Call Me Francis Tucket by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen [Paulsen, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80417-4
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

———— Chapter Eight ————

The next morning was different. He started right, ate some meat and drank water, made sure all his gear was finally dry, and was moving well before dawn.

Morning light revealed that the line of bluffs to the north had come to a shallow end and he swung straight north on the off chance that he would run into the wagon train.

It was a beautiful day and the mare was frisky, so he let her run for a mile to burn it out, loping easily, and was amazed to see the mule keep up handily.

“Whoa …” He held the mare down and studied the mule. It had filled out beautifully in just two days of constant eating and wasn’t breathing hard though it had loped a mile. “You actually look younger,” Francis said aloud. “Maybe we can rig a pack saddle up later and use you.”

He set off again, holding the mare to a fast walk, his eyes sweeping the grass in front of them, and in two hours he found a track.

Actually, if he’d blinked he would have missed it. It wasn’t a track so much as a faint line across the prairie, heading west, a blemish in the grass that could only be seen when the light was exactly right.

It was not left by a train—probably by a single wagon—but it was something, a track, which was better than he’d had before, and he turned to follow it. It must have been made before the rain, and the grass the wagon had run over had been broken enough to stay at least partially down. When Francis dismounted and felt down in the grass he could feel slight indentations in the prairie sod, barely half an inch deep.

He remounted and followed the track, which seemed to go west by slightly south, and tried not to hope.

It was only midday, but by late afternoon the tracks seemed to have faded more and he was having trouble following them. It had struck him as odd that a single wagon would come out here alone, but there was something drawing him on and he decided to give it another hour or two before turning back to the west.

The country was the same. Rolling flat, or what seemed to be flat with shallow dips into more flatness. He thought he could see for miles, and he couldn’t see anything like a wagon, and at last he decided to end the run and cut north again.

His turn to the north took him onto a low rise, and at the top of the rise he happened to glance left and something caught his eye.

He stopped and studied it. Way off, over a mile, there was something round sticking up out of the grass. It wasn’t white, quite, but a gray color. A gray spot and he realized it was tarp, canvas, and that he was looking at the top of a covered wagon.

The mare turned west again without his meaning to turn her—answering pressure from his knees—and he nudged her into a fast walk.

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