Return of the Gunhawk (The McCabes Book 3) Read online

  Johnny took a few steps closer to the steeper side of the hill. It wasn’t so steep that it was impossible to ride down. You would just have to take it slowly and let your horse find its footing. But if you were riding along and didn’t know the hill dropped off like this, it could catch you by surprise.

  Johnny gazed down at the ranch house. It stood only one level high, and its outer walls were made of upright planks nailed into place. It had a peaked roof. A chimney made of stones poked up through the center, and a thin trail of white smoke was drifting up from it.

  This was the house that had once belonged to Johnny and Lura. Where they had made their home, and where their children had been born.

  The earth smelled the same as it always had here. Rich and fertile. A light breeze picked up and touched his face. Made Thunder’s mane ruffle a bit. A breeze like this was often kicking up in these low hills. Things had changed so little, it could have been seventeen years ago, he thought. He almost expected to see Lura, young and beautiful, stepping from the house to look up the hill at him and wave.

  But that was not seventeen years ago. This was today, and his beloved Lura had been dead all this time. Shot by a bullet meant for him. Shot by a man planting himself on this very hill and aiming his rifle down to the house below. A Hall rifle, Johnny thought. Every type of gun had a unique sound to the trained ear, due to things like the caliber, the length of the barrel and the grains of gunpowder used. Johnny had heard a Hall rifle fired before, and thought the gunshot from this hill had about the same sound. And this shot had a throaty boom that often comes from a large bore. Johnny remembered some Halls had been issued in a .69 caliber. They had been out of production over forty years and you hardly saw them anymore, but seventeen years ago there had still been a few around.

  Since the killer had never been found, Johnny didn’t know for absolute fact that the bullet had been meant for him. He knew nothing at all about who the killer was or what he had been thinking. But he had always assumed he was the intended target, not Lura. She had no enemies in the world. No one who would have wanted her dead. She had been too full of love. She had a way of making the room seem lighter and warmer just by walking into it.

  Johnny had been seventeen years younger. He had been riding home in the afternoon after a day of rounding up strays. His brother Josiah worked for them, along with Zack Johnson. Johnny couldn’t pay them, but they stayed on for free room and board.

  Joe and Zack were still with the herd, but would be riding in shortly. But at the moment, Johnny and Lura had a moment alone. She was stepping from the house onto the porch, like she often did when she heard him ride up. She had always said she could tell it was him just by the sound of the horse. She had said a horse had a certain way of stepping when Johnny was in the saddle. It was like he and the horse were one, and the horse knew it and so stepped a little livelier. A little freer.

  Johnny’s face had lightened up when he saw her. It always did. He normally rode with a lot of heaviness in his heart because of men he had seen killed, and men he had been forced to kill himself. Even at the young age of twenty-five he had already lost count. Outlaws. Mexican border raiders. Renegade Comanches. Sometimes at night if he sat alone by the fire it started coming back to him. If he shut his eyes he could see their faces, hear the gunfire and their death screams. But when he saw Lura’s face and her smile, all of that seemed to fall away, at least for the moment.

  She had many smiles, depending on who the smile was aimed at, but there was one she reserved only for Johnny. One of love, filled with comfort and not a little joy, and a hint of daring. All of this wrapped up into one smile.

  He swung out of the saddle and let the rein trail, and Lura stepped down from the low porch.

  She said, “Where are Joe and Zack?”

  “Back with the herd. They’ll be along in a little while.”

  She raised a brow. “The children are down for a nap. That means we might actually have an entire moment alone.”

  “And what do you want to do with that moment?”

  Her smile took on an extra pinch of daring, and then he took her in his arms and pressed his mouth to hers.

  She pulled back after what felt like half an hour. “Why, Mister McCabe. You are such a flirt.”

  He chuckled. “I’ve been called many a thing before. But never a flirt.”

  She was grinning playfully. “And what are some of these things you’ve been called?”

  This was the last thing she ever said. A gunshot roared to life from the hill behind Johnny, muffled a little with distance as the hill was easily a hundred yards away, and Lura was shaken as a bullet tore into her chest two inches below her collar bone.

