Read Online Texas Drive by Bill Dugan - Free Book Online Page A

The burst of light momentarily blinded him, and he twisted away from it.
    Looking through his fingers, he realized it was just a window, catching a few rays of sunlight. As he reached the flat, he kicked the pony once, then clucked to him. The horse broke into a trot, and he covered the last two hundred yards in short order. At the front of the house, he dropped to the ground, wondering where Wilkins was. It wasn’t like the big man to ignore visitors. He was supposedto have ears like a rabbit, and stories about his hearing were legendary. Most of them were almost certainly exaggerated if not outright false, but this still was odd.
    Ted stepped onto the porch and rapped on the screen. He heard the echo of his knuckles, but nothing moved inside. He rapped again and turned to look across the yard, toward the barn and the corral. He wasn’t even sure why he was here, but it was something he felt he had to do.
    “Jack?” His voice seemed to bounce around the yard, then stop dead. Not even an echo from the barn. He rapped a third time, then pulled the screen open. He tried the door, and it swung open easily with a press of his fingers.
    “Jack? You in there?”
    Wilkins still didn’t answer. Ted felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle, a sensation he hadn’t had in three years, not since he’d left the front as the war was winding down. Inside, everything looked normal. He went to the bedroom and stood in the doorway.
    The door was half open, and Ted could see the lower half of the bed, but it was empty and, from the looks of it, unslept in. Wilkins never took pains with the ordinary domestic details, so there was no way to be sure.
    The bedroom was empty. Ted shook his head and walked back to the front room, which tripled as kitchen, dining room, and living room. Wilkinshad planned to add another room, but when his wife, Mabel, caught typhoid, he hadn’t bothered. When Mabel died, there was no reason. Jack’s Winchester was missing from over the fireplace, but it was the only thing out of the ordinary.
    Ted stepped off the porch and crossed to the barn. The barn door was open, and he walked through cautiously, convinced that something was seriously wrong. Jerking his Colt free, he ducked to the left, just inside the dark barn.
    “Jack, you in there? Jack Wilkins?”
    His own voice came back at him, and something skittered across the loft, but no one answered him. Rather than search the barn on his own, he thought about riding for help, then pushed the idea aside. If Wilkins needed that much help, it was already too late for him.
    He backed out of the barn and walked around to the rear. On the way past the corral, he noticed rails were down on the back side. On the damp ground, he spotted half a dozen moccasin prints. They could have been from the day before, but he didn’t think so. A little water still sat in the center of each depression. If the prints were a day old, there would have been no such puddles.
    Ted stared off through the stand of cottonwoods behind the barn. Then, for some reason he didn’t understand, he raced toward the trees, as if something were drawing him there against his will. The hair on his neck was standing out straight, now.
    “Jack?”
    Again, he got no answer. Pushing into the sparse undergrowth, he saw a smear of blood on some leaves. There was no mistaking it. It was fresh and glistened in the sun as the leaves rippled in the breeze. On the far side of the brush, he found Jack’s Winchester.
    He picked it up and sniffed the muzzle. The sharp bite of gunsmoke told him the carbine had been fired recently. So there was hope the blood wasn’t Jack’s. Hope … but not conviction.
    Ted started out into the saw grass, where he saw another smear of blood. A few yards ahead, he saw flies swarming around the tips of the grass blades. He sprinted for the spot, found even more blood, and a place where the grass had been pressed flat, probably by a human body. The long oval depression was