Texas Drive (3 page)

“I’ll think about it.”

“You do that …” Johnny got up and walked off the porch. Ted watched him stalk toward the barn, digging his heels in harder than necessary, as if he were trying to scrape something off his boots.

He disappeared into the rickety barn, then reappeared with a saddle over his shoulder. Ted watched as the older man saddled his pinto pony, then swung into the stirrups with a practiced ease.

He whittled a little faster until Johnny was gone out of sight, then stuck the knife into the rail and stood up. The shavings spilled onto the weather-beaten porch floorboards and crinkled under his feet as he stepped to the screen door. Inside, he went to his room and closed the door. Red light from the west spilled into the room as he sat on his lumpy mattress. It stained his hands, and he stared at the bloody-looking fingers, curling them this way and that, interlacing them, then tugging them apart again.

When the sun finally slipped below the horizon, and the red light was gone, he reached for his gun-belt, strapped it on, and left the house. He saddled his own pony, mounted up, and walked the horse past the bunkhouse.

Rafe MacCallister was sitting outside. Ted could see the ember of a cigarette end in the shadows.

“Late to be goin’ for a ride, ain’t it, son?”

“Never too late for anything, Rafe.”

“Wish that was so, Ted, wish that was so.”

“See you later, Rafe.”

“Where you going?”

“I need to think a little bit.”

“You be careful, boy. Them Comanches will likely be looking to get even. They don’t like to lose.”

“You tell Johnny that just now?”

“Course I did. Why wouldn’t I?”

Ted nodded, then kicked his pony into a slow trot. He waved his hat, knowing that Rafe probably couldn’t see him, but wanting to acknowledge the old man anyway. And he knew very well where he was going. There was little doubt in his mind that Rafe also knew. But some things were unnecessary to say while others were better left unsaid. In this case, it was a little of both, unnecessary to tell Rafe, and just as well unsaid as far as his brother was concerned.

Riding through the dark and peaceful countryside, he concentrated on his pony’s hoofbeats, the way a man waiting for something will concentrate on a clock. It sometimes seemed he knew exactly how many strides of his pony it would take to get from one place to another. That was a consequence, he knew, of his rather limited inclination to move any great distance from the house, except when work required it. And when he did go, there were few places he was willing to go.

Unlike Johnny and the other hands, he avoided San Pedro. He was not a great drinker, and there were only two reasons to visit the town. Both involved whiskey. One of them also involved women who were less than scrupulous about the company they kept, and the degree of intimacy with which they kept it. For that matter, they seemed unconcerned about the frequency, as well.

Ted knew that he had been changed by what happened at Shiloh. He still had nightmares. They squeezed him in the dark like a fistful of giant fingers crushing his chest. He would wake up gasping for air, soaked in sweat and thrashing around in his bed like a man on fire. And without exception, the nightmares stopped just short of his own death. He would find himself staring into the muzzle of a Yankee musket. He could see the musket ball, just beginning to emerge from the barrel of the gun. Its surface was rough, pitted like the moon through his father’s old telescope.

He’d had that one a hundred times, maybe a thousand. But they were all variations on the same theme. The smell was what lingered. He would wake up with the smell of blood and voided bowels so thick in the air it felt as if he were trying to swim across a glue pot. Everything tugged at him. His movements were sluggish to the point of futility. Great strings of red mucilage pulled at his arms as he tried to raise them above the surface, crawling for his life through a fluid too thick to let him drown, but too strong to let him go. And those first few minutes never failed to take a lifetime.

His breathing would be labored for an hour. He was forced to lay there in the dark, unwilling, even unable, to close his eyes. What he saw in the dark was too plain, and too horrible, to stand.

But he blamed himself. He thought it must be some weakness in him, some hidden flaw. Johnny
had been there with him, but he seemed, if anything, tougher since Shiloh, not softer. What had begun to eat at him like invisible rust had tempered Johnny. What was toughness in his brother had become, according to some, including Rafe, a mean streak. Maybe Johnny had handled it the right way. And that uncertainty made his own reaction even harder to bear.

