The Long Trail (The McCabes Book 1), Brad Dennison [ebook reader wifi .txt] 📗

“No kidding, huh? But no, the pressure was there, but it didn’t come from them. It came from others. I don’t think Pa or Aunt Ginny were even all that aware of it. But every time I stepped into a saddle, the boys on the ranch expected me to handle the horse like I was an expert horseman, because Pa was. When I was ten and was thrown by a horse, I remember Reno, one of the men who used to work for us, saying, ‘he ain’t like his old man, is he?’”

“I think it’s a damn lot to expect a ten-year-old to ride like a full-grown man who’s been in the saddle all his life.”

Josh nodded. “But at ten years old, I didn’t think that way. I felt I was less than Pa, and it made me feel bad. One day, when I was twelve or thirteen, and missed a rabbit with my squirrel gun, Hunter said, ‘I guess you’re not quite the shot your old man is.’ He didn’t mean anything bad by it. Hunter is one of the finest men I’ve ever known. But still, the words stung. They hurt down deep. Even now, I find myself pushing, always trying to go the extra step, trying to be worthy of being called Johnny McCabe’s son.”

“Is that why you lit out after these raiders alone?”

Josh nodded. “I guess that’s part of it.”

Josh looked to Dusty. “I ain’t never talked about any of this to anyone before. I’d appreciate it if it didn’t go any further.”

“It won’t.”

They rode in silence for a half mile. The ridge bottomed out onto a flat, grassy expanse. The tracks were very plain here, as the earth was dry. In places, entire chunks of sod had been kicked up by the pounding of hooves.

Dusty said, “What was it like when you were growing up? What was the family life like?”

Josh went on to paint him a picture of life in the McCabe household. Despite the pressure he felt from the outside world, the home itself was filled with the glow of love, and of the rock-solid feeling of peace that comes with knowing your mother and father, or in this case, Pa and Aunt Ginny, are there to protect you, to pick you up when you fall, to keep out the evil of the world. And most importantly, to know that they love you, not for what you do or don’t do, or say or don’t say, but simply for who you are. That might be the most important thing a parent can do for a child.

Josh had a few faint memories of the ranch house in California. It had outer walls of adobe. He remembered a parlor, off of which was a kitchen and a bedroom which was Ma and Pa’s. A loft was built over the parlor, which served as a bedroom for Josh and Jack. A small bunkhouse outside was built, and was where Zack Johnson, Uncle Josiah and Hunter slept.

“The house itself was an old hacienda, part of an old Spanish land grant that had been abandoned back in the forties, when Mexico lost California in the war, and a lot of the Spanish deeds were ruled null and void. Ma and Pa fixed it up, and added the outbuildings.”

“How did she die?” Dusty asked.

“Shot in the ranch yard one afternoon. The way it was told to me, she was walking toward Pa with a basket of eggs on her arm. The shot was fired from atop a small hill beyond the barn. A large caliber rifle, like Pa’s Sharps. Or that old Hawken. She died in his arms, while whoever shot her just rode away, scott-free.

“Pa, Zack and Uncle Joe rode after him after Ma was buried, sort of like we are now, but when they were a few days out, there was a hard rain that washed the trail clean away. They never found him.

“It was shortly after that when Pa moved us all north, to the valley we now call home. I don’t know if we were the first white settlers in that part of Montana, but we were firmly settled in by the time of the big gold strikes at Grasshopper Creek and Alder Gulch.”

Josh gave a sort of sad sigh. “Pa was saddened by the news of the gold strikes, and the towns of Bannock and Virginia City and Miles Town that boomed to life as settlers flooded in to pan for gold, and to dig for it. The town of Helena, which used to be Last Chance Gulch, is only a few days ride from the ranch. A couple years ago, the town at McCabe Gap began to spring to life. Only a stage stop for now, but it’s growing, and it’s only three miles from the house. Pa, he always liked the feeling of total freedom that comes with living in a stretch of wilderness far from any white settlement. He doesn’t even like McCabe Town being so close to the house. Even that little town is too big for him. He finds civilization makes him feel hemmed in. That’s where I get it, I guess.

“One night, sitting in front of the fire, Pa said that with every settler who rides north along the Bozeman Trail into Montana, or who rides the river boats north along the Missouri up from St. Lou’, a little more of that freedom slips away. One day, he said, even here in Montana, barbed wire fences and no-trespassing signs will divide the land. People will cut the land up into sections, and the freedom to just ride through the mountains and camp where you had a mind to will be gone.”

The trail came out onto a well-worn wagon road, where the tracks mixed with those of many others.

“This is a stage route,” Josh said. “I’ve been through here once, with Pa. We’re about a day and a half north of