Boom Town (The McCabes Book 4) Page 2

  The livery barn was still there. And the church. And Hunter’s saloon. But now there were a number of newer buildings between them all.

  The street seemed to lead directly to Hunter’s, where it was met with another street, forming a sort of L shape. As Johnny approached Hunter’s, a man stepped down from the boardwalk and walked toward them.

  He was smiling as though the sight of Johnny and Jessica was the grandest thing he had ever seen in his life. He was tall with a long face, and wore a jacket and string tie, and his hat was not the wider-brimmed type you usually saw in the West, but a bowler like they wore back east.

  “Greetings,” he said, walking up to Johnny.

  Johnny gave the reins a small tug to halt the team, and the man held his hand up for Johnny to shake.

  “Welcome to Jubilee,” the man said. “My name’s Aloysius Randall. I’m the proprietor of the hotel here in town.”

  Johnny then noticed the sign. Where there had once been a hand-painted sign that read HOTEL, now there was a sign with artfully painted letters that read JUBILEE HOTEL.

  Johnny said, “What happened to Frank Shapleigh?”

  “Mister Shapleigh sold his enterprise to me over the winter. We still have some rooms available. Are you planning to stay in the area? Perhaps homestead, or even try your hand at a gold claim, if you’re feeling lucky?”

  “Do I look like a homesteader?” Before the man could reply, Johnny said, “No thanks. Not interested.”

  That was when Johnny saw Hunter stepping out of his saloon. At least that building hadn’t changed. It was still an oversized log cabin. And Hunter was still an oversized man with a thick, black beard.

  “Johnny!” Hunter called out. Then he looked back to the open doorway. “Jack! Your pa’s here!”

  Johnny clicked the team forward, toward Hunter’s. Not that Johnny meant to be rude to this Randall fella, but he had the disorienting feeling that he was in some sort of insane dream.

  He stopped the team in front of the saloon just as Jack stepped out. Like Dusty had told him earlier, Jack was now wearing a badge.

  Johnny climbed down from the wagon and he and his son locked in a hardy embrace.

  “Pa,” Jack said. “I have so much to tell you.”

  Johnny gave the tin badge a little flip with one finger. “Dusty told me everything. And I’m fine with it all, as long as you are. I don’t want you to live my dream, I want you to live yours. But we can talk more about it after we’re settled in.”

  Jack gave a quick glance back at the wagons. “Where is Dusty?”

  “He’s not with us. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you all about it over dinner.” Johnny gave a perplexed glance down the street at the buildings. Another saloon down past Miss Alisha’s. A grain warehouse. A seamstress’s shop. A bank, for goodness sake.

  He said, “What in the name of sanity is going on here?”

  Jack shook his head. “It’s a long story.”

  PART TWO

  The First Chinook

  3

  Six Months Earlier

  The first chinook of the season hit two weeks before Christmas. Ginny didn’t really understand or even want to understand the causes of it. John had tried to explain it to her once. Something about the warm water of the south Pacific making its way up the coast and somehow affecting the mountain winds. It was all Greek to her. All she knew was that she was grateful for the chinooks, because otherwise winter in these mountains would be dreadfully long.

  Ginny had been born and raised in San Francisco. Lived there until she was forty, when she closed up the house to move in with John and help him raise her niece’s children. Not long after, they had all moved north to this valley. She had lived her first forty years experiencing winters that were cool and rainy, but she could at least get out of the house and take a walk down the street. Here, in these mountains, when the snow piled sometimes three feet high by Thanksgiving, you couldn’t really get out of the house at all.

  The family did have a sleigh, kept in a small barn out behind the house. They would hitch up a team every so often and take a ride up the stretch to Zack’s, or into McCabe Gap to visit Hunter. Ginny so loved a sleigh ride. She had read about them when she lived in San Francisco, but she had never actually experienced one until she moved to these mountains. But they were small compensation for the sometimes weeks that she was cooped up in the house.

  If not for the chinooks, then she would have been snowed in from late October until early May.

