Comanches preyed upon other Indians as well as upon the white settlements. They saw everyone around them as either friend or enemy. They had few friends.

York cried, “The federals! They don’t do a damned thing to protect white people, but they’d shoot us all to save their Indian pets.”

Blessing did not argue. Rusty had a strong feeling that he agreed even if he did not say so. The captain said, “Preacher, we never thought to bring a shovel, but there’s a plenty of rocks here. Reckon you and Rusty can cover her decent and then try to catch up to us? We’ll move on as fast as we can without killin’ the horses.”

“We’ll do our best by her.”

Blessing sought out Gaskin. “Fowler, why don’t you stay and help?”

Gaskin was quick to dismount. “If you say so, Tom, but you know I’m ready and rarin’ to go on.”

York looked down a last time at the blanket-covered body. “We ought to kill them all and send them back to hell where they came from!”

The black man called Shanty rode beside him, talking quietly, trying to calm him. “You liable to bust a blood vessel, Mr. Isaac. You know what happened to you the last time.”

Rusty had heard that York got into a violent argument at the settlement and went into some kind of fit. Witnesses had feared for a few minutes that he might die.

As the men rode away, Rusty asked, “Was this lady maybe some kin of York’s?”

Webb shook his head. “I doubt he even knew her. But out here we’re so few that in one sense we’re all kin.”

“I just thought from the way he acted . . .”

“A few years ago, down on the Brazos, he and Shanty went to help a neighbor raise a cabin. When they got back he found his own cabin burned and his wife dead. The Comanches did to her what they did to this poor woman, and killed his two little girls besides. Such a thing has driven stronger men than Isaac York out of their minds.”

Rusty and Webb wrapped the blanket around the body and began picking up rocks. Fowler Gaskin made a halfhearted effort but contributed only a few stones to the mound. He kept mumbling about the likelihood that the rangers would run into an ambush. “Tom Blessing don’t know what he may be gettin’ into.”

“He knows what he’s doin’,” Webb said. “He always does.”

When the minister decided the body was covered with enough stones to discourage wolves and coyotes, Gaskin declared, “This sorry mule is about give out.”

Webb suggested, “Then the best thing for you to do is go on home. You wouldn’t be of much use on a worn-out mule.”

Gaskin tried to look disappointed, but the relief in his eyes made him a liar. “You tell Tom Blessing how bad I hate to have to drop out.”

Webb was much kinder than Rusty thought the situation warranted. “He’ll understand. We all do.”