Rusty trotted out to the pen and saw the gate slumped half open, dead weight against its leather hinges. Leaning down to pick up the rawhide strip, he saw that it had been cut. He became aware of moccasin tracks, and his heartbeat quickened. Instinct made him look up, his gaze sweeping the open ground between the cabin and the river. His stomach, warm and full from a breakfast of coffee and cornbread, honey and venison, seemed to do a quick turnover.

“Daddy! Daddy Mike!”

He had taken to calling his foster father Dad, it sounded more mature. But in a moment of excitement he reverted to the name he had used since boyhood.

He started back toward the cabin in a hard run. Mike Shannon limped out of the kitchen onto the open dog run, one arthritis-knotted hand raised to shield his eyes from the rising sun. His graying whiskers had not felt a razor in a week or more. His thick gray hair was disheveled, for he had not taken time to use a comb. He combed his hair only for company, and he had no reason to expect any.

“What’s all the noise, young’un? Fox been amongst the chickens again?”

Rusty was too old to be called young un, but he supposed Mike would hold to the habit as long as he lived. No one knew Rusty’s age, exactly. The best guess was that he should be a year or so on the far side of twenty.

“Indians, Dad. Indians got the mules.”

Mike Shannon snorted. “Ain’t seen an Indian here since . . .” He did not finish the sentence. He had seen a lot of Indians in his time, most of them over the sights of a rifle. He had been in so many skirmishes that they tended to run together. When he began telling about them, one incident often became mixed with another. He contended that the fine details did not matter so much as the innate truth and spirit of the story. Even a village idiot could cite dry facts.

Michael Shannon hobbled out to meet Rusty and accompany him back to the corral. He had come home from the Mexican War a dozen years ago with two mules and a sense of duty fulfilled. But he had gone off on an Indian campaign a year or so ago and came home with a wounded leg that still pained him every day. He had had to lean heavily upon Rusty to work this farm that the state of Texas had awarded him for service. Texas had little cash to pay its volunteers, so they often went unpaid despite the best intentions of governor and legislature. But it had land aplenty. It sometimes settled its debts with real estate.

Mother Dora came out onto the dog run, arms folded as if they were cold, thin shoulders slumped. She had been ill of late for no specific reason that met the eye. Preacher Webb was the nearest thing to a doctor within a day’s ride, when he was not off to some distant point carrying the Scriptures to the farthermost settlers. Webb knew a lot about poultices and potions, but he could not fathom what was wrong with her. Country women tended to age rapidly on the frontier. An old saying declared that Texas was heaven for men and horses but hell for women and dogs. She had simply worn herself out, for a woman’s work began before daylight and did not end until she crawled into bed, exhausted.