"Kinda cold," Boyd said, pulling his blanket about his shoulders.
"No fire here." Drew handed over his companion's share of rations, some cold corn bread and bacon carefully portioned out of their midday cooking.
"'Member how Mam Gusta used to make us those dough geese? Coffee-berry eyes.... I could do with some coffee berries now, but not to make eyes for geese!"
Dough geese with coffee-berry eyes! The big summer kitchen at Oak Hill and the small, energetic, and very dark skinned woman who ruled it with a cooking spoon of wood for her scepter and abject obedience from all who came into her sphere of influence and control. Dough geese with coffee-berry eyes; Drew hadn't thought of those for years and years.
"I could do with some of Mam Gusta's peach pie." He was betrayed by memory into that wistfulness.
"Peach pie all hot in a bowl with cream to top it," Boyd added reverently. "And turkey with the fixin's—or maybe young pork! Seems to me you think an awful lot about eatin' when you're in the army. I can remember the kitchen at home almost better than I can my own room...."
"Anse, he was talkin' last night about some Mexican eatin' he did down 'long the border. Made it sound mighty interestin'. Drew, after this war is over and we've licked the Yankees good and proper, why don't we go down that way and see Texas? I'd like to get me one of those wild horses like those Anse's father was catchin'."
"We still have a war on our hands here," Drew reminded him. But the thought of Texas could not easily be dug out of mind, not when a man had carried it with him for most of his life. Texas, where he had almost been born, Hunt Rennie's Texas. What was it like? A big wild land, an outlaws' land. Didn't they say a man had "gone to Texas" when the sheriff closed books on a fugitive? Yes, Drew had to admit he wanted to see Texas.
"Drew, you have any kinfolk in Texas?"
"Not that I know about." Not for the first time he wondered about that. There had been no use asking any questions of his grandfather or of Uncle Murray. And Aunt Marianna had always dismissed his inquiries with the plea that she herself had only been a child at the time Hunt Rennie came to Red Springs and knew very little about him. Odd that Cousin Merry had been so reticent, too. But Drew had pieced out that something big and ugly must have happened to begin all the painful tangle which had led from his grandfather's cold hatred for Hunt Rennie, that hatred which had been transferred to Hunt Rennie's son when the original target was gone.