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

that brackish mud you men call coffee remains from this evening’s pot.”

She knew, Dusty realized. Hunter was right. Somehow, she knew. He could tell by a certain look in her eye. A look that was knowing, and at the same time he saw a twinkle of amusement.

“Yes’m,” he said uneasily, no longer as concerned about how he might say what he had to say, but feeling that the situation was somehow beyond his control.

“Josh, go get our guest a cup of coffee.”

Josh gave a slow huffing sigh, obviously displeased at being suddenly reduced to an errand boy, and left for the kitchen.

“So,” McCabe said. “Dusty, is it? Is there something we can do for you?”

“John,” Miss Brackston said, before Dusty could answer. “Does he remind you of someone?”

“No, not really. Well, maybe. A little, I guess, now that you mention it.”

“Who?”

“Dusty, I didn’t really notice at first, but you look a lot like my brother, Josiah.”

Miss Brackston let out a spontaneous cackle. John and his brother Josiah did indeed bear some resemblance to each other. “Well, I suppose he does, at that. But that’s not who I meant.”

McCabe continued. “I haven’t seen Josiah in years. In fact, twelve years now, I suppose.”

Then he realized what she had said, and looked at her. “Who’d you mean, then?”

Dusty was also looking at her in amazement. “How could you know? I mean, I didn’t tell anyone. Hunter, he figured it out, but..,”

“We all figured it out,” she said. “You look something like your Uncle Josiah, yes, but you’re the spitting image of your father.”

McCabe’s mouth fell open. “Wha..?” was all he could manage.

In the kitchen doorway, a coffee cup fell and shattered.

“Josh,” Miss Brackston called out calmly. “Clean that up, will you?”

Johnny McCabe glanced from Ginny to the boy seated before him. Dusty did not know what to say. He had ridden out here not sure how to proceed once he got here, but he hadn’t expected the news to be announced this way. And Miss Brackston - she was simply sitting staring back at McCabe, her eyes twinkling with amusement.

In the silence, every sound of the house was somehow magnified. A creak of an overhead timber. The monotonous clicking as a small ship’s clock on the mantel ticked off seconds to no one in particular. However, there were no sounds from the kitchen.

“Joshua,” Miss Brackston called out. “I don’t hear the sounds of things being cleaned up out there!”

Dusty then heard the clink of shards of glass being bumped together as they were swept up.

The woman in the rocker looked to McCabe. “I’ve got to say, John, I’ve never seen you speechless. I’ll have to mark this down in my diary.”

“How could this be?” he finally said. He glanced to Dusty, then back to her. “How?”

“You tell us. You’re the only one in the room who was there.”

She was enjoying herself. Dusty wasn’t sure what he thought about this, but he found himself having to suppress a smile.

McCabe rose to his feet, and took a couple of paces toward the hearth. “It’s impossible. I was never unfaithful to Lura. And there’s been no one since.”

“Think about Utah Territory,” she said. “Maybe twenty years ago. Its called Nevada now. You were drunk out of your mind.”

Dusty looked at her incredulously. How could she know the details? He wasn’t surprised his father did not remember – it had been so long ago, and from what Dusty had been told by Lewis and Annie, McCabe had been about as drunk as a man can get. But Miss Brackston wasn’t there.

She said to McCabe, “Think about a night a few weeks after you thought Lura had left you. Drunk out of your mind, in a little saloon, in a small mining town in Utah Territory.”

McCabe shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Miss Brackston looked at him firmly, but the twinkle was still in her eye. She was enjoying having the upper hand on Dusty’s father, knowing something he did not.

Dusty had the impression of a sort of rivalry between the two, possibly each trying to get one up on the other. Good-natured, but intense. And even though the situation was in itself not funny and certainly not a game, she was taking advantage of it to see McCabe twist in discomfort. And Dusty had the impression that, were the situation reversed, McCabe would be doing the same to her.

“Let me set the stage,” she said, almost theatrically, “to jog your memory.”

And she began to recount how his late wife, Lura, had been pregnant and whisked away by her parents, sent back east to have the child away from their friends and the patients and business associates of her father, the doctor, and that Lura’s mother had left a farewell note to him, forging Lura’s handwriting. “Not knowing she was in the family way, or where she was, you simply rode out.”

Johnny drew a slow breath, and let his gaze drift upward to the darkened ceiling. “I hadn’t thought about that in a long time. Oh, God, did I ever get drunk. And I stayed drunk for what must have been a week. It was my last bender. I was known for that sort of thing when I was younger, but that one was as bad as they got. It’s amazing I didn’t get myself killed.

“My brother Josiah came along, which is probably how I managed to survive. It was on that ride that we met up with Zack Johnson – I hadn’t seen him since riding with the Texas Rangers, a couple years earlier. He rode along to help Josiah keep me out of trouble.”

McCabe focused his gaze on Ginny. “I was so drunk, I wasn’t sure where we picked him up, but when I sobered up, he was there.”

“So, you don’t remember her,” Dusty said.

McCabe raised an index finger to point into the air, as if he were identifying a fragment of a memory that had just popped up. “Zack