“You think you can turn an Indian boy into a farmer? I can’t see you bein’ content to stay on a farm yourself, not for the rest of your life. You’ve spent too much time on horseback.”

“There’s no call these days for rangers, so I’ll be a farmer.”

“The day the call ever comes, you’ll drop that plow like it was on fire.”

Rusty did not argue the point, but he could not foresee that call coming anytime soon. To the authorities his ranger service branded him a Confederate, though a strong reason for his being in that service had been his loyalty to the Union. To have declared that loyalty at the time could have caused him to be lynched, as James Monahan’s Unionist father and brother had been lynched early in the war.

James said, “If you’re not in a hurry, you’re welcome to ride along with us to the farm. These cattle move slow, so we’ll be out another night.”

Rusty looked back. He saw no one. “It’ll do our horses good to slow down.”

“Won’t hurt you none either. You look like a hundred miles of washedout trail.” James turned toward the cattle. Rusty and Andy followed.

They came first to Vince Purdy, James’s grandfather, a Texan carved out of the old rock of revolution and the Mexican War, bent now from years of labor and hardship but stubbornly refusing to let anything break him. His knotty old hand still took a steely grip that threatened to crack Rusty’s knuckles. “Td given up on you,” he said. “Figured the next time I seen you we’d both be playin’ a harp.”

“I can’t even play a fiddle.”

Purdy’s pale eyes fastened on Andy. “Couldn’t you find his people?”

“We found them, but we couldn’t stay. It’s a long story.”

The old man looked southward. “We’ll have plenty of time to hear it before we get these cattle home.” Several had their forelegs hobbled with rawhide strips so they could not run. “They’re wild. They want to turn and go back to where we brought them from.”

Like Andy, Rusty thought. “It’s a wild country.”

“It won’t always be. I’d give a lot to be a young man again . . .” Purdy stared off toward the horizon, his aging eyes reflecting youthful dreams still alive and stirring.