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

after he rode through, and started a small ranch near ‘Frisco. His wife died, three or four years after they were married, I think. They say she caught a bullet meant for him, but you know how stories like that are. They grow as time passes. They say he now has a spread in Montana Territory. He has a couple sons, probably about your age.”

Dusty thought about that for a moment. “But how could anyone know for certain, considering..,” he glanced to Annie, “no offense, but considering the line of work she was in. All the men she must have been with.”

Lewis shrugged. “Rosie always said she somehow knew. She had a feeling. Women can tell that sort of thing sometimes. And we all saw the resemblance. Even now, looking at you, you’re the spitting image of him. He wasn’t much older than you when he swaggered into the barroom that night. The way your face is shaped, the way you walk. It’s almost like looking into the past.”

Dusty nodded slowly. “Johnny McCabe. I guess I don’t know quite what to think about that. I hadn’t been really expecting to ever find my mother, not really. I mean, it was a real long-shot. And even if I did, I figured finding my father would be out of the question. And I certainly wasn’t expecting him to be someone like Johnny McCabe.”

Lewis refilled Dusty’s glass, and Dusty took a slug, then asked, “Where did she get the name Dustin?”

Annie said, “Her father - your grandfather. You were named after him. Dustin Callahan. He was a trapper, sometimes an Army scout. He took up with a Ute woman, and they settled in a mountain cabin in the Tahoe area.”

“Did she ever mention having any brothers or sisters?”

“No. She was never one to talk much about herself, but I gathered by what she did say that she was an only child.”

“So, I’ve got Indian blood in me,” Dusty said. “And my father is Johnny McCabe.”

He then asked, “Did he know about me?”

“No,” Annie said. “He was in town just one night. He rode on the next morning. That was back when we were working out of a mining camp a couple days’ ride out of ‘Frisco.”

Lewis nodded at the memory, agreeing her account of the events. “Eighteen fifty-eight, I believe. Long before we bought this place. That was a year before the gold rush. The Comstock Lode. This was all just empty desert country, back then.”

Annie gave a weary shake of her head. “Lord, those were wild times.”

Dusty listened to the talk, but his mind was on what he was learning about his background. About his father, and how he came into the world. He was aware of the ways of the world; once he had learned his mother was a saloon whore, he knew the probability of how he had been born. But that was before he knew his father’s name. He had never met Johnny McCabe, and most of what he had heard about him was probably tall tales, but at least his father no longer seemed entirely faceless. And as the facelessness vanished, Dusty felt a touch of anger rising. Even though he knew this anger was not rational, it was still very real.

“So,” Dusty said. “He rode into town, got a little drunk, whelped a child, and rode on without even a backward glance?”

Annie said, “He didn’t just get a little drunk. He sat down at a table and began pouring the whiskey down. How he ever made it up the stairs, I’ll never know. The following morning, his brother and another man, Zack Johnson, rode in to get him. They had to practically carry him out.”

“Zack Johnson. I’ve heard of him, too. A Texas Ranger, or at least he was at one time. That name comes up around camp fires every so often.”

“Apparently he’s a friend of your father’s.”

Lewis said, “Don’t fault him none for that night, getting drunk like that. He had a powerful hurt riding with him. You could see the pain in his eyes the moment he stepped into the barroom. I was tending bar, and the look in his eyes, the pain, caught my attention even more than the way he wore his guns. He ordered a bottle of whiskey, dropped a fistful of silver dollars on the bar, enough to pay for a week’s stay in the best hotel in town, and said to keep bringing the whiskey to him until he fell over.

“He didn’t say what was behind the pain he was feeling, that he was trying to numb with all that whiskey. And if he ever told Rosie, she never told us. But like I said, you could see it in his eyes.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Annie said, “I don’t think paying for a saloon woman was the usual way he conducted himself. You work the saloons enough years, you develop a sort of feeling about people.”

“He didn’t buy Rosie, either, if that’s any consolation. Rosie told us she never took any money from him. And when those two men came in to fetch him, I called one of them over to the bar and gave him back the cash your father had dropped on the bar. I never could bring myself to even take out enough for the three bottles of whiskey he poured down.”

“My God,” Dusty said, his sudden anger now fading. “Three bottles?”

Lewis nodded. “I’ve known men who drank themselves to death on less than that.”

“What do you suppose? What do you suppose could have driven a man to that kind of hurt?”

“I don’t know. But the look in his eyes kind of haunted me. For a little while afterward, I’d have nightmares about it.”

Dusty finished his whiskey. Since taking something for free went against his grain, he insisted on sweeping up. Lewis and Annie told him he was welcome to remain as long as he was of a mind to. They considered any child of Rosie’s to