A Vast and Desolate Land
Date: 2018-12-21 06:00:00+00:00
Description: Justice in a lawless land. When honor demands a life, can honor be satisfied with the life of an innocent man? Does a criminal deserve mercy when an innocent man is standing in his stead? In the vast emptiness of the Llano Estacado, Rab Sinclair finds there are no easy answers when he becomes a pawn in a barbaric plot to mete out punishment. When a renegade band of Comanche demand a life for a life, and any life will do, Rab Sinclair and an outfit of vaqueros and hired gunmen are forced to track a criminal in order to save a friend. In the untamed West, a man’s sense of justice ends where surv
Publisher: Mooncalf Press

A VAST AND

DESOLATE LAND

◊

ROBERT PEECHER

For information the author may be contacted at

PO Box 967; Watkinsville GA; 30677
or at mooncalfpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual events in whole or in part are purely accidental. None of the characters or events depicted in this novel are intended to represent actual people.

Copyright © 2018 ROBERT PEECHER

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781723844218

For Harrison,

A fine traveling partner

Through a Vast and Desolate Land

CONTENTS

-1-

-2-

-3-

-4-

-5-

-6-

-7-

-8-

-9-

-10-

-11-

-12-

-13-

-14-

-15-

-16-

-17-

-18-

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-20-

-21-

-22-

-23-

-24-

-25-

-26-

-27-

-1-

Distance, like time, played havoc in this place.

In the distance, a small herd of pronghorn grazed on what grass they could find.

The distance deceived the eye on the flat, open plain of the Llano Estacado. The pronghorn might be a mile or maybe half a mile, but probably not more than two miles. The Llano Estacado existed as a vast emptiness where distance deceived and time passed according to no schedule.

Skinner Jake gave a disgusted glance at his Sharps rifle and spat brown juice onto the crusty sand at his feet. With respect to the pronghorns, the empty cartridge box rendered that Sharps rifle as useless as a stick. So Skinner Jake just watched the pronghorn meander, and he spat brown juice.

Distance deceived.

To the south thirty miles, or maybe sixty, dark clouds melted to the earth in the first sign of water Skinner Jake had seen in days. So he picked up his Sharps and the possibles bag that was running out of defenses against possibilities. The one he cradled in the crook of his elbow, and the other he slung over a shoulder.

South to water.

Those who knew him still called him Skinner Jake, though he'd not cut the hide off a buffalo in more than two years. Buffalo skinning proved to be a filthy way to make a living, but he done it long enough to earn the nickname. Cut and peel, slice with the sharp knife, careful not to damage the pelt, peel back the hide. Long, hot days on the open plains tracking sign with one of the best buffalo runners who ever shot a bull. He could put down ten or fifteen from a herd in short order. Lank Hawkins they called that man. Ol' Lank, tall and skinny with just a few good teeth and a patch of bald on the front of his head where an Injun had tried to take his top knot. He didn't much take off his hat, even in a church, but mostly Ol' Lank just stayed away from places where he might be conspicuous for his head gear.

Lank Hawkins taught Skinner Jake all he ever knew about buffalo hunting, and Skinner Jake got to be pretty good with a rifle. Though on this current trip, he'd hired on to skin, not shoot.

Skinner Jake considered that he'd be pleased right now for Lank Hawkins' company.

Them pronghorns had water. They would not be here if there warn't water to be had nearby. But finding it could be just as impossible as using that empty Sharps to bring down one of them pronghorns.

Skinner Jake found himself in a sorry spot, and just now it seemed a small likelihood that he'd make it out.

A month ago, he'd come out on the Staked Plains with a dozen other men. Four wagons, two horses a piece for all the men. They intended to cross the Llano Estacado in search of buffalo. They brought with them ample supplies for the trip. They wandered the Staked Plains without seeing more than a small herd of buffalo. When they saw it, they brought them down and skinned them up, but it was too small a load in the wagon to turn back. So they kept wandering and seeking.

Then the Comanche attacked.

The band of buffalo runners scattered from their camp, and Skinner Jake couldn't say what happened to some of the others. Except for a boy called Dave. Dave took a bullet in the thigh. Jake helped Dave, and together they fled the marauders, finding refuge in a deep wash.

Most, maybe all the rest, lost their scalps and their lives.

Skinner Jake knew for sure that the Irishman Murphy was killed. He saw that happen. And Murphy's son, too. Father and son died together as they fled on foot across the open plain. A half dozen mounted Comanche rode down on them, speared them, dismounted, and committed slaughter.

Skinner was lugging Dave, running, falling, pulling Dave back to his feet. When he saw the Comanche ride down on Murphy and his son, he pulled Dave off in a different direction. That's when they fell into the wash. In his panic, Skinner never even saw it. He just fell and pulled Dave with him.

With just their hands and Skinner's knife, they dug into the bank of the wash and pulled themselves in as far as they could.

It was enough.

The sounds of the slaughter reached them. Skinner Jake believed now that the screams of his companions would be with him as long as he lived, even if he survived this.

When it was over and the Comanche were gone, Dave was dead. He bled to death hiding their in the dugout embankment of the wash.

But Skinner Jake survived the initial attack. He picked through the wreckage left behind and found his own Sharps rifle. The Sharps was in tall grass, but not difficult to find. It perplexed him why the Comanche did not take it. But it hardly mattered because they took the powder and balls.

For more than a week Skinner Jake wandered, trying to find his way back to anything like civilization. But there were no trails here, no roads, no signs that pointed to anything. And the vast, high plain whipped its wind and battered him. The nights were so cold he could only sleep from complete exhaustion, and the daytime sun seemed to bake his face.

Still, the thing he feared most was coming upon the Comanche.

The Llano Estacado appeared flat and stretched off to unimaginable distances, but Skinner Jake knew that across the level plain there were depressions and washes and hollows where the ground sank away. But even in these places he could find no water. No puddles left from a recent rain. No river flowing. The wind whipped into even the low places and worked together with the sun to steal every bit of water that might sustain life.

Common sense and the weakness in his bones told him that the rain to the south was too far. He could not survive that trek.

When Skinner Jake gave up, he found a pencil and some paper in his bag. This was not the way he wanted his life to end. It was a thing he feared, dying alone of exposure and thirst and hunger, and yet here he was in the face of that thing.

He did not have much in the way of letters, but he knew which letters made which sounds and could scratch them out on paper well enough to make himself understood.

With hands blistered and skin cracked from the constant wind, Skinner Jake made his final letters.

"I am noin by Skinr Jak. Skinr of buff. I cum to this plays with a band o men, but they all kilt by comanchee. I run and git cleer o them, but am now lost and out o wata and fuud. Wil di heer. If u find my bodee, take nif and sharps ryfel and buree me. All hop gon. Shud not hav cum heer. Ant no buff inee how."

He stuffed the note inside his shirt pocket and then crawled down into a shallow wash with a sandy bottom. There he stretched out on the ground, sheltered a bit from the wind, and Skinner Jake used his possibles bag as a pillow.

There, Skinner Jake waited to die.

-2-

Two men picked through the wreckage left by the Comanche.

Bodies were strung out for a mile around the busted up wagons. Dead horses and dead men, both.

Clothes blew out across the Staked Plains — a red bandanna turning somersaults across the grass first caught their attention, and they followed its path to a high spot where they could see more colorful clothes and the wagons.

Caleb Morgan turned his head and wretched when he discovered the man tied spread-eagle, his wrists at the top of a wagon wheel and his ankles staked into the ground. They'd built a fire at the V where the man's legs were spread, cooking his genitals while he was still alive.

"It's hideous," Caleb said, his stomach still turning and the bile of fear in his throat. The horror of it repulsed him, but deep down Caleb's fear that the same might happen to him is what turned his stomach so violently.

Most of the others among the dead went faster. A bullet or lance in the back, their hair cut away.

"Comanche don't want the white man coming into this place," Rab Sinclair said. "These bodies are a warning to stay away."

"Maybe we should not be here," Caleb said.

"Maybe not."

They looked around at the remains of the wagons and the men.

"Buffalo runners," Sinclair proclaimed. "Come up here hunting buffalo."

"How can you tell?" Caleb asked. In the time that he'd lived on Rab Sinclair's ranch in New Mexico Territory, Caleb Morgan had come to realize he had an opportunity to learn some rare lessons. Sinclair's unusual upbringing and his travels gave Caleb access to expertise that some men spent all their lives trying to obtain without every getting close.

"Look at what's scattered around. Sugar and flour, jerky, gunpowder and lead balls. The Comanche would not have wasted so much of the sort of thing they want if there'd not been plenty more to loot. Every sack of sugar or salt you see is another two bags the Comanche took with them. These men came here with food enough to feed themselves for weeks. No women or children, so they ain't homesteaders. Most of them ain't wearing holsters, so they carried rifles and not six-shooters. This is a hunting party."

Rab pointed to the baggage scattered around.

"If you pile all their belongings up and even if you double it figuring the Comanche took that much more, you've still only got enough provisions and supplies to fill one of these wagons. That means they was planning to bring something back off the Plains with them. Hides. There ain't nothing else up here on the Staked Plains to hunt and skin other than buffalo, and precious few of them."

The older of the two, Sinclair, followed tracks in the crusty sand. Two men fled this way. The tracks led some distance away from the wagons, and ahead of him Rab saw that the tracks disappeared down into a dry wash, so narrow that it was barely visible even from just a few yards away. Rab dropped down into the wash and found the body of a man who'd bled out. The body was hid well enough in a hastily dug out hole in the side of the embankment. This body, unlike the others, still had its hair.

Rab stood up and called to Caleb Morgan, "One of them got away."

Caleb hurried over to where Rab was standing down in the wash.

"How do you know?" Caleb called.

Rab pointed to the tracks. "Two men ran this way. One helping the other. If you look, you see tracks from just three feet, occasionally a fourth foot where the man dropped a wounded leg. In the confusion of the attack, these two got away. They ran here, to this wash, and dug themselves into the bank. The one with the wounded leg died here."

Rab nodded down toward his own feet. "He's still here. Still has his hair. The Commanche'd have scalped him, even if he was dead when they found him. But they didn't find him. I reckon the other that was with him must have waited until dark, or until the Comanche were gone, and then cut a trail out of here."

Caleb now stood over Rab, looking into the wash where he could just see the body.

Rab reached up and Caleb gave him a hand out of the wash.

"Should we look for him?" Caleb asked. "The one who survived?"

Rab looked at the sky above them, searching for some answer. The crows had gotten to the bodies here. Some were circling, angry that Rab and Caleb came along to disrupt their free meal. Others were hopping along on a ridge not far away. A murder gathered around a dead horse farther away from most of the bodies and was having a feast.

But Rab saw no other birds in the sky that might indicate the location of another body.

Far to the south rain dissolved down out of the sky. South was not their direction.

Rab Sinclair tightened his lips, his face grim and severe.

"He might head for water, but that's probably fifty miles from us. We've got work to do. If a man comes to a place like this, he needs to be prepared to get hisself out of it. We ain't nobody's rescue party."

Caleb nodded.

"What about these? Should we bury them?"

Rab shook his head. "The Comanche left these as a warning. We bury their warning, I promise you they'll use us to make the next one. Best get back to the others and keep moving."

They crossed again over the killing field. Caleb did not like to look at the bodies and see the grotesque places where their hair was cut away.

"Another one survived," Rab said, after looking at some tracks on the ground. "Look here."

They were near one of the wagons now, and Rab showed Caleb footprints that crisscrossed the field where the buffalo hunters had been slaughtered.

"He hid up under that tarp," Rab said. "You can tell, by the pattern of the tracks, he walked through here after it was all over."

"Maybe it was one of the Comanche," Caleb said.

"Look here," Rab said, drawing a circle in the sand around one of the tracks with his finger. "That's a boot heel, son. This was a white man. He came out from under that canvas tarp and he walked around, probably picking up supplies for hisself. And then he walked off to the south. Didn't run, neither. He stayed up under that tarp while all his outfit was killed around him, waited for the Comanche to leave, and then he walked away, easy as you please."

"What do you make of that, Rab?" Caleb asked. "A man hiding like that instead of standing to fight?"

Rab Sinclair stretched his neck.

"You can't fault a man too much for doing what he has to do to survive, Caleb," Rab said. "I reckon it's unfair to judge someone when you ain't been in their place. But I'll say this about it. I wouldn't want to call a man like that my friend. If I'm riding with a man, I'll fight for him and expect him to do the same for me."

"Even if it means getting killed?" Caleb asked.

"You pick the right friends to ride with and you won't get killed."

The two men walked back to where they'd ground tied their horses. Sinclair was riding a black-spotted Appaloosa and Caleb Morgan was mounted on a buckskin horse that was almost as good as Rab's roan.

They'd backtracked that bandanna for more than two miles, and when they topped a low ridge and could see the dust from the three-hundred head of cattle, Rab Sinclair felt some relief.

"Them Comanche that attacked the buffalo runners are going to gnaw on me," Rab said. "They'll care less about our steers than they did the salt and flour them buffalo runners had, but that was a war party what butchered those men. They're hunting scalps. We'll double up the watch and maybe enliven our pace."

Caleb nodded. His stomach was still turning for fear, and if Rab Sinclair had Comanches gnawing on him, that was a bad sign.

***

The outfit Rab Sinclair chose to drive the cattle out of Texas was a motley bunch, but Caleb Morgan had enjoyed their company. They were probably too many men for driving three hundred head of cattle, but even before they left New Mexico to go into Texas, Rab had warned Caleb there could be Injun trouble. Having a couple of extra men made sense.

Caleb, being the youngest in the outfit, took on the job of wrangling the horses. Nine men with two spare horses for each man meant that Caleb had spent the last three months taking care of eighteen horses at any given time. There were also the spare mules for the chuck wagon, but Sancho Biscuit managed his own mules.

Sancho Biscuit drove the chuck wagon and cooked the meals. They called him "Sancho Biscuit" because he could not, or would not, get any rise out of the biscuits he made. For years Sancho had cooked for one outfit or another, and always there were Southern men in the outfit who wanted biscuits the size of a cat's head. But flat bread was the best Sancho would do.

"He's a generally poor cook," Rab Sinclair told Caleb on one of their first nights out of New Mexico, "but he speaks a little Comanche, and that may mean more to us than the taste of his vittles."

Rab hired on three Mexican vaqueros — Miguel, Jorge, and Carlos. They did the bulk of the work with the critters, with Carlos riding almost like the trail boss.

A fellow called Fitzpatrick, who'd fought in the War, and another man named O'Toole who was a former army cavalryman and Indian fighter, rode at the back of the pack, even behind Caleb and the remuda. They were gunmen who Rab hired on to deal with trouble, whether it was bandits or rustlers or Comanche. Fitzpatrick and O'Toole were the rearguard.

Up in front were the other two men, Vazquez and a half-breed Apache named Kuwatee.

With Sancho Biscuit and Rab, it made for an outfit of ten men. It was too many for a herd of just three hundred, but Rab Sinclair was feeling careful.

The herd consisted of cows and a few bulls, but mostly steers that Rab bought cheap to graze on his ranch. When they were good and fat, Rab was going to sell them to the army at Fort Craig. Rab's intention with the cows and bulls was to grow his own stock with some hardy Texas longhorns.

"Ride down and let O'Toole and Fitzpatrick know about what we saw up there," Rab said. "They don't need the particulars, but let them know a band of buffalo hunters were attacked and killed. Also, let them know that one man survived it. Tell them to keep a lookout. If we see him, we'll take him with us."

Caleb returned to his horses, strung out and grazing at the back of the herd. O'Toole and Fitzpatrick had helped him manage the horses anytime they got too strung out, and being in the back with the remuda, they'd gotten to be friendly with Caleb.

As Caleb rode to the back, Rab rode up toward the front of the herd. He spoke quickly to each of the men.

This was a hard outfit. All of the men had been in battles of one kind or another, either singular fights with individual rivals or full-blown army fighting with Indians or Confederates or Yankees.

For his part, Rab Sinclair threw in with the Confederate army during the war, until it suited him to get out of it. Fitzpatrick was a Union cavalryman who took some pride that he'd fought under a fellow named Custer. Caleb had never heard of Custer, but outside of a few of the generals — Lee and Grant, Jackson and Sherman — Caleb didn't know the names of many people who'd fought in the war. That seemed a lifetime ago, and it was none of his business, anyway. He'd been a boy during the war.

Caleb passed the word to Fitzpatrick, and that man took the news without a trace of emotion.

"I'll keep watch for the survivor," was all Fitz had to say.

Then Caleb rode out to O'Toole.

"We found some buff hunters killed a couple of miles from here," Caleb said. "Rab says it looks like Comanche done it."

O'Toole's lips drew narrow and he shook his head. "That ain't good news. How long ago?"

"Pretty fresh, judging from the bodies," Caleb said. "Birds was at 'em, but they'd not been picked at too much."

"Hell," O'Toole said, which was his response to most everything. "I sure would like to run this herd back up to Las Vegas without having to fight no Injuns. How many hunters in the party?"

Caleb thought on it. "I didn't count, but maybe a dozen."

"Hell," O'Toole said again. "Hell on that. We ain't but ten, so they ain't afraid to fight a party our size. What's Rab say?"

"Says to keep a watch for the survivor," Caleb said.

"Hell," O'Toole said. "Hell on the survivor. He ain't my affair. Boy, you see any sign of Injun, you ride on and tell me right quick."

"I'll do it," Caleb said, wheeling the buckskin back around to catch up to a red-headed sorrel that was wandering in search of decent grass. That sorrel had a mind of its own and had been a constant source of irritation for Caleb this entire journey.

With Vazquez and Kuwatee at the front and Fitz and O'Toole in the rear, Caleb felt a sense of comfort as the cattle drive pushed on ahead. Half of the herd would be Caleb's. That was a gift to him from Rab Sinclair. Rab had helped him build a cabin on Rab's ranch southeast of Las Vegas. Caleb had spent time helping on the ranch, learning the way of things. And now Rab was setting Caleb up with his own stock. It was small, but it was a start. Provided there was no disease, it would be a good start. One man by himself could manage a hundred and fifty cattle, and Rab had given Caleb a couple of good pastures for the critters. The truth was that it was all open range, but only Rab Sinclair had any claim to the land. Mixed in with the steers they were bringing from Texas there was also a score of cows, and that was the real prize for Caleb. Those cows would one day be the mamas of his own stock.

Caleb pushed the buckskin over closer to the other horses.

The blue roan that Rab had named Cromwell was the real wrangler in this pack.

When Rab Sinclair wasn't riding him, Cromwell set the pace for the remuda. The other horses followed the roan. When they strayed too far, the blue roan would run out and give them a bite and push them back with the others. Part trail horse, part pack leader, part stock dog.

With the horses moving again, Caleb didn't have much to do other than ride behind and keep an eye on them.

Out across the backs of the steers, through the dust, he could see Rab Sinclair moving from one vaquero to the next, letting them know about the fate of the hunting party.

Then Rab rode forward up to where the half-breed Apache was sitting on a high spot. They talked for a long time so that the cattle caught up to them and began to pass them. Then the half-breed rode on ahead and Rab made out toward where Vazquez was riding, far ahead of everyone else.

Vazquez was a part-time deputy sheriff in San Miguel County. He was fast with a gun and didn't know fear. Had he ridden out with Rab and discovered the fate of the hunting party, Vazquez's stomach would not have twisted the way that Caleb's did.

"He ain't much for driving cattle, but if we get into a fight he'll be worth ten other men," Rab had said. "He fights like the devil."

People had said the same about Rab Sinclair.

Caleb Morgan didn't know the men in the hunting party. He didn't know their reputations or abilities. But he didn't think O'Toole was right. The Comanche might take on a hunting party of a dozen men, but they wouldn't try these hard men in this cattle drive. Not if they were smart.

-3-

Sancho Biscuit drove his wagon on ahead, trailing his mules on long lines about behind the chuck wagon.

When he was satisfied that he'd picked a good spot, he called his team to a stop and unhitched them from the wagon.

He staked the animals out near the wagon, but gave all of them lines enough that they could graze. Then he went about setting up for supper.

Salt pork cooked in a skillet with onion, then beans cooked with the grease from the pork. It was decent enough food for the trail. Sancho kept green and red chili peppers that he cut up and added to everything he cooked. Beans flavored with chili peppers. Pork flavored with chili peppers. Beef steak flavored with chili peppers. When he made up corn dodgers, he flavored them with chili peppers. Some were hotter than others, and Sancho amused himself by watching the white men try to eat the hot ones. O'Toole and Fitzpatrick, in particular, would starve before they'd eat the hot peppers.

He also made up flatbread with the flour he had, so that the entire meal could be wrapped up into the bread.

Each day Sancho was the last to leave camp and the first to arrive to the next camp. He had the job of selecting the site for the camp each evening, but Rab Sinclair had instructed him to always choose the highest ground he could find.

High ground on the Llano Estacado often could be measured out in inches. The Staked Plain all through here was flat as a saucer. A low hill in the distance might be eight miles away. But there were swales, depressions, even washes, and Rab Sinclair didn't want to be near anything like that. These were all places where an ambush could be made, or a man might hide in such a place until nightfall.

Sancho used his shovel to clear away a small pit for making a fire. He gathered up some loose stones nearby to put around the pit. All the wood he had to burn is what he brought with him, so the fire was never bigger than it had to be to cook. And Rab didn't like more smoke than was necessary.

Sancho had worked with trail bosses who liked a big fire that put off light all through the night. But not Rab Sinclair.

Small fire. Little smoke. High ground. Keep your eyes open. Watch for sign. Watch for people.

Always worried, that was Rab Sinclair.

The only time Rab altered his desire for high ground was when he directed Sancho to a place where there was water. Somehow, Sinclair knew always where to find water. But those spots were few out here on the Staked Plain.

He started the fire, using newspaper he'd picked up in a Texas town to get it going. Plenty of wind but no fuel meant that every fire had to be made with what a man brought with him. The possum belly of the wagon was loaded with wood, and the newspaper helped to get the fire lit when the wind would blow the flame off of every match. Sancho saw no need to worry about smoke. The wind here in this place whipped the smoke away before it had time to rise. The wind also made it a chore to get the fire started. Sancho had to get very near the newspaper to strike his match, and he had to cup his hand around the match to keep the flame from disappearing.

In the distance he could see the cattle moving. From here they looked like the earth itself, shifting and swaying. They kicked up dust, but so much sand blew anyway that the dust above the cattle was only a darker tinge on the horizon.

While the fire burned itself into hot coals, Sancho got his fry pans from the back of the chuck wagon and started preparing the meal. He chopped up the green and red chilies. He cut thin slices of the salt pork. He put a kettle of water near the fire for coffee. He had one fry pan for the pork and beans and one for the flatbread. He could make the bread better in a Dutch oven, but that was often too much work. The men did not care if they had good bread, they just wanted to eat as soon as they rode up to the wagon.

By the time he looked up again, the steers were taking shape, moving out across the countryside. And here came Vazquez riding up to the chuck wagon.

"It's a good spot to camp," he said. Vazquez and Sancho both spoke English. The Vaqueros mostly just spoke Spanish, though Carlos spoke good English when he wanted to. Kuwatee spoke very little.

"One spot here is little different from any other," Sancho said. "Picket your hawss and get a plate. The bread will be finished in a moment."

One by one, the riders all came in. All except the half-breed Kuwatee and Rab Sinclair. As the riders converged on the chuck wagon, Rab and the half-breed rode off to the north.

"They not hungry?" Sancho asked.

"Probably riding a scout," Fitz said, his mouth full of food.

"Is there trouble?" Sancho asked. Having driven the wagon ahead in search of the campsite, he did not know about the discovery.

"A few miles back we found a hunting party slaughtered by Comanche," Caleb said.

Sancho cleared his throat. He walked to the front of his wagon and checked his shotgun and six-shooter. Both were loaded.

"Does Rab think the Comanche are near?" Sancho asked.

"Hell, of course they're near," O'Toole said. "Three hundred cattle and a wagon cutting out across this godforsaken place? They knew we was coming two days before we got here. I guarantee you, them damn Injuns hit that hunting party just to get their dander up in preparation for us."

"If it comes to that, we'll give them a better fight than the hunting party did," Fitzpatrick said.

The Union cavalryman exuded confidence in everything, but especially in a fight. "By God, I'd give them a charge they won't soon forget."

"You don't charge Comanche. Not if you like your hair," O'Toole said. "When I was a trooper, we fought the Comanche. Only way to fight them is to hunker down, shoot back, and pray to God that they leave before nightfall. They sneak up on us in the middle of the night and we're as good as dead."

"Put three men on night watch," Carlos said, his accent thick.

"They won't care about the steers," O'Toole said. "They'll want the hawsses. But if they decide to take them hawsses, three men on night guard ain't gonna stop no Comanche raiding party."

As they ate, the men dropped the bandannas from their faces. But when the food was finished, they raised the bandannas back up. The wind blew strong and picked up pieces of sand that stung the eyes and face. The wind helped the sand find its way into their food, and the grains were grit in their teeth. Even after they ate, the men would sometimes lift the flap of the bandanna to spit grains of sand.

"Rab and the half-breed ain't back yet," Vazquez observed. "I want Miguel, O'Toole and Jorge to take the first watch. Caleb, you and Fitz join me on second watch. Two hours per watch. Every man on watch take a fresh hawss. Stay close to the remuda. Don't worry too much over the steers. If Rab and Kuwatee get back, Carlos you'll take watch with them on third watch. For now, second and third watch should bed down by the wagon. Get some sleep where you can."

"Good advice," O'Toole said. "I've got a feeling this night is going to be hell."

"I'll keep a couple of plates of food under this cloth for Rab and the half-breed," Sancho said.

***

Rab Sinclair slid down out of the saddle and walked to where Kuwatee was kneeling beside his horse.

"Unshod hawsses," Kuwatee said. "You can see the tracks here, riding east. I would say maybe as many as twenty or twenty-four hawsses, all with riders."

Rab looked at the tracks as Kuwatee pointed them out. The tracks overlapped quite a bit, making it almost impossible for Rab to count the number of horses that had passed through here. The Comanche, to hide their numbers, rode in single file, or near enough to it. Looking at the tracks, Rab would have guessed closer to thirty riders.

"How long ago do you think they came through?" Rab asked.

Kuwatee nodded to a pile of droppings. "Not more than four days ago."

"They came through here just before they attacked those hunters back yonder," Rab said.

"Likely," Kuwatee agreed.

"If they kept going east they won't be around here, then," Rab said.

"They have gone to water," Kuwatee said. "They're riding dry."

Rab stood up and looked across the horizon. He knew where some of the water holes were, and none were close or easy to find. A small range of squat mesas somewhere beyond the horizon marked a spot where there was sometimes a few small ponds. If enough rain had fallen in recent weeks, Rab knew they could find water enough for the cattle there. If not, they would have to drive the cattle on to the Pecos River where there would surely be some water this time of year.

If the Comanche were moving east, they'd have a harder time finding water. They would have been better off traveling south where recent rains would still be standing in some of the washes.

"May not be looking for water," Rab said. "The buffalo hunters had at least a couple of casks, and those were both broken open and spilled out."

Kuwatee grunted a response.

"If they do not seek water, then they seek scalps," he said. "If they saw us, they are following us."

Rab nodded. "That's my thinking. And we're damned hard to miss with all these steers kicking up dust."

The two men both swung back up into the saddles.

"What do you think, Rab Sinclair?"

"I think we should have got fresh hawsses before riding out this far," Rab said. "But we should ride back across our backtrail a ways and see if we see anything there."

"Yes," Kuwatee agreed. "It would be better to know they are coming than to find them in our camp tonight."

There was no love between the Apache and the Comanche, but that made little difference to Kuwatee. He held no loyalty to any tribe, nor to the whites. As a half-breed, he was ostracized by everyone. Though he'd spent much of his childhood with his father living among the Apache, when his father was killed in a battle with Buffalo Soldiers, Kuwatee was sent away. His mother's people refused to take him in. And so he found his way to Las Vegas working odd jobs.

He might have fallen in with outlaws except that Rab Sinclair gave him a job working on his ranch. He paid Kuwatee very little, but the Apache half-breed was free to live on Rab's land where he could go unmolested.

No friendship existed between Rab and Kuwatee, but there was a mutual respect that was as close to friendship as the half-breed had ever known.

Together, they rode back to the east, following the path the cattle had cut out across the Llano Estacado earlier in the day.

Their shadows stretched long in front of them, and the haze on the eastern horizon showed that night was approaching.

They rode easy, sparing the mounts for a dash back to the camp if the Comanche appeared in front of them.

They spread out, riding up to every high spot they could easily reach. They dismounted and walked, looking for sign. At last, when the sun was getting so low that they might worry about finding the camp, Rab signaled to Kuwatee, and they wheeled their horses and started back.

"No sign of the Comanche," Kuwatee said, riding up even with Rab.

"I didn't see anything, neither," Rab said.

"Maybe we sleep easy tonight. Worry tomorrow."

Rab chuckled. "Maybe. But I don't think I'll sleep easy tonight."

The two riders continued riding blind off toward the northwest. The sun descended on the far horizon, leaving the riders to pick their way through the dark. But the herd was spread out over some distance, and when they came to the first of the steers they were then able to work their way among the cattle to find the camp.

"Rab Sinclair and Kuwatee riding into camp," Rab said loudly, knowing a guard would be awake.

"I hear you, Rab," O'Toole called back.

In the darkness, the two men found each other.

O'Toole rode close to Rab Sinclair so he would not have to speak loud.

"Vazquez put us on a three-man night watch. We're not worried so much about coyotes getting the critters as we are Comanche taking the hawsses, so we're sticking pretty close to the remuda."

Kuwatee rode on ahead to picket and unsaddle his horse and give it a good rub down.

"That's the right thing to do," Rab said. "Comanche ain't cattle ranchers, but they'll take a score and a half of good hawsses quick as you please."

O'Toole nodded uselessly into the dark.

"When I was in the cavalry, we had a couple dozen men riding a patrol out in west Texas. We bedded down in a canyon with the hawsses picketed in the center of our camp. Guards at each end of the canyon. We woke the next morning, every man camped at one end of the canyon was murdered. Throats cut. The hawsses was all gone. All that happened without a sound. Them Comanche is like ghosts in the night."

"Just keep your ears open. No moon, you'll never see them, but you might hear something. Trust the hawsses," Rab said. "You understand me? Trust the hawsses. If they get restless, blow or start acting jittery, it's a threat nearby. Fire a round. Even if it's nothing, I'd rather be awakened for nothing than have my throat slit while I'm asleep."

"Don't you worry, Rabbie," O'Toole said. "I'm a mite jumpy tonight. I'll pull the trigger to wake you up if the wind changes direction."

"Fair enough," Rab said.

"Sancho left a couple of plates for you on the back of the wagon, covered 'em up with a cloth. It'll be cold now, but better than nothing."

Rab joined Kuwatee in tending to his mount, and then the two hurried to eat and bed down before it was their turn to stand watch.

-4-

Death does not always come when it is expected, nor is it always expected when it comes.

And sometimes, a man's fortitude may dip into exhaustion without coming close to death.

Skinner Jake woke in the middle of the night, surprised to find that he was still alive. Thirsty and hungry, still, but alive.

He pushed himself up out of the wash that he thought would be his grave and stood to face the night.

The wind was not so strong as it blew during the day, but it was still coming pretty good. And it was cold up on the plain.

Jake's legs didn't want to work at first, but he got them going. To which direction they were taking him, he did not know.

Jake could cut the hide off a buffalo pretty fast. He could shoot a buff from three hundred yards, and he knew how to drop the matron cow without killing her so that the others would mill around and make themselves easy targets.

But he survived with a chuck wagon and a heavy bedroll. He survived with the provisions his outfit brought with it. He survived based on the preparations and supplies of a hunting party.

Skinner Jake was no frontiersman. He was no pioneer. If he had powder and lead, he could hunt for some sustenance, sure enough, but he was not a man who could survive on his own in the wilderness by his wits and expertise. And especially not in a place like the Llano Estacado where game was scarce and water was scarcer.

He wandered in the dark, taking tentative steps for fear that he might step in a prairie dog burrow and twist his ankle or fall into a wash and break a leg. He might have been walking in a grand circle for all he knew, but he kept going, hoping he'd set a straight line as a course.

