Johnny McCabe (The McCabes Book 6)

by Brad Dennison

  The farmer appeared to be about forty, but it was hard to tell. A lifetime of hard work can make a man sometimes seem older than he was. He had a beard that was dark at the chin but white at the sides, and lines trailed away from his eyes.

  The farmer held out a hand and said, “My name’s Cobb.”

  Matt shook it, and then Johnny.

  Matt said, “We must look a wreck. But we’ve been on the trail a lot of days.”

  The door opened behind Johnny and he heard feet shuffling. Two sets of them. He had asked Joe and Thad to stay out with the horses. Somehow, Johnny figured it was Thad’s idea to come on in.

  Cobb said, “I’ve got to be honest with you boys. There’s been a lot of rough-looking riders here in Missouri in recent years. Lots of bad doings. Shootings and such. You’ve heard about John Brown, last year.”

  Matt nodded. “We surely have.”

  “You have to understand, I’ve gotta be careful.”

  His wife said, “Henry, we’ve never turned away strangers. Especially in weather like this.”

  Thad pushed forward, pulling his pistol from under his coat and aiming it at Cobb.

  He said, “Now you listen here, old man. We ain’t asking.”

  Matt took a step back from Thad. He said, “What are you doing?”

  “This old man’s gonna turn us away. Are we gonna let him?”

  The woman’s eyes were wide open. Her eyes were darting from Thad to Henry and back again. She said, “Henry?”

  Johnny said to Thad, “Put down the gun.”

  “You ain’t in charge anymore. You ain’t got the backbone to do what’s gotta be done.”

  Johnny thought about that old Chinaman he had known in Texas. Some of the tricks the man had shown him. How to bend a man’s hand in a way that’s contrary to the way a wrist wants to bend. How you can use that trick to take a knife right out of a man’s grip, and it doesn’t matter how strong the man is. You just had to be fast and sure. Two things Johnny had always been.

  He thought the trick would work on a gun, too. Especially since Thad hadn’t been smart enough to cock the gun first. Thad’s gun was a Colt .44 Dragoon, what they called a single-action. It had to be cocked before it could fired.

  Johnny grabbed at the gun with one hand and pulled it toward himself, then he got the other hand on it. He turned the gun to Thad’s left, making Thad’s wrist bend inward in a way that weakened the grip, then Johnny pushed the gun toward Thad, which slid it away from his fingers. All in a second and a half.

  Thad was left staring at him, caught between anger and disbelief that Johnny had actually just pulled the gun out of his hand.

  Johnny glanced at Matt. Matt seemed to somehow know what Johnny was thinking, and he nodded.

  Johnny aimed the gun at Thad, and he didn’t forget to cock it.

  Johnny said. “Give me that money from your pocket.”

  Thad reached into his pocket and pulled out the fistful of cash. It was no longer rolled neatly but in a crumpled mess. Johnny held out his left hand and Thad pushed the money into it.

  “Now, ride. I don’t care where you go. Just go.”

  Thad said, “You ain’t sending me out into that storm?”

  “I don’t care where you go, as long as it’s not here.”

  Thad looked to Matt and said, “Matt?”

  Matt was looking at him sadly. “Just go.”

  Thad gave Johnny a long, hard look. Thad said, “What about the food we took? And one fourth of that’s mine. One fourth of that money is, too.”

  Johnny said, “You take what’s on your horse and nothing else, and you ride.”

  “You ain’t got the nerve to pull that trigger.”

  Henry Cobb’s wife had her hand over her mouth.

  Thad stood there looking at Johnny. Maybe actually seeing the steel in Johnny’s eye for the first time. Thad apparently decided maybe it wasn’t so smart to test Johnny after all, so he turned toward the door.

  He found himself face-to-face with Joe.

  Joe said, “Don’t let me ever see you again.”

  Thad stepped around Joe and out into the cold.

  Joe said, “We never should have let that sum’bitch ride along with us.”

  Johnny eased back the hammer on the pistol, and said, “Now, don’t go speaking ill of Aunt Sara.”

  “Didn’t mean to.”

