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[Continuing chapter seven]
“But they’ll get to Walker first!”
“Maybe. My guess,” Cleburne said, “is that they’ll hare off like madmen, in a hurry to defend their manhood or their corrupt government of whatever it is they think they’re fighting for.” Patton turned to see Cleburne eyeing him; the Irishman’s mouth was twisted in a small, tight grin. “And they’ll blow their horses,” he concluded. He prodded the horse into a faster walk; the beast protested, but complied. “Whereas we will maintain a steady pace through these woods. If I’m right, they’ll have slowed to a walk within the next few minutes. We may even pass them before the hour’s up.”
He’s too damned sure of himself, Patton thought. But the horrible part of it was, the man probably had cause to be sure. He was a veteran of who knew how much campaigning. And he’d proved himself a good friend in New Orleans. That doesn’t make him right about everything.
After a half-hour of steady riding, it seemed to Patton that the woods were thinning. “Do you think things are opening up?” he asked Cleburne. “Look, there’s sunlight coming through up ahead there.”
“We’ve reached another clearing,” Cleburne said. “A meadow or something. We’ll be able to gain a minute or two on that gang. And where are they, anyway? Seems to me that if the woods are thinning we ought to be able to hear them better.”
Patton realized that at some point he’d stopped listening for the murmur of muffled shouts and hoo-rahs that they’d occasionally been able to hear as they progressed. Either the gang had dramatically out-paced them, or they’d passed the gang a while ago without noticing. He stopped them and listened carefully, but heard nothing more than wind in leaves and pine-needles, and the occasional bird call.
Then he could see more than sunlight up ahead. There was a definite end to the trees, and if it was a meadow they were about to enter, it was a big one. “Let’s pick it up,” he said. “I think we’re about to truly enter Texas.”
They passed out of the trees, and found themselves on the crest of a gentle slope.
“My God,” said Cleburne.
“Ain’t that something?” Patton asked.
“Oh, it’s more than something,” Cleburne said. “I’ve never seen the like.”
Ahead of them, spread out as far as a horizon that itself seemed to recede infinitely, was the garden of Texas, that land Patton had always assumed was the product of some overactive empresario’s imagination. Rounded, grass-covered hills unrolled to the west, north and south, at some places decorated with copses or even small forests. Most of the hills were polka-dotted with colour, yellows and blues mostly but some reds, and Patton was almost certain he could hear the sound of bees moving from wildflower to wildflower. Overhead, a bird sang a hymn of praise.
“I once visited my regiment’s colonel at his country estate,” Cleburne said. His voice seemed slow, distant, as though Patton was hearing him through a whiskey haze. “He and his family had spent hundreds or even thousands of pounds, and employed armies of men for years, to make the estate look like a pale imitation of this.” Patton followed the sweep of Cleburne’s arm, and now saw sunlight reflecting off of water; there was a small run down there, one bend just visible through the waving grasses. The whole landscape, in fact, seemed to be in motion as the breeze stirred branches, grasses and wildflowers. The overall effect was lulling; perhaps that was why Cleburne sounded the way he did. “I have never seen anything like this in my life,” the Irishman said. “A perfect garden, created without a single bit of effort by man. I’d be willing to wager that Adam’s paradise looked something like this.”
“You sound like someone who’s spent too long in the saddle,” Patton said. “Stop mooning over the flowers and get moving. We’ve got to catch Walker, don’t we?” He shifted and twisted in order to reach his saddlebag, and drew out the spyglass he’d bought in New Orleans. Raising it to his eye, he began methodically to search the hills in front of them.
He found the road quickly enough; they’d evidently drifted a bit as they moved through the woods, because they’d emerged from the woods about a mile south of the road. Not that this would be a problem anymore; the rolling prairie onto which they’d emerged made roads unnecessary for men on horseback. It would be a pleasure to ride from here on.
A hint of movement caught his eye. He fumbled with the glass trying to retrace his scan; in frustration he took the spyglass away and tried, squinting, to recapture with his naked eye what he thought he’d seen. He had no luck, though, and snarling wordless anger he returned to using the glass, trying to dampen his eagerness and remain calm and methodical.
There! There it was again: a column of dust rising above the crest of a hill. Carefully, he shifted the glass to either side, fixing in his mind the locations of a brace of trees and a large rock jutting from the side of the hill, so that he might have a chance of spotting it again without the glass. When he was satisfied, he slowly lowered the spyglass from his eye without moving his head. Yes, there was the hill. And there was the road, cresting a lower hill just in front before disappearing, probably to go around the taller hill.
“I think I’ve found Walker,” he said. He could hear the trembling in his voice. “Over there, west by north-west. There’s dust coming from behind that hill with the big rock; I’m willing to guess that Walker’s column is what’s kicking up that dust.
“And I don’t see that gang of Modulators or whatever they called themselves. Guess I was right about them blowing their horses.” He felt wonderful, tingling with alertness. Taking on the Moderators alone would have been a desperate undertaking. Fighting as part of an army was what he was trained to do. Let me get to Walker, he thought, and then bring them on. “Let’s go,” he said.
“I want to remember this vision,” Cleburne said, nudging his horse into motion with exaggerated slowness. I want to remember the first time I truly saw Texas. It’s as though I was brought here just for this moment, to see this.”
“It’s the sun,” Patton said as their horses picked their way down the slope. “After not seeing it for so long, it’s gone to your head.”
Next Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
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