Clemmie Monahan reminded him in some particulars of his adoptive mother, Sparrow, widow of Buffalo Caller. She had always been busy, flitting from one task to another like a hummingbird, never settling for long. Clemmie’s many attentions to him were well meant but smothering. She treated him like a child, and he did not consider himself a child. He had ridden with older warriors on a raid, though without permission. That should qualify him as grown, or nearly so. Clemmie’s daughters were much the same, especially the youngest, the one called Alice. The oldest daughter, Geneva, was kind but did not overwhelm him. She had a husband and a baby who commanded most of her time.

Rusty had spoken little about Geneva, but Andy perceived that there once had been a strong attachment between the two. He saw it in the way Rusty watched her when she was not looking and quickly cut his gaze away if she glanced in his direction.

In this respect he found little difference between white man and Comanche. He had observed Steals the Ponies’s disappoin I’ment when a young woman he favored had chosen someone else. He saw the same futile longing in Rusty’s eyes. Unlike Rusty, Steals the Ponies had put his disappoin I’ment aside and sought the favor of another.

As much as possible Andy tried to remain outdoors, away from the attention of the womenfolk. He enjoyed watching the men brand the cattle they had gathered and brought to the farm. A man named Macy, a former soldier for the South, was accomplished with the reata, a long rawhide rope. From horseback he would cast a loop around an animal’s hind feet and drag it to a fire. While a couple of men held the struggling creature down, James Monahan would pull a long iron bar from the blazing wood and draw his brand on the bawling animal’s side. Rusty said it was the letter M. He promised that once Andy learned all his letters, he would be on his way to reading and understanding the talking leaves of books and newspapers.

Andy understood that when enough cattle had been gathered, James intended to drive them to a faraway place called Missouri and exchange them for money. He could not fathom white men’s obsession with money. It was worthless in itself. It could not be eaten. Silver coins could be used as shiny ornaments on necklaces and bracelets and such, but they had no other practical purpose that he could see.

Still, he was told that they could be traded for food, for horses, even for land. It seemed a poor exchange. But white people had strange ways.