Johnny McCabe (The McCabes Book 6)

by Brad Dennison

  “We won’t, sir.”

  With their bedrolls tucked under their arms, they headed for the stable. Their horses were tethered in front of the stable. Johnny’s saddle was on Bravo.

  Clancy was leading a horse from the stable. The horse was saddled and a bedroll was tied to the cantle. Johnny’s old Colt rifle was in Clancy’s saddle.

  Johnny said, “Are you quitting, too?”

  Clancy nodded. “This place ain’t home for me, anymore. And I’m riding out on my own horse. I don’t want Coleman to claim I stole one from the ranch.”

  “Where will you go?” Matt said.

  “Maybe the Carerra ranch. See if they need a cowhand”

  Johnny said, “You tell Miss Maria that I asked her to hire you. Though I don’t think you’ll need to.”

  Clancy swung into the saddle. “So long. All three of you are welcome at my fire, anytime.”

  Johnny said, “I hope you know the same is true of you.”

  “Keep your powder dry,” Joe said.

  Clancy waved his hand and rode through the gate and down the trail.

  When their bedrolls were in place, they mounted up. When they turned their horses away from the barn, they found the men walking toward them. Goullie, Frenchie and Gates. They all had their bedrolls with them.

  Goullie said, “We’re riding out. We can’t ride for the Broken Spur, anymore.”

  Johnny said, “Where will you all go?”

  Goullie said, “I heard the Carerra ranch might be needing a ramrod.”

  Frenchie said, “There’s a farm girl I’ve been seeing, outside of town. Maybe it’s high time I asked her to marry me.”

  Gates said, “I’ll find a job. I’ve done lots of things. Ridden shotgun for a stage company. Been a deputy sheriff once.”

  Johnny said, “It’s been a pleasure working with you all. I’ve learned a lot here, at this ranch. Wherever I go, I’ll take what I’ve learned with me. And I’ll say this—you boys are all welcome at my side, anytime.”

  Johnny looked toward the gate that led to the trail out beyond the ranch yard. He didn’t have to touch his spurs to Bravo. The horse seemed to know what he wanted and started forward. Joe and Matt fell into place behind him.

  The gate to the Broken Spur was made of wrought iron and bore the name GRANT. Johnny looked at the name as they rode through. He thought of all he had learned from Breaker Grant in their months here.

  Out beyond the gate, he was about to bring Bravo to a stop, but the horse stopped anyway.

  “So,” he said. “Where to from here?”

  Matt shrugged. “You’ve been talking about those border towns. You’ve kind of gotten my curiosity up.”

  “I don’t know if I want to go back there,” Johnny said. “I poured down way too much tequila in those towns. Trucked with the kind of women Ma would never have approved of. Gotten into more than one gunfight.”

  Joe said, “I’ve always wondered about California.”

  Johnny looked at him. “California is a long ride from here.”

  Joe nodded. “Might be what we need.”

  Johnny looked to Matt.

  Matt shrugged and said, “You’re the ramrod.”

  Johnny grinned. “All right, then. California, it is.”

  PART FIVE

  The Mountains

  68

  Montana, 1881

  Johnny McCabe got up from the sofa and put two more chunks of wood onto the fire. It was going to be a long night, he realized. He had been telling the story of his early days, but the story was only partially told.

  His joints hurt as he got up from the sofa. He had just been talking about his days at the Broken Spur ranch, in Texas. In those days, nothing hurt. He could sit in the saddle all day, and after a good night’s sleep, get up and do it all again. Those days were long gone.

  Gradually, as he had been telling the story, people had gone to bed. Joe was dozing. After all, life on a ranch began before sunrise, and even though there wasn’t a whole lot of work to do in December, the habit of rising early persisted.

  But Bree was wide awake and sitting on the floor in front of the sofa. Dusty and Haley were sitting on the edge of the hearth, and Josh and Temperance were on the sofa. Nina had gone to sleep, but Jack was standing by the fire, a glass of bourbon in hand.

