“It don’t take but one enemy to kill you.” Rusty had been through this argument several times during their flight. He knew the boy remained strongly tempted to turn about and take his chances. Perhaps at his age he did not fully comprehend the finality of death.

Rusty had seen much of death in his thirty-something years on the Texas frontier. Comanches had killed his own parents and had taken him when he was but three or four years old. From that point his experience had diverged from Andy’s, however. Texan fighters had recovered Rusty a few days after his capture. He had been raised by a childless pioneer couple and given their name, Shannon, because he knew no name of his own.

Years later he had followed his foster father’s example and attached himself to a frontier company of rangers patrolling the outer line of settlements, guarding against Comanche and Kiowa incursion. He had remained a ranger volunteer during the four years of civil war. That service had exempted him from joining the Confederate Army and fighting against the United States flag old Daddy Mike Shannon had defended with his blood in conflict against Mexico.

Hardship had robbed Rusty of his youth, giving him the look and bearing of a man ten years older. His hair was the color of rusted metal, untrimmed in weeks and brushing uncombed against a frayed collar. A heavy growth of redtinged whiskers hid most of his face, causing a deceptively fierce look belied by the gentleness in his voice. “It’s tough to turn your back on everything you’ve known, but you’re white. You belong amongst your own kind.”

Andy placed his hand against his heart. “Here, inside, I am Comanche.”

Another boy might cry, but Andy’s Indian-instilled pride would not allow him to give way to that much emotion, not outwardly. Inwardly he could be dying and not show it. Even when Rusty had first found him lying flat on the ground with his leg broken and given up for dead, Andy had not cried.

Rusty said, “You’ll feel better when we get to some friendly faces.”

Andy clenched his teeth and looked away.

Dusk revealed a campfire several hundred yards ahead. Rusty’s first instinct was to circle widely around it, but he reasoned that Indians were unlikely to build so visible a fire this near to settlements.

Andy asked, “The Monahan farm?” That had been Rusty’s first announced goal.

“We’re not far enough south yet.”

If it were still wartime Rusty would suspect that the camp belonged to deserters from the Confederate Army or men trying to escape conscription officers. But most of the hideout brush men had dispersed peacefully when war’s end removed any reason for isolating themselves.

He said, “I’d pass them by, but we ain’t eaten a fit meal in days. Maybe they even got coffee.”