"If them Comanche find me and reckon I escaped 'em before, it'll be twice as worse for me this time," Skinner Jake told himself.

Speaking out loud, his voice sounded strange to him. It sounded cold and distant, like someone else's voice.

But it was a comfort to him to hear something other than the wind.

"Just keep on walking Jake, old boy. Keep on walking, and soon enough you'll come to something. Water, maybe. Water would be a good thing to find."

His mouth was so dry and his tongue was starting to feel fat.

"Some whiskey to put in that water wouldn't be so bad either," Skinner Jake chuckled to himself. "But you ain't likely to find a spring o' whiskey out on the Staked Plains. Not likely a'tall."

Time and distance deceived on the Llano Estacado. Time crept on with a slowness that was enough to drive a man crazy and distance was too impossible. The miles a man could walk seemed to amount to nothing, but the miles that stretched beyond were like a stuck hand on a watch.

In the darkness, Skinner Jake just kept his legs moving as best he could. Weak and feeling the pain of thirst and hunger, he simply willed his legs to move.

Walking in the blackness of night proved better than walking in the day. In the day he could see how little his effort gained him, but at night there was no concept of how much farther he had to go.

He might have been going for an hour, or maybe it was three hours. Skinner Jake had no knowledge that allowed him to watch the passing stars and judge time. But however long it was, he heard somewhere in front of him a low cooing, carried by the wind.

"Damn if that don't sound like cows," Skinner Jake said to himself. "Damn if it don't."

He stopped walking and listened a while. The noise was not constant, but it continued, sometimes louder and sometimes softer.

"I must be losing my mind," Skinner Jake said, trying to puzzle out in his mind whether or not a herd of cattle might be able to survive on the Llano Estacado.

"It might be," he said. "But if they can survive, it'll have to be with water. Ain't no other way than that. And that means if they's cattle out here, there must also be water."

Fearful that he might walk right past them in the dark and never see them and then lose them by morning, Skinner Jake decided to sit down where he was and wait for light. His only worry was that when the sun came up he would discover that there had been no cows and he was, in fact, losing his mind.

But the sounds continued through the night.

"Either my mind is right gone, or there is cattle."

While he waited in the darkness, Jake's thoughts went back to the Comanche attack. He tried to remember if any of the others might have escaped. He had seen some killed and seen the bodies of others when it was over, but he did not know the fate of all of the outfit.

What came on them should not have been a surprise. Not after what happened. It was that damned fool from Arkansas. Skinner Jake never could decide if he liked that Arkansas man. Cossatot Jim, they called him. Named for some river where his people came from. The man was crude and mean, and the sort of man who would bring ruination to those around him, but he was full of humor and could turn the dullest campfire into a good time. He was a knee slapping sport, always looking to stir something up.

Though he liked him, Skinner Jake couldn't deny that Cossatot Jim was the sort who borrowed trouble whenever none could be found. Well, Cossatot Jim borrowed trouble for the buffalo hunting party, and they was now all dead because of it.

Cossatot Jim brought down the wrath of the Comanche upon the entire outfit. Skinner Jake expected that whatever else happened, the Comanche had done for Cossatot Jim. And he probably deserved whatever the Comanche gave him.

When the first bit of blue light from the east touched the night sky, Skinner Jake could still hear the cattle. Exhausted, thirsting to death, and with an ache in his belly, he waited until the light grew and shapes began to appear on the horizon. A mile in front of him, maybe more, Skinner Jake saw the plain moving, like a slow dance of the earth. He stood and started walking toward it. If his ears deceived him through the night, then his eyes now deceived him in the morning.

Up ahead, Skinner Jake saw cattle spread out in a wide herd, the steers moving from one clump of grass to another. It looked for all the world like a cattle drive.

A desperation overtook him as he lumbered forward. He stumbled and caught himself, his eyes fixed upon the herd of steers. More light filled the sky, and like a solid shadow at the top of a knoll, Skinner Jake could see the silhouette of a covered wagon.

"Help!" he called out, but his swollen, dry throat couldn't get enough volume for him to even hear himself.

If he had lost his mind and there were no cattle and there was no wagon, that was okay. He would die anyway. And if it was all just a mirage, just an imagining of a crazy man, at least he would die imagining himself being rescued.

"Help!" Skinner Jake cried out again.

And then a rider was coming toward him, the horse bounding over the plain. The rider's face was covered with a bandanna, and he wore a tall hat atop his head.

Skinner Jake waved his arms furiously at the rider before falling over into the sandy dirt.

-5-

Sancho Biscuit made space in the back of the wagon, and O'Toole and Fitz lifted the man onto a pallet of bedrolls. They dipped a cloth in the water barrel and wetted his lips and mouth.

"Do what you can for him, but don't linger here," Rab Sinclair said. "Then catch up to others as fast as you can. I ain't pleased about stringing us out across this plain."

Already the vaqueros had gotten the cattle moving. Vazquez and Kuwatee had ridden up ahead to watch for trouble.

Carlos, Miguel, and Jorge were pushing the steers forward. The critters were willing to move because the grass here was poor and there was no water.

Caleb had not yet loosed the horses, and he was standing nearby watching as Sancho nursed the man.

"You think he's one of them buff hunters?" Caleb asked.

"Of course he is," Fitz said. "No other white man is just wandering around alone out here."

"How did he find us?" Caleb asked.

"We ain't easy to miss," O'Toole said. "We're like a big, moving target out here. Anyone who wants to find us will find us easy. Look at how them cows have tore up the land behind us, eating and stomping on everything. We've blazed a clearer trail than a tornado would."

If the Comanche came, Caleb Morgan knew how O'Toole and Fitz would respond. Vazquez and Kuwatee, too. They were fighters, all four of them. They carried 15-shot Winchester Yellow Boy rifles in leather scabbards strapped to their saddles and six-shooter Colts on their hips. Vazquez even had a pair of Colt Army conversions that took cartridge bullets like a rifle instead of cap-and-ball. Vazquez was a tough old lawman. O'Toole was an Indian fighter from way back. Fitz was a war hero. No one really knew about the half breed, but no one doubted that he was tough as iron.

The Vaqueros didn't carry guns, not while they were herding the cattle, but they all had rifles and six-shooters in Sancho's wagon. But they would fight.

Even Sancho carried a rifle and a six-shooter within arm's reach in his driver's box.

But if the Comanche came, Caleb did not know if the rest of the outfit could count on him. He had so much fear after seeing those men scalped. He knew such things happened, but the only other time Caleb had ever seen violent death face-to-face, he had cowered.

He thought of the man who hid under the tarp and wondered if this was the man now in the back of Sancho's wagon.

"I'm going to ride our backtrail," Rab said. "We didn't see any sign of the Comanche yesterday, but if this man caught up to us in the dark, the Comanche might have also."

Rab swung himself into the saddle of the blue roan, wheeled the horse and started back east, following the wide path the cattle had made.

When Caleb thought of Rab Sinclair, he was always on Cromwell's back. The blue roan seemed as much a part of Rab as his right arm or his left leg. When he rode other horses in the remuda, he never looked quite right.

"Get them hawsses moving," O'Toole called at Caleb. "I want to get off this godforsaken plain as fast as we can."

"You having regrets about signing on for this, O'Toole?" Fitz teased.

O'Toole grumbled a bit under his breath. "You'll have regrets yourself if them Comanche come upon us," O'Toole said. "I fought them when I was with the cavalry, and it's no game."

Fitz scoffed. "I've stood up to the Rebel Yell, I'll stand up to the Comanche. Don't you forget, I was with Custer at Gettysburg."

"This ain't Gettysburg," O'Toole said. "And the Comanche ain't going to put you in Andersonville if they catch you."

"They cooked a man's privates when they attacked them buffalo hunters," Caleb interjected.

"Don't scare the Yankee, boy," O'Toole said with a laugh.

"You're a Texan, aren't you, O'Toole. Did you fight in the War?"

"Aye, I'm a Texan. My father and my brothers fought in the war, but I was a wee bit young. They left me home to tend to my mother and our farm. I did some fighting with the home guard against the Indians, and then took up with the cavalry when the war was over."

Fitz left it alone at that. He knew better than to prod Confederate pride too far. He liked O'Toole and had enjoyed riding along with him, and if a fight came he didn't want to be at odds with one of the men who'd be making a stand with him.

"Hurry them horses," Fitz said to Caleb. "O'Toole is right, of course. Another week or so, and we'll be home."

Caleb finishing getting the horses unstaked. He left a bridle and lead on each horse, the leads looped and draped onto their backs to keep from being a nuisance to the animals. The stakes that he used to picket the horses went into the chuck wagon.

When he was finished, Caleb started to drive the horses behind the cattle. It was slow going. The horses veered off in search of grass that the cattle had not yet consumed or tamped down, and Caleb allowed them to veer.

The vaqueros were experts with their cattle, and only once on the trip so far did Caleb have to push a stray steer back up into the herd.

It seemed to him that the cattle were moving faster this morning. He wondered if Carlos, or maybe Vazquez, was driving them at a quicker pace because of the threat of Comanche.

With the morning sun on his back, Caleb warmed up fast enough. The breeze at night was chilly, and mornings on the Llano Estacado were unpleasantly cold. But the daytime wind blew warm, and the sun by afternoon would be baking hot.

After some while, Sancho drove his wagon on past Caleb and the horses, trailing his spare mules behind the wagon.

"He wake up yet?" Caleb called.

"Not much," Sancho responded. "We gave him a little water and he passed out again."

Caleb wanted to know if the man they rescued was the man who hid under the tarp or the one who dug his way into the embankment.

Caleb looked back over his shoulder and saw O'Toole and Fitz riding along behind. They were the rearguard, presumably they would be the first ones to see the Comanche, unless Rab encountered them.

If the Comanche did attack, O'Toole or Fitz, one of them, would fire a warning shot into the air. At that point, Caleb would abandon the horses and ride forward to the wagon where there were guns and shells. Everyone, the vaqueros, the rearguard, Vazquez and Kuwatee the half-breed up at the front, they would all converge on Sancho Biscuit's wagon.

Animals — horses and cattle — could be rounded up later. Surviving the fight was more important.

As they went on, Caleb kept checking over his shoulder. O'Toole and Fitz were always back there. Sometimes they rode far out to the north or south. Sometimes they just sat their horses, watching behind them. But they were always in sight, and that was a comfort to Caleb.

But he did not see Rab Sinclair and the blue roan.

It was Rab's way.

Rab enjoyed the evenings by the campfire with the other men. He liked the camaraderie of the trail ride. He loved to scout and ride over long distances in the saddle.

But in his heart, Rab Sinclair could never be a true rancher. He wasn't a cowpuncher. He had no love for herding and moving steers. The going was too slow. The steers too noisy. The trail too dusty. When Rab disappeared over the horizon to scout, Caleb believed it was as much to get away from the trail drive as it was to watch for Comanche or other threats.

***

The blue roan slid easily down the side of the steep, rocky incline.

"You are a sure-footed old biter," Rab said, patting the roan's neck. Cromwell shook his black mane and black face at the compliment, as if to say that managing the slope had been a small thing and not worthy of praise.

Having ridden out of sight of the cattle, Rab turned the horse south until they came to a deep wash.

Having ridden all over this territory and seen some things that defied explanation, Rab Sinclair understood that in other times this world must have been a very different place.

Here, for instance, he could see the unmistakable evidence that vast currents of water had cut deep grooves into this land that was now so dry. He rode down through the canyon cut in the vast emptiness of the Llano Estacado. From half a mile away he couldn't even see the canyon, it looked simply like a low spot. Now, down inside, Rab rode past thick brush and saw ahead of him a small stand of cottonwoods.

He led Cromwell over to the trees, and there he found small pools of water. Rab slid down out of the saddle and tasted the water. It was fresh enough — rain water held in rock basins.

Rab dipped his canteen down into the water and then let the horse drink.

Here in the canyon, the wind did not whip away the water, and beneath the cottonwoods the sun did not evaporate it all away.

The cottonwoods, weeds, and brush blinded Sinclair from seeing into the rest of the canyon.

Cromwell began to drink, but with a jerk, the horse lifted his head and sniffed at the air. Rab put out a hand and touched the horse's neck, making a soft shushing noise.

And then Rab heard something — a voice speaking through the trees and brush.

It was not Comanche. As a child, Rab Sinclair lived among the tribes people. Mostly he lived with the Cheyenne and Ute, but he'd spent time with most tribes, including the Comanche and Apache. Rab's Scottish father considered himself to be a missionary of sorts. Mostly, the Indians believed he was insane. But Parson Sinclair, as he was sometimes called, moved freely among the tribes, even when the tribes were at war with each other or at war with whites. Rab always suspected his father had a hankering for squaws, and there was ample evidence for it.

So in his youth, Rab had picked up some of the tribes' languages. He spoke a little Ute and a little Cheyenne, and he could make himself understood to the Cherokee. They'd never lived long enough with the Comanche or Apache that Rab had any of their words, but he recognized their talk when he heard it.

The words coming to him through the cottonwoods and brush were English words spoken by a white man.

There had been two survivors from the buffalo hunters. One was in the back of Sancho's wagon, unconscious and just hanging to life. But it now appeared the other was here, in this canyon, surviving on the water that pooled below the trees.

The roan sniffed at the air and snorted.

At the sound of the horse, the voice beyond the cottonwoods stopped speaking.

Rab took Cromwell's lead and walked him a ways back up the canyon until they reached a slope the horse could manage.

"Up you go," Rab whispered to the horse, and Cromwell pushed off and bounded up the slope. Rab climbed up behind the horse.

At the top of the hill he slid the Yellow Boy rifle from its scabbard and dropped the lever to chamber one of the big .44 rounds.

From his vantage he could see the tops of the cottonwoods poking out of the rim of the canyon. There, the canyon made a bend back to the east. Somewhere in that bend, beyond the stand of cottonwoods, was where the voice had come from.

Rab dropped Cromwell's lead in a patch of grass. Unless there was some threat, the horse would stand for a ground tie.

Sinclair edged along the rim of the canyon, keeping far enough away that if there were people down in the canyon they would not see him. He reached the bend, and there he squatted down low and moved slowly up to the rim.

The slope here was steep and dropped as much as thirty feet. No man would easily get out of the canyon at this place.

Making sure of the ground beneath him so that he didn't cause a rock slide, Rab craned his neck to look down over the rim. There he saw one sole man, crouched into a narrow cut in the side of the canyon. The man carried a long gun and clutched it tight against him.

He'd heard Cromwell, and the horse had spooked him.

"Yo!" Rab called out.

The man jumped with fright, leaving the safety of the cut. He spun round, seeking the source of the voice, and raised up his rifle. Rab was all but certain that the gun was unloaded. When they found the other man out on the plains he carried a Sharps rifle, but he had now powder and no bullets. Rab thought for sure this man would be equally without ammunition.

"You ain't no Injun!" the stranger in the canyon shouted.

"No, I ain't," Rab said.

"What in hell are you doing here?"

"Driving Texas cattle into New Mexico," Rab said. "I reckon the better question is what are you doing down in that canyon talking to yourself?"

"I was attacked," the man said. He was jumpy for lack of food, probably more than a little scared. His eyes were wild and his manner skittish.

"You with them buff runners we seen back a ways, slaughtered by Comanche?"

"All of 'em killed," the man said.

"Not all," Rab said. "We picked up another survivor."

The man's wild eyes rolled around like the devil.

"Who was it?"

Rab shook his head. "Don't know. He come up on us this morning but collapsed. Wind whipped, thirsty, and about half starved. You seem to be okay."

"I ain't had nothin' substantial to eat for a couple of days, but I found water here."

Every bit of Rab Sinclair's good judgment told him to leave this man in the canyon and let him find his own way out. The man's skittish behavior and wild eyes set uneasy with the man who'd traveled so much of the West and had met so many different kinds.

All the same, Rab knew that leaving a man out here alone in this desolate and empty place was as good as killing him.

"We best get you up out of there. It's a long walk to the chuck wagon, and I ain't got but the one hawss."

"We can ride double," the man said.

"No, we cannot," Rab said.

Sinclair stood up and gave a piercing whistle that cut across the wind, and from a distance he saw the blue roan lift its black head.

"Hiyaw!" Sinclair called out, and the horse galloped toward him.

Rab patted the roan's neck and fetched a broken peppermint stick from his pocket and gave it to the horse. He expected the horse to obey him without treats, but he sometimes gave rewards to make sure that the horse always came at a whistle and a call.

He unloosed his lariat from the saddle.

"You strong enough to climb?"

"I'm strong enough to climb, but I don't know how far I can walk. Maybe we switch off riding?"

Rab tossed one end of the rope down into the canyon, swung himself into his saddle and looped the other end of the lariat around the saddle horn. The lariat was about forty-five feet, plenty long enough for the man in the canyon to loop it around himself.

"Start climbing," Rab called down, and he urged Cromwell forward so that the horse pulled the man as he walked up out of the canyon.

"My name's Rab Sinclair."

Rab watched the man to see if there was recognition that went across his face. Rab saw none. Sometimes folks had heard of him because he'd done a good bit of traveling and made something of a reputation. Sinclair liked it best, though, when folks didn't show recognition at his name. Depending who they'd talked to, sometimes folks who didn't know him formed a poor opinion of him.

"They call me Cossatot Jim."

Rab looped the lariat back up while he sat the horse.

"That's quite a handle. Your mama give you that name?"

"She called me James. I come from down on the Cossatot River in Arkansas. So it come to Cossatot Jim some years ago."

"My folks are to the west. You follow me as far as you can see me. If you lose sight of me, you follow the swatch the steers have made."

"You ain't gonna let me ride?" Cossatot Jim asked.

"I ain't," Rab said. "It's not my fault you're out here without a hawss, and this hawss, especially, don't take to strangers. He'd buck you off and stamp your head before he'd carry you ten yards."

Cossatot Jim grumbled some about that, but Rab Sinclair paid him no attention. The man was fit enough, so Rab squeezed his knees and Cromwell started off west at a trot.

Rab swung around in the saddle one time just to be sure there were no Comanche out on the open plains. A gnawing in his gut told him it was a mistake to help this man, but he didn't know how he could leave him here.

***

"They come on us all of a sudden," Cossatot Jim said.

The horses were picketed and the men of the trail drive were gathered near the chuck wagon for their supper. Sancho Biscuit set the skillets on the drop table at the back of the wagon. The men dished up their own plates from skillets. The first man they'd found, the one Cossatot Jim identified as Skinner Jake, was still unconscious. Sancho dabbed a wet cloth on his lips, but the man was suffering from dehydration and exhaustion, and no one in the outfit was giving Skinner Jake good odds of living long enough to get to New Mexico.

When they'd all taken seats around the low coals of the campfire, Cossatot Jim told his story.

"I reckon some of us was dead before we even knowed the Comanche was attacking. They was two low ridges that formed a kind of V, and that why we'd set camp there. We thought them ridges might break the wind a bit for us, cause the nights was gettin' so cold.

"But them Injuns came from both sides of them ridges, hid almost all the way up to our camp. And when they come, they come mounted and shrieking like a band of Devil's demons from the gates of Hell."

"I've seen the Comanche attack quick like that. How did you survive it?" O'Toole asked.

Cossatot Jim dropped his eyes. "I ain't proud to say what I done. I was over by one of the wagons. We'd pulled the canvas off the top of the wagon, thinking on making a windbreak with it. So I was holding it in my hands, and I just wrapped it over me and fell to the ground. I can't say why they didn't find me. But from up under that canvas I could hear them killing the others — not something I'll ever forget. Shrieking Injuns, screaming men being tortured to death. It was Hell on earth, I'll tell you that. Hell on earth."

Cossatot Jim sat quiet for a moment, and the other men respected the silence. They'd all endured something similar at one time or another.

Fitz, in the war, had seen plenty of carnage. It was a hard thing on a man to see so many friends and strangers all in one place, all dying or suffering. At Gettysburg, the fighting was so vicious in places that hundreds of men were alive one moment and dead the next.

O'Toole had seen enough of it, fighting the Comanche in Texas.

Vazquez, for his part, had fought Apache raiding parties and had shot it out with outlaws.

Kuwatee had fought everyone. Whites and Indians, alike. Sometimes at the same time. He was a man without allies.

No one in the outfit really knew what the vaqueros had seen or not seen. Though they lived near Las Vegas, they kept mostly to themselves in communities of Mexicans who had lived in that place long before New Mexico was a territory of the United States. But a man didn't move on these plains or among the mountains without fighting. Whether he was fighting the wind or the heat or the cold, coyotes, or Indians, fighting was part of life for a man of the West.

Even Caleb Morgan, who was still young and had never engaged in battle, had watched people he cared for die. First his father, and then his mother, and then the old man who cared for him — murdered by outlaws right in front of him.

"They come on us with arrows and lances, but a couple of them had rifles, too," Cossatot Jim said. "I didn't move the whole time. I just stayed under that canvas and hoped they wouldn't find me. And when it was silent for a while, I poked my head out, and I saw that they was all gone, and all the other boys in my outfit was dead. Or so I thought. The trail them Injuns left went to the east, so I started walking to the west. Anyway that would take me away from them was the best way, so far as I could see."

"You were lucky to find that canyon," Rab said. "Most men out here would die of thirst."

"I was lucky, that's so," Cossatot Jim agreed.

"Why they attack?" Kuwatee asked, breaking his silence for the first time.

Cossatot Jim eyed the half-breed.

"They attacked on account of them being Comanche," Cossatot Jim said. "That's what Comanche do. They surprise you and attack you for no reason at all whatsoever."

Kuwatee glanced at Rab Sinclair and gave a tiny, subtle shake of his head.

That shake of the head confirmed for Rab what he already had guessed. Often, a white man did not understand the reasons why the Comanche did what they did, but the Comanche seldom failed to have a reason. They could be vicious and sometimes comprehensive, but they were seldom indiscriminate.

"You gave no offense to them?" Rab asked.

"None at all," Cossatot Jim said with a glance at Skinner Jake, laid out on a bedroll near the wagon. "We didn't do nothing to provoke. I reckon it was enough that we was just cutting across their hunting ground."

"Could be," Rab said. "They've surely seen us, or signs of us, and yet they've left us alone."

"Well, you ain't home, yet," Cossatot Jim said.

-6-

The Comanche scouts sat their horses, just visible on the northeastern horizon.

"Wind blowin' sand in your face, it's hard to judge," O'Toole said. "Maybe two miles off?"

"Maybe," Fitz said. "I would call it closer to three miles, but it's hard to say."

O'Toole spotted them first. They'd been hard to see. He thought they might just be a bush or something. From the initial distance, they looked like one black mass out on the horizon. But as he rode a little closer, reaching the extremity of the path the steers were cutting, he saw one of the horses move.

"Hell," he said to himself. "Bushes don't take steps."

So O'Toole sat his horse and watched them, and after a while Fitz rode up and joined him.

"Out yonder," O'Toole said, pointing. "A couple of mounted men. I'd bet my right arm they're Comanche scouts."

Fitz discounted them as a shrub of some kind, but then he too saw one of the horses shift.

The two veterans watched the two Comanche scouts, and the two Comanche scouts kept watching the two veterans.

"What do ye think they're up to?" O'Toole asked.

"Testing us," Fitz said. "They've counted our numbers, they know our strength. Now they're testing to see how we react. They've let us see them. They want us to know they're there."

"I've half a mind to ride up and put fifteen shots from the Yellow Boy down their throats, I'll tell ye that," O'Toole said.

As he spoke, Rab Sinclair rode up to them.

"I reckon there's a dozen more of them laying on their bellies between us and them two scouts," Rab asked. "O'Toole, you'd never get close enough to the scouts to pull your trigger."

"You seen 'em, too?" O'Toole asked.

"Yep."

"So what do we do, Rabbie?" Fitz asked.

Rab sucked his back teeth and shook his head.

"We keep them doggies moving," Rab said. "We keep 'em pointed toward Las Vegas. We get them cattle and ourselves home as fast as we can, and we leave them Comanche be."

"Leave 'em be?" O'Toole said. "Likely enough they ain't going to leave us be."

Rab nodded thoughtfully.

"We should try to compress the cattle some," Rab said. "It's hard because there ain't enough grazing out here. I'm going to have Sancho draw back and stay closer to you rather than going on up ahead. Right now we're riding in a diamond around the cattle, but I'm going to have Kuwatee and Vazquez ride out on the sides. Y'all stay in the back, but position yourselves generally near to them. That gives us more of an open box shape with the cattle coming out at the top. I'll stay up at point and be sure nothing happens in front of us. If the Comanche attack, the fight will be at the back. And that way, if the cattle stampede, at least they will stampede in the direction we want them to go."

O'Toole laughed. "And they won't stamp us down while we're trying to fight the Comanche."

Rab grinned, though his bandanna hid the smile. "Yep. That, too."

"You think they'll attack us?" Fitz asked.

"They'll attack," O'Toole said.

Fitz ignored O'Toole. Of course O'Toole thought they would attack. As a one-time Indian fighter, that's all he knew of the Comanche. "You said last night they ain't indiscriminate. We've caused no trouble for 'em."

Rab shrugged his shoulders. "They ain't indiscriminate, but sometimes what offends a Comanche takes some puzzling to figure out. We might be grazing our cattle right through the middle of their hunting grounds. Or maybe some canyon we passed by is a holy place for them where the spirits of their ancestors congregate. Or maybe they can smell O'Toole ten miles away."

Fitz laughed.

"There ain't nothing wrong with the way I smell," O'Toole said bitterly.

"We may have offended without knowing it, is my point," Rab continued. "With Comanche, it's best to expect that we somehow made them angry and be prepared for their response."

Rab wheeled his horse. Cromwell, the blue roan, was back in the remuda today, and Rab was riding a chocolate-colored bay with a raven black mane.

"Don't linger too long back here," Rab said. "You'll start to look like a target instead of a curiosity."

The two veterans sat their horses a while longer, watching the motionless black specks out on the horizon.

"You think he's right, that there's a dozen of them on the ground between here and there?" Fitz said.

"Probably two dozen, and they'll lay there all day if they have to just to have the chance of taking your scalp."

The two men turned their horses and started back up toward the rest of the outfit.

Even as they rode, they saw Vazquez and Kuwatee falling back and taking up a position at the far left and right of the trail drive. Sancho wheeled his wagon out of the way to allow the cattle to pass while the vaqueros herded the cattle into a tighter position.

Caleb already had spent the day keeping the horses tight together. He had pushed them out a ways past where the cattle were grazing so that even in in a tighter space they would have more grass.

Fitz rode a little closer to where Caleb grazed the remuda.

It took the better part of an hour, but when the cattle passed Sancho Biscuit's wagon, the old cook turned his mules into the wake of the cattle.

Cossatot Jim walked not far from the wagon.

The others in the outfit did not argue, but they were surprised when Rab Sinclair refused Cossatot Jim a horse. And then refused him a ride on the wagon. And then refused to loan him a weapon.

Jim's rifle — like the one Skinner Jake carried — was never loaded when the Comanche attacked the buffalo hunting party. Rab was firm when Cossatot Jim began asking for the loan of horse and gun.

"You can walk with us, and we'll share our food and water because it's the decent thing to do. But this ain't a rescue party. Every horse and every gun we've brought with us has a job. None of them are extra. And they'll remain employed with us as they were intended."

"Surely you'll let me ride in the wagon," Cossatot Jim said.

"I'll not," Rab said. "We already have an extra man in the wagon, and I'll not make it two."

The one kindness Rab did spare the man was that Rab found an extra pair of moccasins he'd brought along and let Cossatot Jim have those, even though they were a mite big on his feet.

With the outfit newly positioned, mostly to the rear of the cattle, Rab Sinclair was now the one who would have to ride the farthest and fastest if it came time to make a stand. The others had short distances to fall back to Sancho's wagon.

But if the Comanche attacked, Rab Sinclair wasn't likely to fall back and take up a defensive position, anyway. It wasn't his style.

The easy going pioneer had a reputation for being slow to anger, but when he got there, he came on hard.

The one concession Rab made to the Comanche was that he took up an extra box of .44 cartridges from Sancho's wagon and dropped those into his saddlebag.

***

"Can I confess something to you?" Caleb said.

He used a rock a little bigger than his fist to drive the stake into the ground, picketing the last of the horses. Rab Sinclair was standing nearby, scratching the blue roan's neck.

"Sure, Caleb," Rab said.

"I'm about scared as hell, Rab," Caleb said.

"Ain't no shame in bein' scared," Rab said. "Them Comanche don't come to play. Only a fool wouldn't take them serious."

Caleb stood up and stretched his back. He was stiff and sore all over. Unlike the other men in the outfit, most of Caleb's nights were spent in a bed with a mattress of some kind, and sleeping on the hard ground and sitting all day in the saddle was testing foreign muscles.

"But you ain't scared," Caleb said.

Rab pulled the bandanna down from his face and unscrewed the cap to his canteen. He took a big drink of the water. It tasted of metal from having sat so long in the canteen.

"I'm a mite nervous," Rab said. "But I've seen an awful lot to start getting scared now. The important thing is what you do with the fear. Do you control it? Or does it control you?"

"How do I know which is which?" Caleb asked.

"Well, if you jump on a hawss and ride off, that's the fear controlling you. If you lay down in your bedroll and toss and turn and don't get the sleep you need to be alert and ready the next day, that's the fear controlling you. But if you stand with the men in your outfit, you've got control over your fear. If you keep yourself fresh and ready to fight if you have to, that's you controlling the fear. If the time comes that we have to fight, if you chamber a round, take aim and pull the trigger, and you keep on doing that, then you're controlling your fear."

Caleb narrowed his eyes and looked to where Cossatot Jim was sitting with the others, eating his supper. "And if I pull a canvas tarp over me and hide?"

Rab grinned and nodded his head. "Then your fear has got you, and you ain't fit to ride a hawss in my outfit."

If a Western man had much to do with cattle, he went on a trail drive at one time or another. But most of the men who sat stools in saloons and talked about their days driving cattle only shared stories from one trail drive. Not many men did it more than once. Saddle sores were a part of it for some. Stiff muscles and low wages chased others away. But the monotony of the day is what convinced most men that trail drives were for other people.

Rise before sunup. Coffee and breakfast in the dark. Get the gear together, saddle the horse.

The moment the sun topped the eastern horizon, push the cattle. Ride all day. All day. Slow, so that landmarks on the horizon seemed to never get nearer from sunup to late afternoon. Beef on the hoof couldn't move too fast and had to eat the whole way. If they ran the cattle too hard and didn't give ample time for grazing, the cattle lost too much weight on a drive and would fetch a smaller price per head.

With the shadows long and pointing east, it was supper and bed down, with an expectation that soon enough you'd be on night watch.

Over and over, day after day, sometimes for two full months.

A trail drive was a hell of a way to make a living, and for the average cowpuncher, it was only fifty or sixty dollars at the end of the trail.

For all the talk in saloons, the most excitement a man might have in two months was shooting at a coyote and missing.

Of course, excitement wasn't what anyone wanted on a trail drive. Excitement usually came in one of only three ways — a crossing over a swollen river, a stampede, or an Indian attack.

No cowpuncher wanted any of that if it could be helped.

But the monotony had a way of digging deep down into the bones and making a man careless.

If the blame fell to anyway, it was Miguel's fault. He could ride herd on steers better than almost any man in all of New Mexico, but keeping watch at night was not his specialty. It was worse now that watch was three men instead of just two because the rotations came quicker and everyone was getting less sleep.

And Miguel began to doze in his saddle.

So when Cossatot Jim slipped away from the rest of the men in their bedrolls, Miguel did not hear him.

All through supper, Jim observed everything. He knew where to find a blanket and saddle. He knew which of the horses had been ridden and which were fresh, and he knew where the fresh horses were picketed. He knew where to grab a Yellow Boy and a box of ammunition. He'd already stashed away a full canteen.

He made up his bed a bit farther away from all the others.

Miguel, Carlos, and Vazquez had the second watch.

Cossatot Jim waited until he knew the men from the first watch were asleep.

Quietly, methodically, the buffalo hunter gathered his stolen supplies. He'd slipped a fair amount of jerky into a saddlebag, along with the stolen box of cartridges.

