Texas Drive (4 page)

Ted cocked his Colt and aimed it. The Comanche tried to get to his feet, but he didn’t have the strength. Propped on one hip, he lay there panting. Ted turned away, lowering the hammer and holstering the gun. The brave was no threat.

Snatching at the blanket, he raced to the next fire and flailed at the flames until they were reduced to glowing straws. The light rose and fell as the wind moaned past, then they died out altogether. In the distance, he could hear the hands rounding the herd and driving it to let the cattle run off their terror.

Scattered gunshots cracked over the thunder of
the hooves. He saw another Comanche, this one on horseback, race toward him. Hitting the ground, he grabbed the Colt and snapped off a shot. The Indian charged past, tossing a lance, but didn’t stop. The lance grazed Ted, piercing his shirt and pinning him to the ground. He ripped the cloth away, wiped the blood on his shirt, and got to his knees.

He turned, waiting for the Indian to charge back, but the sound of the horse receded in the night. When it was gone, he got to his feet, holding his side. He could feel the trickle of blood between his fingers, hot and sticky. He could smell it and wanted to gag.

Ted walked toward the Comanche, who was lying on his back now. Behind him, he heard hoofbeats and reached for his gun. Johnny skidded to a halt. He dismounted and raced toward his brother.

“What the hell happened? Where were you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know damn well. How did this happen? Why the hell were you night riding, to watch the goddamned moon?”

Johnny spotted the Comanche and brushed past. He prodded the Indian in the ribs with the toe of one boot. The brave moaned. His eyes opened and he stared up at Johnny.

“Christ almighty, he ain’t even dead! Can’t you do nothing right?”

“He was no …”

Johnny drew his gun and cocked the hammer. Ted grabbed his arm, but Johnny shook him off.

“Don’t …” Ted shouted, but Johnny ignored him. He fired once, then again, hitting the Indian in the head and the heart. Johnny turned, shaking his head.

“You yellow bastard …” He brushed past Ted, glanced at the wound in his side, but said nothing. Johnny grabbed the reins and swung up into the saddle. “We’re leaving first light. No thanks to you, we have enough beeves to head north. I don’t imagine you’ll be comin’.”

Johnny wheeled his horse and galloped away. Ted stood there watching horse and rider disappear. When his brother was out of sight, he glanced at the dead Comanche once, then walked back to his horse. It hurt to mount up but he ignored the pain and spurred the pony once, just hard enough to get him moving.

The sound of the herd off in the distance was growing more subdued, even as he approached. He moved past the mess wagon, but didn’t stop. He skirted the edge of the herd, now just milling in a broad circle. He spotted a hand, but couldn’t tell it was Rafe until he got closer.

Rafe looked at him long and hard, but didn’t say anything until their mounts were almost nose to nose.

“You see Johnny?” he asked.

Ted nodded.

Rafe saw the blood and started to ask a question, then changed his mind. “I got work, Teddy. See you in the morning.”

“Where’s Johnny now?”

“Riding point.”

“Thanks.”

“I’d give him some time, I was you. He was madder’n hell.”

Ted ignored the advice. He pushed his pony around the edge of the herd and prodded it into a gallop. He passed two hands on the way, but they didn’t acknowledge him. When he reached the head of the herd, he spotted Johnny almost immediately.

He closed on his brother, nudging his horse alongside, squeezing in between Johnny and Ralph Dalton. Dalton spat once, then shook his head as he moved away.

“Johnny …”

His brother didn’t answer.

“Dammit, Johnny, talk to me.”

“Must be hearing things,” Johnny mumbled. “Swear I heard something.” He turned and looked through Ted as if he were a pane of glass. “Nope. Don’t see nothing.”

Ted grabbed Johnny’s arm and jerked it. The sleeve of Johnny’s shirt started to groan, but it held and Johnny clapped a hand over Ted’s wrist. This time he spoke directly to him.

“You let go or I’ll break your goddamned arm, you hear?”

Ted swung, but missed. Johnny leapt from the saddle, swatting the pony on the rump to chase it away. “Come on, you damned yellow-belly. Come on!”

Ted kicked his pony and threw himself on Johnny as the horse moved past. They both went sprawling in the dust, and Johnny, who was the larger of the two, grabbed Ted around the head and got to his knees.

