Gone to Texas Read Online Free PDF

City?”
    â€œMexico City?” The guard snorted and laughed. “When you’re dead, maybe. No one ever leaves this place alive.”
    Ellis felt suddenly weak and his hands trembled. For foolishly accompanying Nolan, they had been condemned to die a slow death—it might take years. In a voice as unsteady as his legs, he told the others what the guard had said. In the dim light he saw their faces register shock, then despair. Without feeling hunger or being aware of what he was doing, he ate the little piece of boiled chicken, then lifted the bowl to his mouth and drank the water in which it had been cooked.
    Although the others looked ready to lie down and stop breathing, Blackburn’s wrinkled face seemed to glow in the dim light. “We are not going to give up hope of deliverance,” he said in a firm voice. “We are going to keep our senses, because one day we will leave this place alive.” He recited from memory a verse from the Bible. Ellis didn’t recognize it or any of the others Blackburn recited each morning thereafter. When he had gone through all of the verses he remembered, he started over. He’s keeping us all from going mad, Ellis thought, but he resigned himself to dying in the stinking dungeon.
    One morning, more than a year later, they were ordered out of the dungeon and herded onto the street. Shielding his eyes from the unaccustomed sunlight, Ellis saw saddled horses and a cavalry troop awaiting them. Still in chains, they were ordered to mount and weakly climbed on. They were escorted out of the city on the same road they’d followed when they arrived.
    â€œThey’re taking us north,” Ellis said quietly to Duncan. “I wonder what that means.” Duncan didn’t reply, for the officer, a short man with a waxed mustache, was glaring at them.
    â€œWhere are we going?” Ellis later asked a soldier who rode near him. The man glanced around to see if the officer was watching before replying.
    â€œWe’re taking you to Saltillo,” he said. “I think from there you go to Chihuahua.”
    The officer in charge of the escort apparently regarded the prisoners as criminals who deserved no consideration at all, for he showed them none. One morning, Joel Pierce was too sick to rise. “Put him on his horse,” the officer ordered. “If he wants to die he can do it in the saddle as well as in bed.” Two soldiers roughly shoved the gaunt youth onto his horse’s back. Duncan and Ellis rode on opposite sides of him ready to catch him if he started to fall. Somehow he survived, and he was able to ride by himself by the time they reached Saltillo.
    When they stopped in the plaza at Saltillo, the people crowded around as usual to stare at the bearded, ragged, dirty prisoners. What was left of Ellis’ homespun shirt and pants was barely enough to cover him. The old women, in black dresses, brought them bread and fruit, although they obviously had little to spare. One gave Ellis a white cotton shirt, then wrung her hands when she realized he couldn’t put it on because of his shackles.
    The cavalry troop that brought them to Saltillo turned them over to another. Ellis looked at the new officer, a clean-shaven young Spaniard with sparkling black eyes. When he inspected the prisoners, he frowned at the sight of their scarred wrists and called to his sergeant. “Send a man for the blacksmith and remove those chains,” he ordered. “I don’t care what they did—they don’t deserve to be treated like that.”
    When the shackles were removed, Ellis tore off what was left of his ragged shirt and put on the one the woman had given him. His arms had been shackled so long he could hardly move them.
    â€œThat’s better, isn’t it?” the officer asked in Spanish, and smiled.
    â€œMuchas gracias, '’ Ellis replied.
    â€œI thought all Spaniards were mean as hell,” Ellis