Synopsis

In this standalone sequel to The Big Drift—winner of five awards including the Spur Award of Western Writers of America—Patrick Dearen explores race relations against the backdrop of the Big Dry, a devastating drought in the 1880s in Texas. Zeke Boles, a black cowhand, awaits hanging in North Texas for a murder he didn’t commit. His white friend Will Brite, with whom he rode in the Big Drift blizzard, has exhausted virtually all avenues to get Zeke exonerated. Will’s only hope is to set out for the faraway Devils River to find the actual culprit, a man with a missing finger.

But Will has his own legal issues. He has married Jessie, a young woman of mixed race who often passes for white, and a grand jury is sure to return an indictment of miscegenation that could land Will in prison. Follow the exploits of Will and his friend Arch Brannon as they join a cattle drive through a searing land between the Devils and Pecos rivers.  This hellish trail is destined to be marked with carcasses and a lonely grave, but at its end lies the only hope for tomorrow.

2025 finalist, Spur Award of Western Writers of America

2025 finalist, Peacemaker Award of Western Fictioneers

2025 medalist, Will Rogers Medallion Award

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Excerpt

Jessie, Jessie! Have I wronged you?

Have I wronged you, sweet Jessie?

Thirty-year-old Will Brite had much on his mind as he stepped off his bay horse at the closed “whites only” tavern at Doans on the Texas side of the Big Red. Not only did everything about Jessie weigh on him, but somewhere there was a cowhand with a missing ring finger on his right hand.

Zeke Boles, a Black cattle drover facing the gallows in the shooting death of his employer and onetime master, had known it from the start. And now, Will knew it too as he mounted the creaking boardwalk. He had been here before, a half-dozen times in the fifteen months since a Texas Ranger had arrested Zeke far to the southwest. But in the sunrise light of this August day in 1886, Will saw the covered boardwalk as if for the first time.

The rays burnished a stain on the corner post, and Will ran his fingers down the smear. He could feel the texture of the wood’s grain all the way to the boardwalk that still showed the dark blotch where cattleman Andrew Young had bled out and left Zeke seemingly culpable. Zeke claimed that he had been protecting the man who had been the one constant in his three decades, but in this unjust world, the word of a former slave carried little weight against the testimony of white witnesses. Indeed, seven Bar X drovers from the distant Nueces River had sworn to rushing from the tavern upon hearing the gunshot and finding Zeke alone, holding a smoking forty-five revolver over the body.

Will turned toward the sunrise. Off the far end of the boardwalk, the person truly responsible could have run away unseen by anyone else. As Zeke told it, a drunken cowhand had stumbled out of the tavern and found him waiting for Master Young. The intolerant cowhand had pistol-whipped Zeke, and when Young had come outside and defended Zeke, the assailant had gotten the best of him.

Every detail of Zeke’s story made sense: With Young helpless against the post, the cowhand had cocked the forty-five to kill him, and Zeke had leaped into the fray. Zeke’s finger had been on the trigger as they had struggled over the weapon, and when the revolver had boomed, Young had slid down the post and streaked it red.

Regardless of the truth, a white man like Will had died, and witnesses had seen a Negro with a grip on the forty-five. Zeke had been left with no choice but to run, and run he had—hundreds of miles down to the Slash Fives on the Middle Concho and into Will’s life.

During Zeke’s trial, there had been no way to establish his innocence, but Will had hope as he turned about. When he had visited Zeke in Wilbarger County Jail in nearby Vernon a day ago, Zeke had casually mentioned something not disclosed in court. The drunken cowboy’s gloved hand had been over the muzzle during the struggle, and the bullet that had killed Master Young had shot off the cowhand’s ring finger. Assuredly, when Zeke had rushed for his horse, he had seen a dozen chickens fighting over the prize just off the boardwalk and dislodging a thin gold band.

Now that Will had come in search, he found the ground between the boardwalk and hitching post dusty, for it had been heavily trafficked. Whenever rain had fallen, water had poured from the tavern’s eaves and rendered the spot a mudhole. Boots had tramped or slogged through countless times, and any dollar-a-day cowboy would have been drawn to a shiny article of value. The likelihood of finding evidence was remote, but Will retrieved a small shovel from the saddle of his horse and set to work.

As a buzzard wheeled overhead, periodically throwing a dark shadow across Will, he scraped and dug and sifted with his hands. He could hear the rasp of the shovel blade and smell the fresh dirt, but the only foreign objects that ran through his fingers were cigarette butts and old quids of tobacco. He was discouraged, and he used the side of his foot to scrape the excavated soil back in place.

When he tamped the loose dirt with the back of the shovel, he heard the ping of metal against metal and discovered a thin, gold band, just as Zeke had described. It was too large for a man’s little finger, but a close fit for the digit alongside.

From the moment in the spring of ’85 when Zeke had confided in him, Will had never doubted his account of the shooting. But there was something about holding tangible evidence that made it all the more convincing.

About the Author

A Texas Literary Hall of Fame member and author of 28 books, Patrick Dearen was born in 1951 and grew up in the small West Texas town of Sterling City. He earned a bachelor of journalism from The University of Texas at Austin in 1974 and received nine national and state awards as a reporter for two West Texas daily newspapers.

An authority on the Pecos and Devils rivers of Texas, Dearen also has gained recognition for his knowledge of old-time cowboy life. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he preserved the firsthand accounts of 76 men who cowboyed before 1932. These interviews, along with decades of archival study, have enriched Dearen’s 18 novels and led to 10 nonfiction books.

His new novel is The Big Dry, a standalone sequel to his 2014 novel The Big Drift, winner of five awards that include the Spur Award of Western Writers of America and the Peacemaker Award of Western Fictioneers. His other recent fiction releases are Grizzly Moon (Spur Award finalist), The End of Nowhere (Peacemaker Award finalist), Haunted Border (Elmer Kelton Award), Apache Lament (Will Rogers Gold Medallion), Dead Man’s Boot (Peacemaker Award finalist), and The Illegal Man, a modern-day western about illegal immigration. His other novels include When Cowboys Die (Spur Award finalist), To Hell or the Pecos (Elmer Kelton Award), and Perseverance, which concerns hobo life in Depression-era Texas.

A backpacking enthusiast and ragtime pianist, Dearen makes his home in Midland, Texas, with his wife Mary.

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