn whiskey at keeping infection away, but a lot better tasting.”
He tossed it to Jack, who unscrewed the cap and took a swing. Not quite Kentucky bourbon – few things were – but it served the purpose.
Jack handed it to Dusty who took a pull, and handed it to Pa.
Once the flask had made a couple rounds, Pa left the fire to saddle up and do the scouting he had talked about.
Jack’s stomach was full of venison, and the whiskey was bringing on a relaxed feeling. He lounged back against his saddle, and stretched his legs out before him. Dusty had braced his bedroll against a large clump of grass and was sitting against it.
The whiskey flask was in his hand. He took a deep pull from it, then capped the flask so none of the whiskey would spill in flight, and tossed it to Jack. Jack caught it nimbly.
“Good catch,” Dusty said.
“I played some baseball once in a while at school.” He unscrewed the cap and also took a deep mouthful. He paused while he enjoyed the burning all the way down.
“Baseball, huh? Men our age playing a kid’s game?”
Jack shrugged. “It’s catching on. They actually have leagues where you get paid just for playing ball.”
Dusty gave him a squinty-eyed look. Like he wasn’t sure if Jack was funning him.
With the cap once again firmly in place, Jack launched the flask through the air and back to Dusty.
“I’m mighty glad to finally get the chance to meet you, you know,” Dusty said. “I’ve heard a lot about you. There’s always the feeling of an empty place at the table. Now that you’re gonna be back home for the summer, the family will be complete.”
Jack said, “I spend so much time away, I have to confess, sometimes when I’m at the house it feels more like I’m visiting than coming home.”
He hadn’t really intended to say that, but the whiskey was sort of loosening his tongue.
He kept on talking. “Not that I would ever say that to Pa or Aunt Ginny. But for the past two years, my home has been a small twelve-by-eight room that I share with a fellow student named Darby.”
“Do you think of that as home now?”
Jack shrugged. “Not really. It’s just a place. I don’t really miss it when I’m away.
“You know,” he said, dropping back a bit against his saddle and looking up at the breathtaking Wyoming sky. “It’s just occurred to me that I don’t really think of any place as home. The school is where I go to study. The ranch is where I go to visit the family.”
Dusty sat with the whiskey flask in his hand, sort of staring into space. “That’s how I felt. All my life. Until last summer and I found the family. Now I have a home. A place to belong.”
Jack nodded and almost said, must be nice, but he held that back. He was still sorting out his feelings about the whole situation. He didn’t want to say anything he might not truly mean, and he surely didn’t want to say anything that might hurt Pa or Aunt Ginny, should it get back to them. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to explain things to them, but he surely didn’t want to try until he had all of the jumbled feelings inside him figured out.
Interesting, he thought, how easily Nina seemed to understand him. He didn’t have to struggle to quantify his feelings or put things into words around her. She seemed to be able to figure him out just by the look in his eye. The way he moved. The tone of his voice. She so incredibly perceptive.
The flask came flying back toward him and he snagged it out of the air. He took a mouthful from the flask. It had been half-empty when Pa first took it from his saddlebags, and now there wasn’t much left at all.
He had to admit, the whiskey was warming him considerably from the inside out, and he felt mellow and calm. And he found his shoulder felt much better.
He tossed the flask back to Dusty. He shook it to measure the contents, and said, “There won’t be any left for Pa when he gets back.”
“Life can be hard.”
Dusty cracked a grin, and took another swig.
Dusty said, “Y’know, I envy you.”
This caught Jack a little by surprise. “You envy me?”
“At that school, with all that learning there for you. A whole library full of books. You can be anything you want. If you decide medicine isn’t for you, then there’s always law. Or you can be an architect. Or you can teach. The world’s just open to you, waiting for you to decide your place in it.
“Me, I can read and write, but not all that good. I never had a book in my life. Never read one until I moved in at the ranch. Aunt Ginny has some and I read one cover-to-cover over the past winter. First time I’d ever done that. I labored with it, but I got through it.”
“What did you read?”
“A Christmas Carol, by Dickens.”
Jack nodded. He knew the book.
Dusty said, “Pa says it’s all foolishness. Ghosts showing up to show you your past. But Aunt Ginny says the purpose of literature is to expand your mind beyond your everyday life.”
Jack said, “That’s the purpose of it, I guess.
”
“Now me, I’ll always just be a cowhand. And a gunhawk. A gunhawk who prefers to be a cowhand, I guess. Not that I’m complaining because I like my life. But you’ve got a future ahead of you that’s sort of like an open book. All you have to do is reach out and grab it.”
Pa returned to the fire. “It’s probably best that we turn in. Sunrise is gonna come mighty early. We should take turns standing watch, maybe two-hour shifts.”
Dusty said, “Shouldn’t at least two of us stand watch?”
“No. I think one should be enough. There’s no sign at all that there’s anyone behind us on the trail.”
“I’ll take the first shift,” Jack said, pushing to his feet. Despite the effects of the whiskey, he wasn’t ready to sleep. Too much was rolling over in his mind.
Pa and Dusty stretched out their bedrolls and pulled their boots off. Pa placed his gunbelt at his side so his gun would be within easy reach. His gun was always within reach. Jack had wondered about this more than once. Aunt Ginny had said once that Pa seemed to always live in a state of war. Zack Johnson, a friend of the family Pa had met back in his Texas Ranger days, had said it came from Pa having been shot at once too much.
Jack brought a pot of coffee to life, and with a fresh cup of trail coffee in one hand and a sixth cartridge now loaded into his pistol, he stepped away from the circle of firelight.
Jack said, “Dusty, I’ll come get you in a couple hours.”
“Sounds good,” Dusty said. A jacket was rolled up under his head and his eyes were shut.
Jack decided to take a stroll about the camp as he drank his coffee, then maybe he would go out into the darkness beyond the camp and walk the perimeter.
Funny, he thought, how often he put things in military terms. Things like walk the perimeter. It came from being raised by a man who was forever in a state of war, he supposed.
Another funny thing, he thought, as his conversation with Dusty replayed itself in his mind. Dusty envied him, and yet Dusty currently had all Jack had ever wanted. Simply to be a cowhand, and enough of a gunhawk to ride alongside their father. To work alongside him at the ranch. Being an active member of the family, not simply a guest who visited occasionally.
One Man's Shadow (The McCabes Book 2) Page 18
