Texas Drive by Bill Dugan

white linen had turned ivory. Soon it, too, would be gone.
    Like the woman who made it. Like the man who loved her. Like the first son she’d borne him. All gone, and for what?
    Ted sighed, then collapsed in the rickety wooden rocker Johnny kept by the fireplace. He cried for the first time, and it all came out of him at once. The loss of his brother, the terror of Shiloh, the fear on the rim of Breakneck Canyon. Everything that had ever terrified him poured out in a soundless flood. He wanted to shout, to scream defiance at someone or something, but he couldn’t.
    There
was
no one to scream at.
    He sat there all night, rocking back and forth, listening to the squeak of the floorboards under the chair. The rhythm was somehow comforting.
    Rafe stuck his head in at one point. Ted sensed him, but didn’t acknowledge him. The old cowboy withdrew and went to the bunkhouse.
    And when morning came, Ted watched the sun come up. It spilled through the windows, leaking in around the curtains and crossing the floor toward the chair like a transparent flood. He could feel its warmth on his shins as the cotton turned the light to heat. When it had climbed across his lap and down the other side, he stood and walked to the window.
    He listened to the birds for a few moments, then went to the bedroom where he and his brother had slept. He was almost packed when he heard footsteps on the porch. He heard a knock and saw Rafe at the door.
    “I got to go back, Teddy. We still got most of the herd. Somebody’s got to see to it. I been gone near a month already.”
    “No, Rafe.”
    “But…”
    “I said no! You stay here, watch the place.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “Where do you think?”
    “But you can’t, Teddy.”
    “But I can’t not, Rafe.”
    The old man nodded. “You be careful, son.”
    “No, Rafe, I won’t.” Ted’s voice was cold and hard. “But I’ll be back, all the same.”

13
    TED RODE LIKE a man with the devil on his ass. Covering fifty and sixty miles in a day, he stopped at nightfall, ate a meal, and slept like a dead man. At sunup, he grabbed breakfast, climbed back into the saddle, and didn’t stop unless he had to. He had one spare horse and switched them daily. Riding right up the belly of the heartland, he blew through Arkansas, threading his way through the Ozarks, and climbed into the plains.
    Three weeks later, he reached the Kansas border. For the first time since he’d left, he camped before sundown. When the fire was built, he sat on a hilltop and watched the waters of the Arkansas roll by. Flecks of foam in the dying light danced like fire. High overhead, a hawk, almost too high to see, drifted on the wind, flapping its wings every few minutes to change direction or loft to anothercurrent. It was a windy evening, and there was a chill in the air, but he ignored the fire halfway down the slope. He sat there until the sun went all the way out.
    He was close now and the worst was just ahead of him. The hot rage that fueled him all the way from Texas was gone. In its place, an icy calm settled in his gut. The tremors were gone, the sudden tic of an eyelid or twitch of a cheek, frozen by that calm, no longer troubled him. It seemed almost as if getting here were more than half the battle. He knew that wasn’t true, but he had been driven by the fear that he would never even get to Kansas. That would have been a failure worse than anything he could imagine.
    Now there it was, sitting across the river. Its rolling hills had faded with the sun. In the twilight, it had looked like a landscape of gray ice. Now, in the darkness, he couldn’t see it at all.
    But it was there.
    And somewhere in its belly was the man who had killed his brother. But the calm had its insidious side. With it came time for reflection. He knew Johnny would commend him. He also knew that Ellie would never forgive him. And he was right back staring at that same blank wall again. What should he do? Should he avenge his brother,