  40

  Henry Cobb said, “You boys are in a bit of trouble, ain’t you?”

  Johnny nodded. “You could say that.”

  “And let me guess. That boy that just left is the main cause.”

  Matt shook his head. “We didn’t have to go along with him. The fault is partly ours.”

  Cobb nodded. “I know how the world works.”

  “Henry,” Mrs. Cobb said. “We can’t turn these boys out in cold like this. They need a hot meal.”

  He nodded. “A hot meal, then you can bed down in the barn.”

  The hot meal was a breakfast of bacon and eggs and biscuits, and then they settled into the barn. The horses got a good rubdown. Johnny thought Joe’s idea of putting a blanket over his horse was a good idea, so he did the same with Bravo.

  There was an upright chair in the barn, old and dusty. Matt brushed it off and gave the chair a try. It creaked a bit, but held up.

  “That had to be one of the best meals I’ve ever tasted,” he said.

  He glanced at the walls of the barn and at the roof. There were bales of hay stacked against one wall.

  “Funny how it feels so warm in here, even though there’s not a stove burning.”

  “It’s the hay,” Joe said. He was sitting cross-legged on a blanket on the floor. “It helps keep out the cold.”

  “Hay keeps you cool in the summer, and warm in the winter.”

  Johnny set Thad’s pistol on an old table. “He didn’t have a rifle in his saddle. As far as I know, this is the only gun he had.”

  Joe said, “Unless he had one tucked away in his saddle bags.”

  Matt took off his hat and rubbed his hair back. “I can’t believe it’s come to this.”

  Henry Cobb came in with a kettle and four cups. “Thought you boys might like some more coffee.”

  He poured, then he said, “At sunrise, maybe an hour before you boys rode in, a deputy constable rode out from town. Told us about a robbery and a killin’ in Mansfield last night. Was that you boys?”

  Matt nodded, a cross between sheepish and sad.

  “It was that boy you run off, wasn’t it? It was him what done the shooting.”

  Matt nodded again.

  Johnny said, “We grew up with him and thought we knew him.”

  Henry stood there a moment, looking off at a wall. But somehow Johnny didn’t think it was the wall Henry was seeing, but another time, long ago.

  Henry said, “Got myself into some trouble once. Running with the wrong boys.”

  Johnny took a sip of the coffee. Considering he still felt half-frozen from the all-night ride in the winter wind, this coffee struck him as some of the best he had ever tasted.

  Henry said, “You boys are gonna have to ride. Put as much distance between here and yourselves as you can.”

  “Where?” Matt said.

  “Texas.”

  Johnny nodded. Something about the way he did and maybe the look in his eye caught Henry’s attention.

  Henry said, “You know Texas?”

  Johnny nodded. “Rode with the Texas Rangers for a while.”

  “Then go there. Take different names. Keep yourselves out of trouble. This should all blow over after a while.”

  When the coffee was finished, Henry went back to the house. Johnny pulled a bale of hay down to sit on, and he wrapped one of the new blankets around his shoulders.

  He said, “I can’t believe what we let ourselves get talked into. What’ll we ever tell Ma?”

  They all sat in silence a while. Johnny was weary right down to his bones. He decided to pull down some more bales o
f hay and make a bed for himself.

  He took off his gunbelt and stretched his arms out. It felt good to have the gunbelt off, but he was keeping it within reach.

  Joe said, “You don’t like them guns too far away from you, do you?”

  Johnny shook his head.

  He stretched out with the blanket over him, and felt sleep coming on. The last thing he remembered was Joe sitting like an Indian on the barn floor, striking a match to light his long, wooden pipe.

  Joe touched his shoulder to wake him. Joe said, “We got riders.”

  Johnny blinked a moment. He had been in such a deep sleep, it took him a moment to remember where he was. Such a thing could have gotten him killed when he was sleeping out under the Texas sky, he knew. A brief moment of disorientation was all a Comanche needed to come up on you with a knife in his hand.

