Riding in, Rusty saw only a few ranger horses grazing free. He gave a quick, happy shout as he recognized Alamo among them. The horse nickered at Chapultepec. Rusty slipped the loop of a rawhide reata around Alamo’s neck and petted the black horse before leading him into camp with the mule. “Old friend, I was afraid somebody with light fingers might’ve taken a fancy to you.” To Rusty, a thief was a thief, whether he decorated his head with a hat or a feather.

Tanner grunted. “Place looks like everybody died.”

“Bound to be somebody around.”

“We might’ve come for nothin’. But at least you got your horse back.”

That in itself was justification enough for returning, Rusty thought. “Maybe the captain’s still here.”

He found Whitfield taking his rest on a cot inside the stained old canvas tent. It struck Rusty that he had never seen the captain idle in the daytime. But he had never seen Whitfield take an arrow in the hip before, either.

Whitfield arose slowly, wincing in pain from the wound. He seemed drawn, his eyes dull as he shook Rusty’s hand, then Tanner’s. “I thought you boys took off for the tall timber.”

Rusty said, “We heard about the surrender. What’s happened to the company?”

Whitfield made a sweeping motion with his hand. “You can see about all that’s left. Billings and the sergeant took most of them away before word came about the war. The others didn’t see much point in stayin’ around after we got the news. If you-all came back with any hope of gettin’ paid, forget it. Even if they gave it to you, a barrelful of Confederate money wouldn’t buy you a plug of tobacco.”

Rusty said, “We gave up on pay a long time ago. We just thought you might need us.”

“If somebody was to commit cold-blooded murder on the street in Fort Belknap, we couldn’t do anything about it. We’ve got no authority.”

“We could still turn back Indians if any tried a raid. We wouldn’t need anybody’s authority for that.”

“We’d need more manpower. It’s all finished, boys. If you’ve got a home to go to, you’d just as well head thataway. I’m goin’ myself, soon as Oscar Pickett fetches a wagon so I can load up the state’s property and keep these rascals around here from stealin’ it.”

The prospects were troubling. Rusty said, “I don’t see how a country can get along without law.”

“Texas was part of the Confederacy. That’s gone. It’ll take the Federals awhile to set up their own government. ‘I’ll then, except for maybe a little local law, everything is left hangin’ between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

Rusty felt cold. “So it’s every man for himself.”

“If I was a robber or a horse thief, I’d be pickin’ in tall cotton right now.”

Rusty told the captain about the brush camp, now in the process of breaking up.

Tanner said, “There’s men in that bunch would skin their grandmothers for six bits a hide.”