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

over from that morning’s breakfast. As she did so, she found herself thinking that while she was proud of the strength Bree was showing, she hoped Bree was not too independent and strong. Ginny felt she herself took those qualities to excess, and often thought they were part of the reason she had never married. Many a man is afraid of those qualities in a woman – in fact, she had met only one who was able to love her in spite of them, and maybe even because of them. Most men, she was convinced, would rather have a woman they could believe is a little helpless, so they can take care of her, and be continually reassured of their masculinity. Ginny thought a man with such insecurities would not be the kind of man she would want to spend her life with, but there were times at night when loneliness would creep in on her, and she would start longing for the husband and family she would never have.

True, John and Lura’s children were as her own now, as she had helped raise them, but only because sadistic fate had deprived the children of their mother.

She was tired. Her mind was racing as it often did when she was fighting exhaustion. To look at Josh and Bree, and Dusty, who were seeing their father possibly mortally wounded, made her wonder about a conversation she had had earlier with John on the front porch. If he had taken the children to Pennsylvania to farm, rather than to this valley in Montana, he would not be lying upstairs near death.

She had tried to discourage such regrets in him, but she now wondered herself. The sleepy little farming towns of Pennsylvania never saw guerrilla raiders descending upon them, or saw women hiding in a root cellar, ready to kill themselves rather than be taken captive. They never saw men swaggering about with death buckled about their hips because failure to do so might be to invite violence, an odd sort of paradox in which the ability and willingness to commit violence actually prevented the threat of it. Usually.

She realized she was standing at the bread box, stale muffin in hand. But she did not move.

Oh, John. Why did you have to go and get yourself shot? When you get better, am I going to give you a tongue lashing! All those times you rode off into the mountains, and I thought you were going to get yourself killed and never return. But then, you go and get yourself shot under your own roof.

Who was she kidding? Was he going to get better? Could even Granny Tate, that mysterious little woman who had learned a mixture of home remedies, practical medicines and even a little voodoo on a plantation in Georgia save him now? Even her skill had its limits.

She sat at the table, and thought maybe she should go out to John’s desk, and grab some paper and a pen. Jackson would need to be informed of what had happened. This might seem an odd time to be writing a letter, but she needed to keep herself busy. Simply sitting and waiting might driver her mad.

And yet, what was she to tell in the letter? She decided she might want to wait a day or two. To see if John was going to live. Which, she had to admit, was looking doubtful.

Pessimism was something Ginny did not believe in. Her dear father had preached against it endlessly, and she had always resisted it. Yet now, she found her strength withering, felt herself caving in. Tears began rolling down her cheekbones, and her shoulders shook with sobs, and she did not fight them.

Josh, Hunter and Zack sat on the front porch. Josh was in Aunt Ginny’s rocker, and Zack and Fred simply sat on the floor of the porch with their backs against the wall. Zack’s left arm was now in a bed sheet Hunter had fashioned into a sling, and another bed sheet had been wrapped about his shoulder, under his shirt. The bleeding seemed to have stopped.

Hunter had seen bullet wounds in the War Between the States, and in his years working for Johnny. No need to bother Aunt Ginny with this, he thought. She and Bree were busy working on Johnny. Hunter would see if he could do something about Zack’s wound. To his surprise, the wound wasn’t deep at all. Sometimes, an older model gun that took a lead ball rather than a bullet didn’t do the damage you would think. Apparently, it had been one of these Zack had been shot with. The bullet, or ball, had torn him up, but bruised him more than anything, and had seemed to bounce away. He was cut up fairly bad, but Hunter did not think any bones had been broken

With Ramon and Koller holding Zack down on the floor, Hunter had poured whiskey into the wound to clean it – the old Texas Ranger captain Zack and Johnny had served under had always kept a bottle for specifically this purpose, and Johnny followed suit. The science of infections was still largely unknown, but trial-and-error had shown that if you clean a wound with alcohol, the chances of infection seemed to be cut down considerably.

Zack’s shoulder had gone numb from being hit by the bullet, but the whiskey drove the numbness away damn quick, and Zack had screamed and kicked as the fluid worked its way into the torn skin of his shoulder.

The bleeding had pretty much stopped, but should it start again, Zack knew of another remedy. One time with the Rangers, he had caught an arrowhead in one thigh. After it was cut out, a gaping gash remained, and it was sealed shut with a hot iron. It hurt no worse than the whiskey. If he needed, Hunter could hold him down again, and Josh was pretty good with a branding iron.

Zack had gone upstairs to check on