Johnny McCabe (The McCabes Book 6)

by Brad Dennison

  Johnny nodded.

  McCarty said, “I heard he had passed on. That’s too bad. He and I did business together a few times.”

  Johnny told of his time at the Broken Spur, though leaving out anything that might connect him and his brothers to the incident in Missouri. He also left out any of the details that might cast Maria Carrera in a disparaging light. A gentleman protected a woman’s honor, even if she wasn’t always the best at protecting it herself.

  He finished by saying, “His son Coleman wasn’t well-liked, so a lot of us decided to ride on.”

  “How long were you ramrod?”

  “Nearly eight months.”

  McCarty nodded. “I know some people in Texas. For one, the county sheriff in Clarksville. Harris Newcomb. He and I and Breaker Grant rode together years ago, when I was about your age. If I were to write to him, could he verify what you say?”

  Odd question, Johnny thought. In his experience in the West, you took a man at his word.

  He nodded. “I know Sheriff Newcomb. He’s a good man.”

  It then occurred to him the folks in Texas knew him under the name O’Brien. He decided to come a little clean about that.

  He said, “We didn’t use the name Reynolds in Texas. We called ourselves O’Brien. We got ourselves into a little trouble back East.”

  McCarty looked at him.

  Johnny said, “Some of that recklessness and rashness you spoke of.”

  McCarty chuckled. “Many a man out here is running from something. Leaving his past behind and starting over. That’s one thing the frontier has to offer. A new life. A new beginning.”

  Johnny let his gaze fall on the landscape ahead of them. An expanse of grass that was mostly brown, and beyond it was a softly rounded hill covered with oak. Not the type of oak he had known in Pennsylvania. These were shorter with branches that reached out all which-way. The bartender in town had referred to them as scrub oak.

  McCarty said, “I take it Matt is actually your brother.”

  “We didn’t hide it very well.”

  McCarty shook his head. “You can tell. The three of you have a bond that you don’t find very often outside of a family.”

  They took a few more steps, then McCarty stopped and looked at him. “I don’t normally pry this way. And I normally take a man at his word and would never even suggest trying to verify his statements. But I’m about to make you a job offer, and since I haven’t known you long, I need to be careful.”

  Johnny waited. He wasn’t sure where McCarty was going with this.

  McCarty said, “On my ranch, Johnny, the ramrod has a lot of responsibilities. He oversees practically everything. Hirings, firings. Expenditure of money on things like supplies. I have to know he can run the place without me watching over his shoulder. It has to be a man I can trust. Quint and Hardy have both been working for me a long time. Quint has been with me almost as long as Cooper was, and he’s worked a lot of cow outfits over the years. But neither of them is leadership material. Not like you.”

  McCarty chuckled. “Even back there, without so much as a second thought, you took charge and had Quint and Corry escort my wife and daughter home. Corry even calls you Boss, even though you’re not on the payroll. It seems that you’re already in charge of the men. You sort of fell into the role naturally, and the men look to you like they are meant to.

  “I guess what I’m trying to say is I want you to be the new ramrod.” He chuckled. “It looks like the men already consider you the ramrod, so we might as well make it official.”

  Johnny didn’t know what to say. He had been hoping he and his brothers could find work, hopefully on the same ranch. But he hadn’t been expecting this kind of offer.

  “I don’t know what to say, sir.”

  “Then just say, yes. And you and your brothers can move into the bunkhouse tonight.”

  “So, they have jobs too?”

  He shrugged. “If you want to hire them. You’re the ramrod, now.”

  81

  “The weather sure is different than what I’m accustomed to,” Matt said.

  He was standing outside the bunkhouse with a cup of coffee in his hand. There was a gentle breeze, and the air was dry. It was morning and the day was already growing hot, but it didn’t feel hot.

  “Different than Texas,” Johnny said. “Different than back home, too. A day with this kind of heat back in Pennsylvania, and we’d have sweat dripping from us.”

  Johnny was standing with Matt. Johnny was in leather leggings and his guns were holstered at his hips.

