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Hard Trail to Follow - Hardcover

Buch 7 von 12: Texas Rangers

Kelton, Elmer

 
9780765315229: Hard Trail to Follow
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 076531522X ISBN 13: 9780765315229
Verlag: Forge, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

In this, the seventh novel in Kelton's acclaimed Texas Ranger series, former Texas Ranger Andy Pickard ("Badger Boy" as he was known as a youth living among Comanches), leaves his fiancée’s farm in north central Texas. He begins to track the man, Luther Cordell, who he believes killed his friend, Sheriff Tom Blessing. Pickard is mistaken. But although Cordell did not kill Blessing, the robber-ringleader must be brought to Ranger justice and the rest sorted out later.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Elmer Kelton of San Angelo, Texas is a native Texan and author of 50 Western novels. He has won many awards for his work and has been recognized as the Greatest Western Writer of all time by the Western Writers of America, Inc.

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Hard Trail To Follow

By Kelton, Elmer

Forge Books

Copyright ©2008 Kelton, Elmer
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780765315229
Chapter 1
 
Andy Pickard knew that sooner or later he might have to whip his future brother-in-law.

He had sensed Farley Brackett’s dark presence before he saw him, sitting on a roan horse where the rows ended almost at the bank of the Colorado River. Farley’s erect posture in the saddle indicated that he was not in a good humor. He seldom was.

Andy had walked a thousand miles up and down this fallow field, guiding a plow point through the mellow earth and staring at the rump end of a brown mule. At least, it seemed like a thousand miles. He leaned back to exert pressure on the leather reins tied together and looped behind his neck. The mule stopped in its tracks, always more willing to answer to “Whoa” than to “Giddyup.” It slumped immediately into a position of rest, flicking long ears to ward off a bothersome horsefly. Andy slipped a red bandanna from his neck and wiped his sweaty face while he waited to hear the latest complaint.

Farley’s voice was laced with sarcasm. “What’s that you’re leavin’ behind you, a furrow or a snake track?”

Farley’s attitude grated like a boil on Andy’s backside. The furrow was not as straight as it should be, but he had never claimed he was a good farmer. He tried to match Farley’s sarcasm. “A crooked row don’t mean a thing to a cornstalk. It’ll grow just the same.”

“You ought to’ve stuck to bein’ a Ranger. You’ll never make a farmer if you live to be a hundred and six.”

“I’d gladly swap you this mule for that roan. You can push the plow awhile, and I can laze around over the country like a property owner.”

Farley had spent little time behind a plow, leaving that to Andy and a couple of black laborers. As a prospective Brackett-in-law, it looked as if Andy was about to marry into a life long on hard work and short on appreciation, at least from Farley.

Farley said, “If it wasn’t for Bethel, I’d fire you.”

“If it wasn’t for her, I’d’ve done quit.”

He had thought a lot about leaving. Were it not for Bethel, he would have put this farm behind him months ago. He felt sure the Texas Rangers would be pleased to take him back. They had tried to persuade him not to resign in the first place. The things a man would do for a woman . . .

It was a big farm and a good one, something to take strong pride in if he had been born with hands that fit a plow handle. But of late he had revisited an old dream of going back west, perhaps to the hill country where he had spent a long stretch with the Rangers. It was still but sparsely settled. Land was easy to come by in comparison to this well-populated region of southeastern Texas. Some country out there was so far from the state land office in Austin that a man could squat on it free, at least for a few years, until he could build up his net worth. Another possibility was the rolling plains far to the northwest. There he had friends who would ride to hell’s rimrock with him if necessary. They had done it more than once.

When Bethel had accepted his marriage proposal, the couple planned such a move. She had been as eager as he was. Then her mother fell ill and deeded the farm to her son and daughter in anticipation of death. The wedding and other plans were deferred because Bethel was reluctant to leave her dying mother. This was home. She had grown up here. Her father was buried in this ground, and it was likely that her mother soon would be. Now that Bethel owned half interest in the place, she no longer discussed leaving.

That her cross-grained brother shared ownership was Andy’s hard luck.

At the time, Farley was recuperating from a wound suffered in Ranger service on the border, so Andy had agreed to stay and help. He worked for foreman’s wages, hopeful that Bethel would sooner or later come back around to his way of thinking. Lately that hope was wearing thin.

Farley seemed now to have recovered from the latest of many injuries, major and minor, to which he seemed especially prone. He had reverted to the same cranky misfit he had been before. Andy told him, “We’d get the plantin’ done faster if you’d pitch in and help. You could take the east field.”

Farley shook his head. “Can’t. Got to go to town and get some stuff for Teresa.”

“Write me a list, and I’ll go in your place,” Andy said.

“I ain’t sure you can read any better than you can plow a straight row. Never did see an Indian that could be taught how to farm.”

There he goes with that Indian thing again, Andy thought. He was not an Indian, but Comanches had captured him when he was a small boy and kept him several years. Farley harbored a strong dislike for Indians. Frequently he threw Andy’s old Comanche name up to him. “You’re lettin’ that mule get almost as lazy as you are, Badger Boy. Him and you had better get back to work.”

Andy prided himself on being able to get along with most people, but for years his relationship with Farley Brackett had swung back and forth between uneasy tolerance and outright hostility. Necessity had forced them to ride together as Rangers. Andy’s betrothal to Farley’s sister had joined them again, however reluctantly, on the Brackett farm. He had wanted to show her he could be a responsible husband and settle down to the tranquil life of a farmer. By now he had concluded that it would never be tranquil so long as he had to deal with Farley.

Turning the mule around, he roughly pushed the plow point into the ground and started another row. Farley was still talking, but Andy let the words drift away unanswered on the wind. He was saying a few words of his own.

He had often wondered why a woman so pretty and so gentle in nature should be saddled with such a brother. He tried to take into account that Farley had endured hardships enough to sour any man. He bore a war scar on his face and hidden scars deep within. His brothers had died fighting the Yankees. He and Bethel had lost their father to partisan violence that continued after the war. Farley had made himself a scourge to Union Reconstruction authorities and to state police who tried to enforce their edicts. His wildness had been both asset and liability during his later service as a Ranger.

Andy had long tried to accord him the benefit of the doubt. He realized Farley had abundant reason for being angry at most of the world, but sympathetic understanding was hard to maintain when he made himself so damned disagreeable.

The sun sank behind clouds low in the west, turning them to orange flame. The last few rows were no straighter than those before, but the hell with it. Farley could do them over if he was dissatisfied. Andy wearily laid the plow on its side and unhitched the mule. The lagging animal picked up new energy when it realized it was going to the barn for feed and rest.

Andy laid up the leather harness in the barn and fed the mule in a trough hewn from the trunk of a tree. Farley was brushing the roan. He offered no conversation, but his eyes...

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Verlag
Forge
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
076531522X
ISBN 13 
9780765315229
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
287
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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