He clenched his jaws tight, desperate to keep every movement as quiet as possible. The breeze was calmer now at midnight than it was through most of the day, but it still blew with just enough noise to mask the small movements.

In the darkness, he could hear the watch, and he knew when they were near and when they'd ridden some distance away.

When the horse was saddled, Cossatot Jim eased it away from the others, toward the lowing steers. He would let the cattle hide his movements.

And when he was sure he was clear of the watch, Cossatot Jim mounted and gave the horse a kick with his heels.

The horse bounded forward and worked itself into a gallop.

The sound now was unmistakable, and Cossatot Jim knew the night watch would hear him.

A six-shooter cracked like thunder somewhere behind him, but he dug his heels and the horse picked up more speed — a reckless and desperate race through the dark.

Cossatot Jim knew for certain that those men and their cattle would soon fall prey to the Comanche, and he'd be damned if he was going to get caught with them.

***

"Hell!" O'Toole shouted, snatching for his Yellow Boy and sitting up in his bedroll. "What is it?"

"Rider leaving camp!" Carlos shouted.

He'd fired the shot into the air to alert the others. He knew he was risking stampeding the cattle, but one shot, even in the dark of night, was seldom enough to get them going.

Now all the men in the outfit were stirring. The men of the night watch rode back into the camp. Darkness all around them and not enough moonlight, the men could only see shadows of each other.

"Report!" Fitz called out. "What's happening?"

"A rider leaving camp," Carlos said. "I don't know who it was, but I heard someone riding away."

"One rider?" Fitz asked.

"That buffalo hunter has absconded with one of our hawsses," Vazquez said. "He was sleeping right here, but his bedroll is gone and so is he."

"Should we try to ride after him?" Carlos asked.

"You'll never trail him in the dark," Rab Sinclair said. "We can bet it's a certainty when we see the hawss again it'll be under a Comanche."

"Hell. It'll serve him right," O'Toole said. "Double dealing backstabber is all he is."

"Tighten up the watch," Rab said. His tone, typically easy and settled, did not mask his irritation. "We ain't worried about the critters. Watch the horses and the camp. We'll find out in the morning what all he stole."

"Damnation!" Fitz called. "That scoundrel made off with my saddle."

O'Toole started to laugh. "I told you to sleep with your saddle under your head."

In Sancho's wagon there were two spare saddles, but they were both old and worn, and Fitz was going to regret the loss of his own saddle.

"Maybe the Comanche will leave it when they take his scalp," O'Toole said. "You might get it back after all, Fitz."

In the first light of morning, Rab Sinclair made an accounting of all that was stolen.

Only the horse could not be replaced, though Fitz might argue that his own saddle was irreplaceable.

When he kitted out the expedition, Rab brought extra of everything. There were extra rifles, even a couple of extra saddles, plenty of cartridges and canteens. A saddlebag full of jerky would not be missed.

But they were now down one horse.

"I had a bad feeling about bringing him along," Rab confessed over breakfast. "I should have left him down in that canyon."

O'Toole, who was feeling more generous than Fitz, shrugged his shoulders. "It would be tough to make your way in this world if folks didn't sometimes give you a hand. That's different from a second chance, though. If we see him again we'll hang him for thieving a hawss."

"Won't be a need to hang him," Fitz said. "I'll shoot him dead for thieving a saddle. That saddle saw me through Gettysburg, the fight at Culpeper Courthouse, and the entire campaign through Virginia leading up to Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. I rode that saddle all the way from Fort Leavenworth to New Mexico. No offense to your horse, Rabbie, but I put more value in that saddle than I do the horse it's sitting on."

"Let's get the cattle moving," Rab said to Carlos. "Maybe before the day is over we'll come across Cossatot Jim again."

The vaqueros mounted and started the cattle. The others were slower to take up their positions because it always took some time in the mornings to get the steers started, and there was no need to be in a rush.

As Sancho was stowing his supplies, the unconscious man in the back of the wagon began to stir.

"Where am I?" Skinner Jake asked.

"You're in my chuck wagon," Sancho said.

"Who are you?"

"Name is Sancho de Herrera, but my friends call me Sancho Biscuit."

"You with that outfit I saw?" Skinner Jake asked. Talking around his swollen tongue was difficult, and his throat was painful. He tried to raise himself up, but his head began to spin.

"I am. You've been unconscious for two days with us."

"I could use some water."

Sancho Biscuit got a canteen of water and climbed into the back of the wagon. He helped Skinner Jake prop himself up, and then held the canteen to his lips.

"Not too fast," he said. "Don't drink too much at once. You'll make yourself sick."

Rab Sinclair was mounted now on the Appaloosa and rode over to the wagon. Of the horses in the remuda, Rab's preference was to ride Cromwell. But the Appaloosa had proved to be a good saddle horse, and Rab was enjoying riding him.

"He's awake?"

"He is," Sancho said.

"Damned thirsty, too," Skinner Jake said through a straining throat.

"We picked up one of your friends," Rab said. "Cossatot Jim. He made off with one of my hawsses in the middle of the night. I'll give you fair warning, you try the same and I'll shoot you out of the saddle."

Skinner took another drink from the canteen.

"Cossatot ain't no friend of mine," Skinner said. "Not a friend o' mine a'tall. You ain't got to worry over your horses none with me. I ain't got strength to stand, much less ride."

Rab nodded. "We'll talk more later."

The rest of the outfit now was mounting up and following in behind the cattle.

Rab rode over to Kuwatee.

"I'm going to ride a piece over to the north, the way we saw them Comanche scouts yesterday. I'm going to try to keep you in sight, but if I ain't back in a couple of hours, you might grab O'Toole and ride a ways to look for me."

The half-breed grunted. "Watch yourself, Rab."

-7-

Bernard Swain took a long drink from the bottle of mezcal.

The boy Rudy — they called him "Rude" for short — was antsy.

"Don't worry none, boy," Swain said. "Ain't nobody riding out here to catch us."

"No posse?" Rude asked.

"No posse is coming out to the Staked Plains after some middling saddle horses."

Mezcal Pete reached across and took the bottle from Swain. "Posse comes out here, we'll shoot 'em and leave 'em for the crows. I wish a posse would come out here, I really do."

Rude looked back and forth between the two older men. He'd give his arm for Bernard Swain. Swain was a good man, took him in and taught him a trade. But Mezcal Pete was cheap trash, and Rude wished now that Swain had never brought him along.

"They ain't all middling horses," Rude said. "That stallion won some races, and I know they was looking to breed him. And them two mares are both Morgan horses, sure 'nough."

Bernard Swain took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his head. Out here, the wind dried the sweat fast enough from every spot it could reach, leaving behind a crust of white salt on a man's face. But up under the hat, it could get like a pool with so much sweat.

"You picked some good'uns," Swain said. "You done real good, Rude. You're right, there ain't no middling horses in this bunch. Every one of 'em will fetch sixty dollars or more once we get 'em to Texas."

"What's sixty for a score of horses?" Mezcal Pete asked.

"It's more than a thousand dollars, I'll tell you that," Bernard Swain said.

The truth was, Swain knew he could get seventy-five dollars for each horse. He knew damn good and well that once they got these horses to Texas they'd get fifteen hundred. But he planned to pocket three hundred for himself and then split the remaining twelve-hundred three ways.

The way Bernard Swain saw it, the three hundred was his fee for setting up the deal and being smart enough to figure it out. He figured the kid owed it to him for all the meals and gear Swain had paid for so that the kid could get along. And he didn't mind taking money from Mezcal Pete because Pete was a lowlife.

A man who was a lowlife even among a band of horse thieves didn't deserve a share of the extra three hundred.

In addition to the twenty stolen horses and their own mounts, the men had three pack mules loaded with supplies for crossing the Llano Estacado. Swain figured there were two ways of making the journey across the Llano Estacado. A man could go well-provisioned, ready to face the elements and whatever else came along, or he could go fast, and get off the Staked Plains before the worst came. Bernard Swain planned to get to Texas fast and get money in his pockets for his stolen New Mexico horses.

"That's enough of a break," Swain said. "Let's get moving again."

The men each took a last drink from the bottle of mezcal and Pete pushed the cork back into the bottle and slipped it into his saddlebag.

Rude, swinging himself back into the saddle, saw the man out on the horizon.

"They's somebody out there," he said, astonished.

Both Pete and Swain looked up from where they were cinching their saddles.

"Naw there ain't," Mezcal Pete said. "Look again. You're seeing shadows."

Swain reserved judgment until he was in his saddle and had a better view.

"Damn if there ain't," Swain said. "One man, by hisself."

Pete stepped into his saddle and wheeled his horse to the direction the other two were looking.

"I'll be."

Swain urged his horse forward toward the man. "You two stay here with the horses, I'm going to ride out and see who this is and what he wants."

As he rode out to the man, Swain drew his Colt Army from his holster and turned the cylinder so that a cartridge was under the hammer.

Cossatot Jim was nobody's fool. He'd seen three riders and a score of horses. He recognized a band of horse thieves when he saw it. But seeing as he was one now himself, he figured horse thieves were just the sort he needed to fall in with.

"Howdy!" Cossatot called from distance.

"That's close enough, mister," Bernard Swain called out. "Who the hell are you, and what are you doing out here by yourself?"

"Name is Cossatot Jim. I come from Arkansas. I'm a buffalo runner by trade, but my group was attacked by Comanche some days ago. I got took in by some cattle drovers, but they wouldn't spare me a horse, so I took this 'un. I'd be obliged to ride with you until we find some more white people."

"Land sakes, that's a mouthful," Bernard Swain said. "Where abouts was you attacked by Comanche?"

"Directly in the way you're going, about four or five days ago."

"And where abouts are these drovers?"

"They're moving a herd directly in the way you're going. I left 'em at midnight, so they're 12 hours behind me."

Bernard Swain narrowed his eyes.

"You stole a horse, but you think we'll take you in?"

Cossatot Jim nodded to the two riders and the score of horses yonder.

"I'm savvy enough to know a fellow traveler when I see one," Cossatot Jim said. "I ain't asking for more than company from you. Your horses, or whosoever's they are, ain't an interest to me."

Bernard Swain chewed on this for a bit.

"If we're moving in the direction of them drovers you stole that horse from, you don't want to ride with us. You'll come face to face with them."

Cossatot Jim grinned. "I guess I reckon you'll want to avoid them as much as I do," he said. "You ain't taking them horses right past a band of cattlemen."

Swain shrugged. "That's true enough. What'd you say your name was?"

"Cossatot Jim."

"Well, Crosstoe, turn your horse around and let's see about getting past them drovers and Comanche."

***

With their new companion, the horse thieves started a wide arc to the south, leaving plenty of room for a herd of cattle and a band of renegade Comanche to pass by unobserved.

Mezcal Pete and Cossatot Jim rode together, leading some of the horses.

Rude and Bernard Swain rode behind them with the rest of the horses and the two pack mules.

"Do you trust him?" Rude asked.

"Of course not," Bernard Swain said. "I'll keep one eye on him and the other eye on the horses as long as he's around."

"Why would you want to bring a man like that along with us?" Rude asked.

Bernard Swain clicked his tongue and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Well, boy, it's like this. When you make your way in life the way we make our way, you can't have too many friends. You never know when you'll need them. Way I see it, men like us need to band together and look out for each other. Maybe in a year or five years, I'll run into him again when I've got troubles of my own. And if I help him today, he'll be more likely to help me then."

Swain rode on a ways, thinking through his thoughts.

"We look out across this wide plain, and all we see is how big and empty it is. And we start thinking what a big ol' world this is. Right?"

Rude swept his eyes from north to east to south. "It is a big ol' world," he agreed.

"But the fact is, it's a pretty small world. There ain't that many people in all of Texas and New Mexico. You get into a town and start askin' around, and you'll find that pretty quick you'll run into someone you know, or someone who knows someone you know. It's happened to me more times'n I can count. So folks like us, we stick together. We help each other out."

"I reckon so," Rude said.

"And besides, if we get into trouble, either with them cattle drovers or the Comanche, having one more gun won't hurt none."

Bernard Swain had taken in or partnered up with any number of thieves and outlaws in his day.

At one time or another he'd ridden with stagecoach robbers, rustlers, cutthroats, bank robbers, and claim jumpers. He preferred stealing horses to any of the rest of it. You could make off fast with the stolen merchandise, sell it in the next town, and be shed of all evidence. There was little time involved in stealing a horse and it left ample time for Swain's favorite activity — loafing.

He was a man who liked being master of his own schedule. He didn't like being told to be in a place at a time. He didn't like other men telling him what to do or when to do it. He liked to loaf. Whether he was drinking mezcal on a stool in a saloon or whittling a stick in a front-porch rocker, Bernard Swain enjoyed idle hours.

Stealing horses was the best way he knew to increase idle hours and still have the money to enjoy them.

But he had a dream.

Some years ago, when he was riding with an outfit of rustlers, they had a camp in a canyon in the Texas hills. It was a pretty place with a stream and a pool of water, and there were half a dozen cabins there. One of those cabins doubled as a sort of saloon for the outlaws.

Over the years, thinking about that spot and all the camaraderie he'd enjoyed there, Bernard Swain formed a dream of one day establishing an outlaw town — a place where men like him could go and put up their feet and enjoy idle hours with fellow travelers. He knew what he would name it, too. Profanity, because a man would be free to swear all he wanted in Bernard Swain's outlaw town.

-8-

Losing a horse and gun to that buffalo hunter aggravated Rab Sinclair to no end, particularly because he'd had misgivings about helping the man in the first place.

"I'll tell you, old hawss, you cannot trust a stranger," Rab said.

Like most any man who ever sat a saddle for any length of time, Rab Sinclair's best conversations tended to be with his horses.

"And you damn sure don't trust a stranger who's begging for help. A man who can't do for hisself is bound to steal from you the first chance he gets."

The place in the far distance where the sky touched the ground seemed like an eternity away. It was hard to imagine that somewhere out there was Texas, where they'd been among people when they bought the cattle. The Staked Plains seemed so big and empty, and yet Rab knew there were Comanche out here, somewhere. Likely as not there were others, too. Maybe others moving cattle. Maybe even settlers moving across to New Mexico, although if there were settlers they'd be more apt to be on marked trails.

The land seemed to stretch out as flat as it could be, but along the horizon there were small rolling hills, ridges that hid canyons, even tall hills. The wide plains were deceptive in that way. A hill that seemed to be just a few miles off might be an ancient mesa thirty or forty miles off.

A man could not trust what he saw out here.

And everything appeared so dry — just sand and dead grass. But even water could be found, if a man knew where to look.

"The Comanche know where to find it," Rab told the Appaloosa. "They fled into the Llano Estacado to escape the Spanish a hundred years ago, and they've known ever since then where to seek out the water. If I'd turn you loose, you'd probably find it. I reckon you can smell it, can't you?"

Rab rode back to the east, but not exactly in the path cut by the cattle. He was looking for any signs of the Comanche to try to judge their numbers. He wanted to find out, too, if they seemed to be following. That might indicate if they intended a threat to Sinclair's outfit.

But he found no signs of the Comanche, neither tracks where they'd ridden through nor evidence of campsites. They were like haints that drifted across the plains, never actually pressing a foot into the sand, never bedding down or lighting a fire.

Some time ago he'd lost sight of the herd.

It was hard in this place not to feel overwhelmed with a hopelessness, a loneliness that came from nothing but the sheer desolation.

And still, Rab marveled at the fact that people moved through this empty land. Here he was, driving three hundred head of cattle across the plain just to get them from one place to another.

A couple of days before, not long before they found the massacred buffalo hunters, he'd seen a herd of pronghorn. It was a small herd, only ten or eleven. But they were there, surviving in this wasteland. They found water, and food enough.

Low as they were, the ridges and hills hid a seemingly endless expanse beyond them.

Rab urged the Appaloosa forward, riding another half mile up to the top of a ridge, and there beyond, maybe two or three miles off, he spotted something jutting up out of the flat plain.

It looked out of place, a bright green spot in a sea of sandy brown.

"Now what do you reckon that is?" Rab said. "Come on now, let's go and have a look."

He did not hurry to it, but as the Appaloosa took its easy strides, the distant shape began to take form, and Rab realized that there in the middle of the sweeping waste, a squat cottonwood had taken root. And as he neared it, he could see that the cottonwood was not alone. Beside it someone in some time had built a small rock hut with a timber roof. The timbers had fallen in, and some of the rocks from the walls had collapsed and were spread out beside the hut. But all the same, there it was — a rock hut where it should not be.

The trunk of the cottonwood was twisted and bent. The wind had stripped the cottonwood of all but its most devout leaves so that bare branches reached out helplessly away from the trunk. The tree was squat, not much taller than the hut, and it seemed to escape the wind by hiding behind the hut.

When he got to the hut, Rab dismounted. Curiosity, more than anything, made him want to find some clue as to what man set these rocks one atop the next.

Back in Las Vegas an Italian religious man had lived for three years in a cave on the mountain peak above the town, and Rab now thought of him. Did the ruins of this hut remember some similar man who sought solitude in the name of his God?

"What do you reckon, old hawss?" Rab said. "What damn fool tried to make a home here?"

Any mortar that was used in the walls was now gone. The rocks seemed to sit in place for lack of anything better to do.

As he dismounted and walked up to the hut, Rab saw that it was an entire wall that was knocked over and spilled out all over the ground to the side of the cabin. The roof was caved in and made it impossible to get into the hut itself.

There was no furniture inside. Not table or chair. No papers or books, not even any cookware.

Either the person who lived here took everything with them when they left, or others had come along and looted everything out of it. Another possibility was that whoever built the hut brought nothing with them.

Rab walked around the place to the door to the hut. When he peeked inside, he had a different view from what he'd seen through the collapsed wall. And there he saw the bleached white skull on the ground and bones scattered below it.

"Whoever he was, he never left here," Rab said to the horse. "Let's do one better than him and get on back to the herd."

Maybe it was the sadness of the bones in the broken down hut, or his eagerness to check in on the people he felt a responsibility for, but Rab urged the Appaloosa into a gallop.

It would be an easy thing for a man in this place with no natural landmarks to get turned around and lose his way. The cattle herd probably was less than ten miles from him now, but even from the hilltops, Rab did not immediately find evidence of it.

Riding back to the west, he eventually came to a place where he could see the tramped and chewed clumps of grass and buckwheat that showed the way to the herd, and over the next ridge he could see the movement of the steers like a brown wave on the empty plain.

He gave the Appaloosa a pat on the neck.

"We'll get up in front of them so neither you nor me have to eat dust all afternoon," Rab said.

-9-

Caleb Morgan spat at the ground and issued a curse.

The big bay gelding that Fitz had been riding as a spare mount ever since they started across the Llano Estacado wandered off to the north in search of good grass, and half the remuda followed the bay. It amazed Caleb, working with so many horses and learning their individual personalities, how horses could be so smart and so dumb all at the same time. He was also learning that every horse was stubborn as a mule, but some were subtly stubborn while others were stand-in-your-face stubborn.

Fitz's bay was stand-in-your-face stubborn. Forever that bay wanted to wander off in different directions, and half the remuda always seemed to follow.

Caleb let them go. It mattered little if the horses strayed too far in one direction. But then they moved on a bit farther, and Caleb knew he needed to chase them back with the rest of the horses.

When he rode off to gather them up, that red-headed sorrel made its way down to the south near a high ridge.

As Caleb pushed the buckskin and the other horses back toward Cromwell and the rest of the remuda, he noticed the sorrel drop down below the ridge and out of sight. As strong-headed a mare as he'd ever seen.

So Caleb chased the buckskin back down toward Cromwell.

"Come on, you old biter," he said, using the pet name Rab sometimes employed with Cromwell. "I can't do all this work myself. You've got to take up some of the slack."

With the other horses now back with the remuda, Caleb rode down to O'Toole who was bringing up the rear guard.

"That danged sorrel done wandered off," he said. "She dropped down over that ridge yonder. You keep an eye on the horses while I round her up?"

O'Toole looked over at the ridge. If the sorrel had gone down the back side of it, she was a mile and a half off.

"Listen, son, you be careful down there. You see anything, you fire off a round and then get back up to us lickety split."

"I'll do it," Caleb said. "Don't worry, though. Once I get down there she'll come on back. She just wants to be ornery for a bit."

"Okay," O'Toole said, but he wondered if maybe he should ride down there and keep an eye on the boy.

Caleb Morgan was a special project for Rab Sinclair, and all the men in the outfit knew it. None of them were aware of the particulars, except Vazquez. The story, as O'Toole knew it, was that Caleb's grandfather had been killed because he'd helped Rab Sinclair in some way. So Rab took the boy in and took care of him. The men in the outfit knew that Rab expected them to watch out for Caleb. But they also knew that part of watching out for him was allowing him to learn by doing. So O'Toole shrugged and watched the boy ride off to fetch the sorrel.

Caleb reached the top of the ridge and was perturbed to find that the sorrel was standing down in a sandy wash. The bank wasn't steep, but there was no sense in the horse wandering down into a dry wash where there was no grass for grazing.

"You dumb old cow," Caleb said, sliding down out of his saddle. "There ain't even grass down in there. What are you doing there?"

Caleb dropped down out of the saddle and left his horse there on the top of the ridge.

It was a long, easy slope down to the dry wash. At the bank, Caleb hopped down into the wash, his feet hitting the crusty sand. That's when he realized the horse's lead had come undone and fallen down to the horse's feet. Effectively, the sorrel had ground-tied itself.

Not every horse would stand for a ground tie, but most of the horses in Rab Sinclair's remuda were pretty well trained. If any of them would wander from a ground tie, Caleb expected it would be this sorrel.

The three Comanche were hiding under a rock outcrop that hung out over the bank of the wash. When Caleb jumped down into the wash, they were already behind him.

Caleb never saw the Comanche, nor did he see the club that swung down hard and smashed against the back of his head. One moment he was cussing the sorrel for being a dumb beast, and the next moment everything went black.

The three Comanche moved quickly, throwing his limp body over the back of the sorrel and tying him to the horse. Then they led the horse down the wash to a place where another dry wash joined the first. They followed that second arroyo up to where their horses were tied out of sight. The three Comanche mounted, and leading the sorrel with Caleb tied to its back, they disappeared quickly into the vast emptiness of the Llano Estacado.

***

The cattle moved in their slow, lumbering way.

The horses followed out of habit.

O'Toole rode up close behind, pressing the horses when they needed to be urged forward. He kept a watch over his shoulder.

Out across the plain he could see the three vaqueros working the herd. He had sight of Vazquez and Kuwatee, and he knew Rab was somewhere up ahead. When he looked over his shoulder, Fitz was there.

Sancho had pressed ahead of the horses, and the wagon was between them and the grazing steers.

As rearguard, O'Toole's job went beyond just watching the backtrail. He also had to make sure he could lay eyes on the entire outfit.

He could not see Caleb, but he did not worry about Caleb because he knew where the boy had gone. But after some time, O'Toole checked back over his shoulder and saw Caleb's mount still standing at the top of the ridge. What surprised him was the distance — the mount was quite a ways back behind the herd now.

O'Toole wheeled his horse and rode back to Fitz.

"You seen Caleb?" he asked.

Fitz turned in his saddle and saw Caleb's horse standing at the top of the ridge. Fitz had seen the sorrel wander off, had seen Caleb talk to O'Toole, and knew where he was going when he rode off toward the ridge.

"I saw him go after that sorrel, but I can't believe he ain't back yet," Fitz said. "We'd better go check on him."

O'Toole cast a concerned look over at Caleb's mount.

"I'll go check," O'Toole said. "You ride on ahead and tell Vazquez."

Fitz nodded.

Even as he galloped forward, he suspected they were being overly cautious. But it was odd that Caleb would leave his horse at the top of the ridge and not already be coming back with the sorrel.

He looked back over his shoulder and saw O'Toole galloping toward the ridge.

O'Toole was a practiced Indian fighter. He already had his six-shooter in his hand, ready to fire a warning shot or defend himself. Seeing the Colt in O'Toole's hand gave Fitz a new sense of urgency. He pressed the horse forward faster.

Fitz reached Vazquez about the same time that O'Toole reached the top of the ridge.

Fitz looked back and watched as O'Toole walked his horse along the ridge.

"We may have a problem," Fitz said to Vazquez. "Caleb went over that ridge to fetch the sorrel, and he's not come back yet. He went afoot, left his horse standing there."

Vazquez turned his horse to face back east.

No O'Toole was waving his hands in the air. No one wanted to fire a shot if it wasn't necessary. A single shot probably wouldn't stampede the cattle, but they all knew that it might.

"That looks like trouble," Vazquez said. "I'll ride forward for Rab. You go to O'Toole."

Both men knew that this was a dangerous moment.

The outfit was fine as long as every man held his position. Plenty of eyes scouted for trouble. Every man knew he could count on the man behind him or beside him.

But when the outfit started getting strung out and the eyes searching for trouble were all in one place or the man who was supposed to be behind was off somewhere else — it meant the outfit as a unit was weak.

Fitz knew it from his time in the war. He understood intuitively how to position troops and hold defensive positions. Even as a cavalryman whose job was to attack, Fitz knew how a smaller unit could hold ground and defend.

Vazquez knew it from riding with posses going after outlaws who were bunkered down in the hills above Las Vegas.

O'Toole knew it from his Indian fighting days.

By abandoning their positions, they were leaving the main body exposed to attack from the side or behind. But there was no choice. They had to find Caleb.

Fitz reached O'Toole before Vazquez could get forward to Sinclair.

"Hell. He ain't here," O'Toole said. He pointed to the dry wash down below the ridge. "I reckon he walked down into there, but I don't see him at all."

Fitz rode his horse along the ridge, looking out past the wash in search of some sign of where Caleb might have gotten to.

"Why'd he leave his horse? That's what I don't understand."

"Maybe he saw the sorrel and thought he could get to it," O'Toole said. "Maybe it ran off and he ran off after it."

"On foot?" Fitz said. "It don't make sense. I sent Vazquez to go and fetch Rab. We need him or the half-breed to come and look at the tracks."

O'Toole checked forward but did not yet see Rab riding back to them.

"We're losing time," O'Toole said. "If something's happened to him, the sooner we get to him the better."

"Can you track him?" Fitz asked.

"Maybe a little," O'Toole said. "But not so much as Rab or the half-breed could do."

"Then wait," Fitz said.

In another moment they could see Rab, thundering toward them on the black-spotted Appaloosa. Vazquez was not with him. He'd only rejoined the outfit an hour or so ago.

As he crested the low ridge he reined in the Appaloosa.

"How long has it been since you saw Caleb?" Rab asked.

"Maybe a quarter of an hour, Rab. Between a quarter of an hour and half an hour, I reckon," O'Toole said. "I mean, you see how far we've come."

Carlos and the other vaqueros had the cattle moving along at a good pace just now, and they had been all through the afternoon. The cattle seemed as eager as the riders to get ground between them and the Comanche.

"Hold my hawss," Rab said, tossing the reins of the Appaloosa to O'Toole. He slid down out of the saddle and began looking at the ground around Caleb's horse. "Fitz, you'd best get back in position and keep the outfit moving along. Keep a watch on them horses and don't let them stray."

"All right, Rabbie," Fitz said, wheeling his horse and moving back toward the remuda.

"Tell me what happened," Rab said to O'Toole.

"About half the hawsses wandered off to the north a ways, and Caleb rode to get them. But that sorrel hawss, you know the one, she came off this way on her own. She dropped down below this ridge here, and we couldn't still see her. Caleb got the others back in line, and then he rode down here to go after the sorrel. He dismounted here on the ridge, and the last time I saw him, he was afoot down the slope toward the wash there."

Rab was already walking down toward the wash. His eyes were on the ground.

Now he stood at the bank of the wash.

"Comanche got him," Rab said.

"You sure?" O'Toole asked. "I didn't see nothing."

"I don't know if they lured the sorrel, or if she just willingly helped them. But they had her standing right there in the wash, probably ground tied. I've got Caleb's footprints here, he jumped off the bank into the wash to fetch her. Good clear prints. Then I've got prints from at least two men right here. Soft prints, but I can see 'em. Maybe it was three men. They grabbed him and took him to the sorrel. Tied him to the hawss, I would guess."

Rab stood and looked down the wash, following the tracks of the sorrel with his eyes.

"They walked the sorrel this way," he said, pointing.

"Get back to the herd, O'Toole. Ride up to Kuwatee and send him here to meet me. You take his position, and make sure Fitz knows he's riding alone at the back. You lay eyes on him constantly. I don't have to tell you, O'Toole. You've done this enough with the cavalry. We're in real danger. If them Comanche have decided to take us one at a time, this could get real ugly."

O'Toole spat on the ground.

"Hell, Rab."

"Tell Kuwatee not to waste daylight getting down here."

-10-

A half hour lead was an enormous advantage that would only get better as the day grew longer.

The Comanche knew where they were going and could go at whatever speed they wanted. Rab Sinclair and Kuwatee had to learn their way, following tracks that sometimes disappeared and had to be rediscovered or sometimes deceived. And if the Comanche attempted to hide their trail or double back, Rab and the half-breed might lose an hour or more just figuring out where they'd gone.

"Our only advantage is that from a high spot on a level plain they've got no place to hide," Rab said. "If we catch sight of them, we can catch them."

They'd followed the tracks down the wash and then followed as they diverted back up another wash.

There a fourth man joined them, and they were now tracking five horses — the horses belonging to the Comanche and the sorrel.

Kuwatee had Caleb's horse on a lead and was bringing it with them.

Rab considered changing mounts, but despite its morning adventure to the abandoned hut, the Appaloosa seemed ready to go all day as hard as Rab wanted to ride, and Kuwatee's horse had done nothing more than ride along as the herd's pace. And changing mounts would lose them another fifteen minutes.

So without fresh mounts, Rab and the half-breed tracked the Comanche through the wash until they found a place on the bank where the horses had left out of the wash and cut a trail to the north.

It was luck that Kuwatee spotted the place. One of the Comanche had ridden his horse ten or fifteen yards forward and then backed it up to the place where the others left the wash. It was an effort to deceive anyone trailing them. Rab had missed it, and might have been several minutes trying to find the right trail. But Kuwatee, riding along behind Rab, had seen a fresh scuff mark on a boulder jutting out from the bank. This was the place where the Comanche had exited the wash.

It seemed almost deliberate, and probably was, but the Comanche's trail kept to the low places on the open plain. Twice, Rab left Kuwatee to follow the trail and he rode up to a hill to look out for any sign of the Comanche. But wherever they were out on the horizon, he could not see them.

"What are the chances they're trying to pick us off one by one?" Rab asked Kuwatee.

"Small," Kuwatee said. "If that was what they wanted, we would have found Caleb's body by now. And they would have attacked us. They took the boy as a hostage."

"Why would they want him as a hostage?" Rab asked.

"They have reasons," Kuwatee said. "They will make those reasons known when they're ready."

An hour of riding and following the trail finally took them out to a place where the low spots leveled out, and up ahead, more than a mile away, Rab and Kuwatee could see the small band they were tracking.

Five horses, including the sorrel, were standing in a wide semi-circle and from the distance appeared to be grazing.

The Comanche were sitting on the ground.

"Eating their supper," Kuwatee said.

"It's like they don't even care that we're here," Rab said. "You think they haven't seen us?"

"They've seen us," Kuwatee said.

He pointed to a nearby pile of boulders as tall as a house and long as a train.

"We ride to Caleb, maybe thirty Comanche come out from behind those rocks."

"A trap?" Rab said.

"Surely."

"Stay here. Be ready to run. I'll ride out to them."

Kuwatee nodded. "Go slow. Do not charge them. Do not draw your gun. They seek to parley or we'd already be dead."

Rab urged the Appaloosa forward.

He broke out into the open plain and rode an easy pace out toward the Comanche. As he neared them, he could see Caleb sitting among them. He looked as if his hands and feet were bound with rope.

He cleared the edge of the boulders, about thirty yards away from him, and as Kuwatee predicted, sixteen Comanche rode out toward him. They were also going at similarly easy pace, though they managed to get all the way around him and box him in. None of them came too close, though. They kept a wide berth and allowed Rab to keep riding out toward the Comanche who had taken Caleb.

About ten yards from Caleb and the four Comanche who had led him here, Rab reined in the Appaloosa to a stop.

