The driver said, “It won’t be the smoothest ride you ever had, but we’ll get you there.”

Rusty reached out for Purdy’s hand. “I owe you, Mr. Purdy. James would’ve just left me out there.”

“We raised him better than that, in spite of the way he talks. At least now he’s goin’ someplace that there won’t be no conscript officers, no hangin’ parties, no fanatics like Caleb Dawkins.”

“Don’t ever tell me where. I don’t want to know.”

“You may need to go there yourself someday. The way I’ve heard you talk, you’ve got union leanin’s of your own.”

“I don’t noise them about.”

Purdy handed the driver Rusty’s unloaded pistol and backed his horse away from the wagon. He said, “Give this to him when you get him there. And tell them rangers to take good care of this young feller. He’s a right decent sort.”

The last Rusty saw of him, Purdy was headed south.

The driver held his questions as long as he could. “He says you belong at the ranger camp. I don’t like mixin’ into law business. You ain’t an escaped prisoner, are you?”

“I’m a ranger, or what’s left of one . . . if they haven’t fired me for bein’ gone too long.”

“I’d best take you to the camp before we go into town. There’s some folks in Belknap that ain’t fond of the law. Feel like it messes in their business too much.”

“Some business needs messin’ in.”

“I heard him say you’ve got union leanin’s.”

“My father fought in Mexico for the union flag.”

“Well, it don’t mean nothin’ to me one way or the other. Washington is a long ways off from here, and Richmond ain’t much closer. I make a livin’. What happens somewhere else is other folks’ business.”

Rusty looked at the black man. “They claim the union wants to take away everybody’s slaves.”

The driver shrugged. “Don’t mean nothin’ to me. Ol’ Mose here, he’s a free nigger. Saved up and bought himself, he did. They can’t free him if he don’t belong to nobody noway. Eh, Mose?”

“God’s truth,” the black man said.

The wagon hit a rut, and Rusty had to grab a sideboard to keep from being jostled off. “These crates are awful hard. What you got in them?”

The driver thought a minute. “You askin’ as a ranger?”

“Not if you don’t want me to.”

“I oughtn’t to tell you, but there’s whiskey in them crates, bound for a dram house in Belknap. That’s all I know and all I want to know. But if I was a suspicionin’ man, I’d be inclined to think some of this whiskey is meant to be taken up into the territory and traded to the Indians.”

“Knowin’ that, you’d still deliver it?”

“If I didn’t do it, somebody else would. I’ve got to make a livin’. Me and Mose, we’ve sort of got used to eatin’ every day whether we need to or not.”