“You stay close. There’s nothin’ he’d like better than to catch you off by yourself. I’ll send Tanner to warn the Monahans.”

That brought some comfort, though not enough. “He knows how to find the place.”

Soon Rusty was able to participate in routine patrols, short ones at first, then longer as he regained full use of his leg. Now and then the scouting trips turned up sign of Indian incursion, but it seemed more of a probing nature than any effort at full-scale invasion. A couple of times the scouts overtook the Indians and escorted them peacefully if not happily back across the river. More often, the Indians returned on their own before they were caught, usually with horses and mules and occasionally a few scalps. Once they reached the north side of the Red, they were in Union territory and out of bounds for any official Texan pursuit. Unofficial civilian pursuit was something else, more often than not bringing retribution upon innocent reservation Indians who had nothing to do with the raids.

Though he deplored the punitive expeditions, the captain understood the fear and anger that prompted them. To most white men an Indian was an Indian, just as most Indians made no distinction between whites. He said, “Whatever it costs and whoever gets hurt, we can’t let up our guard. If they ever get the notion they can come across the Red and do whatever they want to without fear of punishment, they’ll be here in force.”

The Indians were fully aware that the white man’s war had crippled the frontier defense and that settlers along the western edge were highly vulnerable. That much was gleaned from conversations with captured Indian invaders given an armed escort back to the line. It was up to the minute-men companies to block hostile incursions to whatever extent they could, lest the dam break and the frontier be inundated by a Comanche flood.

Rusty and Tanner lagged behind Captain Whitfield and two other men in a small patrol scouting far south and east of Belknap. Rusty was half listening to Tanner tell with considerable glee about finding and moving a whiskey runner’s stash to see what would happen. The runner accused a rival of theft, and the two men got into a fistfight of monumental proportions in a Fort Belknap dramshop.

“You ever see them Germans make sausage down on the Guadalupe?” Tanner asked. “Them two fought one another all the way across the floor and out into the road. Time they wore theirselves out, their faces looked like a batch of that raw sausage. I laughed ‘I’ll I was rollin’ on the ground.”

“It don’t sound like somethin’ to laugh about. What if they’d killed one another, and you’d been the cause of it?”

“The world would’ve been shed of two whiskey runners. All they’re good for is to get the Indians liquored up and rarin’ for a raid. There’s no tellin’ how many people have died on account of them, white and Indian both.”