CHAPTER

ONE

THE TEXAS FRONTIER, SPRING, 1865

Rusty Shannon saw brown smoke rising beyond the hill and knew the rangers had arrived too late. The Indians had already struck, and by now they were probably gone.

He had expected trouble, but his pulse quickened as if the smoke were a surprise. He signaled his five fellow patrol members and spurred his black horse, Alamo, into a run. He did not have to look back. The men would follow him; they always did though he had no official rank. He was a private like the rest, but they had fallen into the habit of looking to him for leadership. Nor was he noticeably older than the others. Orphaned early, he could only guess he was about twenty-five, give or take a little. A harsh outdoor life had made him look more than that. He had accepted the responsibility of leadership by default, for no one else had offered to take it.

Back East, the strong nicker of the war horse was fading to a faint and painful whinny as the tired and tattered Confederacy kept struggling to its feet for one more battle and one more loss. To Rusty’s independent, red-haired manner of thinking, it was high time the Richmond government conceded defeat and let the guns fall silent. Even from his faraway vantage point at the edge of Comanche-Kiowa country he saw clearly and with pain that the war had bled both sides much too long.

The Texas frontier had a war of its own to contend with, and it was far from over.

Rusty Shannon was tall and rangy, some would say perpetually hungry-looking. Meals were a sometime thing when frontier rangers scouted for Indians. Often the men were too pressed to stop, and at other times they simply had nothing to eat.

He considered himself a soldier of sorts, though he owned no uniform. Texas had not even provided him a badge as a symbol of ranger authority. The cuffs were raveled on his grimy homespun cotton shirt, the sleeves mended and mended again. His frayed gray trousers seemed as much patch as original woolen fabric, for the long war had made new clothing scarce and money scarcer.

Red hair bristled over his ears and brushed his collar. Forced to be frugal, rangers cut each other’s hair. It was often a rough job of butchery, but appearances were of little concern. Staying alive and helping others stay alive were what counted on the frontier.

Riding their assigned north-south line past the western fringe of settlement, the patrol had come upon tracks of fifteen to twenty horses at dusk yesterday. By order of Texas’s Confederate government in Austin, the rangers were duty-bound to locate and take into custody any deserters or conscription dodgers who might be idling out the war in the wild country beyond the settlements.

Rusty knew the approximate whereabouts of fifty or sixty such men banded together for mutual security, but they were of little interest to him. If the Confederacy wanted them captured it should send Confederate Army troops to do the job. Five or six rangers were no match for so many brush men even if they invested a full heart in the duty, and he had no heart for that kind of business.