Johnny McCabe (The McCabes Book 6)

by Brad Dennison

  “But Matt insisted it had to be that tree. Against Pa’s orders, Matt left the house before sunup one morning, with snowshoes strapped onto his shoes and an axe in one hand. He trudged all the way out there and cut that tree, and hauled it all the way back.”

  Quint said, “What’d your Pa say?”

  “He was furious,” Matt said.

  Johnny nodded his head. “That he was. But I remember what you said. What you told Pa.”

  “I said, I just can’t shy away from a challenge.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you’re now one of our bronc-busters.”

  Matt nodded. “And I have a horse waiting for me.”

  He walked back into the corral and snatched his hat from the dirt.

  Hardy was holding the reins of the horse.

  Matt said, “All right. Let’s try it one more time.”

  The horse tried to throw him off. Matt’s hat fell into the dirt again, and Johnny had to wonder why bronc-busters even bothered to wear one.

  The horse spun around in circles. It jumped and bucked.

  Johnny found himself calling out, “Ride ‘im, Matt!”

  Then the horse reared up clawed at the air with its front hooves. Then came down to all fours and began running. But it was no longer bucking.

  It circled the inner perimeter of the corral a couple of times. Then Matt reined up. The horse clawed at the dirt a couple of times but held its ground. Obeying its rider.

  Valdez was grinning. He had forgotten to check the stopwatch.

  Matt said, “That’s how it’s done.”

  Then he looked past Johnny and Quint, and Johnny followed his gaze to the barn. McCarty and his daughter had returned from riding and had reined up there. Probably going to let Timmons handle the horses.

  Both were looking toward the corral, and Johnny could see Verna had a grin wider than Valdez’s.

  Matt threw her a wave, and she waved back.

  Matt then had the horse rear up triumphantly. Verna laughed and waved at him again.

  Johnny said to Quint, “At the next dance, I think this Ern Cabot I’ve heard mentioned is going to have some competition for Miss McCarty’s attention.”

  Quint was grinning. “It does look that way, don’t it?”

  84

  Johnny generally stopped by McCarty’s office on Monday morning. He wanted to give McCarty a general report on how things were doing about the ranch and what his plans were for the week.

  Often it meant sitting with a cup of coffee and listening to McCarty talk about his earlier days on the ranch. How he had come west on a wagon train back in 1822. Barely twenty years old, he had signed on with a train of freight wagons taking the Santa Fe trail to New Mexico territory. That was how he first met Breaker Grant and Harris Newcomb. He then got involved in a series of adventures, scouting for the Army at one point, and working at various ranches throughout Texas. It was during those years that he had worked for Breaker Grant for a few months.

  Johnny sat with a cup of coffee in one hand. Here at the big house, coffee wasn’t served in a tin cup. It was in a cup and saucer. Johnny had learned how to handle a cup and saucer from Ma, a skill he never thought he would have much use for.

  He generally offered little when McCarty was talking about his early years. Johnny sat and listened. Pa had once said a man can’t learn much with his mouth open. He needs to be quiet and listen.

  One morning in July, McCarty said to him, “Oh, before I forget” and slid a leather valise across the desk to Johnny. “I have some things in here that have to be mailed. Could you have a rider take it to town for me? In fact, I’d rather you took care of it yourself. I have some money going out in an envelope.”

  Johnny nodded. “Consider it done.”

  Johnny left Quint in charge for the morning and asked Moses Timmons to saddle Bravo.

  Greenville was about the size of Clarkston. One long street of businesses, which included three saloons and a couple of hotels. A little smaller than the town of Camanche, which was maybe a two-hour ride away. Beside the town marshal’s office was the post office, which was where Johnny was headed.

  As he rode along the main street, he saw one horse in front of the saloon he and the boys from the ranch usually frequented. A sign over the boardwalk read CATTLEMAN’S LOUNGE. It wasn’t in the usual hand-painted way of many signs in smaller frontier towns. It was in a sort of flourishing hand. The owner of the place had spent a little money creating a distinctive sign.

