Dorothy Garlock Read Online Free PDF Page B

uncle admitted with a nod.
    Eli’s thoughts raged like a tornado. Abraham was one of the things in Eli’s life that had remained constant. Tall, strong, and confident, Abe had been there for him, teaching him to swim and fish, sharing a laugh, and keeping him from getting too big for his britches. Even when Caleb had come along, Abe had simply taken him under his wing and carried on.
    Abraham had always been a bit peculiar, prone to burst out into song or to laugh at the wrong time, but no one had ever paid it any mind; it was just Abe being Abe. As he’d gotten older, things seemed to worsen. Out of the clear blue, he’d fly off the handle, curse their father, and then ride off for days at a time. Their father—as had everyone else in town—realized that Abe would never be able to take over the ranch.
    Eli had always assumed that his brother had grown tired of chafing under their father’s yoke, just as he himself had, but maybe it had been something more. To find him like this, to see him dressed and acting as the dead president of the United States, was nearly too much to bear.
    “How—how did this . . . ,” was all that Eli could manage to ask.
    “It happened shortly after you’d left for the army,” Hank began evenly, his eyes locked on Abe’s back as he made his way across the ranch. “He hadn’t been feelin’ all that well, complainin’ about his head for a couple of days, when he up and fell like a sack of potatoes after dinner. Try as we could, wasn’t nothin’ that could get him to wake up. In the end, all we could do was put him in his bed and hope for the best.”
    “What about Doc Holland?” Eli asked, referring to the elderly physician who ministered to the town of Bison City and all the ranchers who lived nearby. “Wasn’t there anything he could do?”
    “We fetched him right away the next mornin’—rode right through a bear of a summer squall, I did,” Hank explained, “but he wasn’t able to do anythin’ to help. Whatever it was that got ahold of Abe, it was more than the doc was capable of fixin’. He reckoned that it wouldn’t be but a couple of days before he’d give up and pass on. The only thing we could do for him was to keep him comfortable and give him some water from time to time. Your mother sat by his bed for weeks, never leavin’ no matter how exhausted she was.”
    “For
weeks
. . . ,” Eli echoed.
    “Your mother spent all her time beside her remaining son. I ain’t much of a religious fella, but I’d swear on a stack of Bibles that it was her will that kept that boy alive. He didn’t die because she wouldn’t let him!”
    Eli felt the sting of his uncle’s words, even though he was certain that Hank meant no malice. After Caleb’s murder, Eli had left for the army, secure in the knowledge that Abraham remained behind to help their father with the ranch work. As much anger as there had been between him and his father and mother, he certainly hadn’t wanted any hardship to befall them. What his brother had gone through made him sick to his stomach.
    “But he didn’t die,” Eli said.
    “No, he didn’t.” Hank nodded. “One day he just up and opened his eyes, like he’d been sleepin’ or some such. At first, we were all about as happy as pigs in slop, but then we begun to understand that somethin’ wasn’t quite right.”
    “What was the matter? He didn’t know who he was?”
    “Oh, he knew who he was all right—it just wasn’t the same as who
we
thought he was,” Hank went on. “He’d answer to his name. But after a touch, he started callin’ all of us by different names and carryin’ on about the White House, the war, and his boyhood. At that point, it sure as hell wouldn’t take no doctor to know things weren’t the way they was supposed to be.”
    “But why go along with it? Why does he still think he’s Lincoln?”
    “Because try as we might, we couldn’t convince him he wasn’t.” Eli’s uncle shrugged. “Sure, we