  Johnny settled back onto the sofa. At one point, when he was telling about the trouble he and his brothers had gotten into in Missouri, Ginny had gone to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. Johnny now had a cup of hot trail coffee standing on an end table, waiting for him.

  Ginny also had poured herself another glass of wine, and she settled back into her rocker.

  Johnny said, “Don’t you want to go to sleep? Sam went to bed hours ago.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world. I’ve heard bits and pieces of this over the years, but never all at once.”

  Bree said, “What about Maria? Did you ever see her again?”

  Johnny shook his head. “Never again. I heard she married well a few years later, and her ranch is the largest one in northern Texas.”

  Dusty said, “What about Becky Drummond? And your cousin Thad?”

  “I’ll get to all of that. One step at a time.”

  The wind outside picked up and rattled the windows. Had to be cold enough outside to freeze a glass of water in less than a minute, Johnny thought. And yet he loved these mountains. All they had to offer, their beauty and yet their harshness.

  “All right, Pa,” Bree said. “Tell us all about it. You and Uncle Matt and Uncle Joe had left the Broken Spur in Texas and were heading west.”

  Johnny began talking about where he and his brothers were in those first weeks after leaving the Broken Spur in Texas, back in the winter of 1857, and the long journey that eventually led him to this small valley in the Montana mountains.

  “We rode through Texas much the way we rode into it. Avoiding ranches and towns. Texas had a lot of wide-open land back then, so it wasn’t too hard. We had a choice. We could cut directly west through New Mexico Territory, or we could go northwest and into the mountains. I didn’t know a lot about Apaches, and Joe knew nothing about them. But he knew a lot about the mountains, so that’s the direction we chose.

  “And so, in late winter, we found ourselves in Colorado, the foothills to the Rockies. Except they didn’t call it Colorado back in those days. We were in the western end of what they called Kansas Territory...”

  69

  Western Kansas Territory

  February, 1858

  It was dark. A campfire was crackling away, and the coffee kettle was boiling over.

  “Coffee’s ready,” Matt said.

  He knelt by the fire and grasped the kettle, using a bandana so he wouldn’t burn himself on the handle. One thing Matt had learned during his time at the Broken Spur was the various uses for a bandana.

  They were now at a higher elevation than they had been in Texas, and the winter nights were cold. Two inches of snow was on the ground. The country around them was hilly and they could see pines standing tall around them in the darkness.

  Matt filled a tin cup with coffee and said, “Do either of you ever wonder about Thad?”

  Johnny nodded. He had a cigar from Breaker Grant in his hand.

  Joe said, “So, you gonna smoke that or just stand there and look at it?”

  “Well,” Johnny said, “it’s the last one. I may not ever find another cigar that tastes quite like this one.”

  Joe nodded. “I know what you mean. I ran out of tobacco for my pipe. There’s nothing like sitting by the fire in the early morning with a pipe full of tobacco.”

  Matt said, “Well?”

  Johnny struck a match to light the cigar. “I think about Thad once in a while.”

  Matt rose to his feet and took a sip of the coffee. “Do you ever feel guilty about sending him away?”

  Johnny shrugged. “A little, maybe. But I don’t see what else we could hav
e done.”

  Joe said, “I knew men like him in the Army. They’re a danger to all the men around them. Sooner or later, one of us would’ve had to put him down.”

  “That seems to be your solution to a lot of things,” Matt said.

  Joe grinned. “Depends on the problem.”

  Matt returned the grin.

  He said to Johnny, “How do we tell Uncle Jake and Aunt Sara that we sent their son off alone?”

  Johnny shrugged again. “So far, we haven’t had to tell anyone anything. We haven’t written them, yet.”

  “Don’t see how we can,” Joe said.

  Matt said, “It’s partly our fault, you know. We let him talk us into robbing that store.”

  Johnny nodded. “But he didn’t have to kill that constable. He did that all on his own.”