“Let go,” Ted shouted, his voice almost strangled in his throat by the pressure of his brother’s arm. He broke free and landed a vicious jab to Johnny’s ribs. Doubled over by the punch, Johnny charged straight on, his head smashing into Ted’s bleeding rib cage.

Johnny straightened him up and swung twice, connecting both times. Ted fell to the ground and Johnny stood over him, a fist cocked, and panting. “Too late for heroics, Teddy. You had your chance. Trouble is, you just don’t know what side you’re on. Now get up and get out of my sight.”

Ted tried to rise, but his side hurt too much. A searing pain flared along his ribs, and it stabbed at him with every breath. Johnny turned and walked away. When he reached his horse, he mounted without looking back.

“Wait,” Ted called, “come back.”

But Johnny ignored him. Rafe reined in as Ted was getting to his knees. “You want me to go after him?”

Ted shook his head. “What’s the use?”

“None that I can see. Not right now …”

“Thanks anyway.”

“He’ll cool down some, pretty soon.”

“Yeah.”

But Ted knew he wouldn’t. Not for a long time, if ever.

TED COTTON SAT
on the ridge, watching the herd move out. The valley below him was filled with the sound of bellowing cattle. Their hooves kicked up great clouds of dust. The clouds swirled in a hot wind, obscuring parts of the herd and wrapping the drovers in a thick blanket of light brown. Here and there, one of the hands would pop into view for a few seconds, his face covered with a kerchief to keep out the choking dust. Hats, shirts, and pants had turned a uniform beige.

Ted wanted to see Johnny one more time. But the dust and the wind conspired to deprive him. Tempted to charge down into the valley, he struggled and overcame it, but not without cost. He hated to see Johnny go like this. But his brother was pigheaded. And something ate at him from the inside. Johnny wouldn’t talk about it, but he
wasn’t much for talking anyway. Shrugging his shoulders, Ted resigned himself to the possibility he might never see Johnny again.

The herd, like a heaving river of sinew, poured through the valley, funneled through its narrow mouth, and gradually disappeared. When it was out of sight, he could still hear it. The shouts of the drovers were no longer audible, but the thunder of twelve thousand hooves shook the air around him. He could feel the ground rumbling even through his horse’s legs and up through his own. It felt as if the earth were shifting beneath him the least little bit, trying to make up its mind which way to go. Slowly the sound and trembling died away, leaving only the dust cloud, a pale brown stain on an otherwise unblemished blue sky.

Then the cloud, too, was gone.

Ted still sat on his horse, wondering what would become of him. He wondered whether he should have toughed it out, forced himself on Johnny. It was his right. They were brothers, after all. But Johnny didn’t want him along. Maybe it was even worse than that. Maybe Johnny was glad to be leaving him behind, glad at the prospect of never seeing him again.

And maybe Johnny was right. Maybe there
was
something wrong with him. Maybe … but the list was endless. There was nothing he could do about it anyway. Johnny was gone, taking with him the only living connection to a past already so distant it might have belonged to someone else.

He thought about going to see Ellie. But there was nothing she could say that would change things. What had happened had happened. The only thing he didn’t know was why.

Johnny didn’t say much that morning. All through the afternoon, he rode apart from the herd, keeping up, just not keeping close. His mind was blank and he felt numb. For long stretches, he felt as if he were watching himself from somewhere above. He could look down, even saw the top of his hat, a dusty speck on a dusty man riding a dusty horse. He knew what he was watching, but he didn’t recognize himself.

There were too damn many questions, and he had damn few answers. It was better not to try to connect the few and the many. That would leave questions he could have no hope of answering at all. It was the right thing to do. He kept telling himself that over and over. Ted would only get himself killed. Or he might get someone else killed. Not intentionally, of course, but still …

Rafe tried to cheer him up, but the old man knew what was eating him, and it kept getting in the way. This was something you couldn’t pretend about. It was sitting there between them, a huge rock of uncertainty, and there was no way either man could budge it. Finally, Rafe shrugged and rode back to the herd. Maybe with time, Johnny thought, he could talk about it. And when he was
ready, Rafe would be there. Both of them knew that, and it made it easier.

But not much.

