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

gave Dusty but a fleeting glance, and pushed his way through the swinging doors.

Dusty noticed the horse carried a brand that was a roughly drawn letter M, inside an equally roughly drawn circle. The Circle M. Dusty wondered if this man was a McCabe rider.

“Fred,” he heard Hunter say from inside.

“You open for business?”

“Only for my best customers. How about a cold beer? Just got the keg tapped.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Inside, Fred bellied-up to the bar and waited while Hunter climbed the ladder down to his root cellar, and the keg of cold beer. Shortly, he returned with two mugs of foaming brew. Hunter set one on the bar before Fred, and the other he kept for himself.

“Looks to be a quiet night, for a Saturday,” Fred said. “Josh won’t be here to liven things up.”

“When’s he due back from the roundup?”

“Another week.” Fred took a sip of beer. “And did he ever catch hell from Aunt Ginny the next mornin’, after whuppin’ Reno. His face was all bruised up, and on top of that, he and the new men he hired rode out the following morning, without even waiting until after church.”

Hunter shook his head, his shoulders shaking with a silent chuckle. “Josh is braver than I am. I would never want to get that little woman all r’iled up at me.”

“Say, Hunter. Who’s that boy settin’ out there on the boardwalk?”

“His name’s Dusty. Works for me. I hired him Monday. He’s my new cook and bartender.”

“Cook and bartender, eh?” Fred took another sip. “Got gunhawk written all over him. And gunhawk means trouble.”

“No, Dusty’s no trouble. He’s a good man. And besides, no man has gunhawk written all over him more than the man you work for. And you won’t find a more stand-up man.”

“That’s the truth.”

Fred took a sip of beer, and Hunter followed suit.

“Y’know,” Fred said. “Strikes me as though I’ve seen him somewheres. Has he ever been through here before?”

Hunter shook his head. “Nope. Never been to Montana before.”

“Strikes me as downright familiar.”

Hunter raised his brows, his eyes dancing with amusement, as though he were privy to a great secret. “Don’t he, though?”

Dusty, still listening outside, found that downright puzzling.

NINE

Dusty found tending bar was not a strenuous job, but there was a downside. You had to work damned fast. Back at Lewis’s place in Nevada, Dusty had poured a few beers for travelers or miners, or some townsfolk drifting in looking for a respite from the hot, dusty day. But pouring beer in Baker’s Crossing was nothing compared to a cattle-country town on a Saturday night. The bar was continually lined with cowpunchers, each wanting a mug of beer or a shot of whiskey, and wanting it immediately. Dusty found having only two hands to be inadequate. With an apron tied over his gunbelt, he scurried behind the bar, trying to meet the demands of Hunter’s customers. One man wanted no head on his beer, another wanted an inch of foam. Hunter circulated about the room, greeting customers. When a cold beer was ordered, and many were, Dusty would call to Hunter, who would hurry down to the root cellar.

Dusty was always to remain behind the bar while Hunter was down in the cellar. Hunter suspected that, on previous Saturday nights, some cowhands had filled their mugs from the keg behind the bar while he hurried out back to fill an order for cold brew.

Many of the cowhands had no money. They were paid monthly, and some were paid only on credit, as their employers had little cash until their herd was ready to be driven to market, so Hunter kept a line of credit open to any cowhand who worked for one of the local ranches. If you were new to the area, and no local cowhand would vouch for you, then it was cash up front or no service. Dusty had a small ledger sheet in an apron pocket, and was tallying up the drinks as he went.

Somewhere before nine o’clock, one cowhand shoved another, who staggered backward a few steps, jostling another and spilling his beer. Soon fists were flying, and Hunter was in the middle of it, standing almost an entire head taller than most of his customers, calling for them to break it up, and grabbing men by the shirt collar and banging heads together. A punch glanced off his bearded chin, knocking him back a step, and he grabbed the man behind the belt with one hand dragged him to the door, and threw him out into the street. Son-of-a-bitch!, Dusty thought. Hunter is strong! All the while, Hunter had a smile on his face. Dusty, watching from behind the bar, realized Hunter was enjoying himself.

The fight had died away, barely, when a man stepped through the doorway, immediately attracting Dusty’s attention. His clothes were dusty, which indicated he was fresh from the trail. But it wasn’t the kind of dust that lands on a cowhand working long hours on the back of a horse. It looked like saddle-bum dust, dust that has built upon another day’s dust, with more than a little sweat mixed in. He wore spurs, which indicated to Dusty he was not from these parts, as Dusty had noticed most of the cowhands in the northwest did not seem to wear spurs. Dusty himself did not wear them, despite living most of his years in the Southwest, because Patterson had taught him to always move quietly, and spurs tended to make a metallic jingling as you walked.

What caught Dusty’s attention the most about this man were his guns. Remingtons. One riding low on his right side, the other equally low on his left.

The man stepped up to the bar. “I’ll take a whiskey, boy.”

“I’ll take some indication you can pay for it, first.”

“The only indication you’ll get is this.” The man reached for his right-hand gun, but before he could clear leather, he found himself staring into the barrel of Dusty’s Peacemaker, not a