Thunder in the Valley Page 18

  He studied me, a smile still curling the corners of his mouth. It was as if at times he stepped inside my skin and read my thoughts. “Nothing lasts forever, eh, little brother. Sooner or later higher duty calls and the best men part company . . . for a while. But it’s the right of the bigger brother to follow the warrior path, ain’t it now?”

  I stammered and couldn’t speak, stunned by the enormity of his decision. He was embarking on a venture that left me behind, and I didn’t like it at all.

  “Don’t judge me too harshly, Blaine. We can’t rightly spend all our born days fearin’ the damnable savages. The Tyler family must put its share in the kettle an’ help with the fightin’, no matter the tally.”

  I couldn’t disagree with a solitary word. But that wouldn’t make our parting the least bit more tolerable. We had always been together, close as twins.

  “Well,” Blake said with another disarming smile, “we can tarry an’ starve or get ta the table ’fore Step-mother bars the door. What’s it gonna be, Lem?”

  “We eat, dagnabit,” Lem roared, and charged past him.

  Blake waited and put his arm round me, and we marched into Paw’s lion’s den together, both shaking bad as old Daniel hisself.

  Jim R. Woolard is an acclaimed writer and historian. His novels, including Riding with Morgan, Riding for the Flag, Cold Moon, and Feathered Tide, portray life on the American frontier in all its harsh beauty and danger. Thunder in the Valley was awarded the Medicine Pipe for Best First Novel and the Spur Award for Best Original Paperback novel by the Western Writers of America.