By noon, the sun had hammered at them for so long, Johnny was already wondering whether he’d made a mistake. He looked up at the sun, tilting his hat back to take the full force of its glare. Through closed eyes, he saw a pink haze and white light like the tip of a glowing poker. It stabbed at him, but he refused to turn away. That wasn’t the kind of man he was.

Without thinking about it, he understood that changing his mind about anything was not permitted. He didn’t know how to change his mind. It was something you made up, and then you lived with it, come hell or high water. And the late summer sun promised him plenty of the former.

It would be months before he would sleep on the same spot of ground twice in a row. And that thought didn’t faze him. It didn’t cheer him, either. It was the choice he had made. And maybe, if he kept his scalp and his herd, he could send for Ted, and they could talk it through.

If Ted would come.

Johnny kicked his pony and spurted far out ahead of the herd. This was all new to him, and he wasn’t sure how he ought to go about it. It was one thing to round up a small herd and drive it to New Orleans, the way he had once or twice before the war. But New Orleans wasn’t paying enough to
make it worth the trip anymore. The real market was back east, maybe St. Louis, maybe Chicago, definitely New York and Boston. But he had to get the cattle to a railhead. That the nearest one was fifteen hundred miles away didn’t help much.

If you’re going to drive a herd over a thousand miles, he thought, why not two thousand? Or three? The logistics were the same, it just took more time. As he sat on a ridge a mile and a half ahead of the herd, he turned in the saddle and watched the beeves flow up and over the last rise, oozing like mud. The cattle seemed almost playful, spurting ahead here and there, the herd changing shape like a ball of wax in the sun.

But they were more than beeves. They were his past and his future. It was all he had on earth, that and a few hundred dollars for supplies. To feed his hands, buy ammunition, take care of whatever surprises might sneak up on them until they got where they were going, wherever the hell that was.

Rafe was unsure, arguing they should head west to New Mexico, where they knew the army was buying beef. But Johnny wouldn’t hear of it. He trusted Rafe, loved him even. The old man was the closest thing he had to a father. But a man had to make his own decisions. That’s what being a man was all about. And that’s what got Teddy all twisted up, trying to listen to that damn Ellie and her Quaker nonsense.

This was no place to be peaceful. The war had
taught him that, and he’d seen nothing since it ended to change his mind. Ellie had softened Teddy, sapped his strength with all her nonsense about loving Indians as well as white men. You couldn’t do that. You couldn’t even think of them as human, if they were at all, because they’d cut your heart out and eat it raw if you gave them the chance.

Ellie had almost gotten Tommy Dawson killed. Johnny was convinced of that. If she hadn’t filled Ted’s head with such plain horseshit, he wouldn’t have blinked an eye before killing that Comanche. But she had, and he did. And that was all there was to it.

But the country would toughen Ted up again. Long after it chewed Ellie and her kind up and spat out the bones, Ted would still be there, because he knew how tough it was. He would see how foolish Ellie’s thinking was. If she lasted, if she lived, the country would change her, too. It would make her more like Teddy used to be, ought to be. If she didn’t, Teddy would be free and clear. Either way, he’d have his brother back.

If he lived long enough.

As the herd closed in on him, sweeping down the broad slope, painting the sky above it a dull brown, he wished to hell things could have been different. It would be good to know that Teddy was bringing up the rear, the way he always had, ever since they were kids. That’s when they first
started calling him Drag Rider. It had stuck, and Teddy had always been happy with it. But not now. Teddy didn’t listen to him anymore. Teddy wanted to go his own way, live by his own rules. Maybe that’s what hurt the most, not having the final say anymore.

He watched the herd draw closer, and knew that was only part of it. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that something had gutted his brother, stripped off something he used to have. And that it could get them both killed.

Better him than me, Johnny thought, as he wheeled his pony and started down to the floor of the next valley. And he hated himself for thinking that.

“It’s your own damn fault, little brother,” he whispered. “Not mine.”

And Johnny almost believed it.

The day was empty. Texas stretched as far as Ted could see. And as far as he could see, it was empty. Hot and dry, but featureless, like hell without imagination. Sitting on the porch, he turned his attention to the rest of his life. From here, it looked as empty as Texas itself. Stretching out far enough that he couldn’t see the end, but end it would. In some ways it already had.