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

“Is the mountain lion wrong for being what God made it to be? A predator? For that matter, you could compare the mountain lion to those men up in the ridges.”

“A mountain lion is a dumb animal. Those raiders are responsible for their actions. God did not make them to kill.”

“Circumstances did, or they wouldn’t be doing it. Whatever they once were, they’re now predators and they no longer know any other way. To us, they’re evil, like the mountain lion is to the elk. The elk has what the lion can only gain through force. The raiders probably look at us in the same way.”

“I find that hard to fathom.”

“I’ve known many an outlaw in my time. Men who would be considered evil by most standards. But each of them was a human being, like you or me, with dreams and hopes and who felt love and sadness, given the situation. But somewhere along the way, something happened to turn them into predators. And you know what I always found interesting? Not one of them ever looked at himself as evil.”

Johnny rose to his feet, and was about to spin his second pistol as he had the first before shifting it to his left hand and holstering it, but with the disconcerting effect it had had on Aunt Ginny fresh in his mind, he simply transferred the gun to his left and slid it into his holster.

“Are you telling me,” she said, “that you don’t feel some sort of animosity toward those men out there? Those men who might ride in here and try to burn and kill everything in your life?”

“I understand them, Ginny. That does not mean that I feel sorry for them. If they should come riding down here, I’ll do everything I can to stop them. They might be the mountain lion, but they will find that this elk has mighty sharp antlers, and knows how to use them.”

She shook her head slowly, and when she spoke it was barely above a whisper. “It is a goddamned savage world we live in sometimes, isn’t it?”

“A man I once knew said everyone kills. And not just on the frontier, and not just in the direct, more obvious way. Bankers kill, when they foreclose on a home because the family’s not able to pay the debt. A business owner who successfully drives out a competitor is, in a sense, trying to destroy someone. People kill, Ginny. Some kill to take what they don’t have, others kill to keep it. And some, just because they enjoy it.”

“You make it sound so cold. Like life is so empty. It’s not. Living is so much more than that. Much more than simply killing.”

“Yes, it is. But you have to be willing to take the bad with the good. The wilderness can be a mighty beautiful place, as long as you can tolerate its savage side. Life can be mighty fulfilling, but you sometimes have to be willing to kill to keep from being killed, or your family from being killed.”

There was suddenly a thump at the back door, like it had been struck with a fist, and Josh called from outside, “Here they come!”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Ginny felt the breath catch in her lungs, and her heart leap into her throat. Bree had been in the parlor, lying down on the sofa, but she now ran into the kitchen. Johnny grabbed one corner of the table with both hands and gave it a shove, sending it sliding and overturning, then grabbed a loop of rawhide nailed into place on one floorboard and pulled upward, and a trapdoor opened. “Into the root cellar, both of you.”

Johnny’s sudden burst of action caused some of the fear to drain from Ginny. It’s harder to be afraid when you’re in motion, dealing with a situation. She said hurriedly, “You first, Sabrina. Go!”

Bree climbed down a ladder into the darkness below, then struck a match and brought a lantern to life.

“Do you have the gun?” Johnny asked.

Bree glanced at a shelf built against the earthen wall, and the bundle wrapped in burlap. She quickly unwrapped it. A small caliber Colt Navy revolver. She looked up at her father, and nodded.

“You know what to do with it,” he said, more of a statement than a question.

She nodded, her eyes wide with fear, yet with a steadiness he admired. After all, she was a McCabe. “They won’t take us alive, Daddy.”

Bree’s instructions hadn’t been to use the gun to shoot at attackers. The gun was to make certain she and Aunt Ginny were not alive to be taken. Sometimes death is not the worst alternative.

“Can you do it?”

She nodded. “If I have to.”

He could see it in her eyes. The gunhawk spirit. He knew she could do what had to be done.

“Wait until the last possible moment, and use your judgment.” He then looked to Aunt Ginny. “Get going. I’ll close the door behind you.”

Despite her entry into middle age, she handled the ladder quite nimbly, and Johnny allowed himself one final glance to the women in his life, the daughter he loved dearly and the woman who was like a mother to him, who had left behind her life in San Francisco to help with the children when his precious Lura had been killed. Then, he dropped the trap door shut, and with his foot on the door to hold it shut, he grabbed the rawhide loop and pulled it free. He wanted nothing to indicate to any raiders that this was a trap door. He then uprighted the table and set it back in place over the door.

He had not heard the back door open, but Josh was now standing in the doorway. “They all set?”

Johnny nodded. “How many?”

“Eight, at least” Josh spoke quickly, urgently. “Maybe ten. They got the jump on us. Rode in quietly, and didn’t light torches until they were half across the valley. They’re crossing the bridge now, and moving at a