  Matt was lying on the floor, wrapped up in his bedroll. Johnny decided to leave him where he was. Johnny’s gunbelt was still where he had dropped it. He slid one pistol from it and gave the cylinder a spin, checking to make sure the percussion caps were all in place.

  He went to the barn door. It was actually a double door that swung out, so he opened it just a crack to see through. Joe had pulled his own pistol and walked over to a window.

  Four riders were pulling up at the front porch. One of them was wearing a long coat that fell almost to his shoes. Johnny had seen coats like that before. Not so many down Texas way, but men from Kansas or Missouri sometimes wore them.

  Henry came out onto the porch, and they talked. The man in the coat gave Henry a description of four riders, and he was clearly talking about Johnny and his brothers, and Thad.

  Henry shook his head. “Nope. Ain’t seen ‘em. I’ll watch out for ‘em, though.”

  The rider stood and chatted a moment. Henry called him Bob. Henry asked about Bob’s wife and kids, and Bob asked about Henry’s wife. And then the riders were off.

  Johnny said to Joe, “How long was I asleep?”

  “Maybe four hours. It’s about noon.”

  He nodded. “As soon as it’s dark, we’ve got to be riding on. The longer we stay here, the more trouble we’ll bring to Henry. I don’t want that.”

  Come nightfall, they were saddled up. The sleet had fully stopped, and the clouds had blown off. The sky was alive with stars.

  Johnny still had Thad’s revolver, and he handed it to Joe. Joe tucked it into his belt, along with his own pistol.

  Henry’s wife—Johnny had heard Henry call her Marnie—handed up a basket to Matt. She said, “These are hot biscuits, just out of the oven. They’ll give you boys something warm for your stomachs.”

  Henry handed Johnny up a sack of potatoes. “Take these, too. Them cans of beans you have will do you good, but you need potatoes.”

  “Thank you kindly,” Johnny said. “But we don’t have a pot to cook ‘em in. Only a skillet.”

  Marnie held up one finger, as if to say wait a minute, and she ran into the house and came back with a pot.

  “Mrs. Cobb,” Matt said. “We can’t take your cookware.”

  “You will, and you’ll use it.” She handed him the pot.

  He stuffed it into one saddle bag. “I don’t really know what to say.”

  Johnny said, “Will you take some money for your troubles? Ten dollars?”

  Henry shook his head. “No, sir. You don’t be neighborly for payment. You just do it because it’s the right thing to do. When I was young and in trouble, I’d prob’ly be dead if a kindly soul hadn’t given me some help.”

  Johnny reached down and shook Henry’s hand. “We’re mighty beholdin’ to you.”

  Henry said, “It should be a good night to ride. The moon’ll be up in a while. There’s a warm front coming in, and it shouldn’t be as cold as last night. The snow and ice we got will melt fast. By tomorrow morning it should feel like spring.

  “Like I say, if I was you boys I’d be heading to Texas. But be careful going through Injun territory. There’s some mighty bad men down there. Lots of outlaws from Texas hide out there, and some hard cases from Kansas and Missouri ride down there. Texas cattlemen drive their herds north through there, and the Injuns ain’t too happy about it, from what I hear.”

  They started out, riding abreast of one another. Johnny held the sack of potatoes in his right arm and the reins with his left. He wouldn’t be able to get to a gun if he needed to because of the potatoes, but he wouldn’t have been able to wearing Pa’s long coat, anyway.

  Matt said, “So, where to?”

  Johnny let the question roll through his mind for a moment. In a way, home would seem mighty good. His old warm bed, and Ma’s cooking. But he knew his destiny didn’t lie in Pennsylvania. Ma had seemed to know it, too.

  He said, “I think Mister Cobb had the right idea. Texas.”

  Matt nodded. “What about those Indians he mentioned? And those outlaws?”

  “We’ll avoid ‘em. We’ll take the Shawnee Trail, which is how I came north.”

  Joe said, “You know the area. Lead the way.”

  PART FOUR

  Texas

  41

  Montana, 1881

  Bree said, “I remember you said once that you had a price on your head for a time.”

  Johnny nodded. “It was in Mansfield, Missouri that it happened. As a result, we had to avoid towns and farms all the way down to Texas.”

