The Long Trail (The McCabes Book 1) by Brad Dennison (books that read to you .txt) 📕

the three steps from the porch to the ground, and nimbly climbed into the saddle. She exchanged a couple quick words with the ranch hand and then was off across the valley floor, her hair flying wildly behind her. His sister, Dusty figured.

He backed his horse further into the trees. He did not want to be caught watching the house. If even half of what he had heard about the man who was his father was true, to be caught spying on his home could have deadly results.

Dusty did not know quite how to feel, as he sat in the saddle, the home of his father before him. He felt a touch of anger at the thought that this home, quite impressive by frontier standards, should have been partly his, too. While McCabe and his other children were sitting at night under a dry roof and by a warm fire, Dusty had been in a bunkhouse in Arizona, unaware of even where he came from. And before that, he had spent many an evening with the Sam Patterson gang, making dry camp because the light of a fire might have alerted a pursuing posse as to their whereabouts. A little boy, huddled in a damp smelling woolen blanket, chewing on a strip of jerky for his supper, and his actual family did not even know of his existence.

He was angry, but a tear darted its way down along his cheekbone, and he realized the anger was little more than a cover for the loneliness and the down-to-the-bone sadness had ridden with him for as long as he could remember. He reached up with the back of a fist to wipe away the tears, ashamed. Never allow weakness, Patterson had said. When you have a weakness, then your enemies have a way in which to strike at you. And every man is potentially your enemy.

A sad way of looking at life, maybe. But Patterson’s lifestyle was such that trust in the wrong man could be fatal.

He wanted to ride over to the ranch house and announce who he was, and tell them he wanted to belong. It was his right to belong. McCabe and his children may have had no knowledge of Dusty’s existence, and he supposed he could not really fault them for that, but he did exist, and he wanted to belong. He needed to, like anyone else.

But what could he actually do? Knock on the door and say, “Hi, Mister McCabe. I’m your son, from when you spent a night with a whore named Rosie twenty years ago. What’s for supper?”

Hardly.

He simply did not know what to do. But he knew he could not continue sitting here, staring at the house from this grove of trees.

“Come on, horse,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Dusty rode in the general direction of the pass, beyond which he had found was a small town. He had ridden past it two days earlier, skirting it widely as he figured that after all these weeks of traveling he probably looked more like a saddle bum than a drifting cowhand and vagrants tended to attract attention.

Where was he to go? What was he to do now that he was actually here? How could he approach his father? Should he approach his father? Or, should he simply leave well enough alone, and start for Oregon?

Maybe this made some sort of sense. Find Haley. Then find work and start saving money so he could maybe buy a few head of cattle.

Why remain here, confront McCabe and possibly open a can of worms better left closed? After all, maybe McCabe would not welcome him with open arms. Maybe McCabe wouldn’t want a bastard son coming out of nowhere and disrupting his life. Maybe McCabe would tell him to get the hell off his land and never come back.

Dusty had been on the trail for more than a month. His hair had been long to start with, but now he was beyond simply needing a shave. His beard was fine with youth, but was coming in fully and covering his chin, and streaking upward to form the beginning of sideburns. A fairly full mustache crawled along his upper lip. His trousers now sported a hole in one knee, and he needed a needle and thread to patch it up. Hell, he could have used a new pair of levis. A hot bath would be nice, and a bed and hot meal would be his first since leaving Nevada, except for the two cattle camps he had happened upon. Yet, he had spent his final five cents at Lewis’s saloon.

What he needed was a job. From what he had seen since he had ridden into this area two days earlier, the only work available would be with horses and cattle, both of which he was quite experienced with. Of course, there was another line of work he knew much about, one Sam Patterson was very good at, but Dusty refused to even consider that.

Three years earlier, Patterson had said to him, “It’s time for you to make a decision, Dusty. You’re old enough now that if you’re going to stay with us, you need to start pulling your own weight. I don’t mean to sound harsh, boy, but some of the men have always objected to me keeping you with us, and now that you’re practically full-grown, I can’t have you stay with us any longer unless you start riding with us on jobs.”

“What if I decide against it?” Dusty had asked.

“Then, you ride away. Free and clear. You’ll be on your own, but keep in mind all I’ve taught you about survival. About people. And what I taught you about how to use those Remingtons in your belt, and you’ll be all right.”

Dusty did not have to wait to give his answer. He had already put much thought into this. “I can’t be apart of stealing, Sam. I don’t mean to sound like