Shannon asked, “Did you notice that some of them dead Comanches had their limbs chopped off?”

Webb had not. His broken arm had taken precedence over other considerations.

Shannon said, “Right now them Tonks are feastin’ on the haunch off of a Comanche. They’ve got a couple of hands and a foot roastin’ on the coals.”

Webb thought at first that Shannon was joshing him, but his friend’s expression was serious. Shannon said, “They invited me to join them. I said I was already full.”

The Tonkawas had a reputation as cannibals, eating flesh from their enemies in ceremonial rites. This trait they shared with another coastal tribe, the Karankawas, who had been implacably hostile to the first settlers and by now had been hunted almost to extinction. It was said other tribes held Tonkawas and Karankawas in contempt for their consumption of human flesh and gladly killed them on sight.

Webb shuddered. He wished he had not smelled the roast on the Tonkawa fire. “Praise God they’re our friends and not our enemies.”

“Me and you wouldn’t suit them much as enemies. We’d be too tough and stringy to eat.” Shannon turned his attention to the rescued boy with the reddish hair. “What we goin’ to do with him, Preacher?”

“Nothin’ we can do except ride back over the trail the Indians left and ask if anybody knows him.”

“Chances are that the Comanches killed his folks when they stole him.”

Webb felt his throat pinch with pity. He had considered that probability. “If we can’t turn up his family we’ll have to find somebody who’ll give him a good home.”

Shannon seated himself on the fallen trunk of a lightning-struck live oak and lifted the youngster up into his lap. “Davy, is it? Nice name. He’ll be a good-lookin’ young’un when he gets his face washed. That rustycolored hair means he’ll be a fighter someday. Reckon he’s Irish?”

Webb was pleased that Shannon was warming to the boy. “All I know is that he’s not Comanche.”

“He’ll be needin’ a woman’s care. My Dora’d be right pleased to keep him ‘til we find his own folks.”

“And if we don’t find them?”

A fly buzzed around the boy’s face. Shannon brushed it away. “Dora always wanted a big family, but as you know, she ain’t been able to bear. She’d take this young’un as her own and be glad for the chance.”

“I’d keep him myself, only I’ve got no wife to see after him. I couldn’t take him on the circuit with me, and I couldn’t leave him.”

“Then it’s settled. This boy’ll be good company for Dora. We’ll treat him like he was born to us and give him a good Christian raisin’. That’s a promise, ’y God.”

Exhausted, the red-haired youngster drifted off to sleep in Shannon’s arms. The Irishman smiled.

Webb tried to smile too, but his arm hurt too much.

CHAPTER

FOUR

COLORADO RIVER, 1859

Rusty Shannon realized the morning was off to a bad beginning when he stepped out onto the open dog run of the double log cabin and saw that the mule team was not in the corral. He had personally penned them last night so he could get a daylight start in the field. They had included a big gray mule named Old Zach, one of a pair Daddy Mike Shannon had brought home from the Mexican War. The mule was smart as paint, but it had never learned to untie a knot in a rawhide string or push open a heavy gate that always dragged the ground and strained a man’s muscles to lift and move it.