“I remember them all. Welcome, gentlemen, to our house.” She glanced back quickly at Rusty. “I should’ve said, ‘To Rusty’s house.’ It’s his, not ours.”

“It’s yours as long as you want it,” Rusty said. He gave the girls a second looking over. “My, but you two have changed a lot in a year.”

Josie smiled, looking even more like Geneva. “It’s been longer than a year.” She studied him up and down. “You’re thin. Haven’t you been eatin’?”

“When I could. Been times I couldn’t.”

Clemmie made a sweeping motion with her hand. “Then we’d better get busy and fix you-all a good dinner. Come on in.”

Captain Whitfield limped, each step bringing pain. Clemmie frowned. “What’s happened to you, Captain?”

“A Comanche had nothin’ better to do than to put an arrow in my hip, is all. It’s healin’, thank you.”

“It’ll heal quicker once we put some food into you.”

Rusty watched her stir up a blaze in the fireplace. He could not hold the question any longer. “Where’s Geneva?”

Clemmie looked up in surprise, her expression slowly turning to one of regret. “I guess you never heard.”

A cold knot suddenly built in Rusty’s stomach. “Heard what?”

“She’s up yonder at our old place. Her and her husband.”

Rusty caught hold of a chair. “Husband?”

“She’s married. Been married since winter.”

Pete Dawkins poked at the campfire with a dry stick, his backside prickling with impatience. Somewhere in the distance he heard a bugle, but he gave it no attention. He had heard far too many bugles since he and his friend Scully had been hustled unceremoniously into the Confederate Army. There had been no bands to play stirring martial music, no pretty women waving at the departing soldiers. They had been marched out of Austin in the middle of a driving rain without fuss and feathers and with damned little if any showing of respect. It was almost as if they were prisoners, not soldiers.

The truth was that he and Scully would have been prisoners had they not become soldiers. Pete’s hardheaded old daddy had been responsible for that. All on account of a few horses. Hell, the old man had lost more to colic than Pete and Scully had taken. He would probably have considered them stolen by the Indians and have forgotten them had it not been for the nosy damned rangers and that army horse buyer in cahoots with them. What was his name? Blessing, that was it. Tom Blessing. And the rangers. One of them he had encountered before and had gotten to know better than he wanted to. Rusty, they called him. Shannon, that was the last name. Rusty Shannon. He did not know the ranger captain’s name, but he would remember that face and that bushy mustache if he lived to be a hundred.

If it hadn’t been for them he wouldn’t be here. He would still be in Texas, raiding the reservation north of the Red River for Indian horses and making himself wealthy enough that someday he could snap his fingers in Old Colonel’s face and tell him where he could go.