"My name is Rab Sinclair. That boy belongs with my outfit," Rab said. "Cut him loose and turn him over to me."

One of the Comanche stood up. They'd been eating a roasted bird of some kind, though there was no fire anywhere.

"Boy stay with Comanche."

Rab Sinclair had an easy way. He didn't rile very quick. Growing up among the tribes had given him that level temper. Too often, white men were quick to angry, and their anger never set well with Indians. But Rab Sinclair's nature was equally infuriating to them because he did not act the way they expected him to act.

He also never showed any kind of fear because he wasn't afraid.

"No, that boy don't belong to the Comanche. You haven't told me your name. Who am I talking to?"

The Comanche warrior was a young man, and that was a poor sign. If there were no elders, that meant these Comanche were likely renegades and they'd do any damn thing they took a notion to because they didn't have an elder to rein them in.

He wore deerskin leggings and a breechcloth and a deerskin shirt. His long hair was braided in the fashion of the Comanche and tied with leather thongs. His scalp lock, the small braid at the top of his head, was tied with a bright blue cloth and had a single white feather coming out of it. He wore shell earrings in both ears and his cheeks bore shape tattoos.

"I am called Pounding Fist."

The Comanche stood with an imposing posture. He looked like he might charge at Rab at any moment. The men surrounding him were still mounted and most of them carried lances. Pounding Fist had a knife in his belt, but was otherwise not armed.

Rab looked over Caleb. He was pale with fright, but otherwise seemed unharmed.

"You okay, boy?" Rab asked him.

"They knocked me on the head pretty good, but I ain't hurt," Caleb said.

"You no talk to boy," Pounding Fist said. "You talk to me."

"Let's parley, then," Rab said. "Why did you take this boy from my outfit?"

"You have one we want."

Rab bit his lip. "Who do we have that you want?"

"Buffalo killer. You take him in."

This caused Rab a moment of confusion. His outfit had taken in two of the buffalo hunters, but Pounding Fist seemed to be interested in just one. Or maybe he only knew that Rab had taken in one. Skinner Jake had not come out of the wagon since they'd found him. It was possible the Comanche did not know about Skinner Jake.

"Comanche slaughtered all them buffalo killers," Rab said.

"Not all," Pounding Fist said. "One walk with you."

Cossatot Jim.

"He ain't with us no more," Rab said. "He stole a hawss in the middle of the night and rode off."

Pounding Fist had pretty good English. Rab had tried to communicate with Comanche before and it was always saying the same thing over again in a dozen different ways trying to make himself understood. Sometimes Rab wondered if the Comanche always understood but just wanted to be aggravating because they seemed to take great pleasure in a parley of circles.

But Pounding Fist didn't need anything repeated.

The Comanche stood for a long time, contemplating this new piece of information.

Rab stretched one leg out and over the Appaloosa's neck so that he was sitting side saddle with one leg crossed. He purposefully sat as relaxed as he could. He wanted all those Comanche to know he wasn't afraid of them.

At this point, Rab was fairly certain the Comanche didn't intend to kill him, or if they did it would just be through sheer meanness.

"What do the Comanche want with the buffalo killer?" Rab asked.

Pounding Fist stared hard at Rab Sinclair, his face contorted in rage. He spoke just one word, and it was chilling.

"Justice."

Rab chewed his lip a moment.

"Mind if I smoke?" he asked.

Pounding Fist nodded.

Rab took a pipe from his pocket and the tobacco pouch from his saddlebag. The pipe he was smoking was given to him by a chief of the Ute tribe. Ordinarily, in dealing with Indians, Rab liked to display any pipe he had that was given to him as a gift of friendship. But with the Comanche that was pointless. The Comanche seemed to exist in a constant state of war with every other tribe, whether it was open warfare or just smoldering hatred.

Rab went through three matches before he could strike one that stayed lit in the wind.

He puffed on the pipe a few times.

"Looked to me like the buffalo killers go their justice," Rab said. "I come up on a whole lot of bodies a couple days back. Why worry over one?"

Pounding Fist narrowed his eyes.

"You want boy, you bring buffalo killer."

"I told you," Rab said. "He rode off on one of my hawsses."

"You bring him."

"What did he do?" Rab asked.

"He take Comanche woman. Use her. Kill her. Leave body in arroyo. Kill her son."

Rab puffed the pipe. "How do you know it was him and not one of the others?"

"Three buffalo killers take woman. Three. No matter which ones. All get justice."

Rab chewed a piece of tobacco between his front teeth and then spit it into the wind.

"How do you know it was three?"

"Comanche woman's daughter saw. Told Pounding Fist what happen. Now we come for justice."

"Comanche justice is damned harsh," Rab said, thinking back on the massacred buffalo hunters.

"Justice is justice," Pounding Fist said.

"That boy didn't have nothing to do with what happened to your woman," Rab said. "You know that. Turn him loose."

Pounding Fist held his tongue for a long moment. Then he said, "You bring buffalo killer and trade for boy. Or boy will stand for buffalo killer."

"How's that?" Rab snapped. It was the first sign of anger he'd offered.

Pounding Fist let the slightest grin cross his face, and he nodded his head. He knew now that he'd struck a chord.

"Boy will stand for buffalo killer. Justice will be done. Either you bring buffalo killer, or boy take justice."

"What's he saying?" Caleb cried out.

"He ain't saying nothing," Rab said. "Don't you worry, Caleb."

"He's going to kill me for what that man Cossatot Jim done?"

"Yes!" Pounding Fist thundered. "Kill boy or kill buffalo killer. That is justice."

Rab drew on his pipe and blew the smoke out. It immediately disappeared into the wind.

"That ain't justice, and Pounding Fist knows it. Turn loose the boy and go get the buffalo killer yourself. And when you get him, bring me back my hawss, and I will buy the hawss from Pounding Fist with white man coins."

Pounding fist shook his head. "Pounding Fist do not care about white man coins. Justice is all. Boy or buffalo killer. No more talk."

"I don't have the buffalo killer. He run off on my hawss."

Pounding Fist held up three fingers. "Six sunsets. One tonight. Five more after the sun sets tonight. If you do not bring buffalo killer, before the sixth sunset, Pounding Fist finds his justice with boy."

"Rab," Caleb pleaded.

"You just be cool, Caleb," Rab said. "Be cool and calm."

"Six sunsets," Pounding Fist said. "You bring buffalo killer."

Rab looked out to the west where the sun was already getting low on the horizon.

"Where will Pounding Fist be?" Rab asked.

"You will find Pounding Fist."

Rab Sinclair wheeled the Appaloosa and at a sign from Pounding Fist the mounted Comanche behind him broke their circle to give him space to ride through.

"Rab!" Caleb called. "You can't leave me here."

Rab turned in his saddle and looked at the boy. "Don't you worry none, Caleb. I'll be back. They ain't going to hurt you. I promise you that."

He started to leave, but then reined in the Appaloosa and gave another glance back to Pounding Fist. "I'll want that damn sorrel hawss back, too."

-11-

When Rab Sinclair and Kuwatee reached the herd, Carlos had already stopped the drive for the day.

Sancho was cooking beans and bacon in a skillet.

Fitz and O'Toole had picketed the horses near the chuck wagon, and Miguel and Jorge were pushing a few stray steers back into the herd.

"Yo! Gather round me," Rab called out as he rode into camp and dismounted.

Kuwatee took the three horses — his own, and Rab's Appaloosa, and Caleb's that they'd been trailing — and picketed them with the rest of the remuda. He unsaddled the horses and rubbed them down. They'd been ridden hard back to the camp, and the sun was not yet down.

"Me too?" Sancho asked.

"Finish your cooking," Rab said. "Where the buffalo runner?"

"Still in the back of the wagon," Sancho said.

"Keep him there. Don't let him out where he can be seen at all."

Fitz and O'Toole made their way to Rab. Vazquez left the post he'd taken up near the chuck wagon. Carlos was still mounted, but only so that he could keep an eye out across the plain for any steers that looked like they might drift too far from the main body of the herd.

"Miguel and Jorge are still bringing in the steers," Carlos said. "Should I signal to them?"

"Let them keep working," Rab said. "They don't speak enough English for it to matter, anyway."

Rab stood where he'd dismounted and rubbed the dust from his eyes. He dropped the bandanna he'd used to shield his face from the dust and wind. Even with the bandanna, Rab's lips were cracked and his face burnt from so many days in the relentless wind.

"The Comanche took Caleb," Rab told the others. "He's unhurt, but they've taken him as a hostage. They claim the buffalo hunters killed a Comanche woman, and that's why they attacked the camp. They know we took in that feller Cossatot Jim. They saw him walking with us. They say if I don't bring them Cossatot Jim in six days, they're going to give Caleb the justice they've planned for that Arkansas buffalo hunter."

Fitz let out a long whistle.

"Hell," O'Toole said. "How many men are they?"

"I counted twenty altogether," Rab said. "Could be more, but that's the number they showed me."

"Probably ain't a coincidence they showed you twice our number," O'Toole said. "They like having an advantage in a fight. If they showed twenty, you can bet they's thirty at least."

"Who doesn't?" Fitz said.

Rab directed his next question to O'Toole. "The leader of the Comanche is a man named Pounding Fists. Ever heard of him?"

O'Toole shook his head. "Never did. He can't be much of a chief, or I'd probably have heard his name."

"He's young," Rab said. "I wouldn't make him more than about twenty-five years old."

"So what are you going to do?" O'Toole asked.

Sinclair chewed his lip.

"Like as not, I'm going to fetch that man Cossatot Jim and trade him out for Caleb," Rab said.

Fitz was the first to bristle, but he wasn't the last.

"You cannot turn a man over to those savages," Fitz said. "You and I both know what they would do with him, or we have a near enough idea of it."

Vazquez interjected. "I agree with Fitz, Rabbie. If it's true that he did what the Comanche claim, he should be turned over to a U.S. Marshal. That's the way to deal with it."

Rab shrugged.

"If we found this man, forgetting the Comanche for a moment, what would we do with him for stealing my hawss?"

"We'd hang him," O'Toole said. "But we wouldn't roast his privates like a duck on a spit. That's what the Comanche will do."

"We'd give him frontier justice," Rab said. "Because that's what men like us do with hawss thieves. The Comanche have their own sense of justice. It would be right and proper for me to ride out after that man, Cossatot Jim, and string him up for thieving my hawss. Well, it's right and proper that if he violates a Comanche squaw and then kills her, he should be handed over to the Comanche for justice."

"Is that what you'd do to me?" O'Toole asked.

Rab gave him a hard look.

"If you violated a Comanche squaw and killed her then I'm a poor judge of a man," Rab said. "I reckon I don't believe you'd do such a thing. But if you did, yes. I'd turn you over to them. But y'all are all forgetting our choice here. The Comanche are going to deal out justice one way or t'other. Our choice is to give them the guilty man in exchange for Caleb or to stand by while Caleb gets the treatment they planned for Cossatot Jim."

"We could fight it out," O'Toole said. "Try to get Caleb back."

Rab didn't bother to respond. If anyone knew how that would turn out it was O'Toole. The numbers were in favor of the Comanche, but even if the outfit survived a fight, Caleb certainly would not.

"Why does it fall on us to turn over the man?" Fitz said. "Why not just go after him themselves?"

Rab nodded. "I reckon they ain't convinced that I'm telling the truth when I say that Cossatot Jim ran off on one of my hawsses. This way, if I'm lying to them and I have Cossatot Jim, I can just hand them over. And if I'm telling the truth and he has run off, then they put the burden of finding him on me. But I'll tell you this, if they see that feller Skinner Jake in our camp, then they'll really believe I was lying to them. And they might kill Caleb whether I bring them Cossatot Jim or not."

Rab walked to the fire and used the burning end of a stick from the fire to light the tobacco in his pipe. Then he turned back to the others.

"Either way, if I don't have Cossatot Jim it don't make no difference us talking about it. If I ain't got him, I can't turn him over to the Comanche, and this is all just talk for talk's sake. So even before we decide what to do, we need to find Cossatot Jim."

Rab puffed on his pipe.

"I hired y'all to drive a herd of cattle from Texas to Las Vegas. What I'm talking about now is something different from that. So no man has to take any part of it if he don't want. We don't have provisions enough for an extra week out here on the Llano Estacado. We're nine days from Las Vegas, five or six of those days are on the Staked Plains. My gal back at my ranch, Evangeline, she's due to start toward us with fresh supplies, but she probably won't meet us until we're almost back to my ranch.

"Carlos, I need you to take Miguel, Jorge, and Sancho, and keep the cattle moving toward Las Vegas. Meet Evangeline and go with her and whoever she brings to help, and get these cattle back to my ranch. We can't stop the drive to go hunting for Cossatot Jim. The cattle need water and good forage, and we'll lose too much of the herd if we don't keep them going. At this point I ain't too concerned about bandits or rustlers. And we've found the Indian troubles I was worried about. Anyone who doesn't want a part in what I'm planning should ride on with Carlos.

"The rest of you, if you'll stay with me and Kuwatee, we'll take provisions from Sancho's wagon and go looking for Cossatot Jim. We'll spread out and cover as much ground as we can. I've never in all my life seen a place as easy to get lost in as this enormous emptiness. We might not find him. And if we don't, then there's no choice but to try to fight the Comanche to try to get Caleb Morgan back."

"And if we do find him," O'Toole said, "we just give him over to the Comanche?"

Rab shrugged. "That's where my mind is. I understand your objections to it. But if the choice is to let the Comanche have Cossatot Jim or let the Comanche have Caleb, my thinking is that the one earned what he'll get and the other did nothing wrong."

The men stood silently. Each one had his thoughts on what Rab was suggesting. None of them liked it.

"If it was a white woman, we'd turn him over to a white judge," Rab said. "And that judge would hang him for what he done, and none of us would give it a second thought. Roasting a man on a fire is a bit different than hanging him — I'll grant you that. But there's no other difference that I can see."

Vazquez crossed his arms and looked at the ground.

"Here's what I'll say, Rab, and I say it as a man who made his living wearing a badge. If the man did what the Comanche say he did, I don't have a problem handing him over to get what he deserves. I especially don't have a problem handing him over if that's what it takes to save Caleb. I'll ride with you."

O'Toole nodded his head at Vazquez's words. "I do have a problem handing a white man over to Comanche justice. It ain't right. But I had a feeling not to let the boy go after that sorrel by himself, and I reckon I have some blame in his getting captured. And if it comes to a fight with the Comanche to get Caleb back, I ain't going to leave you short-handed."

Everyone looked now to Fitz, the Union cavalryman who rode under Custer at Gettysburg. In his face Rab could see that the man was opposed to handing over a white man to Comanche justice, but he struggled with his dedication to his outfit.

"Look here, Fitz," Rab Sinclair said, and he let him off the hook. "Somebody has to ride along with Carlos and the herd to keep the remuda. Those of us who are staying will take two hawsses a piece so we have a spare mount, but that leaves a passel of hawsses still to be looked after. You ride with the herd, watch the hawsses, and that gives Carlos one more gun in case he runs into trouble. You'll do that for me?"

Fitz nodded. He knew that Rab understood his dilemma. Fitz just couldn't bring himself to turn a white man over to the Comanche. Torture was far different from hanging.

"I'll do that, Rab. No hard feelings?"

"None," Rab said. "You're doing what I'm asking you to do to earn your wages. Can't be hard feelings over that."

"What about me?"

From the back of the covered wagon, Skinner Jake was listening to the conversation.

"You keep your head inside that wagon and don't let the Comanche knew you exist."

Kuwatee now joined them, having dealt with the horses.

"Any idea how you plan to find a needle in a haystack?" the half-breed asked.

"Quickly," Rab said.

***

"You tell me what happened, and you tell me every bit of it," Rab said, his teeth gritted. "Right now them Comanche don't know you're alive. But that can change. It wouldn't take much at all for me to decide to drag you up to them Comanche and get my friend back. They don't know the difference 'tween you and Cossatot Jim. I could have my friend back right now, and don't forget it."

Though his throat was still dry and cracked, Skinner Jake swallowed hard.

"I'll tell you," he said.

"About a month ago we left out of Texas and come into the Staked Plains. We'd heard they was buff up here, and plentiful."

"You find any?"

"Some. We had a few skins. Not much. We found sign of them coming through, but we think maybe we was too late to get the big herds."

"But you found something else?"

Skinner Jake nodded.

"We set up a camp, and each day we scouted out in different directions, hoping to see some sign or run across a herd. If we found a herd, we was to all meet back at the camp and then set off after them as a group. You see?"

"I see," Rab said.

"So Cossatot Jim, and another couple of fellows, Abe Jones and Chubby Tollman, they rode off to the south a ways. When they come back, Cossatot Jim was grinnin' like the devil, like he'd caught the cat by the tail. Well, me and Chubby Tollman was pretty tight, on account of knowin' each other before we come together with this outfit. We'd worked together skinnin' buff for two seasons in a row. So we was like friends. You see?"

"Yes," Rab said.

"That night Chubby told me all about what happened. Cossatot and them come up on a spring down in a canyon, and a little pool there, too. First fresh water any of us had seen in days. So the three of them stripped down and jumped in. You know how it is — cool off, enjoy the water a bit. So they're in that pool, when all of a sudden this Comanche squaw woman and a couple of her children come along. Cossatot and Abe, they grabbed her and the children. Chubby told them not to, but they done it anyway. Then they set Chubby to watch the children and they had their way with the woman. You know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean," Rab said.

"Well, while they're so engaged, one of the children goes to run. Gets away from Chubby. And Abe Jones, he shot the boy as he ran. The squaw woman, she went to pitchin' a fit, and Cossatot Jim gutted her there by the pool. Chubby wouldn't let them hurt the other child, and they turned that one loose when they left."

Skinner Jake took a drink from a canteen.

As Rab stood at the back of the wagon, the chill of dusk hit him with the breeze. The others were bedding down or mounting up for the night watch. It was a disappointment to him that this cattle drive had taken a turn. Up until today, the thing had been moving along pretty well. Even the stolen horse didn't bother him that much. But now Rab was feeling the weight of a life in his hands. Several lives, truthfully. The Comanche might at any time decide to attack. If they saw Skinner Jake, Rab felt it was a certainty.

"After that, for two or three days we kept seeing Comanche stalking us out on the plains. Chubby Tollman only told me what happened. He didn't tell anyone else, and I didn't say a word, neither. And Cossatot and Abe, neither of them breathed a word. So the others warn't prepared for it. They saw them Comanche and figured they was just watching to see what we were up to. But I figured different. I didn't think they'd attack the whole body the way they did, though. I thought maybe they'd come after us one at a time. So I stayed close to camp. And then they came on and attacked. It was a massacre."

"I saw what it was," Rab said.

Sinclair could not muster sympathy for the buffalo hunters. Even the ones who were innocent were still guilty of keeping bad company. A man was no better than the outfit he rode with, at least in Rab Sinclair's mind. And that's why he was always careful about the men he called friends. He didn't have to wonder if Fitz or O'Toole or Vazquez or Miguel or Jorge or any of the others would provoke the Comanche in such a way.

"Tell me about Cossatot Jim. Where will he go?"

"Out here?" Skinner Jake said. "I can't tell you. It's not like there's a place to go out here. Where would you go?"

Rab nodded. "I reckon if I was him, I'd go the fastest way out of here I could find. I'd make for the closest town."

"That's what I would do," Skinner Jake said. "You found him west of where we was attacked?"

"Pretty far west," Rab said.

"He's making for New Mexico Territory," Skinner Jake said.

"And he's got a full day on us, with a good hawss," Rab said. Now he was talking to himself more than to Skinner Jake. "A full day and a good hawss. If he rode directly west of here, he could be to the Pecos River in four days. Maybe three if he abuses my hawss."

"Which he would," Skinner Jake said.

"I reckon that gnaws on me as much as any of this. I don't like for my hawsses to be mistreated. I'll get Caleb out of this one way or t'other, but I don't know if I can save my hawss."

Rab gave Skinner Jake a hard look.

"The only way this gets worse for me is if them Comanche see you. So I'm telling you now, if you climb out of that wagon before you're told, I'll turn you over to them in exchange for that boy. You understand me?"

"I ain't leaving this wagon," Skinner Jake said.

"See that you don't."

-12-

By the break of dawn the outfit was on the move.

Carlos, Miguel, and Jorge had the cattle started west again. Sancho was driving his wagon up ahead of the steers now.

Fitz was in the back, pushing the spare mounts that were left to him.

Rab Sinclair, Kuwatee, Vazquez, and O'Toole had picked out a mount and a spare, and they'd gotten together provisions to see them through a week. One of the spares carried Caleb's saddle. They were light on water.

"My guess would be that Cossatot Jim rode off as straight west as he could go, which would put him to the southwest of us," Rab told the others.

They split up with roughly a mile between each man. Rab was out on the far end of their line. Vazquez was a mile to his left. O'Toole was about a mile to the left of him. And three miles from where Rab rode, just a barely visible speck out on the horizon — and sometimes invisible behind a low hill or down in a swale — Kuwatee held the other far end of the line.

The vast distances seemed impossible. The terrain never changed in any direction, even after the cattle disappeared from view. There was almost nothing to gauge time or distance by.

A small rise far in front of them would sink to nothing as they approached it and never be seen again.

They never saw a dry wash from any distance. It always seemed to just appear a hundred yards in front of them. And then they would pass it, and it would disappear just as fast.

They hurried, because they had to, but they did not exhaust the horses or ride so hard that they might miss a trail or a sign that would lead them to Cossatot Jim.

The monotony of it was maddening.

O'Toole kept wanting to ride nearer to Vazquez to talk, but he knew he had to hold his position for fear that they might ride directly past some important track. So he talked to his horse or to himself.

Vazquez caught himself dozing in the saddle. He would jerk back awake and have to take a moment to turn in the saddle to see if he might have ridden past something with his eyes closed.

Kuwatee, though, was fine in the quiet loneliness of the Llano Estacado. He was a man who had spent much of his life alone, passing between two worlds without ever being completely welcome in either. A half-breed was forever ostracized by whites and Indians alike. He stood a better chance of acceptance among the tribes people, but they never completely accepted him. Living on Rab Sinclair's ranch was the first time in his life, at least the first time in a long time, where he felt there were people nearby he could call friends.

The half-breed sometimes ate supper with Rab Sinclair and Evangeline. Many times he had joined Caleb at the young man's cabin.

But he knew a life of loneliness, and so the loneliness of the expansive plain did not bother him. Kuwatee was at peace with where he was, wherever he was, because he had learned to accept all things.

Rab Sinclair had with him his two favorite horses, the blue roan and the buckskin. He was mounted now on the buckskin, and he found that between them he had no lack of companionship.

Sinclair loved to study the behavior of the horses.

He understood an ear flick from the buckskin or a snort from the roan as well as he understood a man speaking English at him.

"You don't give a care if this plain stretches all the way to the sun, do you hawss?" Rab said to the buckskin. This was a horse that loved to move, and the farther the better. There was nothing the buckskin hated worse than being left in a corral when other horses were getting saddled. And he was an easy riding horse. He seemed to always take his steps as easy as possible for whatever rider was on his back.

At the ranch, Evangeline often used the buckskin because he was such a pleasant animal to ride.

"Not like you, you old biter," Rab said to Cromwell.

At the nickname, the jealous buckskin's black tipped ear turned. He knew when Rab was talking to the roan.

"Come on now, they's plenty of conversation for all of us," Rab told the buckskin, patting it on its neck.

The wind seemed to have let up a bit today, but it was still brutal. It blew steady, chapping every bit of skin it could find. Sand filled the corner of Rab's eyes. Every few miles he would rein in the buckskin, dismount, and pour a little water onto a cloth. He'd use that to wipe the horses' eyes and nostrils.

Nothing about this godforsaken place was fit for man or beast.

The sun baked. The wind beat. The ground provided almost nothing for sustenance. There was grass enough for the cattle if they kept the cattle moving, but water seemed always distant. The Llano Estacado proved to be earth at its rawest, most basic, where daily survival remained a constant question.

Even with full canteens, Rab knew they would need to find water as soon as possible. The canteens needed to be refilled, and the horses would need to drink.

He looked out across the wide plain to his left. With each man riding with a pack horse, even Kuwatee made a large enough target to be seen, as long as he was not below a hill or down in a swale.

But Rab had to wonder if they would even see a sign of Cossatot Jim. If he made a camp four miles west of where they rode and left behind a fire pit, they might never see it.

Sinclair pulled his hat from his head and waved it several times until all three of the other men returned the salute. Then he pointed with his hat off to the west, signaling to them that he was shifting their direction a bit westward.

He laid the left rein on the buckskin's neck and it gently and subtly turned its direction, easing just a little farther off to the west.

The morning sun seemed to anchor itself straight above them, and it seemed to stay hang for hours there at the top of its arc in the sky.

When it finally began to drop to the west, it fell quickly. Noontime seemed to last too long, and the late afternoon seemed to turn to early evening much too quickly.

Now, as the sky to the east began to turn dark, the other three men rode to where Rab was reining in his horses.

***

"Nothing all day," O'Toole complained. "From morning to evening, I didn't see nothing but the same thing all day long."

"It's too much space," Vazquez said. "We could be within a mile of his tracks and never know it."

They would have no campfire. There was no point in it. They didn't carry with them skillets, and there wasn't wood to burn out here anyway. Rab would miss morning coffee, and he liked to have a hot meal to start the day. But it was jerky and some flat bread Sancho made up for them.

"He's left a sign somewhere," Rab said. "A campfire. Hawss droppings. A clump of buckwheat his hawss munched on. Somewhere out here he has left a trail a blind man could follow, and we just have to pick up on it."

"We have to pick up on it and get him back to the Comanche in four days," O'Toole said. "It might be time to start thinking about what other plans we have to rescue Caleb."

Rab struck a match inside his hat and used it to light his pipe.

"We keep this up one more day," Rab said. "If we camp tomorrow and haven't found a sign of Cossatot Jim, then we'll turn back after that and give some thought to how we get Caleb away from the Comanche without getting him and us all killed."

Kuwatee unrolled his bedroll and stretched out inside it.

"It may be that we have more luck if we ride separate," he said.

"I don't like the idea of being out of sight of each other," Rab said. "The Comanche have already taken one man hostage. I ain't inclined to give them opportunity to take another."

"Cover more ground," Kuwatee said.

"Make ourselves an easier target," Rab said.

"I'm with Rabbie on this one," O'Toole broke in. "If we split up and each ride alone, the Comanche can have us one at a time, easy as you please. It's too dangerous. They're likely to change the deal they made at any moment, anyway. We'd just be giving them a reason to do it."

Kuwatee took a deep breath, relaxing and drifting off to sleep. "There are four of us. If Comanche decide to change deal, they will change whether we are together or not."

"We going to set a watch?" Vazquez asked.

"I don't plan to," Rab said. "The hawsses will let us know if someone is nearby."

O'Toole cleared his throat.

"Look here, Rab. It's not too late to go and get Fitz and them vaqueros. That puts the numbers closer to even. It's one band of renegade Comanche. We could take them in a fight. You said yourself they were mostly toting lances, and we've all got the Yellow Boys. There are only twenty of them. It's a fight we could win."

Rab puffed thoughtfully, the orange fire in his pipe glowing when he inhaled.

"It's only twenty that we know about," Rab said. "But remember, Cossatot Jim attacked a woman with children. That suggests that somewhere, maybe not far away, they've got a camp with some size to it. There might be a hundred braves, for all we know."

Now a thought struck Rab.

He knocked the fire out of his pipe and crushed it into the sand with the heel of his boot.

He'd picked the highest ground he could find to make their camp. The wind blew a little harder here than if they'd found a swale or a dry wash. But they had a vantage if anyone tried to get at them in the dark. But Rab also realized that if Cossatot Jim was on the plain he might have lit a fire. Scarce as it was, fuel was not impossible to find.

In the dim light of night, the others watched Rab as he pulled himself up onto the bare back of the buckskin.

"What you looking for, Rabbie?" O'Toole asked.

Rab strained his eyes through the darkness, hoping to see an orange glow somewhere.

"I was hoping maybe Cossatot Jim had made a fire. A man alone on the plain, he might get spooked. Or might just want to have some warmth. If so, we might see him out there."

O'Toole dug into his eye with his finger, trying to get some of the crusty sand out.

"I feel bad for him," O'Toole whispered to Vazquez.

"How's that?" Vazquez said back.

"He's desperate," O'Toole said. "He feels sorry for the kid, feels responsible, and he's desperate to find this Cossatot Jim feller."

Vazquez shrugged, a movement that said nothing in the dark.

"Hell, I ain't sure whether it's right or not to hand over Cossatot Jim to the Comanche," Vazquez said. "But Caleb Morgan rides in our outfit, and I reckon that gives all of us some responsibility for him."

"Yep," O'Toole said. "I ain't arguing that. As to whether or not we hand him over, I'll say this. I ain't in favor of it. He's a white man, and he should get a white man's justice. But if it's that Arkansas feller or Caleb, then I'm in agreement that the boy shouldn't die for something he had no part in. And I don't doubt that the Comanche would do it. Fighting them the way I did, I saw what they're capable of doing. They'll kill anyone — children, women, or men, they don't care. And as far as they're concerned, one white man ain't no different from another. To them, it makes all the sense in the world to punish Caleb for something he didn't do."

"You have a low opinion of the Comanche," Vazquez said.

"You damn straight I do," O'Toole responded. "I sure do. Hell. They earned my opinion of them, too."

"They are good warriors," Vazquez said.

"They're sneaky devils is what they are," O'Toole said. "Dangerous as hell. And there ain't nothing they like better than dressing up their lances with scalps. But if you want to know about the Comanche, all you need to know is that every other tribe of Injun is at war with them. They can't even get along with their own kind."

"Good horsemen," Vazquez said.

"Well, yep. They are that. And powerful warriors. Hell, I couldn't keep doing it."

"Couldn't keep doing what?" Vazquez asked.

"Fighting them."

"How do you mean?" Vazquez asked.

"I mean after so long, I couldn't keep doing it. I couldn't keep riding out on patrols too far off outposts knowing that we were going to be dry-gulched by the Comanche."

"So what did you do?" Vazquez asked.

"I deserted is what I did," O'Toole said. "I run off from the army."

"Isn't that illegal?" Vazquez asked.

"I suppose so," O'Toole said. "But I'm still alive."

Vazquez made a noise.

"You got a problem with a deserter?" O'Toole asked.

"Every man has to walk his own path, O'Toole. Your path is different from mine, and I can't tell you where your feet should fall on your path."

"Hell. That's right," O'Toole said.

Rab dropped down from the horse's back and walked over to his bedroll.

"See anything?" O'Toole asked.

"Nothing," Rab said. "I saw nothing in any direction."

"Maybe tomorrow we'll find something worth seeing."

-13-

Bernard Swain rubbed his eyes and blinked against the morning sun.

"We'll be making a late start of it again today," he said. "Sun's already up quite a bit."

Swain dragged himself stiffly from his bedroll. "Wake up, boys! Morning has broken."

Slowly, Rude and Mezcal Pete pushed their way out of the bedrolls. Cossatot Jim was already up, sitting on a rock some distance away from where the men had made their camp.

"Something wrong there, Cossatot?" Swain called to him.

"We're moving slow," Jim said. "We ain't making nearly the time I thought we would."

"It just seems slower than it is on account of the land just going on forever," Bernard Swain said. "It's like a giant carpet that just keeps unrolling more and more the farther you go."

Jim stood up and then stepped up onto the rock. He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked far to the east and north.

"You act like you're expecting somebody," Mezcal Pete said. "You expecting somebody?"

"I just don't want to get caught out here by Injuns," Cossatot Jim said. "Or anyone else, I reckon."

"Ain't no drovers going to worry none over one stolen horse," Bernard Swain said. "Beef on the hoof only lasts so long out here on the Staked Plains. They've got to get their cattle to good grazing pastures. If they see you again, they'll hang you for sure. But they ain't out here looking for you."

"All the same, we should get moving."

Cossatot Jim had done some figuring in his head. His numbers were all guesses and could have been off by wide margins. But he figured since stealing the horse and making a run, he'd probably gone thirty or forty miles to the west. Then, after meeting up with Bernard Swain and his three man gang, they had made probably twenty miles back east.

