Rusty did not want to lie, but neither did he want to betray the point rider. “I never saw most of them very close. I didn’t care to accuse somebody and turn out to be wrong.”

“Next time, accuse. If a man is innocent, we can turn him loose. If he is guilty . . .” He left it at that.

If Rusty had hoped distance would lessen the pain of Mike Shannon’s death, his first night in the ranger camp proved the hope to be futile. Long before dawn he awakened out of a violent dream in which he saw Daddy Mike lying dead beside the woodpile. Standing over him was a drunken, laughing Isaac York, a smoking rifle in his hand. Though in his dream Rusty held a pistol, he was unable to raise it. His arm hung stiff and useless at his side. Crying in frustration, he struggled but was unable to move. Isaac York drifted away like a wisp of smoke stolen by the wind. The opportunity to kill him was gone.

The rest of the night Rusty lay with his eyes open, listening to the snoring of fellow rangers. Moonlight filtered through the thin canvas so that he could see the forms of the others sleeping on the ground. He turned onto his right side, then his left, his stomach and his back, trying in vain to be comfortable. The ground was hard and unyielding. After a long time he began hearing a rooster crow somewhere in the distance. He turned back his blanket and found his hat, then his trousers. He had slept in his shirt because his shoulders were cold. He pulled on his boots after shaking them to be certain no unwelcome tiny visitor had crawled into them during the night.

Tanner sat up and stretched, yawning and blinking his eyes. “I ain’t heard the call yet.”

“Me neither, except for a rooster. Go back to sleep.”

“Too late now. You’ve done woke me up.” Tanner had stripped down to long underwear. He hobbled to the front of the tent and peered through the flap. His thin legs reminded Rusty of a spider. “It’ll be daylight directly anyhow. You want to start the coffee?”

“Just as well. I’ve got nothin’ better to do.”

“We’ll be headin’ out to ride the line this mornin’. I hope you’ve rested enough to make a long sashay.”

“I wasn’t sent here to rest.”

“What was you sent here for? You kill somebody or somethin’?”

“I was sent here so I wouldn’t’’

Tanner’s jaw dropped. “You want to tell me?”

“It’s not somethin’ I like to talk about.” He thought about it, though, whenever his mind was not occupied with the urgencies of the moment.