  She didn’t care to understand the why of the chinook. All she knew was the chinook brought unseasonably warm weather. Snow would melt and she could step out of the house. True, the ground would be muddy and the stuff would cake onto her shoes and have to be scraped off afterward, but this was a small price to pay for taking a simple walk outside.

  The chinook could last a day, or sometimes even as long as a week. This chinook was in its second day when Ginny stepped outside and walked toward the fenced off corral the boys had built.

  The snow between the house and the corral was almost entirely gone. Only a small patch in the shade of the house still remained. The grass was wet and flattened down, but the breeze was warm. Ginny wore a shawl over her shoulders and was perfectly comfortable.

  Joshua had taken advantage of the weather to ride off and do a quick reconnaissance of the grazing lands beyond the valley. He used the word reconnaissance, which he had gotten from his father. The McCabe men seemed to speak forever in military terms. Something that Johnny had picked up while riding with the Texas Rangers, but which he told her once actually stretched back to the father of the first John McCabe. A somewhat mysterious character named Peter McCabe, who came from the old country. Very little was known about which old country was meant when the McCabes referred to the old country, but because of the Mc in the name McCabe, Ginny figured it must have been Scotland. Peter McCabe was good with a sword and came to the new world under mysterious circumstances and became a frontiersman. He ran with the Huron Indians and eventually became the father of the original John McCabe. It was said that he often spoke in military terms, and the tradition still lived on.

  Ginny had cautioned Josh to be careful. The last thing he wanted was to spend the night at a line cabin and become snowed in when the chinook winds passed. But he assured her that he thought they had a full four or five days remaining before winter weather returned. He had grown up in these mountains and had a feel for these things. Something about the direction of the wind and the look of the clouds.

  “Even still,” she had said to him. “Be home by dinner tonight and let an old woman rest easier.”

  As she walked up to the corral, she realized she had referred to herself as an old woman. She was only in her early fifties. Well, okay, mid-fifties. But her father had been a young man at sixty. Youth is not in the number of years, he had often said. It’s in the attitude. And yet, calling herself an old woman had flowed out of her so easily, and she hadn’t even noticed it until now.

  Am I letting myself get old? She asked herself, as she leaned her elbows on the top rail of the fence.

  One of the men was there, also, sitting on the top rail a few feet from Ginny. One of the few men Johnny retained over the winter. Generally you hired in the spring and cut the payroll in the fall. This allowed the cowhands to go south for the winter and find work there. Around this ranch, there was very little work for a cowhand to do when the land was belt-deep in snow.

  This cowhand was probably the tallest man on the ranch and built like a fence pole, and was known by the improbable name of Fatty Cole. Or just plain Fat, as most of the men called him.

  Ginny could never quite bring herself to call a man by that name, so she said, “Good morning, Mister Cole.”

  “’Mornin’, Miss Ginny,” he said, touching the brim of his hat in the frontier equivalent to the gentleman’s tip of the hat to a lady.

  Fred Ketchum was in there, twirling a loop over his head as easily as Ginny might swat a fly. In the far corner, a dark colored stallion with two blond-ish stockings pulled back, looking at Fred like he thought he was crazy.

  Fred let the loop fly and dropped it over the horse’s head and neck. The horse stood and looked at him. Fred walked up to him slowly, saying things like, “Easy boy.” And, “You’re okay.”

  He then reached one hand up to stroke the horse’s nose.

  Ginny was no rancher and had no interest in it. She left those duties entirely to John and the boys. But she knew they had gone mustanging in October before the snows and caught a few. This was one of them.

  She also knew Johnny didn’t approve of the traditional way of breaking a horse. Climbing onto the back of a wild stallion and trying to hang on while the stallion tried to buck you off and kill you. He had learned a different method during his time with the Shoshone. Approach the horse gradually. Let it get to know you and learn to trust you. Eventually get a blanket on its back. Sometime after that, you introduce it to a saddle.

  They called this breaking a horse Indian style, but John had said it wasn’t really about breaking a horse at all. It was about letting the horse learn to trust you and get used to being ridden.

