The sun was three hours high when they came upon the place where the Comanches had spent the night. Buzzards had already found what remained of a horse they had slaughtered and roasted. They led the pursuers to something else as well.

Rusty took one look at the naked, bloody corpse of the woman and quickly turned away. The exhilarating sense of adventure vanished. He almost lost his quick breakfast of coffee and cold biscuits. He leaned far out of the saddle in case it all came up.

Isaac York went into a frenzy, spurring toward the buzzards, firing his pistol at them, cursing them and all the Indians that ever lived. The birds rose sluggishly into the air. One of York’s bullets struck home, and black feathers exploded. The buzzard fell to the ground and flapped one wing, futilely trying to rise again.

Fowler Gaskin stared at the body with bold curiosity as if he had never seen a woman naked before.

Preacher Webb’s voice had a sting. “Have you no decency in you, Fowler?” He dismounted and untied the blanket from behind the cantle of his saddle. He shook it out and covered the woman with it, removed his hat and began a quiet prayer. The other men bared and bowed their heads. Rusty sensed a quiet fury rising among the group, though no one spoke while Webb prayed. Even York managed to contain himself, but barely.

The prayer finished, York faced Blessing and took an accusatory stance. “They probably done this to her while we was takin’ our rest last night.”

Blessing seemed stunned by the sight of the dead woman. That surprised Rusty, because he had always regarded Blessing as a man who could not be shaken. Blessing said, “We couldn’t have gotten here in time to stop it if we had ridden straight through.” He turned to the other men. “Look around. The boy may be here somewhere, too.”

No trace was found. The boy evidently was still with the Indians.

“Damn them!” York’s eyes were wild. “The only way to stop them is to kill them all—every last redskinned heathen for a thousand miles!”

“You know we can’t.”

“Why not? Who’d stop us?”

“The United States Army. They’d stop us at the reserve.”

Rusty was aware that a reservation had been set up on the Brazos River in North Central Texas for those Indians who would come to council and formally agree to peace. He knew from what he had heard around the settlement that even some southern Comanche bands were there. Other Comanches remained unfettered, ranging at will across their accustomed hunting grounds and beyond, occasionally raiding southward all the way into Mexico. Most Texas residents would not have minded—might even have cheered—if the attacks had been confined to Mexico, but of course they were not.

The settlers were distrustful, even hostile to the concept of reserve Indians. It was common belief that raiding parties ventured out from the reservation, then fled back to the army’s protection once they had committed their depredations. This was accepted as fact, though some of the warriors now on the reserve had sided with the whites as scouts and fighting allies in two recent major campaigns against hostile Comanches.