“Mainly just patrol, watchin’ for sign of Indians comin’ into the country. Most of the time it’s dull and tiresome. Now and then we get a little excitement, like today when we thought we was about to do battle with a bunch of Comanche horse thieves. That one flickered out like a candle in the wind. Most of them do.”

“What about Captain Burmeister? You get along with him all right?”

“Dutch? Sure. Don’t let his way of talkin’ fool you. He can’t help it if he don’t talk good like me and you. He came from someplace over in Europe . . . Westphalia, he calls it. I don’t know just where that is; I ain’t been further than San Antonio myself. I just know that he was a soldier over there a long time ago, and he took French leave—snuck off and left them.”

“I don’t suppose he’s ever snuck off and left this outfit.”

“Never. A man smart as he is could be set real pretty by now if he’d put his mind to it. He’s spent too much of his life volunteerin’ and not enough takin’ care of his own interests. Acts and thinks a little too much like a Yankee for some people’s tastes, but he’d charge hell with a bucket of water. And most every man in this outfit would follow him into the fire.”

Inside the tent Rusty saw several bedrolls spread on the ground. Tanner pointed to an open spot. “There’s your bed.”

“My bed?”

“You wasn’t lookin’ for a cot, was you? This ain’t exactly the Menger Hotel. The rangers get bed and board from the state. It gives them ground to roll out their bed, and it lets them eat all the game they can shoot for theirselves.”

“Mighty generous.”

“Ain’t as bad as it sounds. We get a payday now and again when the politicians in Austin don’t spend it all first. Ain’t much to waste it on anyway . . . bad whiskey, slow horses, loose women ugly as mud.”

“But you’re makin’ it a better country to live in.”

“Ask your Tonkawa friends about that. The way we’ve treated them, they might not agree.”

Two rangers came riding in from patrol, one carrying a deer carcass tied behind his saddle. Tanner hailed them. “Looks like fresh venison again tonight. I’d give a month’s pay for a bait of good salt pork.”

Rusty had left some hanging in the smokehouse back home. The Gaskin family had probably sneaked over and stolen it all by now.