Ted eased his horse back into a walk, letting the pony wander without direction. As they approached the San Pedro Creek, the animal stopped to pull at some foot-high grass, munching contentedly a few moments after each mouthful before moving on a few yards to the next clump of grass. At this rate, he knew, it would take him hours to get where he was going. But that was a blessing. At least he wouldn’t have to face the horrors of sleep.

After two hours, the moon rose above the horizon, its pale silver light spilling through the scattered trees and glistening on the water. At places where rocks broke the surface of the slow-moving stream, the turbulence burbled and reflected the light in patches of cold, white fire. He was only dimly aware of them, like landmarks too familiar to be noticed.

When the first glimpse of light bobbed into view across the creek, he tugged his pony away from its careless grazing and poked it with his knees. The pony shook him off once, then broke into a trot again. He sawed on the reins, urging the animal
into the water and across the creek. He could feel the water rise just above his boots. Usually he would hoist his feet up above the water, but this time he was too preoccupied to care. He felt the creek pour into his boots, and when the pony finally climbed out on the opposite bank, he could hear the water sloshing in them. It sounded like maracas full of damp seeds, squishing dully as his legs rose and fell with the rhythm of the pony’s gait.

The horse seemed to sense his anxiety and pulled against the reins, trying to take its head. The light grew a little brighter, then stayed steady as the house in which it sat grew slowly more substantial. Ted had no idea of the time, but he gave no thought to turning back. He couldn’t, not now, not tonight. He needed to talk to someone who would understand, someone with whom he could share the conflicting emotions churning inside him.

He could see the house clearly now and kicked the horse a little to urge it forward. He skidded to a halt in front of a sun-bleached hitching post and flicked the reins. They wound around the post on their own, and he fashioned a quick half hitch to keep them secure, then mounted the stairs, trying to muffle the sound of his feet on the wooden steps.

The screen door swung open as he climbed the last step. He could see her outlined against the dull glow of the lamp from the living room behind her.
She held one hand to her mouth, as if she had been chewing on her knuckles.

“Sorry it’s so late, Ellie.”

“Thank God you’re alright, Ted. I was so worried. Everybody was talking about it. I didn’t know what to think.”

“I still don’t. Is your father awake?”

“No, Daddy’s gone to bed. I’ll wake him if you want.”

“No, that’s alright.”

She moved to a swing suspended from the porch roof beams. Patting the seat beside her, she said, “Sit here.”

“No, I don’t think I can sit still. I’ll just sit on the railing.” He hoisted himself up and balanced precariously on the rail, careful to avoid splinters from the dry, split oak of the banister.

He watched her in the near dark as she glided back and forth. She seemed to disappear in the shadows for a moment, then float toward him. Just when it seemed she was close enough to reach out and touch, she started back, to disappear again a few seconds later.

“Johnny’s leaving,” he said.

“What? To go where? How can he?”

“Says he wants to take a herd up north. Says he can’t stand Texas anymore.”

“You going with him?” she asked. He could tell by the edge in her voice what she wanted to hear.

“I don’t think he wants me to.”

“What do you want? That’s more important.”

“No, it isn’t. Nothing’s more important than family. But if I want to go, and he doesn’t want me along, seems like I have no right to go.”

“He’s your brother.”

“I know that. But it doesn’t change anything.”

“But…”

“I don’t think I want to talk about it, Ellie. Not now. Not yet. If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to be here without talking.”

“I’ll make some coffee. I think it’s going to be a long night.”

THE HERD HAD
swollen to nearly three thousand head, most of them rawhide tough and stringy. Johnny was talking about getting some English white faces when he got north, but that took money, and the herd was the family fortune. Night riding, Ted had a lot of time to think. He still hadn’t told Johnny whether he would go, and Johnny hadn’t asked. For that, Ted didn’t know whether to be grateful or resentful.

Rafe kept watching him, as if he expected some sort of transformation. But Ted wasn’t changing. Not that he knew of, anyway. He did his job and kept away from the other hands, sleeping during the day while they tried to round up a few hundred more. Johnny had taken a half-dozen men over the border into Mexico, but he came back with almost as many exhausted horses as he did cows. He
wouldn’t talk about it, but it appeared they had narrowly missed getting bushwhacked by a bunch of Mexicans and had to leave nearly three hundred cows behind.