  Joe said, “If we had kept him with us, he just would’ve shot someone else. It’s his nature. I’ve seen it before. Sooner or later, it would’ve come down to us or him.”

  The next morning, they rode deeper into the hills.

  By noon, they were at the top of a ridge that was covered with pines. Down below was an area too small to call a valley, but more than a gulch. Pines stood tall and toward the center there was a small stream. From where they were, it looked like the water was running low and there was a thin ice cover, but Johnny figured by the look of the banks the water ran fast and deep in the spring.

  Off toward the north, the sky was covered with clouds that looked to Johnny like a soft, cottony blanket. The wind was cold and coming directly from the north.

  “That’s snow,” Joe said. “And a lot of it. We ain’t gonna be getting very far.”

  “Well, what do we do?” Matt said. He was pulling his coat tight about his neck. Behind them were some tall pines, with boughs waving in the wind.

  “We hunker down,” Joe said. “We’re better prepared for winter than we were last year.”

  “Winter?” Matt said. “It’s almost spring.”

  Joe shook his head. “In these mountains, when you see clouds like that, it’s still winter.”

  “But can we survive out here?”

  “These hills ain’t much different than the mountains I lived in when I was with the Cheyenne. We’ll be all right.”

  “So, where do we make our camp?”

  “Right here or this ridge.” Joe swung out of the saddle. “Back in a ways. These trees are thick enough that they’ll serve as a wind break.”

  Joe had bought a small hatchet while they were at the Broken Spur, and with it he cut some pine poles and used them as framework for a lean-to. He cut some pine boughs to use as thatching.

  While he was working, Matt gathered as many fallen sticks and branches as he could for a fire.

  Johnny went hunting. It was a great opportunity to try out his new rifle. This would be his first chance to use it in the field.

  His pistols were buckled at his hips, and he thought about how heavy they were as he walked along through the woods.

  It struck him as foolish to wear them out here in the mountains. There was no one to shoot at him. According to Joe, the Indians of these mountains were likely hunkered down for the winter. The nearest settlement would be in New Mexico Territory, probably a two-week ride from here.

  Johnny was in his riding boots. The smooth soles slipped a little in some snow, and he almost fell. He knew Joe carried a pair of buckskin boots in his saddlebags. Johnny thought maybe he would have Joe show him how to make a pair for himself.

  The cloud cover was now overhead, and the air had that certain almost undefinable feel it got before snow began falling. Johnny remembered the feeling well from his years in Pennsylvania.

  Johnny stopped and looked up at the sky. He pulled off his hat and let the cold, mountain wind rush over him. The air was clean and he could catch a scent of balsam. Everything he loved about the mountains back in Pennsylvania was here, and so much more.

  He put the hat back on his head and continued along. Ahead the woods opened to a field, but he waited by a tree and allowed himself a good long look at the field before he considered stepping out. Zack Johnson had said Johnny was overly cautious because of all the gun battles he had been in, but Johnny thought it was more like what Matt had said. Erring on the side of caution. Ma used to say, it’s better to be safe than sorry. It seemed to Johnny to be the same kind of philosophy.

  He then saw movement off toward the center of the field. Some brown stalks of weeds stood tall, and it was behind them that he thought he had seen some motion. Then he saw the motion again. Something dark was back there.

  He waited. Best to be patient. Pa had said more than once, The hunter who hurries goes home hungry.

  He waited, and then he saw what was making the motion. A grizzly lumbered its way out from behind the dead weeds.

  Kind of late in the season for a bear to be out and about, Johnny thought. But the last couple of days had been unseasonably warm.

  Johnny stood and watched while the bear lumbered its way along. The most powerful critter in these mountains. He marveled at the strength in its paws. It could rip a man apart without working up a sweat.

  Johnny wasn’t afraid. The Hawken rifle could bring down a buffalo, and Johnny was fully confident in his ability to make a shot count. If he had to, he could stop this bear. But Johnny hoped he wouldn’t have to. The bear was out here, in God’s mountains, where life was as God had intended it to be. Unspoiled by the greed of people.