  Johnny stood in wide-eyed horror. He had seen many people shot. More than he could ever count. But not now. Not Lura.

  She staggered back a step, and her eyes met his. She wasn’t in pain or afraid. She was just looking at him with surprise.

  Then her knees buckled and she fell backward.

  Johnny caught her but she went limp and began sliding out of his arms. He went down with her, landing on his knees in the dust. He cradled her head. Blood was soaking the front of her blouse. She was going into shock from the rapid blood loss. Her eyes were open but she was no longer seeing.

  “Lura, no,” he said. “Hang on, Sweetie. Hang on.”

  She gave a shuddering breath, then another, and then breathed no more.

  Tears streamed down, cutting rivulets in Johnny’s dust covered face. He looked upward to the sky overhead, still blue in the late afternoon, and screamed out her name. Long and hard.

  And his gaze landed on the rider sitting atop the hill. In the very spot Johnny had sat many times, looking down at his little ranch. Johnny couldn’t make out the man’s face from this distance, but he could see a dark, wide-brimmed hat. And in his hands was a rifle.

  The man sat in the saddle a moment, then turned his horse and rode off. Johnny’s horse still stood where it had been ground hitched. It had shifted a little to one side at the gunshot but had not bolted. Johnny considered leaping into the saddle and going after the shooter, but he considered this for only a moment. He couldn’t leave Lura lying here in the dust.

  And that was how Joe and Zack found him. They had heard the gunshot as they were riding in from the herd. They arrived only minutes after the shooter had ridden away. Johnny was on his knees, Lura’s head in his lap. Tears were streaming and he found he couldn’t even speak.

  Zack was out of the saddle and at his side. They had fought in the Texas Rangers before. Saved each other’s lives enough times that they had lost count.

  “Who done this?” Zack said.

  Johnny couldn’t get the words out. He just looked off toward the low, grassy hill that was now deserted.

  Joe McCabe, with a bushy beard and hair falling to his shoulders, and a Remington holstered at his belt and a Spencer in his saddle boot, was still on his horse.

  He said, “I’ll get the sum’bitch.”

  He turned his horse and charged toward the hill. But his horse was tired. It had logged a lot of miles chasing strays. By the time Joe got to the top of the hill, his horse was spent. To push it any further would probably kill it.

  Lura was buried beneath an apple tree that stood out behind the house. Ginny had come out from San Francisco and stayed with the children while Johnny rode off to find the killer. Joe and Zack rode with him. After a day, Matt caught up with them and joined them.

  The county sheriff, a man who was in his sixties but still strong and with a firm gaze, had said to him, “You let the law take care of this, son.”

  Johnny shook his head. “There’s no law going to be involved in this. I’m going to find him. And I’m not bringing him back.”

  “Don’t do this, son.”

  Johnny said, his voice low and almost hissing, “I’ll say this once. Don’t get in my way.”

  The sheriff didn’t. Johnny never knew if it was because the sheriff really wanted Jo
hnny to find the man himself, as only that would bring true justice. Or if the sheriff, as strong as he was, had been scared by Johnny. Zack had once said when Johnny was mad, when he was really mad, he was the scariest man Zack had ever seen.

  They followed the tracks for three days. And then something happened that almost never happened in this part of California in the summer. It rained. Long and hard, for hours. When it was done, there were no more tracks to follow.

  “I’ll find him,” Johnny said. “Somehow, I’ll find him.”

  Zack shook his head. “No. It’s time to call this off.”

  Johnny looked at him like he couldn’t believe he was hearing these words from Zack Johnson.

  Matt said, “He’s right, Johnny. Those children back there need you. They need their father. You persist in finding this man long enough, you might succeed. What do you intend to do when you find him?”

  “Shoot him down and watch him die.”

  “And then you’ll either be rotting in prison the rest of your life or swinging from a rope. The best thing you could do to honor your love for Lura is to be there for your children. Go home to them. Be there for them. They need you.”