The moon was almost full now, and the cattle huddled together, lowing quietly. As they shuffled their feet, their backs, silvered by the moon, looked almost like a huge lake. They were leaving in two days, and Ted knew he had to decide by the following night.

He didn’t want to go, but he wasn’t sure why. He knew he didn’t want to leave Ellie, and her father would never let her tag along. He thought about asking her to marry him, but he was too young and probably too scared. So his choice boiled down to staying with her or riding out of her life, because Johnny had no intentions of coming back. Kansas was a long way, and Ted knew he’d never come back alone, even if he wanted to.

He was on his third circuit of the herd when he saw something move on the far edge. Ted stood in the stirrups to get a better look, but whatever it was had stopped. He prodded his pony and nudged it into the herd. The cows shuffled aside as the pony waded through. He noticed some stirring at the far edge, as if something had spooked the cattle.

Halfway across, he saw it again and this time there was no mistake. A man on foot was moving along the outer edge of the herd. It looked as if he
didn’t know he’d been spotted. Ted drew his Colt, but couldn’t fire without starting a stampede. He was almost across when he got another look at the intruder.

A Comanche, in full regalia, slipped along the edge of the herd. Ted watched him, but couldn’t figure out what the Indian was trying to do. But he also knew that there would be more of them, out there in the dark. The cattle had gotten very restless, nudging one another and raising their heads to sniff the wind. They started to move a bit now, milling in a circle.

A spurt of flame lit up the Indian for a moment, then died down. The Indian dropped out of sight, but the dim orange glow persisted. He could smell smoke now and kicked his horse harder. A second and third spurt of flame blossomed, both of them closer to the front edge of the herd, near the chuck wagon.

The Comanches were trying to stampede the herd. The dry, brittle grass of late summer, almost explosively flammable with the long absence of rain, was already beginning to burn. The flames licked along the outer edge of the herd as Ted broke through, the cattle sensed the flames and backed away, kicking at the earth in their fear. If they got moving, there would be no stopping them.

Ted jumped from his horse and ripped his saddle loose. Snaring the blanket, he raced toward the first fire and started to swat the flames. Every
stroke of the blanket sent coils of flaming embers up into the air where they winked out and drifted off like black snow.

He beat the first fire to ashes, but four more were burning, and the nearest steers were pushing nervously at the herd. The sharp tang of burnt grass filled the air as Ted raced to the second fire. A shot cracked in the dark, and a bullet whined past his hip and slammed into a calf. Ted turned to see the animal stagger once, then fell to its knees. The shot did what the fire was meant to, and the cows started to bellow.

Already, Ted could hear the distant thunder of hooves as the far side of the herd started to run, the steers on the edge pressured by the cattle behind them. Ted flailed at the second fire, ignoring the fact that it was already too late to stop the stampede.

He heard shouts in the distant darkness, then yips as two or three of the hands mounted up and tried to head off the cattle before they got up a full head of steam. Ted moved to the third fire and raised the blanket again. He had started down when he caught something in the corner of his eye. He turned as he realized what it was. The Comanche, a knife in his left hand, hurtled toward him, and Ted swung the blanket down. He knew it wouldn’t stop the knife, but the Indian was already too close for him to step aside.

Ted fell backward, twisting the thick wool as he
rolled to one side. He’d snared the Indian and twisted again as he tried to get up. The Comanche’s hand flailed at him, the blade narrowly missing him as he tripped again. Ted kicked out with his left leg and landed a glancing blow on the Comanche’s ribs. The Indian grunted with the impact and fell to one knee. Ted grabbed for the Colt on his hip and brought it up as the Indian jerked his arm free of the snare.

He fired point-blank, and the Comanche jerked upright for a second, then toppled over on his side. In the moonlight, the blood seeping from the Indian’s chest looked like liquid coal. Ted scrambled to his feet and bent over him. The Indian looked up, his lips curled back in hatred. In the orange light of the lingering flames he looked almost demonic.