Today was the day, if it was going to happen, that he'd cross paths with that herd of steers and their drovers.

Bernard Swain used his knife to harvest some large clumps of tall grass. Along the way, he'd picked up some dried buffalo chips he was collecting in a bag. Together with the grass, he made a fire with the buffalo chips and used it to heat water for coffee.

There were a lot of things that Bernard Swain was willing to do without for a share of fifteen hundred dollars, especially if his share was quite a bit bigger than anyone else's share. But coffee was one thing he would not do without. He'd found that if he was going to get moving in the mornings, he had to have coffee to help him do it.

Cossatot Jim appreciated a good cup of coffee as much as anyone, but he was anxious to get moving.

He rolled up his bed and tied it to one of the mules. He hurried Rude and Mezcal Pete along, helping them where he could.

"That coffee ready yet?" he called to Swain.

"Soon enough," Swain said. "Don't be so jumpy, Cossatot. I'm telling you them drovers ain't worried about you or that horse. All they want is to get their cows to good pasture."

When the pot was good and hot to the touch, Bernard Swain used a bandanna to grasp hold of the handle.

"Bring me your cups," he said.

Each man held out a cup and took a tentative drink of the coffee. It was very strong and full of ground up bean, but it had a decent enough kick to it and help all of the men wake up. The bottle of mezcal they'd passed around the night before did not help their mornings.

"Maybe we should ride south a ways farther before going on east," Cossatot Jim suggested. "You don't want them drovers coming along and seeing your herd of stolen horses.

"I don't want to get too much farther off course," Swain said. "We've dropped quite a ways to the south already. Unless those drovers suddenly decide they're going somewhere south of Las Vegas, I can guarantee you that we ain't going to cross paths with them."

Swain watched Cossatot Jim, the way he bit at his fingernails and shifted on the rock where he was sitting, the way Jim paced and looked around all the time.

"You've got a worried mind, Cossatot," Swain said to him. "You sure there ain't something you've neglected to tell us?"

Jim blew into his mug of coffee. "What would I have not told you?" he said. "I told you I stole a horse from them drovers."

Swain nodded. "I reckon you did mention that," he said. "But you seem too nervous for something as small as that. You see us. We stole twenty horses. And we're taking our time with our coffee. We're sitting here unconcerned. Yet you act like a man who's being chased by every deputy marshal in the U.S. territories."

Cossatot Jim blew into his coffee again.

"I just don't want to run into any more trouble," Jim said. "That's all it is."

Swain clicked his tongue at Mezcal Pete.

"Now this is what I'm talking about, Pete," he said.

"What's that?" Pete asked.

"What we need is an outlaw town," Bernard Swain said. "We need a place where folks like us can feel safe from the law. Where they don't have to be jumpy, like Cossatot Jim here. We need a place where outlaws look out for outlaws, and ain't nobody else allowed in."

"Why don't you go and start an outlaw town, then?" Pete asked.

Mezcal Pete had heard Bernard Swain's talk of an outlaw town too many times already. The truth was, Pete didn't much like Bernard Swain or Rude. He wanted the money that working with them brought. And Bernard Swain had gotten very good at stealing horses. He always knew how to get them without being caught and how to get paid for them. The trick was riding back and forth across borders. Borders were a friend to the outlaw. Also, it helped to have a willingness to go where most others would not go. Places like the Staked Plains. Other people did not come to places like this.

Swain drank the last of his coffee.

"All right. If we're going to get these horses to Texas, we'd best start moving now."

He kicked dirt over his coals.

Cossatot Jim did not have to be told twice. He was the first in his saddle, and he'd already started walking his horse to the east when the others were mounted and riding.

-14-

Kuwatee pressed his palm against the coals of the abandoned fire.

"Still a little warmth," he said, looking up at Sinclair.

"What do you think?" Rab asked.

"He was here," Kuwatee said. "This fire is from this morning. He is not so far off now."

O'Toole kneeled close to the ground and looked at the tracks.

"I don't see how you can tell one from the other," he said.

"I know these hawsses," Kuwatee said. "I can recognize their tracks by their strides. This is the stride of the hawss Cossatot Jim stole from our remuda."

"What about all these others?" O'Toole asked.

"I do not know these hawsses," Kuwatee said. "Most of them had no riders and bore no packs. The prints do not sink into the sand deep enough if they were burdened."

O'Toole shook his head. "I can see that some of them are deeper than others. But I don't know how you can be certain of what you're seeing."

"I am certain," Kuwatee said. "I have studied tracks many times."

Rab stood beside the blue roan, idly patting its neck.

"I'm pretty sure he's right," Rab said. "See how this track presses deep into the sand? This is a hawss that's carrying an extry hundred and sixty pounds on its back. That's why the track presses so deep into the sand. But these others, they're not deep. Less weight because there's no rider. Also, you see how these others all ride in almost perfect single file? These are tied hawsses being led. You don't lead a hawss like that if it's toting a rider."

O'Toole shrugged. "Now that I can understand."

"It's a big gamble if we're misreading the tracks," Vazquez said.

Having ridden so many times with posses, Vazquez knew that trackers sometimes made mistakes — even trackers who were sure of what they saw. And a mistake — like misreading a track — could prove disastrous for a posse. It could set them on the wrong path and put them hours or days behind a fugitive. And that might be all the time the fugitive needed to get clear.

"It ain't likely that Kuwatee would misread the tracks of a hawss he knows," Rab said.

"So who are these others?" O'Toole said. "What do you reckon?"

"Hawss thieves," Vazquez said. "I'd bet a month's wages on it. Who else would be leading hawsses out across the Staked Plains?"

Vazquez had spent too long as a deputy sheriff to miss the signs of a criminal, and he was often quick to assume the worst about others. That he was usually correct in his assumptions proved out how good he was as a lawman.

"Likely so," Rab agreed.

"He didn't plan to meet hawss thieves out here," Vazquez said. "He came across a gang of outlaws and fell in with them. Turned him back east."

"Warned them about us, and the Comanche," Kuwatee said. "And they cut south to avoid us."

"That's how I'd figure it," Vazquez agreed.

O'Toole stiffened and craned his neck to the east. "I don't see them."

"They are there," Kuwatee said.

While the others looked east, Sinclair's eyes were fixed to the north. On a far distant ridge, Rab Sinclair could see the silhouette of two riders. Though he could make out no details, he instinctively knew that these were Comanche warriors, sent by Pounding Fists to observe.

"They ain't getting closer by us standing here," Rab said. "Let's ride."

Now that they had a trail to follow, the small company made better time.

They did not bother trying to track every step of the horses. With the empty plain stretching out forever in front of them, close was good enough.

They also changed up the formation in which they rode.

Now Rab Sinclair and Kuwatee took the center line, still stretched out about a mile from each other. Vazquez rode a mile out on Rab's right hand, and O'Toole was about a mile away from Kuwatee to his left.

In this way, they could sweep a wide swath of territory, keeping their eyes open for that distant movement that would be the stolen horses and the new band of men that Cossatot Jim had taken up with. With Rab and Kuwatee riding in the middle, one of the two of them could periodically find signs that they were still moving in the right direction.

After two hours, they came to a place where buffalo had been. It must have been a massive herd of buffalo, moving from the south to the north, for the grass and weeds were trampled down in a path that was almost half a mile wide.

The four riders converged when they arrived at the buffalo trace.

"They stopped here to gather buffalo chips," Kuwatee said.

"Someone likes his coffee," Rab Sinclair said, standing in his stirrups and stretching tall in the saddle to look out across the horizon. "How long ago do you reckon they were through here?"

Kuwatee dismounted and followed some of the tracks through the buffalo trace.

"Impossible to say," he determined. "Two hours. An hour." He looked up and checked the sun's position in the sky. "If we do not catch sight of them before sundown, we will catch them before noon."

"Hell. That's what I wanted to hear," O'Toole said. "Think they'll put up a fight when we try to take Cossatot Jim?"

Rab Sinclair clenched his jaws. "I'm tired of this place. I'm tired of riding through nothing but grass and sand and rocks, looking for a thing that should be right in front of me. If they put up a fight, it will be short-lived."

"I'm with Rabbie," O'Toole said. "Let's get this thing finished, get Caleb, and get home."

Vazquez shifted in his saddle.

"What about the hawss thieves? Assuming that's what they are."

"What about them?" Rab asked.

"If they don't put up a fight, but we know the hawsses are stolen, what do we do about it?"

Rab shrugged. "I ain't out here to be a vigilante. Unless them hawsses have a brand I recognize, or if they came off my ranch, that ain't my concern. My concern is this feller Cossatot Jim. My concern is getting Caleb Morgan back safe. Anything I have to do with hawss thieves depends entirely upon them and the posture they take with me."

Vazquez chewed his lip.

"Old habits are hard to set aside," he said. "As a lawman, I'm accustomed to dealing with hawss thieves when I find 'em."

"That ain't what I'm out here to do," Rab said.

"I reckon not," Vazquez said. "And you're paying my wages on this trip, so I reckon I'm out here to do what you're out here to do. It just doesn't set well."

"Our only concern now needs to be getting Caleb back in one piece," Rab said. "And ourselves."

O'Toole grinned and spit on the ground.

"Let's hope we recognize the brands on them hawsses, then," he said. "All this ridin' has me itchin' for a fight all of a sudden."

"What about the Comanche trailing us?" Kuwatee asked.

Rab looked back over his shoulder, but on the far horizon he saw no sign of the Comanche riders he'd seen earlier.

"Ain't a concern right now," Rab said. "Let's hope they don't become one."

***

Not long before dusk, O'Toole out to the left of Kuwatee began to wave his hat high over his head.

Rab Sinclair waved his own hat so that Vazquez would see, then Rab turned the blue roan toward O'Toole, trailing the Appaloosa behind him. Vazquez followed. The half-breed was already on his way over to O'Toole.

"They's something out there," O'Toole said.

The other three men stood in the stirrups to see.

"I don't see anything," Vazquez said.

"Naw, you ain't going to see it from here," O'Toole said. "I waited to signal until we'd rid down into a low spot. I didn't want whoever it is I saw to see me waving my hat in the air. They was far enough that probably they didn't even see me."

"Show me," Rab said. To Kuwatee and Vazquez he said, "Y'all might as well go ahead and bed down here for the night. By the time we get back it'll be too dark to go any farther."

Rab followed O'Toole back some distance the way they'd come. It wasn't even a thing he could notice until they had ridden some ways away and he looked back at Vazquez and Kuwatee picketing their horses, but O'Toole was right about waiting. He'd ridden down into a low spot where he lost sight of whatever it was he'd seen, and there he had signaled. Now, riding back with O'Toole, Rab noticed the slight change in elevation.

It was like this all over the Llano Estacado, where distance was imperceptible and changes in the terrain were indeterminable.

Flat emptiness that hid a thousand canyons and ten thousand hills and ridges.

For men accustomed to finding a mountain out on the horizon and using it as a landmark, the Llano Estacado was especially confounding. Here there was not even a tree or a bush that could serve as point of reference. And so distance lost all meaning.

Time lost all meaning. If there was nothing to walk to, it did not matter how long it took to walk.

At last, though, as they gained the ridge that O'Toole had been riding along, Rab could see the thing O'Toole had seen out on the horizon.

When they got to where they could see it, both men dropped down out of their saddles to avoid sitting too tall on the horizon.

"What is it?" O'Toole asked.

None of them carried field glasses of any kind. Rab Sinclair had a pair, they'd been his when he was scouting for the Confederacy back during the war. But he never toted them anymore. Now he wished the he did.

"Actually, I think I know," Rab said. "A couple of days ago, when I rode off on my own looking for the Comanche — before they took Caleb — I came across a little stone hut. I can't say for sure, but I think that's it."

"Could be a stone hut," O'Toole said. "But I swear to you, I saw it moving when we first come past."

"Hold Cromwell," Rab said, handing the lead to O'Toole. But then he thought better of it. He slipped the 1866 Winchester rifle from its scabbard.

"You're sure you saw something moving out there?"

"Certain sure," O'Toole said.

"And it wasn't them Comanche that have been trailing us?"

"No. It was bigger than that. I think it was just the right size to be twenty hawsses, or so," O'Toole said.

"Go on back down to where Vazquez and Kuwatee are waiting. Get yourself some supper and go on and bed down. But you tell the others. If y'all hear shots, come a'ridin'. Otherwise, just wait for me there."

"What are you going to do?" O'Toole asked.

"I'm going to wait for dark, and then I'm going to walk down there to see what's what."

"You sure you want me taking Cromwell?" O'Toole asked. "What if you need to skedaddle?"

Rab shook his head. "Whatever it is, I'll not be running from it."

O'Toole started to say something, make an argument, maybe, against Rab going down there to that hut on his own.

But O'Toole had been around Las Vegas for several months. He'd had drinks at the saloon with Rab Sinclair, and more importantly he'd had drinks at the saloon with folks who knew Rab Sinclair.

What O'Toole knew was that Rab had a reputation for being the sort of man who not only would walk down to a hut where there might well be four outlaws, but more importantly he was the sort of man who could walk down to a hut where there might be four outlaws.

As he led the horses away, O'Toole told them about it.

"I reckon a lot of men would go down there," he said. "And for any number of 'em it'd be the last thing they did. But Rab Sinclair can go down there. You see the difference? And when it's over, you won't find Rabbie drinking on it. He won't go down to the saloon and tell the story while other men buy his drinks. No, sir. But you can bet your last nickel, hawsses, that when Rab Sinclair walks out of the saloon, other men will be talking about the things he done."

Now that he was some distance away, O'Toole mounted up on his horse, keeping Cromwell's lead in his hand.

"Yes, sir. He's the sort of man that don't never boast, but other men will tell his stories and wish they was there to see it."

Several times as he went back across the plain to where Kuwatee and Vazquez bedded down for the night, O'Toole looked back over his shoulder.

Rab never moved.

He'd squatted down on the balls of his feet and just rested there like that, the 1866 Yellow Boy cradled in his crossed arms.

For a moment, Rab reminded O'Toole of the Comanche he used to fight in Texas.

He had a way about him, like an Indian.

Easy going in his temper, generous with everything that belonged to him, and confident in every move he made.

But O'Toole knew that somewhere under that easy style, Rab Sinclair had a streak of violence in him that must be something to behold.

-15-

Skinner Jake peered out of the back of the covered wagon.

The night watch had dropped now to just two men. There weren't enough of them now to manage more than two men on watch.

The half-moon shone bright enough to make out the shapes of steers some distance away, the horses in the remuda, the black forms on the ground that represented men in their bedrolls.

Because he'd been cooped up in the wagon for so long, Skinner Jake didn't really know all the men from the outfit. The Yankee, Fitz was his name, and one of the vaqueros, they had the watch just now. Jake could see the black shape of one of them riding out near some of the steers. The other was not far from the remuda.

They'd left him unattended so long in the wagon that Skinner Jake had begun to dig through the provisions. What gave him the idea was seeing the Sharps rifle among the armaments inside the wagon. There were a couple of pistols and a couple of lever rifles. And the Sharps.

When he saw the Sharps, he figured there must be balls and powder. So he looked around and found them.

That's when he first thought about maybe making an escape.

He knew what the head man said was true. They could turn him over to the Comanche, and the Comanche wouldn't know the difference between him and Cossatot.

So Skinner Jake started thinking about making a run.

He found a good possibles bag among the supplies. He stowed some jerky and some corn dodgers — food that would keep for a long walk.

The head man had said something about only being nine days out from some town in New Mexico. Jake had heard all this, because being in the wagon he didn't have anything else to do but listen to the conversations taking place outside the wagon.

He could walk as fast or faster than a herd of cattle. Cattle moved slow. Skinner Jake was confident that if he took some provisions and took a couple of canteens of water, he could be out of the Staked Plains in a week.

So he put balls and powder into the possibles bag. He put some grub that he could pack out. He stowed away one canteen, and then stowed away another.

Now, with the night watch guarding for threats from without and paying little attention to what was happening within, Skinner Jake quietly forced the top off one of the casks. He dipped one canteen in, filling it. Then he dipped the second canteen into the cask.

Soft as he could go, Skinner Jake eased himself out of the wagon.

He eased out his Sharps rifle and the possibles bag he'd stolen. He wrapped a bandanna around one of the canteens to keep them from making any noise as they banged together, and then he quietly slid both canteens over his head and one shoulder.

He made for the steers where he knew he could disappear among their black shapes. The night watch probably would not see him in the moonlight if he stayed among the steers and followed the herd as far out as he could.

Skinner Jake knew that if he was going to get away, he'd have to make distance in the night.

He'd thought about trying to take a horse the way they said Cossatot Jim did, but Jake believed that was too risky. These drovers might fall for that one time, but he didn't think it likely that they'd fall for it a second time.

Without looking back more than two or three times, Skinner Jake soon found himself at the farthest of the steers.

Now he turned and looked back down at the wagon. The moon hit the canvas top of the wagon and made it glow white, but he was now far enough away from it that it seemed very small out there on the plain.

He saw nothing of the night watch.

As far as he could see, no one from the outfit had discovered his absence, and no one was following behind him.

So Skinner Jake stepped forward, away from the herd of cattle, and he started to walk.

He moved deliberately and with speed.

His strides were long.

After being in that wagon for three or four days, he found that getting out and moving was a blessing to him. His legs felt strong. His back felt good.

He just needed to put distance between him and that wagon.

He also needed to put distance between himself and any Comanche that might be lurking on the Llano Estacado.

Come morning, Skinner Jake wanted to be as far away from cattle drovers and Comanche Injuns as he could possibly get.

Whatever happened now was none of his concern. If the Comanche roasted that boy's groin or dismembered his genitals and sewed them into his mouth — all things Jake knew the Comanche sometimes did — that was none of his concern.

If the Comanche slaughtered that outfit of drovers, that was none of his concern.

If those men found Ol' Cossatot and surrendered him over to the Comanche for whatever horrors they might devise — well, that was none of his concern, neither.

Skinner Jake's only concern was Skinner Jake, and now that he was making tracks away from all of them, he was plenty satisfied with anything else that happened behind his back.

-16-

Rab Sinclair moved in short bursts.

For a dozen yards or so, he walked easy. He did not bother to crouch or try to make himself small. He just walked across the open plain. And when he felt he'd gone far enough, he squatted down to wait. He watched for any movement there by the hut. Satisfied that no one spotted him, he picked his way forward another dozen yards, squatted and waited.

It was slow going, and the closer he got to the hut, the longer he waited to see if there was movement.

On his approach to the hut, in the slim, silver light of the moon, shapes began to form. First Rab began to distinguish the horses, and then he could count their number. The hut itself became visible. He was sure this was the same stone hut he'd encountered a few days back. Rab recognized the collapsed wall and the squat cottonwood that fought to hang onto its leaves against the harsh wind that swept across the Llano Estacado.

One of the horses snorted and blew when Rab got to within thirty yards of them.

Right away Rab could see that the horses were picketed too near to one another. They didn't have room to graze because of the way they'd been kept too near together. Grass was too sparse out here, and too many horses in too tight a spot would make short work of what little grazing there was.

It annoyed Rab Sinclair to see horses poorly treated.

Like most men of the West, Rab understood that the one thing a man needed for survival, even more than a rifle, was a good horse. Only a fool would fail to treat his horses well. A fool, or a horse thief who never owned the horse and planned to sell it soon enough.

When the horses were all quieted down, Rab took another few steps forward.

Four men slept just a piece away from the horses. Rab was near enough now to see their forms on the ground. They were confident enough that they put up no watch, not even one man awake in the camp. It was uncommon to find thieves who slept easy at night.

Rab went just close enough to satisfy himself that one of those men asleep on the ground was Cossatot Jim, and then he went no closer than that.

He had a long walk back to the where the others were camped, so he started that trek back now.

As he neared the place where he knew O'Toole, Kuwatee, and Vazquez had bedded down, Rab could see the horses. A couple of them had laid down, but the others stood on their feet asleep. Rab knew one of those still standing was the blue roan because he heard Cromwell blow when he smelled Sinclair approaching.

Rab took a few steps closer, still about forty yards from the camp, and he heard a voice call out quietly in the night breeze.

"Best identify yourself before you come any closer."

It was Vazquez, sitting up on night watch.

"Going to need a better watch than just one man to keep me out of my bedroll," Rab said.

"Come on then," Vazquez said. "I saw you coming a good ways off. Figured it was you. Did you find what you were looking for?"

"I found it," Rab said. "Cossatot Jim is bedded down with those three men we've been tracking. They've got about twenty-five hawsses, and I recognized one of them as the hawss Jim rode out on."

"You still think the hawsses they have are stolen?" Vazquez asked.

"Like as not," Rab said. "But they didn't bother putting up a guard."

Vazquez grunted.

"Every time I rode posse, we prayed for some outlaws that didn't bother putting up a guard," Vazquez said. "It never happened often, but when it did the reason was always because the outlaws were confident in the place where they were hiding out. Having spent the better part of a month in this awful wasteland, I can tell you that I understand why they think they're safe out here. No posse would follow those men too deep into the Staked Plains, not for twenty stolen hawsses."

Rab took his bedroll from the stacked supplies and laid it out. He and Vazquez talked in hushed tones to keep from disturbing the others.

"So what's your plan?" Vazquez said.

Rab lit his pipe and puffed on it a few times, taking a moment to stretch his sore legs. Days of riding all day long didn't prepare a man physically for a long walk like he'd just taken.

"I believe in the morning I'm going to saddle up Cromwell there and ride into their camp. And when I get there, I'm going to tell them that I'm taking Cossatot Jim back with me."

"Just like that?" Vazquez said.

"Just like that," Rab said.

"You don't want all of us to go? All of us would even out the odds, and give a bigger show of force. Might be they'd be more inclined to hand him over if they saw four guns instead of one."

Rab shrugged. "I'm hoping not to have to show my gun a'tall. But y'all be close, and if you hear a shot you come riding."

Vazquez shook his head. "I don't understand you sometimes, Rab. Why would you want to ride in there alone and take the chance? The four of us could go in there and without any trouble we could take Cossatot Jim."

Rab puffed his pipe. The strong, chilly breeze stole the smoke he blew out and cast it off to oblivion.

"If something goes wrong tomorrow and one of you gets killed, I'll have to live with that. But if I go by myself and someone gets killed, then it'll either be one of them or it'll be me. If it's one of them, that won't bother my conscience none. And if it's me, I ain't got to live with that. But I brought y'all out here. I'm paying your wages. And so I have some responsibility to try to get you back home without any bullet holes in you. What would I say to your wife and your four children if I had to take your body out to your cabin? That's a harder thing to face than riding in there alone."

Vazquez cast his eyes across the horizon, looking for any movement. The horses were quiet.

"You know everyone in this outfit would go with you, Rab. And you know we wouldn't hold you accountable if something happened to us."

"You're all brave men and good friends," Rab said. "That's why I hired each and e'ry one of you. But I'd hold myself accountable."

"So you're going to ride in there alone?" Vazquez said. "You've decided that?"

"I'm going to ride in there alone," Rab said.

***

Cossatot Jim was the first man to notice the lone rider coming toward them.

Bernard Swain touched the side of his kettle to see if the water was hot enough for coffee.

"Someone's coming," Cossatot Jim said, squinting hard. He did not think the man was a Comanche. From a distance, he thought he could make out a saddle on the horse.

"What do you mean someone's coming?" Mezcal Pete asked, standing up from his bedroll. "Who the hell would be out here?"

But sure enough, as he got up out of his bed, Mezcal Pete could see a rider nearing them. Pete slid his six-gun out of his holster and checked that it had for six rounds in the cylinder.

"For an empty desert, I've had more people ride up on my camp than I care to meet," Bernard Swain said. He stood up and craned his neck for a look at the new visitor.

The horse wasn't coming on at a gallop. Its pace seemed about as easy as a horse could go. But it was crossing the plain with some speed and getting near to them in a hurry.

"That's one of them drovers," Cossatot Jim said. "Calls hisself Rab Sinclair like a man might have heard of him. I recognize that blue roan as the one he rides."

"What do you reckon he wants?" Rude asked.

"I reckon he wants a word with the man that stole his horse," Bernard Swain said, glancing at Cossatot Jim.

"Are these his horses?" Rude asked, misunderstanding. Rude, young but big for his age, was tall and slim, but it wouldn't be long before he filled out into a powerful mountain of a man.

"No, not the horses we stole," Swain said. "I reckon he wants to talk to Mr. Cossatot, there. Didn't you say you rode out on one of the horses in his remuda?"

Cossatot Jim did not say a word. He didn't know yet how to play this. He wasn't sure that his new friends were going to back him up.

"He's got a rifle laid across his lap," Mezcal Pete said. "Swain, you might have to make a decision in a hurry."

Bernard Swain nodded thoughtfully, his eyes fixed on the lone rider coming at him.

"Let him come on," Swain said. "We'll see what he wants."

Rab Sinclair rode the blue roan right up to the place where the four men had camped.

Easy as you please, unconcerned with the strangers, he swung a leg over the roan and slid out of his saddle. All the while, that Yellow Boy never moved from its position in the crook of his elbow.

"I was hoping I'd not missed coffee," Rab said.

"Name's Bernard Swain. This here is Rude, and that's Mezcal Pete. I believe you know Mr. Cossatot."

"I'm Rab Sinclair."

"You're a long way from home, Sinclair," Swain said.

"Yes, sir. I reckon we're all a long way from just about anything."

Swain chuckled.

"That we are. Is there something we can do for you?"

Rab reached up to his saddle and pulled a tin cup down off a leather thong. "I was hoping you might spare a cup of coffee. It's been some days."

Rab held out the cup.

"Get that from our guest, Rude. Let's fill it up for him."

The young man took the coffee mug and held it while Swain poured fresh coffee into the cup. He poured a cup for himself, too.

"I'd be real surprised if you came all this way for a cup of coffee," Swain said.

"That's right," Rab said. "I did not come here just for the coffee. I been tracking y'all for a couple of days now. You headed to Texas with them hawsses?"

Swain watched Sinclair closely. He noticed how the man's eyes took in everything. Swain saw that Sinclair's eyes swept over the horses.

"We are. Headed to Texas. You recognize any of the brands?"

Rab grinned at him and took a drink from the coffee.

"Lucky for you, I do not recognize any of those brands."

Swain grinned back.

"They's four of us and one of you. What would happen if you did recognize the brands?"

Rab shook his head. "I ain't here to speculate on that. I come for Cossatot Jim."

It was a tense moment. Rab knew that he'd find out now whether or not these horse thieves were willing to fight to protect one of their own. If Swain turned hostile or if his hand touched his gun or if he made a threat, then Rab knew he'd have to fight to get what he'd come for. But if Swain kept up the pleasant talk, if he stalled or even wavered, then Rab would have his man.

"What makes you think you can just ride in here and take a man from us?" Swain asked, and that told Rab Sinclair all he needed to know. Swain wasn't going to fight, maybe die, for Cossatot Jim.

"The man took a horse from me. And he's caused me other troubles, too. I think I can ride in here and take him because I don't think you're willing to get killed trying to stop me."

"Now hold on," Cossatot Jim said. "I ain't just going to go with you."

Rab's face turned to sudden fury.

"If you open that stupid mouth to speak to me again, I'll break your jaw," Rab said.

No one who heard him doubted his sincerity, and Cossatot Jim did not say anything else.

Rab took another drink and set the cup down on the saddle. Cromwell stood so still that the cup did not tip one way or another.

If there was going to be gun work to do, Rab wanted both his hands free to do the work.

"I'm obliged for the coffee," he said. "Cossatot, you saddle up my hawss and let's get moving. We've got a fair piece to go today."

Mezcal Pete took a step forward, and Rab Sinclair was surprised to see it happen. He figured Rude and Pete would follow Swain's lead, but evidently Mezcal Pete was his own man.

"Now just hold your horses," Pete said. "This man rides with us now, and I ain't going to let you just ride up here and take him."

Swain put a hand out to stop Rude from getting involved. That was enough for Rab to know that Swain and Rude wouldn't be backing Pete's play.

"Don't do something you'll regret," Rab said.

But Mezcal Pete did not get his nickname through sober thought.

His right hand flinched and went for his gun. Steel cleared leather in a split second, but he was too slow.

Rab Sinclair threw the Yellow Boy level with Pete and from the hip fired off one of the big .44 rounds. In the small space of the camp, even with the wind, the crack of the rifle sounded like a powder keg erupting, and Mezcal Pete stumbled backwards, tripping over the fallen bricks of the abandoned old hut.

Rab dropped the lever on the Yellow Boy and had the barrel directed at Cossatot Jim before he could move.

The thunder of the rifle, splitting the silence of the Llano Estacado, acted as a signal.

Off in the distance, behind Rab Sinclair, Bernard Swain saw three riders coming like demons from out of the haze of the horizon.

"I figured you wasn't as alone as you made out to be," Swain said.

"Anything can happen before they can get to us," Rab Sinclair said. "If you want to try me, now would be your time."

Swain held up his hands to show his empty palms.

"No, sir," he said. "I ain't interested. You take what you come here for."

"But he shot Pete," Rude said.

"A thousand dollars splits better two ways than it does three ways," Swain said. "Don't you worry about Pete."

Rab nodded to the stolen Yellow Boy beside Cossatot Jim's stolen saddle.

"Rude, if you'd be kind enough to get that rifle and slide it into the scabbard on my saddle, I'd be obliged," Rab said. Then to Cossatot Jim, "As soon as that rifle is clear of your saddle, you get my hawss saddled up and you climb up on him. We're going to ride on out."

As they galloped near to the camp, Vazquez and O'Toole split off to ride around to the flanks. Kuwatee rode directly toward Rab, reining in a few yards away.

Cossatot Jim saddled the horse he stole from Sinclair's remuda, and he climbed up into the saddle. Now Vazquez rode over near him.

Rab gave Bernard Swain a nod.

"Bury that man I killed," Rab said. "You'll find a skeleton in that hut. Might as well bury the bones while you're digging holes. Then take these hawsses and get on to Texas. Hawss thieves get on the wrong side of me, but right now I can't prove that you're what I think you are."

Swain nodded. "Any time you want coffee, come and see me, Sinclair. I don't intend to ever find myself on the wrong side of you."

-17-

Skinner Jake kept walking all through the morning with the sun at his back.

And through the morning, his conscience began to wear at him. Without company, he found that to think clearly it helped to talk to himself.

"A man comes out here with an outfit, he should stick with that outfit," Skinner Jake told himself. "Cossatot Jim fixed hisself good. He made his own bed, and he's lyin' in it now. But that don't change the fact that I come out here with a company, and what kind of man am I if I'm the only one among that company who walks back out again?"

He kept going, one foot in front of the next. There was no other way for a man walking through the Llano Estacado. If he was going to get anywhere, a man had to just keep putting one foot in front of the next. It wasn't the sort of thing he could give any thought to. He just had to keep walking.

But Skinner Jake had plenty of other things he had to give thought to. Like Cossatot Jim.

"Them Injuns is going to roast him like a stuck pig."

"Whatever they give Ol' Jim is going to be worse than what any of the others suffered."

"It ain't like it was anyone else's fault. Cossatot Jim could have left that squaw all alone."

"Ain't no man deserve to be given over to the Comanche, not without the opportunity for a fight."

"It ain't right to just leave a man you rode with to his fate," Skinner Jake said to himself. And here he found a convincing argument.

"If a man rides with you, you count on him to stand up for you. And if he don't, you'd rightly call that man a backstabbing, worthless, scoundrel. So what am I if I leave Cossatot Jim to his fate? Ain't I a scoundrel if I won't stand with a man who rides with me?"

One foot continued on in front of the other, and the morning sun was warm on the back of Skinner Jake's neck.

The walk out from the wagon in the middle of the night had been cold and brutal, but except for the walking the day was proving to be pleasant. The sun warmed him. The morning wind and the brightness of daylight gave him a good feeling.

"I shouldn't make no decisions without getting some sleep," Skinner Jake admonished himself. "Still, they's right and wrong here, and I know it's wrong to abandon a man I rode with."

After some time, Skinner Jake stopped walking.

He looked out across the plain in every direction. As far as the eye could see, nothing changed. It did not matter how he quickened his pace. Nothing changed.

A kind of desperation began to overtake him.

"There ain't even no guarantee that I'll get off this blasted plain. I'm as like to die out here as I am to find my way to a town."