  Johnny looked at him long and hard. He wanted to tell Matt he was wrong. He wanted to yell at his brother and tell him to mind his own affairs. And the same for Zack. But he found he couldn’t.

  Joe said nothing. He seldom said much. But he looked at Johnny and nodded his head.

  “Come on,” Zack said. “Let’s go home.”

  All of this ran through Johnny’s mind as he sat in the saddle and looked down at the little house. He had replayed this so often in his head over the years. But as he looked down at the house, he found himself smiling. Smiling at the memory of Lura and all she had brought to him. Josh, who was now a grown man and back at their ranch in Montana running things while Johnny was away. Jack, who Johnny figured had caught the train and returned to medical school back east by now. Bree who was nearly full grown. Wild as a mountain lion and playful as a colt, who could ride as well as any man he had ever met and shoot a rifle with the best of them. And Dusty, who Johnny knew Lura would have loved as her own had she known about him.

  A rider came into view, making his way toward the house. The horse moved with its head hanging low. Exhausted from a day of work with the herd. The rider had a wide-brimmed hat that shaded his face, and a gun at his side. Could have been me, back in the day. Except this man wore his gun high, mounted at the side of his belt. He was no gunhawk. He was a cowboy.

  The man swung out of the saddle and gave a sweeping glance to the area around his home, and that was when he saw Johnny sitting up on the hill.

  Johnny touched the calves of his legs to Thunder’s ribs, and they started down the low, grassy hill toward the house.

  2

  Not much had changed on this ranch over the years, but Johnny had. He was no longer the young man he had been back then. Too many hours in the saddle and his lower back was a little stiff. He had taken a couple of bullets in the chest the summer before and the lead was still in there, and he felt it sometimes if he moved wrong. He had worn his hair in what Ginny called a Shoshone tail even back then, but his hair had been chestnut brown with a hint of auburn. Now it was filled with gray strands. And when he looked in the mirror, it was not the face of a young buck that looked back, but one that was deeply lined from years of riding into the sun and wind.

  The man waited while Johnny rode down the hill toward him. Johnny reined up a few feet away from him and said, “Howdy.”

  The man nodded to him. “Howdy.”

  The man was maybe thirty. He looked hard muscled the way a life of hard work can make a man. His face and clothes were covered with dust, the way a day of working with the herd can make you. The way Johnny had looked when he rode back to this house many a time.

  Johnny said, “Sorry to ride up on you unannounced. I just come to visit my wife. She’s buried out back of this house, under an apple tree.”

  The man realized who he was talking to. “You’re Johnny McCabe.”

  Johnny nodded.

  The man said, “I bought this place from your brother four years ago.”

  Johnny nodded again. When Johnny had left to take the family to Montana, Matt had said he would sell it for him. Instead, Matt kept it to use as extra range for his herd and paid Johnny a small amount for rent. Johnny was fine with this arrangement. Then Matt sent a letter saying he had sold it, and included a bank check. The money was now in an account in Bozeman. Matt had given the buyer’s name but Johnny wasn’t good with names.

  The man said, “Fred Madden.”

  Johnny said, “That’s right. Sorry.”

  Johnny swung out of the saddle and extended his hand and the man shook it.

  Maddon said, “It was his son Hiram I signed the papers with. I guess he runs the family business, now. He told me you might come by some day to see the grave. Of course, you’re welcome to visit. My wife tends to the grave. Keeps it up.”

  “I’m much obliged.”

  The man led Johnny out back, though Johnny knew the way. Sometimes memories of a place can fade, and sometimes a place can change on its own. Trees get taller. Bushes grow where there were none before. But this place was like it had been plucked right out of Johnny’s memory. The walls were even painted the same light gray they had been when Johnny had lived here.

  One thing had changed, though. The apple tree was now much larger. When Johnny and Lura had moved here, the tree had been maybe six feet tall. Now it was full and spread out like it was shading Lura’s grave from the sun and rain.

  Johnny remembered when he and Lura had stood on this very spot. It had been a spring day, and the scraggly little tree was covered with white apple blossoms.

