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

covered the low ridges and hills between the ranch house and McCabe Gap, coming out behind Hunter’s.

Once they were in the forest, with tall pines as straight as arrows closing in on them, Josh fell in behind Pa, assuming single file. He did so without being told.

Pa swung his horse to the right, Josh following, and they began the gradual ascent that would take them to the ridge where the campfire had been the night before. Pa slid his Sharps from the saddle boot and rode with it across the pommel. Josh slid free his Winchester and did the same.

The woods were now thick, pine trees no more than fifteen feet apart. These woods were different than those Pa had roamed as a boy in the hills of western Pennsylvania. Though Josh had never been east of the Missouri, Pa had described the forests of the east, with maples and oaks and alders dropping leaves that grew dry and crunched underfoot, and that were tangled with underbrush you could never get a horse through. However, in these ridges and hills, the trees were mostly ponderosa pines and Douglas firs, some ranging more than fifty feet in height. There was little underbrush, and the forest floor consisted of brown, dry pine needles. This type of forest had its advantages, as Pa and Josh were now enjoying. They were riding their horses unencumbered up the slope, with iron shod hooves striking the pine needle laden earth almost silently.

When the slope leveled off, Pa swung from the saddle and reached into his saddle bags for his moccasins. Long, buckskin boots with soft soles, sewn together with rawhide strips. He had made them himself, based on the footwear the Shoshone used. His first pair had been given him by a war chief when he and Zack Johnson and Uncle Josiah had first wintered in this valley, nearly twenty years earlier.

Pa pulled off his riding boots, which took a moment because most cowhands preferred such boots to be skin-tight, clinging to the foot like they had been glued in place. Then he pulled on his moccasin boots, tying each with a rawhide thong just below the knee.

“I’m going to go cut for sign afoot,” he said. “Stay with the horses.”

Josh gave a nod. You can travel faster on a horse, but right now, secrecy was more important than speed. Pa would be able to move practically unobserved afoot.

Moving as silently as wind whispering through a pine bough, Pa slipped into the trees and was soon gone from sight. He could move through the wilderness as well as any Indian Josh had ever seen. Josh sometimes felt Pa was more at home in the wilderness than anywhere else. Josh thought, if things had been different and Pa had never met Ma, he might have been content to find a stretch of land deep in the mountains, far from any trace of civilization, and build himself a cabin and simply live out his days there.

Josh swung out of his saddle, keeping his Winchester in one hand. He felt he was too much of a target sitting up on his horse.

He waited for Pa. A gust of wind picked up, causing some pine boughs to sway a bit, then it died away. From somewhere off in the trees, a crow called out. Josh removed a canteen, took a sip, and he waited.

Sudden movement from off to his left caught his eye. It was Pa, silently materializing from the woods.

“I found a trail,” he said. “Lots of riders. Looks like it might have been made this morning.”

He and Josh mounted up, and Josh followed Pa for a couple hundred yards along the ridge until they came to the tracks. Then they back-trailed until they found the previous night’s camp. The blackened remains of what had been a huge fire. Empty cans of beans. The stubs of cigars and cigarettes. A couple empty whiskey bottles.

Bootprints covered other bootprints. It was impossible to get a fix on what their number was, other than numerous. Josh could see some bootprints were larger than others. Some had a flatter heel. He could count at least eight different men. And he saw one set of prints that was smaller, narrower, with a sharper heel.

“Looks like they might have a kid with them,” Josh said. “Or a woman.”

“The fools,” Pa said, stepping down lightly from the saddle and scooping up the bottles. “Don’t they know sunlight through a bottle can start a fire?”

He dropped the bottles into a saddle bag. “Well, they’re not trying to conceal themselves at all. Must be their number. Creates a feeling of safety.”

“Why do you suppose they picked this spot?” Josh asked. “If they’re not afraid of being seen, why not go down to a lower elevation? Flatter ground? Maybe closer to town, or to the ranch?”

Pa looked up at the trees overhead. Tall, straight ponderosas. “Can you still climb one of these, like I showed you?”

Josh let his gaze travel up along one trunk. The branches began a good thirty feet from the ground. To climb one of these, Josh would have to wrap his arms and legs around the trunk and wriggle his way up. Pa had seen the Shoshone do this to cut or break branches for a fire. But Josh hadn’t even attempted this since he was ten, when he was two full feet shorter, and about sixty pounds lighter. But Pa had asked the question, and Josh didn’t want to admit to even a hesitation in front of this man.

“Yessir,” he said boldly.

“Then, have at it.”

Josh stepped down and handed Pa one rein. He slung his gunbelt over the pommel of his saddle, dropped his hat to the ground, and shouldered out of his vest and laid it beside the hat. “What is it I’m looking for?”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

“How high do you want me to go?”

“You’ll know when you get there.”

Josh wrapped his arms around the pine’s trunk, the roughness