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

sometimes did this, even on a mid-winter day, stepping onto the porch with no coat for a few minutes, simply to better experience the power of nature. It somehow made him feel a little more connected to it.

“Back where I grew up,” he said, “in Pennsylvania, the summer air is heavy with humidity, so on a day as warm as this was, sweat would be dripping from you after even the easiest of chores. And the heat would last into the night. You’d be more than comfortable in shirtsleeves only, and the humidity would give a dampness to the night that would even be felt on your bedsheets or pillow.”

“I have never been east. Do you miss Pennsylvania? Your parents’ farm?”

His shoulders rose in a shrug, though he knew she would not be able to see the motion in the darkness. “I do to an extent, I suppose. We had a good family, a lot of love in that little farm house. But at seventeen, my father had advised me to join either the Army or the Navy, and see some of the world before I made any decisions that might affect my future. He told me that he would have been more than satisfied for his four sons to settle nearby and farm, but we had to each do what was right for us. And such a decision couldn’t be made objectively when we I had ever seen of the world was our seven-hundred acre farm, and maybe a twenty-mile area beyond it.”

“A wise man.”

“Indeed he was. And since I was already a good horseman, and I had an uncle who was at one time a Texas Ranger and had given me my first set of pistols, and I had become fairly good with them, I decided to go west and join the Army. One thing led to another, and I wound up with the Texas Rangers. And I fell in love with this land. That little farm in Pennsylvania was where my roots are, but I knew this land was where my heart would always belong.

“When I first saw the Rockies, it was like I had really come home for the first time. And that first winter I spent in this valley, even moreso. When Lura and I starting building our first ranch, I would stand outside the door at night, and I could almost feel these mountains calling to me.”

Ginny actually already knew most of this story, but she was silent, letting Johnny tell it, as though he needed to say the words again. Besides, she never got tired of hearing it.

His three brothers were, she knew, Matthew, Josiah and Nathan. Matthew was two years older than John, and had married and was ranching about a day’s ride south of Stockton. Ginny had met him, and found him to be surprisingly sophisticated for a Pennsylvania farm boy. He had an almost theatrical way of moving, and was well-versed in the classics. He read Shakespeare for relaxation. Unlike John, he managed his ranch from a desk, generally was more comfortable in a white shirt and tie, and he knew his wines. A man of thought, and a good man, but not a man of action. Josiah was often called the silent one because he was a man of such few words. He was two years younger than John. He resembled John strongly, though his chestnut hair was devoid of the hint of amber John’s had had when he was younger, and he stood maybe an inch taller and had a slightly heavier frame. Josiah, who seemed to have an even stronger affinity for the wilderness than did John, and whose eyes had always seemed distant. A year after Lura’s death, after helping John and Zack Johnson bring the entire family and all of the livestock north to this valley, Josiah had simply announced it was time to move on, and rode out. John had said he always expected that day would come sooner or later, as Josiah was a wandering spirit. He was surprised Josiah had remained as long as he had. But what surprised him even more was Josiah had never been heard from again. A lot of things can happen to a man riding alone in this land. Many a man died alone in the mountains, or the desert. His bones might be happened upon in later years, but his identity would never be known. And there was Nathan, the youngest, who had joined the Navy in following his father’s advice, but was the only one of his four sons to return to Pennsylvania. Though he and John corresponded by mail, they had not seen each other in more than twenty years, and he was the one brother Ginny had never met.

“I sometimes wonder,” Johnny said, “if I was right to bring you and the children here. I mean, with the riders up there in the ridges, and that party of renegade Sioux that attacked a few years ago. Life out here can be so cheap, sometimes. Some of the men are hard, so empty of compassion. They can cut a throat as easily as you might cut up a chicken for frying. I wonder if maybe I should have taken the children back to Pennsylvania, and made a living farming.”

“I cannot even imagine you behind a plow. And God forbid,” she said with a chuckle, “you actually working afoot.”

He smiled. Cowboy machismo made a man of the west shudder with revulsion at the thought of working afoot. Setting up fence poles, or digging potatoes out of the earth.

“Not that I haven’t done that kind of work with my father and brothers,” he said. “And we have to lay fence here on the ranch once in a while. But maybe you’re right. Maybe such a life wouldn’t be right for me. But maybe it would have been safer for the children.”

“Maybe so,” she said, “but consider this. Jackson is where he would have been, anyway.