An old arrow wound in Rusty Shannon’s leg had been aching all day, but the sudden appearance of Indians made the pain fall away.

“Them damned Comanches,” he declared to the boy. “They don’t ever give up.”

Sitting on his black horse, Alamo, he squinted anxiously over the edge of a dry ravine toward half a dozen horsemen three hundred yards away. They milled about, studying the tracks marking the way Rusty and young Andy Pickard had come.

An afternoon sun glared upon the summer-curing grass. Open prairie stretched to the uneven horizon like a wind-rippled sea. To run would be futile, for both horses had come a long way and were as tired as their riders. This ravine was the only place to hide, though it seemed more likely to be a trap than a refuge.

“They’re comin’ on,” he said. He drew the rifle from its scabbard beneath his leg.

Dread was in the boy’s eyes. “It is for me they come, not you. I go to them.”

“Hell no! I didn’t bring you this far…”

He did not finish, for the boy drummed moccasined heels against his horse’s ribs and put it up out of the ravine before Rusty could move to stop him. Andy could easily be taken for an Indian. His hair was braided. He wore a breechcloth and carried a boy-sized bow. A quiver of arrows lay across his back, a rawhide strap holding it against his shoulder. He made no move to bring the bow into use.

He stopped his pony and looked over his shoulder as Rusty spurred to catch up. The boy said, “You stay back. They are friends of the one I shot. They want me.”

Andy avoided speaking the name of Tonkawa Killer. To do so might anger the dead man’s dark spirit and spur it to mischief against the living.

Rusty checked the cartridge in the chamber. “Maybe this rifle can convince them they don’t want you all that bad.” He stepped down, putting the horse between him and the oncoming Indians. He steadied the barrel across the saddle.

The boy’s eyes widened. “Don’t shoot. They are my people.”

“Not if they’re out to kill you. They’re not your people, and they sure ain’t mine.”

Andy Pickard had been taken from a Texas settler family as a small boy and raised Comanche. Rusty guessed him to be around ten, too young to carry such a heavy burden on thin shoulders. His sun-browned skin gave him an Indian appearance, but in close quarters his blue eyes would give him away. They were deeply troubled as he watched the warriors move toward him and Rusty.

“They come because I did a bad thing,” Andy said.

He had violated a basic tribal taboo; he had killed a Comanche warrior. Now he was subject to retribution in kind by the dead man’s friends and family.