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[Concluding chapter five]
"What you doing, sir?" Pickett asked.
"Something I should have done, or had done, long before," Walker said, looking up from the paper he'd spread out across the saddle-bag in his lap. "I'm mapping our route through these woods. And I'm going to mark the first of the farms you think will be a good source of supply for us." He fixed his gaze on Pickett. "Panola County extends only about twenty miles west from the border, Mister Pickett. We have to travel another hundred and twenty miles from Carthage before we reach the Brazos Valley and Washington. Will you be able to find us suitable sources of supply for that whole distance?"
"Truth to tell, sir, I can't promise that." Pickett smiled. "But I can get us all we need from farms around Carthage, Henderson and Gallatin—that's more than a third of the way. That'll allow us to gain some good time in the next few days. And I think I ought to be able to improvise beyond that."
Improvisation wasn't a word Walker normally liked to use. But careful planning hadn't worked too well in the last couple of days—there were simply too many things that could go wrong in a country as wild as Texas. That wildness was part of its attraction, of course; what man wouldn't relish the opportunity to take such an immense, and immensely promising, place, and bend it to his will?
"You have two hundred and fifty men—not to mention the whole Republic of Texas—depending on you, Mister Picket. You'd best be sure of what you're saying."
"You can count on me," Pickett said. He looked, Walker thought, quite pleased with himself. But then, men often did when they thought they'd been clever. That was what made leadership so easy sometimes.
"Take me to this first farm, then," Walker said. "What's the man's name? Blair?"
"That's him, yep."
"We have to scout out this man's farm and be back with the main column in twenty-four hours, Mister Picket." Walker spurred Destiny into a trot. "Let's ride."
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