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

“Now, that ain’t too neighborly,” Dusty said.

The saloon, which had been rising from a murmur to a roar and then dying back down throughout the evening, was suddenly quiet.

“What’re you gonna do, boy?” the man asked.

“Empty that eye socket if you don’t set that gun down on the bar. Then pull the other, real slow and easy-like, and set it down, too.”

“You think you got the nerve?”

“You want to try me?”

The man decided Dusty did not look like he was bluffing, and did as instructed. First one pistol, then the other.

“Time for you to leave,” Hunter said suddenly from behind the man, and he delivered what Dusty was coming to realize was his customary way of helping a customer out the door when he had worn out his welcome. One hand gripped the man by the back of his belt, the other at his collar, then Hunter dragged him across the floor while the man kicked with his feet and cut loose with a long string of obscenities, mostly at what line of work he thought Hunter’s mother might have been in, and Hunter tossed him out the door.

The room erupted in laughter, then the murmur of a dozen conversations being conducted at once resumed.

Some of the men eventually began to trickle out, their destination being the establishment owned by the woman named Alisha Summers.

“That man with the guns,” Dusty said to Hunter. “He might be trouble.”

“Him? I doubt it. Once his guns were gone, he wasn’t such a big man.”

“It’s not that he was a big man. It’s that he was a small man. That’s what we’ve got to worry about.” Then, Dusty added, “Besides, standing next to you, every man’s a small man.”

Hunter exploded into a belly laugh. The joke had not been funny enough to warrant such an enthusiastic a response, but Hunter had been helping himself to some of his own whiskey. Even though he was the proprietor of this place, it was clear to Dusty that Hunter was still a cowhand at heart, and it was Saturday night.

“Why don’t you grab a beer and take a break?” Hunter said. “You’ve been workin’ hard all night, and the crowd’s starting to thin out. Must be past midnight.”

That sounded good to Dusty. His feet were a little sore. He was accustomed to working long hours in the saddle, not on his feet. He untied his apron and dropped it in a heap at the edge of the bar. Grabbing a mug, he filled it from the keg behind the bar – he was too tired to climb all the way down for a cold one.

He stepped out the door, then to one side so he would not stand silhouetted by the light of the doorway. Something he had learned from Sam Patterson, which had become second nature.

The air was cool. A slight breeze touched his face, bringing with it a touch of balsam.

He glanced about quickly for any motion in the shadows that might be out of place. Another habit he had picked up from Patterson. Such ways might seem needless to some, Dusty thought, but they can mean the difference between surviving and not. Especially since the drifter Hunter had tossed out the door was out there, somewhere in the night. Even though Dusty had taken the man’s pistols, he might have a rifle in his saddle.

Dusty tipped the mug for a sip of beer, and something caught his eye. A small glow, white but tiny and with a barely perceptible hint of orange, out beyond the edge of town, and up a bit. A campfire, on one of the ridge slopes beyond the gap.

He finished his beer, then returned to the barroom. A poker game was under way at a table near the stove. Hunter, the McCabe rider named Fred, and a couple cowhands were forming a small audience.

“Hunter,” Dusty said.

Hunter looked over.

Dusty signaled with a nod for him to follow.

Hunter tailed Dusty to the doorway, and Dusty said, “Look up there, off in the hills.”

Hunter did. “A fire. What about it? Drifters, probably.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“It’s a little odd, I suppose. You’d think they’d ride into town, see if there’s a room available, and if not, or they couldn’t afford it, they’d camp just outside of town. That’s what most of ‘em do.”

Hunter backed out of the doorway and returned to the poker table.

Dusty, however, was not so sure. It was not simply the oddity of the location of the campfire, it was a feeling. Patterson had said, “Regardless of anything, no matter what anyone else says, always trust your gut-feelings.”

The following day, Dusty fixed breakfast for himself and Hunter, and for Franklin and Fred and a few straggler cowhands who had slept off their whiskey in the livery stable or an alley, or a cot at Alisha Summers’. Then Hunter gave Dusty the day off.

From his chair on Hunter’s porch, he watched the Sunday morning church crowd roll in. The church was a small, single-room building that also served as a local school. The preacher was a young Baptist man with hair that was receding into a jagged widow’s peak, who pushed a plow when he was not going about his pastorly duties. He had an almost too gentle and sincere way when he spoke. Watch out for the ones who try to act too sincere, Patterson had once said. They will always be the ones who will greet you with one hand but with the other they will be reaching for your wallet. Sincerity should come naturally, not be something you have to attempt. But the preacher also visited Hunter’s for coffee almost every morning, and laughed the loudest when the humor turned raucous. His wife was not much older than Dusty, and as they had no children, she spent her weekdays at the school-church serving as the school marm.

The school-church was maybe two hundred yards from the last building in town, which was Hunter’s, probably to