  Joe was sitting in a chair by the bunkhouse wall. His ankle was no longer in a splint, and the scowly doctor said he didn’t think the ankle was broken, but Joe needed to be off it for a couple of weeks.

  Joe said, “Didn’t we start out at the Broken Spur like this? Me unable to work because I could hardly walk, and a woman at the ranch house looking at Johnny?”

  Johnny grinned. He said, “The one at this ranch was looking at me for a couple of days, but I decided to just not look back. I saw her at the house this morning but she didn’t even look my way once. I’m kind of relieved.”

  “Good,” Matt said. “Because she’s looking at me, now. Just this morning, she looked my way and flashed me a shy little smile.”

  When Matt had finished his coffee, he headed off to the corral where a few of the boys were working on breaking some mustangs they had caught a few weeks earlier.

  Johnny still had some coffee remaining, but when it was done he was going to ride out to the line shack at the edge of Bar M range. When he was ramrod of the Broken Spur, he had made it a policy to personally check on the boys who were stationed at the line shacks.

  Their job was to patrol the outer reaches of the ranch. Keep any strays from roaming too far and watch out for squatters. They would ride back to the ranch headquarters every month for payday, join the rest of the cowhands whooping it up in town for the night, then ride back out to the line shack with a pack horse loaded with supplies. Johnny had heard them sometimes called line riders. Or Outriders. Or the floating outfit or sometimes just the floaters.

  Seemed everything out West had three or four terms.

  Johnny and Joe watched Matt walk away.

  Johnny said, “I hope Matt knows what he’s doing with that girl.”

  “He always seems to act like he does, even when he doesn’t.”

  Johnny nodded. Joe was right. There was a sort of natural confidence in Matt in everything he did.

  Johnny said, “There’s something about that girl Verna that just doesn’t set right.”

  Joe nodded. “I’ve noticed it, too.”

  The boys had gotten a saddle on a wild mustang and were holding the reins tight. Corry was the resident bronc buster, and he was getting ready to ride.

  He wasn’t wearing a gun. You don’t wear a gun when you’re on a wild bronc. He was in leather leggings and he wore a wide-brimmed hat that was gray and floppy. It was hard for Matt to figure what kind of hat it had been when it was new.

  Matt stood by the corral. Hardy was there, and so was Quint. And a man he now knew as Valdez.

  Valdez was the old-school vaquero. He wore black pants with silver conchos down each leg and a short waist-length jacket with all sorts of intricate design along the edges.

  Matt felt motion behind him, the way you sometimes do. He looked over his shoulder and saw Verna riding onto the ranch yard. She had dark hair that was tied into a long braid, and it bounced along her back as she rode. She was in a red gingham blouse and a split skirt.

  Matt was hoping she would look his way. He wanted to see if he could get another one of those shy smiles from her.

  “Verna McCarty,” Hardy said. “The only child of Mr. McCarty.”

  “Does she have any beaus?”

  “She seems to have her sights set on a young feller whose father owns a ranch nearby. Ern Cabot. She dances with some of the men from this ranch sometimes, when there’s a social or a barn dance
. She’s danced with Evan and Corry once or twice. But she saves most of her dances for Ern.”

  Matt’s gaze remained fixed on her as she reined up in front of the ranch house.

  Hardy said, “Don’t even try. You’ll be wastin’ your time.”

  “Don’t be too sure of that.”

  Valdez called out, “Ride him, Corry!”

  Matt turned his attention back to the corral. Corry was in the saddle, and the men let go of the reins.

  The horse humped its back and bucked and jumped. Corry’s hat went flying away, and then Corry himself followed his hat.

  He landed on the dusty ground, rolling with the impact. Then he was on his feet and ran to the fence to get away from the pounding hooves. The horse was still bucking like it was trying to shake the saddle from its back. Evan was in there, running and grabbing at the reins of the horse.

  Quint had a stopwatch in his hand. “That was six seconds. Not bad.”

  “Not bad? I’d like to see anyone else here do better.”

