“Preacher Webb said he’d fetch you down here when he could. We didn’t figure on it bein’ this way.” She raised her gaze to Rusty. “You got him under arrest?”

“The captain has.”

She said to James, “You could take your horse and lose yourself in the timber down by the river. You could be far gone by daylight.”

“I’m ridin’ a ranger horse, Mama, and he’s plumb give out from the trip.”

“There’s plenty of fresh ones in the corral.”

“And bunch of men there to see that I don’t take any of them. No, I’m stayin’ here ‘I’ll we know the Indian trouble is over with.”

Geneva took Rusty’s hand and eased him off the back side of the dog run, into the shadow. She leaned to him and kissed him. “I was hopin’ you’d come. I’ve missed you.”

“It hasn’t been all that terrible long since I left here.”

“I was already missin’ you while I watched you ride away.”

Tanner came along after a while. “Captain says he’d like to see you and James Monahan down at the corral. Says you belong with the rest of the company.” He gave Geneva a moment’s quiet study. “Sorry to pull him away.”

She said, “We can sleep now, knowin’ the rangers are here.”

Tanner smiled. “I expect just one of them would’ve done, provided it was the right one.”

As he started to leave, Rusty heard a groan of complaint coming from a dark shape lying beside the cabin. A querulous voice complained, “A body can’t get no sleep around here, people talkin’ loud all the time.”

The voice was Fowler Gaskin’s.

Purdy walked with James and Rusty and Tanner. He said, “Fowler was the first one to come here after word got out about the Indians. He was scared to stay by himself down yonder in his cabin.”

Rusty warned, “He won’t leave ‘I’ll you run him off with a club.”

“You’ve got to feel sorry for him. Word came a few days ago that both of his boys been killed.”

“Eph and Luke? I never thought the army could get them that close to the fightin’.”

Purdy looked back to be sure no one else could hear. “They told the old man the boys died in battle, but Tom Blessing whispered in my ear that it wasn’t that way atall. They got in a fight over two French women in a New Orleans fancy house. That was the nearest them boys ever come to a battlefield.”

Daylight brought a sense of relief, for there had been no sign of Indians. Though it was generally believed they did not like to fight at night, that was their favorite time for stealing horses, protected by darkness. Rusty saddled Alamo and made a circle around the corrals and down to the river. He saw no fresh tracks that would indicate passage by the raiding party. Unless they had decided to give the farm a wide berth, they were still somewhere downriver.