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

was a bit warmer than normal. “Running a fever. The heartbeat picks up its speed when your body temperature goes up.”

“What could that mean?” Ginny asked. She and Granny Tate were standing alone in the room, so she said, “Be truthful with me.”

“Infection,” Granny said. “The fever’s because his body’s fighting it. But the shallow breathing might mean his lungs are filling with fluid.”

“He’s losing the fight.”

Granny nodded. “It does look that way, child.”

Ginny turned, and paced absently toward the window. “How do I tell the children?”

“I wouldn’t. At least, not just yet. Like I said, I’ve seen some strange things. Men hurt worse than this who have full recoveries. Others hurt much less who die anyway.”

Ginny nodded. “Then, we will simply have to wait.”

The men tried to go about their work. Fred tended to the remuda. The horses had mostly scattered during the gun fight, so with the help of Dusty and Josh, he spent most of the day rounding them up. Every hour or so, Dusty and Josh would ride back to the house and check on their father. A bandage was tied about Josh’s shoulder under his shirt where the bullet had grazed him, and he had difficulty climbing into the saddle with his injured knee, but he refused to spend any time resting, despite Aunt Ginny’s and Granny Tate’s recommendations. He simply needed to work. To keep busy.

Bree, Aunt Ginny and Granny took turns sitting with Johnny. Staring, praying, but all the time feeling helpless as he waged his war against death.

“Lord, don’t take him now,” Ginny found herself saying, as she sat by his bedside. “Lord, don’t take him now.”

From the doorway, Granny Tate said, “Child, the Lord will take him when the time is right, and not a moment sooner or later.”

“But he’s still a young man. He’s got so many years ahead of him. His children may be mostly grown up, but they still need him. And Dusty has barely met him. A boy should have the chance to get to know his own father. To have finally found out who his father is, and to have ridden all this way to find him, just to have him snatched away like this..,”

“Life and death are two parts of a greater whole, child. Praying to change the way things are is a waste of your breath, and the Lord’s time. Everything is born, it grows, it lives, then it passes on to a higher existence. The trees, the grass, the animals of the woods, and us. We all take the same path. If it’s your time to pass, the greatest doctors in all the world won’t be able to stop it. And if it’s not your time, then all the bullets in the world won’t be able to change it.

“Don’t pray for more years, child. Pray for better years. Don’t pray for good times, or easy times. Pray for strength.”

Ginny nodded. She understood what Granny was saying. She would have given that same advice were she in Granny’s place. But sitting here, watching this man wage what appeared to be a losing battle, she found her faith and philosophies seemed a bit abstract, maybe not strong enough to stand when struck with hard reality.

“And pray for guidance,” Granny said. “From the Good Lord, and from those who have gone before you. No matter how old we may get, or how smart we think we’ve become, we’re all still in need of it.”

Once the horses were rounded up, Josh and Dusty busied themselves helping Zack load the bodies of the dead raiders into a buckboard. Fred hitched a team, and Josh and Dusty drove the wagon into town.

One of the dead men was Long.

“Poetic justice,” Josh said.

A short distance beyond the single street of McCabe Town was a cemetery with seven graves, each marked with a wooden plank standing upright. One read: UNKNOWN. SHOT TO DEATH AT HUNTER’S SALOON. 1877.

“This is our boot hill,” Josh said. “That one there died in a gunfight in Hunter’s, one Saturday night last fall.”

Another read: UNKNOWN. FOUND FROZE ON McCABE MTN 1872.

“Pa found that one in the spring of seventy-two. Every-so-often, Pa rides through the mountains that line our section of the valley, or he sends a rider to do it. To make certain no squatters are settling in. That spring, Pa found an old man dressed in buckskins laying dead on the side of the mountain. He had a broken leg. Pa figured he got caught in a snow slide, broke the leg, and froze to death. Couldn’t get back to camp. Pa found a few beaver traps. He must have been an old trapper.”

Another read: THREE FINGER JACK. HANGED BY MOB 1873.

“Lynched,” Josh said. “from the branch of a big old maple, just outside of town. We call it the hangin’ tree, now.”

“Who lynched him?”

“Some of the town folks, and a few cowhands from ranches in the area. He was accused of shooting a cowhand over a card game on the Watson spread. He was brought into town and was supposed to be held in Hunter’s tool shed for a territorial marshal, but the crowd got liquored-up one night, and hanged him.”

“Did he actually do the shooting?”

Josh nodded. “He claimed the man he shot was reaching for his gun. But the man he shot was well known and liked, and Three-finger was a stranger. We never even knew his full name. But what do you expect in a town with no law?”

“The town’s too small,” Dusty said. “They wouldn’t be able to pay a marshal. A lot of little communities are in the same fix.”

Josh grabbed two shovels from the buckboard, and handed one to Dusty. “Come on, let’s bury them and get back to the ranch. I want to check on Pa.”

He stepped onto the blade of the shovel, and pushed it into the sod, beginning a grave. After a few shovel-fulls, he looked to Dusty, who was digging away beside him.

Josh said, “Do you think