Tanner said, “Maybe we ought to go see what’s happenin’.”

“Captain Whitfield’ll call if he needs us.” On patrol, Rusty was nominally in charge. Anything and everything was his business. In camp, Captain Whitfield was in command, and nothing was Rusty’s business unless the captain saw fit to make it so. Whitfield was a large man who carried a navy Colt on his hip, a bottle of whiskey and a Bible in his saddlebag. He was accomplished in the use of all three.

The new arrival dismounted wearily in front of the captain’s tent and tied his horse to a post. He leaned against the horse, stamping his feet to improve blood circulation in tired legs. His clothes were as ragged as those of the Fort Belknap rangers. Rusty thought he recognized him as a ranger from another company.

Tanner leaned against the fence, watching. “He don’t look like no paymaster. A paymaster would steal at least enough to buy him a decent suit of clothes.”

Rusty went back to brushing Alamo. He could feel the ribs without pressing hard. The horse needed a month’s rest on grain and green grass, but he was no more likely to get it than Rusty was to receive the pay rightfully due him.

Presently he saw Captain Whitfield walk to the mess tent and ring a bell that was normally sounded at mealtime. It was only the middle of the afternoon. Rusty jerked his head as a signal to Tanner, but Tanner had already dropped his brush in a wooden tack box and was on his way to the corral gate, burning with curiosity.

Reluctantly Rusty laid his brush aside. More Indians, he thought. He had not caught up on sleep since the last skirmish.

The company was down to a fraction of its normal strength because of desertions and a shortage of men willing and able to put up with the privations of frontier service. Of those still in the company, more than half were out on patrol.

Whitfield was middle-aged and broad of hip. He would probably run to belly if ranger rations were not perpetually meager and duty hours long. As it was he probably would not render out two pounds of fat. He tugged at a bushy, unkempt mustache while he watched seven men amble up in no particular hurry and cluster around him. Two squatted on their heels. Army officers had admonished Whitfield several times about his company’s lack of military order, but he paid no more attention to them than to the buzzing of flies around the corrals. He considered it absurd to require the men to stand in a straight line or at attention. All that mattered was that they listen to him, whether he was giving orders or reading to them from the Book.

Whitfield had formerly been a sergeant and had taken over the company soon after the outbreak of war. He had inherited the captaincy when the former commanding officer, August Burmeister, had ridden north to join the Union Army. Rusty had never heard Whitfield express favor for either side in the conflict. He suspected that, like himself, Whitfield had chosen frontier service rather than take up arms against the Union. The compromise gave ease to a conscience torn between two loyalties.