The Drive North Chapter 14
By Jess MacIntosh
S.E. Hinton owns any character you recognize and I am not making any money from this.
Phillippe stood sipping the morning brew and watching Tex help Angelique saddle her horse.
A month ago, hell, a week ago, he thought, she'd a shot anyone who suggested she needed help with her horse. But here she was, giggling and smiling at some rigmarole that farm boy was spouting.
"You don't need to worry,"
Philippe started when he realized Mason was standing next to him. Damn, those Rogers boys could move quiet when they were of a mind to.
"He won't hurt that little girl. In any way."
"Hell, I was thinkin' on asking him to come live with us. This is the first time I've seen her acting like a human being."
"Well, maybe..." Mason drawled thoughtfully, "when she was a little thing she thought the boys were getting a lot more attention. Maybe she thought acting like a boy would get her some notice, too. And now she's got someone paying attention to her because she is a girl. So she's more inclined to act like one."
Phillippe nodded. That made sense. "Your brother sure is a lively cuss, ain't he?"
Mason snorted. "I guess you could call it that."
Tex had made close friends with everyone on the trail in a matter of days. He rode on the spare wagon with Johnnycake and swapped mule stories—he'd grown up facing the backend of a mule, he said, was plowing by the time he could first reach the handles.
He could tease Pistol out of a dark mood, mostly commenting on his mustache. "Squeeze them rats out of your nose, Pistol. No use telling me they ain't up there, I see their tails hanging out."
He took roping lessons from Curly, herding lessons from Tim and Darry, let Pony ride his horse one day. Pony had been awed to muteness by the incredible power he had felt behind that light bit.
"Went all the way to Kentucky to get our horses." Tex had told him. "Bred to race. Mine used to fox hunt, too."
Pony had two older brothers and a few weeks on the trail, so he was always wary of someone trying to put something over on him.
"How can you train a horse to hunt foxes?" He'd asked skeptically.
When Tex got his breath back from laughing he'd said: "No, you train hound dogs to chase the foxes. Then you train the horses to follow the hounds. Full out gallop, jumping over anything that gets in their way. It is the most damn fun you can have."
One evening they had all been startled by the war cries of Indians—Tim had been on his feet with his gun out when White Snake and Tex came stampeding through the camp; Tex stripped to the waist and wearing war paint, riding bareback, had jumped his large animal over the supply wagon. White Snake had "counted coup" by touching his coup stickt to the top of Tim's head. The war whoops had faded as they galloped off.
Mason hadn't even looked up.
"I figured something like that was going to happen when I noticed them two gettin' thick. " He had commented. "I apologize for my brother. He never did have a lick of sense. If you want me to shoot him, I'll do it. No sense in anyone else wasting a bullet."
Everyone else had been laughing by then, except Tim, who found nothing humorous in anything White Snake did.
Now, standing next to the Boss, Mason said, "You notice how your good cook got even better after Tex started telling him he's the best he's ever come across? Well, that's Texas for you. He always sees people the way they are and the way he wants them to be. Both at once. I swear, even with all the renegades and scoundrels we've come across, he never met a man he didn't like."
"How does he see you?"
Mason grinned a little bit. "He sees me as the bossy, know-it-all big brother who'd shoot him before he'd let anyone else do it. That's who I am, and who he needs me to be."
"Boss! Boss!"
Both men looked up quickly as Soda galloped full speed into camp, pulled up and spun around just in time to miss the campfire.
"Gun shots ahead! Lots of them! Tim and Darry are already headed that way. Pony!" He yelled, "You stay in camp!"
"You, too, Angel!" the Boss shouted.
Phillippe yanked his horse loose from the picket line. Even with the time it took the Rogers brothers to saddle up, they quickly over-took both Soda and the Boss, leaving them dropped-jawed in their dust.
The riders passed the herd, the cows wandering and grazing now that their drovers were gone. Even Curly had deserted them.
They could hear the gunshots now, the volleys and returns reminding Phillippe of old battles, Commanche and Mexican. He pulled up at the top of a slight ridge, holding up a hand to stop Soda, too.
They surveyed the scene below them, before racing down the slope to join the others.