  Johnny thought he might take Bravo to the livery and have him rest up from the ride into town and maybe have a few oats before they began the ride back to the ranch. Johnny also thought maybe he would do a little resting up himself at the Cattleman’s Lounge.

  As he rode past the Cattleman’s, a man stepped out. Taller than Johnny and maybe forty, but a grisled-looking forty. A tall hat and a tattered vest. A shaggy beard. He wore a gunbelt with a revolver at the left and turned backward. A man who favored a cross-draw.

  The man looked at Johnny, and his eyes remained fixed on him as he rode along.

  When Johnny swung out of the saddle in front of the post office, he allowed his gaze to swing in a seemingly casual way up the street and toward the Cattleman’s. The man was still there, standing on the boardwalk and watching him.

  When Johnny was finished at the post office, he looked up the street again. The man’s horse was still there, but the man himself was not.

  Once Bravo was at the livery, Johnny walked down to the Cattleman’s. He pushed in through the batwing doors and saw the man was at the bar with a glass in front of him.

  A thin boy with bushy, sandy hair was pushing a mop.

  He said, “Howdy, Johnny.”

  Johnny nodded and said, “Artie.”

  Johnny went to the bar.

  The Cattleman’s was a little more prosperous than most of the saloons Johnny had known. In many of them, the bar was little more than planks laid across upended beer kegs, but the Cattleman’s had a mahogany bar. Behind the bar was a mirror that stretched the length of the bar.

  The bartender, a thin man who answered to Slim, said, “Howdy, Johnny. Didn’t expect to see you in town this time of the week.”

  Johnny said, “Yeah, I had some things to mail for Mister McCarty.”

  “Want a glass of tequila?”

  Johnny grinned. Slim knew his preference. “Kind of early for that. Got any coffee?”

  Slim nodded. “I’ll go to the kitchen and see if there’s any left.”

  The man at the bar was looking at Johnny with a squint.

  Slim came back with a cup. “It’s a couple of hours old and it ain’t hot, but it’s warm.”

  “That’s good enough for me.”

  Slim set the cup in front of Johnny. “It’s on the house. Can’t charge a man for coffee that’s two hours old.”

  “Thanks, Slim. I appreciate that.”

  Johnny took the cup with his left hand, keeping his right hand free and within reach of his right-hand gun. Something he normally did.

  The man with the cross-draw gun stepped away from the bar. Through the long mirror, Johnny watched the man step around behind him.

  Johnny said, “I don’t much cotton to men standing behind me.”

  The man said, “Then why don’t you turn around and face me.”

  Johnny set his coffee down and turned. The man was fifteen feet away. The thumb of his right hand was hooked into his gunbelt.

  Slim said, “Now, see here. I don’t want no trouble.”

  The man said, “Stay out of it, barkeep, and you won’t get hurt.”

  Slim moved further down the bar, away from the direction of potential gunfire. He said, “Artie, go get the marshal.”

  Artie let the mop fall to the floor and scurried out the door.

  Johnny said to the man, “I don’t know who you are, but I got no beef with you.”

  The man said, “I know who you are. You might go by the name Reynolds, here. But I know who yo
u really are.”

  “Like I said, I want no trouble.”

  “Well, you got it, boy. I’ve been lookin’ for you and your brothers ever since you left Texas. Been on your trail a long time. Now I’m gonna shoot you down and the reward’s mine. Whether you go for your gun or not.”

  Johnny had never been the first to reach for his gun in a gunfight. He didn’t intend to start, now.

  He focused on the man’s eyes. And then he saw the flicker of intent. The man was reaching for his gun, and then Johnny’s pistol was in his hand, his arm going out to full extension. Both guns fired, the man’s firing first with Johnny’s second. The man’s bullet missed. Johnny’s did not.

  The man took a couple of steps backward. But the gun was still in his hand. He raised it to fire again, and Johnny put a second bullet in him. The man lurched as he took the second shot, then his gun fired and Johnny heard glass shattering behind him.