  “It’s all about trust,” John had said. “But then again, aren’t most things? Marriage? Friendships?”

  This method had no allotted schedule. Each horse learned trust and got used to being ridden in its own time. Ginny had seen Johnny do this with the stallion he now called Thunder. The horse he had ridden when he left the previous summer to go to California. When Johnny had finally climbed up and onto Thunder’s back for the first time, Thunder hadn’t bucked him once.

  Johnny had said once he really doubted Thunder could have been broken the cowboy way. He said any attempt to do this would have resul
ted in a dead rider. And this brought a thought to Ginny’s mind.

  “Fred,” Ginny said, “when you and the boys were out mustanging, did you see that stallion? The one Josh was so fixated on?”

  Fred looked over at her and shook his head. “No, ma’am. We ain’t seen him in almost two years.”

  She nodded. “Thank you. I’m always concerned.”

  Fat grinned. “You think Josh might try to ride him again?”

  She said, “The horse almost killed him the first two times. I’m afraid the third one might finish the job.”

  This stallion was one Josh and Dusty had happened across when they were out mustanging a couple summers ago, and they hadn’t even been able to catch him. The horse had trampled Josh nearly to death the first time, and then later on when Josh got a rope on him, the stallion had nearly dragged him to death.

  “Mister Cole,” Ginny said casually, even though the question she was about to ask was her primary reason for being out here, “have you seen Bree?”

  He nodded. “Yes’m. Miss Bree had me saddle her horse an hour ago. She said a day like this calls for a ride through the hills.”

  Ginny nodded. This was what she figured. Bree had called to her, Aunt Ginny, I’m going out. But with that girl, going out could constitute a stroll about the ranch or a ride into town to see Jack, as much as it could mean a day of riding in the mountains.

  “I trust she took her Winchester?”

  Mister Cole nodded again. “Yes’m. I asked if she wanted me to make sure it was loaded, but she said there wasn’t a need.”

  Mister Cole hadn’t just been attempting to be a gentleman, Ginny knew. He had been trying to get her attention. Most of the young men found Bree to be uncommonly pretty. Bree was also one of the only unmarried women of marrying age within a day’s ride. True, Temperance was unmarried, but she had eyes only for Josh. And there was Nina Harding, who was focused solely on Jack.

  But Mister Cole’s efforts had been wasted. When it came to a rifle, Bree could handle one as well as any man, and she knew when her gun was loaded and when it was not. Which brought Ginny back to her primary reason for being out here.

  She said, “Fred, Temperance and I are going into town to run a few errands. And to just get out of the house for a few hours, before winter returns. When you’re finished, could you hitch a buggy for us?”

  Fred glanced over to the cowhand on the fence. “Hey, Fat. Could you hitch one up now for the ladies?”

  “Yes, sir, you bet I could,” he said as he hopped down to the wet grass.

  Temperance couldn’t quite handle a horse like Bree, but she had been raised on an Army post and knew how to drive a team. With the reins in her fingers and Ginny at her side, they set out for town.

  Fred had said, “Would you ladies like me or Fat to come along?”

  “Thank you, Fred, but no,” Ginny had said. “I think we can manage a ride to town without getting ourselves into too much trouble.”

  The ride to the little hamlet of McCabe Gap was three miles by the long route. There was a shorter horse trail, but Ginny knew this wagon wouldn’t be able to manage it.

  “My, but it’s a beautiful day,” Temperance said as they rode along.

  “Indeed it is,” Ginny said.

  The sky overhead was almost cloudless. The day was warm. Not quite summer-time warm, but more like late spring. A light breeze blew from the west and brought with it earthy smells. Loam, and wet grass. An occasional draught of balsam from the ridges that surrounded this little valley. Here and there were small patches of snow, reminding them of reality. That it was really winter, and soon the snow would be descending on them again.

  Temperance said, “I do hope Josh is right and we have a few more days before winter returns.”

  Ginny nodded.

  Temperance said, “Christmas is coming soon. I’m so excited. I just love Christmas so. I always did when I was growing up. I’m so glad that now that I live with you and your family, I have Christmas again.”