  Johnny and Joe were approaching. Joe was hobbling on crutches to keep the weight off his bad ankle.

  Matt said, “I thought you were riding out to see the line riders.”

  Johnny nodded. “I wanted to watch some of this, first.”

  But then Matt noticed someone else. Verna had left her horse at the hitching post in front of the house and was walking over. Maybe the action in the corral had gotten her attention.

  “Had enough?” Hardy said.

  “Never,” Corry said with a smile. “I’ll never let any horse win against me.”

  He climbed up onto the fence and brushed the dust from his leggings. He looked at the girl with a smile and said, “Mornin’, Miss Verna.”

  “Good morning,” she said.

  Matt said, “I want a try on that horse.”

  Joe looked at Matt. “What’re you doin’? You’ll get yourself killed in there.”

  Matt said, “I’m doing what I do best.”

  “What? You plan on talkin’ the horse to death?”

  Matt ignored him.

  Johnny said, “How do we tell Ma and Luke that you got yourself killed doing something like this?”

  Joe was grinning. “It’s usually Johnny who does the fool stunts.”

  Johnny gave him a look.

  Matt said, “Laugh all you want, you two. But I want a try at that horse.”

  Corry said, “Go on ahead. Have yourself a try.”

  Matt unbuckled his gunbelt and handed it to Joe, and then climbed up and over the fence.

  Evan had brought the horse back to the far end of the corral. Another man was there, helping control the horse. They called him Chip.

  Evan held the reins tight while Matt climbed up and into the saddle.

  “You ready?” Chip said.

  Matt nodded.

  Evan and Chip cleared away, and the horse exploded across the corral. Bumping and thumping. Jumping and then landing hard with its hooves. Matt didn’t even know when he lost his hat, because he was too focused on trying to stay alive.

  There was one large jarring impact with the back of the horse that rattled him all the way to his teeth, and he found himself in the air and then crashing into the dirt.

  Evan and Chip ran after the horse. Matt intended to run from its hooves like Corry had done, but it was all he could do to get to his feet.

  He managed to put one foot ahead of the other and got himself back to the fence. He felt pain in his backside and hips and all the way down to his feet. He wasn’t sure if it was because of the fall or the ride itself.

  “How long did I last?”

  Quint was looking at the watch. “Two whole seconds.”

  Matt looked at him.

  Quint said, “I’m roundin’ up.”

  Matt gave him a pained look. Not hard to do, considering the pain he was in.

  Verna was laughing.

  Joe said, “That’s what you do best, huh?”

  Matt looked at Verna. He gave her a sort of embarrassed shrug of his shoulders, and she gave him a wide smile.

  Matt said, “Yep. It’s what I do best.”

  82

  It was dark when Johnny rode up to the barn and swung out of the saddle.

  Moses Timmons was there. He said, “Didn’t know if you were coming back tonight.”

  Johnny stretched his arms out and twisted a little to one side, and some kinks in his back snapped.

  “Maybe I should have just stayed the night. That was a lot of miles to cover in the saddle in one day.”

  “There’s beans in the bunkhouse, and the coffee’s hot.”

  Johnny said, “How’s Matt?”

  “Still alive. But not by much.”

  Johnny found Matt stretched out in his bunk. Johnny said, “It’s your own fault, you know.”

  Johnny unbuckled his leather leggings and hung them on a post on the wall.

  Joe was sitting at a table, thumbing through a deck of cards. Chip was leaning back in a chair with the front legs of the chair off the floor, and a harmonica was in his hands. He was playing something that sounded haunting and mournful. The kind of stuff often played around campfires.

  Quint was on the next bunk down from Matt and was snoring away. Chip seemed to be using Quint’s snores as a rhythm for his playing.

  Joe said, “I still don’t get what it was all about. How is nearly gettin’ yourself killed tryin’ to break a wild mustang what you do best?”

  Johnny grabbed a tin cup from a shelf. He blew out some dust out of the cup, and then filled it with coffee. “What he’s talking about is using some of that natural charm he’s been told he has. Maybe he’s been told it once too often.”

