Rusty knelt in front of her. “I’ve already thought some about that. I’ve got a place down on the Colorado River. It’s a pretty good ways from here, far enough that Dawkins isn’t apt to follow. House isn’t near as big as yours was, but it’ll keep you warm and dry through the winter. Ought to be grass enough for at least some of your stock, too.”

Clemmie seemed not inclined to accept. “James wouldn’t know where to find us.”

“Preacher Webb can tell James where it’s at. Could even bring him. Nobody there would know James. He wouldn’t have to sneak around in the dark.”

“You were all set to turn him in once. Why wouldn’t you do it again?”

“If I don’t see him, I won’t know he’s around. And I won’t be there. I’ll be in camp at Belknap.”

Geneva pressed, “Maybe by spring the war’ll be over, and we won’t have to worry anymore about men like Dawkins.”

Glumly Clemmie said, “Sometimes I think this war never will be over with. I can’t understand the men that started it. I don’t understand what they were thinkin’ of.”

Rusty watched the rain pounding down, drowning the fire. It had come too late. Daylight would reveal nothing of the house but blackened timbers and sodden ashes.

He said, “They sure wasn’t thinkin’ of the women and children, and how much it was goin’ to cost them.”

Clemmie held her hand against the bound-up wound. Pain put a raspiness in her voice. “If women were in charge of all the governments, there wouldn’t never be no more wars.”

Rusty doubted that. He had read about queens running countries in Europe, yet Europe had wars. War seemed to be part of nature, whether man, bird, or animal. He had seen stallions in vicious combat and enraged bulls trying to kill one another. Once he had happened upon two male wildcats ripping each other with fang and claw, and had watched them battle to total exhaustion. One bled to death. The other slowly limped away the winner, yet barely alive.

It seemed to him that human beings ought to be smarter than the animals, but in some ways they weren’t.

The sheriff grimly surveyed the damage, a silent anger in the stern set of his jaw. “Useless. Stupid.”

Rusty limped along beside him, taking stock of what had been lost and what remained. “All because of the war, I guess.”

“There are some people who use war as an excuse to do what they otherwise wouldn’t have the nerve for. Recognize any of them?”

Rusty shook his head. “It was dark, and things were movin’ too fast.”

“I know for a certainty that you didn’t see Caleb Dawkins.”

“No, but he must’ve been here. Those had to’ve been his men.”

The sheriff grunted. “Probably were. But he wasn’t with them. He was in town all night.”

“How do you know?”

“Saw him myself early in the evenin’. He was playin’ cards. I asked around this mornin’. They said he stayed in the game ‘I’ll way after midnight, then went home with some folks I know who wouldn’t lie.”