Free Texas Drive by Bill Dugan

Johnny would do, but that made it all the more important for him to push on. It seemed almost as if he were filling in for his absent brother, doing what Cottons had always done.
    It was pigheaded, and he knew it, but he also knew he had no choice. Part of him was withering away, and if there was any way to stop it before it had gone too far, he had to try. For all he knew, it was already too late. But he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life wondering when, or if, he had stopped being a man, at least the way the Cotton family had always defined it.
    He was less than a mile away from the spring now, and still hadn’t seen a sign. The stream was narrowing perceptibly. If the Comanches’ raiding party had come this way, they would have had tohave gone in single file in another quarter of a mile. That would be no problem, except for the fact they were driving stolen horses. Unless they had them on a string, keeping them in line would have been all but impossible.
    Fifty yards later, it didn’t matter anymore. He found the place where they’d come out of the water. Half a dozen unshod Indian ponies and nearly a dozen more wearing iron shoes, Jack Wilkins’s remaining horses, had climbed up the bank, leaving water-filled prints in the short span of soft sand between the water’s edge and the verge of the saw grass. Not more than two hours before, probably more like one, the horses had passed this way. He followed the bent grass for three miles before he realized they were headed for the mouth of Breakneck Canyon.
    It was almost too neat.
    It was coincidental, more than likely, but there was a kind of fitness to it, too, one that he recognized and that the Comanches would appreciate. They were going to have another go at it. But this time he was on his own.
    This time, though, he was not going into the canyon. This time, he would take the long way around and ride the rimrock. If the Comanches were taking the short route on through, he’d have an advantage, maybe offset the odds a bit. If not, at least they would have only the advantage of numbers. The high ground would be neutral.
    He worked the switchbacks in a hurry, almost jerking the reins too hard at every hairpin. The loose rock beneath the pony’s hooves skidded and skipped away, bouncing like flat stones on a summer pond, but he didn’t worry about it. The Comanches weren’t stupid. They had to be expecting pursuit. If they had wanted to stand and fight, he’d have run into them long before now. It seemed obvious they wanted to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the scene of the small massacre that had been Jack Wilkins.
    No longer the scourge of the Texas plains, they were still a fearsome enemy. But they seemed to realize their days were numbered. The battle at Adobe Walls had taken a heavy toll. Superior in numbers, the Comanche had been outgunned and had their spirit crushed by Kit Carson’s men in the rooms of Bent’s trading post. Most of the Comanches had long since surrendered and accepted the imposed tranquility of the reservation.
    But by no means all.
    And, as usual, it was the most fearless who refused to be confined. As far as Ted could tell, this was no hit-and-run band who would scurry like frightened squirrels to the reservation and prop one another’s spirits in the middle of the night with reminiscences of the raid. These werefree-ranging Indians, wild red men, avatars of an earlier time.
    He’d know for certain when he found them.

10
    IT WAS PAST MIDDAY, and Ted was beginning to wonder if he had made a mistake. Halfway across the rimrock ledge of Breakneck Canyon, he still hadn’t seen a single sign of the Comanches. In a couple of hours, he’d have to start thinking about going back. There was no way in hell he would spend the night alone on the rim. Not even a madman would risk that.
    And Jacob Quitman’s voice still whispered to him, telling him how foolish he was being. Only God can make that kind of