  Joe said, “That was my first time in Texas. Never been there until then.”

  “I knew of a trail called the Shawnee Trail,” Johnny said. “I’ve heard it called the Sedalia Trail. Or the Texas Trail. Sometimes the Texas Road. Back then, it was one of the main routes for drovers to take cattle to Saint Louis or other spots on or near the Missouri, like the town of Sedalia. This was before the railheads.

  “We didn’t follow the trail directly, because we didn’t want to be seen, but we followed in the general direction. We kept to within a mile or two of the trail. We camped by creeks as we found them, and we shot our supper when we could.”

  “A rough way to live,” Dusty said.

  Johnny nodded his head. He knew his son was speaking from experience.

  Johnny said, “We were hoping, once we got to Texas, we could find jobs using an assumed name. Maybe settle in. But it was rough going, especially since it was winter. Like Mister Cobb said, the weather was warming up and the days were like spring. But the nights were still chilly, even with a campfire. We were taking a risk to have a fire, because a fire can be seen from quite a distance in land as flat as the land is from Missouri down into northern Texas. But the nights were too cold to go without one.”

  Johnny took a sip of coffee. “Eventually, we made it to Texas. And let me tell you, the Red River was sure a welcome sight.”

  42

  The Red River, Texas, 1857

  Joe McCabe emerged from the water with a roar. He stood chest-deep in the Red River, and he shook his head and spraying water from his long hair and beard.

  “Gol dang, but that feels good!” he called out.

  Matt was watching with a little disbelief. He had a cup of coffee in one hand. He said, “You look like a grizzly bear.”

  “You ever seen one before?”

  Matt shook his head. “No. But if I did, it would probably look like you. Look how hairy you are. You could almost comb your chest.”

  “My Cheyenne name is Nahkhoe. Means bear.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  Johnny was walking on the bank of the river with his Colt rifle in both hands. The bank was sandy with patches of grass. Behind him was a stand of trees that had leafed out. A sure sign spring was coming.

  The river was wide. Partway across it was a small, narrow island of mostly sand but with a few short trees growing.

  At the other side of the river, the bank was a lot like this one, and there were more trees beyond it.

  As Johnny walked, he would scan the other side of the bank for any sign of movement and then shift his gaze
to the tree line behind him. Watching for riders.

  Johnny had been the first in the water, and Joe had patrolled along the bank. Johnny didn’t feel quite as clean as he would have from a hot bath, but the water was high in minerals and did a fair enough job. He surely felt better than he had after all those weeks since they left Hannibal.

  Johnny and his brothers had camped the night before in a small clearing of trees within walking distance of the river. Where water had been scarce on their way south from Missouri, it was now plentiful. He heated a kettle full and shaved. His hair was still a little longish, but he felt like he no longer looked quite like a hooligan or a highwayman.

  “That water looks cold,” Matt said.

  “It is cold,” Joe said. “Feels great!”

  He was rubbing his hands through his hair, then he submerged himself again and came back up with another roar that sounded something like, “Yee-hah!”

  Johnny looked over at Matt. “Sure wakes you up.”

  “Your turn next,” Joe said.

  Matt shook his head. “That water doesn’t strike me as all that inviting.”

  “Don’t matter. By the smell of you, if you don’t jump in, Johnny and I are gonna throw you in.”

  Once Joe was out and used a blanket to wipe himself dry, he pulled on his union suit and his pants. Matt had now peeled off the clothes he had been wearing since they left Hannibal, Missouri, and was sticking a tentative toe in the cold water.

  Joe rushed at him and gave him a push, and with a yelp, Matt went face-first into the water.

  Johnny was laughing, but he didn’t forget to keep his attention on the banks of the river. Wouldn’t do for riders to come up on them by surprise.

  Joe was pulling on his buckskin shirt. He said, “So, what can we expect ahead of us?”

  Johnny thought about it for a moment. He had swung them east from the trail as they approached the river, and now they were about forty miles from the trail. He had wanted to camp at a remote section of the river.