  Matt said, “I was making an impression.”

  Joe looked at Matt like he thought Matt was crazy. “On who? The horse?”

  “No,” Matt said. “Not the horse.”

  Joe made an O shape with his mouth, like you do when something dawns on you. He looked at Johnny, and Johnny shrugged. Then he looked back at Matt and said, “So you thought to impress her by breaking your neck in front of her.”

  “I didn’t break my neck, though, did I?”

  “Danged near it.”

  “Danged near doesn’t count. Except in horseshoes. And I got a smile out of her and made an impression that wasn’t negative. Entirely.”

  “That was what you meant by doing what you do best?”

  Johnny took a sip of coffee. He said to Joe, “Sometimes girls like it when a man makes a fool out of himself in front of her. Never tried it myself.”

  Joe said, “Looks kind of dangerous.”

  Johnny walked over to Matt. Johnny’s bunk was across from Matt’s. He put his coffee on the floor, and then began to tug away at his boots. It took a while, but he got his boots off. Felt good.

  He said, “Look, Matt. I know she’s a pretty girl. But you’ve got to look at it from my point of view. I’m the ramrod here, and I don’t want to see my men doing something risky like that for no reason. You’re not an experienced bronc-buster. Corry’s in charge of breaking the wild ones. If you hurt yourself and can’t do the job I need you to, then the rest of the men will have to pull your weight. It ain’t fair to them.”

  “You’re right, Boss. I didn’t think about that.”

  “So you’ll stay off the horses that ain’t been broke yet?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Johnny had Ma’s temper and was on the verge of a shout. Chip had stopped playing and was looking away, trying not to laugh. Joe was laughing outright.

  Matt said, “Riding that bronc might have been a harebrained notion. I’ll give you that. But there was something exhilarating about it. Painful but exhilarating. As a cowhand, I want to do the entire job, not just part of it.”

  “Not all the cowhands ride wild broncs. I don’t. That’s a specialty job.”

  “Well, it’s one I want. I wouldn’t have thought so, until today. Tomorrow, I want to climb back into the s
addle. And this time, I’ll keep at it until I have that horse broken.”

  Johnny looked at Joe, and Joe shrugged.

  Johnny said, “And I thought among the three of us, you were the sane one.”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  83

  Matt’s hat flew from his head as the horse lurched and rocked beneath him. His right hand held the reins and his knees gripped the horse’s shoulders.

  So much fury beneath him. So much power. He thought it was almost a shame to be trying to tame it.

  And yet, he found it was a thrill like no other.

  The horse humped its back and jumped, coming down hard on its hooves. Once. Twice. Three times. And Matt became separated from the saddle.

  He landed in the dirt but rolled with the fall. Then he sprang to his feet, covered in dust, and ran for the corral fence while Hardy caught up with the mustang and grabbed its reins.

  Valdez was sitting on the fence with the stopwatch in his hand.

  He said, “Five seconds.”

  Johnny was leaning against the fence with his arms folded on the top rail.

  Matt said, “Come to watch me break my butt?”

  Johnny shook his head. “Just come to see how my newest bronc-buster is doing.”

  Quint was standing with him. “He’s really come along, the last couple of weeks. I don’t think Corry has anything on him.”

  Matt grabbed a canteen that was hanging from a fence post and took a couple of pulls from it.

  He said to Johnny, “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  Johnny said, “I was starting to wonder, at first. But then I remembered something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A certain Christmas tree, the winter you were fourteen.”

  Valdez and Quint were looking at him, waiting for him to continue.

  Johnny said, “We grew up in the mountains of Pennsylvania. The summer before, we had picked out a fir tree we wanted to cut for Christmas. But it was an extra hard winter. Bitter cold and with more snow than usual. The tree was a mile from the farmhouse, and Pa decided it was too far away to haul back. The temperature hadn’t gotten above ten degrees for a week, and there was three feet of snow on the ground.