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

than a scattering of buildings, roughly conforming to the shape of a street, near the mountain pass known as McCabe Gap. Pa had named it. He sort of liked the old-school terminology.

When Pa had been a child, his grandfather, the first John McCabe, had been a trailblazer and scout, back when the Pennsylvania mountains Pa hailed from had been a frontier. He had dressed in buckskin and lived among Indians, and had many adventures to recount to his wide-eyed grandchildren. He had hunted and fought alongside frontiersman with names like Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton. Some of these stories might have been exaggerations, for the sake of entertainment, but Pa and his brothers and cousins didn’t care. The old man had been one of Pa’s early heroes. And in the time of the first John McCabe, the term mountain pass hadn’t yet developed. An opening between mountains large enough to ride a horse through was called a gap.

This little town, the only one within a five-day ride of the McCabe ranch, was not organized, and had no name, but was coming to be called by the name of the pass. Or sometimes McCabe Town.

The saloon was a structure of upright planks nailed into place with a narrow strip of wood covering the gap between each plank. The roof was sloped, and swinging doors faced the street. A sign bearing the words HUNTER’S SALOON drawn in black paint, was nailed into place over the doorway. The establishment was owned by a burly, bearded man who had ridden for the McCabe Ranch until two years earlier, when he built this place and went into the saloon business.

“I’m getting too old for those long days in the saddle,” he had told Pa and Josh one night. “I always wanted to run a barroom. Since there ain’t one around here, I guess I’ll have to build one.”

At the time it was built, Hunter’s was the only building on this little plateau. News of the existence of a saloon spread like proverbial wild fire, and very shortly there was standing-room-only in Hunter’s on a Saturday night. It was also not long before an entrepreneur arrived by covered wagon and built a hotel fifty yards from the saloon. A stagecoach trail had been bringing travelers bound for Helena to within a couple miles of McCabe Gap for years, and the stage company contracted with the hotel owner, and soon was bringing customers directly to the hotel’s front door. Many walked over to Hunter’s for a cold beer after a day of sitting inside a stagecoach, swallowing trail dust.

Cold beer was a rarity on the frontier. Pa claimed to have tasted it once down El Paso way, in a saloon made of adobe where the barroom was cool even on the hottest days. At Hunter’s, in a room behind the bar, which Hunter used as his living quarters, was a trap door leading down to a fifteen-foot deep cellar, which was where Hunter stored his beer kegs. A rope, which ran through a pulley driven into a timber overhead, was used to lower the kegs into the cellar once they arrived by stagecoach, and Hunter would climb down into the cellar to pour a draft when a customer ordered a cold one. Hunter also kept a keg tapped behind the bar, and charged the customary nickel for a mug of room-temperature beer. But for the labor of fetching a cold beer, he charged a full dime.

Not long after the hotel was in operation, with the stage line bringing customers to its front door, a general store was built, and then a livery stable went up beside Hunter’s, and the street began to take shape. Now, two years after Hunter had opened for business, there was a handful of houses, and a seamstress’s shop. There was talk of building a jail and maybe hiring a town marshal. And a bank would soon be going up, to serve the needs of the growing community and the ranches and farmers in the surrounding area. There was also a small church that also served as a school house during the week.

Josh swung out of the saddle in front of Hunter’s, and tethered the buckskin to a hitching post mounted by the front door, and pushed through the swinging doors to find three men sitting at a table. The three he had fired the day before. Tarley’s shirt pulled tightly over a bandage at his right shoulder, and his arm was in a sling. Reno glared at him with eyes glazing over from too much whiskey, and Tarley turned painfully in his chair for a glance at Josh.

“You’re a brave man, ridin’ into town alone,” Tarley said.

“I let you ride away the first time,” Josh said. “You won’t be so lucky a second time.”

Tarley fixed his gaze on Josh for a moment, trying to muster some bravado, but then apparently decided to count himself lucky to still be breathing, and turned away.

Josh smiled to himself and continued on to the bar, which was nothing more than two long planks laid across upended beer kegs. He decided to let Tarley and his friends believe Josh had intended to wing Tarley, and not kill him. If they believed Josh had put the bullet exactly where he wanted it, they would be less likely to challenge him again. It also wouldn’t hurt Josh’s attempts to build a reputation of his own, and maybe step out from the shadow of Johnny McCabe.

Hunter stepped from the back room as Josh tipped his hat back on his head and leaned an elbow on the bar.

Hunter stood taller than Josh, with wide shoulders housing strength gained from a lifetime of hard work. He wore a pinstriped shirt, and an apron tied over a flat stomach. His hair was thick and black, with strands of silver sprinkled throughout, and his beard was long and bushy.

“Howdy, Hunter,” Josh said. He had never known Hunter’s first name.

Hunter had ridden onto the