Jake felt the weight of the rifle in his hand, and the lead bullets in his possibles bag.

And now he sat down on the sandy ground, leaning the Sharps against himself.

"I'd be a better man if I at least tried to do something to help a man I rode with," Skinner Jake told himself. "I reckon it don't matter much if the fix Cossatot is in is one of his own making. We still rode together in the same outfit. And that outfit was attacked by Comanche. And here I am, the last one left if they hand over Cossatot Jim to the Comanche."

Now Jake began to see something else in his mind.

Five riders on the open plain coming toward him.

The Sharps rifle balanced against his shoulder.

He saw himself shooting and reloading the rifle. Dropping one rider, and then the next. The others would likely drop down out of their saddles, but with that Sharps rifle, Skinner Jake knew he could pick them off from a good distance.

Saving Cossatot Jim from the Comanche might prove an impossibility, but saving him from them four cowpunchers, that was an opportunity that might be worked out.

Skinner Jake sat for several more minutes, continuing to weight the options in his mind.

But the decision was already made. All he really needed to do was admit it to himself.

After some time of contemplation, Skinner Jake stood up and turned to face the morning sun. And then it was one foot in front of the other, walking back the way he'd come.

-18-

Carlos set a faster pace than they'd taken at any point so far in the trip from Texas.

Like Carlos, Miguel and Jorge now had their rifles in scabbards strapped to their saddles. The loss of almost all the guards necessitated that the vaqueros be prepared for anything.

Sancho drove the wagon far ahead, watching for trouble but also hurrying to get forward. The men were all eager to get these steers off the Llano Estacado, and eager for the safety of their own beds in their own homes.

"Damn place has become aggravatingly crowded," Fitz said to Carlos.

"Si, it has," Carlos said. "Who would have thought when we set out that there would be so many people in such a terrible place?"

Fitz scanned the horizon. A single man walking along the empty plain should be a simple thing to see, but since morning they'd had no sign of Skinner Jake.

"You don't think that fool buffalo skinner went back to try to help Cossatot Jim, do you?" Fitz asked.

"He would get himself killed if he did," Carlos said. "No, senor, I believe he walked west. But he will walk fast than our critters will, and we won't likely see him again."

After the war, Fitz had come to the West with the army. But he did not stay with the cavalry for long. Many of the skills of the Western man still eluded him. He wasn't a tracker, though few white men could do it as well as Rab Sinclair. The Indians, though, seemed to be born with a knowledge for tracking.

"If I could track worth a damn, I'd try to follow him," Fitz said.

"He has that rifle and ammunition," Carlos said reasonably. "A buffalo hunter, if he saw you coming, would put you down from a mile away. It is what they are good at."

Fitz nodded. "Maybe so. But I feel like I've failed at the one task Rab left for me."

"He left you to guard the herd," Carlos said.

"But what if Skinner Jake goes back? What if he tries to help Cossatot Jim?"

"There was no love lost between those two," Carlos said.

"Maybe not. But they rode together. Men ride together like that, and even if they don't like each other they might feel obliged."

"If he goes back he will cause trouble," Carlos said. "But Rab wants his cattle across the Llano Estacado and in his own pastures. That's what he left us to do."

"I reckon," Fitz said, but he wasn't sure.

Left as the only guard on the herd, Fitz rode in wide circles, watching out across the plains for any sign of trouble. As they neared the edge of the Llano Estacado, the possibility of rustlers or bandits increased. But as he rode around the herd, Fitz kept a watch for a lone traveler on foot.

Skinner Jake was the joker in the deck.

Fitz didn't like it none that Rab Sinclair was going to trade Cossatot Jim for Caleb. Handing a white man over to the Comanche, even a scoundrel like Jim, felt wrong to Fitz. If the man had earned a sentence, he should get that sentence in a court and from a judge. At least, that's the way Fitz saw it.

But he understood why Rab made the decision he did. The Comanche would surely kill Caleb in Cossatot Jim's place. And by rights, Rab Sinclair could hang Cossatot Jim himself after the buffalo hunter rode off on one of the horses from the remuda.

Fitz's objection, though, wasn't so much that the Comanche would kill Cossatot Jim. Fitz's objection was the manner in which they would do it. Comanche justice meant torture, the worst kind of death.

***

Sancho Biscuit rummaged through the provisions in the back of the wagon.

"Not enough jerky, not enough beans. They've gone into the water casks."

"It's just two men," Carlos said reasonably. Miguel and Jorge and Fitz were all still out driving cattle, but Carlos had reached Sancho's wagon. "They can't have taken that much. One of them went on foot."

Sancho growled angrily. "Sinclair and the others took a fair portion, too," Sancho said. "And we never brought enough. But Sancho Biscuit won't starve. I'll get the first of what comes out of every pot, and if there is not enough left for the rest of you then that will be your problem. Then you can decide how much they have taken."

Carlos smiled but left the older man to do his grumbling. Instead of continuing to argue, he said, "Fitz is very bothered that Skinner Jake escaped."

"I am very bothered, too," Sancho said. "He took very much of the jerky."

"He worries that this man might do something to interfere with them getting Caleb back," Carlos said.

Sancho rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"If that man goes back near those Comanche he would be a fool," Sancho said. "The Comanche will kill him."

Carlos nodded thoughtfully. "This is true. He would be a fool to go back to the Comanche. But was he a fool when he sneaked away from us in the middle of the night?"

"Very foolish," Sancho said.

"So he might also be foolish and go back to try to help his friend."

Sancho stopped and thought about it.

"Maybe," he said. "He spent much time in the wagon complaining about the other one, Cossatot Jim. 'All his fault,' he said. 'Cossatot Jim done all this,' he said. But then I see the two of them talking, and they seem like good friends. So maybe he will go back and try to help his friend."

Carlos stayed silent for a moment.

"And if he goes back and tries to help his friend, what will happen to Rab and the others?"

Sancho shrugged. "Maybe nothing. Or maybe nothing good. Rab Sinclair can take care of himself, but he won't expect this man to turn back up."

"That is what I think, too," Carlos said. "Should we send Fitz back to warn Rab?"

Sancho shook his head. "He will need provisions," he said. "He will have to take more of what little I have."

Carlos nodded. "I will talk it over with Fitz. I will see what he thinks. If he thinks he should go back to warn Rab, we will see if we can keep him from taking too much of your stores."

Most of the steers were grazing near the camp now, and Carlos watched as Miguel and Jorge pushed in the last of the strays.

Through the night the herd would shift some, stretch out over a larger area in search of better grass. But if they finished the day with the cattle gathered together, the cowpunchers would have less territory to cover in the morning to start off the cattle moving. The faster they could get the cattle moving the next day, the farther they would get.

For a drover, the worst thing was a day where the cattle wouldn't move and not enough ground was covered. Days like that meant one more day added to the end of the trail drive.

As he watched, Carlos realized that Fitz was nowhere near them. He was far out on the horizon, and Carlos knew he was looking for any sign of Skinner Jake.

Jorge was the first into camp, and he brought his appetite with him. Sancho gave him two pieces of flat bread and scooped beans and meat onto his plate.

Miguel soon followed him in.

But Fitz was still out riding to the south.

"He'll not find anything out there," Carlos said, as much to himself as anyone else. "If he is worried about Skinner Jake, the best thing to do is go back and try to find Rab Sinclair and warn him."

It was nearly full dark by the time Fitz rode into camp. Sancho had kept the fire going to be sure that Fitz had warm food eat.

Carlos picketed his horse for him to give Fitz time to eat his supper.

"How many days out from Las Vegas are we?" Fitz said when Carlos walked over.

"If we push hard, we should be off the Llano Estacado in two days," Carlos said. "Three days at the farthest."

Sancho, cleaning out the skillets, stood nearby at the back of the wagon.

"What are you thinking?" Sancho asked.

"I'm thinking of riding back," Fitz said. "The others can't be more than thirty miles behind us. And if Skinner Jake has turned back, Rab needs to know it. He could foul up everything."

Carlos stretched out in his legs in front of his camp chair. "I'm not telling you anything you do not know, but this is a wide and open plain where it is easy to get lost. You could ride within a few miles of Sinclair and never see him. You could easily get disoriented. If you ride back after them alone, you might never come off the Llano Estacado."

Fitz nodded. "I understand. But I feel some responsibility for Skinner Jake getting away from us. And if he was the cause of something going wrong for Rab and the others, that would be my fault, too."

Carlos nodded. "No other man would blame you."

Fitz cast a look back to the east, back to the wide expanse of the Llano Estacado.

"Like as not, Skinner Jake's going to die out there," Fitz said.

"Like as not," Carlos agreed.

"He's afoot, limited in his provisions, and he had a fifty mile trek west just to get off the Staked Plains and to a place where he might find water and decent hunting. Fifty miles is a long way to go."

"Longer to go if he gets disoriented or turns an ankle stepping in a prairie dog hole," Carlos said. "Or if he runs into Comanche."

"And if he did turn back, there's small chance he'd ever find Rab and the others," Fitz conceded. "But if he does find them, it's a good bet he can cause all sorts of trouble."

Carlos took a heavy breath.

"So what do you think, my friend?" Carlos asked.

Now Fitz sighed heavily.

"I think in the morning I'm going to pack up some provisions, take a spare horse, and ride back to see if Rab and the others need my help. Even if I don't run into Skinner Jake, if they have trouble with the Comanche I should be there instead of here."

Carlos nodded, wondering if Fitz was more worried about Skinner Jake or more worried about not staying with the others in the first place.

"We'll ride on and be waiting at Rab's ranch with the cattle."

-19-

"I'm a white man," Cossatot Jim said. "You can't just hand a white man over to the Comanche."

Rab Sinclair ignored Cossatot Jim's pleas. He had more on his mind than anything Cossatot Jim had to say.

The men had ridden back west, moving back to the place where Rab had his initial parley with Pounding Fists. After getting Cossatot Jim from the horse thieves, they had seen the Comanche scouts a couple of times during the day.

They broke for camp just before nightfall and bound Cossatot Jim in rope so that he would not escape again.

They woke before dawn, and when the first light of day began to show, they saw that overnight the full body of the Comanche raiders had turned up.

Like specters, the Comanche appeared overnight about a mile from where Rab and the others camped.

"I never heard them," Vazquez said. "They moved horses and men right past us in the middle of the night, and I never heard them."

"It's enough to put a man's heart racing," O'Toole said. "I seen 'em do things like that before. It'll shake you, for sure."

Kuwatee remained silent, looking out at the Comanche camp across the plain.

"I reckon they'll want to parley," Rab said. "I'll finish my breakfast and ride over there to see about making the exchange."

"You call it an exchange," Cossatot Jim snapped, "but it's murder, is what it is. You'll all be guilty of murder if you hand me over to them savages."

"You'll die either way, so you might as well shut your mouth," O'Toole said to him. "If we don't hand you over to the Comanche, we'll hang you from the first tree we see."

"Hang me for what? Killin' that squaw?"

"No," O'Toole said. "We'll hang you for stealing the hawss."

Cossatot Jim sat quiet at that, but he wasn't finished with his pleas. He was just looking for a new line of attack.

O'Toole bit his lip as he walked over and took a seat on the ground near Kuwatee. Like everyone else, he'd been keeping an eye on the Comanche camp since the morning light first showed the encamped Indians.

"Maybe it's just my nerves from all the years I spent fighting the Comanche," he said. "Every time I ever saw a camp of more than about four Comanche, they always looked like they was a war party to me. But I'm looking over there at that camp, and for all the world it looks to me like they's readying for a fight."

The fact was, from this vantage point the Comanche seemed completely indifferent to O'Toole and Kuwatee, Vazquez and Rab Sinclair. But to O'Toole, that looked like a war party.

"It is hard to say what their intention is," Kuwatee said. "I count twenty warriors."

O'Toole glanced across to the camp. They'd erected no tepees, and appeared to have just slept on buffalo hides with blankets.

"No women," O'Toole said.

"No," Kuwatee agreed. "There must be a larger camp somewhere on the Staked Plains where the women and children are."

Rab Sinclair threw a blanket over the blue roan and then a saddle.

"You're riding the roan again today? You rode him yesterday," Vazquez said.

Rab grunted affirmatively.

"I trust him if things go sour."

"And what do you want us to do if things go sour?" Vazquez asked.

"Depends on how sour they go. If I'm dead and you can get to Caleb to rescue him, I'd be obliged if you would do that. He's a good boy and doesn't deserve the sort of death the Comanche would give him. If you can't rescue Caleb, then get yourselves out of here. Do your best to get my cattle to Evangeline so she's got the income from them."

For thirty years, relations between the Comanche and the whites were dictated by hostility and mistrust. Even Rab, who for a short time when he was young had lived among the Comanche, did not trust them. All the men in the outfit had heard stories of the way the Comanche tortured hostages. No man among the outfit cared to find themselves captives of the Comanche. They all held one last cartridge in a pocket to be used as a last resort rather than to be captured alive.

"I'm going to ride out there part of the way and see if Pounding Fists will come out and parley," Rab said. "I intend to come back. If there's some reason why I'm riding over to their camp of my own will, I'll signal you with a wave of my hat. If he comes out with warriors and takes me back against my will, you be ready for whatever comes next. It'll come fast."

"You'd be a damn fool to go over there," Cossatot Jim shouted as Rab cinched tight his saddle.

"Maybe so," Rab said in his easy way.

Rab took a heavy breath and stroked Cromwell's neck, feeling the horse's strength below his hand.

"All right you ol' biter, you be ready to run like the devil," Rab whispered to the horse.

The knot made Rab Sinclair feel like he was headed into trouble. It was the same knot he had when he rode into the Mesilla Plaza to face a man who wanted him dead and the army that man had paid to be with him. It was the same knot he had in his stomach when he rode into the Black Mesas of the Cimarron River Valley in search of murderers. It was the same knot he'd had on the eve of battle back during the War. And it was the same knot he had when he was a boy and he and his father were about to be thrown out of another tribal village.

Rab checked his Colt Dragoon to see that all six chambers had balls and powder. He put percussion caps on all six nipples and left the hammer on half cock.

"Cut a deal with me, Sinclair!" Cossatot Jim called. "We can work something out."

Rab put a foot in the stirrup and swung a leg over the back of the blue roan.

"We're working something out," Rab said to Cossatot Jim. "I'm riding out there now to do it. I'll say this to you, in case I don't have time to say it later. A man who violates a woman deserves whatever justice he gets. Whether it's a noose outside a white man's courthouse or a fire in a Comanche camp. What he don't deserve is sympathy. So you'll get none from me."

"It ain't a decent way to treat a white man," Cossatot Jim said.

"Well, killin' that squaw wasn't a decent way to treat an Injun woman," Sinclair said.

***

Rab Sinclair rode the blue roan about three hundred yards away from the camp.

Those Yellow Boy rifles the men in his outfit had in their scabbards wouldn't be any use at this range. If anything went bad out here, Rab knew that he was going to be on his own. It was easier that way, though. A man on his own didn't have to worry about someone else. He didn't have to worry if a man near him was injured. He just had to watch out for himself.

Rab sat the horse for a quarter of an hour, facing the Comanche camp and waiting for Pounding Fists. The Comanche camp was active, but from where he sat Rab could not determine what they were doing. They did not appear to be breaking down their camp or preparing to leave. He thought he had spotted Caleb Morgan. A lone man sat on the ground in a posture that suggested to Rab that he was bound at the wrists and ankles.

At last, four of the Comanche mounted on horses and began riding toward Rab. All four carried Comanche lances wrapped in bleached leather straps and adorned with feathers. If they had rifles or six guns, Rab could not yet see.

They did not hurry, leaving Rab with ample time to look them over as they rode out to him.

Pounding Fists rode at the head of the small contingent with the other three keeping some distance behind him. As they neared, Rab could see that they were all shirtless now and had painted their faces and chests with red and white paint. Their ponies, too, were painted with designs on their faces.

Rab reached into his pocket for his pipe and tobacco pouch. It took a couple of matches, but he was able to get the pipe lit despite the wind.

By the time Pounding Fists and the other three rode up to where Rab Sinclair was sitting his horse, Rab had struck a relaxed posture and was puffing his pipe. If he was honest, his posture didn't match how he felt.

The Comanche had a reputation among white settlers. Whether it was deserved or not, Rab had seen for himself what they were capable of doing. The camp where they found the slaughtered buffalo hunters was reminder enough. He seldom got nervous dealing with other men, whether Indian or white, but the Comanche made his heart beat faster.

"You have buffalo hunter?" Pounding Fists said.

"I have him," Rab said. "Bring out the boy so that I can see him. I want to know he's unhurt."

"You are great warrior among your people," Pounding Fists said.

"I ain't," Rab said. "I'm just a cattle rancher. Sometimes I guide folks who are going from one place to the next. But I ain't a great warrior."

"Boy says you are great warrior. Says you will kill Comanche if we harm him."

Rab grinned and puffed his pipe.

"I lived for a time among the Cheyenne. When I was about fourteen years old, my pa and I lived with the Cheyenne. I remember that I was about fourteen, because there was a Cheyenne squaw I sparked on, and that's about the age when I really started to take an interest in women." Rab smiled at the memory of it. "You understand?"

"Pounding Fists understands."

"I thought you would. You've got good English. Missionaries?"

"Pounding Fists father married white woman. She teach white talk."

"So, like I was saying, I was about fourteen years old. I was pretty big for my age. Strong. I had a reputation among the boys in the tribe for being pretty good in a fight. But even so, they kept coming at me. Kept wanting to fight me. Now some of 'em, I knew why they wanted to fight. Two or three, they'd sparked on that same squaw and they thought if they could best me in a wrestling match that she would give them the attention she was giving me."

The Comanche was listening to the story, and as far as Rab Sinclair was concerned, that was a good sign. Anything that kept Pounding Fists from trying to lodge that lance in Rab's gut was a good sign.

"But there was others, too, that kept coming at me. And I asked my father about it. I asked why, when they know I'll beat them, do they keep challenging me. Do you know what he told me?"

Rab puffed the pipe a couple of times, and Pounding Fists sat patiently.

"He told me to never let an Indian know I was any good in a fight," Rab said. "He said once an Injun knows you can fight, it's a great honor for him if he can best you."

Rab smiled now and leaned forward in his saddle.

"You understand? That boy may have said some things about me, but I ain't claiming they're true."

Pounding Fists' face showed no emotion.

"Is the boy unhurt?" Rab asked.

"He is."

"I'd like to see him. And then we'll exchange hostages," Rab asked.

Pounding Fists spoke to one of the men behind him, and that man wheeled his horse and galloped off toward the camp.

The wind seemed to beat harder against Sinclair's face than it had since they'd first brought the cattle up to the Llano Estacado. His face was exposed now in front of the Comanche, and he was half tempted to pull the bandanna up over his nose and mouth. But Rab knew that in a parley with the Comanche, anything could ignite a powder keg, and he didn't want to do anything that might tempt a fight. They were bringing out Caleb, trusting Rab to bring out Cossatot Jim later.

Pounding Fists did not speak, but sat his horse with his eyes on Rab Sinclair.

Rab didn't make any more effort to make conversation. Instead, he watched the Comanche going to get Caleb.

It was hard to see the details from the distance, but Rab was able to fill in that which he could not clearly see. He watched them cut the ropes and bring a horse to Caleb. Not including the one who rode out with Pounding Fists, three more Comanche mounted to ride out with Caleb. That meant there would now be seven of them together out there for the parley.

The odds were about to be heavily weighted in Pounding Fists' favor.

Rab let the blue roan dance a little bit so that he turned in a circle. It gave him an opportunity to look around for any more Comanche raiders.

Vazquez, Kuwatee, and O'Toole were watching. Out across the open country, Rab saw nothing in any direction.

As the roan came back around, the four Comanche were riding out with Caleb. He looked fine, riding the red-haired horse. If he was injured, he was still sitting up straight. If they'd tortured him, as they were known to do to hostages, it was not so bad that he could not ride.

After several minutes, Caleb and his Comanche guards rode up even with Pounding Fists.

"They treat you decent?" Rab asked.

"I could use some water," Caleb said. The boy looked pale with fright but was otherwise unharmed. "They ain't fed me much."

"This is almost over," Rab said. "You'll be home soon enough, and this'll give you something to talk about down at the saloon.”

"I'd rather forget it," Caleb said.

Rab turned to Pounding Fists.

"I'm obliged to you for remembering the sorrel hawss," Rab said. "I'll go now and fetch the buffalo hunter. Then we'll finish up our business here."

Rab wheeled the roan and rode back across to where the others of the outfit were waiting.

"All right Cossatot," Rab said. "It's time to go and pay for your crimes."

"You can't turn me over to them," Cossatot Jim said, and his eyes were wide with fear. He was nearly in hysterics.

O'Toole lifted Cossatot Jim to his feet.

"Maybe one of us should ride out there with you," O'Toole said.

"Saddle a hawss for Caleb," Rab said. "Cossatot Jim can ride out on it. Wait here for me. Be ready to ride or fight. If you look about two hundred and fifty yards north of where I'm talking to them Comanche, there's a nice rock outcropping. If this comes to shooting, that would be a place to make a stand."

O'Toole looked for the spot. "I see it. If it comes to shooting, we'll meet you there."

They left Cossatot Jim's hands bound and helped him onto the buckskin, saddled with Caleb's saddle.

"You'll pay for this," Cossatot Jim raved. "Every one of you. You can't turn a white man over to the Comanche like this. O'Toole! You know this ain't right. Stop this!"

O'Toole shrugged. "Caleb's over there on account of what you done, Jim. We ain't got no choice in this thing. We've got to get Caleb back, and you've got to pay for what you done."

Rab urged Cromwell forward, and the buckskin followed.

"May you all rot in hell for what you're doing to me!" Cossatot Jim yelled as he rode away.

While they rode out, Kuwatee, O'Toole, and Vazquez saddled their own horses and packed their gear on the spare mounts.

By the time they reached Pounding Fists and the six other Comanche, Cossatot Jim was all out of threats and exhortations.

Rab rode up close to him and grasping Cossatot Jim by the back collar of his coat, Rab jerked him clear of the saddle and dropped him to the ground.

"There's your hostage," Rab said. "Caleb, climb down off of that sorrel horse and get up on the buckskin."

Caleb hesitated, but none of the Comanche moved to stop him. So he swung his leg over and dropped down off the sorrel. He took the sorrel by the lead and walked it over near to the buckskin.

"Here's the last thing I'll say, and then we'll ride off," Rab Sinclair said to Pounding Fists. "You want to give the buffalo hunter justice, and I won't stop you. But no torture. You hang him or shoot him. But no torture."

Pounding Fists narrowed his eyes and shook his head.

"Comanche justice."

"No, sir. Hang him or shoot him, like decent folk would."

Pounding Fists let out a war whoop and jumped from his horse. In a smooth motion, he drew a knife from his belt and reached down and grabbed a handful of Cossatot Jim's hair in one hand and raised the knife up, ready to cut and tear.

That's when a heavy thunder erupted from a rocky outcropping about three hundred yards away. Rab looked to the direction of the sound, and there at the rocks saw a bit of white smoke being whipped away by the Llano Estacado wind.

When he turned back, he saw a hole in Pounding Fists' chest, and the Comanche fell to his knees, his fingers still intertwined in Cossatot Jim's hair.

Pounding Fists' eyes were wide, a look of shock on his face.

A second before the Comanche, Rab Sinclair realized what had happened, even if he didn't understand why.

-20-

Skinner Jake walked through most of the night.

The silver light shone on rocks and yucca plants, tufts of grass and the barrel of the Sharps that he carried. In the night, he could walk on forever without fear of being seen from distance. It was cold, too, and walking helped to keep him warm.

He walked all through the next day, too, with the wind battering his face and the sun beating down on his hat. The empty plain seemed to stretch forever in every direction, and in places there wasn't even a low hill or a big rock to break the awful emptiness.

A man's mind could wander anywhere out here on this plain, and walking alone in the emptiest place he'd ever seen, Jake's mind wandered to places that frightened him. He began to wonder if the cattle drivers and the Comanche and Cossatot Jim and all them others had just been things he imagined. All his memories seemed to become strange and unreal, like no other place and no other people could ever have existed, and he and this open, empty plain was all there was and all there ever had been and all there ever would be.

And in this state, Skinner Jake came to form a bond of friendship with Cossatot Jim that never existed before this day.

In his mind, he forgot — or ignored — that all that befell his band of buff hunters was caused by Cossatot Jim's vileness.

The emptiness of the world around him was filled now with one desire, one thought: Skinner Jake had it in his mind that whatever else befell him, he was here to save Cossatot Jim from them cattle drivers that was looking to turn him over to them Injuns.

He walked until he couldn't walk any farther, and when he stopped, he was convinced that he was lost.

But just after dusk, he heard horses passing somewhere near him. He was smart enough not to say anything, but he followed the sound of the horses as long as he could. When they at last outpaced him, and Skinner Jake could no longer follow the, he stopped for the night and slept on the cold, crusty sand.

When he woke at dawn, Skinner Jake saw the Comanche horses out on the horizon. Then he saw Rab Sinclair's outfit camped not far away.

To keep from being seen, he crawled on hands and knees fifty yards to a small outcropping of rocks, and there he waited.

He watched everything — Rab Sinclair riding out on the blue roan to meet the Comanche. The Comanche bringing Caleb out. Sinclair bringing Cossatot Jim.

He loaded the big Sharps rifle and spent some time working out his aim based on the distance and the wind. A good buffalo hunter had to be able to adjust for wind because his work was done in the wind. The parley was happening about two hundred and fifty yards from where Skinner Jake was hunkered down on the ground behind the low rocks. The Sharps rifle was accurate at two hundred and fifty yards, and it was the sort of shot that Skinner Jake had made many dozens of times.

Shooting buffalo at distance was not as easy a feat as one might think. Even with the heavy .52 caliber ball of the Sharps rifle, a buffalo was a difficult animal to bring down. You had to them in the right spot.

And hunting buffalo wasn't just a matter of shooting one and moving to the next.

A good buffalo hunter knew how to hit the matriarch cow of the herd to wound but not kill her.

Once she was wounded, the others would come around her and mill. Big, dumb beasts that they were, a buffalo hunter could sit on a knoll three hundred yards away and shoot buffalo all afternoon, and the other animals would never run. They'd just stand there by the wounded cow and mill waiting their turn until they were all dead on the ground.

Too many people thought buffalo running was just raising up a rifle and hitting a great big target on an empty plain. But it was far more than that. There was a precise skill to it. And Skinner Jake had that skill.

A shot from two hundred and fifty yards was no challenge for a good buff hunter.

When the Comanche chief leapt from his horse and took Cossatot Jim by the hair, Skinner Jake already had his aim, and the hammer on the Sharps was already cocked. The moment that Comanche raised his knife to Cossatot's head, Jake squeezed the trigger.

The shot broke the terrible quiet on the open plain so that even the wind seemed to stand still and gawk.

-21-

Everything that happened next could not be stopped.

The only man on the plain who had the ability to communicate with both sides and prevent an open war on the Llano Estacado was gasping for his last breath as his fingers slid out of Cossatot Jim's hair.

The Comanche warriors expected duplicity, but when it came they were slower than Rab Sinclair to react.

Rab's hand dropped to his Colt Dragoon. He thumbed the leather thong off the hammer, and as he slid the barrel clear of the holster he cocked the hammer all the way back. Gunmetal cleared leather just as the six mounted Comanche near him began to react.

The first warrior tossed his lance up in the air to change his grip on it, and he let out a war whoop to freeze the blood.

Caleb Morgan's horse had started to dance, and his back was turned when the Comanche warrior darted forward, his lance raised up. Rab lifted the heavy Dragoon and fired. He was too close to miss. The .44 caliber ball smashed into the Comanche's exposed ribs, knocking him from his horse.

"Ride for those rocks!" Rab shouted to Caleb.

The boy still had hold of the sorrel's lead, and now he cut fast out across the plain, racing toward the rocks from where the shot had come.

The five remaining Comanche braves went for Rab Sinclair. Rab squeezed his knees, and Cromwell bounded — not away, but directly toward the Comanche.

Ride into them!

In close combat against overwhelming numbers, the best way was to get in as close as possible. If Rab was in tight among the Comanche, they could not propel or jab with their spears. Their fists would have small effect. Yet his Dragoon could still be employed.

The only word for what came next was slaughter. Armed with the Dragoon against enemies who were armed with just lances and knives, Rab Sinclair had the better hand even if there were more Comanche.

One Comanche swung his lance, and Rab absorbed the blow of its shaft on his shoulder, ducking his head clear. He thumbed back the hammer on the Dragoon and pressed the barrel into the Comanche's stomach. He pulled the trigger with devastating effect on the Comanche.

Another Comanche warrior on Rab's other side grabbed at Rab's buckskin coat, but Cromwell seemed to sense the danger and reared. Rab held tight with his knees and wrapped the fingers of his free hand around the pommel. The Comanche lifted off his horse and then fell to the ground, trapped between Cromwell and his own horse, and knocked stupid when one or both of the horses danced and hooves landed on his head.

Another of the Comanche warriors tried to get near enough to jab with his lance, but the crushing mass of horses moving about like boiling water prevented him from getting so close.

Rab saw the threat and raised up the Dragoon. The Comanche shied away and covered his face, but Rab's target was the man's chest — the Dragoon spit smoke and flame and now another man was dead or dying in among the mass of horse and battle.

Cossatot Jim did not need to be told that a miracle had come to save him, and he did not need encouragement to seize the opportunity.

Cossatot was running across the open plain in the wake of Caleb's horse.

The rock outcropping, really nothing more than a pile of rocks no taller than a man's knees, would provide only the smallest of defensive breastworks. Men and horses would all be exposed there. But it was a place to go.

Three of the Comanche who rode out to the parley were still horsed and in the fight.

Rab waved the Dragoon toward them and fired one shot that went through the mass of men and horse without hitting anything.

The Comanche were armed only with lances and knives. There might be rifles back in the camp, but none of those who had ridden out had a firearm among them.

The initial confusion of the fight wore away, and the three Comanche still mounted near Sinclair rallied.

One charged Sinclair with his lance held high overhead and gripped to throw.

Sinclair aimed the Dragoon in his direction and fired.

The shot missed, but the Comanche turned and ducked when Rab shot, throwing himself off balance. Cromwell, seeking a path out of the fight, darted forward, and Rab swung the heavy Colt so that the barrel landed on the jaw of the Comanche.

The man plummeted from the saddle.

The remaining two Comanche charged now, both of them, but Cromwell was already at a gallop, racing to catch up to Caleb Morgan, who was riding the buckskin and leading the sorrel.

The blue roan passed by Cossatot Joe whose hands were still bound. He was running as hard as he could for the rocks.

Rab heard the war shouts of the Comanche behind him.

And then he saw the man at the rocks who had fired the shot that ignited this cauldron.

Skinner Jake took aim behind the Sharps rifle, and for an instant Rab thought the buffalo hunter was going to shoot him from the saddle.

But a puff of white smoke escaped from the Sharps, and one of the two Comanche behind Rab fell from his horse when the .52 caliber ball from the Sharps caught him in the chest.

The sole Comanche still mounted and in the fight now broke off, riding back toward the camp where the rest of the Indians were gathering and mounting, ready to come to the fight.

The blue roan raced into the cluster of rocks, and with the roan still slowing its pace, Rab leapt from the saddle. The roan wheeled and came back, and Rab reached into the saddle bags, hurrying to reload the Colt Dragoon. It was laborious, pouring out powder and ramming home each individual lead ball, holding the grip against his hip to get the right leverage on it. Rab had heard about gunsmiths who converted the cylinders on the old Dragoons to accept rifle cartridges, and he now bitterly wished he'd had someone convert his old six shooters.

Rab glanced over his shoulder and saw that the Comanche in the camp were forming up, preparing to make a charge.

His own outfit was not yet to the rocks. The shot came unexpected. The violence came and went with speed, and Vazquez, O'Toole, and Kuwatee found themselves rooted, watching to see how it transpired. They were just now darting out across the plain to the cluster of rocks where Skinner Jake, Caleb Morgan, and Rab Sinclair were gathered and where Cossatot Jim was making his run.

"I told you to stay with the chuck wagon," Rab said to Skinner Jake.

