[Texas Rangers 03] - The Way of the Coyote by Elmer Kelton Read Free Book Online Page A

observed, "At least Andy makes friends of most of the boys after he's whipped them."
    "I've been afraid he'd get hisself killed before you could finish raisin' him. He'd be sixteen, maybe seventeen now wouldn't he?"
    "The best we can guess."
    "Ever talk about goin' back to the Comanches?"
    "Not anymore, but now and then he gets moody. He stares off to the north, and I can guess what's in his mind." At times Andy would be sitting in a room with Rusty or riding alongside him on horseback but seem to be miles and years away.
    The blacksmith said, "He sure needs a woman's influence. You got any prospects?"
    Rusty sidestepped the question. "Do you hear somethin'?"
    Shouts arose from down toward the mercantile store.
    The blacksmith turned his right ear in that direction. "Sounds like a fight. I'd bet you a dollar that Indian of yours is in the middle of it."
    Rusty said, "I've got no extra dollar to throw away." He set out down the dirt street in a brisk trot, ignoring pain from the old arrow wound in his leg. He muttered, "Damn it, I can't turn my back for five minutes ..."
    There was hardly a young man living in or around the settlement who had not made his peace with Andy, often after a stern comparison of knuckles. But now and then a new one turned up.
    The first face he saw was that of Fowler Gaskin, longtime neighbor, perpetual thorn in the side of Daddy Mike and now of Rusty. Old Fowler called himself a farmer, though he farmed just enough to stave off starvation. Rail-thin and sallow-faced, he was perpetually hungry-looking. For miles around, neighbors dreaded his visits because he seldom left without taking something with him whether it was offered or not. Nothing he borrowed ever seemed to find its way home unless the owner went and fetched it. Half the time it was not to be found, even then. Gaskin would have broken it, sold it, or traded it for something else.
    Gaskin was shouting, "Git him, Euclid! Git up and show him. We don't let no damned halfway Indian come to town and act like he's as good as a white man." Tobacco juice streamed from Fowler's lips and glistened in his gray-speckled beard.
    Though Euclid Summerville was several years older than Andy and forty pounds heavier, he lay pinned on his back. Andy sat astraddle and pounded on him while Summerville waved his hands futilely, trying to ward off the blows.
    He was Gaskin's nephew. Rusty used to believe that Texas could never produce specimens of humanity as worthless as Gaskin's late sons, but Summerville had proven him wrong. He was as lazy as his uncle, sharing the old man's bad habits and contributing a few of his own. Rusty had heard speculation that he had been more than friendly with Gaskin's homely daughter. If that was so, he hated to think what manner of offspring the inbreeding might produce.
    "How I wear my hair is my business," Andy declared. "Now say you like it just the way it is."
    Summerville choked as he tried to answer. "Damn Indian son of a bitch!" He face was red enough to suggest he was about to go into some kind of slobbering fit.
    Andy gave Summerville's arm a strong twist. "Say it."
    "All right, all right. I'm sayin' it."
    Gaskin stepped in closer to protest. "Git up from there and whup him, Euclid. You can do it."
    Obviously Summerville could not. His dusty face, already pudgy, was beginning to swell from the punishment. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Andy pushed to his feet and stepped back. Stooping to pick up a pocketknife, he started to close the blade, then reconsidered and broke it off against a hitching post. He pitched the ruined knife to Summerville.
    "Next time you try to cut off my hair, I'm liable to cut off somethin' of yours.
    Gaskin shouted, "Where's the law when you need it? This damned Comanche needs to be throwed in jail."
    A bystander said, "Euclid started it. You'd better tell him to pick on people his own size from now on. The smaller ones can beat the whey out of him." Several onlookers laughed.
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