Andy had heard much talk and wonderment among The People about the war between white men of the North and South. They had taken advantage of the increased opportunity for raiding into the settlements because so many young white men had been drawn away to the distant fighting, weakening the Texan defense.

He had seen a few Yankee soldiers. They looked no different from Texans except for the blue uniforms and that some had black skins. He knew only one black man, a former slave named Shanty who lived near Rusty’s farm. He had found that Shanty’s color did not rub off like paint, as he had thought it might.

Andy did not understand why Yankees and Texans would fight one another. It was not as if they were different in the way Comanches and Apaches were different. War between those tribes seemed natural because they had so little in common and all wanted to hunt on the same land. So far as he could determine, white men of the North had little interest in coming this far to hunt.

Josie Monahan was trying to teach Andy his letters and to print his name. During his earlier visit she had coached him on the use of English, helping him remember bits of the Texans’ language. He still felt awkward, often struggling for a word that seemed determined to hide from him in a far corner of his mind.

She said, “If you’d talk Rusty into stayin’ longer, I’d have time to teach you out of the first reader.”

He guessed that the first reader must be a book. He wished he could learn to read without having to study so much. Studying made his head hurt.

He suspected that Josie was less interested in teaching him than in keeping Rusty around as long as she could. It was plain that she had strong feelings for him. He was not sure to what extent Rusty shared those feelings, though in his view if Rusty could not have one sister he should be con-tented with another. They looked much alike, and the younger one was not encumbered with a husband and baby.

He had seen more than one Comanche warrior who was disappointed in his first love but had taken the next youngest sister and found her more than satisfactory.

Josie had taught Andy to recite the alphabet from A to Z. Now she began trying to teach him the look and sound of each letter. She drew one on a slate.

“That’s an H,” she said. “It makes a ‘huh’ sound.”

It was like no word Andy knew in either English or the Comanche tongue, but he repeated after her to keep her from becoming impatient. “What’s it for?” he asked.

“Lots of words start with H, like harness and house and horse. If you use enough imagination you can almost see a horse in that letter. See his body and his legs?”