"I couldn't let you turn Cossatot over to them Comanche, not knowing what they'd do to him."

"I should shoot you now," Rab said.

"You don't want to shoot me now," Skinner Jake said. "You're going to need my rifle in about five minutes when them Comanche decide to charge us."

Cossatot Jim was still running for the rocks, but the others were now riding up and dropping down out of their saddles.

"I knew when I saw that shot from the rocks it had to be you, Jake," O'Toole said. "Only a buffalo hunter would make that shot."

Skinner Jake grinned, but O'Toole wasn't giving him a compliment.

"It was touch and go whether we'd get out of this without having to fight them Comanche, but you made sure of it, you damn fool," O'Toole continued. "You should have stayed with the wagon. You've risked all our lives for that no-account reprobate."

The Indians at their camp were massing for an attack, but Rab watched as one of them rode hard away from the camp.

"I'd wager he's gone off to the main body," Rab said. "Who knows how many he might bring back with him."

"This is no place for any man who wants to live," Kuwatee said. "We should make tracks."

"What about these two?" Vazquez said, nodding to Skinner Jake, and the others knew he meant also Cossatot Jim who was not yet with them but getting close.

Vazquez, O'Toole, Kuwatee, and Rab Sinclair each brought a horse and a spare mount. Caleb was mounted on the buckskin, but the sorrel was now added to the remuda. But there were no more saddles, and the spare mounts were all packed with provisions.

"Ain't spare horses for them," O'Toole said. "I say we leave 'em. Skinner Jake wanted to fight the Comanche, we can let him."

"Wait a minute," Skinner Jake said, his eyes full of sudden fear. "You can't leave us."

Rab was still reloading the Colt Dragoon. He was just now opening the tin with the percussion caps. He glanced at the others, trying to read in their faces where their minds were on this.

Rab Sinclair was no leader of men. He'd paid these men to ride protection on a herd of cattle, but paying men was different from leading them. Vazquez had led posses. O'Toole was never more than a soldier who followed orders until he decided not to be that anymore. Kuwatee was his own man, neither taking nor giving orders, very much like Rab himself. Rab could make decisions for himself, but he generally thought that other men should make their own decisions — especially in a tight spot like this.

But someone had to decide the next course of action, and Rab Sinclair was the man paying the wages.

There was every reason to leave Skinner Jake and Cossatot Jim to whatever fate they could work out for themselves or the Comanche could work out for them. Cossatot Jim was a horse thief, and he'd earned himself a hanging. The truth of it was, he'd also earned himself whatever justice the Comanche wanted to give him when he violated and murdered the squaw and the child.

And Skinner Jake wasn't much better. He'd left the chuck wagon after Rab was clear with him not to, and now he'd put every one of their lives in danger.

But there was no more opportunity to negotiate with the Comanche. Trust was broken, whether it was Rab's fault or not. And the only man who could negotiate, Pounding Fists, was lying dead with Skinner Jake's .52 caliber bullet in his chest.

"You shouldn't ought to have come back here," Rab said to Skinner Jake. "You came back here on your own, with no promise from any of us that we'd help you or protect you. You've made your choice in this, and we'll not die here with you just because you're a white man and those men over yonder are Comanche."

"You can't leave us here," Skinner Jake said, and he turned the Sharps rifle toward Rab Sinclair. "Throw down that six shooter, and I'll be obliged to take your horse."

The Sharps rifle was loaded and cocked, and Rab stood there holding a Dragoon with no percussion caps on it. None of the other men had drawn their rifles from their scabbards, and all of their six guns were still holstered.

"Any one of you men tries to draw, I'll shoot Sinclair first and then work it out with you. You might be surprised how well this old buff skinner can use the butt end of a rifle."

Now Cossatot Jim was running up, gasping for breath.

"Unloose my hands!" Cossatot Jim demanded. "And give me a rifle for God's sake. Them Comanche are ridin' down on us!"

Rab glanced up. Sure enough, those Comanche who had been encamped were crossing the field now. They were not quite a mile out, and they were not charging. But they were forming up in their battle line, lances and bows ready.

Skinner Jake held the Sharps one-handed at his hip, the barrel still accurately pointing at Rab, and with his free hand he drew a knife from his belt. He held the knife and Cossatot cut the rope binding his wrists.

Cossatot Jim didn't need anyone to explain the situation. It was easy enough to see what was transpiring.

Jim took the reins of the bay horse that O'Toole was riding, and he slid the Yellow Boy from the scabbard.

"You take them hawsses, and I swear to you I will find you and put a bullet in you," Rab said. "Them Comanche will never get to you before I do."

"You got to stop worrying about me and start worrying about them Comanche getting to you," Cossatot grinned as he swung himself into O'Toole's saddle. He wheeled the horse, and charged away.

Skinner Jake reached up and took Cromwell's reins. He positioned the horse so that he could keep the Sharps on Rab even as he climbed into the saddle.

The horse danced nervously as Skinner Jake sat into the saddle. He tugged the reins, but Cromwell shook his head.

The blue roan was gentle for women and children, but not many men other than Rab Sinclair sat a saddle on that horse.

Skinner Jake gave the roan a kick with his heels, and Cromwell bounded forward about ten yards, and there he bucked hard and reared back. Skinner Jake still had the Sharps rifle in his hand, and when Cromwell reared the buffalo hunter reached for the pommel and missed. Cromwell came down and bucked again like he'd never had a rider on his back before. The second bucking did it. Skinner Jake dropped the Sharps and went headlong off the roan's back.

But it was too late.

The Comanche were clearing the ground too fast, their horses driving like the devil.

O'Toole unstrapped the pack off one of the horses and looked at Caleb.

"Get on your horse and ride like hell, son," O'Toole shouted to him.

Vazquez pulled the Yellow Boy from his scabbard and dropped the lever to chamber a round. He sighted out a target among the front riders of the Comanche, and he let loose a bullet.

Kuwatee, too, fired his rifle.

"Everyone ride!" Rab shouted, making a run toward the blue roan.

O'Toole mounted the horse that he'd stripped the pack off, gripped its mane and set the horse west at a gallop, following behind Cossatot Jim, who was already a hundred yards ahead of them, and Caleb.

The pack horses started to run, spooked by the war whoops from the oncoming Comanche.

Vazquez and Kuwatee both got off a couple more shots, but the mounted and rode out hard past the blue roan that stood waiting for Rab.

As Sinclair reached the horse, Skinner Jake charged him with his knife.

Rab dodged the knife and punched Jake hard in the face.

The Comanche were so near that Rab could feel the ground shuddering below his feet.

He took the blue roan's reins and started to swing himself into the saddle when a Comanche with a red and white painted face swung a club that cracked Rab Sinclair in the skull, and everything else went black.

-22-

Before Rab Sinclair opened his eyes he knew it was night by the cool air. He also knew he was in a tepee because of the hollow sound of the wind blowing against the stretched buffalo hide. His head pounded from back to front, and his breathing was labored by a sharp pain in his side. We was certain that while he was on the ground unconscious the Comanche must have kicked him and broken a rib or two.

He hesitated from opening his eyes. If he was being watched, he did not want to let the Comanche know yet that he had regained consciousness.

He tried to take a few deep breaths through his nose. He caught a faint smell of smoke, which meant that the Comanche had a fire going outside the tepee.

He strained his ears to see if he could hear anything, trying to make his hearing work past the throbbing pain in his head. But he heard nothing in the tepee. Outside, there were faint sounds of talking.

His wrists were bound in what felt like leather straps, and when he tried to easily pull his legs apart he felt that his ankles were also bound.

He cracked open first one eye and then the other.

The tepee was dark, but through barely open eyes Rab did not see anyone else in it. He was lying on a dried out buffalo hide laid directly on the ground. He was stiff and sore all over, and he did not wonder if the Comanche had kicked him more than just in the ribs. He felt thoroughly beaten.

Nevertheless, he felt that he could stand and fight if he had to — except for the leather thongs binding his wrists and ankles.

He needed the pain in his head to go away.

Now he rolled his head to get a better look around the tepee. It was dark, but the open flap allowed in silver moonlight, and Rab could see that another man was bound on the ground near him. It was Skinner Jake. He appeared to be asleep or unconscious.

Rab wondered if the others had gotten away or if they were being held in another tepee.

He took shallow breaths to ease the stabbing pain in his ribs.

He shut his eyes again and dozed back to sleep.

***

Activity outside the tepee woke Rab. Voices. Movement. Shouts and laughter.

Rab cracked his eyes again and saw through the flap that the sun was up, but it was still early morning. He could see people outside the tepee walking around.

Skinner Jake was still there, still unconscious, and in the daylight Rab saw that he'd been beaten pretty good. His face was bruised and battered. His clothes were torn, and he had a nasty slash across his chest from a lance or a knife.

The tepee was empty except for the buffalo hide on the ground. The Comanche had made certain not to leave anything that might be employed as a weapon.

With an effort, Rab sat up.

His ribs ached, and every movement brought a new stab of pain. His head still pounded, the sharpest of the pain emanating from the back of his skull where he'd been clubbed.

Shouts and laughter filled the air, and Rab leaned a little bit to see what was going on outside.

One of the Comanche warriors was picking himself up from the ground, and it looked like some of the others gathered around were mocking him over something.

And then Rab saw what was happening as the blue roan danced into view, a Comanche astride his bare back.

The roan bucked and reared, but the Comanche's hands dug deep into the roan's black mane.

If he'd had a rifle, Rab Sinclair would have shot that Comanche off the roan's back.

In addition to the men trying to ride the blue roan, Rab could also see women and children in the camp. They'd taken him back to the main body of the Comanche.

He looked at the unconscious man on the ground.

"I should have left you and your friend instead of taking you in," Rab said.

"You'd be smart to lie back down and play dead," Skinner Jake said without opening his eyes or stirring any more than was necessary to whisper his response. "They think you're awake and it'll be time for them to start their games."

Rab pulled against the leather thong binding his wrists, but it only squeezed tighter.

Though his wrists were bound, Rab's hands and fingers were free.

"I can pick that knot loose that has your wrists tied," Rab said. "I'll untie you and then you untie me."

"Be quick about it," Skinner Jake said. "They've come to check on us twice since morning broke."

Rab scooted close to Jake and began untying the leather thong. The knot was tight as the devil, and a knife would have improved his speed dramatically.

"You been awake all night?" Rab asked.

"Awake and waiting," Jake said. "They'll come to get us soon. Probably going to burn us and take our scalps while we're still alive. They've been known to blind a man with porcupine quills. I've heard stories of worse."

"What about the others?" Rab asked. "Vazquez? Kuwatee? O'Toole? Caleb?"

"Last I seen they was making tracks," Skinner Jake said. "Them Comanche knocked you a good one, and you went down. Then three or four jumped on me and beat me black and blue."

"You think the rest of my outfit made it away?"

"Looked that way to me," Skinner Jake said. "But I wasn't worried too much about them. I know some of the Comanche kept chasing them. I can't say if they ever caught them, though."

"I can see my saddle," Rab said. "My rifle is still in the scabbard. If we can get to that, we can fight our way out."

"You'll never get to it," Skinner Jake said. "We're in the main camp. There's sixty Comanche warriors out there."

"So what do you think to do?" Rab asked.

"I'm praying they wear theirselves out on your horse," Skinner Jake said. "They'll get sick of it sooner or later, and when they do they'll likely cut it up for their supper. But if it lasts long enough maybe we'll live to see nightfall. Then we make an escape after dark."

"Don't seem like much of a plan," Rab said.

"But rushing out there to try to get your hands on a rifle that's got a dozen shots in it makes sense to you?" Skinner Jake asked. "A miracle is about all we got right now."

At last Rab felt the knot give, and he began to tug the loose end through. Working quickly now, he loosed the bands on Skinner Jake's wrists, and Jake pulled against the slack until his hands were free.

"That's a start," he said, but he caught himself as his voice rose just slightly above a whisper.

Skinner Jake leaned forward. It was obvious he was in pain, but he pushed through it and began untying the leather thong around his ankles.

"Get me untied," Rab said.

"You wait until I'm unhobbled," Skinner Jake said. "Then I'll work on your wrists."

It took him a moment, but at last he got the thong loosened and began to pull it away from his ankles.

"That's better," he said.

Jake got on all fours and crawled to the opening of the tepee.

"That horse of yours is giving them a good time of it," he said. "Just bucked another one off. They'll have him in a stew pot before early afternoon."

Jake turned and looked back at Rab Sinclair.

"They's going to be awful sore when they come in here and see I'm gone," Skinner Jake said. "But if you're still here it'll buy me a little time. Good luck to you."

And then he slipped out of the opening of the tepee and disappeared from sight, leaving Rab Sinclair still bound at the wrists and ankles.

Rab breathed a curse and tried again to pull against the leather strap on his wrists, but it only seemed to get tighter.

With his wrists bound, he could not get to the knot on the thong around his ankles because it was tied in the back.

Skinner Jake had left him with no way of making an escape.

Rab leaned back on the buffalo hide on the ground, his side aching and his head throbbing.

And then he heard shouting, and from his position he could see some of the Comanche men leaping up onto horses and racing away.

"That's going to be Skinner Jake wishing now that he'd untied me," Rab said.

He shut his eyes and laid still, and in a moment a Comanche pulled open the front of the tepee. Rab did not move, but he knew the man stood there for a long while. When he left, he did not close the front.

Then he heard Skinner Jake shouting. Maybe he was fighting, but it sounded like he was coming nearer.

There was commotion outside the tepee, and Rab heard riding horses and running men. Jake shouted at the Comanche, but whatever he was saying just sounded like nonsense. The shouts were getting nearer, but even when Rab could tell they had brought him back into the camp, they did not bring him over to the tepee.

And then, in a moment, the shouts turned to screams. Terrible screams of panic and horror filled the air.

For several minutes Skinner Jake screamed, and then the screams went silent. Rab assumed they had killed him.

After a few minutes, Rab heard men approaching the tepee.

He expected that whatever fate they had for him was about to come, but instead something heavy landed on the ground next to him. A vile smell immediately hit his nostrils.

Rab kept his eyes closed, no matter how much he wanted to look. Then someone grabbed his ankles and pulled hard against the thong, checking to make sure his ankles were still bound. The person stepped nearer and pulled against his wrists. Whoever it was then poked him several times, as if trying to determine if he was awake or would wake up.

And then Rab heard their footsteps leaving.

He cracked his eyes and saw no one, and then he turned his head to look at what the Comanche had thrown into the tepee.

It was Jake. He was unconscious, passed out from the pain. A bad wound in his shoulder showed where he'd been lanced.

But the lance point wasn't the worst of it. His boots were gone, and the bottoms of his feet were a red and bubbled mess, and the skin hung off the bottoms of his feet like melted strands.

Rab turned away, sickened by the sight.

They'd stuck his feet in the fire to prevent him from running away again. They had not even bothered to tie him up a second time. The burned flesh of the bottoms of his feet would keep him from running again.

Rab chanced picking up his head to look out the open front of the tepee to where they'd been trying to ride Cromwell.

No one was bothering him now. The horse was standing idle.

Nearby his horse, Rab could see his saddle with its rifle.

If he could get loose and make it to the saddle and the blue roan, Rab was certain he could get away.

There were many voices outside, and they seemed to be in an argument. Some of the voices sounded angry, while others were raising to near shouts.

And then in a moment, Rab could hear footsteps approaching the tepee. And then hands were on him, and he abandoned his effort to feign sleep.

Angry, painted faces were close to his face, and they were tugging again on the leather thong on his ankles.

And then Rab realized it wasn't the leather thong. They were pulling his boots off of his feet. And then they were lifting him, rough in the way they jerked him one way and another, pulled against his arms and legs.

Rab Sinclair didn't need to have any more of the Comanche language than what he had to understand what was happening.

Skinner Jake had tried to make an escape, and they'd prevented him from making another run by burning the soles off his feet.

Now they were going to prevent Rab from trying to make an escape.

-23-

In the war, Fitz had seen some rough things.

Anyone who ever wandered too near a surgeon's tent on the edge of battle lived to regret it. Limbs, arms and legs and cut off with a saw, could always be found in piles. And the men whose arms and legs were being sawed off could be heard from inside the tent. Sometimes they screamed. Sometimes they took it with manly silence.

But those who never made it to the surgeon's tent littered every battlefield, dying slowly or quickly. Some wept at the end, realizing the vain search for glory had brought them instead to an ignoble end. Others cursed or shouted.

When he thought of it, at least once a day, Fitz could vividly recall wounds he had seen. Gruesome and fatal wounds that stayed with him. A face torn asunder. A pool of blood forming on a friend's belly from a wound that would not be staunched. A shoulder shot away, leaving exposed bone and flesh.

At the thought of these things, Fitz would recoil.

He'd left the cavalry because he could not rid these things from his memory, and he hoped the horrid visions would come less frequently and with less explicit detail if he got away from men who reminded him at every turn of those whose bodies had been so terribly mangled.

But nothing he saw or remembered from the war was as horrific as watching from a dry wash as the Comanche chased down Skinner Jake.

Fitz was too far away to do anything, and he was on the other side of the Comanche camp.

Riding out looking for Sinclair and the others to warn them that Skinner Jake had escaped, Fitz heard shooting.

When he finally came up to where the shooting took place, he found only the Comanche breaking camp. From a distance he watched them. He'd seen bodies. He knew something had happened. And then he saw prisoners. From a distance he wasn't sure who the prisoners were, but when he spotted the blue roan he knew that Rab Sinclair was with the Comanche.

And now he hunkered down in a dry wash, his piebald gelding concealed farther along where the banks of the wash kept him hid.

All he could do was watch as the Comanche rode down on him and one, with an easy and swift movement, threw the lance into Skinner Jake's shoulder. It knocked him off his feet, and in an instant he was surrounded by Comanche. He got up to run again, yanking the lance from his own shoulder, but two then four and then more Comanche were surrounding him.

The buffalo hunter put up a small fight, but very quickly he was overwhelmed by their numbers — and the Comanche warriors dragged him back to the ground where they kicked and punched at him. And then they carried him forcefully back to camp, and four of them held him with his arms and legs pinned, and another ripped his boots away. And they stuck his feet down into a fire.

Skinner Jake screamed and fought, but they held him, cooking the soles of his feet.

Fitz looked away.

It made him sick not to do something. If his rifle could be trusted at distance, Fitz might have tried to shoot Skinner Jake just to put the man out of his misery.

But the screams stopped when Skinner Jake passed out from the pain.

Fitz had little opportunity to try to get closer to the camp than he was. On the open plain, the Comanche would see him the moment he left the cover of the wash. Between him and the camp, there wasn't even a rock to hide behind.

Several of the Comanche warriors carried Skinner Jake's limp body back toward a tepee, and Fitz thought the ordeal was finished. But then he saw them come out of the tepee carrying another man, and this one was not unconscious. Fitz was stunned that the man made no desperate attempt to shake himself loose from the men toting him. Without seeing that it was Sinclair, Fitz knew it must be. Rab Sinclair had a reputation for coolness, but Fitz knew that Sinclair must have heard Skinner Jake's screams. He could not believe that Rab wasn't putting up any kind of fight.

The small group neared the fire where they had burned Skinner Jake.

Most everyone in the camp was watching Sinclair and the Comanche who carried him.

Fitz tried to form a plan. All he could think to do was charge the camp, shooting with the rifle as he ran. He didn't know what he would do if he made it to Rab, but no other idea came to mind.

Just as he stood up, a piercing whistle cut through the wind, and Fitz stood, perplexed. He was almost certain that the whistle had come from Rab Sinclair, or one of the Comanche carrying him.

And then Fitz noticed the blue roan.

The Comanche had left the roan untethered, like their other horses. Now the roan bucked and ran a circle in among the other horses, and then the roan charged toward the Comanche carrying Rab.

Other horses among the Comanche remuda also charged, following the roan as if they, too, were trained to come to the whistle.

By the time Cromwell was getting to the fire he was at a full gallop, and fifteen or twenty horses were following the roan.

The horses galloped through the camp, knocking into tepees, tearing over buffalo pelts, and knocking down men who tried to grab them and get them under control. Women were running and calling out to children, but the younger children thought they'd discovered a new game and were running and laughing, trying to play with the charging horses. All the men in the camp abandoned whatever they were doing and ran to the horses, trying to get them under control.

The men carrying Rab Sinclair dropped him on the ground and backed away as the roan reared and kicked toward them.

As if he, too, had been trained to come at the whistle, Fitz jumped out of the wash and started running for the Comanche camp.

-24-

Rab Sinclair had no clear plan. He knew the roan would come with a fight, and he figured other horses would follow. Beyond creating momentary chaos in the camp, Rab didn't know what use that chaos might be, but he was ready to try anything that might delay having his feet burned to the bone.

On the ground with horses charging back and forth around him and the blue roan kicking and rearing, Rab had to roll several times to keep clear of the horse's hooves.

"Come on old biter!" Rab shouted at the horse.

And then he saw what he needed. Eight yards away there were four lances leaning against each other and forming a cone. Rab rolled across the crusty ground. When he got to the lances, Rab swung his legs to knock them over. Moving quickly, while the horses still created havoc, Rab used one of the lances to cut through the leather thong binding his ankles. When his ankles were free, Sinclair got to his feet. He slid his arms over the blade of the lance and worked them up and down until the lance cut through the leather strap.

Still the horses were causing mayhem, and none of the Comanche were paying any attention to him.

Rab took up the lance and hurried to where he'd seen his saddle. He slid the Yellow Boy out of its scabbard and worked the lever to chamber a cartridge.

Now he whistled again, and the blue roan wheeled and darted back toward where Rab was standing.

Rab shouldered the rifle and fired off two quick shots at the nearest Comanche. He deliberately shot into the ground, backing them off and making them run for cover but not killing them.

Though he knew they blamed him for the killing of Pounding Fists, Rab had no dispute with the Comanche, and if he did not have to kill them, he didn't want to.

He spun and fired two more shots into the ground near their horses that were still grazing and ignoring the others that were running amok within the camp. Those two shots were enough to spook the horses, and most all of them now started to run.

The roan danced in circles around him.

"You're a good ol' hawss," Rab said, grabbing up horse's reins and patting his neck. Rab shook out the blanket and swung it over the roan's back. Then he lifted his saddle and slung it onto the horse.

That's when he heard the rifle shots and for the first time realized that Fitz was standing on the outskirts of the camp.

Moving quickly, Rab cinched the saddle. The roan was already breathing hard from an active morning, first bucking the Comanche men from his back, then leading the charge through the camp. Rab knew running was not a long-term solution to his troubles.

He replaced the two cartridges he'd already fired and then swung himself into the saddle. He moved fast. Fitz had renewed the commotion within the camp, but it would not take long for the Comanche to rally, grab some horses, and resume a fight. Rab wanted to be gone long before that happened.

He rode quickly to one of the horses still grazing, unlooped his lariat and roped the horse.

"Come on now, pony hawss," Rab said, pulling the horse back toward the tepee where Skinner Jake still lay unconscious.

At the tepee, Rab fired off another couple of rounds to back off a group of four Comanche warriors who were stalking him.

Fitz had reloaded and was again firing shots from distance into the camp.

Rab pushed the Yellow Boy back into its scabbard, and he bodily lifted Skinner Jake up to his shoulder. He took Jake to the horse he'd roped and draped the man over the horse's back. Jake's stomach rested on the horse's back, and his arms and legs dangled off.

"You probably ain't going to survive this, but I'll not just leave you," Rab said to the unconscious man.

Rab cut a length from his lariat and hogtied Skinner Jake's wrists and ankles under the horse's belly.

He drew out the Yellow Boy and fired more shots into the tops of a couple of tepees. From the second one, a group of children poured from the opening, screaming. He'd fired too high to hit anyone, but he'd scared hell out of the children. And that's what he wanted. More chaos added to the mayhem of the stampeding horses and Fitz shooting up the camp.

As best as Rab could see, not a single Comanche was struck. But between the horses and the two gunmen, they'd turned the camp upside down.

Now Rab Sinclair stepped into the stirrup and threw a leg over Cromwell's back.

"All right, you old biter," Rab said. "You've had a big day of it already, but I'm going to have to ask you for more."

Rab squeezed the horse with his knees, and Cromwell — with the Indian pony trailing — rode hard toward Fitz.

"Glad to see you," Rab said, riding up to the former Yankee cavalryman. Fitz was reloading his rifle from cartridges in his pocket.

"Kind of a tight spot we're in," Fitz said.

Rab chuckled.

"I've been in worse," he said.

"About a fifteen minutes ago," Fitz said.

Fitz's face was full of panic as he worked to reload.

"You got a hawss?"

"Back in that dry wash."

"Hold this," Rab said, tossing the loose end of the lariat down to Fitz. "You hold them Injuns off a mite longer. I'll go and fetch your hawss and we'll ride out of here. If they come for you and you can't fight 'em back, cut him loose and get mounted on this pony. I'll leave ol' Skinner Jake there if the choice is him or you."

Fitz nodded and put a foot on the end of the lariat. He raised up with a fully loaded rifle and resumed shooting at the camp.

Unlike Rab, Fitz was a man of war who tried not to waste a shot. He was shooting from distance, but he'd already hit and wounded two of the Comanche men. The rate of fire he could keep up with the lever-action Yellow Boy was like nothing he'd experienced in the war, and he felt like a one-man army the way he could keep at bay as many as three dozen men. Even shooting from a long ways out, Fitz believed if he could have taken more time to pick his shots he'd have put down more of the Comanche.

In a moment, Rab rode up out of the wash leading Fitz's horse, and he galloped forward to where Fitz was just now reloading again.

"Never mind that rifle," Rab said. "Let's ride on out of here."

Fitz swung himself into his saddle, and the two men rode with Skinner Jake and his pony trailing behind.

"Hell of a thing, you showing up the way you did," Rab said.

"When Jake took off I went looking for him," Fitz explained. "I heard shooting yesterday morning, and I came upon the aftermath of your skirmish. I followed from a distance until the Comanche brought you to their main camp, and I've been watching the camp all night."

"Where are the others?" Rab asked.

"No idea," Fitz said.

"Where are we?" Rab asked.

"No idea," Fitz said.

***

Rab Sinclair stood on the highest spot he could find and looked back south over the horizon.

"Nothing's moving," Rab said. "If they're tracking us, they're still well back there."

"Do you think they're tracking us?" Fitz asked.

"I do."

It was late in the afternoon, but they still had a couple of hours left of sunlight. The moon tonight would be full, or nearly so.

In their flight from the Comanche, Rab and Fitz first cut east, the fastest way from the camp, and then made a wide arc north to try to get back west. Maybe they could catch up to the others or the vaqueros with the cattle.

"We're still headed north," Fitz observed, looking at the sun over his left shoulder.

"The Llano Estacado is more than two hundred miles north to south and a hundred and fifty miles east to west," Rab said. "I've heard 'em say the entire state of South Carolina could fit inside the Llano Estacado. And right now, we could be anywhere inside it. My thinking is to ride north until we find the trail our cattle cut."

"Will we see it?" Fitz asked.

"We'd be hard pressed to miss it," Rab said. "Them steers chewed up every blade of grass in a swath a mile wide. And what little grass they didn't eat they stamped down under hoof. When we come to that trail, we can cut west and maybe catch the others. But even if we don't catch them, it's a pathway home."

"I reckon so," Fitz said. "What about the Comanche behind us?"

"If they want to follow me home, I'll fight them there," Rab said.

"Any thoughts about Jake?"

Rab looked at the wounded man still unconscious and draped over the back of the pony.

"I've got nothing for him," Rab said. "I don't even have a salve in my saddlebags. I ain't going to leave him, but I probably can't save him."

Rab did cut his shirt into strips that he wetted with his canteen and loosely wrapped the burned feet.

"Let's just keep going," Rab said. For the last half hour the men had been walking along beside the horses to spare the mounts in case they had to make a run. They continued now to walk, leading the horses along.

"This is the damnedest cattle drive I ever been on," Rab said.

"It's the only cattle drive I ever been on, and I can promise you I'll not be on another," Fitz said with a laugh.

Rab laughed, too. But then he stopped.

"I'm sorry Fitz," he said. "Sorry to you and the others. I sure did not think buying cows in Texas was going to turn into an ordeal."

"Nothing you should apologize about," Fitz said. "You couldn't know. And you said up front we'd be passing through the damnedest country this side of hell. I just didn't know there'd be so many of the Devil's demons."

"Huh," Rab said. "Them Comanche?"

"Demons," Fitz said again.

"They ain't demons," Rab said. "If Cossatot Jim had violated a white woman and killed a white child, we'd have formed up a posse to go after him. And we'd have found him, and we'd have stretched his neck from the first stout tree we encountered. He'd have never visited a judge, but we'd have called it justice."

"The Comanche killed everyone in that buffalo hunting party," Fitz said. "Is that justice?"

"It's Comanche justice, sho'nuff. The way they see it, if you ride with a man who does something like that then you ain't no different from him. Besides, if Skinner Jake told the truth, at least a couple of them buff hunters joined in the rape and murder."

"And torture?" Fitz said.

"I'll confess it's over in a hurry, but you don't think a hanging is a kind of torture?" Rab said. "A man knows he's going to die. Feels that rope go around his neck. Sure, it ain't having your feet burned off to keep you from running, but there's a kind of torture to a hanging — even if it's just a torture of the mind."

"Maybe," Fitz said. "But you can't defend them taking Caleb?"

Rab nodded thoughtfully. "No, and I'd have killed every one of them to get Caleb back. But the Comanche don't distinguish much between one white man and another. They knew if they took Caleb that they'd be making Cossatot Jim our problem. And they knew that we'd go and fetch him back for them. I don't defend it, but I can understand why they done it."

Fitz shrugged and walked along quietly for some time.

And then he said, "It's a strange thing to think about your enemy as justified."

"Walk a ways in another man's path and he don't seem so much like a demon," Rab said. "Folks'll always say you should do this or you should do that, but if they can't see things from the way you see them, then they can't really say. If that had been Evangeline that Cossatot Jim violated and murdered, I believe I wouldn't think twice about putting him to a fire."

Fitz nodded his agreement, and the two men kept walking.

They'd gone another three miles or more, and still had daylight left, when Rab Sinclair stopped.

"Look at that, yonder," Rab said.

Fitz strained his eyes, but then he saw it. Up ahead, the ground seemed to change color. It was like the brown and black of the grass in the distance suddenly turned a color like sand.

"What is that?" Fitz asked. "Why's it look like that?"

"Unless I miss my guess, I reckon that's where a herd of cattle recently chewed all the grass it could find down to the nub."

"That's it, then?" Fitz asked. "That's our road home?"

"I reckon it is," Rab said.

They continued walking, and as they neared it and their vantage changed, the discolored ground began to fade to normal again. But as soon as they were in among the chewed grass, it was obvious to Fitz what he was seeing. The grass and weeds were chewed down. There was other evidence, too. Marks in the sand that showed hooves and dried cow chips scattered all over.

"This is it," Rab said. "Here we turn west and keep an eye on our backtrail."

"How far in front of us do you think they are?" Fitz asked.

"The herd moves at twelve or fifteen miles a day," Rab said. "My guess would be the herd came through here three or four days ago. So maybe fifty miles ahead. A hard day's ride on a fresh hawss. A day and a half for these hawsses."

Rab stopped walking.

"Help me get Skinner Jake down off this pony," Rab said. "We'll stop here for an hour or so. Rest the hawsses, maybe eat some of what we've got. Then when it gets dark, we'll pick up the trail again."

"Keep going after dark?" Fitz asked.

"Unless you want them Comanche catching up to us while we're asleep," Rab said. "Ever heard of a Comanche Moon?"

"Where they attack by moonlight?" Fitz said.

"A full moon with Comanche on your trail is a dangerous time," Rab said.

"But we're not sure they're behind us," Fitz said. "We've seen no sign of them."

"They're back there," Rab said.

-25-

Fitz had a lead in each hand, pulling his own horse and the Indian pony as well as he walked along within the path left by the grazing herd. In the moonlight, he could follow the path with ease. Clumps of grass munched to the ground showed up white. If he drifted outside of the path the herd had taken, the grasses and buckwheat still grew tall, and he knew to cut back the other way. Or sometimes, Fitz would lead the horses into the tall grass and watch them graze some before leading them on. He was careful to keep them away from cockleburs, though the horses knew not to eat it as long as there was other grazing to be had.

