Sergeant Bailey said sternly, “He’s the army’s business now. You dassn’t touch him.”

James fumed. “I know, and I won’t. But I’d like to.” He stuck his finger in Pete’s face. “I hope they send out invitations to your hangin’. I’d ride five hundred miles bareback to watch it.” He strode angrily back toward the house.

Rusty said, “Andy, we’d just as well go, too.”

The boy pushed himself up from his place on the wagon tongue. Rusty was disturbed to notice that the braids had slipped from beneath Andy’s hat and lay on his shoulders.

Bailey noticed, too. “I’ve seen some light-skinned Indians. Is this boy half Choctaw or somethin’?”

Andy took offense. He thrust out his chest. “Not Choctaw, Comanche.”

The sergeant’s suspicions rushed to the surface. “You ain’t fixin’ to sell him or make a servant out of him, or somethin’ like that, I hope. Lieutenant Ames, he wouldn’t stand still for nothin’ of that kind.”

Rusty saw it was too late to put the cork back in the bottle. “Andy’s white, but the Comanches raised him. He wants to go back to them. I’m helpin’ him get there.”

Andy nodded, silently vouching for Rusty. The sergeant still seemed to have reservations.

Rusty said, “I’d sooner you didn’t say anything to the lieutenant.”

“There ain’t nothin’ slow about Lieutenant Ames. He sees things for hisself.”

“We’ve been afraid the army might try to take Andy and send him to a reservation, or maybe an orphanage . . . somethin’ like that.”

Bailey looked intently at the boy. “Long as this is what he really wants . . .”

Andy nodded. “I want to go home.”

“Then I don’t see where the army’s got any business messin’ around with him. And I don’t think Lieutenant Ames would either.”

The other soldier listened but never spoke. Rusty judged that he had come out of slavery, where no one had asked his opinion or even considered that he might have one. Whatever suited Sergeant Bailey would suit him, too.

Pete Dawkins was not so compliant. “Damn anybody who’d send a white boy back to the Indians. Ain’t you got no pride in you, Shannon?”

“You’re a horse thief and a hangman. I don’t see where you’ve got any call to talk to me about pride. Even your old daddy’s ashamed of you.”

“My old daddy might be wrong about a lot of things, but he was right about the Confederacy. Now we got Yankee soldiers overrunnin’ the country, makin’ white folks take orders from niggers. It’s a hell of a world the Monahans and all you Union-lovin’ scalawags have took us into.”

Bailey knelt beside Pete, malice in his eyes. “I wonder, did Cotter get them ropes tight enough? I think I’ll take another hitch on them.”