“Less’n she makes a move toward you.” He frowned. “Got your arm busted, looks like. Better let me carry the boy. White, ain’t he?” He leaned down and drew the lad up in front of him in the saddle.

The woman pleaded in words Webb did not comprehend, though her expression told him she did not want to give up the child. Knowing she would not understand, he felt compelled nevertheless to try to explain. “The lad has people somewhere. He needs to be back with his own kind.”

The mare had risen to her feet and was walking shakily. Webb motioned toward the woman, then toward the mare. “You’d best be slippin’ away while you can.”

She understood his motions if not his words. She hopped upon the mare’s back. Crying, she made one last plea, holding out her arms. Shannon turned the boy away from her. She gave up and moved westward in the direction of the general runaway, though she kept looking back at the boy in Shannon’s arms.

A volunteer rode up, eyes ablaze with excitement, sweat running down his face into a stubble of beard. His hands were bloody, but the blood did not appear to be his own. He pointed toward the fleeing woman. “Ain’t you goin’ to shoot her?”

Shannon said, “I never shoot women without I have to.”

“Indian women make babies, and babies grow up to do murder. If you ain’t goin’ to shoot her, I will.”

Shannon set the boy down upon the ground and eased the muzzle of his rifle in the horseman’s direction. “Do and you’ll answer to me.”

The man’s face went scarlet. “You wouldn’t shoot me over a Comanche squaw.”

Shannon’s voice was crisp. “I might. And then again, ’y God, I might just whip the hell out of you.”

The man lowered his weapon. “One day her sons’ll come to take your scalp, and you’ll wish you’d killed her before she bore them.”

“They’ve got plenty of fightin’ men left up yonder if you’re bound on more killin’. Go get them”

The fight, what was still left of it, had swept on past. “I figure to.” The volunteer looked down at the boy on the ground. “You takin’ Indian boys to raise, are you?”

“Look closer. He ain’t an Indian.”

The rider’s eyes reflected surprise. “Good thing he ain’t, because I’d be of a mind to kill him before he has a chance to grow up and kill me and mine.” He rode on.

Shannon watched until the man was swallowed up in the dust. He turned back to Webb. “Yonder’s a bunch of men gathered. Maybe there’s a doctor amongst them. Your arm needs lookin’ after.”

Webb carried a medical book in his saddlebags with his Bible and administered limited physical aid along his circuit because real doctors were scarce in settlements beyond the main towns like San Antonio and Houston. But he doubted he had the fortitude to set his own broken bone. He mounted, careful not to use the left arm.