Webb would miss having Shannon around. “Surely you’d not depart our midst before you’ve harvested your crop.”

“And leave the fruits of my labor for somebody who never broke a sweat? Old Mother Shannon never raised no halfwit sons, ’y God. I figure we’ll leave in the fall and locate us a place. I’ll break the land this winter and have her ready to seed in the spring.”

Webb understood the pioneer wanderlust, for he harbored a liberal case of it himself. It had caused him to leave his boyhood home in Alabama and had brought him by fits and starts to the Republic of Texas after the revolution against Mexico. “I’d not mind followin’ after you, Mike. I’ve an itch to be seein’ new country.”

“Come with us, then. There’s fever in this low ground, and I’ve noted that you’ve got an unhealthy cough. There’s others movin’ out yonder. Where there’s people there’s a need for somebody to teach the ways of the Lord, lest they go heathen.”

Shannon was right. Webb’s lungs sometimes ached, and often he felt himself short of strength. He was tall of frame but so thin he sometimes wondered how he managed to cast a decent shadow. He attributed his condition to the humidity and smothering heat of this region near the Gulf of Mexico. A higher elevation should be better for his health.

Shannon said, “It ain’t good to stay in one place too long—dulls a man. You wear out one farm, you move on to another. That’s what the Lord put the land here for.”

“I don’t know that He meant for us to wear it out.”

“He must’ve, ’y God, because He gave us so much. There ain’t no end to it.” Shannon made a broad sweep with his arm toward a horizon flat and endless.

For a while Webb had been aware of a tan cloud hovering low in the northeast. He had first thought it might be a dust storm, because the weather had turned dry of late, but it occurred to him that the wind did not seem strong enough to raise that much dust. Besides, the cloud appeared localized, moving slowly westward.

Shannon thought along similar lines. “Kind of odd doin’s yonder, don’t you think?”

Webb had seen large horse herds stir dust like that, but this seemed an out-of-the-way place for traders to be taking a remuda, away from the major settlements. “Might be a group of immigrants, strayed off of the main trail to look for grass.”

“If so, maybe they’re in the mood to hear the Word, and might be me and you could get us a woman-cooked meal.”

“You had a woman-cooked breakfast this mornin’. Your Dora is as good a cook as ever I ate after.”

“But I can’t remember the last time I had a cup of real coffee that wasn’t stretched out with parched grain. Maybe them folks have got some.”

Webb had intended to be at the Linnville settlement by dark, but he supposed tomorrow would be soon enough. If these people were in need of preaching, it was his obligation to offer it. “Let’s go see about that coffee.”