It felt natural to Rusty that he ride alongside Preacher Webb. Several times he had accompanied Webb on his preaching circuit when he had no pressing responsibilities at home. The minister had always been pleasant company and a good teacher without blatantly appearing to try. He was widely read and could talk at length on subjects totally foreign but fascinating to Rusty. Moreover, he withheld his sermons for the pulpit. His best preaching was done by example, living the kind of life he urged upon others. If the man had any vices beyond a little affinity for horse races and a bachelor’s way of staring wistfully at good-looking ladies, Rusty had not seen it.

He had long marveled at the man’s stamina. The minister would sometimes ride until fatigue dulled his eyes and he could barely stay in the saddle. Yet once Webb reached his destination and found a crowd waiting to hear him, his shoulders straightened and his weak voice took on the power of the Word.

“The Lord never gives us a job to do without He gives us the strength to carry it out,” Webb often said.

His left arm was crooked, having healed that way after being broken by an Indian club at Plum Creek, so Rusty had been told. The arm was always subject to the miseries when weather changed, but the minister never let it handicap him if work needed to be done.

He and Mike and Rusty caught up when Blessing’s men stopped for a noon rest. The trail was still plain. Rusty thought, though he did not say so, that it was a mistake to pause while the Indians rode on. But the pursuers’ mounts could only be pushed so far and so fast. The Indians could switch to fresh horses from among those they had taken. Blessing’s men had to make do with what they had. If a mount gave out or went lame, its rider was out of the chase.

The ranger captain walked out to meet the three incoming horsemen. “Better get down and let your mounts blow a little.” He waited for Rusty to dismount. “Your daddy has been sworn in so many times there don’t seem any point to it. But I’ll swear you in if you want me to. You’ll not likely see a dime of state money, but at least you can put in a claim . . . for whatever that’s worth.”

Rusty had not even considered that he might be paid. Mike had always told him that a man owed it to his neighbors and to his country to serve when duty called, and he should never ask about reward. “You just ask what they want you to do. It’s your way to pay for the privilege of livin’ in Texas and the United States of America.”

Rusty had been no more than seven or eight years old at the time, but he remembered how joyfully his foster father had celebrated when Texas gave up its status as a free republic and became a state in the union. Mike had declared, “If it hadn’t been for my daddy comin’ over from the old country when he did, we’d still be in Ireland today, workin’ a shriveled-up potato patch and starvin’ to death, ’y God.”