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

Army, or occasionally attending a livestock auction. Pa’s right-hand-man, Zack Johnson, who had ridden alongside Pa in the Texas Rangers many years earlier, would take care of the ranch while Pa and Josh were away. But a year earlier, Zack had decided he would like to start his own spread, and so he had staked out a claim at the other side of the valley and began his own cattle operation.

Pa had not taken any of his journeys during the past year, but Josh knew he eventually would, and wondered who he would entrust the ranch to while he was gone. It had been at the supper table a few nights ago that Pa had announced his plan.

“You won’t be goin’ with me this time, Josh. With Zack gone, I need someone here to look after things. You’re doing the work of a man. That makes you, in my eyes, a man. The ranch will be yours until I get back.”

The fork had almost fallen out of Josh’s hands. “I’ll do my best, sir.”

Josh reflected on all of this as he rode along. He had informed Aunt Ginny the evening before that he would be riding out to visit the cabin where the ranch’s line riders were based. Pa sometimes referred to them as the floating outfit. Josh told her he would probably be spending the night at the cabin.

The floaters were ramrodded by a cowhand who had ridden for Pa maybe nine or ten years, and who went by the name of Reno. On the frontier, you did not question a man’s name. He told you what he was called. You accepted it, and never inquired further. Reno was a good man, but even so, Pa would ride out once a week to check on things. He felt it served to reinforce the fact that this ranch was a hands-on operation. The owner was also the main ramrod.

Reno was a good man, but he was known to drink a little too much. And when he was drinking, he was not such a good man. Get some whiskey into him, and he tended to throw responsibility out the window. This was maybe in the back of Pa’s mind when he rode out to check on Reno and the boys, but he never voiced the concern. When Josh mentioned it to him once, all Pa said was he and Reno had an understanding.

Josh tended to ride out to the line cabin, make the customary appearance. Reinforce the fact that this was a hands-on operation. Maybe share in the work for a day or two, then return to the house. Nothing less than Pa would have done.

The night before Pa had ridden out, he stood with Josh on the front porch, overlooking five miles of meadow stretching out before them, forming the valley floor.

“This ranch will be yours one day,” Pa had said, a smoldering pipe in one hand. “I want you to treat it like it’s yours while I’m gone.”

“What’s the secret to being a good leader, Pa?”

Pa shrugged. “I don’t know. Most of it is something you’re born with, I guess. I’ve always seemed to fall into that role without even trying. I think you have those qualities, too. But the captain I rode under when I was with the Texas Rangers gave me some advice. Treat your men with respect, be honest with them, never talk down to them, and never ask them to do something you wouldn’t do yourself. I was the ramrod of two other cow outfits before I started my own, and I’ve always applied those rules to my men. And I’ve done well.”

Josh was about Pa’s height, though more slightly built. He could move more quickly, but his wrists and forearms were more slender, and his shoulders didn’t have as much spread. He had never been able to muster the bull-strength of Pa, and doubted he ever would.

Josh’s hair was the color of corn silk, which he had gotten from his mother, and he wore it long, falling to his shoulders, like Pa did. Pa, Zack Johnson, and Josh’s Uncle Josiah had once wintered in the valley with a band of Shoshones, a year or so before Pa had married Ma and long before Pa had moved the family here. It was from them Pa acquired his preference for longer hair, wearing it pulled back away from his face, and letting it fall to his shoulders, and sometimes tying it in a tail Indian-style.

Aunt Ginny was usually ready to go off on a scolding frenzy, and Pa’s hair had been the subject a number of times throughout the years.

“Good God, John, you look like some sort of half-civilized mountain man.”

“That’s what I am, Ginny,” he would reply, which always drew a chuckle from Josh and his sister Bree.

Aunt Ginny’s consternation had settled on Josh more than once after he had started growing his hair long – at first it was to be like Pa, and now he had simply gotten used to it. Aunt Ginny was forced to admit, though, there were worse things than for a boy to try to be like his father.

Like Pa, Josh was clean-shaven. The Shoshone had a name for a man with a beard. Dog-face. Pa and the others had ridden into their camp with a couple months worth of whiskers decorating their jaws, but once he had found himself on the receiving end of that name, he sharpened his bowie knife to a razor’s edge and shaved away his beard. Though, Josh found that with his own light hair and complexion, not much grew along his jaw to shave, except for some light fuzz.

Josh wore a flat crowned hat with a brim that was becoming floppy with wear, and at his right side was holstered a Navy Colt.

Colt was the more popular brand of pistol, but among the old cap-and-ball revolvers, anyone who knew anything about shooting preferred a Remington for its superior balance and aim. Pa carried