  The man dropped to his knees and fell face forward.

  “I seen the whole thing,” Slim said. “It was self-defense.”

  Marshal Brannigan came into the saloon just as Johnny was holstering his gun. Artie was right behind him. Brannigan had a rounded stomach and a fleshy face, but he looked to Johnny like he might have been strong when he was younger.

  It took ten seconds for Johnny to tell Brannigan what had happened. Then Slim and Artie both said the man had ridden in about an hour before Johnny. He had asked questions, like which ranch the Reynolds boys and Matt O’Toole worked for.

  Brannigan said to Johnny, “Have you ever seen him before?”

  Johnny shook his head. “Never.”

  Slim and Artie said the man never gave his name.

  Brannigan went through the man’s pockets. Since he had come in on horseback, Brannigan went for the vest pockets first. They found nothing.

  “A bounty hunter, I would say, since he talked about claiming a reward. Who did he think you were?”

  Johnny shrugged. “He never said.”

  “He thought you were somebody else, I guess.”

  Slim was looking at the mirror behind the bar. Both of the bounty hunter’s bullets had found it. An entire section was now missing, and a crack ran the length of it.

  Slim said, “And he cost me my mirror.”

  85

  Weeks passed.

  There was little rain, which Quint told Johnny was common in this part of the country. A water hole was drying up at one section of McCarty range, so Johnny and some of the men moved five hundred head to another section where there was a stream that flowed down from the mountains. Now that winter run-off was done, the stream was much narrower and shallower, but it would be enough for the herd.

  Then, Johnny took some men and headed back to the mountains to do some mustanging, to give Matt and Corry some wild ones to break. They were gone a week.

  Once they were back, there was a storm that provided no rain but gave a few flashes of lightning. One streak of lightning started a grass fire and scattered two hundred head. Johnny took Hardy, Evans and Valdez with him, and they were nearly a week rounding them up.

  One afternoon, Johnny reined up in front of the stable. Moses Timmons had the portable anvil set up and was banging away on a strip of iron, bending it into a horseshoe.

  He looked up and said, “Hey, Boss. Mister McCarty said he wants to see you.”

  “All right.” Johnny was covered with dust. He had been out on the range all day. Because of the lack of rain, the ground was dry. A horse would kick up a cloud of dust as its hooves struck the earth. All day long, you rode with dust all about you. It got into your nose and your mouth. It got so that was all you could taste, even after a drink of water.

  Johnny said to Timmons, “Take care of Bravo for me, will you?”

  Timmons nodded.

  Johnny hated to go to the main house looking like this. He tried to brush the dust from his shirt sleeves, but it seemed ground in. He looked down at his leggings and boots. Hopeless. But Mr. McCarty wouldn’t have asked to see him if it wasn’t important.

  Johnny decided not to knock at the front door. Mrs. McCarty kept the house rather elegant, with oriental carpets spread across the floor, and chairs with velvet upholstery. Fine doilies here and there. It wasn’t quite the palace that had been Breaker Grant’s, but it was within shouting distance of it. Instead, he went to the kitchen door and knocked.

  A Mexican woman answered. She had an apron tied about her middle and a kerchief about her hair.

  He knew her name as Anna, so he said, “Hey, Anna. I was told Mister McCarty wants to see me. I didn’t want to track dust and dirt all through the house.”

  She left him at the doorway and then came back a few minutes later. “Mister McCarty says to go on in. He’s in the study.”

  Johnny found him behind his desk. The study had glass windows that were more like doors, each with a knob that could be pulled open. A man could step through to the yard behind the house.

  There was a fireplace with a marble mantelpiece, and a fire was burning low against the oncoming coolness of the night.

  “Johnny,” McCarty said. “Come on in.”

  McCarty had a ledger book open on the desk. He said, “There’s a mine outside of San Francisco that’s up for sale. A town called Lonesome Camp. I’m trying to decide whether or not I should make a bid.”

  Johnny said, “’Fraid I don’t know much about mining.”

