Francis rose to his knees and looked to the rear where an old mule, so skinny its ribs stuck out inches, stood with its head hanging nearly to the ground. On its back was a blanket worn until there were holes through it, no saddle, and instead of a bridle a loop went around the lower jaw. The miracle, Francis thought, was that the mule had gotten this far.

“You see what I mean.” Courtweiler pointed to the mule. “Dubs prefers to go afoot, and by the third day will outrun a horse. But given as I am to more intellectual pursuits and less of the physical I need to ride. And so we must have your horse.”

“I have kin,” Francis said. “Just over that rise. They’ll be looking for me …”

Courtweiler shook his head. “Dissembling won’t help, my boy. We came from there. There are no people there, no tracks, nothing. I do not know how you arrived here but let me assure you, there is nobody close to help you.”

“I’ll die if you leave me here with nothing.”

Courtweiler sighed. “Indeed. There is that possibility. Still, life on the frontier is very hard and we must expect these little setbacks and somehow muddle on, don’t you agree? Now, please take off that shirt before I have to ask Dubs to assist you …”

Francis hesitated, saw Dubs move and decided not to anger the huge man. He shrugged out of his shirt, felt the morning coolness on his skin.

“Off the blanket, please.”

Francis moved from the blanket and Dubs snaked it off the ground and rolled it up in one fluid motion and stood again, still, waiting.

“And now, Francis, as fruitful as it has been to meet you, I’m afraid we must be off …”

Dubs had already caught the mare—Francis could not believe they had done all this without awakening him—and they saddled her, left the mule standing and rode off, Courtweiler holding Francis’s rifle across his lap as they rode away, headed west while Francis sat next to a dead buffalo, a nearly dead mule, and watched them go.

TURN THE PAGE FOR A PEEK AT ANOTHER RIP-ROARING TUCKET ADVENTURE.…

TUCKET’S RIDE

Join Francis Tucket and his adopted family, Lottie and Billy, as they become entangled in the Mexican-American War of 1848.

Available from Yearling Books

Excerpt from Tucket’s Ride by Gary Paulsen

Copyright © 1997 by Gary Paulsen

Published by Yearling
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York

———— Chapter One ————

Francis Tucket lay on the ridge and watched the adobe hut a hundred yards away and slightly below him. He had his rifle resting on a hump of dirt, the sights unmoving, pointed at the doorway to the hut.