“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.”

“Not much we can do about them now’.”

Tanner pointed his chin at Rusty. “He done somethin’. Shot one of them, he did.”

“By accident?”

Rusty shook his head. “I did it on purpose. Had to. But I’m hopin’ he lives.”

Tanner said, “You better hope he don’t. He may come after you someday. Even with one arm, he could still blow a hole through you.”

Whitfield frowned. “There was a time we might’ve broken up a camp like that, but I didn’t want to. Most of them were just tryin’ to stay out of the army. Now they’re not my problem anymore. As long as they don’t bother me or mine, I won’t bother them.”

Rusty asked Whitfield, “Do you think you can travel with that wounded hip, even in a wagon?”

“As long as it’s in the direction of home, I can grit my teeth and keep goin’.”

Home. The word held the warmth of spring sunshine.

“It’ll be safer, travelin’ in a bunch. Me and Tanner will wait here with you ‘I’ll Oscar Pickett gets back. Then we’ll ride along with you as far as we can.”

Rusty could see in Whitfield’s eyes that the wagon’s jolting hurt him, but the captain voiced no complaint. Rusty had once suffered through the ordeal of a long ride after a Comanche arrow had driven deeply into his leg. Tanner had cauterized the wound with a red-hot blade. It still pained him to remember, though the searing probably saved his leg. Healed now, the scar was still large and ugly, and it sometimes itched enough to drive him to distraction. He could imagine what the captain was going through.