  “Have a seat,” McCarty said. “Would you like a drink? Tequila, isn’t it?”

  Johnny nodded.

  McCarty got to his feet and went over to a small table that had four decanters on it. He filled two glasses and brought them to the desk and set one in front of Johnny.

  Johnny took a belt. “Sure washes down the trail dust.”

  “I’ll say one thing for you,” McCarty said, “you’re a hands-on leader. True was too.”

  Johnny nodded. “I was that way at the Broken Spur. My father used to say a leader has to be willing to get his hands dirty alongside the men he’s leading.”

  “Your father sounds like a good man.”

  “He was, sir. He’s passed on.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Johnny took another belt of the tequila. “I used to drink too much of this down in the border towns. Brings back memories.”

  Alongside the ledger book was a white piece of paper Johnny hadn’t really noticed until McCarty picked it up.

  He said, “I sent a letter off to Harris Newcomb, a while ago. I got his reply today. He thinks quite highly of you and your brothers. But he and I have few secrets from each other. We fought side-by-side more than once in our early days. Saved each other’s life a couple times over.”

  Johnny nodded. “I know how that is. There are a couple of Texas Rangers I feel that way about.”

  McCarty reached into a desk drawer. “As a result, he told me some interesting things about you and your brothers. I went into town afterward and took this off a wall.”

  He pulled out a long sheet of paper and slid it across the desk to Johnny.

  At the top, in big black letters, was the word REWARD.

  Then the names of Johnny and his brothers, and their cousin Thad.

  It went on to say they were wanted for murder in Missouri, and the reward was for $1,000 each.

  “That’s a lot of money,” McCarty said.

  Johnny nodded.

  McCarty said, “Newcomb knew about this, but kept it to himself. He said Breaker Grant knew about it too, the entire time you were working for him.”

  Johnny decided it was time to tell McCarty the whole story, like he had done with Breaker Grant. He began with his return home and his father’s murder, and he followed it with the ride west he, his brothers and their cousin Thad had made in a futile attempt to find the killer. He told of the killing in Missouri and of the journey to Texas.

  McCarty said, “So, it was your cousin Thad who actually killed that lawman.”

  Johnny nodded. “
But we were there. We shouldn’t have been. We owe that shopkeeper for the goods we took. We’d like to pay him back, but I’m not sure how we can do that without tipping off the law as to where we are.”

  “Have you had any word from your cousin?”

  Johnny shook his head. “Not since we told him to ride on, more than a year ago.”

  McCarty sat in thought a moment. Then he said, “Tell you what I’m going to do about all of this.”

  He got out of his chair and crumpled up the reward poster, and he threw it into the fire.

  “None of it will ever leave this room,” McCarty said.

  “I’m beholdin’ to you.”

  “Harris Newcomb is a good judge of character. I’ll stand by his judgment.”

  McCarty went back to his seat behind the desk. “Marshal Brannigan has been asking questions ever since that bounty hunter you had to kill a while back. But I’ll hold him off. I was a major contributor to his last campaign, and he knows he won’t win again if I don’t back him up.”

  Johnny shifted in his chair. “I hate to be that kind of burden to you.”

  “It’s no burden at all. I fancy myself a good judge of character too. You’re a good man, and you’re running this ranch with the same efficiency True Cooper did. I don’t want to lose a man like you.”

  “I won’t let you down.”

  86

  “Don’t you look all spiffed up,” Johnny said. “You’ll put us all to shame.”

  Matt said, “I usually do.”

  He was standing in front of the bunkhouse mirror, adjusting his tie. He had a gray, pinstriped jacket and matching trousers.

  Evan was in a clean shirt and had buttoned the top button. He had watered down his hair and was taking a comb to it.

  He said, “You wasted good money on them duds. She ain’t even gonna look at you twice. She’ll be with Ern Cabot.”

  “But,” Matt said, “she’ll be leaving with me.”

  Johnny was using a bandana on his boots in hopes of bringing out a shine. “I hate to see a man so overcome with humility.”