“I sure wish I had that little horse now.” Pete sat down at the side of the dusty wagon road, checking the soles of his shoes. “Got a hole wore almost through. I’d be about as well off barefooted.” He removed the offending shoe and rubbed his foot. Its bottom was tender where the leather had worn thinnest.

Bad as they were, the shoes were no worse than the rest of his clothing. What once had been a gray uniform was now only a couple more rips away from being rags, stained, crusted with dried sweat and dirt. The knees were out of his loose-hanging trousers. Missed meals and loss of weight had caused him to punch a new hole in his belt so he could draw it tighter. The cuffs of his tattered shirt flopped open, the buttons gone.

He said, “You’d think somewhere we ought to be able to borry a couple of horses.”

“Like we borrowed from the Tonkawas?”

A buyer had come along with genuine Yankee money in his pocket, and Pete had sold the horse. In his estimation it was too good an animal for a blanket Indian anyway. It had also been too good for the buyer, but Pete had been unable to track him and steal the sorrel back, though he tried.

Scully grunted. “Horses seem awful scarce around here. Reckon the war took up all anybody could spare.”

“I’d settle for a hog-backed mule if I could get off of my feet for a while.”

Pete had worried little about pursuit, even before they crossed out of Louisiana into Texas two days ago. He had seen many Confederate soldiers straggling along the roads, trying to make their way home. Nobody seemed to question whether or not they had deserted their companies. An army had to be fed, and the Confederacy seemed unable to continue doing that. Better that the men scatter and try to take care of themselves. That was Pete’s opinion anyway, and lots of Texans seemed to share it. Opinion was about all most of them had left to share.

Pete and Scully had been able to shoot enough game for at least a bare subsistence. True, it was hard to fill up on squirrel, and it became tiresome day after day, but it was better than starving. Yesterday afternoon they had managed to catch a farmer’s fat shoat without attracting attention. They had feasted last night on roast pork several miles beyond the farm where the shoat had come from. The meat was gone now, and Pete was hungry again.

“You’d think somebody would take pity on a couple of soldiers who went and done the fightin’ for them,” he complained. “Ain’t nobody offered us nothin’.”

“Don’t look to me like anybody’s got much to offer us. This whole country’s poor as a whippoorwill.”