Texas Drive Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 wasready, 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 tomake 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