Tanner grinned. “They only got us outnumbered by three to one. We ought to crack this nut pretty easy.”

The befreckled young ranger would willingly go hungry for three days to get into a good fight. He had, several times.

“Then let’s be at them.” Rusty drew his pistol and loaded the chamber he customarily kept empty for safety. He preferred the rifle, but it was difficult to use from a running horse.

The rangers were two hundred yards from the cabin when the Indians discovered them and ran for their mounts. In the excitement three horses jerked loose and loped away, wringing their tails. Two Indians set afoot swung up behind others. A third mounted a spare animal whose owner no longer needed him. Rusty saw an Indian lying beside a tall woodpile but did not take time to determine if he was dead.

A man with an old-fashioned long rifle stepped out of the cabin and took a parting shot. An Indian slumped forward but grabbed his horse’s mane and remained astride. The man shouted, “Go get them!”

Rusty called, “Everybody all right?”

“Nobody killed.” He waved the rangers on. “Get my work horses back if you can.”

Horses and mules were almost as important as life, for without them a farmer had no way to plow his fields, no way to travel except to walk. The war had pulled most horses out of this region except wild bands ranging free beyond the settlements. Few farmers were equipped to catch those, much less to break and train them. And should they manage to do so, chances were that either the Indians would steal them or a government horse-buying team would come along and take them away. It would leave Confederate script or worthless promissory notes, which Rusty regarded as legalized theft.

The Indians cut immediately to the creek. Timber there was heavy enough to give them partial cover for their escape, though it would slow them as they dodged through the trees and undergrowth, the entangling briars.

Rusty said, “We’ll stay out here in the open and keep up with them.” Sooner or later the fugitives would have to quit the timber and ride into the clear.

Tanner turned in the saddle. “Look back, Rusty.”

Two raiders had broken out behind the rangers and were racing toward the cabin. Startled, Rusty reined the black horse around. His first thought was that they intended another try at Faust or one of the other settlers who had come out of the cabin and gathered in the yard. He spurred in pursuit, intending to keep the warriors too busy.

The pair slowed their mounts and leaned down, grabbing the fallen man by the arms and lifting him up between them. Men in the yard fired a couple of futile shots.

It was a point of honor among plains warriors not to ride away from the battlefield and leave a wounded or dead comrade behind to be killed or mutilated if rescue was at all possible. By white men’s standards the Comanches were savages. Though Rusty deplored their propensity for random killing, he respected their bravery. He wondered if he could muster the courage to do the same thing.