Skinner Jake made some noises, but he did not wake up.

The wind blew harder now than it had most nights, and Fitz had to strain his ears for any noise.

He wore his six-shooter on his hip at half cock. Every man who carried a Colt Dragoon or an Army or Navy knew that a good knock on the back of the hammer could discharge the gun, and so most men didn't put a cap on the chamber under the hammer. But if a band of Comanche warriors was riding after him, that man would cap all six nipples. Fitz was read to grab for the gun in his holster. While he wasn't riding he'd even moved the leather loop off the hammer so that he could draw the gun quickly.

A noise somewhere nearby piqued Fitz's interest, and he took both leads in one hand and dropped his other hand to the grip of the gun.

It must be coming on to midnight. Sinclair had been gone for some time now. He was riding the backtrail looking for any evidence of pursuit. Neither man wanted to have the Comanche sneak up on them, but they agreed that they should spare the horses as much as possible. Water and feed had been light, and the horses had spent a rough couple of days.

Still, the horses weren't the only ones exhausted.

"Fitz, I'm coming up behind you," Rab called.

The voice made him jump, and Fitz laughed at himself.

"See anything?" Fitz asked.

"Nothing," Rab said. "If the Comanche are back there, I don't know where they are."

"But you still think they're back there?"

"They're back there."

"In the army, during the war, on a long march I got pretty good at sleeping in the saddle," Fitz said. "If we weren't sparing the horses, I'd be able to fall asleep right now."

Rab chuckled.

"Climb on up there," he said. "I'll walk for a while, and then we'll switch."

"You sure?" Fitz asked.

"Go ahead."

Fitz climbed wearily into his saddle, and it did not take more than a moment for his eyelids to start to fall shut. He jerked sometimes in the saddle as he drifted further to sleep and began to slide or collapse. But he'd jerk back awake and then begin to doze again.

Rab kept walking.

He'd journeyed many times on long trips through prairie and mountains, and he could walk all night if he had to.

He watched the moon fall to the western horizon. It was setting almost due west this time of year, and the path the cattle took seemed to be taking a perfect west-northwest line. Rab wondered if he was still with the cattle when the herd came through here or if he'd already gone off in search of Cossatot Jim. He figured the cattle passed through here without him.

Walking through the night they were not making quick time, but every step brought them closer to the herd. Rab hoped that when he got to the herd he would find Caleb, Vazquez, Kuwatee, and O'Toole had rejoined the trail drive.

The silver light of the moon shooting in rays from the western horizon masked the first gray light of dawn touching the night sky.

"I slept all night," Fitz said, waking up.

"I reckon you did," Rab told him.

"Skinner Jake ever stir?"

"Not once," Rab said. "I haven't checked him, but he might well be dead."

"Sorry way to go if he is," Fitz commented.

Out here on the Llano Estacado the horizon was as much as ten or fifteen miles in the distance. A thunderstorm could be seen from fifty or a hundred miles or more.

Rab swung himself up into the saddle and turned the blue roan to the east where the sun was now casting its bright morning light. Rab held up a hand to shade his eyes from the sun and looked across the backtrail.

"Almost easier to see at night than to try to look back into the morning sun," Rab said.

Fitz walked his horse over to where Skinner Jake was strung across the Indian pony.

"Still breathing," Fitz said. "His breathing's weak, but he ain't dead."

"If we can catch Sancho Biscuit, he's got a salve in his wagon. I don't know that it will do any good, but it's some treatment. And we can lay him out in the wagon, which will have to be better than being tied over a hawss."

Fitz started to say something but stopped. Something to the south had caught his attention.

"Is that dust?" Fitz asked.

Rab looked to where Fitz pointed and saw it.

"Riders," Rab said. "I'd guess it's at least a dozen of them."

"The Comanche?"

"We'd be fools to wait around to find out," Rab said.

"Going to be a rough ride for Skinner Jake," Fitz said.

"That can't be helped."

The two men wheeled their horses and began a long run, covering distance quickly. Sparing the horses through the night proved out the wisdom. The horses galloped hard for nearly two miles and then slowed to a trot. The pony, without the gait of the other two horses, fell behind several yards, but it kept following without being led. The dust cloud had disappeared.

"They've slowed to a trot or a walk," Rab said. "But they're still back there. Like as not they've seen us and know we're here."

They let the horses walk a short distance and they held them to a trot. Periodically they would slow the horses to a walk, but never for long.

"We should spare these hawsses as long as we can," Rab said. "We made need 'em to make a big run here soon."

By late morning the riders had covered nearly ten miles.

"Look at how many more shrubs there are," Rab said. "The landscape is starting to change. The ground is starting to roll a little bit, and if I ain't mistaken, those look like some high hills out across the horizon."

"What's that mean?" Fitz asked.

"We're probably not much more than sixty miles from the ranch. Twenty miles or so, we'll come to some steep cliffs where we'll have to find a trail to get down them. That's when we're officially down off the Llano Estacado. Another twenty miles beyond that, and we should start to see the mesas and peaks up near Las Vegas. And when we see Starvation Peak, we'll be about fifteen miles from the ranch. But we'll catch the herd before we get to the ranch."

They kept going at a trot for another couple of miles without seeing any sign of pursuit, though Rab remained convinced that the Comanche were still very close behind them.

After some time, a shape appeared on the horizon in front of them.

"Now what do you reckon that is?" Fitz asked.

Rab leaned forward in his stirrups. "I reckon that's a rider."

"One of our outfit?" Fitz asked.

Rab started scanning the ground for tracks, but it was impossible to discern any specific track among all the prints left by the cattle.

"I don't know," Rab said. "But I'm going to find out."

Rab gave a call to the roan and squeezed the roan's sides with his knees. The roan began to push harder, his trot turning into a gallop.

They gained quickly on the rider in front of them. His horse was fatigued, and the man wasn't even watching his backtrail.

In short time, Cromwell was near to overtaking the rider, and Rab recognized both the horse and the rider. The horse was a big bay that O'Toole had been riding. The last time Rab had seen that horse, Cossatot Jim was stealing it to get away from the Comanche.

***

O'Toole's bay was spent, and by the time Cossatot Jim heard Cromwell's pounding hooves over the wind, he couldn't get enough out of the horse to try to flee.

When he heard the roan coming, Cossatot Jim whipped around in the saddle. The black face of the blue horse, the snarl on Rab Sinclair's face, and Cossatot Jim's blood went cold. He reached for the Yellow Boy in the scabbard, O'Toole's rifle, but he was too late.

Cromwell charged up beside the bay and Rab reached out with both hands, grabbing Cossatot Jim's shirt at the shoulders. Rab rolled from his own saddle, his fingers tight in Cossatot's shirt, and both men fell heavily on the ground.

Rab was to his feet first. Cossatot Jim still had hold of the Yellow Boy, but he was stunned from the fall.

Rab stepped in and smashed his right fist into the bridge of Cossatot Jim's nose.

The buffalo hunter's eyes watered up at the stinging in his face. He swayed for a moment on his knees, but then rallied and stood up. The rifle was still in his hands, so Rab stepped in again, grabbing hold of the rifle and twisting it so that it popped free of Cossatot's grip.

Rab threw the rifle onto the ground well away from them.

"What happened to the rest of my outfit?" Rab asked.

"I don't know," Jim said. "They rode off one way, I rode off the other. I thought the Comanche got you."

"They did. Me and Skinner Jake both," Rab said.

"Serves you right for trying to hand me over to them," Cossatot Jim said. "Too bad they didn't kill you."

"Yep," Rab said. "I reckon you'll feel that way about it."

"So what now?" Cossatot Jim asked rubbing his nose.

Rab stuck his tongue against his back teeth and cocked his jaw.

"By rights I should hang you," Rab said. "But I figure we're about thirty miles from a good stout tree."

Cossatot Jim glanced at the Dragoon that Rab wore on his hip.

"So you going to shoot me?"

"Nope," Rab said. "All I'm going to do is take back my property."

"The horse?" Jim asked, glancing over his shoulder where the bay and Cromwell stood some distance away.

"There's a band of Comanche about a two or three miles behind us. I reckon if they can't find a stout tree, they'll think of some other thing to do with you."

Cossatot Jim looked back but saw nothing.

"They're back there," Rab said.

"Then maybe I'll just take your horse," Cossatot Jim said.

"You won't take that hawss, or any other. You're at the end of the trail, Cossatot Jim."

"You can't do this to me," Cossatot Jim said. "I'm a white man, dammit."

Rab started to walk over to pick up the Yellow Boy, but Cossatot Jim drew a Bowie knife from his belt and charged.

Rab Sinclair grew up wrestling and fighting for everything he ever got. His easy manner and the fact that he was slow to rile often gave folks who didn't know him the wrong perception that he wasn't much of a fighter.

Cossatot Jim had felt Rab's fist against his face, so when he came with the Bowie knife he had an idea what to expect.

Cossatot Jim thrust with the knife to throw Rab off his balance, and then swung a kick to try to knock Rab off his feet. The kick worked. Sinclair had backed away from the knife and his feet weren't set. Cossatot Jim's ankle caught Rab in the side of the knee, and Sinclair went down to the ground.

Cossatot Jim lunged now, stabbing down with the knife. But Rab rolled to avoid the knife and then kicked out with a stomping motion from the ground.

Rab's foot caught the buffalo hunter in the thigh, and the force of it made him stumble forward with his own weight.

Now Rab sprang back up from the ground and rushed toward Cossatot Jim. Rab threw a heavy punch into the buffalo hunter's jaw with his right hand, and then followed that with a strike from his left.

Two hard punches to the head, and Cossatot Jim was stunned. He stood with the knife but no will to wield it.

Rab landed two more punches to the man's head, catching him in the left and then right side of head.

Cossatot Jim dropped to his knees. He was dazed but not unconscious.

Rab reached down and grabbed Cossatot Jim's wrist — the one holding the knife, and twisted the wrist back behind the buffalo hunter until he dropped the knife. Then Rab threw one more punch, this one into the back of Cossatot Jim's head.

The punch bloodied Rab's knuckles, but it knocked Jim senseless, and he fell to the ground.

Now Rab lifted the back of Jim's coat, pulling it up over his head, and Rab took the knife and shoved it through the tail of the coat and into the hard earth.

Cossatot Jim wasn't trapped by any means, but in his dazed state the coat over his head and pinned to the ground was enough to keep the buffalo hunter from getting up.

Breathing heavy from the exertion of the fight, Rab stumbled over to pick up the rifle he'd tossed to the ground, and then he went to the blue roan and took up the reins. He leaned his head against the roan's back just as Fitz rode up with the pony just behind him.

"I seen riders to the east," Fitz said. "Maybe two miles back. Looks to be about ten or twelve Comanche. They're coming hard again, Rab."

"I'm coming," Rab said, still struggling to catch his breath. "You go on, but I'm right behind you."

Rab stepped into a stirrup and pulled himself into the saddle.

Walking through the night with little food and no sleep had not left him fit enough for a fight. But he'd survived it, and he had what he wanted. He took up the lead from O'Toole's bay and led the horse in a quick trot to follow up behind Fitz.

The Comanche were pushing their ponies hard, racing to try to catch up. They'd been following for a full day and night, now, and this was the first they'd come near to their quarry. They seemed determined not to let their quarry slip away again.

O'Toole's bay was spent, and even though it was now relieved of the burden of a rider, the horse was forcing Rab and Cromwell to move too slowly. Rab reined in the blue roan and rode along next to the bay. He slid the Yellow Boy from it's scabbard and worked it in between a couple of straps on his own saddle, and then he took out his long Bowie knife.

He hated to leave a trophy for the Comanche, but he didn't see where he had a choice.

He slid the knife along the side of the horse and then sawed through the straps on the saddle. When it was loose, he pushed it off the bay's back, relieving the horse of the last of its burdens and giving the bay a little more room to breathe.

"All right, now, hawss, I need you to run," Rab said.

He urged the roan forward, and now the bay was keeping up.

The Comanche could have the saddle.

Fitz was up ahead, still well within sight. His horse and the pony were moving along at a good pace, though. All the horses on the trail drive came from Rab Sinclair's remuda, and he was proud to see the way the horses endured the difficult exertion.

He'd gone some distance farther when he looked over his shoulder and saw that the Comanche had come to a stop. Rab wheeled the roan and held the spot for a moment, watching the Comanche. In all, it looked to be maybe twenty of them, maybe a couple more than that.

They'd found Cossatot Jim.

It was hard to see from distance, but four or five of the Comanche had dropped down and were lifting the man up. Rab could not distinguish exactly what was happening, but it from a distance it appeared violent.

"Haw!" Rab shouted, wheeling the roan. And again they were at a run, charging to catch up to Fitz and the pony.

-26-

"I know this country," Rab said. "I've ridden through here before. We're not far now."

Rab Sinclair and Fitz followed a trail down into a canyon of cottonwoods. There, they found a small stream where the horses drank.

Even Fitz, who still felt like a foreigner in the West, recognized that they were coming out of the Staked Plains. On the horizon he could see several tall mesas. The ground was more broken with boulders, washes, canyons and rolling hills. In a place like this a man like Rab Sinclair could hide, even from the Comanche. Since they had stopped at Cossatot Jim, they'd seen nothing of the Indians.

Together, Rab and Fitz untied Skinner Jake, astonished to find that the man was still alive. Rab sacrificed what remained of his shirt to put new strips of bandage on the buffalo hunter's wounded feet. They gave him water by drenching a bandanna and then wringing it out onto his lips.

"Ain't much else we can do for him," Rab said.

"If we were doctors, we'd just cut his legs off below the knees," Fitz said. "At least, that's what they did in the war."

The burned feet were grotesque, but as long as the man was still alive, Rab was willing to try to get him to the doctor in Las Vegas.

"We'll camp here tonight," Rab said. "Come first light, we'll vamoose out of here."

"How close are we?" Fitz said.

"Judging from the tracks back yonder, I think Carlos spent most of the day moving the cattle down the trail leading off the Llano Estacado. If I'm right, they'll be camping about five or six miles from where we are right now."

"Do you think the others have caught up to the herd?" Fitz asked.

"I hope so," Rab said. "I've seen nothing that tells me if they're with the herd or not. My worry is that they're still out there on the Llano Estacado, trying to find me."

"It seems more likely to me that they'd be trying to get you back than that they'd go to the herd," Fitz said.

"Maybe," Rab said. "I've been thinking on that a good bit. Kuwatee and Vazquez are practical men. They'll see it as a small chance that they could safely get me back from the Comanche. They'd be apt to argue for catching back up to the herd, I think. O'Toole and Caleb, they'll probably push to go back and look for me. The worst situation would be if they separated and two went on and two went back."

Fitz listened, leaning against a cottonwood.

"If the four of them stuck together, that's safest for them. If they went back to the herd, that's best for us. It means tomorrow we're all back together. If they went back to try to rescue me from the Comanche, it could turn out poorly."

"I judge it different," Fitz said. "I think you're right that Kuwatee and Vazquez are more practical, but I don't think they'll be thinking there's small chance of getting you out. My guess is they'll think you're capable of taking care of yourself."

"Maybe," Rab said. "I doubt that. A man that gets captured by the Comanche doesn't often get hisself loose."

"It happens," Fitz said. "I remember hearing a story about a woman who was captured with her son and daughter, and she and the girl were able to escape."

"It happens," Rab said. "But it's uncommon."

"But it did happen to you," Fitz said. "You did escape the Comanche."

"With your help," Rab said.

"Not much. I did little beyond adding to the chaos of those horses running through the camp. You did that, and all the rest, by yourself. My point is, all those others in the outfit are going to have the same opinion of you that I have. And that opinion is that if anyone is likely to escape the Comanche, you're the one to do it."

"I don't know if that's true or not, but if that's their opinion and they went back and rejoined the herd, then that works for us."

"It's their opinion," Fitz said. "We all hold you in pretty high esteem when it comes to surviving in a place like this. I doubt any of us would have signed on for this if someone else was leading the trail drive."

Rab reached into his pocket for his pipe, but then thought better of it. Instead, he changed the subject.

"I don't think the Comanche will find us down here, but I don't want my tobacco smoke to lure them into the canyon if nothing else does."

Fitz nodded and grinned. "You embarrass easy, Sinclair."

"How's that?" Rab asked.

"A man says that others think highly of you, and you're quick to change the subject."

Rab shrugged.

"I reckon I don't put much stock in what others think of me," Rab said. "If I'm going to a place, I like to know how to get there. If I'm fighting a man, I like to beat him. If someone's planning to burn my feet to the bone like they did to that poor damn fool unconscious over there, I'd like to stop them."

Fitz chuckled. "That's what I'm talking about. Everyone knows what kind of man you are. You win your battles."

The shadows in the canyon were almost complete now with the sun low on the horizon and little light finding its way in through the cottonwood canopy. A chill haunted the air, but the wind spared them because they were deep enough and low enough in the canyon.

"You take first watch?" Rab asked.

"You need the sleep worse than me," Fitz said.

"Watch the hawsses, especially Cromwell," Rab said. "He'll doze on his feet, but he'll be alert. If he blows or snorts or gets fidgety in any way, you wake me fast and grab up your rifle."

"You trust the horse's instincts?" Fitz asked.

"I do," Rab said. "Especially that hawss. A hawss is a frighty animal. He can't do naught but run if he's attacked. And so he keeps a pretty good watch for himself. I've ridden through desert and prairie and mountain forests with that hawss and slept like a baby every night because I trusted him to wake me up if trouble came. And I'm still here today."

"You sleep," Fitz said. "I'll watch the roan."

Rab pulled his buckskin jacket tight around him and made a pillow out of his saddle. He laid the Yellow Boy rifle beside him so he could find it quick if he needed it, and he covered up with the horse blanket.

Skinner Jake moaned some in his sleep, but he never woke up all through the night. The horses stayed calm.

***

The nearest trail down off the Llano Estacado was not the same one that Carlos used to move the cattle.

In the south, a man could walk off the Staked Plains and never realize he had left the tableland. But in the north, west, and east, the Llano Estacado ends abruptly with steep cliffs. In the north, the cliffs drop down into the Canadian River valley. In the east and west, the escarpments drop three hundred feet or more, and the change is sudden and dramatic.

Carlos had to follow a trail that was large enough and with an easy enough slope that the cattle could be persuaded to move down it.

But Rab and Fitz, with Skinner Jake now tied to O'Toole's bay and the Comanche pony following, found a switchback trail that the horses could easily maneuver.

And now they were transported to a place wildly different from that which they had come. Off the Llano Estacado, they were surrounded by juniper bushes dotting every hillside and a few tall pines, cliffs and rocky outcroppings. The grass here was greener.

"Feels like home," Rab said.

They followed a path used by deer and other animals down to the south until they found the trail that the cattle had taken. The path was easy to discern, though the vegetation was not as wholly destroyed simply because it was more plentiful here.

"We're still another twenty miles to my ranch. Carlos will have to camp one more night. But we'll catch the herd today, and I wouldn't doubt if Evangeline isn't there with fresh provisions and a couple of extra hands," Rab said.

"We may not make it to them," Fitz said.

"How's that?" Rab asked with a chuckle.

"No joke, Rabbie."

Fitz was looking back over his shoulder, and when Rab took a look behind him he saw what Fitz had seen. A score of Comanche were behind them, riding down off the Llano Estacado on the same path the cattle had taken.

"What do we do here?" Fitz asked.

"Ride like hell," Rab said.

Both men urged their mounts to a hard gallop, and the bay and pony followed.

Though they'd had a night's rest, the horses were on the verge of exhaustion. Cromwell, the fittest of the remuda, was beginning to out-pace Fitz's gelding so that Rab felt inclined to slow his run.

They pushed on like that for more than a mile with the Comanche slowly closing the distance.

And then, up ahead, Rab saw what he'd been hoping for.

On a high hill directly in their path, Rab saw a rider he immediately recognized as Evangeline. She was mounted on a piebald that hadn't been part of the remuda, which meant she'd not only brought a wagon but also had fresh horses. Almost surely that meant she'd brought at least a couple of hired hands.

"Someone's up ahead!" Fitz shouted over the rush of wind as the horses gave all they had.

"Evangeline!" Rab called back.

Rab slid his rifle from its scabbard and fired a shot into the air. He was all but certain Evangeline had seen them and seen the Comanche, but Rab wanted to be sure that she understood they were riding in and bringing trouble on their heels.

Now she wheeled her horse and disappeared from the top of the hill in front of them.

An arrow, shot from distance, flew uncomfortably near to Sinclair's right side, and he looked back over his shoulder to see that several of the Comanche were raising up their bows.

Rab had allowed Fitz and the other two horses to push ahead of him, and he realized that he was the only target within range of the Comanche arrows.

Rab held the reins in one hand, and using his free hand he untied his saddlebags. He slung them over his shoulder, and none too soon as he felt an arrow hit his back and punch a hole through the saddlebag. It stung like the devil, but the arrow did not penetrate his buckskin jacket.

They raced up the slope to the top of the hill where they'd seen Evangeline, and as they topped the hill a magnificent sight awaited them.

At the bottom of the hill, half a mile away, Evangeline had dismounted behind a buckboard wagon.

But she was not alone.

Scurrying about to get up their rifles, Rab could see Caleb and O'Toole. Vazquez had already leveled his rifle back down the road, ready to provide covering fire to usher Rab and Fitz in. Kuwatee was unhitching a couple of mules from the buckboard to move them back.

Carlos and the vaqueros were not there, and neither was Sancho, but it stood to reason that they'd be ahead with the cattle.

Beyond the wagon, horses from the outfit's remuda were ground tied, all of them saddled.

Fitz cleared the wagon with the pony and the other horse right behind him.

Rab felt another arrow strike the saddlebag, and this one hit with more force. It was like a punch to the back. Without turning, Rab knew the Comanche were now gaining on him.

Vazquez fired his Yellow Boy rifle with a crack like thunder and puff of white smoke.

O'Toole fired, and then Caleb.

Kuwatee had his rifle out now, and he let loose a shot.

Evangeline shot also. All the shots were high and wide to prevent from inadvertently hitting Sinclair, and the Comanche were too far back for any of the shots to be effective, anyway. But the brief volley was enough to make the Comanche rein in.

"What took you so long?" Evangeline called out as Rab Sinclair and Cromwell passed the buckboard wagon.

Fitz wheeled his horse and grabbed the leads on the pony and the other horse, bringing all three horses under control to keep them from spooking the others and causing them to run.

Rab reined in the blue roan and swung out of his saddle. He dropped the saddlebags off his back and saw there were actually four arrows stuck in the bag.

He pulled his rifle from its scabbard and fell in with the others behind the buckboard. He'd deliberately jumped in beside Evangeline.

"You're a sight," he said to her.

"Not as much as you," she said. "When the others told me you'd been taken by the Comanche, I said we needed to start back to meet you in case you were hurt or needed a fresh hawss."

Rab grinned at her.

"You had more faith that I'd get away from the Comanche than I had, I'll tell you that," Rab said.

"None of us doubted you would," O'Toole said.

"I doubted it," Kuwatee said, and there was no humor in the comment.

The Comanche, twenty or so, had pulled their ponies to a stop and were looking at the small band of fighters hunkered behind the buckboard. There was some discussion taking place among them.

At last, one of them urged his horse forward a bit from the others.

He was armed with a lance and a knife.

He raised the lance high above his head and then threw it into the ground where the lance stood like a signpost beside the pony. He then threw his long knife into the ground near the lance, and it also stood up.

With his arms raised out high over his head, the Comanche urged the pony forward at a walk.

"Should we shoot him?" O'Toole asked.

"Not yet," Rab said. "Looks like he's coming for a parley."

"You going to ride out and talk to him?" Caleb asked.

"I don't believe I will," Rab said.

The small outfit greeted the sole Comanche rider with astonishment. In the face of half a dozen rifles, the unarmed Comanche continued to ride toward them at an easy walk. If he had any fear, his face did not show it.

"What in hell do you think he's up to?" O'Toole asked.

"Maybe he wants Skinner Jake," Fitz said.

Vazquez looked back and for the first time saw the body tied to the horse.

"Is he dead?" Vazquez asked.

Fitz, who was still mounted and had the leads of the other two horses, dropped the pony's lead and pulled the other horse up to him. He reached over and felt Skinner Jake's back.

"He's still breathing," Fitz said. "But he ain't in good shape. He's ridden tied to the horse like this for two days, and the Comanche burned his feet pretty bad. Truth is, I'm perplexed that he's still alive."

The Comanche was now within a few yards of the buckboard, and still he had made no movement other than to ride forward. His hands were still in the air, and they could all see that he was completely unarmed.

"That's about far enough," Vazquez called out, but the Comanche ignored him.

He rode past the buckboard, with every one of the six rifles turning to follow him.

Rab Sinclair glanced back at the other Indian warriors to be sure it was not some kind of trick, but none of them had moved.

The sole Comanche now rode directly up to the pony that Rab had taken from the camp. He reached down and took hold of the lead, and then he wheeled his own pony and started back east to where the others were still waiting for him.

"Hell," O'Toole said. "He just came to retrieve his pony."

When he returned to the others, the Comanche all wheeled their horses. The sole rider dismounted long enough to retrieve his knife and lance, and then they all started back over the hill.

-27-

Vazquez and O'Toole drove the buckboard to Las Vegas with Skinner Jake stretched out on blankets in the back.

"Leave him with the doctor, and have the doctor see me about paying for his care," Rab said. "And when you've left him, ride on back out to the ranch. I'll pay you your wages, and maybe we'll have a little fiesta to celebrate a successful trail drive."

"Was it a success?" O'Toole asked. "It was damned hard to tell."

"Another hour or two and Carlos will have those cattle on my ranch," Rab said. "We went to Texas to get three hundred head of cattle, and we've made it to the ranch with three hundred head of cattle. I'd call that a success."

"I won't argue with you," O'Toole said. "We managed to all get back with our hair in place."

"I don't believe I'll ride across the Staked Plains again," Vazquez confessed. "I felt safer when I was a deputy riding with a posse."

Evangeline rode her piebald unnecessarily close to the roan as they walked the horses through the long valley leading up to Rab's ranch.

Rab Sinclair did not mind.

Evangeline had been with him at the ranch for a few years.

Long-legged and blonde-headed, when Rab first met Evangeline Sadler she was working as a saloon girl in Santa Fe. Raised up on the banks of the American River in California, Evangeline's father was an unlucky prospector. Her mother cooked meals at the camp where her father sought gold, and they survived on the wages her mother earned from those meals.

She married a man in California who brought her to Santa Fe, but when he took ill and died, Evangeline found herself alone, broke, and friendless in a strange place. So she went to work selling whiskey drinks in a saloon. The men who drank there were vulgar and sometimes cruel.

She met Rab Sinclair in the saloon, and the easy mannered, quiet man who always wore a grin sparked on her right away. And she sparked on him. The vulgar men gave him a wide berth, and when one of them became too familiar one night, Rab Sinclair put that man on the floor. And then he offered Evangeline an opportunity to leave the Santa Fe saloon if she'd care to take up with him on his ranch.

She leapt at the opportunity.

They'd been together ever since — five or six years now. They'd talked of marriage, but Rab didn't have enough religion to care, even though his father had been a missionary, and Evangeline had tried marriage once and it had not gone so well.

She was as hard a worker as any ranch hand he ever hired, which was one of the reasons he was able to sometimes leave the ranch, either to guide folks or to go on long hunts. He knew that Evangeline would see to the place.

They'd never made any religious formality out of their relationship, and Rab always figured Evangeline would eventually get tired of his wandering and move on. But she took to ranching, and Rab sometimes wondered if she stayed on because she loved the ranch and tolerated him.

But the piebald kept bumping into his knee as they walked along.

Rab Sinclair and Evangeline, along with Fitz, Kuwatee, and Caleb, saw to the horses in the barn.

They brushed them down, spending extra long with them. They gave them oats and fresh hay and put a little whiskey in with their water. Then turned them out in the paddock.

Carlos, Miguel, Jorge, and Sancho Biscuit were waiting for them at the ranch house. They were sitting out rockers on the front porch, all of them dozing under the shade of the overhanging roof. They'd been asleep when the riders brought the horses to the barn.

The hands Evangeline had hired to help bring in the cattle were pushing the critters out to the east pasture while the men who'd made the long drive dozed in chairs on the front porch of the house. They were all men who had worked for Rab at some point, either as ranch hands or during roundups or on cattle drives to Fort Craig, so they knew the place and would see to the cattle just fine.

"Let's get up a fiesta," Rab said. "A little celebration of our success."

Sancho Biscuit laughed.

"Glad you escaped the Comanche," he said.

"I'm glad Fitz came back and found me at the right time," Rab said.

Rab, Evangeline, and Sancho went to the small pavilion where Rab had a kitchen, and together they cooked up steaks with hot red peppers. They fried cut potatoes in the skillets. Rab tapped a keg of beer, and the hands all drank and sat at the picnic table under the pavilion while the cooks did their work.

Fitz entertained them with his description of the fight to save Rab and the flight from the Comanche. He told them about Skinner Jake and Cossatot Jim.

Carlos translated some of the story for Miguel and Jorge, but largely they had picked up enough English that they could follow along.

"When the Comanche had me, they didn't feed me much or bring me water very often," Caleb said, "but they didn't bother me none neither. Hearing what they did to Skinner Jake, I reckon it's a good thing I didn't try to make a run."

"They keep you bound up?" Rab asked.

"No. They kept a feller watching me all the time. But they just sat me on the ground and left me alone."

"You were just a hostage, not a prisoner," Rab said. "They never did intend to do you harm. They wanted them buffalo hunters."

"Your ranch isn't far from the Llano Estacado, Rab," Carlos said. "You think they'll try a raid on you?"

Rab shrugged but shook his head doubtfully.

"I'd be surprised," Rab said. "I'll probably keep the cattle in the east and north pastures for a time. I've got a neighbor who grazes his cattle out that away, too, and between us we can keep an eye out to be sure there ain't Comanche rustling. But I think those Comanche got what they wanted. They wanted Cossatot Jim."

"And their pony," Evangeline pointed out.

A short time later, even before the food was all prepared, O'Toole and Vazquez drove up in the buckboard.

"We left Skinner Jake with the doctor," Vazquez said. "Doc says he might live but won't never walk again."

Rab looked out to the paddock where the blue roan was rolling in the dirt.

"Weren't for that hawss, I might have been laid up right there with Jake," Rab said.

"He's a good ol' hawss," Evangeline said, touching Rab on the shoulder. "You be sure to give him some extra whiskey in his water for the next few days, Rabbie."

"Make that old biter more ornery than he already is," Rab said.

"I'm glad you ain't laid up next to that buffalo hunter," Evangeline said. "But if you were, I'd push your wheelchair for you."

"It's a rough country," O'Toole opined. "Takes a hard man — and woman — to make it out here in the West."

"It's a rough world," Fitz said, broadening O’Toole’s opinion. "I ain't found a place yet where men don't do awful things to each other."

Rab Sinclair looked around at his small outfit. Evangeline and Sancho Biscuit were now setting down plates in front of them all. They were damn good men, all of 'em. Including Evangeline, in the loosest sense of the word.

"I'm proud to have ridden with you boys," Rab said. "Obliged to you for all that you did. All you signed on for was to move some cattle, but you took on everything that came our way. You risked your lives for Caleb, and for me, and a man can't ask for more'n that. So maybe it is a rough world, I can't prove otherwise. But it smooths out the edges some when you've got folks you can count on."

the end

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for saddling up and riding along with Rabbie Sinclair, Caleb, and the rest of the outfit on this cattle drive.

If you’ve not yet read the other novels featuring Rab Sinclair, I’d encourage you to check out some of the other books with this recurring character:

Trulock’s Posse (in which an older Rab Sinclair joins a posse chasing a gang of outlaws)

A Trail Too Far (in which a young Rab Sinclair leads a small wagon train along the Santa Fe Trail)

The Glorieta Grudge (in which an old vendetta troubles Rab Sinclair).

If you enjoyed this novel I’d be grateful if you would sign up for my newsletter at my website.

My newsletter is the best way to learn about my latest releases and keep in touch with me.

Sincerely,

Robert Peecher