Dark Thicket

Chapter 1 The war against the Union lay five weeks behind him, and he had crossed the Sabine out of Louisiana four days ago. Owen Danforth was beginning to feel at last that he was truly back in Texas. Here, until he decided he was ready to return, the war would not touch him. Until he was ready...A dull throbbing brought his right hand up to grip his tightly bandaged left arm. Not all the fever had left it. He wondered if he wouldeverbe ready to go back. Late in the morning he had broken out of the close and confining piney woods. Now he rode upon the higher, drier prairies that looked and smelled of home. His rump itched with an urgency for getting there, but the afternoon sun was in his eyes, and he knew night would catch him with miles yet to go. The big Yankee horse beneath him no longer took a long and easy stride. The journey had been wearying, and only a couple of times along the way had Owen managed to beg oats or corn for him from some farmer he met, some stranger in whose barn he slept a night. The war had left little enough even for people to eat, and horses must sustain on whatever grazing they could find. The fresh spring grass was yet weak, and so was any animal that depended upon it. Owen came finally to a wagon trace which seemed to strike a chord in his memory. Turning in the saddle for a different perspective, he thought he recalled using this road when he had traveled eastward two years and more ago with his brother Ethan, eager to join the fighting before it could all be finished without them. He found familiarity in the pitch of the gentle hills, the steeple of a distant church, the lay of a neglected cornfield with a gully started at its lower end, gradually carrying away the fertile topsoil with every rain. A mile ahead he saw a string of large wagons moving ponderously toward him. They reminded him of the long military supply trains he had seen early in the war, trains that had gradually shortened as the Confederacy found it difficult to keep filling them. These, he saw as he came nearer, were heavy freight wagons paired in tandem, each pair drawn by four spans of big draft horses and mules. He pulled out of the trail to yield them room. A tired-looking middle-aged man on horseback rode up to him. He gave Owen's bandaged arm a moment's study. "Howdy, soldier," he said pleasantly. "Where you bound?" Owen said, "Home. I'm Owen Danforth. You'd be Jake Tisdale, wouldn't you?" Tisdale blinked. "Owen?" His eyes narrowed for a longer, more careful look. "Damned if you ain't. Wouldn't of knowed you, son. You've changed a right smart." "So've you. When I left here you was farmin' on the river. You in the freightin' business now?" Tisdale nodded. "War duty. I was too old to tote a rifle, and they said I'd do the government more service haulin' freight. I take cotton bales down to the Rio Grande and ferry them across to Mexico. Confederacy trades them to French and Englishmen for war supplies. The Yankees can bottle up the Texas ports, but they can't do nothin' about us tradin' in Mexico." He pointed his chin toward the lead wagon, its wide-rimmed wheels raising dust as they labored by. "I come north with guns and ammunition and such." Owen had heard about the cotton trains. "I been told the Yankees invaded Brownsville from the sea to put a stop to this." "They did. But we cross the Rio farther west, where their patrols can't reach. Then we travel down the river on the Mexican side and thumb our noses as we go by. Makes them madder'n hell." TisdalKelton, Elmer is the author of 'Dark Thicket' with ISBN 9780812565225 and ISBN 0812565223.