He faintly remembered that he had been called Andy long ago, but hearing that name still caught him off guard at times. He had an uneasy feeling of not knowing for certain who he was. His life before capture by the Comanches seemed distant and unreal, like a dream dimly remembered. He could grasp only fragments, while most of it drifted out of his reach.

He was ill at ease among most of these white people who wanted to be his friends. When Rusty was reluctantly taking him north to rejoin The People, they had stopped to rest awhile at the Monahan farm. Andy had perceived a special bond between Rusty and this family, a bond that had to do with the white men’s war and the misfortunes it had brought upon them all. In vague ways these people conjured up hazy memories of a white mother and father whose faces Andy could no longer bring into focus but whose voices echoed faintly in his mind.

He could not discern what was memory and what was illusion. The Comanches placed heavy importance upon dreams. Perhaps what he thought he remembered of his Texan family was no more than that, a persistent dream that haunted him like a mischievous spirit. It seemed to offer secrets but dangled them just beyond his grasp.

Memory or dream, it kept coming back while he was with the Monahan family. And sometimes in the middle of the night he woke up in a cold sweat, remembering his Texan mother’s screams as she died.

Comanches had killed her. That he knew, yet he held no malice against them. After all, they had taken him in. Buffalo Caller had claimed him as a son, and Steals the Ponies, after resenting him for a time, had accepted him as a brother. The People had become his people.

After awakening from a nigh I’mare he would lie with open eyes, mourning over having left them, wondering if somehow he might yet find a way to rejoin them without jeopardizing his life. No way presented itself, but he clutched at the hope.

Andy stayed close to Rusty as much as he could. When Rusty was not available, he turned to Vince Purdy. The Comanches had taught him respect for elders, and Purdy had a gentle nature as well as a wise countenance. Andy felt comfortable in the old man’s presence. He wanted to feel the same way about Preacher Webb, for the minister seemed tolerant and understanding. However, when he spoke about religion he left Andy confused. Webb’s teachings seemed different in many ways from those of the Comanches. So far as Andy had been able to determine, the two religions had little in common except belief in a central great spirit who oversaw the world.