The Outcasts Read Online Free PDF Page B

resting. It was solid, packed firm under the hooves of countless horses, bison, and cattle, its ancient upheaval already done. Here in Texas, the ground first buckled and then plunged away, lowering to canyons or surging up into mesas, as though still in the act of formation.
    The Sierra Vieja stood at his back as he watched Deerling and Dr. Tom riding a short way ahead. From the time they had left Franklin, following south the floodplains of the Rio Grande to their first supply stop at Eagle Springs, Nate had instinctively lagged behind. It seemed somehow an imposition on seniority to ride next to them, although it wasn’t only his junior status that gave him pause. It was more the sense of violating an unspoken social pact that made him loath to come within earshot.
    Watching the rangers together, he was struck again by their similarity or, more to the point, their relatedness, although he knew for a fact they were not blood kin. Upon Nate’s being sworn in to the Texas State Police, Captain Drake had spoken of Deerling’s and Goddard’s long career of rangering—twenty years together, almost as long as Nate had been alive, border wars and Indian chasing for half their own lives. Drake had told Nate personally that if he chose to make a career of the law, he could do no better than attach himself to Tom Goddard and George Deerling.
    On occasion, Dr. Tom would drop back and point out animal markings in the sandy loam or a weathered imprint carved into the rock. Often it was to warn Nate to look sharp, to scan the slight rises or abutments of rock for signs of movement from Mescalero Apache or even Comanche raiding south from the Llano Estacado. Earlier, Dr. Tom had taken him to task for his old Dance revolver and his Henry repeating rifle, asking when Nate would grab some sense and be reborn into the religion of Colt and Winchester. He warned Nate, “Someday when you don’t need it to happen, some piece of metal’s going to get fouled under the hammer of that cap-and-ball pistol. You wait and see.”
    Nate had to admire the wicked beauty of the brass, self-contained cartridges of the rangers’ converted navy Colts. But he’d never give up his Dance cap-and-ball pistol. It had been given to him at the outbreak of the war by a man closer to him than his own father. He did, however, admit that he would gladly give over the old Henry hanging in a scabbard at his side for a .44 Winchester as soon as he had the means to do so.
    The sun set in slow measure, warming their backs until the light was snuffed out and the elevated plain turned cold. They passed through Fort Davis, a dirty, mean, nearly abandoned fort manned by black soldiers left over from the war. They had been assigned to guard the coach and wagon trail routes frequently raided by Indians because of their training in conflict but also because these soldiers had nowhere else to go. No funds were available to keep the fort in good working order, so its window frames stood empty of glass, its barracks empty of doors.
    Deerling did not stop at the fort but rode purposefully through the town, saying they would bedroll at Limpia Creek a half mile away. The soldiers stood quietly in groups in the alleyways, hovering around fire pits, their impassive faces turned towards their shoes.
    They ate jerky and pan bread next to a fire built up from mesquite wood under an overhang. Dr. Tom pulled from his pack a much-abused news sheet and squinted at the variegated print in the half-light. Nate tossed out the last of the grounds in his cup and started to pull off his boots.
    Deerling said, “Don’t do that.”
    Dr. Tom pointed to the overhang. “We get a visitation, you don’t want to have to make a run for it in your stocking feet.”
    Deerling lay supine on his bedroll, his shotgun cradled like a child in his arms. Closing his eyes, he said, “Tom, take first watch. Then Nate. Then wake me.”
    Dr. Tom squinted hard at the newsprint, but the fire had grown too weak,