  The bear stopped and looked at him. Maybe the critter had caught his scent, Johnny thought. The breeze was sort of drifting back and forth.

  The bear watched him for a moment.

  Johnny said out loud, “Keep on moving, big fella. I don’t want any trouble.”

  The bear stared for a moment more, then it looked away and continued on its way.

  Johnny watched while the bear disappeared into the trees, and then waited a few minutes more. He wanted the bear to be good and gone before he started moving.

  Once he was sure the bear was no longer anywhere near, he started across the field, and that was where he saw the tracks in the grass. A buck, he thought. He knelt for a closer look. They looked recent. Maybe only a few minutes old. The buck might have run through the field only moments before Johnny arrived.

  He looked up at the sky and estimated he had a couple of hours of daylight left. Venison would sure go a long way to help him and his brothers get through some cold winter days in these mountains. And if the days grew cold enough, then the meat wouldn’t spoil.

  He decided to follow the trail for a bit. He stepped along carefully, trying to make as little sound as possible. Again he thought about the advantages of having a pair of deerskin boots like Joe’s.

  He didn’t have to follow the trail long. He stepped out of the woods into another small glade, which the stream cut through. There, not even three hundred feet away, was the deer.

  It was a mule deer, with antlers that rose to four sharp points. Different than the white-tailed deer of the Pennsylvania mountains, but not all that different. The buck was facing away from Johnny, and it was drinking from the stream.

  The breeze had changed direction again and was coming from the deer toward Johnny, which meant the deer wouldn’t catch Johnny’s scent. However the deer would still be able to hear him, and cocking his rifle would make a little noise.

  He brought the hammer back slowly, but there was still a click as the hammer locked in place.

  The deer raised its head and looked back at Johnny. Any sudden motion might send the deer running.

  Johnny had been hunting years ago in the woods behind the farm, and a deer had looked up at him when he cocked his rifle. Just like this deer had done. Johnny had raised the rifle as fast as he could but the deer took off running in a zig-zagging pattern and Johnny’s shot missed.

  So this time, Johnny didn’t raise his rifle. He stood still, barely breathing. No motion at all. The deer looked directly at him, then looked at somet
hing in the woods off to Johnny’s left. The deer then looked back at the stream but didn’t drop its head just yet.

  Johnny raised the rifle to his shoulder. A smooth, fluid motion. The rustling of the fabric of his coat was enough to get the deer’s attention and it looked back at him again.

  The deer turned to its left in a burst of speed.

  Johnny fired, and the rifle kicked hard against his shoulder.

  The deer went face forward and slid on the mossy shore of the river, and remained on the ground, kicking its hooves.

  Johnny ran to the deer. He drew his right-hand revolver to finish it off but found he didn’t have to. The deer was dead, kicking off its last remaining bits of energy in its death throes.

  Johnny slid the pistol back into his holster. Then, before he went to work on the deer, he took the time to reload his rifle. Once you’ve been in a few gun battles, you don’t walk around with a gun that’s not loaded. He had the pouch of lead balls and greased patches in one coat pocket and the powder horn in another.

  Once the rifle was again loaded, he drew his knife. He would gut the deer before he hauled it back to camp.

  With the knife in one hand, he noticed a snowflake twirling its way down and landing on the carcass. Within seconds, a scattering of flakes were now falling.

  He was about a half mile from camp. If he got to work now, he could have the deer back to camp before the snow started falling hard.

  70

  The pines standing between the lean-to and the edge of the ridge’s summit would stop most of the wind but not all of it, so Joe built the lean-to to face toward the southeast. Joe knew from experience that most of the weather passing through these mountains would be from the west or the northwest.

  The lean-to was thatched heavily. Wind still escaped into the shelter, and the shelter was not warm like the farmhouse had been on a cold winter night. But it was warm enough. Joe built another shelter for the horses nearby, and they seemed comfortable.