The Long Trail (The McCabes Book 1) by Brad Dennison (microsoft ebook reader .TXT) 📗

“If Patterson was riding with them, then that means he was one of the ones who escaped. He may have been one of the ones who shot Pa. If that’s true, then I aim to shoot him. Where do you stand on that?”

“The reason I was planning to ride after them is because I’ve got to know if Patterson was indeed with them. And if he was, I’ll be the one to take care of him.”

THIRTY-THREE

“They didn’t put much care in hiding their tracks,” Josh said as he and Dusty rode along the side of a lazily sloping ridge, ponderosa pines standing tall about them. “These tracks are almost a week old, but still so easy to read you could almost do it with your eyes closed.”

“They had no reason to believe anyone would follow them,” Dusty said, his stetson pulled low to shade his eyes from the sunlight slipping through the bows overhead. “When they rode away from the ranch, we didn’t make any immediate attempts to come after them, so they probably figured we were hurt too bad.”

“This trail has been going south since I first picked it up, and they’ve been keeping a steady pace. Almost like they’re heading to someplace in particular.”

Dusty nodded. “It seems that way, doesn’t it?”

The trail took Dusty and Josh to a small rocky ravine, probably a stream bed in the spring, Dusty figured, and then onto a second ridge. The trail continued down from the ridge and into a small valley of tall mountain grass, with scattered birch and aspen.

They reined up at the rim of the valley, and Josh said, “Beautiful, ain’t it?”

Dusty nodded.

“There’s places like this all through the mountains. I figure I’ll one day take over the ranch from Pa, when he’s older. But there are times I’ve thought I might want to find me a good woman someday, white or Injun, it doesn’t matter as long as she’s got a lot of sand, and build me a cabin in a place like this little valley, and raise young’uns. I would pick a place deep enough into the mountains so the white man will be a long time in bringing his rules and laws that can tie a man down.”

Dusty said, “You’d be a long haul from any town.”

“That’d be fine. You wouldn’t need many supplies, because you could live off the land. There’s deer, elk, moose and bear that could last you a lifetime. And fish in the streams. You could put in a small patch of corn.

“A good woman to stand by me, and raise a family with me. Sometimes I think if I got me that and a place like this, I’d never look back.”

“Y’know, Josh? I’m starting to suspect there’s more to you than meets the eye.”

Josh snorted with disgust at his own sudden burst of sentimentalism, and started his horse down a game trail that led into the valley.

They found the remains of a camp near a small spring. The leaves that had fallen from the aspens in previous years and now covered the earth in a layer of mulch had been cleared away, and in their place were the charred remains of a campfire.

“They don’t seem worried about being followed at all,” Josh said.

Dusty shook his head. “It’s like I said. And yet, they’re not wandering aimlessly. They’re definitely riding somewhere in particular.”

They dismounted to rest the horses, and filled their canteens from the spring.

“You’d think,” Josh said, “that they would ride north for Canada. Get beyond the reach of the law, in case a territorial marshal went after them.”

“It was never Patterson’s way. When I was with him, he kept his activities mostly to Texas and New Mexico Territory, and kept a hideout in the Rockies. Patterson found a small canyon, with only a narrow pass for an entrance, and with steep rock walls all round it, and he built a cabin. The canyon was easy enough to find if you knew where to look, but it was high up in the mountains, and you needed a mountain horse to get there. Patterson kept a remuda of mountain horses only, just for that reason.

“He and his men would sit back drinking whiskey and eating steak taken from rustled steers while the law ran itself ragged trying to find him. He even invited a photographer to the hideout once to take a picture of him and the men, he was so cock-sure the law would never find him. One time he found out a journalist had come west from New York City to do a write-up on the Patterson Gang, and Sam met him in Denver and escorted him blind-folded to the hideout, so he and the men could be interviewed.

“More than one outlaw rode south into Mexico for safety, just like up in this territory they ride north to Canada, but Patterson told me that kind of safety is never a sure thing. A U.S. Marshal would have no jurisdiction in Mexico or Canada, but an imaginary line like a border would never stop a bounty hunter, and the Texas Rangers have crossed into Mexico illegally more than once to bring back outlaws.

“If Patterson is the leader of this group we’re chasing, then I’d bet the law eventually forced him out of his hideout, and he’s come north to set up his operations here. I’d bet he’s found another canyon or a small valley somewhere in these mountains.”

As Dusty spoke, his eye caught sudden motion in the tall grass of a meadow that began at the edge of the spring and stretched away for a couple hundred yards.

“What’s wrong?” Josh asked, kneeling by the spring, filling his final canteen.

“I saw something.”

Josh rose to his feet. “What?”

“I don’t know.”

Blades of grass suddenly moved, and a gray furry head with long ears popped suddenly into view.

Dusty smiled. “How would you like something other than beans tonight? Not that the beans were bad, but they ain’t my first choice.”

“Good luck,”