He said, “The Indians don’t need anybody from outside to agitate them. They’ve got reasons enough of their own.” He thought especially of the Tonkawas, exiled in the midst of their enemies after long and helpful service to Texas.

Whitfield asked, “You hear any talk about horse thieves down where you went?”

“Didn’t talk to many people, but Indians haven’t penetrated that far in a good while.”

“I’m not talkin’ Indians. At least, I don’t think so. Seems like there’s been a mild epidemic around the settlements over east, horses turnin’ up missin’. Most people blame Indians, but we haven’t found that much Indian sign.”

Rusty remembered that somebody had run off a number of the Monahan horses the night the Monahan house had been burned. And Caleb Dawkins had complained about missing horses after James Monahan’s retaliatory raid, though Rusty was sure James had not taken them.

Whitfield said, “The army’s buyin’ all the horses it can get and not askin’ many questions. It’s not likely it’s buyin’ any of them from Indians. As I see it, it’s white men doin’ the stealin’.”

“Anybody in particular?”

“There are some people around Belknap I wouldn’t trust with a blind mule. Or else it’s some of the renegades in the brush, waitin’ out the war. They’re a mix of conscript dodgers and wanted men.”

Rusty wondered if he was thinking of James. “Even if they snuck into the settlements and did the stealin’, those men from the brush couldn’t afford to be seen. Somebody would have to help them sell the horses to the army.”

“That is the way I figure.”

Rusty remembered what Tom Blessing had said when Rusty met him driving his wagon. “I’ve got a friend back home buyin’ horses for the government. He told me he’s fixin’ to meet some horse dealers up thisaway”

Whitfield’s interest quickened. “Did he say where?”

“Town of Jacksboro.” Rusty’s trips along the frontier line had never taken him quite as far as Jacksboro, but he knew in a general way where it was.

Whitfield’s big moustache made several contortions while he thought over the situation. “Might be interestin’ if we just happened to be passin’ through when those horses come in.”

Defensively Rusty said, “Tom Blessing is as honest as anybody you ever met.”

“Blessing? I remember that name. Seems like I even rode with him a time or two.”

“He used to be a friend of old Captain Burmeister. He wouldn’t be a party to horse stealin’.”

“Not intentionally, but if he lives way down on the Colorado River he probably doesn’t know the people at Jacksboro, or around here either. He has to take them at their word.”

“For that matter, I don’t know anybody over there.”

“But I do. They’ve had a right smart of Indian trouble since Jacksboro got started. Nobody’s apt to get suspicious if we make a pasear over that way lookin’ for fresh Indian sign.”

Whitfield took Rusty, Tanner, and the Morris brothers. They set up camp west of Jacksboro, a small farming and stock-raising town of modest log and lumber houses, hard hit in the past by Indian raids and surviving hard times on the most tenuous basis. From afar, the rangers watched Tom Blessing arrive on the second day with his wagon, a saddle horse tied behind. He raised his tent beside a set of log corrals.