  Johnny’s sombrero was hanging against his back by a chinstrap, and the twin Remingtons he carried then were slung low and tied down. She stood beside him, her hair the color of corn silk and tied back in a bun. His arm was around her shoulders and she was snuggled into him, the way a woman does when the man she loves puts his arm around her.

  “Oh, Johnny. Look. An apple tree. I just love fresh apples.”

  He said, “I’m kind’a partial to apples, myself, I suppose.”

  “Let’s build here.”

  “Right here?”

  She looked up at him with an exuberant smile and nodded. “Right here. So when we come out the kitchen door, we’ll be looking right at this little tree. And we’ll have children and the tree will grow as they grow. And one day we’ll be old, and this tree will stand tall and full and rain apples down on us in the fall. You’ll bounce a grandchild on your knee, and you’ll pluck a fresh apple and give it to him.”

  Johnny stood now, looking at the tree. It was big and full. And considering the age of the children, and the way Josh and Temperance looked at each other, it wouldn’t be long before he would have a grandchild to bounce on his knee.

  Madden said, “I’ll leave you be.”

  Johnny nodded a thank you, and Madden stepped away. Back out front to tend to his horse, Johnny figured.

  Johnny removed his hat. Not the same gray sombrero he had worn back then. He now had a brown hat that was flat brimmed and with a four-corner peaked crown, and had no chin strap. He still had his Remingtons, but they were in a drawer back at the ranch house in Montana. He now wore a single pistol, a Colt .44 Peacemaker. But like with the Remingtons, it was slung low and tied down.

  He let his gaze fall on the tree. It was nearly four times the size it had been when he last laid eyes on it. The branches were curvy and a little twisted, which was the way with most apple trees. The branches fell almost to the ground.

  He figured it was just the way she had imagined it would grow to be, all those years ago.

  He allowed himself to imagine what she might have looked like today. She was nineteen when they married, and twenty-four when she was shot. Would make her forty-one today. Probably would have a few lines on her face. Maybe a
strand or two of silver in that fine yellow hair of hers. But her smile would probably still be the same, or maybe made even more beautiful with a touch of wisdom added to it over the years.

  He could imagine the two of them standing here. Him, the grizzled old gunhawk he now was, and her in a fine dress. The house would probably be twice the size it is now, because he would have added onto it as the years went by. A lady like Lura deserved a fine house. Josh would be out with the herd, and Dusty would be with him. Johnny figured Dusty would have found the family no matter where they were. Jack would be back east, studying to be a doctor, and Bree would be learning to be a lady at the hands of the finest lady Johnny had ever met.

  He saw himself reaching up and pulling an apple from a branch and handing it to the love of his life, and her taking it from him with the smile that warmed his heart. Her saw her taking a bite of the apple, relishing the taste. He would smell the gentle scent of peach blossom she often wore.

  The apple tree was a McIntosh. He and Lura had never named the ranch, but he used an underlined letter M for the cattle brand, and he and Lura knew the M stood for McCabe, but also for McIntosh. For their tree. Locals had begun referring to the place as the M Bar, as many ranches were called by the brand. Hence the ranch in Montana was often called the Circle M.

  Johnny had intended to one day build a front gate for people to ride through when they came a-visiting. The gate would be wrought iron painted black, and atop the gate would be the letter M. But the way things had happened, none of it came to be.

  He could imagine himself looking into her eyes, saying, “Is it everything you wanted? This place? The children? The life we have?”

  She would look up at him with that smile. “Everything and more.”

  But she wasn’t here. The house no longer belonged to them. He had taken the children north, to the little valley he and Zack and Joe had wintered in a long time ago. The winter they had spent with the Shoshone. That village was now gone, but Johnny carried with him all he had learned from them. He and Zack and Joe had built a cabin there. The next summer, they had expanded on the cabin, building a two-story ranch house of logs in the shape of a cape cod, like the family’s old farmhouse had been back in Pennsylvania. The house Johnny, Joe and Matt had grown up in. The original cabin had become the kitchen.