  Ginny nodded. “That’s one of the things we’re going into town for. I still haven’t found a suitable gift for Bree.”

  “Really?” Temperance threw her a look of surprise, then tried to cover it up by snapping her gaze toward the trail ahead of them.

  Ginny was certain she appeared to most as one who lived a carefully ordered life. It was but a mere illusion. She thought they would all be shocked to discover the disarray her life was usually in.

  One who would not be surprised, who could somehow see behind her proper air of formality and sometimes stern ways, was John himself. Even as a young cowhand who wore his gun like he knew how to use it, he had seen through her charade. And another had been the young man she gave her heart to, all those years ago. A man she seldom talked of, and of whom she had even told Johnny only a little. The man who had been lost at sea, on one of her father’s ships.

  She said, “I have long thought about one thing Bree needs in her life. Something no young woman in the high society of San Francisco would have, and would probably pale at the thought of it. But Bree is unlike any young woman I have ever known.”

  Temperance nodded. “She sure is.”

  “That’s because of who her father is. And the line of people she descends from. Being a McCabe and all it entails is something that simply runs in the bloodline. Sometimes it’s a lot for them to live up to. But the results are always worth the effort.”

  Jack was standing outside the log cabin that served the small community as the marshal’s office and jail. Not that the town actually had an official lawman. The town wasn’t even an official town. Just a small unincorporated community. It had begun when Hunter built a saloon near the wide mountain pass known as McCabe Gap, and then a stage coach began traveling through once or twice a month. Eventually a hotel went up, and a general store, and other businesses like Alisha Summer’s house of ill repute. Henry Freeman was the town blacksmith. The folks in town pitched some money together and now they had a building to serve as a jail, and had hired Jack to be their unofficial peace officer.

  Jack stood by the door, enjoying the morning sun. He wasn’t wearing a coat, for the first time in weeks. He had a cup of coffee in his hand and his gunbelt was in place. The little tin badge Henry Freeman had hammered out on his anvil was pinned to his vest, and his hat was tipped back so he could feel the sun and its welcoming warmth on his face. He had been thinking he should probably walk his rounds, which essentially meant strolling about the town and making sure everything was all right. But the stretch of dirt that constituted the town’s single street was now maybe six inches deep in mud because of all of the snow that had melted so quickly when the chinook hit. To get from the cabin, which stood by itself and was not connected anywhere by a boardwalk, he would have to step down into the mess and try to navigate through it. Not that he was afraid of a little mud, but it wouldn’t work too kindly on his riding boots.

  So he stood on the small deck in front of the cabin, enjoying the sun and drinking his coffee. This was how Aunt Ginny and Temperance found him.

  Temperance pulled the team to a halt in front of the cabin. The steel rims of the wheels were covered in mud.

  “Good morning, ladies,” he said, reaching to the brim of his hat that was tipped back and making an effort to touch it, but then giving up.

  “Good morning, Marshal,” Aunt Ginny said.

  “And what brings you ladies to town?”

  “I need your advice on something.”

  “I would invite you inside,” Jack said, “but I could play host better at Hunter’s. How would you like me to treat you to a taste of tea?”

  “I would enthusiastically accept the invitation,” she said with a smile.

  Jack set his cup of coffee on a bench by the front wall, then took a wide step from the edge of the deck to the wagon wheel, and pulled himself up and onto the wagon seat without having to step into the mud.

  Though Hunter’s was a saloon, it was quickly turning into a morning meeting place for the town residents. Hunter kept a tin of tea on hand for the occasional morning when Aunt Ginny paid him a visit, and for Granny Tate.

  Ginny found Granny Tate and Henry sitting at a table along with Charlie Franklin, who owned the general store. At another table, reading a newspaper, was Frank Shapleigh, the owner of the hotel. Shapleigh was maybe forty, with a rumpled jacket and a crooked string tie, which was normal for him. He had a fleshy face, and a thick mustache that seemed to swallow his entire mouth.