Bitter Trail by Elmer Kelton

Author:Elmer Kelton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2012-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Frio coughed as the south wind whipped up dust from the edge of the trail. He could imagine how much worse it must be in the drags, where Happy Jack Fleet was not so happy, bringing up the rear of Frio’s train along the Mexican side of the river.

It seemed to Frio that this drought would never end. It conspired to make a difficult situation almost impossible—compounded the misery that already was bad enough, bringing these groaning wagons and these thirsting mules the long way around on a trail woefully short of feed. All winter he had watched Mexican teamsters on the oxcart trains, burning the thorns from prickly pear and feeding the pear to their oxen. But mules wouldn’t eat prickly pear, with or without the thorns. So all winter Frio had had to devote space to maize and corn, space that would better have gone to cotton.

The river had receded to shoals in many places. Once he saw the steamer Mustang snagged on a sand bar. The Union officer in charge of troops aboard paced back and forth, swearing. The ship’s crew was making signs of trying to free the little ship, but Frio knew their hearts weren’t in it. Their loyalty remained with the Kennedy & Co. leadership and the Confederacy. They were doing only what they had to do for the Union, and taking their own sweet time about even that.

From the rear of the train, Happy Jack Fleet yelled at the troops, “Why don’t you Yanks get off and push?”

What the soldiers yelled back at him was unintelligible, but its general meaning was plain enough.

The train’s entry into Matamoros attracted much less attention than had the first one, only days after the Union had taken Brownsville. Frio understood this; Texas wagons were arriving in Matamoros almost every day now. They were becoming commonplace. Yet he was aware of one thing: People were looking upon him personally with an interest they had never shown before. He was the one who had first beaten the Yankees, the one who had shown the others the way. Suddenly he was no longer “Frio” as much as he was “Mr. Wheeler.”

Coming up in the world, he thought, finding it somehow a little humorous. He hadn’t sought this new importance, and he didn’t take it very seriously.

He led the wagons into the Confederate cottonyard and shook hands with Hugh Plunkett. Plunkett grunted. “Brought me some more work, is all you done. Don’t a man ever get any rest?”

“I haul it, you sell it. This war ever gets over with, maybe we can both rest.”

Frio saw a young Union lieutenant in dusty blue leaning against a gatepost. Plunkett explained: “They got a man over here all the time now, not doin’ a thing but watchin’ what we do, countin’ how much cotton we get, how much stuff we ship in and out. It don’t do them any good to know—just makes them mad. Looks to me like they’d be happier just to stay ignorant.

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