volume one IN THE D U D L E Y C L A R K - Ohio Vine Tours

westward to the land of Texas. With no family, and feeling beholden for
their kindnesses, he accepted the offer and left behind forever the world of his
boyhood.
Years would drift by and he would think often of his brother, and of what
became of him, and why he had not been present to defend his mother and
sister.
In time, wanted posters and mistaken identities would convince him his
brother still lived, and thus would he begin to search for the sole relative in
the world with whom he shared memories and blood.
He supposed his mother would have liked it better if, besides simply
carrying around her Good Book, he committed to live by its teachings. But
over years of wandering and drifting, he had unintentionally become like
what he imagined his brother to be—an untamed rogue with too fast a gun,
and unrepenting when he used it.
The main difference between him and his brother lay in the fact that he
did not savor the act of killing, as it seemed his brother did. Nor did he go
looking for trouble. His skills with six-shooter and rifle had been acquired
by necessity, as acts of survival. The Great War taught him that a man
could change loyalties as easily as removing a dirty shirt. Also, that staring
a man down with cold, flat eyes wasn’t an acquirement of nature so much as
it was an attitude, the consequence of discipline.
Just like riding a horse or drawing an inside straight.
He flipped to a dog-eared page in Exodus he discovered one day riding
herd many years before, and ran his finger down to the passage he had
committed to memory:
Our cattle shall also go with us;
There shall not an hoof be left behind;
For thereof must we take to serve the
Lord our God; and we know not with
What we must serve the Lord, until we
come thither.
He reckoned there had been a species of Cowboy even back in those old,
Biblical days.
He smiled at this, then closed his eyes and was soon fast asleep.
20 ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY